Here it is friends: My new analogy on how revelation really works. This has been tempered in the fires of a hot debate with Jeffrey Giliam over the last few weeks and I think you might like it. (Or not…) <\/p>\n
The theory uses the Internet as an analogy. Imagine God has a Celestial server and our minds are the client-side computers downloading and uploading communications with him. Each of us has a unique situation — some have faster processors than others; some have faster bandwidth than others, etc. (The good news is that all can upgrade – aka repent). When it comes to the Latter Day Saints, it seems that many or even most are utilizing download capacities of about 14.4 Kbps to 28.8 Kbps. (For you novices, that is the equivalent of a painfully slow dialup connection.) It’s not that they couldn’t have faster connections; they just have spiritual spyware and other things that are limiting the connection and bogging them down. They can get some basic information downloaded, but the process is slow and tedious and amount of info that can be downloaded without losing the connections is quite limited. That means no streaming video or audio for them even if they wanted it. <\/p>\n
So what is the data God delivers? Well, we could call it all sorts of things – light, intelligence knowledge. Since God is a God of truth, for the purposes of this analogy I’ll call it “truth”. So when we are judging the quality of revelation I think it is almost entirely a function of how much truth <\/em>is downloaded. Let’s take an example like “The Vision” in Section 76. I’ll call that 1 Gigabyte (GB) of truth. On the opposite end on the scale we’ll get a simple “yes” to a question. I’ll call that 250K of truth. Again for those of you who aren’t used to these numbers I should explain that 1000K = 1 Megabyte (MB) and 1000 MB = 1 GB. So in this analogy, section 76 is the equivalent of 4000 “yes” revelations. <\/p>\n Alright, so the ability to receive that much information from God requires that our side is completely cleaned up of spyware and that our bandwidth is as fast as we can possibly get it. Obviously Joseph Smith had incredible bandwidth and processing capacity. We all want to be more like him when it comes to revelation. Increasing our personal bandwidth requires lots of practice and lots of repentance. (I have talked about that before but will go into that part another time.)<\/p>\n The suggestion I want to make is this: God delivers the data (truth) in whatever format we are most comfortable with. <\/em> In other words, if we have the bandwidth to receive a 100MB revelation, God automatically will send it to us in the media format that is most desirable and best suited to our learning style and preferences. For some it will be the equivalent text (pure knowledge), for others it play in our minds like audio (the voice of the Lord) for others it might be video (dreams and visions). Our minds and spirits become the Celestial media player and God sends us the Truth in whatever format will be easiest for us to deal with and comprehend. The media format is not all that important — the important part is that the truth gets delivered and understood. <\/p>\n Why is this useful? Well if my analogy\/theory is right, it provides an explanation why 19th century saints seemed more prone to angelic visitors and visions than 20th and 21st century saints are. They were culturally predisposed to desire that media format<\/em> while we modern American Saints are not. But here is the important part – I believe we can get the same truth in our preferred media format that they got in theirs. 100MB of truth is 100MB of truth regardless of if it is delivered as a video file (vision) or a PDF file (pure knowledge) and this is important because the “PDF style” of revelation seems to be the most commonly experienced style over the last several decades so it would refute the idea that pure knowledge revelations are inherently inferior to visions or other types. It also explains why those of other cultures even today are much more likely to have visions, angelic encounters, etc than most of us 21st century American are – they are culturally predisposed to prefer it as their Celestial media type.<\/p>\n What do you think? Am I right that the amount of Truth the only important part or is the media format in which it is delivered the most important aspect?
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