Orion Rising
By Jack Hoehn, September 19, 2016:
Wallowa Lake Moraines–Copyrighted permission from
David Jensen photographer, djensen@eoni.com
I woke during the night as I often do, but this time it was summer and I was in a cabin at the edge of Lake Wallowa, in northeast Oregon. Wallowa Lake is seven miles long, a perfect glacier-carved moraine lake with both sides of the lake a 400-foot-high dam of crushed rocks carried down from the mountains behind. The ice ages that made 400-foot-deep rivers of ice carving out mountain valleys and dropping the debris in the plains below started long ago. They finally began to recede about 15,000 years before Christ, or 17,000 years before me. Now all that remains of the glaciers is the beautiful lake of melted ice with rocky moraine edges and a little patch of snow that survives the summer high up on Glacier Peak a few miles away.
But tonight as I looked east the horizon across the lake in the darkness was a smooth line of black against the 3 am sky. And right across from me pushing up from the dark rim of the glacial moraine were three stars almost vertical to the dark horizon beyond the lake. I suddenly realized I was watching the earth turn towards Orion. The three stars in a line were his belt. His two arms including the reddish twinkling of Betelgeuse and bluish Bellatrix were clear above him, and his feet and faint sword were not yet seen. And as I sat in the summer comfort of the mountain night on the cabin deck with the dark lake below, I watched our earth spin eastward and beheld as Orion rose in the sky.
Orion–NASA Public Domain
MOST VISIBLE CONSTELLATION
The Orion constellation of stars is visible from almost all parts of earth. I have seen it well from South Africa, and you can see it from the far North. It is one of the most recognizable of the constellations, and even non-astronomers like me have little difficulty finding it.
Adventists have a special affinity for Orion because our founders thought Jesus should return to earth through what Joseph Bates called a “gap” in the middle of Orion’s sword, the cluster of three fainter stars that I began to see join the three brighter stars of the belt as the earth turned further towards the coming sunrise.
I went back to bed after about 30 minutes of confirming that Earth did spin towards the east and that Orion could be watched to be actually rising in my night sky as Oregon hurled towards it.
(Here is a video clip if you want to refresh your memory of Orion.)[1]
JOSEPH BATES SAW A GAP IN ORION
Orion was known to the ancients and is mentioned in the Bible.[2] And Captain Joseph Bates, an early Adventist, published a pamphlet in 1846[3] called The Opening Heavens where he applied John 1:51 that reads in the King James as, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, hereafter ye shall see HEAVEN OPEN and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the son of man [emphasis added]” to the “Opening in the Orion Nebula” thought to be found in the stars of the sword of the constellation. This “gap” was seen with 18th-century optics and was described in a 1770 astronomy book Bates quotes from as follows:
The most remarkable of all the cloudy stars is that in the middle of Orion’s Sword, where seven stars (of which three are very close together) seem to shine through a cloud, very lucid in the middle, but faint and ill-defined about the edges. It looks like a GAP in the sky, through which one may see (as it were) part of a much brighter region… in which there seems to be a perpetual uninterrupted day among numberless worlds, which no human art can ever discover—Furgerson’s Treatise on Astronomy, edition A. D. 1770.
Since Orion can be seen from almost everywhere on earth, and astronomers felt there was a starry gap, Bates cobbled this together with the “HEAVEN OPEN” statement, and reasoned that this must be the place through which Jesus would return to earth. Bates’ sources told him the size of the constellation—“This constellation measures about one thousand miles from North to South, and five hundred from East to West, and is visible to all the inhabitants of the earth.”[4]
Jacob’s ladder’s top, he reasoned, must have rested in Orion. And Ezekiel saw “the heavens opened [Ezekiel 1:1].” So again the “opening in Orion” seemed to him to be the conduit to heaven.
ELLEN WHITE SAW AN OPEN SPACE TO HEAVEN
Ellen White not only picked up 7th-day Sabbath observance from Captain Bates, but also favored his suggestion that Christ would return to earth through the Orion Nebula. She had just passed her 21st birthday and was pregnant with her second son when the young visionary published this in 1848:
“The Lord gave me a view of the shaking of the powers of the heavens…The powers of heaven are the sun, moon, and stars…The powers of heaven will be shaken at the voice of God. Then the sun, moon, and stars will be moved out of their places. They will not pass away, but be shaken by the voice of God.
Dark, heavy clouds came up and clashed against each other. The atmosphere parted and rolled back; then we could look up through the open space in Orion, whence came the voice of God. The Holy City will come down through that open space.”[5]
NO GAP, JUST A DUST CLOUD
In 1976, however, Adventist science teachers Merton E. Sprengel, M.S., then a chemistry teacher at Union College, and Dowell E. Martz, Ph.D., then a physicist at Pacific Union College, published three articles in the Review and Herald that examined how the opinion of Joseph Bates and the single mention of “the open space in Orion” by the young prophetess have been taken up by subsequent Adventist authors and expanded into a highly speculative idea about Orion as being a starry corridor leading to Heaven. They concluded there was no “gap in the sky,” no “opening in Orion,” but instead a cloud of stellar dust or gas blocking the stars behind with naked eye or weaker early telescopes.[6]
HUBBLE SEES MORE
Orion Nebula — NASA Public Domain
Launched in 1993 the Hubble satellite provides telescope images 100 times more powerful than the strongest telescopes on earth have taken. In 104 of its orbits it has focused on the Orion Nebula to piece together a beautiful picture of the stellar dust and hydrogen gas cloud, and the bright new stars forming in this “star factory” closest to earth. Of course, instead of “1,000 miles” across it is 24 light years across.
1 light year = 5,876,625,000,000 miles, so you do the math!
Looking at the beautiful Hubble montage, of course there is no reason why Jesus, with his version of Jerusalem from on high, couldn’t come back to earth through this cloud of hydrogen and stellar dust amidst the 2,800 “new” stars (propylids, hydrogen and dust arcs, rings, blobs, pillars, bright Trapezium stars, brown dwarfs, red stars, blue stars, binaries)[7] that appear to have been formed there. But if so, there is no longer any possibility of a 500 x 1,000-mile canyon into Heaven!
And the size and scope of the Universe, including the stars and nebulae that form Orion to human eyes, now dwarf our previous understanding of the extent of our universe. Our Adventist pioneers in the 19th century saw the same stars I saw this August summer night. They read and used the scientific literature of their day to construct an interpretation of Bible texts to speculate on Heaven and the second coming of Christ. Ellen White once envisioned something very similar to Joseph Bates’ interpretation.
Captain Bates would not have written his pamphlet after stronger telescopes changed the optical illusion of a “dark place” or “gap” in the Orion Nebula. And Hubble images and better sizing of the distance and size of Orion’s sword might have changed what Ellen White reported to her audience as a single aside that made sense in her day, but not in ours.
7 DAYS THROUGH ORION?
Surely a “seven-day trip through Orion to heaven” as taught to me in my Adventist youth[8], is no longer a possibility even at the speed of light! So either those “seven days” of stellar travel are the same “seven days of creation” that happened on a 4.5 billion solar year-old earth with evidence of life starting 3.8 billion years ago, or both Genesis and Ellen White are speaking of things outside of the natural world and its 24-hour days, making any attempt to explain them in natural terms such as “recent” or “the same unit of time we call a week” irrelevant.
I watched Orion rise over the edge of Lake Wallowa’s margins, and if I were Joseph Bates or Ellen White with 19th-century science, it could have been seven days away and 1,000 miles across, as far as my eyes could tell. And the beautiful glaciated lake with its stony moraine margins could have been 6,000 years old for all I knew, for none of us was here 6,000 years ago.
But I and my fellow Adventists now live in the 21st century, with much different telescopes, much different astronomy, much different geology, much different paleontology, much better science than Captain Bates and Prophetess White or her audiences had access to. I know it took a rocket ship three days to get to the moon, I know that it takes a probe nine months to get to Mars, and I know that even if we could travel at the speed of light it takes 1,344 or so years for light to get to us from the middle of Orion’s sword!
SAME BIBLE, DIFFERENT SCIENCE
We share the same Bible, we share the same Sabbath, we share the same expectation of the second coming of Jesus Christ as they did. We share with them the same duty to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.
But surely our understanding of details such as the size of the Nebula of Orion, its distance from earth, and the “seven days” of either creation or travel through Orion to Heaven need to be adjusted to fit the best evidence. Our Adventist pioneers interpreted the Bible and spoke to each other about it using the science they had. So we now must reinterpret and seek to understand, as they did, both Bible statements and Ellen White’s visions using our science, not theirs.
God remains Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer. We remain creatures limited by our brief mortality and imperfect knowledge of both science and revelation, so our opinions must remain the best guesses we can make and held lightly as opinions, not as doctrines, not testing truths, not essentials for salvation.
Like Captain Joseph Bates and Prophetess Ellen White, we too need mostly to do justice, to love mercy, and to always walk humbly with our understanding of God and with our interpretations of the Bible and the science known to its writers. Just don’t ask me to do so based on a desperate clinging to some version of inadequate 19th-century science as of equal value to the dear Bible itself.
_________________________________________
FOOTNOTES:
(Photos of Orion and Orion Nebula from NASA-Public Domain.)
[1 https://www.https//youtu.be/2d_udzDHseI.co.uk/programmes/p00jqjr7
[2] Orion—see Job 9:9; Job 38:31,32; Amos 5:8.
[3] https://archive.org/details/BatesJ.TheOpeningHeavens1846
[4] Joseph Bates, The Opening Heavens, page 10.
[5] Ellen G. White, Early Writings, page 41.
[6] See https://angusmcphee.wordpress.com/appendix-5-the-open-space-in-orion/ for more details on these articles in the Review and Herald of March 23 – April 8, 1976.
[7] Wikipedia, Orion Nebula, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_Nebula
[8] Again likely based on a single “seven day” remark in another youthful vision of Ellen White, recorded in Early Writings, page 16, and expanded by Adventist imagination and creativity into a fanciful week trip including a stop for lunch at a planet en route to heaven!
Jack, an interesting article which exposes yet another misconception many Adventists have come to accept by putting their trust in the early church founders and co-founders.
“So we now must reinterpret and seek to understand, as they did, both Bible statements and Ellen White’s visions using our science, not theirs.”
I find this statement very strange. If Bates and White misinterpreted the Bible because of what they thought they saw in the cosmos, wouldn’t we be only compounding the same errors using Ellen White’s visions as reference to understanding something which does not exist, namely, Jesus returning through some “Orion Nebula”?
And this: “Like Captain Joseph Bates and Prophetess Ellen White, we too need mostly to do justice, to love mercy, and to always walk humbly with our understanding of God and with our interpretations of the Bible and the science known to its writers.”
“Our interpretations of the Bible” is where we all go astray and lose sight of the truths as revealed to us through the Spirit of God. When the Spirit of God reveals Jesus Christ to us, it is all Truth. No need to “interpret” for ourselves—we will know the Truth.
I spent a lot of hours looking into the Orion nebula through a 12 inch telescope in Sedona, AZ I remember telling a neighbor about the open space in Orion through which Jesus would return. He was a university student at the time, in the air force reserve, also interested in astronomy, a science student.
Now I understand the look of incredulity with which he responded to my “insight.”
Jack,
Thank you for reminding us just how amazing and powerful our creator God truly is!
I used to report on news stories at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and one day had a few moments off-script with an astronaut there for a Shuttle post-mission debrief. I happened to have my young son with me that day and he asked the astronaut what it was like to be in orbit and looking out at the stars. I don’t remember the astronaut’s name, but I’ll long remember his words, “Son, it’s the most amazing thing you can ever experience being out there and seeing truly how vast space is and realizing that if what God created is that amazing, then He has to be pretty amazing, too.” Then he autographed a crew photo for my son and told him that if he studied hard in school then maybe one day he could fly into space with him on a future mission and see what it was like, too.
I’m looking forward to going on that “space mission” with Jesus when He takes the redeemed to Heaven. If it only takes seven days to get wherever “there” is, then the God who created our universe is capable of traveling at some pretty amazing speeds well in excess of the speed of light. I’ll be interested in learning how He does what is outside human concepts of physical limits like the speed of light.
Thanks, Jack. I’ve always been interested in the reference to Orion. I wrote about it a few years ago, too, from a slightly different perspective.
How many of us were taught as truth what EGW wrote, with nothing in Scripture for support?
Children can be taught by their elders and will believe almost anything, but there are still some, long from childhood, who still believe such fairy tales as they are so pleasant.
But has anyone determined exactly the location of heaven? Or if it is even a literal place? Both John and EGW saw many things in vision that are impossible to be literal, and yet, trusting souls have relied on the literality of these writings.
Someone from the Comservative fundamentalist bench help me out here. Are real Adventists supposed to take Ellen White as literally as we are supposed to take scripture? Or are there different standards for interpreting “lesser lights” than for “greater lights?”
Nathan,
Dr. Hoehn writes: So we now must reinterpret and seek to understand, as they did, both Bible statements and Ellen White’s visions using our science, not theirs.
Sept. 19, you wrote on Erv Taylor’s Ages of the Earth part IV: The problem, as I see it, is not that the Church has embraced Creationism. The problem lies in its insistence that it’s belief is not primarily a matter of faith, but is really a sort of naturalism that be faith assumes its beliefs can and will be objectively validated. It is the mirror image of neodarwinistic faith. Such insistence will lead, and is leading, to the unraveling of revealed, experiential faith as the foundation for our understanding of who God is and who we are.
I think Dr. Hoehn is promulgating ‘a sort of naturalism’ that you think unravels experiential faith.
The Bible and Mrs. White become totems that can be interpreted, as needed, by the ‘new science.’ Adventism becomes a sacramental religion with the bible and the spirit of prophecy as infinitely flexible sacraments. They say whatever the ‘new’ science says. The ‘new’ science speaks in their name. Honor the sacraments. Nothing else remains of faith.
Thank you, William, for your thoughtful response. I understand your concern. Let me see if I can clarify.
First of all, the naturalism To which I was referring on Erv’s blog is what I would call a theological naturalism – one that confines God within a systematized understanding of His past revelations. That understanding is rationally cross-referenced so as to create a sort of logical necessity. It begins with revelation from an open-ended, unfettered transcendence, but ends with logic and reason within the systematized closed understanding of that revelation.
Philosophical naturalism, by contrast, rejects transcendence and revelation altogether, beginning instead with human logic and reason interacting with history and ending with open-ended, malleable progressivism.
The end product of both theological and philosophical naturalism is quite human. The experiential faith I am talking about, and that I see in Jack’s Commentary, derives from a willingness – insistence – to let God remain ever transcendent in a Jobian sort of way. His intersection with time and human experience is a real and knowable tether and guide, but cannot easily be encapsulated or conceptually systematized. It remains always a matter of faith. My point was that when we try to reduce that faith to logical necessities, we are engaging in a theological naturalism that results in the unraveling of our faith. Evidence is not proof.
Continued below…
As history demonstrates, the Incarnation is always “infinitely flexible.” Humans make of God’s revelation what they will. Theological naturalism led to the cross. It is the tragic side of freedom.
Jack profoundly reminds us of God’s challenge to Job. He invites us to be humbled in our sectarian conclusions by seeing the God who both blesses and applauds our attempts to understand Him, and calls us back to embrace the reality that He will remain conceptually elusive – that the more certain we are that we have “caught” Him, the more evidence He will provide that we haven’t. And remarkably, in that evidence, He reveals once again that He is God.
Nathan:
You say: “My point was that when we try to reduce that faith to logical necessities, we are engaging in a theological naturalism that results in the unraveling of our faith. “ This is how Wikipedia defines Natural Theology — Natural theology, once also termed physico-theology, is a type of theology that provides arguments for the existence of God based on reason and ordinary experience of nature. This distinguishes it from revealed theology, which is based on scripture and/or religious experiences, and also from transcendental theology, which is based on a priori reasoning. Definition-wise – I think we are pretty much on the same page, right? It is this natural theology the Karl Barth rejected in favor of revealed theology.
What I think Jack is doing is excusing the founder’s crude amalgamation of natural theology with prophecy as something excusable because they were using the best science they had. After all, we have to do the same thing with the best science we have.
The bit I wrote about EGW being Jack’s sacrament was unnecessary, I was contrasting the sacramental with the experiential. My point is Jack makes the Scriptures say what he wants them to say: that is: he reinterprets them, rather than listening to them speak to him. He does this speculating, using the best science he can find. He ought to reign himself in a bit and limit himself to what the text reveals.
I don’t read Jack as playing fast and loose with scripture, William. I think he takes it very seriously. It’s just that if scripture says things about the natural world that are totally inconsistent with what we know to be true through the best tools available – like the earth being flat, or if it said 2+2=5, I don’t think God needs us to take that literally. Jesus in a way read what He wanted to into scripture. He saw Himself in the Old Testament in passages that doubtlessly meant something quite different to the audience to whom it was written.
Interpreting the Bible is a bit like interpreting the Constitution. There are SCOTUS decisions I don’t agree with. But it would be unfair of me to conclude that the writer of the decision must be making the Constitution say whatever he/she wants it to say. Can’t we acknowledge that there are many different interpretations possible for reasonable people of faith as to many passages of scripture?
I believe the creation story of Genesis is the way God wants me to understand what I cannot know. And I’m fine with that. I don’t view the Orion vision that way. Hence my question about whether SDA’s should take Ellen White less literally than the Bible.
BTW, thanks for the Wikipedia reference on theological naturalism. I wasn’t aware that I had ever run across the term before. But the “official” description seems to comport with my intuitive sense of its meaning.
Nathan,
Of course Dr. Hoehn takes scripture and his faith seriously. It merits a serious response. I never doubt his sincerity or integrity.
You surely have a reason when you disagree with a SCOTUS decision; you probably disagree with the method of interpretation. In court you usually don’t dispute the law, you dispute its application.
I think Dr. Hoehn uses his belief in science to interpret revelation; cautiously and humbly, as he indicates in this article. Unlike Professor Taylor who just believes in science (natural theology). Neither one of them has a valid epistemology for discerning divine revelation.
Going back in time you once called the Apostle Paul something of a misogynist. I disagreed and on reflection you walked that back a little. We both know where you got the notion; you read Paul. Dr. Hoehn reads Paul and declares him to be the first feminist. He is using his physico-theological beliefs about the equality of men and women to interpret the scripture. He is both sincere and wrong. You have to force the interpretation. The bible is not an equality manual.
His natural theology informs him that the scripture is incorrectly interpreted if it doesn’t accommodate the best scientific chronologies. It may well be in the epistemological spirit of the founders of the Seventh-day Adventist church. It’s still wrong.
Very compelling thinking, William A
I’m still thinking, especially about the prospect of naturalism being a threat to experiential faith.
Are you suggesting that when faith morphs into belief it opens itself to proof and disproof?
Have you read The Tacit Dimension, a little book by Michael Polanyi?
Bill,
I have purchased The Tacit Dimension. It is on my Kindle. I have not read it, but I promise I will.
You ask, “Are you suggesting that when faith morphs into belief it opens itself to proof and disproof?” I don’t think so. I’m suggesting the whole duty of man is to believe what has been revealed. Maybe I mean the exact opposite.
When God revealed His will to Abraham telling Abraham to offer up his Son it was faith and belief that substituted themselves for evidence that God would faithfully keep his promises to make Isaac a great nation.
Faith has nothing to do with science. Science says Isaac will die if I slit his throat and bleed him out like sacrifice. The promise is contrary to science: Isaac will live, even if he dies, because God has promised Abraham Isaac is the father of a great nation. Belief w/out proof.
William,
Let’s not overlook that having a faith-based relationship with God enables us to discern between the credible and the incredible. That relationship should be continually growing and sometimes our perception of the difference between the credible and incredible is nothing more than the depth of our experience with God at the time. When I look back over my life path with God, I can see many times when I would have thought what He was asking me to do was impossible or incredible but for the experiences I had enjoyed with Him during the years between. Just last night I was thinking about a challenge He has laid on my heart and how He has been working to make it happen. It is something far larger than I have ever done for Him before, yet instead of feeling overwhelmed, my attitude was “Wow! God, we sure are on another adventure together, aren’t we?” Instead of being fearful, I am excited to see what God will do next.
Jack,
I truly enjoyed your write-up about Wallowa Lake and also about Orion. We were there in late June. And I enjoyed sitting on the deck behind our room and watching the stars in all their glory, something we cannot see well in the suburbs of Portland.
While there is much to contemplate in your narrative, there is something I struggle to understand. I have been watching Orion since I was 5 years old. It rises around sunset in December but in June it rises around sunrise. According to the US Naval Observatory Betelgeuse rose about an hour after the sun when we were at Wallowa. Betelgeuse is one of the brightest stars in the night sky, but as viewed from earth the sun is orders of magnitude brighter than any other star. Are you sure it was Orion you saw from the cabin? I myself have never seen it with the naked eye in the summer.
Astronomical Applications Department
U. S. Naval Observatory
WALLOWA, OREGON
Location: W117°31’48.0″, N45°34’12.0″, 1300m
Sun
2016 Jun 01 (Wed) 05:04
2016 Jun 30 (Thu) 05:05
Betelgeuse
2016 Jun 01 (Wed) 07:30
2016 Jun 30 (Thu) 05:36
Apologies, Jack
Having re-read your article several more times, I deduce that you were there in early August. And indeed Orion would rise at Wallowa at the time you saw it.
2016 Aug 08 (Mon) Wallowa
Betelgeuse 03:03
Rigel 03:26
Sun 05:43
So you had perhaps an hour of viewing before Orion merged into the pre-dawn twilight. I guess I haven’t been in the right place at the right time to see it as you saw it?
Jim ,
Where on earth does Orion rise at sunrise in June? I thought Orion was not visible from end of May until early August. Late May it disappears from the western evening sky to reappear just before sunrise on the eastern horizon in early August. That is Nebraska. Who sees it in June?
William,
The reason we don’t see Orion in early summer is precisely BECAUSE it rises and sets with the sun. It is still there in the sky but we cannot see it because the sun is so much brighter and the whole sky is illuminated by Rayleigh scattering of sunlight in the atmosphere. From an hour or more before sunrise until an hour or more after sunset (twilight zone), scattered sunlight obscures all but the brightest objects in the night sky. Only the moon or a nearby supernova will be visible, but as the sky darkens first the planets and then the brighter stars become visible. And in metropolitan areas, atmospheric scattering of artificial light does the same thing at night, so the dimmer stars are never visible to the naked eye.
You and I should be under the moon’s shadow during the total solar eclipse August 21 next year. It will be interesting for us to see what “daytime” constellations become visible within that shadow. We should have a pretty clear view of most or all of Orion because it occupies a much larger portion of the sky along the Ecliptic than does the sun or the moon.
Jim,
Of course. I knew that. I just was thinking when I could no longer see it.
I’m looking forward to the total eclipse next year also. It will be my first and I’ll be looking for Orion.
Ironically I have an excellent view of Orion from my window as I am writing these comments. But I didn’t in early August because it was too low in the sky to be seen behind the backdrop of the ridges which lie to my East.
On the other hand, at Wallowa Jack could see it rise in early August, because the terrain to the East falls away from the Eastern moraine of the lake. If you are above the crest moraine you have an unimpeded view to the horizon. Jacks’ cabin was probably below the Eastern crest (probably on the Western side of the lake?), rendering the moraine as the “black band” he saw beneath Orion.
Jim. August 20, 2016 at 3 to 4 am Orion was rising over the eastern morain of Lake Wallowa exactly as described. Jack
My good friend Nate suggested that “Theological naturalism led to the cross. It is the tragic side of freedom.” My suspicion is that behind Nate’s use of the term “theological naturalism” is a very sophisticated approach to soteriology in Christian theology. However, I guess I have to get out more often since I can’t recall seeing the term used in the context that Nate employed it. When he has some extra time, I wonder if he would please define what he means by this term?
No, it’s not sophisticated at all, Erv. It just sounds that way. It’s simply a phrase I use to describe reasoning within a theological box without acknowledging the box as a human creation. Best example – “God had to create the world in six literal days; otherwise the seventh day sabbath would make no sense.” The “Wisdom” theory set forth in the Book of Job is another example of what I call theological naturalism. It argues that, just as the natural world is governed by highly fixed laws, so the divine-human encounter is governed by certain logical laws and rules. By this thinking, God is bound and bounded by the logic imposed on Him by religious authorities interpreting their sacred texts.
I know my explication is kind of half-baked, like many of my ideas. I used the term “theological naturalism” because I thought its meaning would be intuitively evident. Sorry if I lost you.
The problem is not with science. The problem is in this statement, “The Lord gave me a view ….”
Ray, can you fill in the dots in your comment? I’d like to know what you were going to say?
Joseph Bates and Ellen White reasoned about the relationship between God and the natural world in the same manner as many Bible authors. Let me illustrate this with a simple Bible example that does not involve Creation or Orion or the Flood or the Sanctuary.
God’s Throne is fixed in the Heavens. Most of the Bible was written around 30 degrees North latitude. Where we live the only visible object fixed in the Heavens is the North Star. It hangs about 30 degrees above the horizon throughout the night and everything else revolves around it. Aha! God’s Throne must be somewhere beyond the North Star. So we know that God’s Throne is in the North. Could the North Star be light leaking down from God’s Throne through a hole in the Firmament?
In order to determine the meaning of Scripture (or of Ellen who called herself a “lesser light”), we must first try to understand it within the frame of reference of the authors.
Jim. God and life forms. Just as i was reading your understanding of God’s throne fixed location in the heavens, i was watching the “Moving Arts Studio/Net Flix” of under water sea life, with a most peaceful musical background. The infinite numbers of types, shapes, and sizes of life forms shown in breathtaking color was magnificent. i praised God for reminding me of His Almighty power of the exquisite beauty of His creative majesty, even underseas, where until underwater photography
was possible, no one but He could appreciate it.
Wow! Seven days to heaven. Einstein got it wrong; it is possible for something with mass to go faster than the speed of light. In seven days, I was taught that an SDA day consisted of an evening and morning which was due to the sun going around the earth. So how do you measure a day in outer space where there is no sun? A 1000+ light years in seven days? According to Einstein time stops at the speed of light, So how can you measure time when there is no time? I guess Einstein got that wrong too and all those experiments confirming Relativity are just Satan’s clever deceptions. Yes the earth is young (6000 yrs), created in 6 days. All the science that says otherwise is just deception. To be an SDA and believe all this claptrap means you also must be a science denier. If the Genesis Story is literally true then virtually every field of science is wrong. How can you be a scientist and believe in all this nonsense? Traditional Adventism is joke. It is an embarrassment to the Christian community.
“Traditional Adventism is a joke.” It is an embarrassment to the Christian community.”
It pains me, Ppriest to read such scorn and contempt in an otherwise perfectly rational and reasonable comment. Why is it necessary, and why should anyone care that you feel that way? Throwing rhetorical rocks simply detracts from your credibility as an intelligent, thoughtful commenter.
My mother was a traditional Adventist. Believe me she was not a joke to the people whose lives she was motivated to bless because of her faith, including mine. It was the faith of highly educated traditional Adventists that led them to give generously to build schools, churches and hospitals. And it is those traditional Adventists who by and large still give far more generously than more liberal Adventists.
I suppose Jesus was also a joke and embarrassment to the cognoscenti of His day. Would you not agree? Why not simply accept and embrace that different Adventists are at different places in their understanding and walk. There are negative trade-offs when one embraces “Enlightened” Adventism. Those who would celebrate escape from the “shackles” of traditional Adventism should honestly acknowledge that trade-off before condemning and sneering at a faith that has blessed millions.
What we believe pales in comparison to how we live our beliefs. Rhetorical rock throwing tends to make the thrower appear as narrow-minded and intolerant as his target.
Nathan,
Paul Priest always calls me that: science denier. He is neither arguing the facts nor the law when he does. I never deny the science, I just question it. He believes and I doubt. I’m a threat to his faith. So is traditional Adventism.
The Jews in Jesus Christ’s day didn’t think he was a joke; he was a threat. They had him murdered.
I do refute natural theology. Paul Priest is wearing epistemological blinders and he can’t see any validity to revelation that contradicts his belief and faith in science. Believe it our not, your mother is emblematic of the existential threat a theology of revelation poses to those who reject it.
The continued use of the pejorative ‘science denier’ is more than merely personally offense. It has terrible connotations about integrity. I actually have pretty thick skin and a ‘sticks and stones may break my bones’ attitude about these things. You know, just don’t call me late for dinner
The term ‘science denier’ is obviously derives from ‘holocaust denier’ which is used to describe the revisionist historians who concoct scenarios to explain away the millions of Jews who were liquidated by the Nazis.
For all the fretting that goes on about civility around here, especially the recent dog pile on Jim Hamstra for his germane comments about Erv Taylor. I am a voice crying in the wilderness in my repeated objections to the use of ‘science denier’.
I want Paul to keep commenting, and I can keep bearing the insult, but in my opinion, he is besmirching his own reputation when he calls others ‘science denier’.
Ppriest,
Over the centuries, science has made progressive leaps in knowledge and a number of milestones on that path have been the discovery of certain things such as the speed of light. Recognizing that such things exist isn’t the problem, it is the concepts that we build around the assumptions that get applied to such facts. Assuming that the speed of light is an absolute limit is an assumption. It is accepted as a fact because it has become a conceptual limit we have not been able to challenge it and attempt to exceed it. In the same way the speed of sound was viewed as an absolute that could not be exceeded, but it was. Will the speed of light be exceeded by human technology? Perhaps, but we have a great gap to cross between current capability and that speed.
How long did it take the angel sent in response to Daniel’s prayer in Daniel 10 to come from Heaven and deliver God’s answer? Even if you assume that the angel was already here and just received God’s instruction to deliver it, God is easily able to exceed the speed of light. So if God is that capable, is he able to deliver on His great promises to us? Why do we doubt God’s ability to do what He says He will do?
Yes William. You are correct that what we understand to be the laws of physics may not be universal constants. But when believers insist on a cosmology in which the known laws of physics and science do not operate or have not operated – because God said it – we cannot claim scientific or objective credibility.
We can contend for the credibility of singular events which we believe evidence God’s intervention in history. But at some point in time, as our knowledge increases, we need to re-understand the “Ptolemaic” cosmology of prophetic understanding. Just as God worked within the cultural moral assumptions and understandings of ancient Israel in order to grow them beyond those understandings, so it seems reasonable that He gives us the freedom to grow beyond concrete literalism to see and experience His word and universe on a different level than the prophets through which He communicated were able to understand their message.
I understand that such an approach can threaten the certainty that serves institutional needs. But God insists on human freedom. He wants our certainty to come from experiential life with Him – not from our conceptual understanding of Him. The “Devils” believe. They have a much better conceptual understanding than do we. It follows, does it not, that how we conceptualize the objects of our faith isn’t all that important except as those understandings lead us toward God (greater trust) or away from God (less trust).
Joseph Bates was well-versed in the astronomy of his day. During the formative years of Adventist thought (1830s to 1850s) astronomers were taking fairly accurate measurements of the Solar System. However they were only beginning to take accurate measurements that could compute stellar distances. The development of astro-photography that would enable the latter, was just beginning. (For an excellent summary of this topic see sci.esa.int/jump.cfm?oid=53197.)
So why did Joseph Bates describe the dimensions of Orion as approximately 1,000 x 500 miles?
Bates was well-versed in Celestial Navigation which is based upon the Celestial Sphere. The Celestial Sphere is a projection of the heavenly bodies onto the Terrestrial Sphere (surface of the earth modeled as a perfect sphere though it isn’t). You may have seen a globe with a transparent rotating outer shell depicting the positions of the stars and constellations. The transparent shell represents the Celestial Sphere. The extent of the Orion on the Celestial Sphere is approximately as Bates described it. And he would have know this because Betelgeuse and Rigel are two of the most prominent, widely visible stars used as reference points for celestial navigation.
Given that in the time of Bates nobody had accurately measured the actual distances to or between these stars, the common way to describe them would have been in terms of the Celestial Sphere. So Bates was correct.
If the foregoing explanation was too arcane, think of it this way. Two ships are sailing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. If at the same time, the captain of one ship sees one end of Orion directly overhead, and the captain of the other ship sees the other end of Orion directly overhead, the two ships are approximately a thousand miles apart. (They are not exactly a thousand mile apart, but a thousand miles rounded to the nearest thousand.)
Joseph Bates was a retired sea captain and he knew whereof he spoke.
How did early Adventists conceive of the 7 day trip to Heaven?
At the opening of the 7th Seal in Revelation 8:1 there is silence in Heaven for about 1/2 hour. The time of the 7th Seal is the time of the Second Advent. Applying the “year-day principle” to this passage (correctly or otherwise?) the Millerites taught that Jesus would return to earth, accompanied by His Heavenly Host, and then return to Heaven with the Saved of Earth, over the course of 7 earth-days (approximately 1/48 of a year). Apparently some concluded that “descent” from Heaven could be accomplished in 1/2 day, whereas the return journey with a multitude of humans would take 7 days.
I tend to view this particular item of numerology as symbolic rather than literal. After all we are talking about supernatural events here (Second Advent, Resurrection, etc). Trying to map them onto earthly notions of time or space or matter or energy make no sense. Arguing that it would be impossible to travel to Heaven via Orion in 7 days because of Special Relativity simply does not apply to miracles. And if one considers the consequences of General Relativity and a Heaven outside of space-time, Heaven could in some other dimensionality or topology, indeed be very near to Earth. For you Trekkies, maybe we will go through a one-time Wormhole?
Paul and other Bible writers make it clear to us that these things are beyond natural explanation or comprehension.
Adventist Church where I grew up (Balkans) thought me that the observance of the seventh day Sabbath was required to enter the Heaven; therefore, as they maintained, it will take 7 days to get to Heaven so that those who did not have an opportunity to keep the seventh-day would observe one Sabbath before they enter the Heaven. I am glad I am where I am now.
Jim Hamstra,
I like your reasonable approach. We know so little about the locality of heaven. (Is it another dimension right next to us?) There are many strange things to learn. I also agree about the use of numerology which is obvious in Scripture.
Paul, I recall, as a teenager, standing at night looking up from a town where we both lived and being solemnly told about the Orion Hole In Heaven Jesus Passageway. I eventually realized it was a conjured proposition, wholly a hoax.
A version of the Flat Earth Society lives in official Adventism where it is a permanent institution. Some of the mummified champions of this evident bogus cosmology consider their role as a laughing stock to be a badge of honor in their self-appointed role as the guardians of the “Word of God.” I’m becoming convinced that most of them can’t help themselves because of an innate inability to process contradictory information and adjust to new conclusions.
Adventism, I’m sorry, was built on a hoax, the efficacy of “prophecy.” It is a prime example of the actualization of the shibboleth, garbage in, garbage out. So the reason for “embarrassment” is much larger than the hole in the sky.
Rest easy Nathan, In the end, it isn’t what we think, but who we are that matters. So, even though I adopt the viewpoints of modern cosmology and others don’t, I pass no character judgment on them, or your mom, while being a critic of mythical Adventism. I could sit down with anyone from this forum at Starbucks and have mutually enjoyable conversation. I think that is what Christ did, as an appreciator of character, not correct thinking. Adventism is loaded with millions of fine people who don’t think like me. They never will. Bless them!
Bugs-Larry wrote:
“it isn’t what we think, but who we are that matters”
This is at least half-true. But there is a very strong case to be made that what we think has a major impact on who we are.
Unfortunately I have been cursed with an insatiable curiosity about too many different things. While I will never completely understand all these things that fascinate me, I like to think that I have attained some degree of understanding of some of them. And those who know me can testify that what I think is a very large component of who I am.
Apparently very little of who I think I am, really matters? Ouch!
Well I pushed some buttons on that one. However, the fact is denial of science is everywhere, not just in the SDA church but on the lips of broadcasters and legislators, our movers and shakers. There’s denial that AIDS and HIV are connected. There’s denial of the science showing vaccines don’t cause autism. A century and a half after publication of Origin of Species (1859) there’s still denial that we came to be what we are through natural selection. 180 years or so after the publication of Lyell’s Principle of Geology (1830-33), demonstrating beyond all possible doubt that the earth must be of great antiquity, there are plenty of Adventists who’ll tell you it’s only a few thousand years old. And our ancestors played tag with dinosaurs. There are those on this site that deny the reality of global warming even though the evidence is becoming drastically harder to ignore. This is just the tip of the iceberg of the science denials that are currently corrupting our culture and poisoning our public discourse and damaging our church. Science denial is stifling our ability to make the right decisions for the benefit of society and wellbeing of our children and grandchildren. The promotion of young-earth creationism by the church is counterproductive in evangelizing unbelieving scientists and to most people educated in public universities.
cont.
Re Darwin’s Origin Of Species:
170 years on, the premise that we can explain the origins of life by random combinations of molecules, is looking pretty shaky. Microbiology continues to discover ever more complexity within even the simplest mono-cellular organisms. Nobody has yet observed a non-trivial, functional protein molecule spontaneously arising from its constituent compounds. Nobody has yet observed a single instance of one functional protein morphing into a different kind of functional protein (as opposed to minor variants of the same protein. Nobody has devised or observed anything resembling a viable micro-biological process for either of these to occur spontaneously . These presumed phenomena are taken as an article of faith that cannot be falsified.
Yes I am well aware that mutations can and do occur with regularity. And that some of them are arguably beneficial to the organism. I admit of a rather high degree of variability and adaptability of life forms over time. But that is a theory of survival, not a theory or origins.
Meanwhile the fall-back argument for Evolution as the explanation for the origins of life as a “scientific fact”, is that any other alternative is “unscientific”. This is blatantly fallacious circular reasoning. And that is a fact.
Correction – make that 160 years on.
Furthermore, when an Adventist youth is exposed to legitimate geology by the force of geologic evidence for Earth’s antiquity, they either deny the science or conclude the Bible to be a flawed book.
There are some science deniers that insist they don’t deny science just question it. They say it is the assumptions of science that are questionable. If you put enough garbage into people’s minds, sooner or later too many people will begin to believe the garbage. Rather than thinking, they stop thinking . . . all the while believing their disagreement with the science experts is really a case of thinking for themselves. Their inability to think robs them of the ability to realize it.
“Their inability to think robs them of the ability to realize it.”
Paul, if you don’t accept the Bible as our record of God’s instructions and interactions with mankind, then this won’t make sense to you; but I’ll still ask the question: Isn’t that what Eve decided to do, think for herself and reject the words of God?
I make no apologies for questioning any “science” whose claims are not supported by empirical evidence, or whose “theories” have no falsification criteria.
Evolution as an explanation for the origins of life fails both of these criteria.
Jim,
You make no apologies, because you are incapacitated. Re-read the concluding paragraph of Paul’s post.
Rather than thinking, they stop thinking . . . all the while believing their disagreement with the science experts is really a case of thinking for themselves. Their inability to think robs them of the ability to realize it.
There are none so blind as those who will not see. Jim, you’d better leave science to the experts. /sarc
William,
I suppose am little more than a brain-dead zombie at a keyboard?
I don’t see Eve doing a lot of thinking. A talking snake should have alerted her that something was amiss. I’m not sure how to interpret the Adam and Eve Story. I don’t see it as a literal historical event although it could be. Currently I see it as a metaphor for Israel. I point to the parallel between the two stories. Adam and Eve placed in a garden paradise, Israel placed in a land flowing with milk and honey. Adam and Eve given a law “don’t eat the fruit of the tree.” Israel given a law the Ten Commandments. Adam and Eve given dominion over the earth. Israel was to be the light of the world. Adam and Eve disobeyed and banished from the garden, Israel disobeyed and was sent into captivity in Babylon. I see the serpent in the garden as a metaphor for Israel’s worship of the things created rather than the creator. It has always been that way. We either worship the things created or creator.
Paul, interesting observations. Thank you.
Definitely good observations Mr Priest.
On the previous post, I don’t think that our youth are quite as naive as presented. They would weight the BIBLE and science within perspective, noting that science is only a tool and the results are interpreted within our limits of understanding.
Most of the youth would contend that many approach the BIBLE with the same principles of science, without the observations, proofs and theories to even derive the resultants. But still love to postulate against the resultants.
I still like the idea that GOD created an old earth. Everyone is right. Would Adam not have starved if HE did not make trees with fruit on them already? Just some chicken and egg thoughts.
Once you started with the 15,000 to 17,000 year stuff, it was time to disregard the rest of the article.
A closed mind is a terrible waste.
Hermes,
I have some questions for you:
1) Do you believe that one or more ice ages have occurred?
2) If your answer to Q1 is YES, then when do you think the last ice age was at its peak, and when do you think it ended?
3) If your answer to Q1 is NO, then how do you account for all of the surface features across the Northern tier of the US of A, where I have lived my entire life, that appear to have clearly been sculpted by (post-flood) ice?
Could you please show me the Bible text contradicting the present best estimate for the ice age? I seem to have missed that.
AMEN, twice at least!
Whisper
Unfortunately, the idea is not mine. There is a lot of literature out there that documents the parallelisms between Adam and Israel. Your idea of approaching the Bible with the same principles of science is in my view biblical. (See 1 Thess. 5:21 prove all things) However, my exposure to SDA education says that proving means the use of a proof text. That works if one is trying to prove a theological point about say the Gospel. But when theology and modern science converge on nature proof texts don’t work, because of the differences in the word view between the two. The Bible reflects the world view that was dominant 2-3 thousands years ago and it must be understood in the context of that world view. The same principle applies with understanding EGW’s writings. She writes with the world view that existed in the 19th century. The traditional SDA view is established the age of the earth by adding up the ages of the patriarch at the time of birth of their first son, and the 20 + EGW statements that the earth is about 6000 years old. What happens when the 6000 year view diverges from that of science, 4.5 billion years? One accommodates either by denying science, asserting the earth was created with age, rejection Genesis as fiction, or reinterpreting Genius. Asserting the earth was created with age has problems both theologically and scientifically. Theologically it makes God a deceiver. Cont.
Creating a mature earth is one thing but creating a really old earth is another. Scientifically the rocks say the earth is really old. To reject Genesis as fiction destroys the integrity of scripture. I prefer to reinterpret Genius.
Ppriest wrote:
“Scientifically the rocks say the earth is really old.:
Radio-isotope dating of crystals and minerals contained in rocks, indicate that these constituent materials are indeed very old (probably billions of years). Whether or not the non-primordial rocks are as old as their constituent crystals or minerals, depends upon how these secondary rocks actually formed. In some cases, notably volcanic rocks, we can observe their formation in the present. In most other cases, we can work only from inferences. Though many of these inferences are plausible and supported by empirical observations and experiments, they remain inferences, subject to possible refutation by new data.
On September 23, 2006 @ 8:37 am, Hermes Mendez wrote: “Once you started with the 15,000 to 17,000 year stuff, it was time to disregard the rest of the article”. Some years ago I was talking to an SDA school teacher, who is now a leader in the church, about an article appearing in the Watch Tower of the Witnesses. She replied, ” I do not read those things”.
When we bring such prejudice to the reading of other people’s opinions and ideas, we hurt ourselves, and make the world a much poorer place. And I believe this is an attitude which hurts the SDA brotherhood.
Let us consider: Those inventors and innovators whose works allow us to communicate with one another in an instant, as we do now; those who enable us to travel long distances in a day; those whose work permit us to touch a switch and get our house fully lighted in a moment; those who send to and retrieve humans from the moon; those who enable us to feel warm in our homes when it is cold and cool when it is hot; where did these people get their knowledge and understanding from? Satan? Themselves? Are all these people sabbath keepers? Do they keep the Commandments? Do we benefit from the application of their discoveries? Then, why so myopic in your spiritual vision? God imparts to them His knowledge and His wisdom, and protects the products for our benefit; yet some of us refuse to see and admit the hand of God when and where it is manifested!
With the Bible and inspired writings, why do we feel that God is leading us outside of what He has given us, to others that do not believe as we do, for inspired instruction? Did He lead Saul to the witch of Endora for some information he could not get in Israel?
Are we so arrogant to believe that the Bible was written with a bias for that time so therefore we have to look at it through a modern lens? Did God not anticipate that we would be reading it in these days? Or is this another way of justifying our own uninspired interpretation?
We need to concentrate on what we know to be inspired and throw overboard that which is not. When we start questioning what God has told us of the age of the earth, then we are on Satan’s territory. Stick with God. He will not lead us astray!
Hermes,
You brought up and interesting point—having inspired writings why do we need to go to uninspired sources? When Ellen White died she had around 1500 uninspired books in her library. She was an avid reader. Much of what she read in these uninspired books ended up in her books. She thought that some of the things she read were so good that she used their ideas and in many cases their actual words, so uninspired sources have their place. SDA’s do not have a monopoly on truth. All knowledge comes from God, and I think God expects us to use that knowledge.
I agree with you. I read books on history, DIY, tiny homes, archaeology, etc from non-sda writers. When it comes to religion, why should I wade in another pool? That is what I mean. There is little time and I am not knocking others. I just feel it is time to stick with what we know is 100% inspired and not spend time on materials that could draw us away from the truth.
“The ice ages that made 400-foot-deep rivers of ice carving out mountain valleys and dropping the debris in the plains below started long ago. They finally began to recede about 15,000 years before Christ, or 17,000 years before me.”
AND THIS IS KNOW AS FACT WHY?
“I know it took a rocket ship three days to get to the moon, I know that it takes a probe nine months to get to Mars, I know that even if we could travel at the speed of light it takes 1,344 or so years for light to get to us from the middle of Orion’s sword!”
Is it ASSUMED that the Creator is limited to travel at the speed of light?
“Just don’t ask me to do so based on a desperate clinging to some version of inadequate 19th-century science as of equal value to the dear Bible itself.”
The writer suggests that EGW’S comments were based on “current science” rather than Heavenly Revelation. Does the writer really hold that the Bible is dear? It is alleged that CURRENT SCIENCE IS SUPERIOR to the Bible.
Bates had an opinion. EGW observed from Revelation.
Allen Nash wrote:
“Bates had an opinion. EGW observed from Revelation.”
Both Bates and Ellen were very well-read individuals. Ditto for William Miller. And not just from the Bible.
William Miller used secular history books to arrive at his estimates of when time prophecies in Daniel would be fulfilled. And he did not invent or even discover the “year-day principle”. It was used by many other Bible expositors including Sir Isaac Newton who wrote a commentary on Revelation. What Miller did was correlate the time prophecies with major historical events of his time, notably the French Revolution which had the greatest impact on Western Europe of anything since Constantine and Clovis.
As I have explained above, Bates described the size of Orion based upon its terrestrial footprint as widely used for Celestial Navigation. He did not learn this from the Bible but from secular sources. Like every other navigator of his time, and many since, he probably had a copy of The New Practical Navigator by Bowditch. To this day it remains an excellent compendium of the relationship between the earth and the stars, and is still taught by the US Navy. Now I do believe that God created both the heavens and the earth. But to use the former to navigate the latter, the Bible is less useful than Bowditch or my GPS, both extra-Biblical.
Ellen had 1500 books in her library. If God showed her everything she wrote, then why did she bother to read these other books?
Daniel 9
“20 Now while I was speaking, praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the Lord my God for the holy mountain of my God, 21 yes, while I was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly, reached me about the time of the evening offering… 23 At the beginning of your supplications the command went out, and I have come to tell you, for you are greatly beloved; therefore consider the matter, and understand the vision”
This is from the Dear Bible and offered as evidence that God knows something about travel that we and current science do not know. There is no need to question the ability to travel from earth to Heaven in seven literal days when God is involved. For that matter being caught up into a cloud… I would like for science to weigh in on that.
“We have power over what we believe and what we believe has power over us.”
Science changes it’s opinion over time. Science is not always a sure thing is it?
Is it the position of science that it now has no errors in it’s teachings, nothing to correct?
Allen Nash wrote:
“Science changes it’s opinion over time.”
So do theologians and even prophets. If you study her works carefully you will see that Ellen herself changed her opinions over time. And that she did not claim to be infallible.
I urge your to carefully consider the Ellen quotes on this web site. And go investigate the context of each quote for yourself.
goodnewsaboutgod.com/studies/spiritual/the_organized_church/infallible.htm
Allen, I concur with Jim. The theory that people will take 7 days to reach Heaven is completely contrary to Scripture; as Nathaniel wrote earlier:
“Jesus himself said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you”, “The kingdom of Heaven is at hand”, “The Kingdom comes not with observation”. Think about these things!”
The minds of humans wander off in directions leaving them helplessly lost. Sometimes it may take years or, hopefully only “7 days” to come back and face the truth as it is within the Holy Scriptures.
Take a look at these words which speaks about the Word of God, the Wisdom of God—Jesus the Son of God:
27 When He prepared the heavens, I was there,
When He drew a circle on the face of the deep,
28 When He established the clouds above,
When He strengthened the fountains of the deep,
29 When He assigned to the sea its limit,
So that the waters would not transgress His command,
When He marked out the foundations of the earth,
30 Then I was beside Him as a master craftsman;
And I was daily His delight,
Rejoicing always before Him,
31 Rejoicing in His inhabited world,
And my delight was with the sons of men.
Proverbs 8.
The “sons of men” refers to the spiritual aspect of mankind and not the physical.
“27 so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and have our being,..” Acts 17:26-28.
Yours Truly did not say whether or not it will take 7 earth-days to get to Heaven. Having never made this particular trip, much less timed it, I do not know the answer to this particular question. Nor do I much care, nor do I think those who make this trip care how long it takes.
What I did attempt to do was to explain how the idea of a 7-day trip to Heaven, came into Adventist thinking. Nothing more and nothing less.
Jim, I was referring to your comment regarding the fallible content of Ellen White.
I find it interesting that you regard Ellen White as fallible and yet uncertain of her statement in regards to the “7 day heavenly journey”.
Anyway, I’ll try not to mention your name again lest I misquote you in any way and create confusion.
DD,
The idea of a 7-day trip to Heaven, as best I can determine, did not originate with Ellen White.
This is but one of many examples where modern readers choose to believe she is an original source for everything that she wrote. Clearly this was not the case, as anyone who has seriously investigated Adventist history can attest.
So why do people on both extremes of the Adventist spectrum (including fellow and/or former travelers), continue to believe this?
1) Her writings are still widely published, whereas those of many of her contemporary sources are not. So people who read something first in her writings, tend to think of her as the source for those ideas.
2) It is convenient to their modes of reasoning and argumentation, to use Ellen as the source for things they choose to believe (on the one extreme) or dis-believe (on the other). Ellen has become the Adventist pinata, with the “progressives” striving mightily (blindly?) to beat upon her, while the “fundamentalists” keep hoisting her up and out of harm’s way.
“So people who read something first in her writings, tend to think of her as the source for those ideas.”
If its in “her writings” and she isn’t the source then 1) she used other people’s words and ideas, coping their material 2) people have added and are continually adding to her writings, building a stronger case to exalt their denomination above all others simply because it possess the “gift of prophecy” through their prophetess, claiming she spoke the words received directly from God, which, according to them fits their understanding of end-time “remnant church” prophecies.
The conclusion: Adventists are liars.
Attention, Hermes and Ppriest: How do you know the difference between “inspired” and “uninspired” works? You seem to take for granted, that the Bible, and perhaps, the writings of Ellen White are inspired and all the others are uninspired. It does not mean that if a writer does not say that “God has shown me”, God has not shown him/her. And perhaps, not all who claim God’s direct revelation are indeed correct. So, telling me that Mrs White had over 1500 uninspired works about her, may not be as accurate as we think. God’s increased knowledge is revealed to many more people than we may imagine, or may want to admit! We seem to see things through the lenses of those who socialize us.
Also consider: Is God only in religion? Is He only for the SDAs?
Nathaniel, I am sure that there are many works outside of the adventist church that God has inspired. There have been through history. And I am sure that God leads people through them. My point is that believing as I do that adventism has the truth, I do not need the other. God leads His people from many churches and religions. God is an awesome God and His ways are way beyond my comprehension. I just worry about our people being led astray from the truth by delving into areas that may not provide a sure footing.
The ways of “science” are always changing. Scientists were blood letting 200 years ago to cure almost every malady. Most modern science today that delves into the origin of the universe or how natural observable phenomenon came into being do so from a premise of discounting God. God gave us the natural world so we could marvel in his majesty and His works. God is a wonderful Father!!
If the sky was a flat canopy on one plane then the Orion hole in the sky might exist. But it isn’t and it doesn’t. It’s an illusion created by our viewpoint. The bodies creating our perspective aren’t across from each other. The Orion Nebula, the furthest of its “stars” is in the star creation business and is about 1600 light years away from us. Betelgeuse, the nearest, is in the last stage of stardom, the red giant stage of star life, after which comes, probably, boom, supernova. Current photos of Orion show innumerable bodies and gaseous clouds beyond the imaginary “hole.”
Pasting faith concepts onto reality always bedevils both. We know what stars, gas clouds, and galaxies are about and the cosmological recycling of which each is a part. Everything in the universe is in transformation, here today, gone tomorrow (in billions of years).
But, where is heaven? Is there such a place? Does it have air? Is Jesus really coming “back” to transport people to paradise? Won’t people need air on the trip and when they arrive there? Is Jesus “out there”? Is he subject to laws of physics? How fast can he go? These are fine rhetorical religious questions. But cosmology can’t be adjusted to fit them, evidenced by imaginatively placing Jesus in Orion.
Yes science does change in some areas over time. However, there are some areas that are so well established that little if any change will occur. The heliocentric model of the solar system for example. Science has a good grip on electricity as evidenced by the thousands of electrical gadgets out there. Some things in science are so well known they can be used to determine what can and cannot happen in the universe. Neither information nor matter cannot travel faster that the speed of light. The faster you go the more energy it takes. Also the faster you go the more massive you become. At the speed of light mass becomes infinite. There is not enough energy in the universe to make it go faster. The fact is demonstrated again and again in the various particle accelerators. Some, speaking theologically, say, “With God all things are possible.” I’m not challenging that statement but it does generate a lot of questions. The Bible makes many claims that are contrary to science, miracles for example. Consider faster than light travel. When Daniel began his prayer the angel Gabriel was commissioned to go to his side. He was there by the end of the prayer, Heaven to earth in 3 minutes or so. When Christ was in the boat on the Sea of Galilei it was instantly transported to the shore. Following Christ’s resurrection He went to the Father and back in just a fraction of a day. Paul talks to being carried in the spirit to the third heaven as does EGW. Cont.
Ppriest wrote:
“Neither information nor matter cannot travel faster that the speed of light.”
Experiments regarding matter and energy and the speed of light, from particle accelerators to nuclear weapons, do indeed affirm the predictions of Special Relativity.
On the other hand, “information” has no intrinsic mass or momentum. Recent experiments in quantum physics have shown that in very limited quantities, “information” can indeed travel faster than the speed of light. However the apparatus necessary to conduct these experiments, does have physical mass and energy and is subject to the laws of Special Relativity.
Both “quantum entanglement” and more recently “quantum teleportation” have been demonstrated in the realm of sub-atomic particles (photons). Because quantum states, but not matter or energy, are exchanged, these phenomena occur virtually instantaneously, independent of distance.
The headlines heralding the promise of ordinary data communication faster than the speed of light, are highly premature. Whether and to what degree these experiments will scale to higher bandwidths remains to be seen. Like “quantum computing”, these more recently demonstrated physical phenomena, will probably prove to be highly resistant to scaling-up to exchange of more than a few bits of data at a time.
The present bandwidth achieved appears to be sufficient for secure encryption key exchange (which requires fairly low bandwidth assuming these are…
Jim,
I read something a couple days ago about the Chinese developing a RADAR-like system using quantum entanglement. It reportedly can detect stealth objects at a distance greater than 100 km.
What about gravity? Isn’t it an instantaneous force?
William wrote:
“What about gravity? Isn’t it an instantaneous force?”
Gravity is a major conundrum in modern Physics, much like the Electron and Photon were a century-plus ago. Nobody has succeeded in giving a really good explanation for how gravity actually operates.
Quantum Physics prefers to think of Gravity as a field with an associated particle (Graviton) that mediates the force. This is not the same thing as the Higgs particle which mediates Mass itself. Gravity is by all accounts going back to Newton, a side-effect of Mass, but they are not the same things.
General Relativity prefers to think of Gravity as the warping of space-time caused by the distribution of mass within the Cosmos.
The Inflationary model of the Big Bang claims that space-time itself, can expand (or presumably contract) faster than the speed of light.
Mapping Inflation back onto General Relativity, seems to require that Einstein’s much-disputed (even by Einstein) Cosmological Constant, can and at certain epochs has, assumed a much larger or smaller value. In other words it is not a constant but a variable over cosmological history, though Cosmologists tend to ignore this. Ditto for speculation that there could be some very different curvature of space in different places, or different “vacuum energy” in different parts of space-time for the Quantum Physicists, which to me would imply that the Cosmological Constant could vary in the present.
Who really knows other…
I should add that the very recent and very rudimentary observations of Gravity Waves, appear to confirm that they travel through space-time at the speed of light, which is consistent with Einstein’s predictions.
But there are still a lot more observations required to reach any definitive conclusions on this question.
Quarks, Sarks and Baryons! It’s a good thing the quantum realm looks after itself. (does it?) I’m no use here.
Now I have to go read about the Cosmological Constant.
How can you detect a gravity wave if you haven’t discovered the graviton? This is definitely not a weighty matter.
Do these examples mean that Einstein was wrong? Is it possible that science has got it all wrong? If so does that mean all the paranormal claims are valid and alternative medicine is legitimate? Why does God create a law then violate it again and again? Does He do it just to show He is God? Consider this one: In the new earth there is no sun because God’s thrown is there. No sun! Does the heliocentric model become a geocentric? What happens to the planets? Do they now orbit the earth?
The problem is these are just stories. They are believed because they are in the Bible and the Bible is divinely inspired. Are all stores in the Bible true? Consider the stories of the death of Judas recorded in Matthew 27:3-8 and Acts 1:16-19. Judas died either by hanging or he fell and his guts broke open, he died one way or the other but not both. One of the stories, although inspired, is not true. Many other examples can be cited. If I can’t trust the stories about the death of Judas how can I trust any other story recorded in the Bible without outside confirmation? I would like some really good answers.
Ppriest, don’t get so lost in the minutiae of how he died, that you miss the fact that he died. Plus, I just read both texts and you seem to want to paint a picture of mutual exclusion that simply doesn’t exist. Ever seen the movie Castway? Tom Hanks was going to hang himself from a tree branch sticking out over a cliff. He decided to test the rope/branch first, so he found a log to approximate his body weight, tied the rope to it, and tossed the log off the cliff. The rope/branch snapped and the logged busted apart when it hit the rocks below. Read the texts again, neither explicitly say how he died(as in exact cause of death), just that he hung himself, fell, and his body burst open. It baffles my mind sometimes, at how open minded people can be to some of the colorful “theories” of science, yet completely closed minded in how they look at scripture.
“It baffles my mind sometimes, at how open minded people can be to some of the colorful “theories” of science, yet completely closed minded in how they look at scripture.”
Ron, I like your Tom Hanks example. And how true that many get lost reading between the lines and see that which isn’t there, forming an understanding or interpreting Scripture in ways which suits their own preconceived ideas, but neglect the underlying spiritual messages essential in converting the soul. I think it’s not as baffling as one would imagine. What constitutes a “broad-minded” person; and is it a good thing? Excessive knowledge, especially which has nothing to do with the spiritual truths of Scripture, only confuses the mind and “chokes the word”. Looking for the Spiritual God and Creator of all things by that which is created, acknowledging His handwork is fine, but not when unbelief creeps in by those who do not believe in God or the Holy Scriptures–a toxic mix which poisons the minds of those who are weak in the Faith. The physical world gives us a glimpse of the Creator, but without a personal spiritual relationship we can never know Him. This is what the Bible is all about, dealing with the spirituality of man and his relationship with God through Jesus the Christ. Nothing else really matters.
Ppriest wrote:
“In the new earth there is no sun because God’s thrown is there. No sun! Does the heliocentric model become a geocentric? What happens to the planets? Do they now orbit the earth?”
As I have previously explained regarding the inability to see Orion (or other normal stars) during the day, the sun is so much nearer that its brightness overwhelms the much dimmer star-light. The point of that narrative in Revelation is the the brilliance of God’s Presence will overwhelm any other “natural” source of light in the Celestial City.
The Revelation narrative does not say anything about whether there will be a Solar System or stars or whatever. Isaiah mentions Sabbath and new moon feasts in heaven. These are all depictions of something supernatural in terms that humans can relate. They should not be used either to constrain or to negate what God can do, has done and/or will do.
“And the city has no need for sun or moon to shine on it, because the glory of God illuminates the city, and the Lamb is its lamp. ”
This does not say whether the sun or moon will exist, only that their light will not be needed in the New Jerusalem.
But the New Jerusalem, “the mother of us all”, is the “City of the great King” Jesus Christ.
Jim, I see Babylon as the city and throne of the “ruler of this world”; but Jerusalem is the city which should replace Babylon in our hearts. If Christ is our King and LORD, Who dwells in His people through the H.S., then the New Jerusalem is also in our hearts. The New Jerusalem “comes down from God out of Heaven”–God is Spirit, the Heavenly Jerusalem is also a spiritual city. “And the city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it, and the Lamb is its light.” Rev. 21:23.
We should be a little more reticent to postulate on where the New Jerusalem is located. Has the Bible informed us of its exact location? Or were God’s throne is actually and visibly located?
For those that rely on the literal reading of the Bible, it presents some contradictions difficult to mix; and then throw in EGW’s vast writing of heaven: where she has been and writes of it so assuredly. Is it actually a literal place? How can we know for certain that Both John and EGW’s descriptions were based on their having once been there rather than in vision. Are visions and dreams descriptive of reality?
“Are visions and dreams descriptive of reality?”
Elaine, I’m not sure about all dreams; people dream all the time and they can occur because of much activity throughout the day, (Eccl. 5:3). But visions which are confirmed by Scripture are always a revelation from God about Jesus Christ. If they don’t reveal and glorify Jesus Christ they are not from God. John’s visions as recorded in the Book of Revelation are clearly the revelation of Jesus Christ. All events throughout this Book reveal deliverance for the reader from all spiritual problems within their heart; Christ being the deliverer; and the glory always belongs to Him.
So, are visions descriptive of reality? Yes, of course. Spirituality is real, but not always in the physical sense. I think, I speak, you hear and understand with your mind–has that not become spiritual reality for you? And when visions come from God it always produces results by converting our hearts in some way or another.
If people say they had a vision from God, but it can’t be clarified/confirmed by Scripture and doesn’t glorify Christ, it’s not from God.
Man wants to explore space, but he needs air and there is not a supply out there. Solution: Build a spacecraft, store in it a supply of oxygen, and go into space.
If God is omniscient, as we believe, and omnipotent, then He can provide a huge spacecraft for those who are planning to go to heaven. He can create the conditions which enables the craft to make the trip in seven days, to fulfil the wishes of those who wish a seven-day trip.
Otherwise, leave the future to God; and He will work out things in His way with His wisdom and power!
Who would be the pilot and has she been given the coordinates to heaven?
I think most people have the coordinates–the Bible.
Heaven is as far as people want to make it.
“Draw near to God and He will draw near to you….” James 4:7-10.
The matter of Bible interpretation is a stupendiously intricate and fascinating exercise.
When Jesus of Nazarette appeared, some claimed He was the promised Messiah of the old Testament. The bulk of the Jews did not think He was the promised Messiah, and did not accept Him as such.
We, Christians, harshly criticised the Jews for rejecting Jesus. We claim they mis-interpreted the Old Testament prophecies which pointed to the Christ. Let us face the facts. The bulk of the Old Testament prophecies predicting the restoration of Israel, and the advent of the Annointed One, did not present a character and the activities which were exemplified in the life of Jesus of Nazarette. The Messiah of the Old Testament was a more forceful character, and His mission and accomplishments were to be more phenomenal and more mundane than what we saw in the life and ministry of Jesus. We can go into more details by references from the Prophetic writings of the Old Testament; but the point I wish to make is that we, in our era, are in danger of falling into the same, or similar rut.
What we are looking for may not be there; and what is here we may not be seeing it. Jesus himself said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you”, “The kingdom of Heaven is at hand”, “The Kingdom comes not with observation”. Think about these things!
Do you prefer the writings of Alice Bailey over Ellen White? You are skating on thin ice, sir. Go back to the old paths, the good way in Jeremiah 6. Evolutionists are thought of very highly in satan’s kingdom. This is his theory given to Darwin directly by Satan himself. I see the heresy in the SDA church that is causing a shaking. Pray for God’s mercy and wisdom. Be humble to learn. None of the proud can know the true God.
“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”
Colossians 2:8 KJV
http://bible.com/1/col.2.8.kjv
“Go back to the old paths, the good way in Jeremiah 6.”
Monica, Jeremiah 6 is a long chapter, what part did you have in mind which would emphasize your message?
More heat than light, thanks anyway to most of you.
If we want Light we start reading the Bible. If we want heat we board a space ship and travel towards the sun. Are space ships heat resistant?
Ron, you have created a third story of how Judas died. He hung himself but the rope broke and he fell. His guts broke open and he died. You are making scripture say something that it does not. Matthew is clear. The priests took the silver and bought potter’s field. Then Judas hung himself. Acts is also clear; Judas used the money to by potter’s field, then he fell and died. Matthew makes Judas death a suicide while Acts makes his death an accident and that is a significant difference. All this difference has nothing to do with the Gospel of Christ, it does, however, say something about divine inspiration. How can two divinely inspired writers get the death of Judas so differently? The question was asked in an earlier post, “how do you know what is inspired.” Both Ellen White and the Bible claim divine inspiration. Because of that infallibility is imputed to both. When I was denominational teacher differences of opinion were settled with an EGW quote or Bible text. Again and again writers on this website make post to the effect that because the Bible says it is so. Enough evidence has been produced in the last three or four decades to show that White is anything but infallible. The difference in the story of the death of Judas along with hundreds of others that can be cited show that the Bible is not infallible. What is this thing called divine inspiration. Billy Graham saw the prophets as Gods secretaries taking dictation. The evidence doesn’t fit that view. Cont.
Hanging is but one of many ways to “fall and die”. Someone places a rope (or other constricting object) around your neck, you fall, you die. This may or may not be self-inflicted. It may or may not be accidental. It may or may not be a clean drop. The rope may or may not break. The suspension point(s) may or may not hold.
I see no conflict between the two Bible passages quoted by Ppriest, regarding how Judas died. Matthew provides more detail than Peter.
. The SDA church says the prophets were thought inspired. But if Matthew and Luke were thought inspired wouldn’t they have the same thoughts about the death of Judas? The concept of divine inspiration needs to be restudied, redefined so that it fits the evidence.
Luke is simply reporting what Peter said, probably a narrative reconstructed from people who were actually in that meeting.
Many if not most of the people in that meeting actually knew Judas and were familiar with the events surrounding his untimely and unhappy demise. In Luke, Peter is merely recounting well-known facts, not trying to explain them. On the other hand Matthew is explaining what happened to Judas for the benefit of people who did not already know.
Peter and Matthew may well have had similar thoughts about Judas. But two different people with similar thoughts will probably express them differently. If they express them identically, then one is probably repeating what the other said or wrote.
Correction – “in Luke” should be “in Luke’s narrative”
The text in Timothy “all Scripture is inspired….” could only be referring to the Hebrew Scriptures as the Gospels had not been written at that time (They were written later than Paul) and the on scriptures recognized were the Hebrew writings. There were many early Christian writings that were used by the apostles but were not included in the NT which was finally canonized in the late third or fourth century.
Paul,
There are two different animals here. History and Revelation. We don’t know exactly what happened – not the particulars of Judas death. The history of it is unclear.
If we believe the bible is also revelation and more than history we remain open to the possibility we might understand/know more about the particulars later.
As to what is revealed: It would have been better if Judas had never been born. Judas was necessary,…and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled. There are several places where scripture prophesy betrayal, PS 35, 69.
And this is from Zechariah “And I said unto them, If you think good, give me my hire; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my hire thirty pieces of silver. And Jehovah said unto me, Cast it unto the potter, the goodly price that I was prized at by them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them unto the potter, in the house of Jehovah”
The historian believes the new Testament ‘stories’ about Judas were written to conform to the prophecy. The believer believes the other way around; the prophetic revelation is historical in its prediction and fulfillment. It isn’t evidence unless you believe.
Assumptions underlie faith. Just like they do science. You do well to question them. They might be wrong.
6Therefore I issued a decree to bring in all the wise men of Babylon before me, that they might make known to me the interpretation of the dream. 7 Then the magicians, the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers came in, and I told them the dream; but they did not make known to me its interpretation. Dan. 4.
I remember someone saying that science compliments Scripture. How can carnal minds expect to shed light on the origins of creation while denying the existence of God?
As you are very aware, everyone who makes such a statement cannot be accepted as valid. Whether science supports Scripture can’t be proved; nor that Scripture supports science. Belief in Scripture is dependent on faith; belief on science must be confirmed numerous times by many scientists who accept that is true for now; but is always subject to additional knowledge. Science and Scripture should never use the same measurements for validity as faith is always subjective and needs no other confirmation than each individual.
i doubt seriously that God will need a pressurized space vehicle with breathing apparatus for transport to heaven of the saints. The resurrection of the souls will be spiritually. No flesh can inhabit the heavenly kingdom. i believe God is able to transition to any part of the Universe by
thought transfer. There may be other methods for the angels, in Earth time. Here is a scenario that
i believe is possible, supposedly there are 3 heavens, Telestial, Terrestrial, and Celestial conception. A babe is conditionally immortal, as are the angels. The Bible states some are born wicked?? That’ difficult to understand, unless there has been amalgamation with subhuman species. At death the soul is retrieved by God, the flesh returns to the Earth. At the second coming of God, He restores the individual’s soul, in spirit form, of which each will initially abide in one of the three heavens, determined by God. Later to receive assignments in other parallel Universes, to do God’s business.
There may be ongoing education for those saints in lower heavens or portions of the various Universes. The prime reveries of heavenly music, will fill the souls of the Saints, so exquisitely they
will never think of Earthly pleasures. There are magnificent panaramas of beauty that thrills the soul. We will have heavenly bodies such as that of Jesus the Christ, God, with heavenly talents, and
our intelligence will be of Godly inheritance.
Doesn’t interest me, Earl. It is no better than reincarnation since where I might have been, who I was, and where next doesn’t matter since I don’t recollect where I was.
I am my body, it requires air. Ephemeral is distressing fantasy. I don’t want to live without it. In truth, I am made up in a temporary arrangement of atoms which are borrowed for an interlude of supra-microscopic Planck/time, on their journey to somewhere else.
Yes, it entertains to speculate and I have no problem with yours or all the religious theories, I have no concern about returning to atoms. The entire universe is on borrowed time as it recycles, destroys and recreates itself, while it expands forever into cold darkness. Yes, I know, that may all be revised favorably by cosmologists and their physics buddies at some future time. And here might be an after death happy surprise. In the meantime I intend to live life as fully as I can, “eat drink and be merry,” in moderation, of course. And enjoy the observation and participation in Love that I choose to ascribe to “God.” All else is “vanity.” Including heaven.
“The Bible states some are born wicked?? That’ difficult to understand,…”
Not so difficult to understand when you see wicked parents and their children who are just as wicked as they are. So where do the children get their evil thoughts/intentions from?
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Global warming, or climate change, as its advocates changed the name, is a bogus hoax concocted by the left to charge people higher energy rates and control them. There’s no empirical evidence to support the theory. Science isn’t determined by consensus. The so-called computer models were set up to produce the results that were wanted. The liars who contrived this hoax have been exposed numerous times so any thinking person knows to pay no more attention to it.
There are and have ever been atmospheric cycles symbolized by waves of heat and cold, We are currently in the “hot” era. It is and cannot be “man made”. It is a false
problem created by those seeking control of the masses. Al Gore has already amassed
over 500 million dollars from this false science. The United Nations will soon issue
unnegotiable assessments to each nation that all nations, including the USA, signed onto in Paris in December 2015.