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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

>>Just when I thought I had evicted all the capitals in general use, now my head's boiling

Ah, the accursed memories of capitalization in Galaxy Tales 1, 2, 3 and Archangel Syndrome 1 & 2.

Oh, and I changed boy to girl.

The boy telling her she'll have to do it on her own raises the big question: why? Perhaps the kid should tell her she has to lead the fight for Connor, but that the HS is with her. Obviously, I need better wording for that.

I explicitly mention in the chapter that the boy is younger and smaller than Connor, so, in theory, it can't be him. He can make himself look younger and different, but he can't make himself shorter or smaller in size.

>>She shivered as a bolt of adrenaline reignited the [faith] in her soul. It spread like a roaring fire, driving the cold from every corner of her being. The Holy Spirit had just returned to her in full force.

You don't like my over the top wording? I thought it was crap as soon as I posted it.   However, the word faith rather than religion is much better IMO, and the rest is beginning to grow on me. I like the concept of what happens to her there (she reopens spiritually to let the Holy Spirit in).

>>So this was God’s answer to her plea for help. There would be no host of angels to come to her aid. No armor, no shields, no weapons. Because none were needed. For the ultimate reinforcements had just arrived: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

I'll keep most of that, but I'm going to remove the reference to the Father and the Son. And I need to add something about the fact that it's her fight to lead. Like Connor, though, she knows she'll never walk alone again. The HS will be with her from now on. Assuming she doesn't drive him out again.

You didn't write that mm post?

Not scary enough. I should use an AI image generator and ask it to draw scary demons.

Question. I finally described what demonic spirits look like, and they do not look like angels, who look like the most stunning of humans (details TBD). Due to the evil tendencies of demonic spirits, their spirit forms have turned nasty looking. They look like rotting (partially decomposed) human corpses with wings. I love that look for them. It's also easy for the reader to visualize.

The conundrum is that demon spirits in the new draft cannot grow bodies from DNA (too hokey). Instead, they can turn dead bodies into zombies. They enter the dead body of someone who hasn't decayed too much, heal minimal signs of decay, absorb whatever knowledge there is in the dead human's brain, and then proceed to use that body as if it were still alive.

If I stick with the current look of demonic spirits, it'll mean they look like rotting humans, and they take over (slightly) rotting humans' bodies in order to function. There's a consistency there, but I wonder if it's a good idea for the spirits to look like their stolen bodies. I need to make sure the reader knows which one I'm talking about at all times.

Among other things, when you shoot a zombie, the closer you get to destroying it, the more its zombie body will decompose in front of your eyes. It's face will melt, and it will eventually dissolve completely if you shoot it often enough to "terminate" the little [censored]. Once terminated, the spirit arises from it, looking very similar to the decomposing body.

There's a lot of duplication there and the potential to confuse the reader, so I'm considering changing the look of their spirit forms, assuming I can figure out another look for the spirits that's as gruesome as a rotting human with wings. I'm leaning toward changing their look to something else.

Thoughts?