The Gods of the Internet Age

I love reading the Bible, especially the New Testament. However, when I read it I sometimes realize that the only reason I believe in its spiritual realities is because they appear in its pages. Yes, I see a change in my life from when I didn't read the Bible. But it still strikes me as amazing that aside from the Bible there is no accounting for all this talk of God, Christ, and the spiritual life.


Others believe in the realities the Bible speaks of because they heard it from others and were convinced by the account of the people who spoke to them about it.


Of course, other religions, e.g., Hindus, believe their religious tradition because it's mentioned in their religious texts.


The printed word continues to exert influence. Entire movements have begun simply because someone put words on paper.


What kind of movements might yet come into being, not because someone writes about them, but because a computerized program creates that new reality? So many people's lives revolve around the Internet and its labyrinthine realities. What's to stop some of them from choosing a life based on Internet realities?


Welcome to the transcendent worlds and realities of the Internet and their effects on people's lives.

We Create Our Adventist Reality

The reason the concept of the remnant is so effective is that only a few will ever be able or want to live the sometimes austere lifestyle of Adventism.

Traditional Adventists focus on wholesome music, art and entertainment. They eat wholesome foods, drink healthy beverages, and live a healthy lifestyle that traditionally has been both a comfort to dyed-in the wool Adventists, and a source of restlessness for the more adventurous among us.

Even though it would probably never come to pass, since you could no longer speak of a remnant, imagine what a primarily Adventist society would be like. Well, such societies actually do exist in the enclaves near Adventist institutions. The only difference is that you can always find a gas station within driving distance if you needed gas on the Sabbath.

Imagine, if you will, a world of mostly Adventists where gas stations never opened on Sabbath because everyone walked to church. That sounds like what Jewish believers do by having temples near their communities. Realistically, a society where everything stood still on the Sabbath sounds a lot like heaven on Earth.

Who would there be to evangelize in a mostly Adventist society? Again, I've experienced that when I lived in an Adventist enclave and wanted to walk to my evangelism exercise walk on Sabbath afternoon, only to find that--surprise surprise--everyone within walking distance was already Adventist. Of course, some of the Adventists I found were listening to secular music on Sabbath and not bothered by the fact that I was knocking on their door to speak to them about Christ and was subsequently informed, "everyone is Adventist in this building except the man below us who is battling cancer. If you want you could knock on his door." That was my first and last attempt to go door-to-door in a mostly Adventist community.

What if Christ, out of kindness to the Adventist worldview, actually comes back and takes the Remnant to an Adventist afterlife of their own creation? To do otherwise would seem less than kind. In a universe where anything is possible, might there also be an alternate universe where Catholics enjoyed a proper Catholic-tinged afterlife, replete with the virgin Mary having more of a salvific role than she does in protestant churches.

Might this be the reason why God tolerates so many different religions and varieties of Christianity and Judaism, because there are enough alternate universes to accommodate all his children and their particular vision of the afterlife?

Who knows, maybe the good folk in the recently conceived (8th-day) Adventist Futurism movement might also one day live and enjoy the future reality they so passionately hope comes to light.

In the future perhaps everyone will have their "million year picnic"* in a heaven of their own imagining.

* The Million Year Picnic is a 4000-word short story by Ray Bradbury, about a family from Earth that emigrates to Mars.

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.

Virtual Heaven

Version I

I wish I lived in heaven. I live on Earth. It is heaven. 1978

We have heaven. -- Jon Anderson, 1973

Guiding your vision to heaven and heaven is in your mind. -- Winwood/Capaldi/Wood, 1969

This life is as close as we're going to get to heaven, my friend. -- Hindu man I encountered as a student missionary, 1974

Florida is heaven. -- Adventist African-American pastor, c. 1996

Version II

My fondest wish and dream is to be like Him and to know Him. Spending time with Him is also very heavenly to me. In this respect I can enter heaven whenever I think of Him, when I read about Him, or when I read His very words or experiences in the Bible. Would I like to live with Him in a perfect place? Oh yes, of course. But in the meantime, He can make this as close to heaven as it can possibly be.

And this is eternal life that they might know You, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom You have sent [and the Holy Spirit whom Christ has sent.]

If you have the Spirit of Christ, you have the very atmosphere of heaven.

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?

With God as our Time Machine where Can we not Venture?

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8)

"Frank J. Tipler suggested in 1974 that if a sufficiently long cylinder with the mass of several neutron stars was induced to spin along its longitudinal axis, the cylinder should create a frame-dragging effect and warp spacetime in its locality as the spin approached the speed of light." http://www.wikipedia.org/

This article from which the above quote is taken set me to thinking about the real possibility of an advanced civilization, or being, creating such a device. Serious scientists today postulate three scientifically realistic modes in which to engage in time travel, i.e., "near light-speed passage, black hole ergosphere passage and Tipler 2-way time machine (construction of a large rotating cylinder of dense matter.) " George Zebrowski, Macrolife: A Mobile Utopia. Even though these are technically for forward time travel, we won't digress too much by exploring the equivalent modes for reverse time travel.

After we've been in the Next World, i.e., Heaven, for a million years, might not the theoretical concept of Tipler's Cylinder make it an interesting historical, scientific and experiential enterprise with which to revisit some of the significant occurrences of human history, as well as the distant future. The reasons for wanting to do so are more than just educative. In an age where seeing a filmed version of something is no longer absolute proof, might not witnessing the actual event in real-time be beyond proof? It would also be an enriching experience to outdo all such experiences.

Perhaps the most significant events or people in human history, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, for example, would be of utmost importance to experience first-hand. Others might also wish to witness first hand the creation of the universe, the beginning of life on Earth, and other similar historical events. Since anything is possible for God, and since Tipler's conjectures are based on Einstein's theories of relativity, might there not already have been humans from the distant future who where present at the crucifixion itself? Of course, all of the precautions of cause and effect would have to be left untouched. I am referring to, for example, visiting early twentieth-century Germany and convincing young Adolf Hitler to enter a monastery or other non-political vocation.

It has been suggested that we will be remade in the Next World so as to have enough challenges and novelty to make sense of living the millions of years successfully that eternal beings will be privileged to enjoy. Be that as it may, revisiting key events, or people, in cosmic history might be what keeps eternity constantly challenging and meaningful. Some would rather forget everything that happened in the previous imperfect world, our present world. Others might want to be reminded about how much they have to be thankful for in their transcendent glorified life.

On the other hand, might not the exceptional thinkers of human history, e.g., Einstein, Galileo, Copernicus, Mozart and others, actually be future visitors from a time when time travel presents one of the significant vehicles to better the future, by improving the past. If we consider this unlikely, but potentially feasible approach to Earth's history, might not we be constantly experiencing an adjusted reality because of benign visitors from the future?

Another possibility might be that given enough visitors from the future perfect world visiting us throughout their future eternity, might not this imperfect world slowly be transformed into a shadow of their future perfect world? What if finally, after millions of years, the two worlds, the perfect and the formerly imperfect world merged, leaving one pristine, eternal, incorruptible perfect world.

The future creates the past. The past creates the future. It is all a cycle.