I found the following statement from last week's book study remarkable:
"In the greatest of all demonstrations of his power, [Jehovah] resurrected his Son, Jesus."
This surprised me, but the more I thought about what it took to perform that feat, the more amazing it seemed. Being a programmer, I started to think in terms of the serialization of objects (bear with me here). An object can represent pretty much anything (customer, company, document, etc.), but an object is only "alive," so to speak, if it's loaded into memory. Once loaded, it can actively function, accept and return information, perform calculations, etc. If you pull the plug on the computer, however, the object disappears. If you want to preserve an object when the computer is powered off, or for the purpose of sending it to another computer, you need to save it to disk, a process called serialization. This can capture not only the structure and data of the object, but also information regarding the state of the object and its components (e.g., is the object currently listening to requests, or is it asleep?). The serialized object on the disk is effectively "dead," inert, unable to perform any functions. However, it may be "resurrected" at any point in the future, picking up its duties right where it left off.
I imagine the resurrection performed by Jehovah functioning similarly. At death, he saves a complete snapshot of an individual to his memory, or "disk." At the time of the resurrection, he just deserializes the person, loading him or her from disk into the physical world. Of course, his error handling routines are able to prevent the loading of defective components, so the resurrected object would avoid troublesome bugs, while still containing all the data, structure, history, and state information of the original.
Can you imagine how much disk space and processing power would be needed to do this for a human being, to recreate every memory, conscious or not, every feeling, every physical characteristic, every thought? Incredible. Is it realistic to believe that God could do this for every one of the billions of humans that have ever lived? That brings us back to the point that launched this topic: Jehovah resurrected Jesus. Jesus had been alive since the beginning of creation, perhaps for billions of years. As God's master worker, he was delegated the task of using Jehovah's power and wisdom to create the entire universe and all other living beings. He was likely endowed with essentially limitless memory, and would thus be able to recall every detail he had ever observed. Although Jehovah was the source of power, the Son would have wielded this far more mightily than any other created being. Yet, when he was executed, for three days he existed only in God's mind. It follows, then, that to restore this life, complete with all that accumulated detail and the capacity to wield unfathomable power, would be a greater demonstration of power than either the original creation of Jesus or even the creation of the entire universe. Awesome. Could we have a better guarantee of God's ability to deliver on his promises?
Posted by dan at July 5, 2004 02:48 PM | TrackBackVery true. And it seems reasonable. While out of the grasp and ability of man, even they think that it 'can' be done. There has been (a little) research into the transportation of people via signals. (Transporters) The problem is, capturing the state of every molecule, at that instant. The disasembling and even the reassembling are not the hardest parts. (Mans become good at desassembling.)
Posted by: M Kenyon at July 6, 2004 06:12 AMI accessed your site through JB's site. I just wanted to tell you that I really appreciated your comments regarding why the resurrection of Jesus was truly the greatest show of power by Jehovah. I never really thought along the lines that you brought up. Perhaps it was brought out at my bookstudy but I must have missed it or perhaps I was day dreaming about dessert night. Who knows, I just wanted you to know it really made me appreciate the amount of power it did take to resurrect Jesus.
Posted by: Shannon at July 7, 2004 03:43 PMThanks Shannon. Drop by anytime!
You bring up an interesting point Mark, and it raises all kinds of questions regarding the relationship between our physical being and the soul. Is it true that our entire being, every thought and memory, all our facilitis for making decisions, creating, feeling emotion, etc., can all be defined by a discreet arrangement of molecules? I think that might be oversimplifying things. Since the spirit realm is not bounded by our observable physical world, it seems reasonable to me that there is more to a human than an assemblage of atoms. Of course there's an evident physical component to the functioning of our brains, but when God reads hearts, is he just analyzing our physical structure? My gut tells me there's something more to a human, that you can't sum the physical parts to arive at the whole. Just speculation, of course. Perhaps one day we'll understand.
Posted by: dan at July 8, 2004 10:53 PMAn excellent guarantee indeed:
Because he has set a day in which he purposes to judge the inhabited earth in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and he has furnished a GUARANTEE to all men in that he has resurrected him from the dead. - Acts 17:31
Posted by: Tobmeister at July 25, 2004 09:51 PMThat was a good point Dan!
I thought another good point of Jehovah's justice was shown with Satan. If Satan’s accusation is correct (that man only serves Jehovah for the good things he does for us) and if no-one person was able to stand true to Jehovah, then Jehovah’s justice would not allow the killing of Satan. Now the good news is there are many Bible accounts, and faithful men of old who proved Satan a liar and we are trying everyday to do the same. Satan knows Jehovah’s justice, so he is now just trying to make as many people stumble, like a last ditch effort. We should do all we can to continue to prove Satan a liar and be able to see Jehovah’s Justice!