As I write this, I am watching the sun rise above the horizon in the east through my little window (see picture above), predictable and calculable. Somewhere out of view is the moon, its position also predictable and calculable. Indeed, we have amassed so much astronomical data now that we can accurately calculate and predict where each of the planets will be on any day at any time in the future. This has taken centuries of painstaking work, of making careful observations, predicting patterns, and arriving at mathematical formulae which anyone can test and determine to be absolutely accurate. It's one of the reasons we know, beyond any doubt, that the solar system is heliocentric and the earth is a globe. And when people come along challenging both, you know they are fundamentally ignorant.

As an exercise in thinking and logic when you are young and learning about science, I think 'challenging' accepted norms is good provided you are willing to give way and accept whatever everyone else knows when you discover they have sound scientific reasons for making their claims. Human knowledge can only ever safely advance this way.

No, I am not getting into a flat-earth discussion this morning - I consider that topic well and truly flogged to death and the emet (truth) to be established beyond any intelligent dispute or reasonable doubt. The earth is a sphere and the sun lies at the centre of our solar system. Those who carefully look at the overwhelming volume of scientific evidence who still dispute that are willfully living in a fantasyland. Most may not be well trained enough to do the science - and it's clear that flat-earthers for the most part have no clue how physics works in three-dimensions - but they need to at least do some school-level experiments that will show them what reality looks like. I have put up some very simple experiments that anyone can do on my website. In these days of the internet, it is extremely easy to get collaborators around the world to confirm positions and directions of movement of heavenly bodies at different locations. It couldn't be easier to find out what kind of a universe we live in.

Yesterday I illustrated one of my two sermons with the flat-earth fallacy in the context of how our minds and hearts follow different systems of 'logic'. Perhaps 'logic' was not the best word for the heart dimension at least so I will amend that here and now and substitute the word 'intelligence'. Logic is, after all, the science of reasoning, proof, thinking, or inference. In computing it is the arrangement of elements in a machine to perform specified tasks. Intuition, by contrast, is the immediate apprehension by the mind without reasoning, something even scientists occasionally use, and often unawares. There is more to our volitional life than mere logical thinking.

The study of system in religion - the rational analysis of a religious faith - we call theology. It is the attempt to find order and meaning but on a far grander scale than science, embracing as it does the invisible world of spirit too. In a way, it is - or can be - the science of religion. However, as anyone who has had experiences of the supernatural knows, there are definite limits to 'doing theology' in that way. By its very nature, because it depends on the finite mind to process its data, theology can never really be more than a crude approximation of reality, as witnessed by the many theologies that exist even within Christendom itself, even though they all claim to be using the same source material, the Bible. And even those who have limited themselves to one version or translation like the King James Version, have no real advantage in that respect over those who use the many others.

Take two examples - the Lutherans and the Pentecostals - who 'do' theology very differently indeed. The Lutheran faith is very much an intellectual, staid one, the Pentecostal much more emotion-based or 'arty', if I can use that word. Personally I find Lutheran theology very dull and intellectual, and Pentecostal theology far too undisciplined and illogical. I have always been somewhere inbetween. The Pentecostals are far more in touch with the life of the Ruach (Spirit) because their's involves much more heart-engagement, and you need that for spiritual chayim (life). On the other hand, they can be wild and undisciplined. The Jehovah's Witnesses and Calvinists are much more like the Lutherans inasmuch as theirs is a very intellectual, doctrinaire form of the Besorah (Gospel).

You need both...at different times, but above all you need chayim (life) because as I said yesterday, we are mind and heart, and the two were designed to operate as a single entity which Elohim (God) alone can harmonise. We forget, sometimes - and this is something I didn't mention yesterday - that the mind and heart aren't the goal...either separately or together. When we die, we can't take our brain with us. When we die, we can't take the psychic forces of the heart with us either. They are bodily functions and with the body they must remain, even to disintegrate into the earth. Using electrical coronal discharges in the 1930's, Semyon Kirlian demonstrated that with his auric photographs of dying plants and other organisms on photographic plates. When we die, all that is left, until the resurrection, is that mysterious entity called the 'spirit' (though remember that there are those like the Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists and many Messianics who deny this who are called 'soul-sleepers'). But what on earth is that?. Can it think? Can it feel? And if so, how is it different from the 'thinking' and 'feeling' of the physical body?

Christian and Messianics confuse the mind/heart with the spirit all the time. Dangerously, we often confuse our own 'spirit' with the Ruach haQodesh or Holy Spirit as well and often wrongly conclude that it is Elohim (God) speaking to us in a revelation when it is in fact our own flesh! You may not be aware but it is well known that a minority segment of the population commonly hear 'inner voices' which are not whispering demons (though they can be). These inner voices are quite simply vocalising sentences to yourself in your mind as a way of thinking. King David did it all the time (e.g. Ps.42:5-6; 43:5; 62:5; 103:22). This is what I mean by 'inner speech'. There are five known layers of this inner experience, each less 'instinctual' than the one before it, like the layers of an onion, and more in communication with the conscious mind. These may be illustrated disgramatically as a pyramid, the highest requiring the most brain function and the lowest, the least:

None of these five form what may be termed 'conscious thought'. Rather, they are variables in the algorithm which our conscious mind uses in processing and decision making. Like I said, the large majority of people (about 75 per cent or three quarters of the population) go through life without ever experiencing this 'inner speech', that is, talking to themselves in their heads. Not only that, but research has shown that people rely to different degrees on each of the five inner experiences to make contributions to their conscious thought. Why do I mention this? Because not uncommonly religious people who are of this minority who experience 'inner speech' can easily confuse parts of their own interacting self with the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit), and those who do not experience this phenomenon may typically judge those who have this experience as as having a 'loose screw' because they cannot grasp what this is. Even more interestingly is the fifth category of basic, uncomprehensible Unsymbolised Thoughts which are a perfect explanation of most of the gibberish spoken by those who speak in so-called 'tongues' when it's not actually demons driving them.

So what is this 'inner speech'? Why does it exist in only a quarter of the population (on average)? What is it 'for'? And what does it indicate? More importantly, how do Christians/Messianics who experience this phenomenon supposed to understand the difference between their own inner voices, demons and Elohim (God) speaking to them? As to the first question, about all I have been able to conclude is that inner speech is an indicator of self-awareness. Those who do not experience this phenomenon tend to be more instinctual in their behaviour as well as having more powerful emotional responses in stressful and uncomfortable situations. Whether we care to admit it or not, the subconscious processing of information plays a huge rôle in life. Thus research has shown that the people who most commonly engage in inner speech are analysts (like architechts, logicians, commanders and debaters), diplomats (protagonists, mediators, advocates and campaigners), explorers (entertainers, entreprenneurs, virtuosos, and adventurers), and a category psychologists call sentinels (consuls, executives, defenders and logisticians).

The less aware you are, the more bias there is in your soul. That's common sense. Why do such biases exist? Why are there such strong mental blocks in the minds of so many especially when anything contradicts a personal world view, like flat-earthism or evolutionism, for example? The refusal (or even inability, for lack of training) to think things out logically means that we defer more to feelings and simple sensory awareness, as shown in the truncated pyramid illustration We react instinctually. And though we like to comfort ourselves that 'instinct' or 'get feelings' are always right, they aren't necessarily so.

It has to be added here that those who lack 'inner speech' do not lack the capacity for critical thought but lack the propensity to engage in critical thought subconsciously. They have less of a logical filter between input and conscious processing and are impacted more deeply by emotional stimuli. Likewise, having inner speech does not mean you do not experience emotion but you are able to act more rationally in otherwise emotionally-charged situations and your decisions are not as easily clouded by emotions.

Part of my task this morning is to assure those who experience inner speech that they are not freaks and that those who lack this ability should not regard them as such or 'demon-possessed'. I just want people to be aware that we are extraordinarily complex and that no one type is 'better' or 'lesser' than anyone else. We're all gifted differently and we are all needed in the Body. The critical thing is whether you are led by the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit), whether in your thinking, inner speech, inner seeing (seership), emotions, or whatever, because these are all functions of the soul that Yahweh created. Nor do you have to be an intellectual to be spiritual - you simply have to be Ruach- or Spirit-led which means, ultimately, to be echad, one, whole, or integrated - in other words, fully human, and in the image of the Creator.

The great congregationalist preacher, Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) pointedly said on his death-bed as his spirit began to slip away: "Now comes the mystery." By that, I think he meant, ones intellect and emotions can go no further and we must enter into an entirely different kind of realm. No science, theology, or charismatic ecstatic utterance could ever possibly make sense of so profound a mystery as the spiritual to which death is the ultimate passage and we come to finally see ourselves as we really are.

When we are divested of our physical bodies we will know who we really are and see what it was we actually chose to be in life. For some that will be a joyful realisation, for others a horrible one, because of what they continue into in eternity. The scientist and theologian will be dead silent for their tools will be of no use any longer. Like the head and the heart, earth and heaven aren't so much two 'localities' related to each other within the same time-space continuum (they actually occupy the same space), nor are they necessarily 'physical' and 'non-physical' worlds, respectively, either: rather, they are two different kinds of what we crudely call 'matter' and two different kinds of what we call 'time'.

As post-Enlightenment Westerners, we have the unfortunate tendency, inherited from our Greek and Roman intellectual forebears, to think like wretched spiritual 'flatlanders' of which flat-earthism is a symptom, being a two-dimensional mindset. We reflexly retreat into our rationalistic closed-system universe whenever we think about the 'spiritual' or non-physical dimensions. Protestant churches tend to be the worst in this regard, a reason I have studied Eastern Orthodoxy a lot for although their spiritual kernel is undoubtedly Greek, just as the Catholic-Protestant one is Roman, they are much closer to the ways of the Middle East and heartland of the Bible in their perception of the spiritual than we are west of Thrace and Macedonia. I am so grateful I could have experienced some of this when I was in the Ukraine and Bulgaria as a missionary in my younger years.

What is the current relationship between heaven and earth? We know that in the resurrection that the two will be melded into one reality and become inseparably connected. Their division was forced by the human rebellion, a reason we see depicted in the temple symbolism of the Old Covenant a separation between the Sanctuary (containing the 'Holy of Holies' and the 'Holy Place', representing the Father and the Son) and the Outer Court, representing the consecrated place of the earth. Beyond is the wilderness of the fallen world.

The Eastern Orthodox represent this division in the layout of their churches by envisioning 'heaven' as the 'inner sanctuary', the space around the altar, and 'earth' as part of the building outside that space. The two are separated by the iconostasis, a wall of icons and religious paitnings, upon which are depicted the saints whose presence 'in heaven' is not far from the worshippers on 'earth'. In the centuries of illiteracy this artistic representation was a tremendously useful tool in the eduation of the masses. Indeed as many of you know, Eastern Orthodox Churches are full of artwork depicting Bible stories for people to learn visually, in a day when few could afford to own a Bible.

It's a beautiful and, I dare say, a reasonably accurate - if somewhat simplified - representation of reality. It has been preserved in ancient paganism too, in their temples, though with Yahweh supplanted by false deities of divers kind, representing Satan's desire to supplant the true Creator as cosmic ruler. That's why there was never any problem with Solomon employing a pagan architect from Lebanon sent by Hiram of Tyre to build the temple in Jerusalem because the original tavnith or pattern had never been lost. For the same reason, we find depictions of the Ark of the Covenant in pagan Egypt resembling the one constructed by Moses. It wasn't that the Israelites 'borrowed' from paganism - rather, the original tavnith (pattern) had never been lost. And Satan, being a cheap copycat, wanted his devotees to mimic Yahweh's worship as closely as possible in order to snub Him. That's the reason I have never been intimidated by atheistic liberal claims that the religion of Israel wasn't original and had just 'borrowed' from the surrounding nations. I have known people who unreasonably (and tragically) lost their faith because they wrongly concluded that Israelite religious practice was just an evolution from the pagan. The same kind of false logic is employed over the virtually universal stories of the flood in all ancient cultures which demonstrated not that the Bible borrowed frok an older pagan tradition but that the Flood was an actual historical reality which everybody knew about, the Genesis record being the most accurate recollection of the same.

But let us return to the 'heaven' and 'earth' dichotomy. Though these worlds are very different indeed, they're actually not very far from one another either, for the simple reason they were designed to be joined together, having been joined together previously in a distant æon. That doesn't, of course, mean that these two worlds are completely separated because of the Fall. Yahweh's space and ours interlock and intersect in all kinds of ways even while, for the present, they retain their separate and distinct identities and rôles. One day they'll be married together again and we will enjoy life in a very new and exciting way, just as we enjoy those all too infrequent glorious moments when we are in direct communion with Elohim (God).

This biblical vision is all very different from the all too common misapprehension of believers that death will see us permanently 'done' with a physical, earth life and committed exclusively to a 'heavenly' one where all the rules are different and where reality is different. I suspect this is why Western Christianity views 'heaven' as a place where all earthly associations come to an end - affections, marriages, families, and the like especially - because according to them we will all be in some transcendant Nirvana-like bliss where none of these things matter any more. But this is not the vision painted in the Bible. The Scriptures emphatically teach that we shall be reunited with our physical bodies - permanently - and that life will pretty much go on as it did before but without the interference of the devil and his cronies, and without pain, sickness and death to spoil everything. There are many such depictions of the Millennium and beyond in the Tanakh (Old Testament) which liberals and others 'explain away' as simply human approximations of a reality beyond our current ken.

This gnostic idea has warped the minds of far too many believers over the centuries and encouraged them to ditch their erstwhile responsibilities to family and the like and to fantasise of being free from such obligations, much as the rapturists, with their peculiar brand of pseudo-theological fiction, believe they will be whisked away from trial and tribulation to be spoiled in some distant place while the rest go through hell-on-earth. Whatever gave them the idea that our future is to be one of less responsibility rather than more? To my way of thinking (which I maintain is the biblical one) if we are to become 'priests' and 'kings' in the world to come (e.g. Rev.1:6), this speaks of more work, responsibility and accountability, not less! That is not to say that Paradise will not be a place of much deserved, blissful rest for the heaven-bound qoedeshim (saints, set-apart ones), for it absolutely will be, but this is not a permanent condition - it is an intermediary one between this life and the resurrection. I could be wrong, I suppose, but what I read in my Bible and what Yahweh has shown me in revelation and through communion with Him, we are not going to be floating around in a some candyfloss heaven idling our time away. And though truly we shall be worshipping Elohim (God) continually in His presence, do not take the pictorial symbolism of the Book of Revelation too literally - these are physical representations of spiritual realities. We will be multitasking in the next world like we've never multitasked before, and simultaneously operating in more than one patch of physical space at a time too. The resurrection world will not be limited as this fallen world is, hemmed in as we are by the tight boundaries of its current dimensions.

Yah'shua (Jesus) will be the centre of this new resurrection world as the very embodiment of both the worlds of physical and spiritual matter. The resurrection world-to-come will reflect Him for it will proceed from Him. And not just this earth but the whole Cosmos. He is the source and focus of everything. That's the great mystery that Henry Ward Beecher was undoubtedly trying to articulate on his deathbed. That's really good news, to my mind, because we don't need to make the Besorah (Gospel) any simpler or more complicated than Yah'shua (Jesus) Himself. And for me personally, that reduces in its simplest elements to believing and proclaiming the deity and resurrection of Christ, and believing and living out the simple mitzvah (commandment) to love Elohim (God) and to love your neighbour as yourself by pursuing the Torah lifestyle. Do those - sincerely and earnestly - and how can you go wrong? Then you'll be at the very heart of the future world as well as reflecting an image of it in the here-and-now.

Read Phil Robertson's book, UnPHILtered [1], and you'll get the general idea, because he knows how to make the Besorah (Gospel) simple and very practical [2]. The creator of Duck Dynasty, he is refreshingly outspoken in this lackadaisical, nihilistic, politically correct, post-Modernist world we currently find ourselves languishing in. If you want to know what 'biblical correctness' is, you'll probably enjoy him as much as I have. There is little or no disagreement between that man's brain and his heart which is what I chiefly like about him. His is a highly integrated, biblically-centered world.

I spend a great deal of my time at a computer writing sermons and articles like this one and I pastor a tiny congregation out in the middle of Sweden. But I know, deep within myself, all of that is probably coming to an end or at the very least is going to be substantially changed. I sense through what Yahweh is telling me that it will soon be time to move on elsewhere. I minister a lot online too but that too I believe is coming to an end also. The Besorah (Gospel) was not designed to be served in a fishtank - whether in social media or in the walls of a traditional church building - but in all the world. A friend of mine recently resigned his position as a pastor of a church and headed off to another country to witness to people in the streets. He's never been happier or felt closer to Yahweh!

The Internet is heavily controlled and censored. I used to reach thousands of people a day but the way the algorithms are now set up I am lucky if I can reach 50 in a typical day. Unless there are major online reforms, it will only get worse. So many have been - and are being - banned because of their witness for Messiah. Many have lost their regular incomes because of this. At every turn, there are more and more restrictions imposed by the suffocating political correctness 'laws' and the iron control of the corporations which own most everything. Of course, these lackeys of the dark side can only end up throttling themselves but until that happens, we must be wise in where and how we seek to witness. Alternative internets are appearing in Russia and China now, all censored, of course, and especially in communist China.

The traditional four-walled 'church' is also in a pickle. The crazy denominations aside, the traditional ones have either become social entertainment clubs or have fossilised into dead institutions knowing not what they are doing. I believe the rebirth of the Body of Messiah as the Remnant will see all of this substantially change too. We will be much more like a family than a drive-in cinema once or twice a week to hear a pastor preach or a teacher teach. The days of the house church becoming mainstream and underground are rapidly approaching.

The current biblical year is almost over and we are about to enter into a huge unknown. About all I know is that things are going to be changing rapidly and that everyone needs to be well prepared. Shalom (peace) in Yah'shua (Jesus)!

Endnotes

[1] Phil Robertson with Mark Schlabach, unPHILtered: The Way I See It (Howard Books, NY: 2014)
[2] However, he is your typical antinomian (lawless) Protestant so his lifestyle choices (like eating habits) aren't always scriptural