Sermon 4 - God and the Universe
There is nothing worse than someone who has made up his/her mind before the subject is discussed. A closed mind that will not learn is not the mind of a fool, but more likely the intellectual who thinks they know it all already. There isn't any subject, no matter how far off the wall (stupid) it may be, that does not inspire thought, and promote change. And, now for a little metaphysics to better understand how things work…
I ask, what are we? Some speck of sand on an endless beach. A tiny pile of rock floating in the endless sea of space. We are all a part of the eternal universe. The laws that govern the universe are the same on one side of the universe as on the other. The same can be said for religion. True religion must be the same no matter where you go in the universe. Because the nature of the universe and all things therein and all the laws by which the universe operates are eternal; it follows that religion, true religion, must be eternal too. The eternal religion is not an endless homage to some all-powerful being.
Pure religion is the knowledge and understanding of the eternal laws that govern all things, set in motion. Creation is an eternal law in action. An eternal action that must continue until the end is reached. Religion would, must, bind together not only all things of this creation, but it is the glue that holds the universe together. We have been drawn together from the first moment of our creation and will continue to be pulled together until that ultimate moment, the Day of Judgement.
There is no mandate-from-above, only eternal truth in motion. We are free to choose the path on which we walk. This is one of the great eternal truths. We can walk on the path of eternal truth or on some other path of which there are many. All of the paths on which we walk extend beyond the Last Day.
All of these things, and the things that follow, are but tiny fragments of the religion of the eternal universe. Small bits of an eternal whole as viewed through a porthole in a storm tossed ship. If you cut down all the trees in the world and pounded them into paper; you still wouldn't have enough paper to write all the things that could be written on this subject.
WHAT IS TRUTH?
There is eternal truth and temporal truth. Truth as an eternal principle is simply a statement by some living being or a law by which the universe is governed that cannot be changed. Temporal truth can change and often does.
All too often today we stray from the pure nature of truth. We are being taught that truth is in the eye of the beholder, or in other words that one man's truth may not be another man's truth. Truth can be changed simply by changing one's point of view. What is true today may not be true tomorrow. Half-truths become the whole truth, little white lies become the half-truths, lies then come colored in different shades of gray, and on it goes until we become willing to believe a lie and will fight and die to force that belief on others; most often in the name of religion (made up to justify our way of life). When this happens honesty, trust, integrity, and like words, become words in a dictionary with no meaning and, “the truth,” can be changed at the whim of the teller. What rubbish, what utter foolishness! If truth could be changed then it was never the truth to begin with.
The eternal truth is rooted in the past. The past is unchangeable and indestructible and is guarded by a very thin but impenetrable barrier called the present or the Now. This is the barrier that Einstein, and his theory of relativity must slide off. There is no speed fast enough to cause anyone to travel backwards in time (the past), as Einstein suggests. Not even if you could go from one side of the universe to the other in the blink of an eye. Go fast enough and time will stand still, but you will never turn back the clock. The theory is not one of space-time, matter-energy, but of time-speed, matter-energy. It is space-time that makes backward travel in time possible in Einstein's theory. The past is unreachable from the present, and so the space-time equation must change.
For the past to remain untouchable and truth unchangeable, space must be removed from the space-time equation. Space simply is, and this makes space one of the simple truths of the universe. Space is indestructible and so rooted in the past it has seen universes come and go. To it, Gods are nothing, small children playing in a large sandbox. To remove space from the space-time equation means that the past, or all knowledge gained up until the moment of the present, must remain in space somewhere beyond the reach of creatures of the present. It becomes simple when all you need to do is set the past (total past knowledge) outside of time. By setting the past outside of time, you bind the past to space and make the past as indestructible as the space that surrounds it. To set something outside of space is to set it into nothingness, and you cannot set something into nothing. All things must remain in space regardless of their state of being or dimension, matter, energy, body, mind, everything. To bind time to the indestructibility of space would make time indestructible too. By removing space from space-time, the end of time is made possible, all knowledge of the past is made reachable, and the creative action of God can and will continue until the Last Day is reached, and Justice gives birth to new eternal creatures.
For any and all life to tap into the knowledge of the past, they must become part of the past. Because time is easily destroyed, any living thing can destroy time simply by stepping through death's door. Become a part of the past and destroy time and all the knowledge stored in the past is yours. Equitable to all life but very individual in nature. It is this individualism that brings about justice for all life. Justice, another truth that is as old as space.
Can a lie stand in the light of truth? I think not. The rules of justice are very rigid. All on its own Justice would sift the wheat from the weeds without any help from God. There is no hope, (or is there?). We bring justice into play ourselves. We either stand in the light of truth or hide in the shadows of darkness all on our own. Convicted by an eternal past from which we cannot hide; where can you run to escape an eternal justice system of your own making? What corner of space is there that Justice cannot find you? Now is the time to make changes before Justice can take hold of us. After the Last Day it will be too late; Truth and Justice will come looking for us and there will be no place to hide.
All things must remain is space, and it is through the process miniaturization acting on the complexification within space that all things great and small in the universe become. Duration (time between life and death) is almost meaningless to the eternal creature but finds value with creatures of the present. Such creatures are we at present, standing on the edge of time just out of reach of the knowledge of our eternal nature.
What has this all to do with religion? It is the point from which this creation must start. It is the point from which we must begin to bind together all matter and mind (body and spirit). It is the beginning of the end of this creation. It speaks to the certainty of Gods. Mind alone could do nothing. Matter cannot move of its own accord. Only mind and matter together can only push matter about. Without help we could not have come about on our own. This is about a small moment in eternity in the life of many kinds of eternal beings, and all this is but a small part of the eternal religion.
IS THERE A GOD?
I should like to think so. But, this is not an answer enough for the logical mind that must doubt such a thing to be. One cannot point to God, nor can one point to a tree and say, "God made that to grow." This strikes against sane thought. Sun light, water, and good earth caused the tree to grow, I see no God in this. Still, as the sun shines, as water flows downhill, as long as there is earth under my feet, I believe there is a God. One may not be able to point to God, but the tracks of his dealings with man can be found throughout time.
It is theorized that the number of Gods in a society is proportionate to how civilized they are and their ability to explain the natural phenomenon around them. For us one God is more than enough (almost too much for some), but for a people 3 or 4 thousand years ago one God was unthinkable. To explain the world around them, they would have Gods of trees, Gods of bushes, there would be water Gods, and earth Gods, and fire Gods, Gods of rain, winds, sun, and moon. If they couldn't explain it, they created a God who made it and controlled it. Vikings, Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, etc., just about any people on the planet had more than a few Gods to explain what they could not understand. Greater the understanding, the fewer Gods that were needed. Against this, one group of people stands out against the grain, the children of Israel. Almost two thousand years before Christ when everyone around them had a plethora of Gods, the children of Israel bowed down before a single living God. Of course, religion is an awfully big business, which is another reason to have a lot of Gods.
One could call it chance. You could, until you read the laws given to them by that same God through the prophet Moses. The laws of purification alone set them apart. More than 3500 years would pass by before we would understand the why of so simple a thing as washing our hands before we eat. Then there was the list of animals that could or could not be eaten. How would you explain to a people nearly 4000 years ago that unless you cooked certain animals really well you could get sick and die? If the health laws of the Old Testament had been followed by the people of Europe, the Black Death, that took the lives of many thousands of people would have never happened. The spread of a number of diseases could have been avoided.
I shall not track through time or the prophets to point out footprints of a living God. I shall back up for just a moment before creation. The mind is eternal, it has no beginning, nor any end, nor any hands. It can think but not act. Thinking bits of complexification spread across our section of space unable to act upon even the smallest speck of dirt. From where or how or why God came into our section of space will remain a mystery until time is destroyed and the past knowledge is remembered. Unable to act for ourselves God set in motion the process of creation. A process that set us upon a path where we can act and be acted upon and will end with mind and matter fused together forever. An eternal process once started cannot be stopped. Turned, guided, left to rot, but not stopped. For each part of matter there is a part of mind to go with it. Even the Earth is a thinking creature upon whose back we (all life) are just fleas. Are we (humans) the only creature who doesn't understand the whole plan. We set ourselves above everything and nothing on Earth takes notice of such foolishness.
God cannot break the eternal laws which govern the universe, but knowledge is power, and we know nothing of the universe beyond what we see. So much is filled with stuff we can't see. With knowledge unknown to us God can appear to bend or even break the laws of our understanding, but he must still work within the bounds of the laws that govern the eternal universe. There are both higher and lower laws, just as there are eternal and temporal things in the universe. The lesser laws must give way to the higher laws. The higher law rules supreme and nothing can step beyond it not man or God. Can God break his own laws? I doubt it, everybody has to play by the rules.
Life is harsh, people die every day without good cause. Starvation, war, murder, sickness, drugs kill children, old people, women, and men by the thousands every day. We look to God and shout, "How can You let this go on?" We plead, "Show us mercy," to a God who has started his own wars using whole nations. A God whose prophets have destroyed armies or a single unbeliever who challenged His truth as spoken by those same prophets. All too often answers to prayers are more choices. We ask for strength; God gives us weakness. We ask for courage; He gives us dangers. We ask for wisdom; He gives us problems. We ask for patience, and God gives us trials of endurance. It is a rare thing that we learn from life when everything is going well. Yes, we can ask, "Where is the merciful God," in the face human (or our own) suffering, but mercy from God might destroy us all. For God to step in every time life got a little rough would negate our freedom of choice, nor would we learn to take responsibility for our actions created by those choices. How could we come to know joy without sadness, or good without evil? Where would be the lessons of life if some all-powerful being stepped in before we could get hurt?
We see only death at the end of the road, but like God we are eternal beings. The bodies can pile high, but no one dies. They are all safe and well protected behind the impenetrable barrier of the present. There they will stay until the crunch (time destroyed), when matter and mind are fused together forever. There they stay, greeting loved ones as they too become part of the past. Destroy the innocent and Justice will sweep them up into the light. Destroy the wicked and it is a kindness to them; otherwise Justice must dig the hole real deep. We all too often see only the short view. God sees only the long view. What is cruel to us in the short term, might be love to God, and this because of a greater knowledge of the eternal laws that govern the universe and his love for us his eternal children.
But what of chance? It is our own arrogance that places us at the center of all life. Chance does not lend itself to complexity very well. Life does not cross breed by chance, if at all. The staggering complexity of life on this planet at present and in the past points its finger not at chance, but at some higher power with a plan. We are not a planet of chance, but rather we are one of engineering. Genetic engineering at its finest. Chance would destroy us through inbreeding long before we could even crawl out of the sea on slimy fins, as Darwin suggested. Our own attempts at genetic engineering suggest this. Until recently most of man’s attempts at genetic improvements on nature has been through inbreeding; the results have left crippling defects in animals, and plants unable to cope with nature without help.
The human concept of love is so limited. Love doesn't last (until death do you part) or so we have been taught. A world where great loves are doomed. I do not believe this, love is eternal. Love can step beyond time, but our understanding of love is seen from the moment. Love and Like seem much the same when view from between two sheets. We humans might truly love a handful of people and things, but God loves all life individually. God's love is eternal and so overwhelming. It's like going from a dark room out into the light; a light, a thousand times brighter than the sun. Where is my fear of death as a child of that light? I have hope in a love that goes beyond time, and all life becomes my brothers and sisters. A love that binds together husband and wife, parents and children, for all eternity. Is it any wonder why I must believe in God.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
A vast sea of complexity, mind and matter devoid of creation, floating in space. How long were we there among the scattered bits of matter, eons, tens of thousands of eons? At what point does the past become a blur? A past remembered but unrecalled. Then came the call, an eternal law began to take hold of us, and offer us a choice. The first ripples of an eternal action just begun. The first call of creation, "assemble."
All things have an opposite or another half of some kind in the universe. Sometimes both can be seen. Sometimes one is seen and the other unseen. Sometimes both are unseen, but everything has its other half. There are things made of matter only, and things made of energy only. There are things that are both matter and energy. There is a physical (matter) universe and spiritual (energy, mind) universe that must coexist in the same space. Matter and energy are eternal (E=MC2, M=E/C2) as is the space that surrounds them. This is the basic, “nature,” of the material of space. We are both matter and energy, body and spirit, temporal and eternal, miniaturization and complexity.
Materials assembled, we were not created from nothing, the process of miniaturization (material creation) together with complexification (spiritual creation) began to go forward. An action taking place, and material being acted upon. Because actions taken or choices made by an eternal being send ripples into the far flung future, we find ourselves here. Here where we must learn how to make choices of our own and take responsibility for the ripples we cause by those choices. We must be free to choose left or right, good or bad, black or white without prejudice. This is something we could not do with a knowledge of an infinite past and an understanding of the future. Would you choose to do evil if you knew the power of Justice and the price you must pay in the eternal hereafter. Such knowledge would tip the scale. Our freedom of choice would come to none effect, and in a sense, we would be forced down a certain path with greater destruction by Justice if we strayed from the path, and this because of our knowledge and understanding of the eternal laws. But, free choice is ours unclouded by a knowledge of our eternal past. This is one of the great eternal laws; being there are opposites in all things then there needs to be a way to choose between them. So, we have free choice, and here we must walk by faith, free to choose the path on which we walk, until we go beyond time.
Religion is a poor word to describe, the eternal way. Miniaturization with complexification proceeding forward until complexification and miniaturization must become one. Complexity is the balance to miniaturization, and likewise miniaturization is the balance to complexity. Complexity pushing out and miniaturization pushing in. At some point, miniaturization and complexity will create enough pressure pushing against each other to fuse together. This is the omega point (the resurrection). This is not the end, but a seed that must give birth to new life. Just as a tree pumps information into a tiny seed that gives birth to a new tree; the omega point is the creation of the omega seed. Just as the tree doesn't make just one seed, it makes hundreds; the omega point does not give rise to just one seed, but thousands on thousands. A final act of miniaturization and complexification that doesn't make just one new tree but a whole forest. The forest that must come of the omega point staggers the comprehending mind.
The eternal action of creation set in motion by God will continue until all matter and mind becomes fused together. There is no part of mind that does not have an equal part of matter. Apart, neither can have any effect on anything. Put them together and they can move mountains. The action that creation started will continue until time is destroyed in the big crunch; when all matter and all mind must be bound together as one, and we become remade with full knowledge. This is the omega point, the resurrection of all things, birds, plants, fish, animals, trees, people, the very planet we are standing on, all things renewed unto new and everlasting life. This is the moment when all life must put aside the things and deeds of the moment and take up their birthright as eternal beings and except responsibility for the choices they have made in this life.
BINDING
Miniaturization is perhaps a poor choice of words to describe what seems to be the greater part of the eternal process of our creation. A process that sets us on a collision with the Last Day, the omega point. A place at the end of time that will bind the ends of the Earth together, from beginning to end. This is all part of the eternal religion that binds the universe together; of which miniaturization is a part, the tool that brought about our creation. This binding is beyond anything the mind can truly comprehend. It will bind together the family of man from the time of Adam until the last moment of time for man. The moment when we become bound together with all life, with all knowledge, and all power. Fused together not as one great big massive thing, but as individuals filled with the knowledge of the eternal past. If we became a large ball filled with all the knowledge of the past, Justice would tear us apart. Destroyed or driven insane by eons of guilt. Pulled apart by our own lies in the face of the eternal truth. Part of this great thing screaming for justice against the other part. A creature/thing that must be forever at war within itself.
As we approach the big crunch all things must begin to be restored. The floodgates of knowledge and truth must be thrown open as we rush toward the omega point. All knowledge, all truth, all matter, all mind, all life, all religions rushing toward the final act of creation, The Day of Judgement. A point where past and present must come together and time ceases to be, but all this to what end?
The endless end. Planed from the beginning to the end, that we might have the ability to take action, make choices, and have an effect on the eternal universe. The resurrection is not the end, but a rebirth of all things going from temporal to eternal. A new beginning on the eternal line of our existence.
The end of this creation is more than matter and mind coming together. The binding at the resurrection, the fusing of mind and matter (spirit and body) seals our fate in eternity, and hands us over to Justice. The path we chose to walk on in this life is sealed to us at the time of our resurrection. All the good and bad in us, all our habits and flaws sealed to us in the fusing of the resurrection, and then we are reborn as eternal creatures to stand in the light of all knowledge and truth where Justice can claim us. Claimed by degree according to the light of truth that is in us. Sealed to the path we have chosen in this life by the demands of Justice. This is the time to change paths, while we are still temporal creatures. After the resurrection it will be too late.
IS THERE NOTHING ELSE?
Oh, yes! There is much more, but it becomes more personal and more entangled within the realms of my belief; a religion that is beyond age. It must rail against those who would create God in their own image. Those who would try to fit a changeless God and eternal truths into molds of their own making to justify their way of life. Fools, stand in the light of the eternal past where the truth of all things resides and try that.
I should like to speak of the sacrifice to Justice that mercy might have a part. Justice alone is without mercy and requires payment in full. For mercy to have effect, payment to Justice must be made. Without mercy we would all fall short, and Justice would claim us by degree. But, man often decries justice when he is forced to take responsibility for actions in the here and now. What will he do when he is called to task for the ripples he made in the waters of eternity? There comes a point when it is too late to claim mercy.
I would offer discourse on the agelessness of the gospel and truth restored, but who would listen? I would point out that the floodgates of knowledge and truth are already open wide. I could tell you about the karma like nature of the laws of Heaven. I could track the footprints of God through time to show you an eternal living God that is the same yesterday, today, and forever. In a world that would rather hope that God is dead, what good would it do? People see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear.
I could write pages on how the world and man was created in a perfect state, and how when man fell, he took all of creation with him. One dark spot and Justice claimed a whole planet from God. How without a real Adam there would be no need for Christ. But, man's faith is in chance and evolution, as his creation and creator.
I could tell you about hope and faith. Hope in a more perfect and everlasting love. Hope in a world where dreams come true. A hope that is tied to faith. A faith that brings understanding of the eternal, which brings more faith, which brings more understanding, which brings more faith. On and on it goes, until you come to perfect understanding, and go beyond faith, but if you can't touch it or see it, it's not real, is the way the world thinks. Close your eyes and the world disappears. Is it faith or knowledge that makes you believe that the world is still there where you left it?
I would use up reams of paper on charity, and service to your fellow man. The pages I could write on stewardship; from the simple (our own lives), to the complex (the earth on which we all must live), and how stewardship, charity, and love for your fellow man all ties together. What good would it do in a world where it's, lookout for number one (me), in our quest for power over others. All too often as we try to hang on to our power, we become stumbling blocks to progress. Power measured in money, success, and recognition, and all too often gained at the expense of other people’s lives and dreams. All said and done, the only thing we can take with us is what is stored within our minds and hearts.
I'd like to tell you about love, eternal love. Love for your neighbor, your brother/sister. Love for all things living. However, love and lust sound a lot alike when viewed from the moment. Every time something dies at our hands without real need, love of life waxes cold little by little until, finally, love dies in the hearts of men.
I could go on and on, but all these things and more seemed to have no part in this discourse. Nor, do I wish to make this overly long and hard to understand, filled with complex and boring detail. Also, I have no wish to dive into theologies that seek to change the changeless. The eternal is simplicity and should be reflected here.
I only have one question. How can you eat an eternal carrot who has free will and understands the eternal laws that govern the universe?
Amen.