Analysis of The Spirit of Man (I-VII)

I. (Renaissance Man)

It was the best and worst of times
 It was from the seeds of the Black Death
 It was the birth of new ideas
 It was a question and a guess
 What would happen if we went into an opposite direction?
 Of our fathers and our mothers and we made our own invention?
 Of the world and what is real, we won't rely on intervention
 We can throw away the answers and take our meaning from the question

It was the locking of church doors
 It was our cult of reasoning
 It was the rights for everyman
 Or it was the bloody guillotine
 We can build a golden calf; we can dance upon the throne
 We can resurrect the pillars that fell down on ancient Rome
 We can choose what to condemn, we can choose what to condone
     With no superstitious fears because it's man and man alone

II. (Modern Man)
 Take all I am
 Take it all away
 Take Your mark from me
 Put me on display
 An animal is all that is left
 The will to power is underneath
 My desire to overcome
 The will of God will never cease

Take all I am
 Take it all away
 Take Your mark from me
 Put me on display
 But from these dark satanic mills
 Inside the city of all that is vain
 The machines will testify
 And the smoke will bare my name

III. (Post Modern Man)

I can rewrite time
 I can question consciousness
 I can find the truth in lies
 I can turn right into wrong
 But I can't run away from this void inside of me

I can use the used
 I can let her comfort me
 I can turn out all the lights
 I can entertain my thoughts
 But I can't break these chains; I can't set my free will free

I can trace myself from nothing
 I can give credit to chance
 I can numb my sympathies
 I can measure all things to man
 But I don't doubt that all I boast is undermined by all I doubt

IV. (Post-Post Modern Man)

I've been to the top of the mountain
 The feeling was empty; reality is all that remains
 I've been down each turn in the road
 There are no more surprises, only signs of dead ends
 And I recognize that it's bigger than me and I'm in its hands and I'm in its hands

I've studied all the world's religions
 I became an agnostic, I was an atheist too
 I believe that the body is born broken
 That the world waits for judgment, but I don't have to care
 And I recognize that it's bigger than me and I'm in its hands and I'm in its hands

The things that I have ordained as good
 They come back to haunt me, when I change my view
 The natural laws that govern the body
 Have jurisdiction of perspective, no one alone obtains truth
 And I recognize that it's bigger than me and I'm in its hands and I'm in its hands

I've emerged from the cocoon of reason
 Shed the skin of definitions, took flight into the absurd
 But I've flown into the web of purpose
 Been bitten by apathy, now that monster's wrapped me tight
 And I recognize that he's bigger than me and I'm in his hands and I'm in his hands

V. (A Thousand Years)

In the final days the scoffers call you out
 Where is this promised coming?
 Don't tell me you don't doubt
 But don't be fooled by them,
 O you who hold the truth
 Be careful not to live
 Undisciplined and loose
 For the ancient world that drowned in the deepness of their sins
 Had these same kind of disputes
 So just remember, that a day with the Lord is like a thousand years

The false prophet who speaks
 From the mire of his heart
 Reserves his place in darkness
 Chained to the blackest part
 The slander against things
 In which he does not know
 Is a stain upon the linen
 That Christ washed white as snow
 And if God did not spare angels of the heavens when they fell
 Will He let this brute beast go?

So don't consider God
 Whose mercies are so vast
 Slow to fulfill His promise
 Because it's not been fast
 Persuaded by the scares
 Adorning perfect hands
 He honors the great love
 Of the sacrificial lamb
 And all who call on Him and depend upon His name
 Begin to understand
 That a day with the Lord is like a thousand years

VI. (Statue of Time)

Time moves so fast
 Cementing the present into the past
 It's uncompromising
 Every word that I speak
 Every thought I permit
 Is a sculpturing tool
 And I'm building a statue
 Composed of my deeds
 And the mortar of time

Can sand be used as stone?
 Will chaos unify?
 Neither can I,
 Build a statue that will stand
 Against the coming winds
 Against the judgment fires
 When all will be revealed
 And time will testify
 To whom I really am
 And who I've been called to be

VII. (The Futurist)

We've planted cities around the world
 We have the tools and technology
 We're all plugged in and we're growing still
 We're all connected now globally
 We started naked with sticks and stones
 Look at the progress that we've made
 We've outgrown God; now it's man alone
 There is no soul to be saved

Take a look at the playing field
 It's not the game you knew before
 It's clear as day for those who seek
 Who watch the stats and not the score
 There is no future there's just the past
 Its social cycle prophesy
 A closed system you can't escape
 Condemned in the courts of entropy

The signs and wonders are all around
 Prophesies spoken from the youth
 Acting on the stage of hopelessness
 This generation rejects the truth
 We had it free a bit too long
 Consumed the land a bit too fast
 The fields are burning the sky is black
 The futurist screaming out from the past
 O woman run to the hills and hide
 The wicked spreading a thick malaise
 Children of famine hear these words
 Your fathers' apatite is your grave
 The falling ash is like burning snow
 Man's just a shell of what he was
 Eating his brother in the road
 He became the animal he claimed he was