The first part of the book of Revelation contains the seven letters to the seven churches. They are very wordy and repetitious. They appear to just give basic rules for living, which could be summarised as follows:
1. If you should fall or fail in any endeavour, go back to the beginning and start with what you already know you can do. Continue with and build on that.2. If suffering should come your way, try to be strong and endure.
3. Do not become obsessed with the basic pleasures of life to exclude all else. Do not entice others to follow this path. It is possible to overcome with perseverance and you will be rewarded if you do.
4. Even when you have been doing the right thing, evil can still sneak in and return. Hold onto what you have and overcome. “You will receive the morning star”. (Jesus is the morning star; see Revelation 22:16)
5. Apathy is not an option. Do something. Strengthen what you have left and carry on.
6. Even in the final times when you have little strength, do not worry. As one door closes, another one is open and cannot be closed.
7. In the end those who overcome and knock at the door will pass through it and be at one with the Universe.
Now, let us have a look at the book of Revelation in more detail. The letters finish in Chapter 3. In Chapter 4, things start to take off in a different direction and the action starts. The visions seen by John are very descriptive and enigmatic. They conjure up all sorts of pictures in the mind. They would challenge any special effects department of today to the limit with their complexity and intricacy. The numbers 4, 7 and 24 crop up numerous times in the symbolism and the famous number 666.
What we have to remember is, that if the visions seen by John have any significance to our lives, or world history, past or future, and if they behave in the way that clairvoyant visions behave, then, the visions need not be consecutive in time, but they would be relevant to us at some point in time. The visions would be symbolic of past, present and future states, but using only John’s point of reference in his own life and experience of the time. He could not be shown something that did not already exist in his own brain. It repeatedly states that much of what is seen will not be understood for a very long time.
The Bible in numerous places, talks about the end of things or the end of the world. One wonders why such a subject should cause such preoccupation amongst the people of the time who lived such simple lives. Perhaps in view of the evil in the world, they hoped for something better. Then again, the same applies today. Even a child will ask how did it all begin and where will it all end. It seems that we are preoccupied with beginnings and endings.
It would appear, that the term “end” has been used to refer to two different events in the life of the Earth. First, it has been used to describe the real end of the world. That is its physical destruction. However, there is another end referred to frequently and that is the end of the age. When masters or prophets were asked, when things may be different or when will it all end, the two events could become intermingled and blended together instead of being treated as two distinct events in the history of the Earth.
We know from our scientific understanding of stars that the world will not last forever, even though it should have a very long time to go. See Chapter 10. That will result in the physical destruction of the Earth and all life upon it.
The other “end” spoken about in the Bible, the end of the age, appears to refer to the period, which immediately precedes the millennium. It is alternatively, referred to as the end of things as we know them or have come to expect things to be. This heralds the start of the millennium, which is a “thousand years” of peace on Earth. Once again, we cannot pay too much attention to the exact length of time to which this refers. A thousand years just means a very long time. It could equally be a hundred thousand years, a million or a billion years.
We will know when this time is approaching by certain signs. Daniel states that this time will be imminent when there is no more daily sacrifice on Earth and we have seen the abomination that causes desolation. Well if that second one refers to the atomic bomb, then one would assume that both these things have or are happening in this present age.
The reference to there being no more daily sacrifice on Earth is a slightly difficult one. If it means that there will be no more daily sacrifice of animals to Gods, then we can assume that we are close to approaching this in most countries. Yet, it may go deeper than that. There may be a time in the future when technology will have advanced to such levels that it will no longer be necessary to sacrifice the lives of animals for food. There will be a major food revolution. Cattle turn grass and water into deliciously tasting protein without any help. It cannot be beyond the realms of possibility, that one-day, factories will do the same thing with grass, after first removing the waste products and returning them to the land just as animals do. The rest would then go through a series of processes as they do in the inside of cattle. In this way, it would be possible to cut out the middleman or in this case middle animal in the process of food production. Naturally, the finished product would have to be as good as or better than the real thing for such a process to take off. Animals of the future, instead of us eating them as food, may well be cultivated for their ascetic pleasure they give to the inhabitants of the Earth. The very idea of firing metal into animals, for the pleasure of it, may be as socially unacceptable in the future as drink driving is today. You would think that those that do so today, would at least have the compassion to fire a bullet into their own leg, just so that they know what it feels like, before they go inflicting it on other life forms. As for bull fighting, I must keep my mouth shut or they may never allow me on the Spanish mainland again. I am thankful that many of the islands have finally turned the corner. In fact if all tourists made a boycott then the axe may yet fall, since the majority of Spaniards are not now all that interested.
Ideas on the future of food production are already in the first stage of germination, partly because of research into the possibility of one day sending people to Mars. When the first Mars missions take place, it will be impractical to take animals there to provide a food source high in protein. This is due to the cost of the mission. Every kilogram of mass costs a fortune under our present technology. Successful experiments with a device called an extruder have been very promising. This takes plant material of various types. Then it compresses and heats it while at the same time forcing it through a small nozzle. The material’s structure changes, increasing the protein content. As previously stated, one cannot help wonder if green grass would have a lot to offer, since cows and sheep have been successfully converting it to protein throughout their existence. In theory, it should be possible to convert corn into chicken after first removing the waste products as chickens do, without a real chicken being involved and sacrificed. In many instances, science has managed to build upon what the natural world has shown us. We no longer make the strings of rackets out of catgut. Ivory for piano keys, billiard balls and dominoes is a thing of the past. I have a vision of the future, when all it will say on the packet of protein from the supermarket, are which types of grass went into its making.
“When the gospel of his kingdom has been preached in the whole world, as a testimony to all nations”, is another sign of the end of the age. Well, the Internet is doing a very good job of connecting all peoples throughout the world. When all have access, will this prophecy have been fulfilled? The seals in Chapter 6 would appear to refer to very long periods in the history of the Earth. The white horse would represent the early stages of life on Earth when the survival of the fittest governed all. The fiery red horse would represent the period of wars and unrest on the Earth. The "time of trial" is also another reference to this period. The understanding of the Universe would be as something that had a beginning and an end. This is approximately, where we are now or towards the end of it. The black horse would represent a long period of peace on Earth when everything would be understood in terms of balance, harmony and a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work for all. This appears to equate with the millennium, which occurs after the defeat of the beast. The sun would provide all essentials to life. The sun will be our direct source of fuel production instead of the mining of fuels.
Up to now, we have relied on temporary measures to provide our energy. We have dug up fossil fuels, which have the sun’s energy, trapped in them. This energy landed on the Earth millions of years ago. The plants of the day absorbed and trapped the sun’s energy in them by the process of photosynthesis. The process also involves absorbing water and carbon dioxide. We come along millions of years later and set fire to it, either in our own fires, the boilers of power stations, or in the case of petrol, burning it in the internal combustion engine and release the energy. It is a strange thought, that when you are sat in front of a coal fire that the radiated energy that you feel on your skin, landed on the Earth from the sun millions of years ago. All the vehicles that are in motion on the Earth now are moving because of the Sun’s energy that arrived millions of years ago. This was fine when the Earth was sparsely populated. These days however, we are starting to feel the adverse effects. Apart from the pollution of the environment, we are also putting extra carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. That is, the carbon dioxide that was taken out of the atmosphere millions of years ago to build the plants during the photosynthesis process. Normally, the Earth itself radiates excess energy back into outer space during the night. If there is an excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere then this prevents the Earth radiating effectively. The carbon dioxide traps the energy. This is just like a pane of glass in a greenhouse. The frequencies of radiation emitted by the sun can pass through the glass. This warms up the contents of the greenhouse. Conversely, the frequencies of radiation that these cooler objects radiate cannot pass through the glass in the opposite direction. Therefore, the greenhouse warms up. This is why the greenhouse effect is said to be producing global warming. This then fuels speculation as to what may happen as a result, from local to large-scale climatic change and the effects on the polar ice caps.
As mentioned in Chapter 3, we have also released energy provided by the supernova explosion, which preceded the formation of the solar system. The splitting the nuclei of a minority of heavy elements has provided us with cheaper energy but has also produced problems of its own. Obviously, things cannot go on this way forever. Apart from the pollution and the unwanted side effects, fossil fuels as well at nuclear energy are non-renewable energy resources. This means that one day in the imminent future, they will run out. There has been research into the possibility of building fusion reactors on the Earth. The idea is to produce similar fusion reactions that take place in the sun’s core here on Earth. In theory, all that we need is some hydrogen, which we can get from water, some extremely high temperatures to allow the hydrogen to fuse into helium and a strong enough magnetic field to contain all this energy and maintain the reaction steadily. It is open to debate as to whether this has any future or not or even if it is possible. If the Earth were to have any long-term future as prophesied, God will have to provide all our energy needs. How? From our own local nuclear fusion reactor situated a safe distance of ninety three million miles away, the sun. We are already on the verge of a new energy revolution. The only thing that holds it back is that we live in a monetary society. To enable the revolution to gain momentum the price has to be right. In the future, we will harness the energy from the sun and store it by making fuels on the Earth instead of digging up the sun’s energy from past eons in the form of fossil fuels. Hydrogen is the perfect fuel. At present, we obtain hydrogen from fossil fuels so there is no net gain. We can also make it though, by the electrolysis of water, that is, splitting the water molecule into hydrogen and oxygen by passing an electric current through it. The sun can provide this electricity directly by the use of solar panels or indirectly using wind turbines. The sun also drives the wind. It is highly likely, that as solar technology becomes more advanced and prices come down that it will eclipse wind power completely. Having got pure hydrogen you could burn it to release the sun’s heat and end up with water as your waste product.
In contrast, fuel cell technology is also now coming to fruition. Fuel cells do the opposite of electrolysis. They take in hydrogen and produce electricity directly leaving only water as a by-product, that is, the original amount of water that went to make the hydrogen in the first place. Hydrogen then, is a fuel that produces no harmful by products at all. Progress is already under way to build power stations using fuel cell technology. We will then use fuel cells in large vehicles such as goods vehicles and public transport and then the private car. What a different world that would be with all vehicles and power stations running on pollution free fuel from the sun’s energy. That is, the sun’s energy landing on the Earth today instead of millions of years ago. Solar panels containing solar cells capture the sun’s energy directly. For general purposes, solar cells have always been too expensive. Advancement in solar technology is moving at an unprecedented rate. This together with the threat of fossil fuels becoming more rare and expensive should eventually tip the balance in the Earth’s favour. Then, energy production and usage will be in a truly balanced state and in harmony with the ecology of the Earth.
In the book of Revelation, the fifth, sixth and seventh seals are clearly about the final destruction of the Earth which we know from science will happen when the sun becomes a red giant. This is the subject of the next chapter but one.
In the meantime, the millennium precedes this. The millennium begins when we have seen the signs spoken of and the beast has been defeated. We will deal with that subject in the next chapter.
So to summarise, there are two main events or three depending on your belief system. There is the end of the age, the end of the world and the resurrection which is either instantaneous at death or at some date near the end of the world. In Matthew Chapter 24 Jesus gives his account in response to questions about things to come. It is apparent that he is not relying solely on his own clairvoyance regarding these matters, since at one point he starts to quote phrases from the prophets Daniel in verse 15 and Isaiah in verse 29. With our present day knowledge, assisted by science, we can see that although very descriptive, there appear to be three separate topics, which are run in together. He begins by talking about the end of the age and then runs this into the end of the world. In Chapter 25, he then gives accounts in the form of parables as to how people find their new environment after death. By separating these subjects out as separate topics, we may be able to increase our understanding and see things in a new light in terms of our religious and scientific knowledge. This is not to say that Jesus was confused. It could well be that those who wrote the accounts down from their memories may have got confused. It is easy to see how this could happen. If someone asked him to tell them about when all this would end, meaning when everything was going to get better then they would have been told about the end of the age. On the other hand, if the question related to what happens at the end of the world, meaning its physical destruction, then that would be a different story. Comparing accounts, they would both be convinced that they had asked the same question. The two accounts then become one.
For further information try entering the following words in your search engine in different combinations: food, production, artificial meat, latest, technology, extruder, mars. Also try, solar, energy, technology, latest and fuel cell.