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How Shall We Tell The Children?
By Edward Chamberlain

Table of Contents

ORIGINS

I said earlier that I believed that it was an inadequate starting place to look at where mankind was at, and then try to make some sense out of his condition. Therefore, we must pick another starting place. The only logical starting place to me is to begin at the beginning, and so, that is where we will begin.

David asks of God in Psalms 8:4, "What is man, that thou art mindful of him?" It is not too hard to imagine David as a young shepherd boy, lying on a darkened hillside, looking up into the marvels of the night sky, and wondering, "What is my place in all of this? "What does it all mean?" There is a difference between the answers to that question when it is answered by philosophers and when it is answered by the Bible. Most philosophers seek to answer the question, "What is man's place in all of this?" The Bible not only answers that question but also answers the question, "What is my place in all of this?" The Bible feeds our hunger for meaning much more personally than the philosophers.

Where you find your answer to such questions as, "What is man?" is going to depend upon the body of belief in which you have placed the major portion of your faith, for you are trusting in the truthfulness and the reliability of either some man from the body of mankind, or in something or someone from beyond mankind, to provide you with the information you need in order to decide upon your answer.

I once read about two rival philosophers who were considering the question: "What is man." One of them answered that question like this: "Man is a two legged animal without feathers." The other plucked a chicken and said, "Look upon the philosopher."

It seems to me that the principal difficulty in answering the question of "What is man?" is not one of sociological and anthropological differentiations but one of origins. The answer to the question of what is man, is going to depend ultimately upon from whence he came, and not upon where he has been, or where he is at. When we answer the question of his origin, we answer not only what he is, but also what is his destiny.

If the origin of man is in the mindless, and near infinite, wastes of random chemical connections, then man is nothing more than a whimpering, complaining freak of temporarily sustained chemical reactions who will expire as soon as his limiting reactant, phosphorous, is completely held in composition, if he does not annihilate himself, or become the victim of some stellar or natural cataclysm, before that.

If man's origin is in this random chemistry, it is the cruelest and most logically violent joke in all of a violent and mindlessly cruel universe, that that which has neither mind nor purpose, has produced a chemistry that is at once, high mind, and needful of a purpose to explain and to match it.

Within the limitations in which they chose to define man, both Rousseau and Nietzsche were right. Nietzsche seemed to think that man was a virtueless, animated beast, that had sex for his engine and self preservation for his fuel. Rousseau believed that man was a schizophrenic personality divided between his nature, which he believed was pure selfishness, and his duty, which he defined as civic.

Because Nietzsche presupposed a natural brute of a man he would find no other, and because Rousseau looked at man from the standpoint of where he was at, and not from whence he came, he found Nietzsche's brute struggling to be civilized for no apparent reason.

As far back into history as it reaches, the record shows that men have been attempting to live together by some order of rules which they have developed, either deliberately, or by default, around the many ways in which they have answered the question, "What is man." The record also shows that those attempts have always failed to provide a universal, individual civility, and that they have never attained nor maintained any degree of corporate civility for very long. Civilizations and empires have come and gone by the hundreds and they are constantly being rebuilt around the same failed beliefs.

But if the origin of man is with a divine Creator, then man's purpose and destiny would be defined externally to himself by that Creator.

"What is man?" - Man is the being that is lost and confused. Man is the being that is either lost and confused because he refuses to accept the natural order of things as they really are: i.e. he refuses admit that there are no such virtuous things as morality, ethics, law (other that the natural law of force), or order (other than the natural law of order by strength). Man is lost and confused because he wants such things as beauty, duty, love, good, and a myriad of other such like unexpected things through which he daily struggles to accommodate himself to others, but he knows no cause for such things to exist.

Within that context, man is lost and confused because he refuses to admit his true nature and get on with the true and real business of nature, which is that of the strong weeding out the weak to the benefit of the gene pool and to the availability of the phosphorous and food supply.

Or, on the other hand, man is the being that is lost and confused because he has lost and forgotten the cause which makes such distinctions as good and evil, love and hate, duty and self interest, law and iniquity, profane and holy, beauty and baseness important to him.

It does not matter how longingly our hearts yearn for such things as kindness or gentleness to be a part of the innate human character if there is no cause sufficient to explain their origin and require their continued necessity. We need to look around us. The mother bear who will fight to the death to protect her young male cub this year will in turn kill him if he comes near her next generation of offspring two or three years from now. She harbors no confusion about to whom she is to be gentle, and to whom she is to nurture, or to whom and when she is to be a savage.

Self preservation is what some have called the "will to be," or the "lust to be," or the "will to survive." Because the strong and the savage prevail in the struggle for self preservation many have thought that to be its purpose, that is to say, that they believe the purpose of self preservation is to ensure the strength of a specie. But purpose demands a mind, and self preservation has none of its own. I do not mean that which has purpose must also have mind, I mean that anything which has purpose must have had that purpose imparted to it by some intellect. The crowbar has purpose because it was conceived and designed by a mind to function to a purpose.

Purpose and utility are not the same thing. Purpose is intrinsic, utility is applied. Once, shortly after I had joined the Navy, I was on messcook duty on my first submarine. One day I had to go back to the "after" engine room to get a 25 lb. can of coffee from outboard of one of the main engines. In order to get there, I had to pass through the "forward" engine room where the enginemen were overhauling one of the main diesel engines. As I went through their compartment, I heard one of the enginemen call to an apprentice to hand him a combination wrench. The apprentice called back and asked what size he wanted, and the engineman said, "I don't care, I'm going to use it for a hammer." The apprentice was thinking purpose, the engineman was thinking utility.

Nature, which has no mind, can give purpose to nothing, and man, cannot discover purpose because purpose can only be assigned as an expression of intent at the time of origin by an originator. Therefore, natural man can have no purpose. Man can only discover utility. Therefore if man's origin is natural, he has no purpose, and if his origin is supernatural, there must exist a "record of intent," recorded by his Creator, and delivered to us as utilizers, if our purpose is to be continually known and fulfilled.

Purpose is never self defined. Purpose is always defined externally by the "manufacturer" at origin. Utility may be discovered after origin through necessity or association. When they have discovered some utility for something, men are often confused that they have defined its purpose. This condition necessitates the proposition that the philosophy of man, and the science and the art of man that has been developed to express that philosophy, can never bring light into the Scriptures, but that the Scriptures can bring light to man and into his philosophy, and his art, and his science. The proposition therefore, becomes that when the Scriptures are held to be the superior gauge of Truth, and when man will subject his inquiries to, and interpret them by, those Scriptures, he will be shown the truth, and Truth will make him free. But if he turns that relationship around and subjects the scripture to his own reasonings and imaginations, then he will plunge headlong into a utilitarian darkness and will be the slave of that darkness which will end in both physical and spiritual destruction.

Self preservation therefore, originates in individuals, and it is every individual who gives it a purpose. Self preservation is not by itself a purpose of man, and it is not its own purpose. Self preservation does not have the individual for a purpose, but the individual has self preservation for his purpose. Civility is a sophistry of self preservation; it is a utility of many individuals who must each reckon with that same purpose of self preservation in every other individual. The strong have little need of this utility. Civility is a sophistication of self preservation that has been originated by the weak to influence the strong toward accommodating themselves to the weak.

The strong have not much need for the weak, and so unless they can discover some utility in them, the weak are burdensome to the strong. However, competition between individuals of the same specie is not the only competition in nature, and because, in life, there are many types of dangers and predators, the strong have allowed the concept of community to develop as a utility to help protect themselves from those outside dangers and predators. Therefore, within the specie, the strong should defeat the weak for breeding and feeding rights, but should otherwise help to preserve them, though albeit pitifully so, in order to have some cannon fodder to throw at, and against, other specie and communities. This is the natural order, and those of you who profess to be natural men ought to get on with your business if you really believe in what you preach. That is why I say that the animalistic, savage gunman is closer to your truth than you are if you are a person who believes in the natural origin of man and the evolution of his character. I am of the weak, and I am completely amenable to your purpose, for I have no desire to live for even a second in your world. And yet it is the only possible solution to the problems facing the natural world, if our origin is natural because the imperatives of self preservation are soon going to erupt upon the sophistry of civilization in such a manner as to destroy it.

Even though self preservation is the source of civility, it is acting contrary to nature and itself. Self preservation does not naturally concern itself with grand schemes; ticks and lice will kill their host; the brute will devour the last of a specie with as much relish as it did when there were millions of them. Self preservation sustains itself in the present and lets the future take care of itself.

The fact that in some regimes man has been able to survive in the present with enough energy left over for him to ponder questions of the future, and to ask such questions as, "What is man," in no way denies that self preservation is only concerned with the present, but in fact proves it to be so, for it is only when the present is perceived to be secure that man ever considers anything else, and, when survival is perceived to be in danger in the present, all other considerations become null and void in the natural realm.

Clearly, logic tells us that this duality in man, this brute of a fellow trying to accommodate himself to others in friendship, is unexpected and counterproductive, and that one half of this nature should be shed. But which half?

Observation and logic then, tell us the same things that they told Rousseau, namely that man is both the savage animal and the civil being. History, philosophy, and religion have all agreed that regardless of which side of this nature we choose to develop, or if even if we do not choose a side at all, we will still live with this conflict in ourselves. There will be times when we will strive to be civilized and we will loose to brutality, and there will be times when we will try to be brutes but we will loose out to civility. To choose a side does not end the conflict, but rather more nearly stabilizes the nature of the combat so that we can more consistently wage our war against the other side of our opposing nature.

In order to choose which side of this nature we ought to develop and which side we ought to resist, we need to try to understand which side would represents the best choice. The question of which is the best choice once again reduces to the question of origins. If our origin is natural our best choice is the side of the natural savage. If our origin is supernatural, our best choice would be the side of the divine, the side that can be, and has been shown to be, at every point in conflict with that natural side. If our origin is natural, our nature is naturally undefined, i.e. there can be no limitations upon our selfish motivations. If our origin is supernatural, our supernature is supernaturally defined, i.e. our character must be limited and contained within that definition. If our origin is natural, we have most unnaturally acquired this conflict with our self interest, this bent for civility. We should shed it at once. But if our origin is supernatural we have acquired a strikingly brutish, natural side to our character which should likewise be shed at once. (I am not going to consider at this time the possibility that our origin could be supernatural, but that our eternal assigned purpose is to be both good and evil. For if that be the case, there is no hope for us to be changed and we will all die by this nature, and even if there is an afterlife, it would just be more of the same that we see now, and I could not stand this forever.)

It therefore becomes necessary to make a decision. The prophet Joel wrote about multitudes upon multitudes of people being in the valley of decision, and said that the day of the Lord is near in that valley. There has never been a time in history when so many people were so thronged into that valley in such desperate need of making a decision.

What information then is needed to decide? As a naval officer I was taught that indecision was more dangerous to the effectiveness of a unit than a wrong decision, and that is true as long as effectiveness is the only measurement to be taken. But, while any decision will certainly improve our effectiveness in effecting the civilization of our choice, a wrong decision will certainly undo us, because: If we are naturally undefined, and we chose to resist that nature, we steadily weaken our genes and wastefully use up necessary resources by allowing the weak (of whom I am one) to survive and to propagate. Allowing the weak to survive is detrimental to the strong because they consume available resources, such as the food supply. The weak have no natural right to food unless they are being cultivated as food for the strong. I would caution the strong that wasting food for the purpose of cannibalism is inefficient, but capturing those who have been utilizing your resources without your authorization and eating them is efficient. There is nothing wrong in this if man is naturally undefined for there is no such thing as wrong, or evil in the natural order, for there is no mind external to man to define wrong. And if man has to define right and wrong for himself, one man's opinion is as reliable and as authoritative as the next man's. It is manifest then that the opinion that promotes the natural is the superior opinion. If there is no supernatural, there is only nature, and anything that can happen in nature is entirely natural.

But if we are supernaturally defined there is much wrong with the natural choice. If we choose to resist that divine nature, we bring ourselves into divine judgment. If we do not choose between those two choices, we oppose ourselves to the point of being insane, and we build insane civilizations. I offer the evidence of recorded history to support the proposition that all civilizations have been, and are even now, being built, by men incapable of completely deciding between these two alternatives, and the efforts of such men have always resulted in a compromising, civilized insanity.

If the correct choice depends upon our origin, and I surely believe that it does, then we need to have some information about our origin in order to decide. Beliefs about origins are mostly two. At this time the most popular belief is the natural, which holds that man's origins are found in a primordial soup consisting of the right elements, in the right proportions, in the right place, at the right time. By some force of nature these elements spontaneously combined to form a living, self replicating critter. This critter survived, eating something, only "The Soup" knows what. But it would seem that the only possible source of nourishment would have to have been the "soup" itself. It seems, then, that this critter would have had to have eaten the soup that brought it to life. Therefore, cannibalism is a most natural circumstance. This critter was then changed by the struggle of natural selection into all the various forms of life that are now alive and that have ever been alive.

When main frame computers became available which could model this hypothesis, two self confirmed evolutionary atheists began to compute the probability of such synthesis occurring. Sir Fred Hoyle and his associate and collaborator, C.N. Wickramasinghe computed that the odds that self replicating life could have spontaneously formed from such a primordial soup were one chance in ten raised to the 40,000th power. There is no human that has ever lived that can comprehend the magnitude of that number. I have read that if you could count all of the electrons in the known universe you would come up with approximately ten raised to the eighty-second power of electrons. If you want to know how many times larger ten raised to the forty thousandth power is than ten raised to the eighty-second power, you subtract 82 from 40,000 and the remainder is the answer. The odds against life spontaneously arising from inorganic material are 10 raised to the 39,918th power times greater than all of the electrons in the known universe.

The reason the number of electrons in the universe is germane to this issue is because it is through chemistry that this primordial life was supposed to have arisen, and chemistry is primarily an interaction of electrons. Clearly, even if all the elements and their electrons in the entire universe had been mixed in the primordial soup there would have still been no chance of obtaining a self replicating life form.

If we allow for the supposed synthesis process to be repeated at a repetition rate of ten thousand times each second, using the entire universe in the "soup," for a period of 12.5 billion years, we will have tried roughly 4 X 10 raised to the 17 power, times 10 raised to the 82nd power, of combinations from out of all of the possible 10 raised to the 40,000th power combinations. This means that the odds against self replicating life forming from such a "soup" where the synthesis has been steadily occurring at ten thousand times each second over a 12.5 billion year period are: 10 raised to the 40,000th power divided by 4 X 10 raised to the 99th power, to one, or in other words, ¹ chance out of a number of chances equal to 2.5 X 10 raised to the 39,901th power. In order to have a 50\50 shot at synthesizing this "critter," with the same repetition rate, the process would have to be repeated, not 12.5 billion years, but more than 12.5 billion times 10 raised to 200th power years, which is 12.5 billion years with an additional 201 significant zeros added to the left of the decimal point.

Of all of the necessary assumptions involved in postulating such auto-vitality, the one that is the most ridiculous, but at the same time, that is the most completely necessary, is that after having accomplished the first trial assimilation, all of the compounds in all of the universe, which had been created during the first ten thousandth of a second, were instantaneously checked for vitality. But there can be no mind capable of such checking, which means the check for vitality had to be accidental and natural. If vitality was present on the first try, then the process had to stop, and all of the remaining inert compounds had to have been disassembled to provide an environment suitable to maintain life. All of this had to have happened without a mind behind the process. But if vitality was not present after the first assimilation, then all of the compounds assimilated had to have been instantaneously uncombined. This assumption is absolutely essential in order to accomplish the next instantaneous combination. But there must also be a record kept of combinations which have been tried and have failed. Both the testing for vitality and the keeping of such a record, require a mind and there must also be a place for keeping the record. Since all of the universe is tied up in trying to produce this auto-vitality, there is no physical nor energetic place left for any such mind or record to exist, and thus random trials become ordained, and the process would be doomed to almost certain endless and redundant repetitions of failed syntheses. In other words, this process could not have proceeded without the direction of some intelligent control, but at the same time, if it had been intelligently controlled, it could not have been naturally originated, but rather would have had to have been created. This process of mindless assimilation, checking for the correct information, and instantaneous dissimilation had to have been continuously repeated, with no duplication of synthesis, for 1.25 billion X 10 raised to the 203rd power years in order to have had an even chance of producing life out of the equation. If the necessary duplications of failed syntheses, and the necessary time is allowed for natural decomposition of previous syntheses before the next synthesis is attempted, the equation and the time required becomes even more absurd.

All of the preceding assumes an existing creation that consisted of a soup containing the necessary inorganic building blocks such a carbon atoms, hydrogen atoms, nitrogen atoms, oxygen atoms, etc. But where did they come from? How did the inorganic materials get real? It has been computed that the chance of accidentally forming a carbon atom through the hypothetical fusion process of hydrogen into helium, and helium into lithium, and so on, is also one chance in ten raised the 40,000th power. It therefore becomes increasingly absurd to postulate that carbon based life formed through a process that has one chance out of 10 raised the 40,000th power to produce atomic carbon multiplied by the one chance in 10 raised to the 40,000th power of life forming out of a hydrogen and carbon and nitrogen and oxygen soup.

The odds against life forming from a hydrogen cloud are at best one chance in ten raised to the 80,000 power. That is the number ten with 80,000 zeros before the decimal point. And it must be remembered that we started with hydrogen already in existence, and that the hydrogen had to have come from somewhere.

It is no wonder that the two scientists who developed this data gave up not only the belief in evolution, but refuted both the big bang theory and the steady state theory of the formation of the universe as well. They repudiated all natural explanations of origins that denied a controlling intellect after becoming convinced that the chance of life forming by itself was so ridiculously small that it had to have been created and planted upon earth by supernatural forces.

There are many other evidences against the theory of evolution such as the relatively young age of the earth yielded by all of the most reliable natural clocks, i.e. those "clocks" that require the fewest assumptions concerning original conditions. A clock can be made of anything measurable that has a known rate of change as one of its characteristics. For example, the moon can be used to accurately measure the lunar month because it has a steady rate of change. But the moon has no facilities for accumulating previous cycles so it is only good for measuring the length of the lunar month and cannot tell us about how many months the cycle has been repeating, and therefore if, I were to have to use the moon to measure the age of the earth I would have to philosophically presume to already know the answer in order to calculate how many months the moon had been cycling. But if I had a doctorate in "Moon Guessing" I would expect you to believe in my guess and accept it as truth. (That is about as scientific as evolutionists get.) All natural clocks require that some assumptions be made concerning: historical conditions, magnitude of original parameters, and system losses. One such natural clock is the decay rate of the earth's magnetic field, which yields an age of at most a few thousand years. The clock of population growth also limits life on earth to a few thousand years, i.e. we would exist upon the bodies and bones of trillions of recently dead humans that had not yet rotted if man has been in existence for 4.5 to 7 million years. The assumptions required in the use of all such clocks concern a guess at what the original magnitudes and conditions were in an ancient past when there were no records. The most reliable clocks therefore will be those clocks that require the fewest and the most reasonable assumptions. All of the clocks that meet this reliability criteria indicate an age for the earth in thousands of years instead of billions. The only clocks which yield very ancient ages are the clocks which use radioactive decay rates of one element into another, and these clocks are the ones which require the most unreasonable assumptions concerning quantities of original elements, constancy of decay rates (which has been proved not to be the case), no system losses (which likewise is known to be false), and "special calibrations" of the derived data.

In the 1960's it was accidentally but mathematically demonstrated that the most reliable radioactive clock for dating the age of the earth involved radioactive carbon 14. But it was not the ratio of carbon 12 to carbon 14 used for biological dating that disputed the long ages of the earth, but rather it was the ratio of carbon 14 being created in the upper atmosphere to amount of carbon 14 that is becoming nitrogen in the lower atmosphere that provided the information that proved that the atmosphere of earth could not be over 45,000 years old. It was mathematically demonstrated by a scientist from Bell Laboratories, who won a Nobel Prize in Physics for his work, that the amount of radio active carbon 14 being created and the amount that is becoming nitrogen would reach equilibrium about 45,000 years after the process had begun. But when the amounts of each were measured it was empirically demonstrated that equilibrium in the process had not yet been reached and the data proved a young age for the atmosphere of a few thousand years instead of an age of millions of years.

There are many such evidences for a Special Creation and a young earth, and we can not pursue them here. These evidences have been put forth in a number of books by many scientists who are also Creationists. "SCIENTIFIC CREATIONISM" by Dr. Henry Morris, Creation Life Publishers, San Diego, Ca: is a good place to start for those who wish to pursue the matter further.

If life could not have arisen spontaneously, but had to have been created, could it not have been made as spores which were allowed to scatter until the natural processes worked upon them for millions and millions of years until the result was man? This is the position now held by Hoyle and most theistic evolutionists. Religiously and philosophically it is untenable unless one is ready to admit that we ought to get on with the business of the survival of the fittest and quit worrying about this civilization nonsense.

The only reason anyone would ever try to reinterpret the first 11 chapters of Genesis to include any science or history conceived by man is because they have more faith in man than they do in Almighty God. It is high time each of us got all of our eggs into one basket or the other; we cannot afford to delay any longer. That may not be sound financial advice but it is Solid Rock Faith.

The theory of evolution neither desires, nor requires God. And God certainly did not use evolution. If God has used millions of years of the death, suffering, pain, and savagery of evolutionary chance to make man what he is today, he now has no right to judge the savage which that chance has produced, and I will tell him so to his face. A god that would do such a thing is a bully, and a usurper, and not at all loving or righteous, and I don't want to live with him for a minute, much less for an eternity. Like wise if God were to have used the pain and suffering and sorrow and brutality of the natural order while "directing the progress" of evolution, then God himself is responsible for violence, death, brutality, suffering, sorrow, and so on, and I will likewise tell him what he can do with his "love and his righteousness." But God never said that he did anything so silly. It is men who have more faith in man than in God who say such things.

Since the Bible does not talk at all about evolution, it is most obvious that the only reason anyone would try to add it between the lines is because they have been listening to some man. The Bible says they who believe in man instead of God are cursed. Those who want to believe evolution, theistic or otherwise, do so from the standpoint of a faith in cursed man that willfully ignores all contrary evidence.

But even if man was created and defined supernaturally, he should not have this duality in his nature, this perplexing and troublesome opposition to himself. If man was created supernaturally, then he is either the product of extremely poor engineering, or something has gone wrong after production. One can scarcely examine the human body and accuse the Designer of poor engineering:

Go to any engineering firm in the world and ask them to design you an ambulatory "critter" with trillions of fuel cells, each individually capable of specialized kinds of work, and each serviced by a single fuel supply pipe and a single waste removal pipe, all of the trillions of which are connected in common to a single pump that pumps a circulating slurry that continuously exchanges fuel for waste products and oxygen for carbon dioxide (and by the way, this slurry cannot carry these gasses in gaseous form because they will cause the slurry to clot, or form bubbles within it, which can stop the pump or block the distribution of the slurry). This slurry also must be capable of containing and delivering lubricants, repair parts, and foreign body repellents to each and every one of those trillions of cells. Any engineering firm you talk to about building such a "critter" for you will laugh you down the stairs and out the door. And you haven"t even begun to discuss with them any of the other complexities of the body's marvels such as the brain, or the mind, or the eye, or the hand, or the ear, etc. In the 139th Psalm, verse 14, David said, "I am fearfully and wonderfully made."

Go to that same engineering firm and ask them to design and build a critter for you that is capable of doing the following: Place, in random order, upon an otherwise empty table, a drinking straw, a pencil, and a ball point pen. Place your "critter" across the room from the table, and place two chairs directly in the path between your critter and the table. Instruct the critter to advance to the table, and to retrieve only the pencil, and to return to its former position, all the while avoiding the two chairs. Be prepared to spend a lot of money. Yet any human child who can not follow such simple instructions is considered dysfunctional.

If our problem is not due to bad engineering, then we were either created to no purpose, or something has gone terribly wrong after our creation. Being created with mind but to no purpose is the same thing as not being supernaturally created. It has been previously demonstrated that purpose can be defined only at the time of creation, by the creator; therefore, we cannot define our own purpose, but we can discover some utility for ourselves. If we are left to discover only our own utility to give meaning to life, then one man's utility is as good and as valid as the next man's, and all utilizations become equally legitimate, even those that debase, and oppress, and captivate, and enslave, and slaughter.

When we do not care about purpose, all possible utilities become equally valid. Whether the engineman was to utilize the wrench for a hammer or a pry bar makes no difference, since, once it was in his hand, he could utilize it for any utility for which he willed. It is entirely unnecessary that such utilization be efficient, or rational, or popular. The engineman had reasoned a utility for the as a hammer, and his reason was sufficient to his will. When all utilizations are equally valid, those utilizations which are the most violent and domineering must certainly prevail unless there is some agency beyond those utilizations to confound them.

Can we find the reason then that man, in his utilization of himself, displays two conflicting natures? A hint of the problem involved in answering that question lies within the way the question itself was written. The question seeks a reason, when what is needed is a cause. The two terms have become almost synonymous through use, but it is only because such usage argues the assumption that man can discover all causes by using his reason.

The ancient Greeks are said to have been the first people to have put forward the assumption that man could discover all causes by the use of his reason. They also believed that in this process of discovery, man would be able to control his environment and his condition, and thus, his destiny. Most of these ancient Greek philosophers also believed that if any gods existed they could not be discovered by man's reason and could therefore be disregarded as immaterial (pun intended). That is to say, they believed that no causes were to be found in any god.

Plato's parable of the cave, in which three dimensional men were, from birth, deprived of any sensory perception in one of those three dimensions, seems to be an attempt to refute this belief. By this parable, Plato attempted to show that as these three dimensional men believed in only the two dimensions in which they were not deprived, so will a man who is created for four dimensions, but deprived of any sensory perception of that dimension, believe in only three. That Plato was not altogether successful in this effort is a matter of history, but then neither was Moses who preceded Plato by over 1000 years.

Look up the Renaissance in an encyclopedia and you will see, in effect, that it is defined as the "rebirth" of western civilization when the philosophies and science of ancient Grecian and Roman "humanists" were rediscovered and flowered in Europe beginning around the 14th century. The relevancy of this will be come more apparent later, but for now remember that while many of those ancient Grecian philosophers, upon whose philosophies the Renaissance was based, denied a spiritual reality because it could not be sensed, Plato tried to show how it could exist even though it could not be sensed, and he tried to point to a kind of birth defect as the reason why it could not be sensed.

Another piece of information that is going to play and important role in this book is that the renaissance was the result of the rediscovery of the philosophies and science of the ancient Greeks and Romans.

When Albert Einstein mathematically modeled the 4th dimension as Time in his special and general theories of relativity, higher mathematics was the only means by which he could express the concept. For this reason, men soon began using parables similar to Plato's cave to demonstrate the space-time continuum of Einstein's theories. These explanations compared two dimensional beings, who were trying to cope with a third dimension, to three dimensional beings who were trying to cope with a fourth. The point of course is this: if man has a problem with understanding a dimension beyond the three in which he exists to such a degree that it can only be illustrated effectively by imagining a lesser being in two dimensions trying to evaluate a third: how much more of a problem is that man going to have coping with a God that is over and beyond this 4th dimension?

Plato's philosophy, Einstein's science, all ancient religions, and the Holy Bible all assert that there exists a reality beyond the material realm, and that simply because it can not be "sensed" directly does not mean that it does not exist.

There are two ways of looking at existence. One way includes this belief in a Spiritual reality, the belief that a realm exists beyond, and superior to, the material reality. The other way is the materialistic belief which limits reality to that which can be directly sensed by man's sensory receptors, or to that which can be observed to cause an effect upon some material which can be observed. This system of belief confesses only the physical or material reality.

This does not mean that human perception is aware of everything within the material reality. It means that even though some things exist in the material reality which humans can not directly perceive with their senses, the existence of these things can be deduced by observation of the effects they have on some material thing which can be observed, and in which changes can be noted. There are many such theoretical things which are beyond human capacities of perception such as electrons, photons, gravity waves, etc. None of these things can be observed directly, but all are believed to exist because of the way they effect observable matter in the material reality.

If men were fair minded they would allow proof of the spiritual reality after the same fashion, for there has never been a person who has come in contact with the spiritual reality who has not been changed, but Satan is not at all interested in fairness, and he is the source of all resistance to the belief in the Spiritual Reality, even though he himself is the object of worship within some of that spiritual reality. At this time we cannot digress far enough to prove that Satan's purpose is, at present, better served by disbelief in the spiritual reality than by belief in him as its lord, but we must state here, only, that those who have decided for Satan's service no longer have any effect upon that war in the spiritual reality which we will discuss later. The reason this is so is because Satan's purpose is not to gain dominion over the material reality; he already has that. His purpose is to also gain dominion in the spiritual reality, and it is only through the church that spiritual realities are bound or loosened in heaven and on earth.

The method of observing a process, anticipating results, recording effects, comparing achieved results with anticipated results, modifying parameters, and checking for new results, is the heart of what is called the scientific method. All that is of the material reality can be subjected to this method with confidence, boldness, and courage. The technological progress of the age of the material enlightenment is the result of using this method in the material realm, while the steady disintegration of 20th century civilization is the result of its failure to acknowledge the existence of that Spiritual reality which exists beyond, and is greater than, the material realm.

The materialists maintain that science and Creationism are antagonistic toward each other, because they say, if there is anything to Creationism their science is useless. The reason they say such things is because they believe that if man cannot discover all causes by his reason, he cannot discover any causes by that reason. Such reasoning reveals a very selfish, immature, and arrogant attitude that says in effect if I cannot have my entire list for Christmas, I don't want any of it.

This assumption is no more valid than assuming that plane trigonometry is worthless because it does not work on spheres. There are in fact a great many scientists who are also creationists. And it is evident that mathematics, chemistry, biology, physics, in fact all of the laws of the physical universe work for them in the same way that they work for the materialists. These laws do not change simply because they are studied and applied under the umbrella of a reality greater than the material one. In fact the magnificent order in these material laws argues for a sufficient cause greater than, and beyond this material reality.

Isaac Asimov said he could not prove that God did not exist, but that he so strongly suspected that He did not exist, he would not waste any effort in trying to prove that He did not. When Asimov said that, he violated a cardinal point of logic that states that you can never prove a negative hypothesis. Therefore, to attempt to prove that God does not exist is not merely a waste of effort but an impossibility. But to prove that God does exist from within the set of material ideas which have been developed from, and only work while, exploring the material reality, is also impossible. The existence of God must be determined by some other method.

As plane trigonometry does not work for spheres, the processes of scientific inquiry which have been developed for three dimensions will not work in realms beyond those three. A cube might perhaps be imagined by a two dimensional person studying plane trigonometry's surface calculations and, by an extension of that imaginable cube, through thought experiments, that person might possibly postulate a sphere. But in order to calculate any dimensions around, in, or along this "imaginary" sphere, a new set of relationships must be formulated. It should therefore also seem probable that we will also be able to apply the formulations which work in the material reality only in some elementary fashion to the greater or Spiritual reality. The Bible says that such is the case in Romans 1:20 where it shows that the creation argues for a Creator: "For the invisible things of him [God] from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood from the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead;..." We shall explore just how this proposition works a little later as we look at some of the supernatural or spiritual laws that God has ordained and see how they are expressed in the Bible.

Is there then any contact between this greater reality and the lesser material one? Now I am only speculating about this which follows concerning time and the Spiritual reality and I do not wish you to take it as anything beyond and interesting possibility for further exploration, even though for convenience I will say that such and such "is" instead of "could possibly be." I believe that the passing of time is a single point of contact between the two realities. The present, in time, is a common point between them. All of the material reality is extended into the spiritual reality and part of the spiritual reality permeates the material reality through a universe sized "box-window" called, "now."

As "now" or time present becomes time past, and time future becomes time present or "now," the finite material universe is pressed through eternity where "now" ripples through it in increments of magnitude equal to the distance covered by the speed of light during the smallest possible part of "now." Time past and time future are but a single dimension in this greater multi-dimensioned reality, and eternal God is beyond the dimensions of even that reality.

If "now" is divided into progressively smaller portions, there must come a point where any additional division will yield "parts" that are no longer "pieces of time." This is the principle that the ancient Greeks used to anticipate such things as atoms and molecules within the physical reality. In fact the Greek word "atmos," which they used to describe these smallest of possible parts, has come to mean something which can not be divided into a smaller piece and still retain the characteristics of the original substance.

When modern man acquired the tools with which to test these hypotheses, he verified that the atom was indeed that smallest piece into which any element could be divided which would still retain the characteristics of that element. Any further division will result in new substances.

Even though one can fall into dangerous grounds when using concepts of the material realm to discover truths of the spiritual reality, I believe we will be safe in doing so in the case of time for two reasons: First, because I believe that time is a partially shared dimension with the spiritual reality, and secondly, and more importantly, because, when God wanted us to know how quickly he would change men on earth into spiritual men at the return of Jesus Christ, he told us that we would be changed in a "twinkling of an eye" (1 Cor. 15:52). That phrase,"twinkling of an eye", translates that Greek word, "atmos". It is that period of time which is of such short duration that any attempt to divide it further would result in something other than time.

If time can not be infinitely divided into continually smaller pieces, it must exist in discrete packets. But if time exists in small packets, and the Bible indicates that it does, there must be something which separates the packets, something that is not time, but is "in between these packages of time." Also, if time exists in these small packets, it must pass from the future into the present, and from the present into the past, not infinitely smoothly, but by jerks or jumps of the size of these small packets. But while the window of the universe is exposed to that "in between time quality" that separates one packet of time from the next, what is happening to the material reality?

When the material universe is being pressed into the "time box window," but the time box window is not impregnated by "now" but by that which separates the packets of time, then "now" is suspended within the material universe and all material motion ceases.

When Einstein demonstrated that matter and energy were interchangeable, he tied them together by motion, i.e. the speed of light. It is motion then which becomes the only constant in the material universe, and when the "now" element of all motion is absent there is going to be something other than motion, and energy, and matter present. This different "stuff" is the substance of eternity. It is the "stuff" from which faith is made according to Hebrews 11:1.

God called the smallest "stuff" of time, atmos; if this "in between now" stuff exists, and I believe that it must, He did not speak of it, or tell us what to call it, but for ease of speaking, and for clarity, let us call it eternos.

If all this speculation is true, then any single point of the physical universe is alternately being "pressed" through packets of atmos and eternos. When the universe is impregnated by atmos, we temporal beings are eating, drinking, living, breathing, driving cars, thinking, and all of the other things we "do" in the material reality. But when the material reality is impregnated by eternos, we are "momentarily" suspended from all those activities in the material realm and our very matter is something else. During such periods we are "alive" in the spiritual reality, but, unfortunately, our spiritual being is no more aware of our material being that our material one is aware of the spiritual one. At this "time," the laws of the spiritual reality are in effect, laws which can be roughly discovered by comparing them to the mechanics of the material reality.

The ancient Greeks were not entirely right and neither are their modern materialistic philosophical counterparts. We can discover at least some portion of the laws which govern the Spiritual reality. We are not forever doomed to be in ignorance of them. Now it is obvious that they are beyond our direct observation, and if we are to learn anything of them, we must do so by some other means. I submit the best way in which that is accomplished, short of your own personal experience, is through the testimony of someone who has come into contact with this spiritual reality and their statements concerning the effects it has had upon them.

The effect I wish to discuss now is one for which no person on earth can claim better expertise than I. It is the story of my conversion experience with Jesus Christ, my first personal encounter with that Spiritual Reality. In March of 1980 my father had surgery for lung cancer. At that time I was employed as a Field Service Reliability Engineer for the Ordnance Systems Division of General Electric, and I was assigned to the Polaris Missile Facility of the Naval Weapons Station at Charleston, S.C. I was 41 years old, a retired Navy Nuclear Weapons Officer, and hard set in my beliefs and my ways, and those ways did not include anything to do with Jesus Christ except maybe a humanistic nod at Christmas.

In fact, nine months earlier when I had been going through my initial company indoctrination at Pittsfield, Mass. I had encountered an evangelical Christian in the employee lounge one day after work, and, since we were both away from home with no place in particular to go, we began to talk. In the course of the conversation this man shared his faith in Jesus Christ with me as a natural and integral part of his conversation.

I told him that I did not wish to offend him, but that I did not see how anyone who thinks, could believe as he did. He told me in a manner that was firm, but kind, that he believed just the opposite, he did not see how anyone who thought seriously about it could help but believe. I remember wondering at that time how two people who had each "thought about it" could reach such obviously opposing conclusions. This man troubled me more than he knew. I left the lounge and went back to my hotel room. I never saw this man again, but I did not altogether forget about his quiet, determined faith.

Several months later we got a telephone call telling us about Poppa's surgery. At the time I did not think we could go to Texas because it was 1700 miles away, and I had no vacation coming. But the 3rd day after his surgery we got another phone call from my brother, who told us that Poppa had suffered a stroke and had been taken back into ICU because of blood clots. We left the next morning. When we arrived at the hospital Poppa was recovering, and I was relieved that he had not died before I got to see him.

That day when I got to talk to Poppa, I learned that he had indeed died for several minutes the night of his stroke. As the blood clot passed through his heart, it had stopped beating, and Poppa was clinically dead for several minutes. During that time he had an out of the body experience where he saw Jesus and the light of the new life. As he went to the light, he suddenly came back to earth and into his body. These things sounded very strange to me at the time, and I thought, "Yeah, really." The doctor confirmed that Poppa had indeed been clinically dead for several minutes the night of his stroke.

That night I had to sit up all night with Poppa in the hospital room while everyone else went home. It was just me and Poppa, who was sedated, and the semi-darkness and quietness of the hospital room for 10 hours. After twenty years in the Navy I was used to standing long boring watches, but ten hours is a long watch, even for a sailor. For ten hours I had to be alone with myself in a darkened room with nothing to read except Poppa's Bible and a Bible commentary named "What the Bible is All About" by Henrietta C. Mears. And so I began to read the Bible just to have something to do. I do not know at what point it became something more than a way to pass the time, and I do not know where I was reading when I told the Lord, (Although I cannot confess that I knew at that time that it was He to whom I was talking.) "Some of this is making sense, but some of it is really hard to believe, if you are who you say you are you can fix that."

The Bible says that Jesus stands at the door and knocks until we open it. My testimony to you is that I did not open that door very wide. I just barely cracked it, but Jesus snatched me out of the gates of Hell, through that crack, before Satan could bat an eye.

Before that night had passed, I understood this much: I could not come to the Bible like a Greek Philosopher seeking to become persuaded by the arguments put forth therein. I had to come from the stand point of belief, however small and weak, and then find that belief reinforced on every page as it grows into a dynamic, compelling force of life. From that night on I have known that I can no longer trust only what I can understand, because there was so much in life that I can never understand, and what had happened to Poppa was just one part of all of that.

Now, I said all that to say this: I would never have changed my mind on my own. I was comfortable, "clean cut," and well liked and respected. I had, in all of my life, never done anything of which I could not be proud, except get drunk a few times at a few social parties, and even then I had not been too much of an embarrassment to myself or anyone else. I was morally upright, I had a good job, and I was a model of self assuredness, self esteem, self discipline, self confidence, and self control (except for an occasional outbreak of temper, for which always I always excused myself, because I broke things but never people). I was certain that even if there was such a place as heaven, I would get there because they just did not come any better than I. If I had only known enough Bible I would have told anyone who asked me that I was the "salt of the Earth."

But a supernatural event happened, something that I can not explain by the laws of this reality. That night Jesus Christ broke me like a match stick without bruising me at all and, Praise God, he set me free from all of that nonsense about my self, and turned my hope completely around toward him. On the way back to Charleston I talked to my wife, and I learned that the Lord had been dealing with her also. We made public our confessions and joined a local church through baptism, and began to serve and grow in the Lord from that day unto this.

I began to read and meditate upon the Bible. I can not explain to you how wonderful it was for me, the first time I meditated upon the words in Philippians 3:4-8 where God has caused the apostle Paul to write these words for people who are of sort that I had been:

"Though I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ."

I still cannot meditate upon that passage without shedding tears. I tell you the first time I read it, I just cried for joy, "God love the hearts of old Pharisees whom Jesus Christ turns around."

There has been an effect upon some material. The material is me, the effect is, that inexplicably, I have been completely turned around, and I love it. I do not say that I am without sin, I say that I delight in the law of God even though it condemns me, because I now know that my righteousness is of Jesus Christ and not of myself. What a difference! What a Savior!

So how is it that this could have all happened to me, and I can't tell you how it was accomplished? I have "speculated" upon this question, not because I need the answer in order to believe, but because I have a curiosity about things. I like to try to figure them out if I can. It seems to me that if we actually do exist alternately but synchronously in two realms, one being the material, and the other being the spiritual, that when I exist in the Spiritual Realm, I am subject to the spiritual laws of that realm, just as I am subject to the material laws of the material realm when I am in that realm. Now it seems to me that this should apply to every person, whether they are being regenerated or degenerated. What does this mean to the material reality?

I believe the Bible teaches that God, for his own reasons, has separately created:

I. two distinct realities:
a. A spiritual reality, and;
b. A material reality

II. two kinds of beings within those two realities:
a. spiritual beings, and;
b. material beings

I believe that the spiritual beings primary awareness of their existence is during periods of eternos, and that material beings primary awareness is during periods of atmos. The Bible indicates that men can be transported instantly into the spiritual realm. And it also indicates that they can just as instantly be sent back into the material realm. The Bible also talks about spiritual beings, or angels, that can likewise be sent back and forth from spiritual realm. The Bible further teaches that not all such angelic transportation from the spiritual realm into the material realm is from God, and also that not all such human contact with the spiritual reality is of God. The Bible also teaches that there are two ways to make the trip into the spiritual reality, and that there are two separated destinations inside of that reality. One of those ways to reach the spiritual reality is through material death. I believe the other way is for God to authorize one of his angels to throw a "switch" in our mind, and we once more become aware of the events of eternos. I believe that switch is usually thrown during a period of eternos. I believe this switch is that connection which we talked about earlier.

What does all of this mean to the material reality? It means that we are much more enmeshed with the spiritual realm than we can know, and that the most significant danger to mankind in all of his history comes from his continued and willful ignorance of the truth of that spiritual reality. The Bible speaks of the effects that the physical reality is having upon the spiritual reality and that the spiritual reality is having on the physical one, and through whom these effects are being wrought. We will look at these truths a little later.

How did we lose the ability to sense this spiritual realm? Why are we so disconnected? The Bible indicates that man lost his spiritual sense because of disobedience to a commandment from God. The Bible indicates that man was created at the same time that God created the material reality, but that God had created the spiritual reality at sometime prior to creating the material reality. The Bible indicates that man was originally created in fellowship with God. In other words, man had a capacity to sense and respond to things in the Spiritual Realm. Within the boundaries of that fellowship there was only one thing, of all of the things that man could even think of doing, that God commanded him not to do. The "rightness" of everything else was determined through a constant communion with the Creator. But the first humans did that one forbidden thing. Now there are thousands of things which man can think of, but which he must not do, and he can't decide by himself if, or why, they are wrong.

When man disobeyed God, that part of him that had enjoyed communion with the Spiritual Reality became disconnected, and mankind has been born spiritually disconnected ever since. The spirit which God breathed into man was created with a connection to God. Through this connection man learned of his purpose and the will of his creator. As he participated in holy communion with his Maker he was continually aware of the will of his Creator in life's decisions, and because mankind was blessed with this communion, it never crossed his mind to be disobedient to the will of God as it was expressed through that communion. But there was just one little thing which God had precluded by law instead of by communion: Even at that time God was, for some reason, demonstrating to someone that simply passing a law could not of itself make, or keep, anyone righteous; i.e. that the law was not made for a righteous man. That one little law went like this, "Thus saith the lord, you shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." And because it was a law, there was a penalty, a prescribed consequence, if the law was not obeyed.

Well, we know the story, Adam and Eve broke God's law and the penalty of death came upon all mankind for that reason. Man was created spiritually connected to his Creator, but when he broke God's law, his spiritual connection to God was broken by the same event.

The Biblical account shows that something else terribly bad happened to mankind when Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit. I ask you to read that account now, in the third chapter of Genesis, and look closely at what effect this fruit had upon our original parents. This effect has been handed down to each human that has ever been born except for Jesus Christ, who by reason of a spiritual conception and birth to a virgin, did not genetically inherit a disconnected subconscious mind.

The Bible says that because man sinned by breaking the commandment of God, that Death entered this physical reality at the same time. It appears also that man must have lost his connection to his Creator when he was driven from Eden, and thus, he became insensible to the Spiritual Realm. But something else happened too. Look at Genesis 2:23-25. Adam and Eve knew that they each existed, and they knew that God existed. And they both knew that they were naked, but this knowledge of their nakedness did not shame them. Now look at verse 3:7 where it says after they had sinned, "and they knew that they were naked." Adam and Eve had become "self conscious;" they had acquired an awareness of self. The moment that the "other part" of man had become disconnected from the Creator, man became aware of a "self" inside of his mind that he believes to be himself: It makes no difference whether this is the true person that God created or not. The problem with "this self" is that it is now thrashing around in our minds wildly driving us to believe and to desire all kinds of nonsense. At the same time that this catastrophe happened to man, he also handed the dominion of the material reality, which God had given to man, over to Satan. Satan has been in charge of this material reality ever since. When the young groom, in Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, "Young Goodman Brown," discovered that everyone in the whole world had been given over to the devil, his faith died because he had misplaced it in man in the first place. Except for the Lord Jesus Christ, all of mankind have inherited that same self in the form of a selfish nature ever since. When Jesus said that we had to be born again he wasn't speaking metaphorically, our only hope to be reconnected to our creator is to be reborn of the Spirit of God. When Jesus told the religious leaders of Jerusalem that their father was the devil, he was talking about anyone who has never been reborn of the Spirit of God.

Many men say that the story I have just mentioned from the Book of Genesis is just an ancient myth whose origins have been distorted by word of mouth transmission over many ages. Even after its transcription, they say it has without doubt been changed in a thousand countless ways by copyists.

Think about this for a minute. Such accusations do not detract from the Biblical record at all if it is supernaturally originated and maintained, but they do speak volumes about the unreliability of any document of human origin which is not supernaturally originated and maintained, including Biblical criticisms. So if we are going to reject the Bible because of Biblical criticisms, we must reject the criticisms as well. In fairness we have to believe in nothing of antiquity, and seriously doubt everything else if we reject the Bible on these grounds.

But if the Bible is supernaturally originated and maintained, how is it accomplished? There is a word which all enlightened humanists do not like to hear, it is the word "revelation." The Bible is originated and maintained by revelation. Revelation means that God caused his thoughts to be transcribed by some person he chose to write them down. I believe God did this by "speaking" directly into to the mind of that person during those periods when eternos was impregnating the physical reality. Sometimes he made the man aware that he was speaking to him, sometimes he made the man aware that he was speaking through him, and sometimes the man wrote thinking that what he was writing was his own thoughts, when they had, in truth, been placed into his mind by the Holy Spirit during periods of eternos. Satan and his legions may likewise inspire mankind, but Satan, being the liar that he is, seldom leaves the man with the information of where the inspiration originated. I believe that the universal need for sleep among the materially alive could be a manifestation of a regularly occurring period during which the "angels" report back to their chosen Lord concerning our responses to their inspiration.

The reason that most people reject the Bible has nothing to do with critical reviews or philosophical objections to revelation. The reason that most people reject the Bible is because it is invasive. It cannot be read as a disinterested third party. We can study the Egyptian Book of the Dead, or Spinoza, or Zen, or Transcendentalism, or Existentialism, or Epicureanism, or a thousand other such "isms," and not be confronted by our condition of lostness. But the Bible forces itself upon us at every point of the human condition, and insists that what is being said, is being said to the reader personally. The Bible gets personal on every level of human existence, and it opens every dark corridor to scrutiny. The Bible violates our "right to privacy" at every precept, and for these reasons, it as often inspires resentment as repentance.

A parallel to this situation can be seen in society today, where it is often permissible to speak generally of God while in "general company," but to speak of Jesus Christ results in stony silence. This is because nearly everyone today has some vague, half baked god-notion about some "Big Guy up there" who is looking out for everyone, but when you speak of Jesus Christ, you are getting personal and specific. The reason for this is that Jesus Christ is a specific person, and he is a personal savior. It is not possible to speak of him without getting specific and personal.

And so the Bible says that man is that being who is lost and confused because he is separated from his Supernatural Creator because of sin. The bible indicates man has two natures because of sin. Man has one nature that is presently depraved, and another nature that is presently born disconnected, or spiritually stillborn. The Bible says that the only cure is to be "Born Again" of water and of the Spirit (John 3:5).

So man is the being that is lost and confused because he has lost and forgotten the reason why such distinctions as good and evil, love and hate, duty and irresponsibility, law and iniquity, profane and holy, beauty and baseness, are important to him. But there is hope of restoring that which has been lost. If man was created to a purpose, then an intelligent Creator would have communicated that purpose to him in some record and by some means beyond the discretion of man, that is to say it must have been supernaturally issued and maintained. If such a record exists, man does not have to discover his own utility, in fact he is acting antagonistically toward his Creator when he attempts to do so. As you probably have already noticed, I maintain that the Bible is such a record, and that it explains not only the purpose of God in creating us, but also why we are lost and confused, and how we can be restored into harmony with that Creator.

The Biblical record is the oldest and most reliable history among the records of heaven and earth. It records not only the creation and the subsequent fall of man, but it also explains the work of the Creator to restore his creature to fellowship with himself. The Bible does not explicitly say in any one particular place what God's purpose was in Creating a Reality which he knew he would have to curse and judge and redeem, but it does generally leave us with the picture of the material reality being used to teach something to the spiritual reality. But just saying and confessing all of that is not evidence that it is true. Is there anything in the Bible which will demonstrate the reliability of its prophets to us today?

There are many passages in the Bible that demonstrate its Truths to the believer, but what about to an unbeliever? I believe that there is one area of prophecy that has been given to us that concerns all of mankind, and that all of mankind can see how it is being fulfilled if they will but look. That area of prophecy has predicted for thousands of years the direction that civilization will take, and it has predicted the type of political, religious, and commercial realm that will develop from out of those civilizations and dominate the world in the time before the return of Christ Jesus.

If such is true, I ought to be able to demonstrate how the Bible both predicts and agrees with history concerning the direction that civilization has taken in the past, and that it gives clear prophecies of the direction civilization is now taking, and the consequences of that direction. Much of the remainder of this book will be devoted to the effort of demonstrating that the Bible is a reliable and accurate record that has declared to mankind the plan and the purpose of Almighty God through all of the years from the time that he made the heavens and the earth until the time that he merges them into one with the Spiritual reality.

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