Chapter Two "Life as an Experiment"

CHAPTER TWO

Life as an Experiment

Thinking along the lines of “THE EXPERIMENT”; some may object to my using the word experiment concerning God’s dealing with this life’s experience.  Let’s take a look at Hebrews chapter one in light of this matter:

“God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, has in these last times spoken unto us by his Son, whom he had appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high....”

You might ask, “How is this expressing an experiment?”  Note the phrase...”in divers (many) manners.”  Think in light of Edison and his experiments, over six thousand, to get the light bulb.  He used a diversity of wires in an attempt to get them to burn continually in the vacuum of a glass bulb.  Nothing wrong with the wires that did not work in his experiment; they all lead to that one wire that did burn continually.

God’s experiment down through human history, and His intent through that experiment, was to bring us to the place where one element would burn continually in our lives, the giving of the Holy Spirit.  This Spirit is the very source and expression of God’s life.  That is the wire we were looking for.  So we have now the correct wire that connects us to God.  Now this life of God doesn’t come and go, it is IN US.  In the Old Testament that Spirit would come and go.  He did not dwell in human kind on a continual base.  This idea of an experiment isn’t that God had to find out anything through trial and error, it was only His getting us to see through various stages and “manners” what had always been originally intended and how far away from this humanity had come.  It appears that we can only handle small bits of truth over long periods of time.

Now tuck this phrase in the back of your mind...”these things were written for our example.”

Someone once asked Edison, “Isn’t it a waste, 6,000, all those experiments.”  His reply, “No, I now know 5,999 things that don’t work.”  As we reflect back through Biblical history, we see things that didn’t work in the lives of those mentioned as past fathers and prophets.  Things we might not have known and might have tried to do to gain God’s favor.  Things like all the laws and rules laid down for them.  Knowing their failures, we don’t go in that direction but only learn from them.  Some today try to re-establish the Old Testament ways and means, feeling they will succeed where the Jews failed.  Good luck. That written was only written to reveal to you that it DOES NOT WORK.  It never was intended to work but was only given to get this experiment on the road and past what does not work.  So, this idea of God experimenting isn’t that He didn’t know and had to use a trial and error method as we do, which I above mentioned, but rather it was an EXPERIEMENT OF ELIMINATION.  Knowing who we are God clearly reveals to us how our ways would never work.  I hope you see this and don’t accuse me of saying that God was in any way limited in knowledge.

Have you ever shared a problem with others hoping to get their input to assist you to better deal with your problem, yet without your going into detail of the weeks and weeks of experiment you have already put into solving it?  Here they are, going over ground you have already covered.  You find yourself saying, “Yea, I tried that.  It didn’t work.”  They keep rattling on and on till you finally stop them and say, “Stop!”   Let me share everything I’ve done up to this point.  This will save us time of going over things I’ve already tired.”

 

I will say at this point, I have been experimenting for over 46 years with this idea of the meaning and purpose of life.  Many that I talk to do not know this and many times are only sharing things I have already tried and found do not work to give me any clearer clarity of meaning to this life and its purpose.  For me to now sit and share the total 46 years of research in one book is impossible.  Yet to find another human being who will hear my questions and not give me something I haven’t already heard or tried, just isn’t there. It is my belief that this is where we all should come to; a place where we get beyond people, places and things for ultimate answers.  Thank God for those along the way that helped us get to where we are.  But at some point we begin to, so to speak, spin our wheels.

At some point in Edison’s experiments, I am sure he had come to this point; exhausted from all the attempts and failures.  He leaves his lab and goes for a walk in the park.  Not thinking, speaking or asking anyone about his experiments with this light bulb idea he just relaxes and takes in the quiet calm of the spring day.  Then beyond all the frustration of his experiments it comes to him.  Call it a knowing.  Yet know this, all his failures brought him to this knowing.

 

I have gotten to this point and the answers have come to where I now don’t need to ask.  The answers are “just there.”   They have always been there waiting for me to fail enough to learn what does not work.  I am now ready to hear what does work.  The Experiment continues....Paul

Oh, I forgot; let me share just one more fact before I close this chapter.  I have had some object to my saying that God started an experiment, complaining that this makes it appear that God had to try and fail over and over to get to a result.   Well, from the way that we view this in our carnal minds and experience it would appear to be just that.  So, adventure with me outside the realm of our experience and get into the mind of God.  What we see worked out over time according to our experience was in fact in the eternal mind of God already complete.  I don’t know that I can use an element of time that we use, like seconds, minutes, hours etc. so let me say it the best way I can.  In the eternal realm, in that realm’s “sequence” of events, God had wanted to accomplish something, and in that sequence of event it was.  We, with our limited dimensional expressions of time, we haven’t the word for it other than to say what was thought, always was, and what we see expressed in time is nothing more than a drawn out display of what always was…GOT IT!!

Let me say a little more and end this chapter; something I got while editing this book.  “We are living in the Eternal Mind of God expressed in time.  All that we have experienced and are experiencing and will yet experience is ALREADY PLAYED OUT in God’s mind; which to Him is already finished.  The Bible can be seen as Past, Present and Future of God’s Eternal Mind in what is called THE NOW.  I can see, as I type this, why He has said to me many times when I am in a situation and can’t see clearly, “Let it play out.”  We get stuck in our little “private” interpretation of it all.  Only when we are seated in heavenly places with Christ Jesus do we begin to understand this; now this is real peace, a peace that PASSES all our understanding.”