A Terrible, Strange Place

[hillsbororiver]

THE UNIVERSE!

The whole thing is as bizarre as it can be.
Think about space, if you took God away, what is left?
Is there anything out there left?
Is there space?
Is it dark?
Is it light?
What is it then?

We think if we take away the creation you have black, cold, space.  Three things in space, it's black, dark and very cold, absolute zero and not a lot of room to do it in. 
It's interesting that most scientist don't believe that space is eternal.  They believe it came into existence with a big bang and time.  Hence we have the space, time and matter continuum.  All started at the same time.

So I say that God is perfect, that's why He doesn't change now and Christ doesn't change.  But did He ever?  Because I have to answer a question.  Where did God get patience? 

[Someone ask the  question: where did He learn obedience?]
I think He learned obedience before He was born and reduced down to a man and so on and so forth. 
Left to His own we know what He could accomplish.....nothing.  He said so, "I can of mine own self do nothing:"(John 5:30).  Because He had the Spirit without measure, He could not sin.  Now Christ had to sweat bullets to do it, but it was still God doing it.

God puts us in the same situation, we have to live our lives.  You may say, well I'll just kill myself.  Not unless God wants you to, you can't kill yourself if God doesn't want you to.  Everybody that ever killed themselves, it was after God said, ok, now you are going to kill yourself. 
He is in control of EVERYTHING, through circumstances.  He doesn't make anyone kill themselves against their will, no.  But He puts them into situations where they can't tolerate life anymore and their own will becomes, I want to kill myself.

[Someone ask the question: is that why Christ was always in prayer?]
Well yes, it's like the old saying; act like it all depends on you and pray like it all depends on God.  That's the way you should live your life.   He could not help but pray. 
What appears to be contradictions are not contradictions, when you have a higher spiritual understanding of what it's talking about. 
Let me show you a perfect example and it sounds like a contradiction, but it's not.

Phi 2:12  "Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling."

Doesn't that contradict this whole thing, we're saved by grace and not of works?  And now we're to work out our own salvation?  What is that?  How do you explain that?  " Of Myself I can do nothing..." (John 5:30),  and he said YOU can do nothing, He said to the apostles.  Then Paul says "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling."  Well it does sound like a contradiction.  Read the next verse, He tells us why.  'For,' now that word always means 'because,' it's another word for because.

Phi 2:13  "For(because) it is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure."

Some of you probably still don't get the answer, but it is there.  Work out your own salvation, is not the gist of that saying, He is not saying, work out your own salvation.  No, he's saying "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, that's where the emphases is, on fear and trembling, not on work out your own salvation.  You work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, why?  Because it all depends on God.  If God doesn't do it, it won't happen, IT WON'T HAPPEN.  So we live in fear and trepidation.

I can not drive down the street, being the safest driver I can, and know that I will avoid an accident, if God has already determined I'm going to have one.  What it doesn't mean is you can drive down the road foolishly or you don't need to wear a seat belt or close your eyes for a while or something like that. 
But you do act it out.  Why? You have to, He makes you.  He made you come out of your mother's womb, and He made you cry.  Not that He forced you, but circumstances, He brought about all the circumstances.  He made you cry, makes you grow and makes you fight with your kid brother.  You do all these things and people reach a place where they get tired of it.  So we have plays 'Stop the world I want to get off,'  I've had enough....I'm at the end of my rope.... it's the end of the line.  Well it's only the end of the line if God has determined it's the end of the line.  If say you came to that conclusion at 8:30, and He knows you won't die until your 77 1/2, your not going to end it. 
That's where the fear and trepidation come in, it all depends on God, there's nothing you can do.  But YOU have to work it out.  YOU have to get up and go to work.  And YOU have to do all this stuff.  And then you say I don't want to, well circumstances make you.
So you think, I'll just end it all, then your child comes up and says 'Mommie.'  Now you say, oh gosh I have a child, I can't kill myself I've got to live for my child.  You see?  And so God makes you live this life.  He makes you do all this, HE MAKES YOU DO IT.  But not against your will.  He puts you in circumstances and that's the only way you can go.  The ONLY way!

You think, I shouldn't have done this or that.  That's right you shouldn't think that way.  You should think, that I shouldn't have done that, because then you are learning.  And when you learn, you will then put that into practice.  Because God doesn't have you learn things so you can't put them into practice.  He has you learn things so you CAN put them into practice.  But the only way you will learn them, is if you see how stupid it was, and you say if I had it to do over, I wouldn't have done that.  So you had to do them, because that led to a lot of trouble and pain and sorrow.  But did you learn your lesson?  Well yeah.  Then don't do it again, Ok, now they're back on track. 
But the whole human race does not comprehend, they do not have free-will.  They have a will based on everything, that everything makes them do.  That's their free-will.

When you think about this you can go crazy, because the whole thing is bizarre.

Indeed it is!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you once again Kat for making all these audios available in print, your tireless efforts are a blessing to all that access these pages.

Also, I wanted to add a few scriptures that I believe underline what Ray has written here;

Exo 34:10  And he said, Behold, I make a covenant: before all thy people I will do marvels, such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation: and all the people among which thou art shall see the work of the LORD: for it is a terrible thing that I will do with thee.

Deu 8:15  Who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water; who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint;

Num 20:5  And wherefore have ye made us to come up out of Egypt, to bring us in unto this evil place? it is no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates; neither is there any water to drink.

Isa 28:21  For the LORD shall rise up as in mount Perazim, he shall be wroth as in the valley of Gibeon, that he may do his work, his strange work; and bring to pass his act, his strange act.

Jer 10:23  O LORD, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.

Act 14:22  Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.

His Peace and Wisdom to all my Brothers and Sisters,

Joe

[Deborah-Leigh]

MAGNIFICENT!

This makes me see better that even our enemies can not do ANYTHING but what they are doing!

Thank you for posting that Joe.

Where is the link to that transcript?

peace be to you Brother

Arcturus

[hillsbororiver]

Thanks for the nudge Arcturus! 

And by the way you are very welcome. 

Here is the link from the Nashville Conference '07 (transcribed from audio # 6 last half).

http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,4472.0.html

Peace,

Joe

[Rene]

Thanks Joe for continuing to bring forth portions of Ray's teachings for our consideration here at the forum.  I never tire of reading these lessons.  It seems as though I learn something new each time I review this material.

 
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you once again Kat for making all these audios available in print, your tireless efforts are a blessing to all that access these pages.

I also would like to thank Kathy for her labor of love in transcribing all the audios from Ray's teachings.  As much as I enjoy listening to the audios, I have found that reading the transcripts allow me to absorb more of the lessons.  I marvel at how much work Kathy is able to accomplish here at BT, but then again, I realize that it is all accomplished through Christ in her.  She is being used in a huge way and we all share in the blessing!


Rene' 

[Kat]

Thanks Joe and Rene 

Well I will tell you Rene, I too absorb more from reading.  So doing the transcribing gives me the perfect opportunity to really take it in.  And God has provided me with time and the desire to do it. 
It's kind of funny, but everytime I work on a transcript I get to thinking that it is the most important one.  I get excited about getting it done, so everybody else can study it. 
I feel it is a privilege to do this work, because I truly believe that what Ray is teaching is most important.  God is surely going to get His Truth out, but...

Rom 9:16  So it depends not upon man's will or exertion, but upon God's mercy.

mercy, peace and love
Kat

[Matt]

Joe,
Thank you so much!  My wife just talked to me last night about "working out our salvation" and its meaning for us etc.. 
Now I have somewhere to start

Every day, God is pulling her in closer and closer to the truth.  The other day, I showed her proof of many spurious passages that are not in the original manuscripts of the NT (sinaitic writings, etc), and she was very upset (not with me  this time though  .)  She even "jokingly" said that she may need to find a different church 

Also, space is just nothing, isn't it?  It hurts my head to think about it for any more that 20 seconds, just like Ray said in his audio about eternity, hmmmm.

Matt

[Sorin]

I agree with Arcturus-that is magnificent!
Thanks for posting that Joe, I needed to read that again.

[Little Joe]

Joe,
Thank you so much!  My wife just talked to me last night about "working out our salvation" and its meaning for us etc.. 
Now I have somewhere to start

Every day, God is pulling her in closer and closer to the truth.  The other day, I showed her proof of many spurious passages that are not in the original manuscripts of the NT (sinaitic writings, etc), and she was very upset (not with me  this time though  .)  She even "jokingly" said that she may need to find a different church 

Also, space is just nothing, isn't it?  It hurts my head to think about it for any more that 20 seconds, just like Ray said in his audio about eternity, hmmmm.

Matt

Actually, Matt, space is something because it exists in time, and space is absolutely necessary for matter to exist, and the whole universe to exist for that matter, since it is mostly empty space.  Before time there truly was nothing, which is incomprehensible.  So "nothing" does not even exist in the space-time continuum as we know it!  I think MY head is beginning to hurt.

[Matt]

18,  19,   20,   POP! (Sound of my head exploding!)

[hillsbororiver]

Hi Everyone,

I sure wish I had a head exploding smiley to put here, thanks for the responses. Here is the next section from;  

http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,4472.0.html


You think if this is what God wanted and He is eternal, why didn't He do it a zillion years ago.  So this plays right into the hands of what I am talking about, but not completely.  Because we have this thing of eternity, which has no beginning.  I mean if anything exists, something has to eternally exist.  And that's just it.  At least as we understand the law of physics and so on.  If you have nothing, you can not from nothing have something.  Something eternally must exist, because WE exist.
 
This (knocks on table) is here, I'm here, you're here, and we know we're here and we know we did not eternally exist.  Because you have a birthday, same day every year, so you're here and can't deny it.  So we know we weren't always here and as we study history and people study paleontology, anthology and all the other -ologys, nothing eternally existed.  Then you get into quantum mechanics, astrology, astronomy and astrophysics and all those things.  We find that nothing in it's present state, always existed.
 
So then we see all these galaxies out there and they are moving, and there moving outward.  Well if they are moving out, they must have been at one time, in, makes sense, right?  And if they were in, this far back in history, then further back they must have been further in too.  So if you keep backing up just sheer logic would tell you that it all came together at one point.  But now you got another quandary though.  Since it comes together, so it was together at one time?  Is that how it started out?
 
The reason it came together, is because gravity drew it together.  But it couldn't have always been that way, because then gravity couldn't have drawn it in, because it was never out.
Oh well, maybe it was out and it drew it in, then it exploded out and then drew it in.  So what, it's the same thing.
 
Modern man doesn't go back 50,00 years on this earth, of course not.  So if you have the pulsating universe you solve the problem, you got to go back to the first pulse.  Where did that first matter come from?  That first pulse?
 
Your mind goes crazy.  You say well it's just there and it got so tight, it just explodes.  But wait a minute, how did it get tight?

Maybe it never came in, it only goes out.  Because if it comes in and goes out that's a two process thing, and we want to look for the original process.  So if it didn't come in first to go out, then it only went out.  So if it went out first, out from where?  It was gravity that was drawing it in?   Your mind can't handle it.  There is no where to go with that!?  Where did the blob that drew itself in and then exploded into the expanding universe, where did it come from?  And if it eternally existed, how could it eternally exist in a state that would allow for that?  It's drawn in so tight it's going to explode, so how can it eternally exist in a state that won't tolerate that?  You see what I'm saying!?
 
Well then where did it get that way!?  You see what I'm saying?  Where did it get that way?  You think well it was that way eternally, but it couldn't have been eternally that way.  Because it can't function in that form, it would blow up.  Well where did it come from?  How did it blow up?  Your brain can't take this any further!

Space is endless and you keep going and going.  It just can't be.  Do you come to a wall?  Well what's on the other side of the wall?  Nothing?  That's what space is?

So I say the whole thing is bizarre.  And I say that in love and hopefully with a little wisdom.  This whole creation is bizarre.  God is doing like He said in Isaiah 28:21 "a strange work."

Here are some verses I thought fit this vein;

Isa 44:24  Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself;

Isa 44:25  That frustrateth the tokens of the liars, and maketh diviners mad; that turneth wise men backward, and maketh their knowledge foolish;

1Co 3:19  For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness.

God has layed things out in such a way that attempting to leave Him out of creation or even in the influencing and direction of our own individual lives requires mental gymnastics that can make you crazy!

Job 10:8  Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about; yet thou dost destroy me.

Isa 64:8  But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.

Jer 18:6  O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the LORD. Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel.

We will not truly have a complete understanding of all this until the "change" at resurrection but even the bits and pieces of wisdom that are being revealed to us expands the mind and gives us glimpses of God and His plan and purpose that relatively very few have had the good fortune to see.

His Peace and Wisdom to you,

Joe
   

[Sorin]

I must be weird, 'cause my head's not hurting, and I always think about things like this.


Now where's that silver wrench? 

[Kat]

Here you go Joe   

We will not truly have a complete understanding of all this until the "change" at resurrection but even the bits and pieces of wisdom that are being revealed to us expands the mind and gives us glimpses of God and His plan and purpose that relatively very few have had the good fortune to see.

I believe for those few that He raises at the first resurrection, He will have revealed, to some degree (because I know people called down through the ages didn't know a lot of this stuff being revealed now), these things.  I just don't see Him rasing up someone that does not have a inkling about how God does things. 
So I think as Ray is working to bring forward all this scientific stuff, is necessary undertanding for those being prepared.


mercy, peace and love
Kat

[hillsbororiver]

I sure wish I had a head exploding smiley to put here, 

Here you go Joe   



Thank you Sister!

I must be weird, 'cause my head's not hurting, and I always think about things like this.


Now where's that silver wrench? 

LOL

I suspect you have not attempted to leave God out of the creation process Sorin, through faith in Him and His Word His people can see things that escape unbelievers and naysayers.

That silver hammer was floating around here somewhere........   

Peace,

Joe

[hillsbororiver]

Joe,
Thank you so much!  My wife just talked to me last night about "working out our salvation" and its meaning for us etc.. 
Now I have somewhere to start

Hi Matt,

It is awesome when we see our loved ones begin to come to an understanding of His Word rather than the doctrines of the churches, I have had a similar experience with my own wife who was in the choir and committees and activities in a Baptist church when I "stumbled" onto Bible Truths.

A few weeks before my stumble I had begun to go to church with her out of a loyalty to her rather than any belief in their system or love for their hell and brimstone god. I would sit, stand and kneel and the appropriate times as my mind was usually a million miles away. When they droned on and on about upcoming events, the need for more $$$, the skits and plays and whatever else they presented as entertainment I would just read my bible.

It might have been my 3rd or 4th consecutive visit to the church when the pastor announced he was going to give a 3 part sermon on "The Two Compartments Of Hell" he even stated there was little to no bible references in regard to this doctrine but "he believed it to be true." As soon as he said that I blurted out loud "why would you teach something without scripture?!! My wife slapped my arm with the back of her hand and threw me some visual daggers that I can still vividly remember. I did (barely) keep my mouth shut the rest of the way with the exception of a few audible groans but once I got outside I could contain myself no longer, I told her flat out there was no way I was going to listen to this stuff any more.

She was more than a little upset with me and said "it took me over 10 years to get you to go to church with me and in only a few weeks that stupid (Bible Truths) website you believe so much has you right back out!" 

To make a long story short(er) my wife eventually came to the conclusion that the church she belonged to was more concerned with $$$ than anything else and that the doctrines were making less and less sense to her, she began to read the bible on her own starting at Genesis 1:1.

We would speak about certain things and I did not try to force feed any meat that might choke her. The first thing she began to see was the fallacy of free will, how we are clay in the Potter's Hand, from there the hell myth and other idols of babylon began to fall.

Every day, God is pulling her in closer and closer to the truth.  The other day, I showed her proof of many spurious passages that are not in the original manuscripts of the NT (sinaitic writings, etc), and she was very upset (not with me  this time though  .)  She even "jokingly" said that she may need to find a different church 


I am really happy to read about your wife's progress in searching the scriptures for herself, it is a very good starting point, once we learn to love His Word the beginning of understanding follows! Thank you for posting this Matt, this kind of testimony always brightens my day.

Also, space is just nothing, isn't it?  It hurts my head to think about it for any more that 20 seconds, just like Ray said in his audio about eternity, hmmmm.

Matt

His Peace to you Brother,

Joe

[phazel]

Also, space is just nothing, isn't it?  It hurts my head to think about it for any more that 20 seconds, just like Ray said in his audio about eternity, hmmmm.

Actually science has found that there is no area of "space" known in the entire universe that contains nothing.  There is some form of energy present within all places known to exist.

[hillsbororiver]

I believe in the article Ray was contemplating what was before "the beginning" or big bang or whatever one chooses to call it, if everything in the Universe were compressed into a pinpoint what existed outside that pinpoint?

Hi Phazel, you are referring to quantum physics or mechanics right? So what you said about "nothingness" not being real you have a very valid point when we view it through the lens of quantum theory.

The quantum mechanical world created by physicists in the 1920's and 30's to describe the behavior of matter at the smallest scale required the introduction of the idea that space itself is the playground of both the directly perceived real particles and virtual particles which are merely unrealized versions of real particles waiting to hatch, should the energy to promote them to reality be found. One way of visualizing this is to imagine creating a tremendously strong electrical field, a much larger version of what could be generated by connecting two conducting plates to a source of high voltage. In such a field, if one were to place an electron in the middle, it would fall towards the positive plate (a proton would fall towards the negative plate). With sufficiently high field strength, the vacuum itself breaks down - out of the "nothingness", an electron and positron pair (the positron is a sort of "mirror electrical image" of an electron) can pop into being, assume real existence, and each would travel to the correspondingly opposite electrical plate, acquiring the energy for their existence from the high field strength created between the plates.

So there really isn't such a thing as "empty space" -- space itself is a busy substrate which itself seems to play a major role in defining what "particles" are.

David J. Barry

Here is some more stuff that might fry a few brain cells; 


20 Things You Didn't Know About... Nothing

There's more there than you think.

by LeeAundra Temescu


1  There is vastly more nothing than something. Roughly 74 percent of the universe is "nothing," or what physicists call dark energy; 22 percent is dark matter, particles we cannot see. Only 4 percent is baryonic matter, the stuff we call something.

2  And even something is mostly nothing. Atoms overwhelmingly consist of empty space. Matter's solidity is an illusion caused by the electric fields created by subatomic particles.

3  There is more and more nothing every second. In 1998 astronomers measuring the expansion of the universe determined that dark energy is pushing apart the universe at an ever-accelerating speed. The discovery of nothing—and its ability to influence the fate of the cosmos—is considered the most important astronomical finding of the past decade.

4  But even nothing has a weight. The energy in dark matter is equivalent to a tiny mass; there is about one pound of dark energy in a cube of empty space 250,000 miles on each side.

5  In space, no one can hear you scream: Sound, a mechanical wave, cannot travel through a vacuum. Without matter to vibrate through, there is only silence.

6  So what if Kramer falls in a forest? Luckily, electromagnetic waves, including light and radio waves, need no medium to travel through, letting TV stations broadcast endless reruns of Seinfeld, the show about nothing.

7  Light can travel through a vacuum, but there is nothing to refract it. Alas for extraterrestrial romantics, stars do not twinkle in outer space.

8  Black holes are not holes or voids; they are the exact opposite of nothing, being the densest concentration of mass known in the universe.

9  "Zero" was first seen in cuneiform tablets written around 300 B.C. by Babylonians who used it as a placeholder (to distinguish 36 from 306 or 360, for example). The concept of zero in its mathematical sense was developed in India in the fifth century.

10  Any number divided by zero is . . . nothing, not even zero. The equation is mathematically impossible.

11  It is said that Abdülhamid II, sultan of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1900s, had censors expunge references to H2O from chemistry books because he was sure it stood for "Hamid the Second is nothing."

12  Medieval art was mostly flat and two-dimensional until the 15th century, when the Florentine architect Filippo Brunelleschi conceived of the vanishing point, the place where parallel lines converge into nothingness. This allowed for the development of perspective in art.

13  Aristotle once wrote, "Nature abhors a vacuum," and so did he. His complete rejection of vacuums and voids and his subsequent influence on centuries of learning prevented the adoption of the concept of zero in the Western world until around the 13th century, when Italian bankers found it to be extraordinarily useful in financial transactions.

14  Vacuums do not suck things. They create spaces into which the surrounding atmosphere pushes matter.

15  Creatio ex nihilo, the belief that the world was created out of nothing, is one of the most common themes in ancient myths and religions.

16  Current theories suggest that the universe was created out of a state of vacuum energy, that is, nothing.

17  But to a physicist there is no such thing as nothing. Empty space is instead filled with pairs of particles and antiparticles, called virtual particles, that quickly form and then, in accordance with the law of energy conservation, annihilate each other in about 10-25 second.

18  So Aristotle was right all along.

19  These virtual particles popping in and out of existence create energy. In fact, according to quantum mechanics, the energy contained in all the power plants and nuclear weapons in the world doesn't equal the theoretical energy contained in the empty spaces between these words.

20  In other words, nothing could be the key to the theory of everything.

http://209.85.207.104/search?q=cache:FsczvL9Pd_UJ:discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/20-things-you-didnt-know-about-nothing+space+nothing+atoms+empty&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=us

Below is a scale of the relative distance between a proton and an electron, quite amazing!

http://www.phrenopolis.com/perspective/atom/

Where did you put the aspirin? 

Peace,

Joe

[Patrick]

6  So what if Kramer falls in a forest? Luckily, electromagnetic waves, including light and radio waves, need no medium to travel through, letting TV stations broadcast endless reruns of Seinfeld, the show about nothing.

[Sorin]

I was going to originally post this, in my original post in this thread. Then I changed my mind, but after getting a second opinion from a friend I've decided to go ahead and post it.

"I agree with Arcturus-that is magnificent! Also, explains why after numerous attempts at denying that God exists, and pulling away from this site- God keeps dragging me back. I said to myself, from this point on, I'll just forget about God, and just live my life, do things I shouldn't be doing, the pleasures of the flesh and so forth, but that act of rebellion was short lived. God has ways of making you re-think
your plans very quickly. And well, let's just say it's not a very pleasant feeling.'

It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Hebrews 10:31"

Take care,
Sorin

[gmik]

What an absolutely riveting thread.  From mind-hurting quantum physics to Seinfel d to Sorin's honesty!  Loving it!!!!!!!

Thanks Joe and all posters!!!!

(this is parent teacher conference week for me and I get all anxious--I love my forum family where I can come and get grounded again!-no pun intended)

[Grateful]

Hello!

I just want to weigh in about a book I read years ago, called The Tao of Physics , written by a nuclear physicist, Dr. Fritjof Capra.   I had to read that extremely scientific book THREE TIMES in order to UNDERSTAND what the author was trying to explain.   I finally was able to boil it all down to simply this :   Using a linear accelerator with powerful magnets situated at different points along its length, the atoms that were propelled throgh its beginning successively had their electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks, muons, etc., etc., stripped off, and the FINAL RESULT was that MATTER is nothing but SPACE, ENERGY, AND LIGHT!!!  (As per the photographs that were snapped at various points in the accelerator.....with LIGHT being the FINAL "thing" that appeared on film.  NOthing is solid!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   There is a Bible verse that says "God is the Father of Lights."  Food for thought, huh?             

"DeLight in God, and He will give you the desires of your heart."

Linda