Another Way and the Rapture of the Nerds

The man or woman of God does not seek progressive sophistication, but instead seeks a regression to a childlike state.  You can’t come to God in carnal confidence—whether it is intellect, wealth, power, strength, or beauty—but to reach God, one must regress to childlike faith.  Matthew 18:2-4:

2 And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them,

3 And said, Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

4 Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Hebrews 11:6 declares what pleases God:

But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

Note Isaiah 66:1-2:

1 Thus saith the LORD, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me? and where is the place of my rest?

2 For all those things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been, saith the LORD: but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word.

The absolute truth of the Word of God allows me to place the full weight of my childlike confidence upon it without fear.  The joy of salvation is released via childlike faith and no other key will open the door. 

Have you been born again as Jesus reveals in John 3:3-8?

Are you ready to sacrifice your carnal confidence for the mind of Christ?  Are you ready to have all your sin and shame expunged from your record?  Are you ready for your day of salvation?  Click onto “Further With Jesus” for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God.  NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID, John 11:25-26:

25 Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:

26 And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?

GOD SAID, John 10:7-9:

7 Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep.

8 All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them.

9 I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.

GOD SAID, John 10:1:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.

MAN SAID:  We have the answers to life’s hard questions.  We will blaze our own trail and we won’t be using the Bible to navigate. 

Now THE RECORD.  Welcome to GodSaidManSaid feature article 699 that will once again prove the full inerrancy of the majority-text Holy Bible.  All of these marvelous features are archived here in text and streaming audio for the building up of the faith and as bait for the fishers of men.  Every Thursday eve, God willing, they grow by one. 

Thank you for coming.  May God’s face shine upon you and all that you put your hand to. 

Ever since Eden, the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve have sought some other way to attain a fulfilling life, and even eternal life itself.  After an act of unbelief and disobedience committed by Eve and embraced by Adam, man was banned from Paradise and close communion with God and barred from the Tree of Life and Immortality.  All through time, man has occupied much of his time in search of some other way to find what he has lost.  God has created a plan of salvation to reverse the curse of sin and death and to graft the once-rebellious back into the very Tree of Life, but man continues to reject and seek another way. 

Since Eden, man has been seeking some other way.  Several examples of his futile search follow:

• In the book of Genesis, Nimrod and his engineers build the Tower of Babel that would reach into Heaven.  God casts down the tower and confounds their one language into many.  Nimrod was seeking some other way.  
  
  
• Man continues his pursuit of another way in astrology and the worship of the sun, moon and stars. He looks to horoscopes and the signs of Heaven to direct his steps.  He seeks some other way.  
  
  
• A pantheon of gods (devils) have been created to substitute for the God of the Bible.  This would include the twisted doctrines interwoven into the Word of God that parade around in Jesus’s name.  He seeks some other way.  
  
  
• Darwin popularized the theory of evolution that pretends that the universe and man were created out of basically nothing and, given billions of years and chance, anything is possible.  God and His Bible, according to Darwin, would be proved irrelevant.  Millions have followed his pernicious doctrine because man is seeking some other way. 
  
  
• Science theorizes of a parallel universe (or universes) that runs adjacent to what man knows as reality:

Physicist Brian Greene explains how properties at the black hole’s surface—its effect horizon—suggest the unsettling theory that our world is a mere representation of another universe, a shadow of the realm where real events take place.  

On GodSaidManSaid, several features have been published concerning science’s quest to unravel the mysteries of the universe and their frequent theorizing that we are not alone, but may, in fact, be a universe separated by another or multiple universes by the very thinnest of membranes.  Discover magazine, a publication dedicated to science, published a multi-page feature in their December 2013 issue titled, “Do We Live in the Matrix?,” with the subheading, “Physicists have proposed tests to reveal whether we are part of a giant computer simulation.  But would you want to know the answer?”

What man yearns to understand about this parallel universe, the children of God not only understand, but literally function in it. They know it as the invisible Kingdom of God.  Believers actually pass back and forth through these dimensions continually. 

Again from Discover:

Unfortunately, our almighty simulators may instead have programmed us into a universe-size reality show—and are capable of manipulating the rules of the game, purely for their entertainment.  In that case, maybe our best strategy is to lead lives that amuse our audience, in the hope that our simulator-gods will resurrect us in the afterlife of next-generation simulations.  [End of quote]

Consider just how close they’ve come to the answer but yet construct some other way to explain the phenomenon they’re discovering. 

• They call it panspermia—the possibility that we (life on earth) have been seeded from some highly-sophisticated creatures from outer space:

Man is looking for some other way.  When evolutionist Dawkins was pressed about the absurdity of life forming from a universe that exploded out of virtually nothing and then complex life developing by pure chance, he suggested that it is possible that we were seeded from outer space—and, of course, that’s true.  God, His Christ, the Holy Ghost, the angels, etc. are all from outer space.  God created all that you see and don’t see by Christ Jesus.  Although, when Mr. Dawkins referred to seeding from outer space, he was not thinking ‘Jesus Christ.’ 

Fifty-four years ago, SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) began its operations monitoring the heavens, trying to intercept alien communications, but they have not heard a single peep.  SETI has just gone through a very expensive upgrade.  Their ears are wide open.  Had they only read their Bibles!  The born-again have not only become children of God, but we communicate with God and His Christ and the Holy Ghost—the ultimate extraterrestrials—on a daily basis. We hear His voice and He hears ours, and the believer even has a secret supernatural language to communicate with when ultimate communication is desired.  Click onto the Holy Ghost Series for amazing information.  SETI is trying to find some other way.

The headline in the June 23, 2014 issue of Time magazine, written by Jessica Roy, reads, “Rapture of the Nerds.”  The subhead reads, “A new religion promises immortality—as a data file.”  Several paragraphs follow:

In the backyard of a cottage overlooking the water here, about 75 miles southeast of Orlando, two poles with metal slats shaped like rib cages jut out from the ground.  Indistinguishable from heat lamps or fancy light fixtures, they’re actually satellite dishes, but not the kind for TV.  They dispatch “mindfiles,” the memories, thoughts, and feelings of people who wish to create digital copies of themselves and fling them into space with the belief that they’ll eventually reach some benevolent alien species.  Welcome to the future.  Hope you don’t mind E.T. leafing through your diary.

The beach house, backyard, and memory satellites are managed by 31-year-old Gabriel Rothblatt, a leader of Terasem, a new sort of religion that seeks answers to very old kinds of questions with an abiding faith in the transformative power of technology.  Gabriel’s parents, Bina and Martine Rothblatt founded Terasem a decade ago, naming it after a futuristic religion in Octavia’ Butler’s 1993 sci-fi novel Parable of the Sower.  (Martine knows a thing or two about satellites: she started Sirius XM radio in 1990, when she was living as a man named Martin.)

“Technology does feel and smell and look and act like a god, at least sometimes,” says John Modern, associate professor of religious studies at Franklin and Marshall College.  “So it’s certainly logical that someone would see the power of technology and locate their faith in it.”

In Silicon Valley, where faith in technology is greatest today, some of Terasem’s ideas are beginning to resonate.  At places like Google, millions of dollars are being spent to research how to cure diseases related to aging and extend life.  Some of the tech industry’s most radical thinkers have been curious enough to attend Terasem meetings, and their portraits line a wall of the faith’s Florida headquarters.  Marvin Minsky, who helped start MIT’s artificial-intelligence lab, is there.  So is Google engineer Ray Kurzweil, one of the most prominent proponents of trans-humanism, an intellectual movement that shaped Terasem and animates many avant-garde ideas in Silicon Valley. 

Terasem’s followers believe that by ritualistically recording your thoughts and feelings in great detail, you can ultimately assemble a digital copy of yourself, available for future use.  To start mindfiling, you write down or record a video in which you talk about a thought, memory, or feeling, and then either upload it to a website or have it beamed out into the universe—hence the satellite dishes.  So far, more than 32,000 people have created free mindfile accounts. 

The mindfiles are stored on servers in Vermont and Florida, and Terasem pledges to protect these files for the long-term future, making it possible for some not-yet-invented software to organize them into an approximation of your consciousness so they can be uploaded into an artificial body 50 or 500 years from now.

“For us, God is in the making by our collective efforts to make technology ever more omnipresent, omnipotent and ethical,” Martine says.  “When we can joyfully experience techno-immortality, then God is complete.” 

Although one of Terasem’s core tenets is “God is technological,” Gabriel insists that it’s not to be taken literally.  Instead, it’s meant to convey the notion that the way you envision God directly influences your life.  But when the possibilities you see in future technology—like omnipotence and the ability to resurrect the dead—resemble those that mainstream religions ascribe to God, it’s less of a leap to suggest that technology becomes religion and God becomes a computer. 

Today’s technology can do almost everything for us—alleviate loneliness, send taxis, stylists, and groceries to our doorstep, and even make people resigned to a life of silence hear again—but it can’t bring the people we love back from the beyond.  At least, the Terasemians say, not yet.  [End of quotes]

They’re looking for some other way, but consider the obvious parallels:

1. Terasem wants to digitally capture the entire you—all your thoughts, memories, and desires—and preserve them for a time in the future.  
   
   God’s Word is already there:

Matthew 12:36:

But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.

I Chronicles 28:9:

for the LORD searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts: if thou seek him, he will be found of thee; but if thou forsake him, he will cast thee off for ever.

Matthew 10:30:

But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.

Every word is recorded.  The image in every neuron is catalogued and every hair on your head is numbered.

2.  Terasem is waiting for a day in the future when artificial bodies are developed so that after one of their clients has died, they will be able to download the old digital individual into the new body—a type of digital immortality.  

God, as you should expect, has a better way:

John 17:1-3:

1 These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee:

2 As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.

3 And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

I Corinthians 15:42:44:

42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption:

43 It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power:

44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.

I Corinthians 15:51-53:

51 Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,

52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

God has made a way of escape, but man is looking for some other way.  The following paragraphs are from the GodSaidManSaid feature, “Immortality Keeps on Knocking -- Part 4 (Immortality Returns):”

The way back to God and eternal life is the same way we left.  There is no other way, regardless of the convoluted solutions proffered.  When there was only the Voice of the Creator in the Garden of Eden, it was called Paradise, and Adam and Eve were immortal.  They had eternal life.  When the second voice spoke—Satan’s voice—and when that voice was chosen over God’s voice, man was ejected from Paradise and died spiritually that very day.  His immortality was lost and he also later died physically.  The final events that took place before Adam and Eve’s ejection are recorded in Genesis 3:22-24:

22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

Paradise was lost when, in an act of unbelief and disobedience, God’s Word was rejected for the second voice in the garden. 

These cherubims, these heavyweight celestial creatures, are seen again in Exodus 25:17-22:

17 And thou shalt make a mercy seat of pure gold: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof.

18 And thou shalt make two cherubims of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them, in the two ends of the mercy seat.

19 And make one cherub on the one end, and the other cherub on the other end: even of the mercy seat shall ye make the cherubims on the two ends thereof.

20 And the cherubims shall stretch forth their wings on high, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and their faces shall look one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubims be.

21 And thou shalt put the mercy seat above upon the ark; and in the ark thou shalt put the testimony that I shall give thee.

22 And there I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubims which are upon the ark of the testimony, of all things which I will give thee in commandment unto the children of Israel.

Note that the cherubims hovered over the mercy seat where God’s mercy and instructions were gained for the Children of Israel.  These Cherubims resided in the most holy place in God’s tabernacle.  The high priest would enter there once a year to make special atonement for the Hebrew people.  This mercy seat that the Cherubims protected sat atop the Ark of the Covenant.  The word ark in Ark of the Covenant is seen similarly earlier in the Word of God as Noah’s ark and as the ark of bulrushes that the baby Moses was placed in, which floated down the river to save his life.  In both instances, the ark was a housing of protection.  Another way to state “Ark of the Covenant” would be “protection of the contract.”  In the Old Testament, this contract was sealed by the blood sacrifice of a clean animal.  This concept was a shadow and type of the Christ to come who would break the back of Satan’s spell by the shedding of his sinless blood and bringing repentant sinners into the new covenant, or contract, with God through the born-again experience. 

In order to gain the protection of God’s contract, one must believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ and repent and turn from his sins.  All of these things take place at the mercy seat.  In order, then, to gain the mercy of God and enter back into the covenant of life and life eternally, one must believe the Word of God and repent and forsake sin. 

It’s the 180-degree principle—the principle of the opposites.  Mankind fell from grace in the Garden of Eden through unbelief and disobedience.  We were cast out of Paradise and became mortal.  Cherubims were posted to block our rebellious return to this place of beautiful, eternal life.  These Cherubims are seen again protecting the way back to Paradise, hovering over the mercy seat and Ark of the Covenant into which only the believers who have repented and forsaken sin can enter.  This is the 180 principle.  The way back is the reverse of the way we left. 

God is once again offering immortality.  Imagine a place where Jesus Christ says it’s impossible to die (Luke 20:34-36).  Jesus Christ is the only way.  [End of quote]

GOD SAID, John 10:1:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.

MAN SAID:  We have the answers to life’s hard questions.  We will blaze our own trail and we won’t be using the Bible to navigate. 

Now you have THE RECORD.

 

 

References:

Authorized King James Version

GodSaidManSaid, “Immortality Keeps on Knocking -- Part 4 (Immortality Returns)”

GodSaidManSaid, “The Matrix: They Always End Up Here”

Roy, J., “Rapture of the Nerds,” Time, June 23, 2014 

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