My testimony on time and space, eternity and the eternal covenant. “The Grand design”.

Here I was, age 32, gloriously saved by reading the book of Matthew and seeing the honesty of  the words “that deceiver” suddenly convincing me that Jesus Christ is risen. But how do I reconcile that with my belief that God is outside time and space, if he exists at all? Not only did I not know the answers, I did not even know the questions.

I started listening to a Christian radio station going to and from work. There was a preacher that came on every day at the same time. “God wrote only one bible, the King James Bible”. He ranted and raved about all other translations and how they were of the devil. I might remember wrong, but at one time I think I heard him say “If it was good enough for the Apostle Paul, it is good enough for me.” Being a Swede I found it puzzling. What about the original language?

As a ten-year old I had heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls and how they had found a complete scroll of the Prophet Isaiah. I got excited. But then I read it was a later copy. Ah well, it was a nice thought I thought and lost interest. But now I did read up on the Dead Sea Scrolls. They were written at about 160 B.C. and had pieces of most of the books of the Old Testament. And there were very few changes. The text had been preserved all these years, and was written before many of the prophesies were fulfilled. This excited me, for that would be possible only if God is outside time and space.

Maybe I could reconcile my beliefs with that of my newfound friends after all. They kept telling me that Jesus is God, but I still found that hard to swallow. A good man, yes, but not God.

The other thing I had a hard time reconciling was creation and evolution. Being a scientist and engineer I was a firm believer in incremental development and incremental improvement, and the Bible talked about a divine action that created it all, just like that. I enjoyed the fellowship, sang in the choir, did all the right things, but I could not witness to anyone except other believers for I had still too many questions myself. But one thing stood out. You cannot get something from nothing, and therefore we could not possibly exist. But we do. How is that? And what does the story of creation in the Bible have to do with anything?

The events of Jan 2011, the shooting in Arizona, affected  me deeply and I decided to finally write down my testimony. But I left out the part of the Grand Unified theory and M-theory for in so doing I would lose most of my audience. For others here it goes. Having struggled with Hilbert space in college and given up once the math required exceeded my willingness to put up with all the levels of abstraction etc. I got excited when they reported the most powerful cosmic radiation ever recorded coming from the Crab nebula. The radiation particles have an energy that contain 1000 times more energy than we can hope to achieve with the Super Hadron Collider. Maybe we can test the 11 dimensional string theory after all? This will strengthen my belief in God (for most it would go the other way, but be patient).

The other thing reported recently is the generation of anti-matter in thunderstorm clouds. There are positrons generated that escape into space. Why is that important with respect to the Bible? It clearly states there was a beginning.

Stephen Hawking maintains in “The Grand design” that the universe arose from nothing out of a singularity. For some reason he thinks that disproves the necessity of God. My take is the exact opposite. It strengthens my belief.

Back to the new Christian. I read the whole Bible, The King James, The New International Version, The Swedish Bible, and Martin Luther’s new German Bible, but the questions remained. Then I took another leap of faith. I accepted that God cares about His creation. This seems to be the overarching theme of the Bible, even with all its bloody parts in the Old Testament.

I agree, looking around you it doesn’t seem that way, but I decided to ponder on the positive rather than the negative. Looking at both my wife’s transformation and my own , decided to stick to the beauty and purpose I started to see in everything once I had made that decision.

So what about the question of time? To my surprise the Bible is full of hints.

There was a beginning of time: 2 Timothy 1:9  He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, Titus 1:2 in the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time.

And of course the most famous of them all: Genesis 1:1. In the beginning…

The discerning observer will notice the word before the beginning of time, which is before. What was before? The bible has an answer  for that too.

In Hebrews 11:2 we read: By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

A little bit later , in Hebrews 13:20 we read: Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, …    If it is eternal it had no beginning, or existed before the beginning. That doesn’t make sense.

Then I read in Revelation 13:8: All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.

In John 17:24 we read: “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. In this statement Jesus clearly states that the love of the Father for his Son existed before the creation.

In John 8:58-59 Jesus claims: Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by. (KJV)

Why did they try to stone him? Because they understood in saying “I am” which is the covenantal name YHWH, in reality its equivalent name in Aramaic, (the Hebrew name in that time and even today for some Orthodox Jews is too holy to even pronounce)  Jesus made himself  YHWH. This was blasphemy of the highest order!

So there it is. Either Jesus is God or he is a false teacher, a pretender and imposter.

And then there is the spirit, the Holy Spirit. Was He there from the beginning? Genesis has an answer for that too.

Genesis 1:2 states: And the Spirit of  God  moved upon the face of the waters.

Now back to the Eternal Covenant. It must have been formed before the beginning.

But who participated? There were no one to form the covenant with. The only thing possible is if it was made between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. What was the blood that sealed the covenant? It was from the Lamb slain, that is the Son, before the beginning of time.

In a wonderful way this makes sense to me. God is beyond time and space, but at the same time He is now in both time and space, being omniscient (knows all, past, present and future), omnipresent (everywhere at the same time). As Creator He is all powerful. It was done in eternity, but for our sake, we who are confined to the prison of time and space, it had to be repeated on earth. The only way to do it was to become a man.

Genesis 1:27 says: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. (Note, gender has nothing to do with it, since the image of God is both male and female) But to retain the property of being fully God he had to be born supernaturally, of a virgin.

The Prophet Isaiah (around 700 B.C.) wrote in 7:14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Immanuel means God with us.

Then again in Isaiah 9:6 it states:

For unto us a child is born,

unto us a son is given:

and the government shall be upon his shoulder:

and his name shall be called

 Wonderful, Counsellor,

 The mighty God,

The everlasting Father,

The Prince of Peace.

Unto us a child is born, this points to him being a human being

Unto us a Son is given, this points to his divinity.

And His name shall be called. Note the name is singular and broken into 4 parts.

Wonderful Counselor. This refers to the Holy Spirit.

The mighty God. (El Gibbor) The only other time Mighty God is mentioned is in Is 10:21, and there it is clear that it refers to God  the father, but here it can also be interpreted  mighty man, God.

The everlasting Father. This is Jesus favorite term for his divine father.

The Prince of Peace.  Refers to Jesus Christ.

This is as good a reference to the triune God as I can find in the Scriptures.

Later in Isaiah 53 the Blood of Messiah and the crucifixion is described – 700 B.C. not an after-construction as was prevailing biblical thought until 1948, before the Dead Sea Scrolls were found!

This leaves us with the nature of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus says in John 17:5 And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.

 And in John 14:26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

There we have it. God existed before the beginning of time as God, the Father, as God the Son in the person of Jesus Christ, and as God, the Holy Spirit, all coexisting before the beginning of time. This is the essence of the eternal covenant, sealed with the blood of Christ.

I have decided to accept that. Thus it is perfectly clear that God created the universe out of nothing. It came mathematically from a singularity, the math exceeds my ability to understand it, but I am locked into time and space and can only understand so much.

However I rejoice in the fact that when I received Jesus Christ, I received Him in the form of the Holy Spirit. Just think of it. I have eternity in my heart!

I leave you with   1 Corinthians 13:12-13 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. (KJV)(Creation and evolution will be another installment in my testimony.)

Jeffrey Immelt, Crony Capitalist. A Limerick.

Obama names GE CEO as head of new economic board From Michael O’Brien – 01/21/11 The top executive at one of America’s largest corporations is taking over as head of President Obama’s outside economic advisory council.

Obama named Jeffery Immelt, the chief executive officer of General Electric (GE), as chairman of the new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. The president announced the appointment during a Friday trip to Schenectady, N.Y., where he  visited the birthplace of GE, the fourth-largest U.S. company, according to Fortune magazine.  Immelt replaces Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, who will step down from his post as head of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board, an outside panel recommending solutions on how best to boost the economy. Immelt had previously served as a member of the board, which includes prominent business and labor leaders.

Appoint Jeffrey Immelt, Barry’s old protegé.

He will do to this land what he did for GE

Run it into the ground

No new jobs to be found

But promoting this President, that’s his forté.

Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.

On July 4, 1776 Congress appointed Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams ” to bring in device for a seal for the United States. “Franklin’s proposal adapted the biblicall story of the parting of the Red Sea. Jefferson first recommended the ” Children of Israel in the Wilderness”, lead by a Cloud by Day, and a Pillar of Fire by Night…..” He then embraced Franklin’s proposal and rewrote it. Jefferson’s revision of Franklin’s proposal was presented by the committee to Congress on August 20. Although not accepted these drafts reveal the religious temper of the Revolutionary period. Franklin and Jefferson were among the most theologically liberal of the Founders, yet they used biblical imagery for this important task.  (Ben Lossing, for Harpers New Monthly July 1856.)

Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.

Thomas Jefferson gave Ben Franklin the nod

“This is now our Seal

Which in time will reveal:

The Fear of the LORD shows: We are no *Nimrod.”

*What does the name Nimrod mean? It comes from the Hebrew verb marad, meaning “rebel.” Adding an “n” before the “m” it becomes an infinitive construct, “Nimrod.”  The meaning then is “The Rebel.” Thus “Nimrod” may not be the character’s name at all. It is more likely a derisive term of a type, a representative, of a system that is epitomized in rebellion against the Creator, the one true God. Rebellion began soon after the Flood as civilizations were restored. At that time this type of person became very prominent. That lead to the Tower of Babel, and the rest is history. From http://www.christiananswers.net/dictionary/nimrod.html

MLK day in Columbia, SC. George Washington boxed in by NAACP.

MLK Day in Columbia,, S.C. 2011 The annual MLK observance at the state house in Columbia SC had an interesting twist this year. The event is held on the north side steps of the statehouse. Prominent at that location is a large bronze statue of George Washington. This year, the NAACP constructed a “box” to conceal the Father of His Country from view so that participants would not be offended by his presence.

They shielded George Washington from public view.

Are our traditions now fully askew?

Would MLK say:

Put this father away?

Our nation must give him his honor anew.

The Long form certificate. Does it even exist? A Limerick.

From the Honolulu Star Advertiser: Jan 18 2011.

Interviewer: You stirred up quite a controversy with your comments regarding Birthers and your plans to release more information regarding President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. How is that coming? Gov. Neil Abercrombie: I got a letter from someone the other day who was genuinely concerned about it; it is not all just political agenda. They were talking on Olelo last night about this; it has a political implication for 2012 that we simply cannot have. (Abercrombie said there is a recording of the birth in the State Archives and he wants to use that.) It was actually written I am told, this is what our investigation is showing, it actually exists in the archives, written down … …What I can do, and all I have ever said, is that I am going to see to it as governor that I can verify to anyone who is honest about it that this is the case. If there is a political agenda then there is nothing I can do about that, nor can the president.

The long form certificate: not to be found.

The Birthers are standing on less shaky ground.

 They can’t find the truth.

Now that is uncouth.

Assurances ring with a shreaking, shrill sound.

Japanese cloning. A mammoth mistake.

Japanese researchers will launch a project this year to resurrect the long-extinct mammoth by using cloning technology to bring the ancient pachyderm back to life in about five years time, a report Monday said.

The researchers will try to revive the species by obtaining tissue this summer from the carcass of a mammoth preserved in a Russian research laboratory, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported. “Preparations to realize this goal have been made,” Akira Iritani, leader of the team and a professor emeritus of Kyoto University, told the mass-circulation daily.

Under the plan, the nuclei of mammoth cells will be inserted into an elephant’s egg cells from which the nuclei have been removed to create an embryo containing mammoth genes, it said. The embryo will then be inserted into an elephant’s womb in the hope that the animal will eventually give birth to a baby mammoth.

Researches hope to achieve their aim within five to six years, the Yomiuri said. The team, which has invited a Russian mammoth researcher and two US elephant experts into the project, has already established a technique to extract DNA from frozen cells.

The researchers had once given up similar plans after nuclei in the cells of mammoth skin and muscle tissue were damaged by ice crystals and proved unusable. However, another Japanese researcher, Teruhiko Wakayama of the Riken Centre for Developmental Biology, succeeded in cloning a mouse from the cells of another that had been kept in deep-freeze for 16 years.

Based on Wakayama’s techniques, Iritani’s team devised a method to extract the nuclei of mammoth eggs without damaging them. “If a cloned embryo can be created, we need to discuss, before transplanting it into the womb, how to breed [the mammoth] and whether to display it to the public,” Iritani said. “After the mammoth is born, we will examine its ecology and genes to study why the species became extinct and other factors.”

More than 80 percent of all mammoth finds have been dug up in the permafrost of the vast Sakha Republic in eastern Siberia. The most perfectly preserved remains of the Ice Age mammals still have hair and internal organs.

Is this really a wise use of research money?. Seems to me it serves only to feed some egos, give publicity but end in abject failure, after which they will all say – but look at all we have learnt in the meantime. There is a host of essential research languishing due to lack of funding, not as exciting, but much more worthwhile. Come to think of it, here comes the limerick:

A mammoth mistake is about to be made

in cloning research, The research must be paid.

Preserved since the ice age.

To that I say: Gee,

in wasting this cash common sense is mislaid.

Obama was right! The sea levels are beginning to drop. A call to action.

In a campaign speech Jun 2 2008, in all humility candidate Obama said this:

The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment—this was the time—when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.

Well, what do you know? The sea levels are beginning to drop in 2010.

(1) Thank you Obama that  the global temperatures are beginning to drop.

(2) Thank you Obama that the excessive heat caused by human activity are beginning to rain out in Australia and Brazil, central Europe and many other places. Thank you Obama for delaying and diminishing Solar Cycle 24, allowing record amounts of Cosmic radiation to reach the earth, giving us more clouds, rain and snow, thereby cooling the planet.

(3) Thank you Obama for protecting our land from all further development, so that our standard of living can be more in line with third world countries.

(4) Thank you Obama for your tireless efforts to usher in Global Governance through Article 21, Cap and trade legislation, giving us mercury lightbulbs that splat mercury all over the nursery when they break, working to sign the Children’s protection act, The Law of the Sea Treaty and everything else coming from the wise leadership of the United Nations.

Thank you Obama for your tireless efforts to protect a woman’s right to choose by denying Federal Funding to doctors and hospitals that have moral qualms about aborting the lives of yet to be born babies, and providing federal funding for abortions.

Again, where would we be, and what could we do without you? Could a return to abiding by constitutional principles change anything? Could reining in a multitude of czars, putting them under congressional oversight rather than giving them carte blance to implement regulation of laws that have not been read before passed prevent some of this? By doing nothing, will all this go away?

But yet, there is hope. As God says through the Prophet Jeremiah in Lamentations 3:21-23 (King James Version) 21This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. 22It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. 23They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. And again, a call to action: 2 Chronicles 7:14 (King James Version) 14If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.