Sounds of the universe

Tags

God's Word, noise, planets, Sound, Universe, voices

Someone shared an article about sounds made by planets on Facebook a week or so ago. It’s been in the back of my mind ever since.  It seems that for some years now NASA has recorded sound waves occurring in space. Some of them sound absolutely bone chilling.

The article includes a number of video/audio recordings from multiple planets (including earth). Here’s one of them – The Eerie Sounds of Saturn:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh2-P8hG5-E)

“There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification.” (I Cor. 14:10 KJV) This verse is translated into English several ways, and considering the context of speaking in unknown tongues, they all express the idea that there are multiple languages in the world and each one has meaning.

However, I discovered that the original Greek words can also be translated “multiple sounds or noises in the universe, and each one has meaning.” Sounds. Universe. Hmmmmmm.

I discussed this article with the Lord the other night, asking him about sounds made by various planets. He began to explain a few things. Just matter of fact things, physics, nothing particularly spiritual, but fascinating to me.

Sound waves, like visual images, contain information. Each sound contains a specific piece of information, and if interpreted (translated) accurately by the receiver, it transmits that data to him.

He had me listen to the sounds I could hear from my bedroom and asked what information I received from each sound. Trucks. What size? Pickup trucks sound different than 18-wheelers. Train whistles. Motorcycles. Car brakes. Cars changing gears. Various automobiles going by the highway.

Ceiling fan. Humming from deodorizer. Heat pump. Footsteps walking overhead. Lighter footsteps, running. Clocks ticking. Even my own breathing, my own heart beat, the constant tinnitus I’ve had for many years… I fell asleep thinking about all the sounds that I could hear, and what data I received from each one.

Last night we continued the conversation about sound.

Every created thing makes sound, because it moves. The wind is air movement, and because it is moving, it makes sound. Creation could have been silent, made without the capacity to make noise. But it wasn’t. There was a reason for the sound, the noise, the voices.

All senses convey information / data. Some can be from close or at a distance, such as sound and sight. Others are near by, such as smell. Others must be up close and personal, such as taste and touch.

Far or near, each use of those senses brings us information which can be useful – if we pay attention to it, think about what the data is saying to us and how we can best benefit from it. Even the sounds recorded by NASA, sounds made by planets, stars, asteroids, comets, meteors, even sounds made by atoms, molecules, and subatomic particles.

Every cell of every creature and creation, from infinitesimally microscopic to majestically huge, has the capacity to make sound and transmit data. And all that information is beneficial in some way, for some purpose, to someone.

Jesus is the Word of God. God’s voice. What a mind-boggling concept! Jesus is both God and God’s expression. Creator of everything that exists, he is also maintainer, sustainer of it. Information-bringer. Explainer. Teacher. Guide. Rescuer. Healer. Provider. Lover. Friend.

Every sound of the universe, every noise, every voice, every burst of static, every clang of metal, every crash of breaking waves, every whisper of wind in trees, every murmur of nesting birds, every hum of a mother’s lullaby – all are expressions containing data.

So – I was thinking. So – what is the bottom line of all that? I asked the Lord.

Well, what is the most essential data? he replied. Then he answered the question himself. Love. God’s love, holiness, justice, mercy, affection, creativity, mindfulness, unwavering attention to his creation. His most highly treasured creation – his children.

Iran on dual nuclear bomb track: uranium and plutonium

Tags

China, Iran, Israel, Middle East, nuclear weapons

Three international news reports caught my eye today (19 Nov 2009):

(1) DEBKA: China told President Obama “No” on sanctions to Iran to halt or slow down Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
http://bit.ly/4CdOF9

(2) FARS: Iran and China are determined to strengthen ties between them in every possible way.
http://bit.ly/k8Mg6

(3) Most interesting – DEBKA: UN inspectors’ October visit to Iran turned up dual-track progress in support of its nuclear weapons program.

Feverish activity was registered in the production of plutonium at Isfahan as an alternative to the Fordo enriched uranium plant near Qom which starts up in 2011.

The IAEA experts discovered 30 metric tons-IS of heavy water hidden in 600 tanks… Metric tons-IS measure the amount of energy a given quantity can release… the amount of heavy water discovered at Isfahan would be enough to make at least one plutonium bomb when the plutonium reactor under construction near the Arak heavy water facility is finished. Other than civilian uses, heavy water may be used to produce tritium, which intensifies the explosive force of nuclear warheads.
http://bit.ly/20JPly

Black and blue

Tags

earthquakes, fires, floods, Iran, Matthew 24, mudslides, nuclear weapons, Prophecy, typhoons

Colors define eras in some artists’ work. For instance, Picasso’s Blue Period (1900-1904) when he painted mostly in shades of blue and blue-green. He went from painting in mood-reflecting shades of blue, to rose, to black, depending on events in his life, so art historians claim.

Jazz musician Miles Davis had a blue period, too – he even recorded an album titled “Blue Period.” His own musical mood was reflective of happenings in his own life, broken relationships, drug addiction, emotional depression.

The last couple of months I’ve felt blue-green myself. I’m even wearing more black and blue clothing than usual, for me. I’ve felt unsettled. A bit quiet, but not a restful quiet. As if I’m listening for the other shoe to fall…

I find myself reading more of a particular fiction genre, more of a particular kind of non-fiction and more of a specific kind of news. And I’m praying a more determined type of prayer. More directed. More intentional. More specific.

As I read assorted scripture passages these days, I seek out those that describe today. Happenings. Relationships between nations, between national personalities. Cause and effect events, some political, some social, some natural, and some supernatural.

As I read and think about Jesus’ description of disasters in Matthew 24, some political, some social, some natural and some supernatural, I listen to the internal voice of the Author. Sort of a running commentary.

I personally believe every one of those predictions have already come true. Yes, I know some Bible scholars say “this gospel of the kingdom” has not yet been preached to all the world. We still have some ethnic groups left to find, still have some preaching to do, right?

Maybe. But the witness to all nations has certainly been accomplished. When the book of Matthew was written, how many nations were there? How many have risen and fallen since then? How many more are being created as we speak? How many ethnic groups have splintered and split, how many become extinct?

It’s true that Jesus said it would be after all that, that the end (of the age) would come. He didn’t say it would be immediately afterward, though, so maybe we have a few years yet to go…

I don’t count on it. Why? Because of what I am NOT reading in the major secular media headlines. Jesus has become less dependent on mankind to preach “this gospel of the kingdom” in some places. Visions and dreams of Jesus are driving people by the dozens, even hundreds, to find someone to talk to them about Jesus. This is happening with increasing frequency in the African – Middle Eastern regions of the world, and probably other places too.

As I read and pray and listen and read, I’ve started keeping a running blog (www.tapister.wordpress.com) with news articles that fit one or more of the descriptions in Matthew 24 and elsewhere. Some days there are so many that I just settle for one.

Disastrous fires have become almost commonplace in California. Unseasonable snow storms are occurring in western states, and it’s just early October. Multiple typhoons just days apart have washed away whole communities. Six major earthquakes in ten days, so far, have killed or buried thousands of people. Maniacal dictators threaten the civilized world.

And people keep on buying and selling, eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. It’s only logical to be in the midst of a blue period, seems to me.

Distractions

The North Korean ship Kang Nam is being monitored by the UN and US Navy, specifically the USS John McCain destroyer. As I write this, the destroyer is being positioned to interdict the N. Korean ship if necessary.

The reason? The weaponry cargo that ship may be carrying, cargo the UN says North Korea cannot ship / sell / transfer to other parties. Nuclear components, or biologicals, or chemicals.

Meanwhile, intelligence sources around the world and especially those of Israel are monitoring the volatile situation in Iran, where the current hard-line extremist President has supposedly won “reelection” and is supported and endorsed by the supreme leader.

Protests by the opposition, even though he is another hard-line extremist, are being met with violence by government forces. And the everyday citizens of Iran are getting fed up with the religious fanaticism that actually runs the country, and more and more voices are being raised in favor of actual reform.

Back here in the USA, the steady march proceeds toward government take-over of banking, housing, automative manufacturing and health care, while the unemployment rate has continued to rise to record heights despite the mega-gazillion dollar stimulus that was going to prevent that.

(Of course, those gazillion dollars had to be borrowed from China and elsewhere, since the US is broke. What was put up as collateral, do you suppose?)

And then there’s the unprecedented natural phenomena, disasters and diseases.

So, which of the foregoing is the distraction from what is going on, really? Any of them? None of them?

I think all of them are distractions from the fact that planet earth and its population are undergoing major stresses that soon will reach the point of no return.

I’ve been reading John Hagee’s book titled “Jerusalem Countdown.” It is five years old now but it might have been written yesterday. John Hagee and Joel Rosenberg (author of “Epicenter”) specialize in end-time events and their books are well worth reading. Studying, underlining and praying through.

Don’t be two-dimensional

Tags

dimensions

Orion Nebula photo, by Hubble telescope

This new Hubble image of the Orion Nebula shows dense pillars of gas and dust that may be the homes of fledgling stars, and hot, young, massive stars that have emerged from their cocoons and are shaping the nebula with powerful ultraviolet light. Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team.

Two-dimensional people are flat, dull, and uninteresting. To say someone is two-dimensional is to call them shallow and insult their intelligence. Nobody wants to be considered two-dimensional, really.

I tried to read up a little on dimensions yesterday. Not the two-dimensions, three-dimensions type, the measurements of size and shape that we learned in grade school, but the time-space type. You know, alternate realities, different-existences-other-than-my-own type.

The last time I tried that I got a major brain freeze, mostly because I needed to go back thirty or forty years and start reading all the math and physics available first, right up to the present.

There are lots of scientific theories out there about this subject. Many varieties of scientists and physicists have studied and written about it. If you have enough background information I suppose you might understand the simplest of the simplified versions of one or two of their hypotheses. I don’t have that background.

However, I do know of two dimensions, alternate realities existing in our own time and perhaps even in our own space. I have a personal theory about how they intersect, and how someone human could move freely between the two and survive.

What started this line of thought was a peculiar website I came across while googling “Orion’s belt” recently. Orion is a constellation or group of stars known as the Hunter. Orion’s belt is mentioned in Job chapter 38, in the passage about God putting the dominion of the entire universe here on the earth. Orion’s belt refers to three of those stars that seem to line up in a straight line, forming the Hunter’s belt.

Well, God seems to have chosen this puny little planet earth for his future headquarters so if he wants to run the whole universe from here, why not.

But I was curious about the several constellations mentioned in that Job passage, so I googled them, and discovered http://openSETI.org in the process — the Open Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

This website discusses the SETI project operated by the United States and other groups of individuals and contains many links to articles about supposed extraterrestrial life. Some of what I read there sounds like the rantings of madmen, but some of it sounds quite reasonable.

The home page states, “Open SETI advocates the use of every research discipline and the study of every category of organic and inorganic activity on earth and anywhere else within our view, as a full response to the rich evidence of our involvement with other intelligence – evidence that we have already seen.”

I did not read everything available from that site and probably never will. However, as a Christian I certainly believe that extraterrestrial intelligences have indeed visited earth, lived here and communicated regularly with ordinary human beings. The main one thought it up, designed and created it, and he can come and go as he likes.

If other people want to take the long way around to discover him and develop a working relationship with him, I wish them much success. It’s a fascinating process and relationship well worth the effort.

I think I’ll keep thinking about dimensions, the two I know of, and who knows how many others that I don’t know of – yet. Eternity is a long time, if time is the right word, and there will be plenty of it to explore and discover dimensions and other things in the years / centuries / eons ahead.

America as I knew it

Tags

warfare

From Commodity Online news, May 22, 2009: “Are you watching the dollar? Maybe the unwinding of the dollar- based paper money system is coming sooner than we expected. Yesterday, the dollar fell again – now it costs $1.37 to buy a euro. And if you want an ounce of gold, it will cost you $937.” There’s a lot more economic news on this site, price of oil going up, etc., etc. Not good news for America and her citizens, unless you happen to be selling gold and oil, or buying US dollars.

America as I knew it growing up is gone, and I don’t think it’s coming back. My father was a WWII veteran, and most of my uncles were too. Daddy was a glider pilot and aircraft mechanic in the Army Air Force; three of mama’s brothers were in the Navy. They had to learn how to use weapons, the best America had to offer, to fight and win that war.

My brother served in the Navy too, stationed on an ammunition ship in the Mediterranean during Israel’s Six Days War. A Russian destroyer followed close behind them the whole time, defying the usual safety distance of a mile, the radius of destruction if the ship blew up. The weapons he used in that war were different – weapons of codes and communications, airwave, radiowave weapons. Effective.

Because of our family involvement in the defense of our nation, I have always been interested in American history and current affairs. Even as a young girl I followed government and politics, watching every televised political convention, listening to speeches and news on the radio, reading newspaper and magazine accounts and editorials.

Today I read news about global current events online, getting a broader view of political events from religious and secular sites, as well as “first-hand” accounts of some reporters and bloggers overseas.

Of course, these days I read news – and opinions about the news – with a bias, reading between the lines and taking note of what is included, what is omitted.

How many Americans know (or believe) that there is a global spiritual war going on? How many think if we just elect somebody different, things will change for the better?

Better for some is defined as more money, more power, more influence. For some, better means more future security, or more free time to pamper ourselves, our spouses and our children.

Maybe America has gotten better in some of those respects since WWII, with a few ups and downs here and there. That’s what gives people the idea that it can still get better, despite the current economic and political conditions worldwide.

I doubt it. I think Matthew 24 was written for our times and it doesn’t predict better. Wars. Rumors of wars. Nations rising against nations. Famines. Diseases. Earthquakes.

So, “What, me worried?” No. I’m looking up, staying watchful. Not just accepting all the bad things as inevitable, however. I pray for specific people and for specific things to happen or to be prevented. As long as I’m still here, that’s one of my assignments as a believer in Christ.

But I don’t think the republic of America as our forefathers envisioned and instituted is going to survive unchanged, and I don’t think the change it is undergoing is for the better.

I think the spiritual battle is heating up, and if you don’t know how to use the weapons of this warfare, you’re going to get hurt.

I’m an X-Men fan…

Tags

movie, Origins, science fiction, Wolverine, X-Men

I have just seen X-Men Origins: Wolverine for the second time, and I’m a bigger fan than I already was.

Science fiction and fantasy were favorite reading materials in my home growing up… they belonged to my parents. Most of the well-known writers were represented, some of whom were scientists and physicists and researchers, as well as authors.

I was attracted by the fact that so much of what had been fiction a few years earlier had become fact. Over these last 50+ years, much more of the science fiction/fantasy I read as a teenager has become fact, practical applications that today we take for granted.

Which isn’t to say that X-Men will do likewise. But there is a story line to all these episodes, even if some reviewers seem to miss it. Several subplots involving different sets of characters. Lots of action, good versus evil. Some romance and some tragedy.

And there is science in there too: dark scientific and military applications most of us would consider impossible to achieve, and too evil to contemplate. World War II should teach us not to underestimate monsters in human form…

So far none of the multiple reviews I’ve read even hint at recognizing a spiritual thread running through the story. Yet one comes through quite clearly and obviously to me.

I asked the Lord one day why some Christians (myself included) are so fascinated by the supernatural. His answer came back instantly – “Well, duh…” as if I shouldn’t even have to ask that question.

No, I guess I already know why. Our God is a supernatural being. We have a violent, evil, deceiving enemy out to destroy us. One who at times may look like an ordinary human being; one who can make a lie sound convincing, deceiving us, pulling us in. We shouldn’t be taken in, but too often we are.

After seeing Wolverine the first time, I went out and bought the other three movies on DVD. I have now watched each one several times, making mental notes of some things in those that make scenes from this prequel suddenly more meaningful.

And I find them not just entertaining, but a vivid, albeit fantastic reminder that there is indeed another world around us. Another real world, more menacing than anything portrayed in these fantasy movies. It’s one we will all be forced to acknowledge and confront some day, maybe sooner than we think.

Prototypes

Tags

Adam and Eve, creation, economic, end-times, Garden of Eden, Genesis, pattern, planet earth, prototype, Wall Street

1690 map including Garden of Eden

Adam and Eve were put in the Garden of Eden, not created there. That’s the answer to a trivia question I sometimes ask Bible study groups I teach. For some odd reason, maybe the fact that the current worldwide economic meltdown sounds a lot like end-time prophecies to me, beginning-time stuff began to drift through my brain yesterday.

What was outside the Garden? Obviously it wasn’t a paradise like the Garden was, else why put the offending couple out? And from the job description Adam had, not only was it not a paradise, it was not a pleasant place. Not a cultivated farm or even a cleared field, it was just plain planet, wild and raw.

Really it was raw material, waiting for something to be done with it. Cut, clear, plow, plant, build, tame, explore, investigate, map, inhabit, organize, civilize.

Without a how-to manual, the best way to go about all this would be to remember the Garden. The prototype. We don’t know how long Adam worked in the Garden, but work he did. He had time to get to know the place, see how things worked, including all those animals. He named the animals, after all. God let Adam do that and whatever Adam wanted to call an animal, that’s what it was. Elephant? Okay, fine. Ostrich? Sure, why not.

People speculate about whether the Garden was real or figurative, and if real, about its location. The named rivers in Genesis only give us a partial clue. I think it was a real place. Its design gave Adam enough information to survive in the wilderness outside, the rest of planet earth.

So I think the Garden was a prototype. It was God’s pattern of order and organization for the rest of the planet. I think the planet earth is a prototype, too, but that’s another story.

We could use one of God’s prototypes on Wall Street these days…