Timetravel and Sci-fi in the Bible

When you think of sci-fi in the Bible, Ezekiel is your go-to guy. He is, after all, the guy who saw a wheel in a wheel and eyes all around. People have forever thought what he saw was an UFO, by which I very much do mean the classic flying saucer.

But this muse is not on UFOs but actually on time-travel.

So consider this. One fine day Moses the great leader climbed up Mount Sinai and met God. His face shone with the light of God. God and he spoke there and he came down with some ground rules for Christians.

Many years later, the prophet Elijah fled to Mount Horeb. There he encountered God again, as a still small voice. A calm. A peace, if you will.

Many more years passed and Jesus brought three friends with him up a mountain called Tabor. There he was Transfigured. He shone. And Peter, James and John saw with him two figures of old – Moses and Elijah.

There is this theory that floats around the internet sometimes and unless you’re a sci-fi fan, your algorithm would not catch it. One of them is that Moses and Elijah did not appear there on Mount Tabor with Jesus as ghosts. Rather, they had travelled through space and time for a dual purpose – one, to be with Jesus at his hour of need, and, two, to converse with God. And they did both.

In the biblical language, we find a one-day-one-thousand-days equivalency for God. In sci-fi lingo, we’d say that God exists outside the space-time continuum. So for Moses and Elijah to meet Jesus even when they are separated by centuries is an easy possibility. Madame Vastra always said time-travel was always possible in dreams, and would hold tea parties in dreams, calling together for meetings people separated by time and space. The Doctor often sends out the TARDIS to collect people separated by time and space to stand with him. For a sci-fi fan, it’s really not that hard to imagine.

I’m not saying this is real. It is a theory that someone proposed. And I really found it fun, amusing and enchanting.

Of course, while Mount Sinai and Mount Horeb are one and the same place, Mount Tabor isn’t. But if you want the facts to fit your theory, you could always say Mount Tabor was the Main Console and Mount Horeb was where you need to stand so the teleporter or transmitter or whatever thingamajic would ‘beam you up’.

Fun, no?

Reincarnation

At the risk of stirring up a controversy, I believe in reincarnation. I find it a comforting thought. Although at other times, I find the idea exhausting. I don’t know exactly how compatible it is with Christianity but I’m guessing for the most part, no.

And why do I believe in reincarnation? It just seems plausible. It’s all a matter of faith, of believing in an Unknown, isn’t it? I reason that if I can believe in God and the supernatural, I should be able to believe in all levels of the Unknown. Who knows what will happen after we die? Who is to say with absolute certainty that when we die, we return to the ether, or if we just climb back up through another tunnel, or if we reach paradise or hell? We don’t know. Because we can’t know.

If you tell me there are beings that can shape-shift between humans and tigers, I shall believe you. If you tell me there are beings whose heads can fly off at night and suck the blood of unsuspecting preys, I shall believe you. If you tell me there are migrating spirit villages whose presence we can tell only by their torches at night, I shall believe you. I believe in the supernatural. I’ve always done so.

My contention with reincarnation, however, is Elijah in the Bible.

Elijah is a curious character. He just appears out of nowhere and slips back out in a flaming chariot to nowhere. At the very fag-end of the Old Testament, we are told this cryptic message that the prophet Elijah will be sent to stir up shit before the Day of the Lord. And when John the Baptist was described in the first book of the New Testament, anyone who knows Elijah would have said: Hey, this is a repeat! Because Elijah before him had been described in pretty much the same details, fashion-wise. See 2 Kings 1:8 and Matthew 3:4. John did say point-blank he was not Elijah but one could argue that perhaps reincarnates aren’t fully aware of their past lives. When Jesus was asked about Elijah he simply replied, Elijah had already come and gone, clearly referencing John.

I don’t want to be proven wrong. I like this theory. I don’t think it does me much harm. It had, for one monsoon, amused me and my mum immensely, discussing reincarnation as she taught me how to knit a sweater. Over hot, sweet milk tea and boiled yams with DPT chutney, or half-boiled country eggs. I have a nice, sweet memory of it. I know there are theologians or smarter people who can prove me wrong. But kindly let it be.

WBU?

Holy Humorists

I should probably say Jesus but if asked about my favourite character in the Bible, I’d probably say Jonah or Elijah. Jonah, most likely.

He’s just funny.

Consider this. You are a prophet. One day you receive this word to go tell some people that they were going to burn. You don’t want to do the job but you’re kind of married to it. So you try to do the “follow the spirit but break the letter” kind of deal and you get up and set out, seemingly obediently. But you shift routes because you figure God thinks you’re on the mission; so you’ll do some mission… just not that one.

But your employer is all-knowing. So God creates an obstacle so you have no choice but to do the OG mission. Resigned, you say fine, I’ll go do it. And you finish the mission.

Suddenly, you feel really important and great that you have done what God asked you to do, the fact that you’ve actively strayed from the mission in the first instance completely slipping your mind by now. So you get up on a hill and set yourself down where you could best view the city burn.

Meanwhile, the people you’ve just condemned decide to sincerely repent so God forgives them. And then you get really angry about it because you’ve missed a great show that God had, in your reckoning, promised you.

I don’t know – Jonah is amusing and at the same time, not too amusing because in his life, I see a pattern I am all too familiar with. My own, if I was being too subtle.

As for Elijah, he is just the stuff that heroes are made of, all that dry humour and everything. Probably Marvel.

A major drama queen, I like that he gets hangry too. At one point, he threw a tantrum at God asking God to just off him and God had to tell him to just go take a nap and eat something. Which he did and he felt tons better.

Elijah has one of the strongest personalities in the Bible. He is a bit violent, yes, but he does it with flair. His introduction is abrupt and his departure is enigmatic. He is sarcastic and snarky, but also his faith is unshakeable.

Elbert Hubbard, I heard, had said that it is counter-productive to take life too seriously because you’re never going to get out of it alive. Even when things get very serious – like Jonah’s doomsday message or Elijah’s constant war with other gods – there is a way to consider situations without losing your head over it. I am hopeful to navigate through this life even just okay.