Frazzled,
The whole concept of prophecy is disturbing to ex JW’s. After all it was prophecy that probably
hooked them in the first place. The entire foundation of JW’s is rooted in the belief that they are
the ones that God is using to serve the prophetic role. There is an ever present fear about the
horrible things that are about to take place. The sense of futility about engaging in any of the
normal activities of life drove them to a frenzied pace of activity that they felt was a requirement
for divine protection. So the mere suggestion that some prophecy is true stirs the fear that
whatever life they have tried to salvage might have to be put on hold again. That would be
unbearable. Prophecy doesn’t disturb me because I an atheist.
I arrived at the atheist position directly without complicated philosophical argumentation. .
Suppose some entity appeared to me and claimed to be the Top God. How could such a God even
expect me to believe him. What could such an entity do to prove to me they are omniscient and
omnipotent and had no beginning. To verify those claims I would also need to be omniscient,
omnipotent and everlasting. For that matter I could never even verify my own omniscience (if I
were) since I could only know what I know and could not know what I don’t know.
The next step is to look for “any kind” of evidence that there are even entities with extraordinary
powers that would at least evoke trust in their benevolence. For instance what would be so hard
for someone less than almighty to restore a few old people to their youth. While not proving they
were God Almighty such an entity would be God-Enough for me to want to become better
acquainted and perhaps even hang out. There are a lot of spectacular things that some being
somewhere might be able to do that would lure humans into worship. So far there has been
nothing spectacular.
So what should I do with the Bible? Should I throw the scriptures out with God? Most people
make that choice. It is “a choice” but not necessarily the only choice. Even evolution improvises
on what has been useful. Evolution is NOT revolution. Usually evolution doesn’t start from
scratch. Evolution continues from wherever it is. Evolution will keep vestigial organs around
and adapt them to a new function. From this orientation could there be something of value to
scripture? The only way to know is to form a working hypothesis that presumes some utility. So,
I choose to see if there is some salvageable aspect of the Bible.
Setti, has been scanning the radio signals coming to the earth in search of evidence that someone
out there might be trying to contact us. A similar effort has recently been attempted at searching
the internet for traces of time travelers through references to things that didn’t happen yet. Don’t
judge these efforts based on the negative results. They are appropriate questions for scientific
inquiry. They begin as What-If propositions or working hypotheses. So when it comes to the
Bible my working hypothesis is: What if an advanced civilization was trying to preserve a
promising species of intelligent beings on a planet, perhaps like humans on earth. Their motive
wouldn’t be for exploitation but simply preservation. In our current state we have discovered
indigenous populations in various parts of the world and have pursued a pattern of exploitation
by turning people into slaves and confiscating their resources. Trying to leap-frog these cultures
into a “modern” world has had tragic consequences.
My hypothesis is that if there were some “Older Brother” planets they might be observing the
progress of civilizations like ours and nudge them in the direction of survival. The goal would be
to have a subtle influence which means to allow things to develop over time with overt
interference only exercised at a point that would threaten survival. The most effective minimal
way of influence would probably be through sacred texts. Such texts would have to be put
together early in the game to give them sacred status in the eyes of a significant population.
I see possibilities that the Bible could be such a text. Most of the Bible is junk for us today.
But it would have to be functional to the people that would faithfully copy it for thousands of
years. Such a text would not be the place to reveal scientific knowledge. It could be dangerous
to accelerate the natural process of discovering things.
The Bible seems to address the most serious problem with any life form. You can’t have life
without a self. Life is “self-moving”, “self-sustaining”, “self-directing” and “self-orienting”.
Life is the consequence of establishing a circular process that replicates by incorporating
chemicals from the environment. Metabolism eventually forms a boundary or “cell-wall”.
That’s the start of the process that leads to complicated organisms. Without this boundary life
would have very little integrity. The trouble with “boundary” is that it leads to competition for
life sustaining chemicals. Competition then leads to conflict. At the point where social
organizations of sentient beings arise the conflict has to give way to cooperation for survival of
everyone. In simple terms the Bible addresses the problem of warfare.
The Old Testament was necessary to form a nation that could be slowly prepared for the
dissolution of nationhood. The Messiah was anticipated as a protector of the nation of Israel.
Jesus showed up at an opportune moment. Empires reached the point where they could rearrange
boundary any way they desired.. Nations could not resist the penetration of empires like Rome.
The new boundary needed to be ideological. Not an ideology that emerged from geography
bound cultures that were destined to fight to maintain their physical boundaries but an ideology
of cooperation and tolerance.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are the only ones that avoid involvement in the divisive politics and
nationalism that govern the world. While not doing so perfectly they at least have actually turned
their swords into plowshares and don’t engage in war and would rather die than kill. To me this
is very strange and noteworthy. The prophecies in the Bible point to a final confrontation on the
earth. Not a confrontation between good and evil but between two ideologies that are both evil.
One is collective and totalitarian and the other is based on laissez-faire greed. Both are intent on
ruling the world. Daniel describes the pre-armageddon/interference tribulation as a battle
between the King of the North and the King of the South. Revelation describes this struggle as
Babylon the Great (King of the South) trying to ride the totalitarian Wild Beast eventually ending
in Babylon the Greats destruction.
At the point where these entities would practically destroy each other the Kingdom of the Sky
will finally step in and set up good government based on cooperation. Following this line of
thought over the past 30 years I have been able to arrive at a coherent explanation for most Bible
prophecy.
These Big Brother protectors of sentient life in the universe don’t have to be omniscient to know
the probable development of geopolitics. They could look at the geographical structure of
oceans, continents, and climate and be able to do some sophisticated statistical correlational
analysis and be able to make the kind of predictions you see in the Bible. These Big Brothers
have no doubt had experience with millions of planets and have an extensive database for their
predictions.
These Big Brother protectors don’t have to be omnipotent to dominate the armies of this planet.
There are credible reports of UFO’s appearing at Missile installations and disabling them.
Metatron knows more about this then I do.
