Eternity 107 - Time-Travel And Concert Ticket Sales To subscribe to the free Eternity Daily Bible Study click hereor go to: http://www.aibi.ph/articles/eternity Time-Travel And Concert Ticket Sales Its 2056, there is now time-travel and the newspaper advertisement reads: "Buy discount tickets to last week's rock concert". The fans buy the tickets at a huge discount, hop in their time machines go back in time seven days and catch last weeks concert. Soon no sane person is buying tickets before the events. So if no-one bought tickets before the event - would all the rock concerts get cancelled? Or would they just go a week forward in time and find everyone's bought tickets now, so the whole lot, band, managers, and roadies would go back in time, un-cancell the concert, and run it "at the same time" with people who bought their tickets a week or a year later? Could we all go back and visit Woodstock? Woodstock is going to have millions, perhaps billions of people wanting to hear the great bands and get in on the atmosphere and free love. That bit of space time is going to be really crowded. There will be people there from 2200 and people there from 1967. And presumably the opposite will occur as well. The World Trade Center on September 11th 2001 is going to be a very empty bit of space-time. So with time-travel we could have space-time bottle-necks on the "good bits" and maybe some bits of "bad" space-time that are totally empty and which "cease to exist". Like exams. Who wouldn't want to skip exams? Now in 2056 Bob and Jane decide to go back in time to Woodstock and there back in the wild days of the 60's they make love and conceive a child. Jane does not yet know she is pregnant and after Woodstoock they decide to return to 2056. Does the birth occur suddenly during the time travel as a terrible shock and do they arrive back in 2056 with a 89 year old child? Or do we just have a 89 year old foetus? If so it would have huge implications for genetics. Can a woman go back in time, seduce Alexander the Great or Archimedes and carry his viable genetic material into the 21st century? And what about bringing whole people forward in time? Basketball coaches would be going back and recruiting Goliath and his five brothers who, according to the Bible, were all over nine feet tall. Certain points in history would become seriously over-crowded with competing interests from the future. The Jews would be trying to figure out how to stop the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD while the Arabs would be trying to ensure that it was never built in the first place. Maybe the Jews would even go back and say to Abraham "No, no, if you do that Ishmael will be born and from him the Arabs will descend and cause trouble." and the Arabs would say "No, Abe, if you do that Isaac will be born and then the Jews will build this Temple." But more seriously what about crucial battles. Would troops from the future go and fight alongside troops from the past to alter history and destiny? Would the Charge of the Light Brigade be cancelled? Would Hitler decide not to invade Russia? Would someone with an AK-47 go back to the David and Goliath encounter and blast the future king of Israel out of existence just so they could keep Goliath on the basketball team? And what about the miracles of Jesus? Five million people from 2056 poised on the shore of Lake Galilee at 2 am in the middle of a storm to see if Jesus really did walk on water? And what about time-travel pilgrimages to the cross, the resurrection and the day of Pentecost? What if there were surprises? What if Jesus was short and had a receding hair line? What if the apostle Paul had a sense of humor? What if Nero was really nice? Actually time-travel would be a disaster as selfishness and competing interests would create massive cheating in the course of history. This cheating would range from finding out tomorrow's winning lottery numbers to attempts to influence the course of a dynasty. Time-travel would be an irresistible temptation to anarchy and moral immaturity. We would even buy cheap tickets to last week's rock concerts. Humanity does not need time-travel it needs moral wisdom and a new heart and mind. This new heart and mind has been made possible by the only time-traveller in history - Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Son of God who travelled out of eternity and into our space-time taking on human flesh at a certain critical moment in human history. (Galatians 4:4 NKJV) But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, That Christmas event has given human history a link with another time zone. The time zone called eternity. Jesus was a bit of eternity wrapped up in human flesh. The Bible puts this truth in a number of ways, here are two of the most clear: (Colossians 2:9 NKJV) For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; (John 1:1-3, 14-18NKJV) In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. {2} He was in the beginning with God. {3} All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. ....And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. {15} John bore witness of Him and cried out, saying, "This was He of whom I said, 'He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me.'" {16} And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. {17} For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. {18} No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him. The Christmas event not only gave us the person of Christ and His teachings but it also led to the cosmos-altering events of the cross. The cross is our personal gateway into eternity. Its our spiritual time-machine. In the cross our past is dealt with, our sins are forgiven and our personal time-line is irrevocably altered. The Bible says Christians have actually "died with Christ!". (Colossians 3:3-4 NKJV) For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. {4} When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. When we come to believe in Jesus, then in a moment our lives, our personal time-lines, intersect with three days of history back in 29 A.D. Our old nature dies on the cross with Christ and then with the resurrection of Christ everything in us is made new, we are born-again, into another eternal realm with a different kind of inner life. (Ephesians 2:5-6 NKJV) even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), {6} and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, Because of Christmas we can find ourselves with a new nature that has its source of life and energy derived directly from eternity where Christ came from. The Bible calls that eternal life. This physical body remains with us in this bit of space-time; but the person inside the body is now in the eternal time zone. When the body dies they and their new natures will just keep on going and eventually get a new body that is spiritual and unfading and imperishable and more suited to life in eternity. (1 Corinthians 15:51-55 NKJV) Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed; {52} in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. {53} For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. {54} So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory." {55} "O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?" Peter Pan learned to fly by thinking happy thoughts - and we can travel into eternity by believing the gospel. We just have to want to get rid of our grasping and selfish nature that is strongly attached to the present time. And we must strongly want to replace it with a new loving nature from the eternal time zone. We must then believe in Jesus, that He is the one from Eternity, the Son of God, the door to the kingdom of Heaven - and then we will be changed. We will "fly", we will be born-again, we will be made new. We don't need a physical time machine to go to the cross. Believing prayer is a spiritual time-machine that enables us to contact the eternal realm. We just need to sincerely ask God to change us and make us into real Christians with loving natures and who possess eternal life. We will then "travel to the eternal time zone" and one day Christians will go to a place with far more love than Woodstock. Christmas Blessings, John Edmiston John Edmiston is a missionary in Manila and has a Christian website called the Asian Internet Bible Institute at http://www.aibi.ph/