The Second Coming of Christ: Reinterpreting the Prophecies

The first coming of Christ was nothing like what the Hebrew nation expected. It did not set them free from Roman rule. It did not usher in the peaceful and successful world that they had read about in the book of Isaiah.

If this misunderstanding happened with the all-important First Coming of Christ, what would prevent a similar misunderstanding from happening to the as-important, Second Coming of Christ.

When it is said that "every eye shall see him" one has to keep in mind that when those words were written down "every eye" referred to those in the then-known world, ostensibly a flat world with the Mediterranean, or great sea, as it's focal point. The Second Coming would have to be very large in scale, millions and millions of angels to fill a large enough area of the Mediterranean Sea, and the barbarian areas of Europe, Asia minor, etc., to be able to be seen all over the then-known world. It would follow then, that when the Second Coming occurs it will be seen by every eye in that part of the world. As the Earth rotates other areas will also be able to see the wondrous sight of golden beings and their Saviour-King hovering over planet Earth in a chariot of clouds.

Greater study and prayer are needed to unlock the prophecies about the Second Coming of Christ and strip them of interpretations that 2,000 years have built into them.

Some faiths believe in a Secret Rapture. Ours does not. However, when it speaks of "one will be taken and the other left" I sometimes wonder if out of respect for Free Will, those that are not taken will be allowed to live out their lives, as well as that of their descendants, until Free Will eventually renders this planet unlivable. In this way, God would not be the destroyer of those he created, they would destroy themselves. How long would this planet continue to exist without God's protecting grace preventing total anarchy and evil?

Some might think that to allow this world to continue with the uninterrupted intensity of evil that would exist without God's grace cushioning the effect of sin, would be more unkind than to destroy all those who reject God's last call to repentance. The same might well be said for our present state of affairs where an ever-increasing level of evil and suffering continues day after day.

The End of Time

This is a phrase that comes to mind without any thought on my part. It doesn't help that often when I open the bible it opens to Ezekiel 7. The New International Version editor has titled this chapter "The End Has Come." I can't tell you how often my bible has opened as if automatically to this very page. I've often thought that perhaps it is the very center of the binding and therefore the page finds me instead of me finding it. That can't be quite right as it took me several tries just now to find this chapter. I had not remembered that it was the seventh chapter. There are, however, 48 chapters to skim through, yet it took about a minute or three to find this End Page.

I've read this chapter several times, especially every time it just happens to find me. I've thought that God guides me to this page and yet it's historical specifics don't resonate with me. My end of time obsession is far in the future. When I don't automatically think of these words, "the end of time" I often think of the following phrase: "a million years from now."

I meditate on what life or the universe will be like within a million years. Sometimes I associate both of these automatic mind phrases and imagine that life as we know it, or the universe, will end a million years from now.

It is nothing but a suspicion. It is not a wish I want to come true.

Today I stopped to think what meaning the cessation of time, as one of the four dimensions of existence, would possibly have. It sounds nonsensical that the other three dimension, height, depth, width could possibly go on and yet, the most important one, time, come to an end.

I once read in a scientific article that it is thought by some that time was the first dimension to come into being before the others could possibly exist. It makes sense since whether you believe in God or not, the universe started out as nothing, or close to nothing, an imperceptible original point of matter-energy. Since time was the first to come into existence, why couldn't it be the first to cease existing, after which the other dimensions would follow its lead.

The good news is that our universe might very well be a cyclical one. If time ends a million years from now, it can begin again a million years later. Or perhaps after time ends, it automatically begins again, racing faster and faster to its next End Game.

One Million Members Added to Adventist Church Yearly

Through non-human means, the amount of new members is reaching incredible heights. Even though the human has to cooperate with the divine, nevertheless, some new principle is at work in the mission camps and older traditional sites of Adventism.


With the increase in numbers come new challenges, as in some locations, Adventists are no longer in the minority. Efforts are being made to counteract any dangerous influence on the part of political magistrates who now control most of the courts in some lands.


Disclaimer: The above is an example of anticipatory journalism. It expresses the desired outcome of a near-future event on the part of the writer. It is intended in the best possible way. If such outcome does not materialize, time then becomes important as to determine the eventual realization of the desired reality.

Future of God

Alternate title: Future of God and Humanity

When God said let us create humankind in our own image, did we or did we not inherit emotions or states of mind such as wonder, surprise, excitement, awe, hope, optimism, and other positive human qualities? What I'm getting at is that these good qualities had to come from God; we did not develop them ourselves. Therefore, what is so illogical about a God who also gives himself the luxury of experiencing awe, wonder, surprise and hope? Or is our God a being that has always been devoid of surprise, wonder, and exploration? I realize I'm seeing the man in God and not vice-versa, but are we not created just a little bit lower than the angels?

This may sound shocking to some, but it reassures me, in a way. Why do you suppose God created--had to create so many of us--at such a great cost? Think of the impossible although, of course, when you think of it, nothing is ever really impossible. What if we all are God's insurance of perpetuity in the same way that parents' offspring are insurance should they somehow never live out their full life span?

Why did God give so much in Christ to save us, mere flesh and blood? Might he not have more at stake then just some wayward children who needed rescuing at any cost? If you really believe that humans are children of God, then like human children eventually becoming like their parents at some future time, might we also not have been designed with the potential--perhaps millennia from now--to become as perfect as our creator through the self-actualizing gift he stored in our very DNA? It's not easy to even write these words. Nevertheless, the very idea gives me a strange hope and sense of well-being for the future of humanity on planet Earth, as well as any non-terrestrial colonies humans may yet develop in worlds beyond our own.

Finally, and this takes lots of faith and courage, what if, we are now, or may one day come to be, all that's left of the perfect and self-sacrificing being we commonly refer to as God? We not only owe it to ourselves to take care of each other and of our home planet, but we also owe it to him, our creator, God.

SPACE RAPTURE: Extraterrestrial Millennialism and the Cultural Construction of Space Colonization

I schoogled (Google Scholar) the terms "Adventist Futurism" and one of the titles that caught my attention was the one in question.

George E. Vandeman's Planet in Rebellion appears in his bibliography.

Page 107 of this dissertation:

Seventh-Day Adventist evangelist George E. Vandeman saw the Earth itself as threatened by mankind’s technology and believed the Day of Judgment, along with mankind’s extraterrestrial rendezvous with Christ, were not far off. However Vandeman's Adventism championed the Earth even as fundamentalists championed the above. After Sputnik, Vandeman wrote, America "was a nation in shock… We realized that we were actors in a technological revolution that would dwarf every other revolution into insignificance." Vandeman noted that only fourteen years separated the destruction of Hiroshima from the crash landing of the Soviet Lunik II spacecraft on the surface of the moon. "We had touched the universe," he wrote, "and its broken secrets had plunged us into nuclear and moral fear."

Vandeman believed that the immense technological advancements of the past few decades were a sure sign of the approaching "end to this world as we know it." Echoing the apocalyptic beliefs of other end times preachers, Vandeman asked, citing the Book of Revelation, "Could it be that we are approaching the time when God must intervene to ‘destroy them that destroy the earth’?" Space colonization would be a reality, for Jesus was the first to prove it could be done. "It was Jesus Himself, you remember, who demonstrated the possibility of space travel and promised it to His followers," Vandeman wrote. "The laws of gravitation were circumvented as the Lord of glory was swept heavenward." When Jesus returned to the Earth, "past vast constellations, bursting into view with a brilliance of display…" he would whisk his believers into heaven, where they would wait out the purification of the Earth by fire. Vandeman noted that none of this miracle would require space suits or oxygen tanks. 154

154 George E. Vandeman. Planet in Rebellion. Nashville: Southern Publishing Association, 1960. pp. 137-49.

To read the entire dissertation click on the title of this post or please click on the link below:

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/etd/d/2004/mcmillend92689/mcmillend92689.pdf

What is Real? Anything?

When I first read about the idea that we might be a computer simulation I thought that it was a bit much and that someone had nothing better to do than speculate about the nature of reality. It's odd that all of this speculation goes hand in hand with cutting-edge technology. If one day, lets say, science perfects teleportation, then that will become the paradigm with which to redefine reality, or what we think reality is.

If one day we're here one moment and light years away in a flash, philosophers might start to wonder if we were ever here to begin with, or if when we got to where we were going would we still be the same person, or would we ever be that person again, if we teleported back from whence we came.

Of course even Plato questioned whether this was the true reality or whether it was a shadow of the ideal model somewhere in some perfect sphere beyond our reach. I've sometimes thought that the apostle Paul must have read much of Plato when he spoke of "looking through a glass darkly."

Please click on the title of this post to read the original New York Times article, Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch, by John Tierney that got me to thinking about the views I've expressed here.

Temporal Mechanics

If you live in the past you will die there.

If you live in the present you will live out your life normally.

If you live in the future you will live forever.

Designing your Own Eternity

"As a man thinketh, so is he." Proverbs 23:7

"If death is not extinction, what might it be like? That’s a question the Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick, who died five years ago, enjoyed pondering. ... Although his reflections were inconclusive, Nozick hit on a seductive maxim: first, imagine what form of immortality would be best; then live your life right now as though it were true." -- Jim Holt, Eternity for Atheists, New York Times Magazine, 07.29.07

Yes the Bible says this and the Bible says that. I'm grateful for what it says, and more importantly, for what it doesn't say. It leaves out so much information. So much the better. We have minds and we have imagination. Let's use them creatively to make eternity the wildest, most regarding and incredible reality we want it to be for ourselves, and for those we love.

My own version of eternity is a bit like this. And it keeps on changing all the time.

This may sound bizarre but I've had this thought forever. Death is so ugly to many of us that I want the luxury of dying in heaven. Yes that's an oxymoron. But let me explain. If you die in heaven, you will live a second later. In a way this is the most perfect kind of death. Virtually, of course, it is a non-death. If you're dead for only one second, are you really dead? What constitutes death, anyway? My ideal death in heaven would be in a coffin of light. When I awake, right beside my coffin of light, is my smiling savior, who gave me the luxury of being dead for only one second, in--of all places--heaven itself.

I'd love to travel back in time once I've entered eternity and sample, first hand, all the major moments of past human history, including the very creation of the universe. I'd also like to travel into the far future. But not just any future, but the future as it might never exist, had God not intervened in some future point in time. Anything unpleasant I'd witness I'd want to forget an hour after I had witnessed it.

Living my eternity as myself, would be very familiar, perhaps too familiar. I'd like to live as another person, perhaps one of my friends, or even my parents, and get a unique perspective of people I loved and wished I had understood and loved more perfectly. Let's say I'd live as someone else for a thousand years, then as myself for another thousand. I'd never run out of different people to experience through the miracle of living as their very selves.

Water has always held a special fascination for me. Waterfalls even more so. I've sat in front of falling water displays in major cities of the world and each time I contemplate the water that falls yet doesn't fall since it keeps on falling, I envy it. In eternity I'd like to be, not part of the waterfall, but I'd like to be the falling water itself. I'd love to experience the sensation of falling, yet not falling.

If He has the time, I'd like to spend a million years talking with God, non-stop. Laughing with Him, playing baseball with him, walking through invisible forests of anti-neutrinos with Him.

I'm happy and I'm grateful that I'm in the process of imagining and experiencing eternal life right now.

Finally, I'd like to know what you'd like your eternity to be like. Share it with me. We just might live our fantasies if we imagine them with the greatest of intention.

Religious Conversion inside of Second Life

More and more people are leaving traditional churches and seeking more ideal or unique religious experiences. If you've never visited Second Life (a 3D online digital world which is imagined, created and owned by its residents) you owe it to yourself to see where more and more of conscious humanity is gravitating to.

No doubt one day soon, if it hasn't already happened, someone will have a religious experience while in Second Life. Think of the advantages of being able to pray and worship with other religious Second Life inhabitants as opposed to going to a brick and mortar church down the street or in another part of town.

A temple, church or mosque inside of Second Life has no screaming children. People do not cough or sneeze uncontrollably while they are in Second Life. If they do, they are behaving in an affected manner by imitating Real World peculiarities. In a Second Life religious environment there is the familiarity of your own home, because technically you are still in your own home. Of course, if you log-on from your laptop, your environment can be anywhere you wish it to be: in a plane, on the beach at dawn, in a quiet garden, in an ancient library surrounded by even older forests.

If you are not able to kneel in the Real World, your Second Life avatar can kneel for you for as long as you wish to continue kneeling in the house of worship of your choice.

Perhaps when it becomes possible to upload personalities and memories successfully, people will, in fact, live out their lives, or continue a kind of virtual life-after-death inside of Second Life.

"Jesus is nicer in Second Life." -- Anonymous Second Life Christian.

Relevant Links: Second Life, Jewish Magazine in Second Life, Faithful build a Second Life for religion online

Primitive Futurism - Futuristic Primitivism

Alternate titles: Savage Futurism - Futuristic Savagery, Primitive Future - Future Primitive

Remember when families sat around the dinner table and talked to each other? How about families visiting each other or visiting friends or church members? Today the average child in developed societies has a television, an Internet portal, and a cell phone to keep them as far away from other family members as possible.

In the pristine perfection of the Garden of Eden, and of non-contemporary family life, people were not as dependent on or obsessed with technology, as they are today, and no doubt, as they'll continue to be tomorrow. Every use of technology has its price. Yes, it improves our lives to a certain extent, but it also ruins something simpler and more natural that used to define being human in a very different way than it is defined now.

With all the gadgets and our dependence on them, we're now closer to being cybernetic organisms than our ancestors were. A cyborg was not made in the image of God. A cyborg was made in the image of 20th century humankind.

Perhaps our goal should be to travel backward/forward to a futuristic primitivism where instead of relying on high octane vehicles or their future equivalents, they would be replaced by recyclable bicycles, or wind driven devices that harness the clean power of the wind or the sun.

In H.G. Wells' novel the Time Machine, 802,701 years after a nuclear war forced humanity to live an almost Edenic life, it only appeared that way until closer scrutiny revealed that the price of a simpler and carefree world had its ugly underside. Perhaps a conscious return to naturalism or intentional primitivism is not really an option unless humanity is forced into it by forces beyond its control.

Only the idyllic Garden of Eden and future paradise, simplicity reborn, are the only viable options towards a return to a genuine intentional primitivism, a futuristic primitivism.

I, for one, hope never to see or use any of the following devices in a perfect future world, whether in this reality or in a transcendent one: I-Phones, I-Pods, Laptop Computers, Cell Phones, DVD players, CD players, televisions, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, automobiles, planes, radios. Yes, they can be wonderful devices that transport you to places and states of mind that you normally wouldn't visit. Then again, perhaps that is not a good thing.

Will there be technology in heaven and the new earth? Would it be heaven or a new earth without those reminders of our artificial life in this world?

Halographic Prayers Underground

Alternate title: World Wide Web 2050

In a special holographic circular room your entire body is connected by wireless electrodes to the supercomputer that colors your seemingly endless room by purposely preventing you from ever hitting any of the walls.

You wear no goggles. There is nothing but yourself and the almost perfect illusion that you are in bright sunshine or in the mountains of the distant past, as you meet and experience people and locations that would have been unthinkable 43 years ago.

The clothes you try on are sent to your home. The furniture you sit on has been shipped and will arrive there by morning, or sooner, for you to enjoy. The virtual people you meet will seem to know you perfectly if ever you meet them in the flesh.

As you sit in the holographic church, or temple, and worship the real God in a real heaven, you wonder how anyone ever risked the safety and the variety that the holographic web now affords you. You find it preposterous that humanity once lived in the precarious world before the free nations of the world had to go into hiding to avoid the nonstop bombing of the cities above ground.