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Take a look at your world floating in space. Do you see the light? Well, actually no… not really. Scientists have been trying to “see it” for decades, and they can’t even tell you what it is: A wave? A particle? It’s like it has a mind of its own.
You don’t see light; you see everything else by light. You really can’t “see” light. (Well,…with one exception: we can see “the Light of the world.” John 1:18: He has made “the Light” known.)
But now check this out: In the picture, the space where you think there is no light; where you “see” no light; what we perceive as black, nothing, and empty space is actually full of light. And what we do “see” in this picture is not full of light – our world. In other words, you perceive light bouncing off of what is not light. You see the skin of darkness, for where is darkness? It’s underneath the surface of the earth. It’s in the depths of those oceans. It’s in the dark waters—the abyss.
We think space is dark, lifeless, empty, and void, and the earth is light, living, full, and solid. It’s matter, and we think matter is what matters.
But perhaps space is light, life, full, and solid—like heaven, and the earth is dark, dead, empty, and void—like hell, Sheol, Tehom, the Abyss.
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Perhaps the earth is like a bubble of dark nothingness floating in a sea of light somethingness. If that’s the case,we live on the skin of this dark bubble between light and dark, heaven and hell, being and non-being, life and death. In what we’ve been told is the antiquated primitive pre-modern cosmology of Scripture, our situation is something like this:
• Above us is light, and below us is dark. We exist in between, some light and some
dark.
• Above are the “waters” of life that rain down from heaven, and below are the
“waters” of chaos, the depths of the sea. We exist in the “expanse” or “firmament” that separates the “waters from the waters” (Gen. 1:6)
• Above us is the breath, wind, Spirit of God, and below us is dust. We exist in
between, like spirit in dust. (Gen. 2:7)
• Above is heaven and below is Hades. Remember Jesus descended into the depths of
the earth and ascended far above the heavens. (Eph. 4:9-10)
• Above is life and below is death.
• Above is fullness and below is emptiness.
A few hundred years ago, in the worldview of our forefather’s, this picture of reality made Hell as large as Heaven. (That was never the biblical view, but it may be our view.) Now most of us tend to believe the world isn’t flat but round. So if we gain a larger perspective and extend the lines in the previous diagram, this is what we get:
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Then, we exist on the skin of a dark bubble of nothingness floating in a sea of somethingness. What we think is full is empty; what we think is something is nothing; what we think is real is not really real. We stand on nothing upside down.
Modern people say, “How stupid! We’ve been to space and we now know that space is empty because there is no matter there. And the depths of the earth are most full, because matter is so dense down there.”
Well, I’m not sure how much of the language in Scripture is to be taken as analogy and how much is not analogy (I suspect less than we think), but did you know scientists are now not only saying that space and time are relative to light, but that matter really doesn’t matter? So what seems to be full is really empty. And what seems to be most empty is profoundly full.
I think we all learned in school that atoms are mostly empty. In a hydrogen atom, if the nucleus (a proton and neutron) were the size of a basketball, then the electron would be circling about twenty miles away. The atom is almost entirely empty. Now physicists tell us that those particles in an atom are not actually there… only potentially there and that the perception of an “observer” somehow determines their very existence.
In the world of physics that’s old news. A little while ago I watched a rather funky movie with some rather strange ideas. However, they did interview some well known physicists. One in particular caught my attention: Professor Emeritus at Stanford University in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, William Teller Ph.D. He said:
Most people think that the vacuum (space) is empty. But for internal self- consistency of quantum mechanics and relativity theory, there is required to be the equivalent of 1094 grams of mass energy (per cm3)… Now, that’s a huge number, but what does it mean practically? Practically, if I can assume that the universe is flat (different that the earth being flat)— and more and more astronomical data is showing it’s pretty darn flat—if I can assume that, then if I take the volume, or take the vacuum (empty space) within a single hydrogen atom, that’s about 10-23 cubic centimeters. If I take that amount of vacuum, and I take the latent energy in that, there is a trillion times more energy there than in all of the mass of all of the stars and all of the planets out to 20 billion light years. That’s big.3
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Did you get that? Do you see what that means? What we think is empty is profoundly full, and what we think is most full is really most empty. Empty space is profoundly full. And the densest matter is least full and most empty.
To put it in Bible lingo:
• The heavens are profoundly full. Psalm 8:1: “You, (Oh Lord) have set your glory in
the heavens.” The heavens are profoundly full, and the depths of the earth are most empty. Empty is full, and full is empty.
• Faith, hope, and love are profoundly full and solid. They “abide.” (1 Cor.13:13)
Houses, cars, and bank accounts are empty, void and passing away.
• Things not seen are eternal, and things seen are transient and fading away. (2 Cor.
4:18)
• Like Jesus said, “The Spirit gives life, and the flesh counts for nothing” (John 6:63
NIV).
• Breath, wind, spirit are most substantive and most real, while matter or dust is more
non-substantive and most unreal.
And what are we? What is Adam? He is breath and dust; spirit and flesh; unseen and seen; light and dark; good and evil; fullness and emptiness. For now, he exists in the
separation, the judgment, the expanse in between.
Adam and Eve tried to fill the emptiness themselves and only made more emptiness. They judged themselves with themselves. They tried to separate the light and the dark, the good and the evil, and they only made more evil. By taking the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; by taking “the law” in the power of the flesh, they tried to create themselves with themselves and only desecrated themselves. Adam and Eve “R” Us.