12-12-96 It looks like this letter may get to you by Christmas. Years from now, church historians will debate the Winter Letter of __________. They will only know of it by references found in the written works of others because they may not have a Macintosh nor the knowledge that the letter itself has been written on electronically legible media. Even if they were to discover a printed copy they would fail to get references like “click on the little pictures.” Sad for them. The Bible, I guess, is a little like that for us. We lack the tech that reads and makes humanly comprehensible the original media. I think that may be because the original media was real life on real earth in a different segment of the time/space/creation box within which we have been made to dwell and to which we are bonded because of those bio-mechanical interfaces through which our existence is made manifest in that aforesaid box. I'm also wondering if knowledge of electronics wasn't available to those Bible people? Just what was that ephod made by Gideon out of gold and jewelry? Hmmm. Ecclesiastes notes sententiously that what is has been and what will be existed already in ages past. I don't subscribe to the von Daniken space alien theories. I'm not that whacked.

Have you ever read Conan Doyle's amusing Sherlock Holmes adventure stories? He has his protagonist say something like, "When you have discarded the impossible, what you are left with, however improbable , is the solution."

Actually, original media may be accessible or at least theoretically findable through some form of triangulating navigation. Imagine that you are in a large dark bag or box. Not really dark because you are aware of the section which is accessible to you by simply falling through time/space even if you think you are being still. But you know there is more. (Somewhere in Ecclesiastes it is written that God has put eternity in our hearts but we are unable to access it. Not quite the same thing I’m talking about here but similar enough to provide a rough working idea.) My concept of navigation is based on the idea that you have one fixed point, someplace you’re going, and someplace you have been, and where you are now. Where you've been may be left out of the equation, although I think one ought to be able to account for it somehow. Maybe. Maybe the Hindus and their heretical Buddhist brethren have made themselves more spiritually ill than necessary trying to do so with concepts of Karma, and whatnot. Hmm. Just a tangential thought. Scripture provides references about three of the four. All three have to do with Jesus. The Alpha - the beginning. The Omega - the end. There is another reference that, when understood along with beginning and end provide the basis for time/space navigation. Someplace it is written that Jesus Christ was crucified before the foundation of the earth. But is four times recorded that the crucifixion took place also within time/space. That third ref is to the present. Somewhere in the NT, actually I think in more than one place, it is noted that "Now is the favorable year of the Lord." Now, this instant, as you read this.

Are you with me so far?

Think again about being in the bag in which you’ve always experienced your own sitz im leben. You understand that falling through the bag began at its top at some time in the distant past about which others (called scientists) who are falling through the bag with you still argue saying things like, “Er, this bone fragment has been falling through the bag for 15 million years, it bears the readable marks of that fall, and we therefore can say that the opening at the top of the bag is at least 15 million years overhead.” (Interesting for me to note that they do not debate about things like, “Is the top of the bag still open and are things still being dropped into it by God, or has it been rolled shut like my lunch-bag.”

Another question about which I wonder is, “Is the bag burning as we fall through it so that there is no going back?” If it is, then in one sense we are always at the top of the bag. Actually, that is THE question because if it is answered yes, then there is only the theoretical possibility of moving in a navigable, knowable direction that is other than that in which we find ourselves falling. As I learned about the minor prophets in the OT, I was struck in several of the writings by the idea that God’s judgments is rushing to overtake, yet there is another reference (Amos?) about God’s renewing of creation overtaking the judgment that was sent out ahead of it. All souls fall. Judgment is dropped in after them with an accelerated fall, overtaking all that is in the bag and burning it as it falls. God’s redemption is dropped where the bag’s opening was, said redemption reconstructing the bag as it falls, overtaking, at some undisclosed point (the ends of the ages - the apostolic times? the favorable year of the Lord? the time of the presence of the Ecclesia in the bag?) the judgment in its accelerated fall and catching up to all souls/all of creation and producing changes in them becoming thereupon the New Operating System. That system, by the way, may have constructed something better than the original bag as it fell.

Is any of this making sense?

Let’s look at God’s bag dwelling prophets for a moment. They are transported, and they themselves know not whether they are embodied or in spirit. They are usually accompanied by an angel into situations wherein they see and hear things that are not usually discernible while seeing and hearing things within normal human awareness. Special notice should be taken of the fact that they are able to interact with beings who are participants in the situations to which the prophets have been transported. From this it is arguable that the prophet is actually “real-time” present within the vision. When the prophet has interacted within the scenario to some degree, the prophet is returned to his or her own part of the bag to resume “normal-time-fall” from that point.

I also note that at no time does any biblical prophet take one of these "time-jaunts" farther back in time than his present. So, it would seem that the God's time travelers are 'anchored' in some way to their present. When God transports them somehow into their futures, their fall through the time/space bag is accelerated. From that future point they are able to travel back through time to that location to which they were somehow anchored. I don't have any explanation yet as to how they were anchored.

Here are some obvious questions which arise from the forgoing - 1. Are likewise anchored/tethered/or whatever to our present? 2. If we are not naturally so tethered, what is the process by which it can be made to happen? 3. God accelerated the fall of the prophets through the bag. Is that something only God can do, or can we learn to accelerate our own fall? 4. If we can accelerate into our future reaching localities far ahead of our contemporaries, what will happen to us if we get stuck there?

The things one ought to figure out are: 1) tethering; 2) navigation; 3) acceleration; 4) deceleration, or return.

Is some of my spelling a little off? This program has no spell checker.

If, as the minor prophets seem to indicate, the bag burns as we fall, there is no access to points farther back than our “normal-time-fall.” And there is some (ever closing) gap between the burning and the renewal. I’d hate to get caught there. God gives us access to the renewal through redemption. I haven’t yet worked out from the biblical material what happens to those who have died. The Jehova’s Witnesses think they know, but I haven’t asked them. However, I do think it’s significant that none of the prophets seem to have been transpored back beyound their “normal-time” place in the time/space/creation bag.

Back to the possibility of navigation. Let’s review. What do we think we know? We think we know where we are at present relative to events in the recorded past. We think we know when Christ Jesus was crucified to within a few years. We think the top of the bag must be at least so many millions of years overhead.

What is the point of integrating this knowledge? Knowledge of the crucifixion provides access to the outside of the bag. From outside the bag one’s present position within the bag may be more exactly determinable. From outside the bag one’s present position relative to the bottom of the bag and to its top may be determinable. Of course, this is assuming that once without the bag one will have the presence of mind or the smallness of mind to turn and look back at the bag. Hmmm.

Those who labored at Babel had less than this information and yet they believed their tower would reach heaven. Maybe it would have. God certainly thought so. Well, because of the Crucifixion, we have more complete knowledge of the structure of creation. What is the point? Can we access the heavenly places with this knowledge but without God’s specific instructions to do so in this way? Can we successfully hack the system and return to Eden or create new systems in our own flawed images? Maybe. Remember that our speech is no longer as confused as it once was. Although Mathematics is demonstrably errored, it is pretty widely spoken. And our machines all understand 010101010101, on/off, power/no power.

I think it’s much more likely that we’ll miscalculate and transport into the place where the bag burns or the gap between burn and renewal. This is because mathematics is wrong. If math were correct then all that was created and set in motion through the use of an understanding of numbers and their relationships would always work all the time. But we know that’s not the case. Things work fairly well most of the time until they cease to function.

My friend George Obeslo in Oregon says that it is the smoke residing in electronic devices is what makes them work. When the smoke is seen to leave an electronic device, one can reasonably assume that it will no longer function. Hmmm. There is the chaos theory also as first noticed in the tracking of weather patterns in the 1950’s. A question I am for this reason forced to ask is, “When God confused our speech at Babel, did he do so at a level deeper than that of human speech, was it at the root read/write level of time/space/creation?” The answer to that question is probably, er, in a word, “Yes.”

Are you with me?

Alpha. Creation. Renewal. Gap. Burn-Cycle. Crucifixion. Fall. Omega.

OR

MAYBE

Alpha. Falls Creation. Then the Burn Cycle. Comes the Gap. Renewal begins its super-accelerated fall. The Crucifixion. Our Present. Omega.

I haven’t got it all figured out yet. I’m not sure I will be allowed to write out my answers, finally, or even deduce them in forms that can be articulated. Fortunately this is something that is continually developing in one of the experimental vats in the mind God gave me. It requires little conscious thought or effort although the fact that it’s running in the background may slow me down some.

I think some of the pictures I draw are the equivilent of mathematical and text informational reports that are generated from other things developing in the mental lab, the Genesis Tank, the Creation Genome Project vat.

Read the Books of Samuel and they seem like track-flattened printed out stage directions included version of what originally was a multi-media interactive CD Rom. The closest other thing by which one might compare some Biblical works to increase understanding is collage , but I think that is inadequate. It is excellent for us that God has given believers the Holy Spirit who opens the Scriptures to us in the same way that Jesus did for his disciples.