Hi Xerces,
Cool thread! I had a little bit of time to look into the issue of Genesis 32:30;

"So Jacob named the place Peniel, for he said, I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved (spared)”

I address it in Part two.

What's described in those passages is very similar to what I experienced in 1984. I described this experience somewhere in this thread (I forget which page), so when I began researching the verses it was like dejavu for me.

Apollo had very valuable input that helped me understand it better.

Not only did I see this 'face', but my friends did as well. It wasn't some silly New Age experience, but a life altering one.

Not just my life, but others around me.

The parting gift I received was akin to giving a monkey a machine gun. Many of my friends were scared of me for a long time because of all of the paranormal things that began to happen after that... again I described some of those things in here somewhere.

It took me many years to put that genie back in the bottle... but whatever. People have to learn the hard way I guess.