... if i would have lived as long as Adam did for 930 years, looking back, i would have been born in the year 1077. By now I would have witnessed the crusades, the enlightenment, relocation from Africa, the inception of America, WWI and WWII..., in addition to the invention of automobiles, computers, airplanes, humans in space...!
Part I: E-life and the Canon!
If I could live for 930 more years, I would be 968 years old in the year 2937, (the age of Methuselah)assuming that the solar system and the earth are still in existence. What will I have witnessed by then? What are its implications? Would I be healthy?
More than a few questions come to mind with respect to E-Life, or eternal life, for example what constitutes life? What is death and is it truly the opposite of life? What is eternal life and what are its ramifications? Can it possibly be real?
In John chapter 3 vs 12 Jesus said, If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things.
1). Humans have already done a lot to extend the life cycle given human achievements & advancements in medical research, the use of pharmacology and the employment of surgical techniques in order to extend the life cycle. There is a lot more involved however, such as eating healthily, exercising and maintaining a healthy psychological balance.
Typhoid fever, smallpox, botulism, tuberculosis and other well documented infectious diseases and plagues each lack the destructive power that each one once held over humans. Millions of people previously died all over the world - in Europe, the Near and Far East, as well Africa and the Americas' due to the incurable desultory and potential life-threatening and life-ending effects of any of these diseases and illnesses.
Other pathogens and illnesses like polio, that were known to cripple or destroy thousands of human lives have since been quarantined and some have been eliminated altogether. Many of us who have had or have loved-ones who were or are at the point of death, have witnessed or are witnessing their full recovery as a consequence of improved medical techniques, research, pharmacology, discovery of cures and improved treatment techniques.
Many others are currently experiencing medicine's ability to prolong life while medical researchers continue to seek and understand causation and cures for a variety of maladies and chronic diseases like hypertension, disease, cancer and diabetes.
2). If we truly believe, today, that individuals once lived nearly a millenia, then why is it so hard for us to believe that the trend of death can be reversed, and that the life-cycle can be extended to 930 or 967 years again. If Adam had maintained eternal life, I have said it before, we could drop by and speak with him today; assuming that Bishop Usher's numbers were correct, then Adam (grandpa) would be around 5000 years old. If I dropped by to see him and he offered me a piece of fruit to eat, I might pass, otherwise I would have a few questions to ask!
I love nature and ecology, I spend a lot of time exploring nature whenever I can get the chance. Have you ever looked at a tree and realized that a tree outlived 2, 3 and 4 generations of your and my ancestors? Each generation was born, lived, thrived and passed on in the shadow of that tree (sometimes in the yard at a house where 3 generations lived before); the tree outlasted them all. And, if you were to slice the tree open you could discern from its rings just how long the tree had lived. Why is a tree outliving a sentient human being?
What contributes to the extended life-cycle of the tree? It's simple: if you have a healthy tree and it is placed in fertile soil, and if the tree receives sunlight, water, food and air it would live for what my appear to be everlasting, as long as those conditions remained constant. For sure it would outlive us in our present state.
If humans are to live for extended periods of time within their earthen bodies, clearly humans also require an intact earth and atmosphere including (oxygen, food, water, warmth, protection from toxins, accidents, diseases and dangerous rays from the heavens among other things..., and happiness).
3). If a person (Latin: meaning to speak through) can learn to exist outside of the body, then the ability to live 930 years or more and its implications are dramatically improved I would think. God, Jesus and the angels, if you believe in any one of them, from all indications are non-human. And whatever their original form happens to be - they are able to simply exist and to change forms, if the canon and other holy codices/books are correct!
A doctrinal discussion on the person of Christ, the Godhead, would open up 'Pandora's jar' for sure if I were to get into that. The Trinitarians and the Oneness folks would all polish off and bring out their weapons (if I were to head down that road). With respect to that, the fact is that each group knows what it believes and believes what it knows. However, has any man seen God at any time?
The arguments made by both schools are arguments that are based upon pure dialectical materialism, and their conclusions are based solely upon their understandings of what someone who preceded them, wrote down or said - and how good were their sources? Neither school knows for sure what the essence of God is, and let me add this caveat, if either school were to actually witness with the human eye what they believe to be God, and let's say that it actually was God, what each school would have witnessed is their their own relative mental-physical perception of what God is - and nothing more!
If you polled the eye-witnesses afterward, not everyone would have seen the same thing! So why do religious individuals waste time on dribble, as opposed to pursuing what is important - the promise. It it real or not, is the promise possible or not - so stop fighting?
4). What is the nature of God then, what does God eat, does It eat, what kind of cuisine does God thrive on if any? The answer becomes negligible when you consumer that the entity that we refer to as God might simply be light, or the basic ingredient for all that is living and non-living, matter or anti-matter.
In the book of Genesis, it was written that after Adam was formed from the soil, apparently the 2nd soil sub-layer where organisms and organic life thrives, that the entity God then in human form literally breathed (theos pneustos) into the formed body and Adam became a living soul. Now, did God conduct mouth to mouth resuscitation on the pre-formed body? I don't know, I was not there.
However, I doubt it; I suspect that life was transferred into Adam's carnate carbon-based frame as a result of the actions of the life-giving principle that we call God! For example when the zygote in reproduction has attached itself to the walls of the mother's uterus, does God climb into each womb and give the fetus mouth to mouth resuscitation in order for it come alive? It is a non-sequitur, a human-body God apparently does not exist!
5). Jesus not only said that he came that we might have life more abundantly, he provided a startling revelation to his followers when he explained to them that "I Am The Resurrection". Jesus did not say that I can initiate or activate the Resurrection, but that I am in effect 'the Resurrection'. He also added in John Chapter 17:3, And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent!
That sounds like a definition, as well as a defining moment to me! Is the term Resurrection a noun or a verb! Then what again is eternal life! Is it a state of being, uninterrupted consciousness, or a connectedness to an anticlimactic life-giving principle!
That raises a critical point in my mind. I have written before that humans throughout history have anthropomorphized God. We have seen numerous representations of God in literature, and characterizations of God scribbled on walls of caves - some images are rather frightening I might add. However, from every indication or description in the canon and from from the vantage point of 21st century understanding, what humans refer to as God is neither human, animate or tangible - unless it elects to appear in one of these recognizable forms.
6). It would appear that in terms of its substance, quantum mechanics and quantum physics would be able to best describe the God-Singularity by comparison at the sub-molecular/subatomic level, albeit It has the apparent ability to transmogrify or morph in and out of different forms, even a human form.
Let's consider John the 1st Chapter, where Jesus is described in terms of his essence as being both logos and light. If we accept what John wrote, then the Jesus that John referred to was originally non-human. Clearly the Jews were stunned in Jerusalem at his claims (John chapter 6) on one occasion when Jesus claimed that Abraham witnessed his day, when clearly based upon his outward form Jesus was still a young man.
What (not who) was Jesus (for not all 1st, 2nd or 3rd century scholars or his friends and relatives believed that Jesus was divine)? Eusebius, the original organizer of the canon, certainly did not believe that Jesus was divine, and he was not alone? Apostle Paul once described God, in Acts the 17th chapter, as something that we live in, move in and have our being or essence in - as if God was a type of creative and sustaining atmosphere that all things, including the Universe, existed inside of after being created by the entity God!
This may or not conflict with what Job and his other contemporaries believed, that the Earth was the womb. Job not only believed that the Earth was the womb from which he sprang, he believed that it was the womb to which he would return. At least that is what the writer of the play, who wrote for Job, wrote in the Wisdom book Job of the Hebrew scriptures.
It would appear then that Jesus' essence or his rudimentary makeup was non-human, even though Jesus had the requisite ability (in the intangible), to shift in and out of our Universe, and in and out of frames - that were human perceptible. Jesus, post-death and Resurrection suddenly appeared among his disciples in the place where they were hidden, and again popped up on the Mountain of Transfiguration.
If you think again about what John wrote a question comes to mind, can words, plans, blueprints or thoughts metamorphize (meta in the Greek meaning beyond or away from) into forms? That would appear to be the case given the different representations of Jesus, who some also believed was the Archangel Michael!
In fact, we are told that an eternal Jesus-essence popped into a 30 year old human frame - and on the cross got back out of it, visited the dead and disappeared into 'the heavenly realm', popped back into the corporeal realm, visited with above 500 individuals and his disciples, subsequently led them to Jerusalem, and then was lifted up into the heavens in an Ezekiel like cloud! I would remind my skeptical friends that today humans are ascending up to the heavens in airships that leave behind a cloud!
In John 17:3, when Jesus explained that he was eternal life, again, he did not say that he had the ability to give eternal life in this context, he said, that he was eternal life, similar to what was written in John 3 (I am the life and all things were created by me). Obsessive-compulsive Martha, sister of both Lazarus and Mary was stunned by his allegation , when he reported that he was 'the resurrection', and the fact that her brother was already dead was of no consequence!
Martha, like most religious people believed in the Resurrection, she simply did not expect to really see the Resurrection take place, not then anyway; nor did she expect someone that she knew personally to proclaim that he was in fact 'the Resurrection'! Today we have a special place for people who believe that they are Deity - we call them delusional, or having had delusions of grandeur! I remember a client who was brought for counseling because he destroyed a bar and beat up some of its occupants. Well he believed that he was God, and one of the patrons used his name in vain! Oops!
Martha wasn't stunned for long, for subsequently Lazarus her brother who had been deceased for approximately four three-dimensional earth days, decided to rejoin the family after Jesus called him not only out of the grave but back from death! Jesus said again, I am the life; does that mean that all life is Jesus?
With respect to Lazarus it must be the case, for not until Jesus arrived did he get back up again! What killed him? Did he die again, post-Resurrection? Why wasn't he taken into heaven - did he receive eternal life then or was he simply raised from the dead? Were eternal life and the Resurrection one and the same?
Jesus spake similar words to call Lazarus back from death, that he spoke to the essence of the unseen Father in his highly intercessory prayer recorded in John the 17th chapter. He gave clear indication by his behavior that the essence of the Father was not here on Earth. Listen to this prayer!
1.) These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee:2). As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.3). And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
And in John the Third Chapter, we are reminded of the purpose for Jesus' advent (why he was sent from the unknown), Jesus said that the unseen God had sent him for a purpose:
15). That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.16). For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.17). For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
What was it that humans were required to believe, in order not to perish (or waste away)? Since Jesus was 'eternal life', what he was saying was that he was giving himself to whosoever would believe, Jesus being eternal life, and not just a person, sage, prophet, miracle worker, prophet or inter-planetary being!
Part II. If One Were Given E-Life What Are Its Implications?
1). Could an eternal ever be killed, or would everything that could cause life to dissipate have been removed from the presence of an eternal forever, or at least have zero effect upon an eternal entity or being? Would an entity that had been given eternal life be able to survive if sucked into a black hole, or would anything that was tangible or physical have any effect on something that was non tangible and eternal? Does it mean that 'the eternal', Jesus no longer in a human form would become your entire essence?
Could you run forever if you didn't have a heart, it certainly would eliminate heart disease? Why why would you have a heart anyway if you didn't have legs and other body organs that did not require blood to be circulated to them?
2). Post transformation, could you see heaven and the pearly gates without eyes, or eat leaves without a mouth and consume leaves without a digestive track?
3). Humans spend, more or less, 1/3 of our lives sleeping. If death is as some say similar or related to sleep, then if you take away death, then would the need to sleep also disappear since the two reportedly go hand in hand?
4). If Adam had lived beyond 930 would he have required insertion into a new body, or would he have required body or organ rejuvenation or replacement, wouldn't he have Alzheimer's? And what would his internal and external organs have looked like after 930 years of aging? Were his organs still intact, for after all he eventually died?
Could Adam still procreate? I am certain that some scientist, archaeologist or forensic paleontologist would love to have the opportunity to conduct a full body examination if Adam were still around, or if his remains could be located. Can you say, give me a tissue sample? Now that is the body that our archaeologists ought to be trying to locate! What was the real difference between the 1st and 2nd Adam, when you consider e-life?
I am certain that some curious paleobotantist would love to examine the foods that Adam was consuming, that would have provided Adam with the sustenance and energy to live for such an extended of time, compared to modern-day humans - diet is critical. Based upon what we have read before, it appeared that Adam was a part of a basic food-gathering society that survived on fruit, nuts, herbs (perhaps he snuck off and fished at times).
Some hydrologist would want to, I'm sure, take a look at the water that he was consuming. Was there something in the water? After expulsion from the Garden he apparently became a carnivore!
In places like Madagascar or the अमजों for that matter, scientists have determined that there is more in either of two these places, for example, that we don't know about, as opposed to what we do know about. We do not know what healing powers may rest in over 90% of the remaining trees in the Amazon, albeit we have already extracted life-serving and curative medicines and relaxants from trees and vines in the Amazon for example.
I choose these two examples because both remind me of Adam's Garden of Eden, of the kind that Adam must have thrived in (as reported both in scripture, in the Quaran and the Torah). Both of these vast tree-stocked locations are also replete with unclassified plants and birds...!
5). Adam's Garden which might have expanded over thousands of square miles would have been full of flora and fauna, much of which he never fully had time to discover given his sudden and unexpected expulsion from the Garden. We speak of the snake that spoke with Eve, however, how many snakes wondered around in that vast wilderness? When you think about the serpent or snake that Adam spoke with, how many little serpents or snakes were a part of that serpent or snake's family. The entity or life-killing principle, what was it - certainly not a snake!
In, Genesis chapter 4, we witness an act of punishment and an act of grace, when Adam was tossed and locked out of the Garden (lest he return to the Tree of Life, that would cause him to live forever in his corrupt state. Clearly, when someone is told by a doctor that he is going to die, under normal circumstance he will go to the tree, doctor or pharmacist and seek medicine, relief or a cure!
6). What is a tree of life? We have found trees of life in the Amazon and all over the world, most have trees of life on their properties, even in their backyards. We depend upon trees for life itself, including shelter, food, medicine, protections and to filter dangerous toxins from the air. Different trees and vines contain healing ingredients. different trees filter the atmosphere of its dangerous toxins.
Our parents and foreparents relied on Homeopathic medicines and cures to heal them from sickness and disease. Apothecary, pharmacist - what is that? Many of them up until the 1950's had never seen one of those? Many times they headed outside to the vine, to the tree, to the ground and to the cow - we'll come back to the cow later for cures and medicines, and molasses! Professor Kinnell, formerly of Stanford University once told me (he was raised on a farm in Virginia), I seriously believed at one time that my folks were barbarians or something.
As a boy he would visit the smokehouse out back, or watch his parents personally butcher animals and hang all kind of weird stuff in the smokehouse. Professor Kinnell told a group of us that for a long time, he remained a vegetarian. With jocularity he said, I thought about reporting my parents to the authorities for perhaps they were vampires or something! Does the Blair Witch Project come to mind?
My dad during cold season would make cough drops for my siblings and me by mixing together kerosene, fire and other ingredients in a small metal pan. He would light the mixture or admixture, and after the solution cooked, it solidified. At that point dad would smack the 8-inch hardened brown round solution, or hit it with a hammer, and crack it into bite sized pieces or cough drops - then dad would proceed to pass out the home-made cough drops to whoever needed them.
Now I don't know whether dad should have been incarcerated or not for practicing pharmacology without a license, but at the time it was the way that things were done. And where do kerosene ingredients come from, petroleum? And what contributes to our survival today, trees?
When we were kids an old friend, singer James Ingram and other kids from the neighborhood and me would raid every tree or grape or blackberry vine in the neighborhood on the way to and from school. We captured a bounty of pears, apples, plums cherries, wild cherries, rhubarbs, crab apples...!
In California kids raid the trees for loquats, kumquats and plumqats in addition to all of the other fruits and nuts!
Today, I enjoy walking among the eucalyptus trees on the campus at the U of California at Berkeley, just as I did a week ago, or heading up north to the Redwood Empire, or viewing the trees on the drive up 50 past Colma to Lake Tahoe. You mean Eucalyptus comes from a tree?
Trees are not only trees of life to humans, trees are also trees of life to animals, and their habitats should be respected and protected!
Not only were and are there homemade botanical cures, some cures were derived from animal waste products. For example, an apparently popular cure in the South was 'Cow Drop Tea'. Yes folks, think about it - someone figured out that not only was rich cow dung (hum baby) a perfect ingredient to fertilize the soil, it was also good for human ingestion in order to effectuate cures.
So these people, as I will refer to them, my relatives - in order to cure certain sicknesses would send the kids out to recover a cow chip/dropping. The cow chip would be brought into the house and placed into a cooking bag and boiled in water until it yielded a drinkable tea. Next, a piping hot pungent smelling cup of 'cow dung tea' would be administered to the family-patient. And guess what, many in the family who were sick before reportedly recovered - even from pneumonia? Put a little sugar in my tea please!
Dudes, placebo, real or imagined, I suspect that I would have recovered from whatever ailed me the moment they bought 'cow drop tea' into my sickroom. Mom, I would have said, the fever, blisters, pneumonia..., its gone - it just left! Depending on the ailment or sickness, sometimes they would place seeping cow dung under a sick bed and allow the fresh steam and aroma to soak into the patient just as one one do today with a humidifier.
Good steamy cow dung would apparently detoxify the body. If you have a cow don't be so quick to sell or throw those cow chips away anymore!
7). What did the ancestors do in order to treat bee stings? Sorry you asked? Once I was tossing balls across the yard at a bee hive built in the foundation of our family home, when suddenly 1 million, well 50 or so bees attacked me all at once. Folks, I was doing the holy dance at 8 years of age in the backyard. My arms were flailing and my legs a running. By the time I got into the house, I had been stung at least 4 times. Mom said to her 8 year old, lay down here on my lap. What was she going to do? She never went to the medicine cabinet.
Mom took a hairpin (bobby pin) from her hair, turned me on the side, dug in my ear with it and brought out a healthy supply of 'ear wax', I kept a healthy supply of that I tell you. The next thing I know mom was applying ear wax to the bee sting, gross! I hope you're not eating. Was I cured? Right on, the wax apparently drew the sting or poison out and I was ready to return back to the fight in the backyard. Well, the truth is, I never bothered the bees again!
On another occasion I caught a bad cold, it was around the year 1973. At the time I was staying with a family who relocated to the west from the American south, and I had relocated from the east to the west. Instead of jumping in the car and heading down the mountain where we lived in order to get a bottle of NyQuil or Robitussin, the minister who was taking care of me said, what you need is some 'red onion tea'. Oops, what's that I thought? Dad had never heard of Luden's cough drops, and this minister had apparently never heard of them either!
The minister either went and purchased some red onions, or he had some on hand. The next thing I know a quart-sized pan, full of red onions and filled with water was simmering on the kitchen stove. As the pungent odoriferous odor and the contents of the red onioned concoction boiled, the aroma stank up the whole house. I was thinking uh oh, these people weren't who I thought I thought they were.
However, and to my amazement when the mixture or admixture (take your pick) had sufficiently boiled it turned into a red tonic right in the pan, and just before it finished its boiling cycle, lemons were added. After everything was melded together a bit longer, the Reverend found the largest drinking cup in the house, filled it with the brew and said, now drink this and go to bed. Go to bed? I was thinking of calling the cops.
He then added, oh and put some honey in it! Yeah, as if that would make it better! Nevertheless, I drank the 'witches brew' just kidding for these were good people, I went to bed and when I woke up in the morning, I was completely cured. Hello, you have got to be kidding me I thought!!
Later, I inquired of a gentleman who had a scientific or chemical background - I don't recall, have you ever heard of such a thing? He said no, however he added, just think about what onions do to you if you were simply to peel one of them. Ah hah, the properties of onions, hotdog, these country folks were smart weren't they! Not only did it work, think about the cost of one large red onion in comparison to a bottle of Robitussin and cough drops.
Besides which bottle of Robitussin would you buy anyway, there are at least thirty different types, expectorant, anti-histamine, cough...<(-:)~? One red onion, mixed with lemon and honey will take care of all of your symptoms and eliminate the cough.
7). I can think of other examples, but what is important is that as long as we are on Eras (the Greek derivative for the term Earth), we have what we need oxygen, atmospheric protections, oxygen, food, water, warmth, medicinal cures, prayer et al. And where do most medicines and foods come from, easy, the same earth that the body is made from. Five minutes on Pegasus 51B, and it is so long and it was nice knowing you!
However, this not the end of the story - who wants to die? Who wants there loved ones to die? Who wants to live forever if everyone else is deceased, deformed or has something wrong with them, or if you gained eternal life and you spent eternity wanting to see all of your loved ones again, well perhaps not an ex-wife or ex-husband <(-:)~!
Part III. Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven But Nobody Wants to Die!
1). It is likely that each one of us has heard that expression before. To get to heaven presupposes that one must die (except in some exceptional recorded cases). To get into heaven also presupposed that one has merited entrance into heaven., for everybody talking about Heaven 'ain't a gonna' there, the song said.
If the human body is dependent upon the Earth for its eternal expression and existence, it ain't going to heaven intact. In fact, a human would apparently cease to exist several miles up into the earth's atmosphere if certain precautions were not taken. Astronauts are required to take life support systems into space and to wear a special suit (I will come back to the suit later), in order to survive.
Are you able to make the claim, like the lyricist did in the old television hit show Fame, that you are going to live forever? Do you really want to live forever? Frankly, I have more questions, like what is the alternative and what form will I be in, and what will we have to do in heaven, go to church everyday?
2.) Here is something to ponder; prior to consuming the fruit-bearing enzyme, higher-knowledge or pathogen that Adam partook of, would he have died whether or not he partook of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Midst of the Garden? Why do I ask? God explained to Adam, according to scripture, that if he were to partake of the fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the midst of the garden, that he would die in that day (age). Clearly, his body did not die that same day!
Some argue that Adam's actual sin was disobedience to God, which was the causal factor for his impending death. Now keep in mind, God did not say that he would kill Adam, he told Adam, according to scripture, that if he were to (of his own action) partake of the fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil then he would die.
I have augured before that there was actually something within the fruit itself which modern medicine, whose effects, God or someone is going to have to reverse if humans (or human consciousness, or the human soul is to live in a prolonged state of being. If the fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was just that - carnal knowledge; is it evil knowledge then that is killing us?
Before you answer, let's back up Don Pardo and go over that again, the question being: Would Adam have died if he had refused to ingest food or drink (starved himself) prior to consuming the magic mushrooms of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil or not? Could his body have conceivably survived for long without food or water anyway? For that matter, how long can your body survive without food and water?
There is a problem here if death was contingent, according to the scriptures, upon Adam eating of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil as opposed to the Tree of Life. Do you get it? I bet they don't preach that at your church? Something is wrong if you were to accept the literal interpretation isn't there! And remember, there are many known interpretational and transpositional errors in the canon.
I believe that I have the answer to my own queries. The first Adam was a living soul, not an eternal quickening spirit like the 2nd Adam Jesus Christ. Had Adam or Eve not eaten or drank, either of their bodies would have eventually died due to a lack of nourishment and hydration - and, I proffer that eventually they would have died of old age or organ failure, unless they had eventually gone to and partaken of the Tree of Life which was awaiting them, just as we apparently have the same choice to make today.
If sin is the cause of death in the first place, where is the sin in not eating? Answer: More specifically, Adam's body would have died without food or sustenance, had there not been some kind of intervention. His soul, the real life इनसाइड of the body, would have apparently lived on had his body ceased to function For according to the scriptures, any contents of the trees in the garden were okay to eat from and apparently nutritional for the body!
It would appear then that 'the life' was more than meat or drink or an essential functioning of the organs! The new Kingdom is described as joy, righteousness and peace in the Holy Spirit!
3).A former psychologist friend and fan of Charlie Brown and the Peanuts column would often say during our staff time at the Counseling center, that 'each of us were merely insects on the windshield of life'!
Even worse than what Bob would often repeat, another gentleman explained life in this manner: He said, life is simply doing the things that you have to do in order not to die. He added that many of the things that we do like eating, drinking, exercising..., if we stop doing them, we would simply die. Good point! If Adam had stopped everything that he had been doing prior to consuming 'from the bad tree' I ask again, was it possible for him to die? This gentleman was correct I suspect, with regard to what it took to perpetuate the body.
However, Jesus indicated in John chapter 10 that there is such a thing as abundant life. To American capitalist corporate executives and our Mega-Church capitalist preachers, that meant, 'I am going to get paid, and get me a Mercedes and an aeroplane'. Jesus and the disciples walked or rode burrows, however, from what I understand he could fly, or had the ability to create a Benz for both he and the disciples to get around in - one a piece! Peter, like today's minister, would have requested a red one!
Enough sarcasm, Abraham Maslow, a non-believer, demonstrated by his Pyramid, that beyond the need to acquire food, water, safety and shelter in order to survive; that there is another aspect of life that trumps mere existence. Once we satisfy our basic needs, Abraham Maslow taught that we move on to enjoying life, the arts, pleasure (sex), libations...!
Was there something else going on with Adam's life that we don't know about it 0other than eating and drinking ? Cain and his family, having been banned from the presence of God and most humans, see Genesis 5, just as pop and mom were banned from the Garden - created instruments which apparently satisfied the ethereal aspects of their being.
Some say that they did so in order to replace the inner spiritual void that was left after being shunned away by God. Cain's family reminded me of what one other individual said during my years working as a counselor at the counseling center, i.e., that all of us are simply finding things to do until we die! Eek!
4). What is my latest point? Have you ever wondered what you would do in the Heaven that the canon describes, if you could get there, other than spending eternity pursuing the means of self-preservation as we do here on Earth?
Okay, don't tell anyone that I said this, however, I spent my life in church. While growing up, I was as much a part of the church building as the pews and the piano were. Frankly, the canon's portrayal of what I would be doing in heaven, i.e, eating leaves from trees, walking down golden-paved streets and worshiping around a throne - the prospects of doing any of these things forever simply does not inspire me - there must be more to it than that.
If you think about it canonizers and bible literalist, if you were to cease to exist in human form, what difference would chemically based-gold streets, leaves or worship for that matter make anyway? In other words, who would benefit - unless of course we were going to make some more cool medicines and ointments. Any cows there? Again, there must be something more! They say that there won't be a temple there, good no more Jim Joneses characters or kool-aid!
A group of individuals who called their organization Heaven's Gate, I believe it was - first castrated themselves, and them beamed out to the mother ship, leaving their bodies behind! People have a variety of motives for wanting to beam up to heaven or asteroids don't they? Wouldn't you need your body hanging out on the asteroid? Er herm, I'm just saying!
5). If I had E-life and were eternal, could a bullet, bomb, disease, dislocated energy or a vacuum kill me or dissipate my energy or consciousness? Or, on the other hand will I be a new creature in a non-molecular non-organic world, simply existing - neither bored or unhappy, just there and simply fulfilled! One very important thing that should be noted from the Bible, God, Jesus - the giver of life, is apparently not a killer by any means - It remains strictly a life-giving and life-sustaining principle apparently.
The primary objective for humans right now, including professional ones, is to continue research in spite of what religion says, research of the kind that will enable us to extend the life cycle. Why? If we can extend the life-cycle say to 125 years, by then we will have figured out to extend it to 200 years, then 300 years and so on.
And given our expanded knowledge, the answer to which I believe resides ultimately above, in and over our heads, we will also come to understand how we can morph our consciousness and essence in and out of different forms; and instead of wasting time doing things we will simply be an 'I AM' too! Does that sound sacrilegious? Trust me, once we figure it out the religious folks will be the first in line to partake! You got it, this Reverend does include himself with the religous crowd!
I believe that it is what must have been intended by the entity that is both at the end of life as we understand it, at its center and its beginning! Today, in religion particularly, we have gotten bogged down - we are going in circles and making little progress except to build larger barns and to make my fellow clerics rich - years of understanding have been sacrificed given our need to stick with and expound upon repeated outdated myths and religious paradigms!
Remember it was religious backwardness and retrograde thinking that caused the persecution and murder of Jesus' body in the first place. Perhaps he would be around like Adam in a human carbon, in and out, himself today! We would get a lot of questions answered had be still been around!
The real problem, if there is nothing really to do in e-life: I will miss having a good Ruth's Chris steak, a bowl of Cioppino or a slab of Barbe Que (Jews couldn't have ribs here - Gentiles got rid of that rule) - and a glass of oops - better wait to do that with Jesus! Christians don't want you to have a glass of ..., with your steak or ribs. You know, I ate a whole of ribs one night all by myself.?
Didn't Jesus promise us new wine in the Kingdom anyway? I know, no grape vines in heaven, however, Jesus apparently has the ability to change at the molecular level into wine or anything else for that matter, like humans. Man I love to mess with church folks!
In Closing: The very possibility of eternal life affects behavior (depending on whether you believe there is such a thing or not) and ones scope, for action is predicated upon belief. E-life for example influences how and why we feel in the manner that we do about funerals and death! If we really believe that our loved ones went to the next dimension, other than missing them, what are we crying about!
If we believed in another dimension that awaits us like the Heaven Gates folks did, we too would likely have beamed up to the mother ship a long time ago. We really should not be going to church just to sing and dance; rather we ought to be going, if the church and other religious organizations were up to snuff, to learn how to and to activate the 'divine evolutionary life principle that eviscerates death and gives us E-life!
So what am I doing here? I am doing what I have always been doing, fighting to help bring the churches up to snuff - not always a welcome enterprise I might add! Is eternal life is never ending consciousness? To the human existentialists, what does it matter anyhow for they are living for the moment?
E-life, will it be a life of unhappiness, despair, sickness, pathology or one where E-lifers experience congenital illnesses or disease? A funeral director once said, don't kiss dead bodies, for the pathogens that caused the death of the deceased may still be alive on the corpse! E - Life: Its Implications - Could Adam Have Died Had He not Partaken?
What age will you be in eternity? Since there is no such thing as time, there will be no such thing as age, you will simply exist!
God's motivation for extending the life-cycle, I believe with the assistance of medical practitioners was and is apparently because of E-Love - there is something good about it, something that we have apparently still not fully realized! For after all, isn't what we are really after - is a state of unceasing love in a state of consciousness? And we understand God to be Love! Physicians were once considered to be instruments of God!
Aren't we seeking to do what Peter wrote about in 2 Peter 1:14, i.e., to partake of the divine nature, as opposed to lustful, prideful and sometimes hateful human nature? The seeds that we plant in the ground today, according to the Apostle Paul will determine what comes out of the ground in the future! But even Paul admitted, you don't have to get in the ground in order to get there. Or, as I have previously explained, we are all in Earth anyway, for all of us are Earthen vessels or bodies anyway!
If hope (confident expectation) in this life is all that there is, and it will be duplicated in eternity with pain, sickness, death, fear and disappointment..., who wants that forever? I suspect that in 2937, someone will know what the truth really was and happens to be.
I suspect that what we refer to as God in the 21st century and have learned from those who preceded us during centuries past, will turn out to be something far greater than the mystical and metaphorical anthropomorphized entity that we have been taught to envision as God by religion.
IT will be far more than the God that has been described in any holy writ, and I will not be surprised that if a lot of what has been been written before, metaphorically about God, may turn out not to be at all as it has been written about by numerous well-intentioned writers before us. However, we must give them credit for causing us to look for IT ourselves.
I believe that we will play a larger role that has been expected and written about ! How will we get there, where there, may turn out to be simple relocation or suspension in or out of space. And if not suspension, it seems to me that once you remove consciousness from the body and learn to relocate it in and out of space - then all you need is an appropriate body or body suit to occupy wherever you happen to visit, just as we have doing while here on Earth - occupying bodies, or when we send Astronauts into space.
If in an out of body adaptable state, if you were to visit a planet where methane fills the rivers, streams and seas, you would simply need to adapt or to construct from a form, likely taken from the ingredients on that indigenous planet or moon, in order to stay there for any period of time - just as has been done on Earth? When heavenly figures come here, they apparently clothe themselves and adapt to the conditions here on earth.
Consider this: In the canon, ants are referred to on several occasions as 'a people'. I considered the other day how similar a nake human being, down on his 4-legs with his or her head sticking up, resembles an ant scurrying around in the dirt. We also scurry around, gathering food, building domiciles or nests, procreating and worshiping. Ants have intelligence, and we have intelligence - they engage in many of the same behaviors, and apparently thought processes as we do.
From the vantage point of one that is highly intelligent, in our present form we are a people who are not much different it would appear than ants living in the dirt. I believe that it is time to evolve to a higher form and to experience E-life, which is not just a form of existence - and I believe that we are supposed to be proactive and participate in the process of transmogrification!
Peace & Grace
The Indefatigable Reverend C. Solomon www.sealofabraham.blogspot.com
Addenda: It is time for institutionalized religion and religious individuals, particularly the leaders of religious institutions to take their feet off of the brakes, and to stop fighting against other disciplines and individuals that have outstripped religion. The fact is that religion is going to have to admit at some point that portions of its dogma were and are simply wrong!
I suspect that religion may be preventing individuals from moving on to E-life and holding individuals in the current state of conscious pain, misery, apathy and despair. If I am correct, some of us are going to be moving on while others are sitting down at the church or mosque still singing and asking the question, Shall We Gather At The River - while the rest of us will be at the River of life and drinking from it!
Religious folks: Get in the real world, get up to speed or you might find yourself gazing up the next time Jesus departs from planet Eras in the cloud!
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