Author: David Ellis

Don: Last week we talked about the common fear of death. Yet some people are afraid of its opposite—immortality, particularly a “useless” immortality. A Time magazine article from Feb. 10, 2011, “2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal” says that by 2045 the technology will have been developed to enable a human mind—its memories, dreams, knowledge,…

Don: The mysteries we are seeking to understand are not riddles that need to be figured out. They are mysteries in which Truth is revealed. The mystery of the transformation on the day of judgment reveals the reversal of the consequences of the Fall, of eating  the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good…

(Pat suggested putting the class on YouTube. Kiran said he could do it. We might consider just recording Don’s preamble.) Jay: It has been suggested that the transformation promised in Revelation will be our return to the Oneness with god we had before the Fall. We’ve discussed the delayed timing of the Lazarus incident suggesting…

Jay: Jesus’s decisions concerning the death and resurrection of Lazarus seem different from the decisions he took in the rest of his ministry. A key verse in the story (John 11:4) tells us that when Jesus got the news that Lazarus was gravely ill, he told the disciples: “This sickness is not to end in…

Don: What died in the Garden of Eden was a spiritual death—separation from god, the destruction of Oneness with god. Scripture often describes physical death merely as “sleep”; it marks the end of our separation from god, the return to Oneness with him, and thus physical death is the end of spiritual death. The mystery…

Don: Before the Fall, Wo/Man was not just at one with god, but also at one with nature. Genesis 1:24: Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind”; and it was so. This is borne out further in…

Don: In our discussion so far the message seems to be emerging that the way back to god through a true and faithful understanding of the god of our various religions may be a red herring; that the best way is in fact through a true and faithful understanding of our individual selves and of…

Don: As Isaiah indicated, we are light-years away from understanding god. What was lost in the Fall from the Garden was not simply the nearness of god. As Paul said in Acts 17:24-27: The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell…

Don: Today I am going to propose that perhaps the way back to god is not through discovery, revelation, or insight about god. The fact that there are so many different paths and revelations may be god’s way of teaching us that a religion that seeks or claims to penetrate the mind of god is…