Miracles of the Gods: A New Look at the Supernatural (432 page)

up by the floods, but he does not know when it will happen - this is plausible for other-worlders themselves do not know it in their timeless state. So if a medium (prophet, priest, seer) preaches: 'Pray!

Pray fervently, otherwise your town will be swallowed up by floods!' it may be a plausible summons, but its contents are a lie, for the town will disappear at some time or other in any case. If it were not so, the timeless other-worlders would not have been able to announce the catastrophe.

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Let us consider a different case. By energy conversion a terrestrial prophet sends his (trained) mental antennae into the other world. He 'sees' events that can only occur in the future, because they have not happened in past history (as known or experienced by the prophet). In other words, the mediumistic visionary does not learn what day is to be ticked off in red on the calendar. He has only one chance of giving a more precise 'message', namely if he has 'seen' the event in such detail that he can work out the approximate deadline for it. But there is one thing that even the cleverest and best trained prophet cannot do: prevent the event he has 'seen'! If it were not programmed for the indefinable future, an otherworldly conscious energy could not have transmitted it and a terrestrial energy could not have

'seen' it. It would be old hat if events which have been in the history books for years were communicated.

Does not this physical and metaphysical hypothesis explain quite plausibly why messages received in

'visions' proclaim and warn of coming events, but can never prevent them? Does not that also clarify why prophetic and visionary messages are often so obscure, 'mysterious' and ambiguous? With their present conscious energy, seers and prophets do perceive future events, but they cannot 'evaluate' them -

except in the form of obscure predictions and unverifiable prophecies.

The last book in the New Testament is The Revelation of St. John the Divine. It is the book of a visionary. The prophet sees images of environmental pollution, aircraft, helicopters, nuclear explosions, etc. He uses his own words to reproduce these visions as he received them in communications from conscious energies:

... and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up ... and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea ... and the third part of the waters became wormwood (radioactive?) ...

and the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed ... (Chap. 8).

And they (the locusts) had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle .... And they had tails like scorpions, and there were stings in their tails .... And ... I saw the horses ... and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone; and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone ...' (Chap. 9).

Is it not crystal clear why John wrote his very accurate descriptions in his own words using his world of ideas? He did not know our modern technical vocabulary. It is stimulating to learn that the atomic physicist Bernhard Philberth [16] has written a modern interpretation of revelation. The only disturbing thing about his technological exegesis is that he always appeals to God in a highly personal