Chapter 13 Delectable Mount.
Today I climb the Delectable Mountain to meet the living God who is in charge of this world. In The Shepherd, John Bunyan gives us a final look at the apostates and, I discover the secret to speaking directly with the all-powerful, all-previously inaccessible God.
Christian and Hopeful reached the Delectable Mountains, where they were welcomed by its owners, the shepherds.
"This mountain belongs to Immanuel, within sight of his city, and the sheep belong to him, for he laid down his life for them."
Christian first asked the one shepherd, "Is this the way to the city of heaven?"
"You are on the right road."
"How far is it to heaven?"
"Some people can't get there because it's too far, but all those who want to go there do."
The shepherd took the two pilgrims to the top of a mountain called Errors, which looked very steep. When they looked down, they saw the shattered bodies of people lying at the bottom.
Christian looked at the shattered bodies and asked, "What does this mean?"
"Haven't you heard about those who fell into error because they listened to Hymenaeus and Philemon (2 Timothy 2:17-18), who said that the resurrection of the body had already passed?"
"Yes, I have heard of them."
"They are the ones who fell to pieces at the foot of this mountain, and as you can see, they have been left unburied to this day so that others may be warned if they wish to come near or climb the mountain."
Top of Error (2022)
The two pilgrims were led by shepherds onto the road to hell. In the distance, they could hear the noise of burning fires, the cries of the tormented, and smell sulphur. "This is the road to hell, the road of hypocrites: those who sell their birthright, like Esau; those who sell their teacher, like Judas; those who blaspheme the gospel, like Alexander; and those who lie and cheat, like Ananias and his wife Sapphira."
Again Christian and Hopeful said goodbye to the shepherds and entered the province of pride. On a dark road, they saw a man being dragged by seven demons, bound by seven strong ropes. The demons were dragging him to a gate on the side of a hill that the pilgrims had seen before (Matt. 12:24; Prov. 5:22).
The seven demons (2022)
When Christian and Hopeful saw this, they were so frightened that they began to tremble. Christian thought the man being dragged by the demons might be someone he knew, so he approached him. Christian thought he looked like an apostate who lived in an apostate village; but he turned his head to the other side, as if he were a thief caught in the act, so that he could not get a clear view of his face. But Hopeful saw him after he had passed by, and on his back was written, 'An lewd confessor and a damned apostate'.
I have seen many people who once believed in Jesus, but were caught up in Satan's deception and fell into the ways of the world. What would be their end? John Bunyan showed me a heap of corpses at the top of the error, with howls of agony and the smell of brimstone, and he also showed me being dragged away by seven demons.
Sometimes I have a fervent desire for heaven because of my consciousness and fear of the torments of hell, but when my consciousness of hell and fear of damnation fades, so does my zeal for heaven. In other words, when my consciousness and fear of sin fade, so does my desire for heaven and happiness, and I have a habit of going back to the easy way out. Perhaps John Bunyan's demonstration of the top of error and the seven devils is also a sign that I should not stop my pilgrimage to heaven.
Comunication with the Animal
I've been an animal behaviourist for most of my life, and I like to ask the question: do animals have love like humans do, like the maternal love that a mother bird has for her young? It's not an easy question to answer, because I'm a zoologist, so I don't look at it in terms of the love that humans feel. For example, a pair of swallows built a nest under the eaves, and they laid five or six eggs. The mother doesn't lay them all at the same time, she lays them one a day, or one day at a time, and then the chicks wake up from the first egg and the oldest is the biggest and the youngest is the smallest. How do you know? You can tell by the size of their gaping yellow mouths. Here's a fun little experiment. A parent will come in with a beak full of food, shovel it all into its biggest open mouth, and then go on its next foraging trip. The next time he comes in with food, he'll shove it into the mouths of his second, third, and so on. It's very regular. They don't duplicate the food they just ate.
Here's the question: can a parent swallow distinguish between all her babies? So we make a cardboard open-mouthed shape, paint it yellow and glossy, and make two fake beaks, one bigger than the first, one smaller than the stick mouth, and when the mother swallow comes back with the food, and all five babies open their mouths at the same time, she puts the fake beak next to the babies' snouts. A very curious thing happens. The mother swallow puts food into a fake beak that is bigger than her babies, but never into their tiny mouths.
In nature, about two days after all five swallows have hatched, the mother begins to carry food. In the first days, the parent swallows carry food around 80 times a day. The mother feeds the youngest with the largest open mouth, and after three to five minutes she feeds the second. At this point, the first one is less hungry and doesn't open its mouth as wide because the food is still in the feeder. However, if the mother is delayed in bringing the food, a problem arises. Let's say there's a delay of 20 minutes. At the third turn, the first one's mouth opens the widest again, and the third, fourth, and fifth ones don't even get a chance to eat at all. That's pretty cruel.
It would have been nice if the parent had known this, but God didn't give this swallow Parent the wisdom to discern it. To have that wisdom, as humans do, the swallow's brain would have had to be made at least five or six times bigger than it is now. It couldn't have discerned it with its tiny brain. That's why, in today's world, where the swallows' food sources have been contaminated by pesticides and insecticides and there is an absolute shortage of bugs, they have a hard time raising two young instead of five.
In the end, we learn from the Bible that God did not leave the care of creation to the animals themselves, but to humans. In Genesis 1:28, God says, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." God has given people wisdom and empowered them to rule over the living creatures, but people still don't understand all of God's words.
Swallow babies and mom (2018)
When I study as a natural scientist, I often feel what God wants us to do. Of course, nature is mysterious beyond beauty, and the more I study it, the more unknown mysteries exist, so many scientists are still challenging the mysteries of nature. Trying to unravel the mysteries brings another joy and delight. Konrad Lorenz, who is called the father of animal behaviour, won the Nobel Prize for studying the sounds and behaviour of animals, so his book "Solomon's Ring" has been introduced in Korea. In the Old Testament of the Bible, King Solomon is said to have communicated with animals by wearing a ring. Of course, this story is not in the Bible (it is recorded in the Apocrypha), but in the Bible, King Solomon is well known as the king who did not ask God for riches or power, but asked God for wisdom. The story of King Solomon's trial, also in the Bible, is one we know all too well; two women had a child and each claimed it was theirs, and Solomon used motherhood to determine the rightful mother.
Today I received a 10-week ultrasound foetal video from my daughter, and she was so excited to see the foetus moving inside her. I could see the head, the torso, the moving arms and hands, and I could hear the heartbeat. I sent her a congratulatory message on her KakaoTalk saying, "God's handiwork is at work!
Whose handiwork is it to create a foetus?
Obviously, the foetus began as a single cell that underwent nuclear fusion. Inside that cell are 46 chromosomes, all of which make up a human being. And within those chromosomes is the genetic information that creates the foetus. In biological terms, they're sequences that look like a double helix. It's like a bead on a thread.
A single cell divides to create a head, brain, arms, legs, and organs. How does a single cell do this? By differentiating, so that each cell has its own job to do: some cells make heads, some make arms, and some make legs. It's fascinating, isn't it, because those cells contain the exact same genetic information in their 46 chromosomes, but the cells that make arms have their genes turned on (programmed) to make arms only, and the hand cells have their genes turned on in the specific areas that make hands. Who dictates this? Today's science explains that it is ordered by the genetic information and makes itself, but if we use the analogy of a computer, it is working because there is someone who programmed the information into it, so there must be someone who programmed the genetic information in the fetus.
What's even more fascinating is that the cells communicate with each other. For example, the cells that make the heart and the cells that make the small intestine communicate with each other. At some point, the heart cells say, "I'll make a heart, you make a small intestine!" and the small intestine cells say, "I'll make a small intestine, you make a heart!" If this communication didn't work, you could have two hearts, or two or three small intestines. Scientists have already found that the exchange of material takes place across the cell membrane, which in turn acts on regulatory genes in the cell's nucleus, which tell the operational genes to make hands and feet and organs.
In its mother's womb, the foetus spends 10 months collaborating with trillions of cells as they divide. It's as if this universe came into being by Hawkings' Big Bang Theory and created countless stars in a galaxy. It's as if the various constants, from the gravit ational constant to the weak nuclear force, were off by a hundred billionth of a degree, as if it knew and waited for humans to appear, says Francis Collins, author of The Language of God. Just as the universe was created without a single error, so is an unborn child being created in my daughter's body right now.
God has already given us far more than we could ever dream, imagine, guess, or ask for, and I believe He is still working through His Spirit, not forcing me from the outside, but working deeply and gently within me.
Talking to God
God wants to communicate directly with Christians. The Bible is full of examples of direct dialogue with God, and the Psalms are a record of the psalmists' conversations with God, including David. I used to think that my one-way prayer was a dialogue with God, but when you look at Moses' interaction with God in Exodus, it's a different story. In a desperate moment, with the Egyptian army behind him and the Red Sea in front of him, Moses cried out to God, "Lord, what shall I do? I want to lead the people according to your will, but the Red Sea is in my way. Please make a way for me." And God answered him immediately: "And the LORD said unto Moses, Why do you cry unto me, command the descendants of Israel to go forth, and take a rod, and stretch forth thy hand over the sea, and part it: and the descendants of Israel shall pass through it by land in the midst of the sea..." (Exodus 14:15-18)
Is this kind of communication possible only for those called by God, like the Psalmists, David, Solomon, Moses and others? As I climbed the mountain today, I discovered a secret that makes such communication possible. It's the secret that we can have a dialogue with God through Jesus. We've been separated from God because of the sin of one man, Adam, but Jesus is the one who bridged that gap. Paul, the author of Romans, writes, "When Jesus died, he brought sin down with him, and when he rose again, he brought God down with him to us. Paul is telling us again: 'God speaks to us Christians in our own language, and we do not miss a word of it' (Message, Romans 6:11). The apostle Paul says, 'This life of resurrection life that God has given us is not to be a timid or heavy life, but a life of expectant adventure, a life that is always asking God, like a child, "What's next, Daddy?"'.
I was up in the mountains today, in constant dialogue with God. It wasn't my one-sided prayer, but a time of listening to His voice and asking, "Oh, how did I not know this God until now?" I'm only now realising that it was my sin that caused my disconnection from God, and that He took it all away, so that I can have a conversation with Him again. Just as a bat emits a sound that is inaudible to the human ear, and then hears the echo and moves on with his life, so I want my shots to be in tune with the frequency of God's voice so that I can hear it again and run towards the city of Zion.
