A Waking Dream

I woke up  in the middle of the night and saw a colourful floral tattoo projected on my wall from the night lights outside my window projecting through the thigh of a guy sitting on the shelves above my bed.

I knew it was a guy, without need to see nor seek to find one actually sitting on the shelves, a ridiculous thought even as it was; and I even knew his name. It also did not occur to me that unless the thigh was translucent I ought to see a shadow and not the colorful floral tattoo. In reality the tattoo was the wall clock sitting just inside the shadows with only its edge in the light.

Then I saw a bat hovering on my ceiling over an unchanging spot. Its was fluttering its wings utterly silent and most rapidly, even more rapid than a hummingbird's. I thought I ought to hear the air moving, fanned as it were by the rapid wings. But I heard nothing. It was utter silence.

Now I did not mind the guy sitting on my shelves but the bat was a different matter. It had to go.

After some time, straining my eyes in the dark, watching it and its mesmerising ultra silent rapid fluttering wings, I decided I had to get out of bed and go behind it, and to scare it to fly away from me through the open windows. I did that and switched on the bathroom lights on the other side, and lo and behold, the bat disappeared completely, instantly, and without any clues how it so vanished.

I started looking around and saw the spot the bat was hovering was actually the ceiling light. It however did not cross my mind, yet again, to see who and whether anyone was actually sitting on my shelves, nor was I yet aware that such a notion can only be complete fantasy. My only concern was how the bat disappeared so suddenly and completely. Confounded, I switched off the bathroom lights and went back to bed.

And looking at the ceiling where the bat was, this time I noticed that the "bat" was actually a reflection on the ceiling lights.

And I woke up from my waking dream; and knew I had just made a fool of myself.

On reflection later in daylight hours, I  surmised that in dreams we believe anything and everything, no matter how fantastical, and perhaps because we were conditioned from many many dreams, many of which were the concatenation of incoherent bits of experiences, actually experienced, or thought or imagined, deliberately or otherwise, creating absurd sequences of dream episodes. And the mind do not judge whether such sequences are real or not. Perhaps it knew it was only a dream.

But in this episode my mind was still asleep, in dream mode, when I opened my eyes and saw the tattoo and the bat instead of the wall clock and the ceiling light.

Thank Me For Slapping You

I never can understand why Christians - to me, so-called - give thanks when they recover from an illness, usually the more serious the illness, the more heartfelt and the more sincere the thanks.

For it is like me giving you a deep cut, and then you later thanking me for stitching you up and healing the wound.

Unless those Christians actually believe that sickness is from the devil and healing is from God, but that is obviously false, for Satan needs God's permission before he even dare touch Job.

So be it sickness or health, good or evil, all are from God; and with God all things are good, categorically!

If you don"t believe me, then, if you ever have the opportunity, ask Job himself.

The Ants Came Marching In

The ants, very small ants, just a couple of millimeters in length, came marching in from outside my apartment block, from at least two levels down, making a turn outside my bathroom, streamed in through its partly opened louvers.

I stumbled on them in the process of establishing a colony behind the pile of warm dry towels stacked on a top shelf. Even so various foraging columns were already streaming out to various parts of the bathroom. And one party was gnawing on the inside of the porcelain wash basin which I only used for brushing my teeth.

That was when I first noticed the ants and for a moment was wondering what food could there be on those smooth white surface. The only thing I could think of was the oils in the mouthwash that I used, and these had somehow become coated to the basin's surface.

Then I looked up and saw streams of ants running hither tither all over the bathroom. Tracing one of these stream I discovered the colony-in-making, and was shocked to see how dense the column was, almost a centimeter in width, as it entered behind the towel, and with some ants tipped with a white spot on the heads, which I presumed were their eggs.

Removing the towels immediately I commenced my brutal annihilation campaign with my only weapon - a can of insecticide. This was very effective against the tiny ants, and I hoped I killed the queen too. But more importantly I hoped the insecticide overwhelmed any scent of the ants' pheromone that made their trails and marching columns, so that they will never discover my bathroom again.

I then went to an adjacent room and saw where the ants were coming from, and it was then I saw them marching from below my flat. Perhaps their original colony was destroyed or disturbed by some family doing their Chinese New Year spring cleaning, but it may be something else too, and I really would never know.

Then I went to the kitchen and from there attacked the outside column. I could reach the louver windows, the turn, and down the wall to just below my window. The aerosol spray from the can of insecticide could go no further below. But these two attacks - inside and outside - were effective in stopping the colonisation, at least for the moment.

For there were certainly lots of stragglers already somewhere in the house that my attack missed.

And there are two worries now. First some of these stragglers might find a new route back to the colony, and the colonisation restarts all over again, this time with another entry point. This had happened before. The second hypothesis, perhaps the more worrying one, is the one of the straggler ants could morph into a queen and establish a new colony itself with all the stragglers. But I do not know if the second hypothesis is at all plausible. I could only wait and watch.

And so I spent the next days spotting and tracking stragglers and some of them have found new homes in some crevice here and there, behind cabinets, in the walls, etc. and the attacks continued. I had not seen any ants marching in from the outside; but of course a new colonisation, by these same colony of ants or yet another, could have already happened, totally undetected.And so both hypotheses are yet to be denied.

So the killing go on, and I need a new can of insecticide.

I Was in North Korea

It was a dream.

And it was with a team. But for what mission I did not know. And neither did I know how we got into the country.

And as with all dreams, various incongruous threads started and ended abruptly, sometimes triggered by something in the dream itself, or, in this instance, my own mind - somehow aware of itself dreaming - directing it with seemingly random thoughts or motifs that popped into my supposedly sleeping mind.

The North Korea I dreamt was very cold and snow was falling hard, and there was a great famine in the land. And it was in the reign of the new Young Leader.

North Korean mourners are obscured by heavy snow on Dec. 22, 2011.

In one thread I saw a starving woman carrying in her arms a sick baby with wiry white long hair and greenish skin tones. (I remembered my mind saying it must have white wiry long hair and so it was.)

A female member of my team approached her and the baby vomited. There were what seemed to be pieces of bread and other orangey macaroni-looking bits in the vomit (and now also I know for sure dreams are in colour). Then a starving man approached the vomit looking for food but turned away and himself started vomiting instead.

Then the team was in some room, perhaps of a disused school, together with other North Korean dissidents, and we were all sitting or sleeping on the floor. It felt like a detention centre, and it continued to snow heavily outside.

I then, walking knee deep in the snow, approached some guard - or was I trying to escape? - and I told the guard, "The Rangers are coming." That apparently scared the guard and the soldiers starting deserting their posts. And I was wondering how they knew what Rangers I was talking about.

Then I became more awake than dreaming, but I - consciously? - wanted the dream to go on, but it disintegrated into absurdity and I went back to sleep, or, perhaps, so I thought.

Let My People Go: Of Moses, Jesus and the Mysterious Prostitute

The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites.

[Deu 18:15]

One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls then came and spoke to me, saying, Come with me! I will show you the doom (sentence, judgment) of the great harlot (idolatress) who is seated on many waters, with whom the rulers of the earth have joined in prostitution (idolatry) and with the wine of whose immorality (idolatry) the inhabitants of the earth have become intoxicated.

And [the angel] bore me away [rapt] in the Spirit into a desert (wilderness), and I saw a woman seated on a scarlet beast that was all covered with blasphemous titles (names), and he had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was robed in purple and scarlet and bedecked with gold, precious stones, and pearls, [and she was] holding in her hand a golden cup full of the accursed offenses and the filth of her lewdness and vice.

And on her forehead there was inscribed a name of mystery [with a secret symbolic meaning]: Babylon the great, the mother of prostitutes (idolatresses) and of the filth and atrocities and abominations of the earth.

[Rev 17:1-5, Amplified Bible]

Moses was rejected by his people, and so was Jesus; Moses returned from outside Egypt to save his people, and so too will Jesus return one day to Earth to save his people.

And Moses told the Pharaoh, "Let my people go."

But to whom shall Jesus make such a demand?

Of course to the one who is keeping his people in bondage and slavery. Not so obvious however is who this one is, and what is the nature of this slavery.

The simplistic view is that this one is Satan, and the people are in bondage to "sin", ie it is Satan who is causing, even compelling, us to "sin", and if Satan's compulsion on the people is broken then the people will no longer sin, and are then free. But is this so?

For firstly it is not Satan that causes you to sin. Satan may whisper in your ears and make you see in your mind eyes to tempt you, but unless you are tempted by such and thereafter act to those ends, you have not sin, eg unless you are a smoker, imagining or seeing a cigarette is no temptation to you, and no sin certainly too.

... each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

[Jam 1:14,15]

So at the root of sin are our "own evil desires", and not whatever outside us.

Eve would not have sinned, if to be like God, to know good from evil, was not tempting to her (and this was even before the Fall) but it was - and I suppose for all of mankind too - and the rest is history.

Secondly sin is the breaking of law, and strictly speaking under the covenant of grace there is no law, and we are already free from sin, ie Jesus' death on the cross have set us free - by the demonstration of the power of the grace of God (and for the Jews, the fulfillment of the Law) - and we need not wait for Jesus' return to be so set free. Death no longer enslaves us: O Death where is your victory?! [1 Cor 15]

If there is a "law" for the free - a contradiction of sorts, for with any law there must be punitive measures to enforce compliance, which is ultimately death - it is to love God with all your heart, mind and soul, and to love your neighbour as yourself. To those free this is not a law, but just part of the essence of being free, like breathing is for those alive, a natural thing, even as having two arms, a left and a right arm, is natural to being a man, or that the offspring of a kangaroo is also a kangaroo. So if you are free, you love, naturally, for God is love.

But many strive to keep the above as "law" or to seem so.

For not a little will put strenuous effort to fulfil some minutiae of the Mosaic law - even if these be irrelevant or inapplicable per se - but hardly noticed their neighbours, if any, let alone think about their needs. The Pharisees have always been around, even today.

And free men returned themselves to slavery, unto themselves and their desires, and not unto God, even as the Israelites complained and desired to return to Egypt after the Pharaoh have let them go.

And thirdly, far many more love money, truly.

You cannot serve both God and Money at the same time, for no man can serve two Masters, and the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, even the evil desires within us.

So why do so many love money?

OK sure it is indispensable, particularly in a modern economy, where barter is no longer practical and then there is not much of value that a pair of hands can toiled into being, eg the garbage scavengers in Lagos, Manila, etc. And to depend on love gifts is just as impractical: deemed parasitic, irresponsible and unethical, even to those who claim to love you. Finally manna from heaven have stopped falling to earth a long long time ago.

And so you need money even to merely survive, to subsist, to live from day to day. But with money you need not stop there, you can have more than just bread for food, maybe have a toy or two to keep yourself amused, throw in a holiday once in a while too, and even start to dream; and with just your own two hands, work to make that dream true.

Therefore you are now free from the limitations of your ownself, and no need to be slavishly dependent on others too. And you give thanks to God, or god or gods, for your blessings and pray that he or they or whatever helped you on your way to attain your dreams.

It should be obvious now that you cannot serve God and Money at the same time. With the latter you feel yourself empowered and in control of your own destiny, and God is optional; if you opt for God it is only to enlist his help, blessings, protection, to advantage yourself in your handiwork, etc, but not to subject yourself to him as Master.

And there is no need for faith but only for that in other's confidence in money or need for such confidence, as evidenced in the recent global financial crisis and in the measures to prop the euro, etc.

And the spirit of man is emboldened within himself, even to see and act as if he is god himself - even as being like God tempted Eve - and nothing he plans to do will be impossible, even as the people in the ancient times came together to build the Tower of Babel.





And this is the Mysterious Prostitute: namely the spirit of man, the spirit of idolatory within him to worship himself, and be his own god. And this Prostitue rides the scarlet Beast and is seated on many waters, the latter being angelically interpreted as "peoples, multitudes, nations and languages", ie the whole world. And the scarlet Beast is the spirit of the nations of the world, driven by the same spirit, the Prostitute.

Thus this is the global power, namely the spirit of man, the spirit of prostitution and idolatory, to which Jesus will say, "Let my people go." It is obvious too that this bondage is very strong, far stronger than the physical bondage Pharaoh exerted over the Hebrew slaves.

As an analogy, and twisting the Pharaoh's tale, imagine Moses asking the Pharaoh not to let the Hebrew people go, but instead to surrender his Pharaohship and to let himself go to another land which is far greater than the Egypt he rules but one where he is not king.

For the spirit of man must surrender his own spirit, for only than can the spirit of man be joined with the spirit of Christ, even as the Bride is married to the Bridegroom, to become the Holy City, the new Jerusalem. Until then it is Babylon, the Harlot.




PS: This article was triggered by the fall of Pharaoh Mubarak on 11 Feb 2011 (11022011) and a protester on BBC News, an Egyptian Christian, thanking Moses for the phrase, "Let my people go."

The End of the World

Earthrise seen from the Moon during Apollo 11

Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be! Amen.

[Rev 1:7]

Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.

But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into.

So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

[Matt 24:42-44]

And so the end of the world will not happen on 21 Dec 2012.

What is revealed and what is known is that the end will happen at a time most unexpected.

And that can possibly be when the world is supremely confident, greatly assured in its knowledge and collective abilities, and all the peoples in the world are utterly convinced that humankind's fate and destiny are entirely in its own hands, each individual having the means and abilities to literally make the future to be whatever each individual or community wants it to be for itself.

It is conceivable then, in such a day, that "all the peoples of the earth will mourn", instead of rejoicing, when they see him who was pierced descending from the clouds.

So also then the end will not come when there are massive earthquakes here and there, disasters triggered by extreme weather and climatic changes, or major wars and conflicts and massive sufferings of humankind in the world from poverty or famine or diseases or plaques like SARS, H5N1, etc. For in such times God is more likely remembered and eagerly awaited, and many, if not all, will rejoice if God returns to end all their sufferings and miseries and pain.

But Jesus will return when he is most unexpected, even unwelcomed.

A possible scenario of such a state of unwelcome, could be when all the nations of the world are at peace, for a significant duration; when all nations have unite, able to settle differences without wars and bloodshed, and instead able to cooperate and launch grand and massive international and global projects, such as never before attempted, even since Babel, even to control the weather and climate, and harness the power and energy of earthquakes and hurricanes, and all the people of the world prosperous.

Then humankind must also overcome one final and fundamental vulnerability, the certain conclusion and termination of all mankind and life on earth as we have always and only known, namely the sun. And this will happen, when the sun runs out of fuel, and even way before that, when the sun inflates to become a red giant, scorching and melting all of earth to barren molten rock.

To overcome this certainty of demise, humankind must be able to travel to other places in the universe, ie undertake inter solar and inter galactic travel, and to be able to colonise on other planets and moons or asteriods and other rocky inter stellar debris, even to recreate an environment for the continuation of an earthly or earth-like livelihood, with all its plants, animals, fishes and birds.

And certainly before that, intra solar system travel shall become as common place as taking the subway downtown.

Earth shall also no longer be threathened by asteriods impact. Instead humans will be able to control and manoeuvre asteriods, to change their trajectories, using the very material of these rocks themselves as fuel, and even to use them as vehicles for travel within the solar system and elsewhere.

The unified international space command will have a fleet of scouting autonomous robots to survey all the rocks in the asteroid belt, and elsewhere. And there is also a fleet of autonomous robots to build initial installations, so that humans, and other robots, can land on them subsequently, to exploit these asteriods for various purposes, from manufacturing, to energy, to travel, and even to become extraterrestrial colonies for the by-then much overcrowded earth. These fleets of scouting and colonies construction robots will all be based on the Moon, Mars, and some of Saturn's moons.

But of course all these sounds very much science fiction, at least for the moment. For sure, we need to discover additional fundamental science - and medical and bioengineering knowledge - to perform practical inter galactic travel, such as worm holes or other exotic forms of manipulating the fabric of the universe, if such are correct notions then.

On the other hand it is only very recent that we had Newton, and then only a few centuries later, Einstein. And knowledge growth, in this Internet age, is explosive and exponential. The next fundamental discoveries may already be on the threshold of happening, and then other discoveries to happen soon thereafter at an accelerating pace, at intervals of decades instead of centuries, and then in years, and so on, so much so that indeed the future painted above can happen in a blink of an eye; and some alive today may experience intra solar travel within their lifetimes. And if understanding gravity is like knowing the mind of God, as Einstein puts it, then we must also be closer to knowing God's mind then at any other time.

Of course it may not happen at all, not as painted above in any case.

But the point is made: namely that the signs to watch for of the imminent end is not in the wars, famine and so on, as popularly interpreted in the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - these are but awakening calls for those whose ears can hear and eyes can see - but rather, ironically, more in the realisation of the longed-for and much desired peace, unity, harmony, and utopia of all the earth, in the flowering and blossoming of the full potential of collective mankind in all his knowledge and capabilities, and when Man comes close to the perfection of God, in whose image, Man is. And then the end will come.

And of course no prediction of an exact date and time of the end is true, never ever.

Ecological Hypocrisy

A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal,
but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel.

[Pro 12:10]

If you care for the earth, the trees and all the animals within it, should you not care more for humankind itself?

For man were given dominion over the earth and all things in it, but the highest commandment is to love your neighbour as yourself, the one whom God deemed worthy enough to die for.

If we truly love our neighbour need the poor go kill elephants for their tusks for some mere dollars?

And if the rich are not worshipping money, is there a need to devastate entire forests just to make paper?

And then if you truly are able to care for something that is not yours, do you not think God care far far more for what is his?