A Kind of Time Machine, Part II

Note: This is the second post in a series. Part I can be found here, and the final part of this particular series will appear next Friday.

Last week I mentioned the vast array of books that can be found inside of a library. I also mentioned how stepping inside of a library is much like stepping inside a time machine. You can pull many books off the shelf and virtually travel anywhere. Those destinations can include historical locations, modern-day locations, outer space, and even imaginary worlds.

Each book has its limitations, however. For example, history books look backwards in time while works of fiction might speculate on how the future might turn out. Likewise, a modern day picture book of Israel will only tell you what it looks like right now, as opposed to what it may look like in one hundred years.

So is there a book out there that is a kind of "time machine" that will let you go back and forth through time? Is there a book that will give you a glimpse of what a city looked like in the past and what it will look like in the future?

It turns out there is such a book.

This book contains historical narratives, fufilled and unfufilled prophecies, and can speak to a reader right where they are at in life. A reader can do side-by-side comparisions of how a city looked in the past and how it will look in the future (for example, Jerusalem). A reader can then go and look up archaelogical evidence to substantiate what is written in the book.

As Chuck Missler often famously says, this book is a message written to us from "outside our time domain." It's a book that goes both forward and backward in time at the mere flip of a page, and in many places, in a matter of few lines.

Here's the curious part, though. In several places, it's as if the Author relishes those moments when history, prophecy, and current events are converge in a handful of verses. For example, take a look at this set of verses from Luke 17:26-32 (NKJV):

[Jesus speaking] "And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed.

In that day, he who is on the housetop, and his goods are in the house, let him not come down to take them away. And likewise the one who is in the field, let him not turn back. Remember Lot’s wife."

Noah's ark? Lot's wife? Verse 32 is, of course, a reference to Genesis 19:26 when Lot's wife looked back at the destruction and became a pillar of salt. In a couple of paragraphs we go back in time (twice) and then look forward to the second coming...and all the while he is talking to a particular audience. Yet it all still applies to where we are at today.

Incredible.

But wait...there's more. The book is filled with these kinds of moments, and sometimes these types of verses appear in the most unusual places. It's as if the Author anticipated that the book would someday run the risk of being fragmented. What's remarkable is that the message still comes trough, despite potential attempts at "jamming" it.

Next Friday, we'll conclude our brief tour of "time machines" with some thoughts about how electronic reading devices may be affecting this message and this type of "time travel".

Photo courtesy of Gadgets N Gear.