The reality of the unseen

As I write the almost empty outer space and the minds of politicians are being disturbed by numerous satellites. It would therefore seem appropriate to start with astronomy and consider its general pattern.

For studying the stars, Sciences has used three methods. The first was the unaided human eye. Man looked up into the clear night sky and enjoyed its sparkling wonder and beauty .this still appears to me to be the most rewarding way, especially if it is done in the right company.

Next came the giant telescope which revealed distances so tremendous and stars so vast that it was quite impossible to imagine them.

Recently a third way has been discovered. During the war radar was used to track the path of the enemy aircraft. After the war it seemed possible that a specially designed radar unit might be able to detect the behaviour of stars and give us additional data. A large unit was built and behaved as expected, except for one embarrassing habit: it frequently saw stars that weren’t there! After further research it was found that the stars were there after all, but their existence had been concealed from us until then as they gave out no light. They are dark stars and there are millions of them. This is but one of many examples of how a scientist is compelled to believe in the reality of the unseen. If you bumped into a dark star, it would hurt just as much as the visible type.

Now the Christian has always believed in the principle of the reality of the unseen. The fact that our limited nature senses cannot directly detect the wonders of the spiritual world merely demonstrates that they were never intended to do so. When we read of Easter Sunday and how our risen Lord appeared to the disciples in the Upper Room, we find that He walked through a locked door. We tend to imagine that He could do this because He was ghostly and unsubstantial figure, and therefore much less real than the door. The truth is that He walked through the door because He was more real than the door. The door was just material. He was, and is, the perfected combination of the physical and spiritual harmony. He is the complete Man and the mere material world is misty in comparison with such bedrock Reality.

The principle of the radar telescope has another pattern which we also find in Christianity. Just as a new form of perception can establish the reality of the useable stars, so a new form of perception is necessary to experience the reality of the invisible spiritual world. Most of us know in practice that this is only too true.

Some years ago I was walking down Victoria street with a business colleague. As we approached Westminster Abbey I suggested that we should go in. I wanted to escape from the noises of the traffic, and the even more wearisome discussion of business. We walked through the door and entered another world. The sound of the choir singing reached us from a distance; around us was embodied all that is greatest in spiritual heritage of our country. David Livingstone’s grave was at our feet and above our heads was all the beauty of a building made by men for the glory of God.

I saw the silent worshippers and glimpsed with them something of wonder of goodness and mercy of God. Not so my colleague; he never once stopped talking about business. He couldn’t see the kingdom of God.

“…The unspiritual man simply cannot accept the matters which the spirit deals with-they just don’t make sense to him, for, after all, you must be spiritual to see spiritual things.”

This does not mean that the Christian is necessarily aware of the reality of the spiritual world all the time, or that faith becomes redundant. Jesus as you can temporarily interrupt a radar set by methods which were used by both sides in the last war, so God allows moments in lives of those who follow Him when the heavens are as brass and circumstances seem to mock at possibility of His love. If, on those bleak days, a man still trusts and obeys when he feels like doing neither, then it is that the bells of heaven ring ,for Christ has said “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

There is another common factor that runs through the physical and the spiritual. Interwoven with the reality of the unseen, we find the unreality of time. In our everyday life we are under the dictatorship of time. We talk of “overtime”, “half time”, “summer time” and “doing time”. Whether we like it or not we are all ruled by the old gentlemen with the scythe. A characteristic phrase of our civilisation is “Time , gentlemen”.

As we move away from our small scale world and reach out into the almost infinite universe, we find that Time becomes less dictatorial. Reality has shown us that the old man becomes a partner, and even a junior partner in the business. The inference is that if we could get outside the universe altogether, we would find that we had left time behind too.

For centuries Christians have believed that this is true and God is not under the dictatorship of time in the same way that we are. With him a thousand years are as one day and one day as a thousand years. Perhaps this fact will help in answering some common problems. People ask “how could Christ have died for my sins when at the time that he died I hadn’t committed any; I hadn’t been born?” “ How can an event be called an answer to prayer when the circumstances that cause it obviously existed before I prayed?” The sting in these two questions, and many like them, lies in the time factor. The key words are “at that time” and “existed before”. But if God is not dominated by time such questions do not arise.

If we ask where God is if He is not in Time, Isaiah gives us the answer. He is “Eternity”, and there the past, present and future (as we call them) are all equally present. This fact may help in the predestination. If the future is always present with God he is merely watching us doing things and that obviously does not compel us to do them.

The most important practical point arising out of all this is to discover if and where the sphere of Time and the sphere of Eternity actually touch. Is there any point anything in common? Fortunately Time and Eternity share one thing, that is the present. The future is unknown, the past we cannot touch- it is only in this present moment that God can fined us and we can respond to Him. This is why the Gospel is a massage of the present tense “Come”, “Follow”, “Believe”, “Now is the day of salvation”. We are helpless once this present moment recedes into the past. We may remember it but we cannot alter it.

Before the war I had an enjoyable holiday in Holland where we cruised up and down the beautiful canals. Our boat was powered with an auxiliary engine which was the responsibility of a cheery South American, whilst his wife, who could speak no English, did the cooking for us.

On the last evening of the holiday the husband explained that she would prepare for us, as a special treat, one of her national dishes. As the boat drifted downstream through the lazy summer evening, we waited, with some apprehension, to see what the remarkable smells coming from the kitchen portended. At last the good lady entered, and with a beaming smile placed before us a large soup tureen apparently filled with thick gear-box oil. Submerged in this revolting liquid were a number of medium-sized fish whose pink eyes gazed reproachfully up at us. We were appalled. To eat any of it was obviously out of question. We poured some of the oil on our plates to keep up appearances, for we were most anxious not to hurt the good lady’s feelings, but what were we to do with the rest? There was only one possibility. I opened the porthole and threw the contents of the bowel into the waters of the canal. when the good lady returned and saw the empty bowel she grinned and left satisfied, and we felt that everything was now happily settled.

Unfortunately, we had forgotten that we were drifting downstream with the tide, and we soon noticed to our horror that a large oily pool was floating down alongside us on the surface of the water, and every now and than a glimpse was possible of the pink reproachful eyes. We tried throwing things at the fish, but they wouldn’t sink.

Until night fell we were on tenterhooks lest the cook should look out on the side of the boat. We could contemplate our past but we couldn’t touch it. That is the difficulty about the past. As we travel down the stream of time we can remember yesterday but we cannot do anything about it. Fortunately God can, and through Christ He does.

When Jesus was confronted with an ill man He said, “ That ye may know that the son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins, I saw unto thee, Arise, take up thy bed and go thy way”. Jesus was on the earth, that is, under the dictatorship of time, but he was God as well as man so he burst through the time barrier and touched the past and forgave man his sins. It is He and only He, who can cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.

We can summarise all that I have been trying to say so far quite briefly. There is one link between the unseen and the seen, Jesus Christ, who said “ He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father”. There is one point of contact between Time and Eternity – it is “Now”. The Gospel might therefore be put in the words “ Jesus Christ Now”.

This instant when I am writing these words, and the moment when you are reading them, is decisive for each of us. They are the part of both Time and Eternity in which each of us is free to act and responsible to God for what we do.

There is a story concerning a climber in the Swiss Alps. With his guide he started at down in an attempt to climb a high pinnacle. They climbed together through the increasing heat of the day, cutting steps in the solid ice. The Guide warned the climber of the danger of the hot sun beating down on the cold ice. There was always the possibility, he said, of a sudden crack appearing and widening into a crevasse without warning. Together they climbed higher and higher, when suddenly there was a noise like a pistol shot, and the ice parted between them. The climber jumped back and the guide turned in a flash and looked across the rapidly widening gap. “ Jump” he cried to the climber. The man gazing into the blue green depths of the crevasse and seemed paralysed with fear . “Jump now”, cried the guide and as the man still made no move he leant as far as he could across the abyss and stretching out his hand said “ Look this hand has never lost a man”. The climber jumped and was dragged to safety.

There is a hand that stretches from the spiritual into the natural world, from eternity into time. It is the hand of Christ , and He has never lost a man.