The Ancient Tradition

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Music

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You’re listening to The Ancient Tradition. A Wonk Media Production. Music provided by Joseph McDade. He is your host, Dr. Jack Logan.

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Welcome to the ancient tradition. I’m Jack Logan. Welcome to all of you. Welcome to all of the listeners listening in. Are you new listeners? I’m sure there’s plenty. And all of you long time listeners, thanks for sticking with us. For you new listeners, I just wanna give you a quick heads up at how the program is kind of organized. It’s set up to be progressive, which means that each episode kind of builds off the previous episode. And the hope is that we get this really comprehensive understanding of the theology.

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that we see showing up in the ancient record. So you can listen in on this one, but I recommend if you have got the time to go back and give a listen to the previous episode so you can get the full picture. So let’s jump into today’s episode. It’s titled, Who is God? A Glorious Being of Ineffable Light. In our last episode, we started looking into the ancient record to see if we could learn about who God is.

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And the reason that we’re doing this is because the things that we learned about God in the last episode and the things that we’re going to learn about God in this episode are indispensable to an understanding of what happens next in the creation accounts. We’ve kind of put those on hold a little bit so that we can develop this, but we’re going to return to the creation in our next episode. So this is a precursor to kind of get us ready to understand what happens next. In the last episode, we learned from the ancients that God is

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the Lord of Maat or the King of Tzedek. And both of these words, Maat and Tzedek, mean about the same thing. They mean truth and justice and righteousness. In the Bremener Rhined Papyrus, we’ve talked about this on the program before, it’s dated to around the fourth century and it’s presently housed in the British Museum, if you wanna check it out. We read a remarkable ancient Egyptian account of the creation.

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which tells us in the beginning that Maat, the cosmic law of rightness, was present when Ra created all things. I haven’t read this account to you before, so I wanna read it. This is the Wallace Budge translation, and I wanna focus on that last part about Maat. So here we go. These are the words which the god Nebiarcher, now Nebiarcher means Lord of the uttermost limit.

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after he had come into being. I am the creator of that which came into being. That is to say, I am the creator of everything which came into being. Now the things which I created and which came forth out of my mouth, interesting, so we’ve got divine under it’s there, after that I had come into being myself were exceedingly many. The sky had not come into being, the earth did not exist, and the children of the earth and the creeping things had not been made at that time.

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I myself raised them up from out of new. Now remember, new is the primordial waters. From a state of helpless inertness, I found no place whereon to stand. I worked a charm upon my own heart. Now remember, the ancient Egyptians thought the mind was in the heart. So he’s talking about conceiving the creation in his mind here. I laid the foundation of things.

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by Ma’at. It’s pretty clear from that passage that the ancient Egyptians believed that Ma’at was a primordial force, a force that existed before and enabled the creation of everything Ra desired in his heart to create out of the dark, inert, chaotic elements, the primordial waters of new. This passage tells us that it was through Ra’s upholding and or adhering to right, truth, justice, and righteousness,

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that he was able to command the elements to order themselves into a world. It was by way of his rightness that Ra was able to impose order on chaos. So now I wanna go to another book. We wanna go to the Egyptian Book of the Dead. And we’ve talked about this in the last couple of episodes, The Papyrus of Annie. It’s dated to around 1250 BC. In this text, we learn that Ma’a

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unalterable. It’s a permanent characteristic of the cosmos. So this comes from Plate 20. It reads and lo Osiris Annie triumphant in peace. The triumphant one. We got to stop here for just a second because note how Annie’s dragon slaying status is used as an epitaph here. Triumphant is used throughout the entire text as an epitaph for Annie. Every time his name is mentioned,

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he’s referred to as Annie, the triumphant one. He’s reinforcing over and over again that he has triumphed over the enemy. I think that’s really, really fascinating. I continue. Sayeth homage to thee, O thou who risest in the horizon is raw. Thou art established by a law. And the law that’s being referred to here is Ma’at. Which changeth not.

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nor can it be altered. That text almost sounds like I wrote it myself, that Ma’at doesn’t change, that it can’t be altered, but I didn’t, that text is written in 1250 BC. From this passage, we conclude that Ma’at has always been a part of the fabric of the cosmos and that it will always be a part of the cosmos. It’s unalterable. And as such, order, any type of order, cosmic, divine, natural, political, religious, marital, and familial order,

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can only be produced by following the law of rightness, which God who is the embodiment of rightness loves. We also noted in our previous episode that since the cosmic law of rightness was embedded in the very fabric of the universe, that not even God could escape its grasp.

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Yesterday morning, I was flipping through a book on Chinese mythology by a lady by the name of Shuiting Ni. She’s an expert in Chinese culture. And I came across the exact same point. Ni writes the following about China’s high god who is Di Qu’in. Now, this is what she says, quote, Di Qu’in is the oldest and highest ranking deity known as the Jade Emperor. He is the ruler of heaven.

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and is only subservient to the Tao itself. Now, if you remember from our last episode, the Tao is the counterpart in China to the Egyptian concept of Ma’at and the ancient Hebrew concept of Tzedek. So she’s saying here that the ruler of heaven is subservient to nothing but the Tao. I think that’s fascinating.

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All of this appears to be tied to another very fascinating characteristic of God, one that we find all over in the ancient writings. And I mean, it’s all over in there. The theme is so prevalent that I had to exercise some restraints so they didn’t overwhelm me with the textual evidence. I’m not really sure if I succeeded, but at least I tried. So let’s jump in.

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In nearly every single religious tradition, from the descriptions of God that we find in these, the oldest writings in the world, right up to descriptions by people who are presently living, who have endured near death experiences, God is universally described as a glorious being of ineffable light. And of course, I wanna know why. Why is God described as a being of light?

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And why is he a being of light? What does this mean? Why is he a being of light and we are not? So we have a lot of questions to answer here. Let’s take a look at some of the evidence, the textual evidence in the ancient writings that describe God as a glorious being first. If we start with the ancient Egyptians, this is pretty easy to see. Most people have heard of the ancient Egyptian God Ra, sometimes referred to as Ray, who is the oldest

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and arguably the most important god in the ancient Egyptian pantheon. Richard A. Wilkinson, in his book that I’ve referred to on the program, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, he says this about Ray, quote, Ray was the first king as well as the creator of kingship. The god ruled on earth over his creation until according to legend he became old.

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Then Reh departed to the heavens where he continued to rule. So there’s the heavenly kingship motif. And also acted as the ancestor of the King of Egypt. In the pyramid text, we find the combined Reh Atum, called the father of the king. By the fifth dynasty, the quote, son of Reh Epitaph, the king’s titular, formalized this mythical relationship for the rest of Egyptian history.

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rulership under Re was synonymous with right rulership or rule according to Ma’at. I wanted to start with this description of Re first because some scholars argue that the ancient Egyptians believed that the sun was actually the god Re and that the god Re was actually the sun. Now there may have been some ancient Egyptians who believed this and there’s plenty of ancient

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Like most of what we see in ancient Egypt, the equating of Ray with the sun is probably meant to be understood symbolically, which seems much more probable since we just learned from Richard Wilkinson that ancient Egyptians also taught that Ray created the world, reigned on earth as a king, departed and now rules in heaven as a heavenly king. It’s kind of hard to reconcile that description of Ray with the notion that he is literally the sun, S-U-N.

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I can think of many, many ways in which the actual sun can serve as a very outpropos symbol for God. For example, the sun could symbolize that God is the source of life, that he resides in the center of all things, that his light illuminates the world. We could go on and on and on. And in a couple of minutes, we’re gonna look at that. We’re gonna explore a couple of direct comparisons along those lines. So let’s jump into the ancient texts.

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Let’s start with the pyramid text. In pyramid text 405, which is found in King Tete’s pyramid, the dead King Tete compares his exalted appearance in the afterlife to the god, Ray. And the text reads, quote, “‘Oh, Ray, you shine as me. “‘I shine as you.'” Very intriguing. In pyramid text 409, the dead King Tete exclaims, quote,

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I am the bull of light. Bull here refers to one who is a god. So a bull of light is a god of light, which they often associated with celestial objects in the sky like the sun or the moon or particular stars. In ancient Egypt gold was used to represent the flesh of the gods. Flesh which is brilliant and radiant like light. Which interestingly,

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is why in the Indiana Jones movies, the idol is always made of gold. The fact that idols are almost always made of gold, whether they be in Egypt, Cambodia, Japan, or among the Hindu, is actually further evidence that the ancients understood God to be a God of effulgent, radiant light. In Pyramid Text 9, in King Pepe the First Pyramid, the deceased King Pepe is referred to as, quote,

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the golden one. In pyramid text 467 the deceased King Pepe says quote, here am I Ray, I am your son, I shine in the east like Ray, I row Ray in the sky’s span, a star of gold. In pyramid text 508 the deceased King Pepe tells us how Ray’s

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I have gone up to raise place. I have laid down for myself that sunlight of yours as a footpath under my feet. I love that text. In Pyramid Text 540, the deceased King Pepe says this of Osiris’s heavenly temple. Quote, I have come to you Osiris in the compound of gold. Okay, let’s go back to the Egyptian Book of the Dead in the Papyrus of Annie.

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We get even better descriptions of God as a being of light. On plate two, the hymn to Osiris, it says this of the God Osiris, quote, homage to thee, king of kings, Lord of lords, prince of princesses, thy body is of gold, beautiful in countenance. On plate 11, it says this of Osiris, quote, Osiris shineth.

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On plate 20, it says this of the god, Ray. Quote, hail thou disk, thou lord of rays, shine thou with thy beams of light upon the face of Osiris Annie, who is victorious. Sheddest thy beams of light, thou art beautiful, yea, beautiful, all the gods rejoice when they behold thee, the king of heaven. Plate 21 reads, quote, oh, thou mighty light.

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who shinest in the heavens, thou art glorious by reason of thy splendors, glorious in majesty.” And also on this plate, we see God’s light associated with terror, which is a theme that we see quite often. Speaking of Ray, it says,

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On plate 28, Annie says this of the girdle or the robe of God. Quote, it shineth and shedeth light, which abideth in his presence and sendeth forth light into the darkness. As the deceased Annie gets closer and closer to where the God Osiris dwells in the afterlife, he says this of the change in environment on plate 11. He says, quote, lo, the blazing fire.

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the flame whereof cannot be quenched with tongues of flame which reach afar. Okay, let’s turn to the Mesopotamians. A professor by the name of Dr. Thavipallan, she earned her degree from Yale and she presently works at the Department of Egyptology and Assyriology at Brown University. She’s done a lot of research on the gods and light in Mesopotamia and this is what she says, quote,

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The concept of brightness was highly significant for Mesopotamian religious thought, in which the gods were conceptualized as numinous beings imbued with an active radiance. Akkadian religious poetry is richly laden with language that emphasizes both the visual — namru, which means dazzling and shining — and psychological — melumu, which means awe-inspiring radiance.

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aspects of this divine brilliance. We can see a little bit of this in the hymn to Shamash, and it refers to the God Shamash like this, quote, “‘Illuminator of all, the whole of heaven, who makes light the darkness for humankind above and below. Your radiance spreads out like a net above the whole world.'” We can find in another hymn to Shamash, it says this.

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quote, Oh, most exalted, perfect one, air of nom, rat, sit, Oh, ever renewing light who brings happiness to the people who sets free, Oh, sham us, who brings order. Very interesting to the dead and the living who sees everything. Oh, shamash light of heaven and earth, radiance of the lands. Dr. Thavapalan continues. She says, quote,

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In everyday practice of religious worship, the concept of divine radiance found visual expression through the shining of colorful metals, mainly gold, silver, and their alloys, and gemstones with which cult statues and spaces were fashioned. Anthropomorphized statues of the gods were made of gold, silver, bronze, and precious colored gems. Again, just like we see in the Indiana Jones movies.

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Do you remember King Ashurnasurpa II, who reigned between 883 and 859 BC? We’ve talked about him on the program. Well, in one of his inscriptions, he notes that he fashioned a temple to the god Ninurta. Do you remember Ninurta? Ninurta was one of the Mesopotamian selfless sons who fought the wicked on Superd. King Ashurnasurpa II fashioned a temple to Ninurta using gold.

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so that it matched Nunerta’s glory in the divine realm. And the inscription says, quote, “‘I decorated the suite of the shrine “‘of the god Nunerta, my lord, “‘with gold and lapis lazuli.'” Dr. Thavapala notes that the luminous associated with Mesopotamian gods was actually understood by the Mesopotamians to be more than just a visual description of the gods. And this is what she writes, and this is really important. She says,

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The concept of Melamu, whose semantic range includes aspects of literal energy, splendor, efficacy, supernormal potency, and majesty, is said to be a property of gods, kings, and weapons. The word is often explained as luminosity or splendor in modern Akkadian dictionaries, but these translations fail to capture the idea that Melamu is both a

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property and an active force capable of protection and destruction than a mere attribute. A king endowed with mellomu may easily overwhelm a foe. Mellomu describes their vital life force with the implication of awe and terror. What Dr. Thavapalan is saying here is really, really intriguing. She’s telling us that the Mesopotamian gods radiated in effulgent light.

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precisely because they embodied a literal energy and power, an energy and power that shined, an energy and power that emitted a splendid light. And this sounds similar to what we see with physical light. Visual light is energy we can see. When the electrons in an atom are heated up, they emit a photon, the tiniest known particle of light. Photons are a quantum or packet of energy.

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Quantum actually means quantity or amount, and it refers to the tiniest possible particle of any substance on the subatomic level. So now we’re in some pretty interesting territory and possibilities when it comes to God’s light. Of course, at this point, I wanna know how God got this luminescent energy and power. And we’ll get to that, but we won’t be able to get to that until our next episode.

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Before I leave Mesopotamia, I want to note that in the Enuma Elish, the light that the gods emit is referred to as, quote, the mantle of radiance. In tablet four of the Enuma Elish, the author describes Marduk in the following manner. This is what it says, quote, his body was filled with an ever blazing flame. His head was crowned with a terrible radiance. I love how the ancients write.

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Okay, among the ancient Israelites, in Deuteronomy chapter four, verse 24, Yahweh’s described as fire. It reads, quote, for the Lord your God is a consuming fire. In the Old Testament, Ezekiel sees the glory of God on his throne. And you’re gonna be able to easily catch the references to precious stones and fire and gold and light here.

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But I also want you to note in these verses how God is described as a man, a glorified man who sits on a throne, who has loins and who speaks. So give this a listen. This is Ezekiel chapter one, verses 26 to 28. It reads, “‘And above the firmament that was over their heads “‘was the likeness of a throne “‘as the appearance of a sapphire stone. “‘And upon the likeness of the throne

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was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it. And I saw the color of amber as the appearance of fire round about within it. From the appearance of his loins even upward and from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire and it had brightness around about as the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain,

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So was the appearance of the brightness around about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face and I heard a voice of one that spake. Now listen to this. Listen to what God tells Ezekiel to do in chapter two, verse one. This is what happens. And he said unto me, son of man,

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stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee.” So did you catch what God asked Ezekiel to do? He asked him to stand. Now where have we heard this before? This is the same thing Christ asked Enoch to do and Azanath to do when they fell to their knees when they witnessed his glory. I find this theme so interesting. In Psalm 104 verse 2,

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it says the Lord quote, coverest thyself with light as a garment. Okay, let’s turn to the Christians now. My favorite description of God is found in the New Testament in Revelation chapter one, verses 12 to 17. Here, John the Revelator is shown Christ’s full glory. Now keep in mind, John walked the earth with Christ when he was on the earth.

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And now he’s experiencing God’s full glory. So you’re gonna easily catch the description of God’s glory here, but also note in this passage how God has hair, eyes, feet, hands, and a voice. Okay, this is what it says, quote, and I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks. This is the menorah, the stylized version of the tree of life.

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And in the midst of the seven candlesticks, one likened to the Son of Man. From this verse, we’ve pointed this out before on the podcast, we’re clearly supposed to see that Christ is the tree of life. He’s standing in the midst of the tree. Quote, closed with a garment down to the foot and girt about the paps with a golden girdle, which he wears because he slayed the Leviathan. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow.

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and his eyes were as a flame of fire, and his feet likened to brass, as if they burned in a furnace, and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars, and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.” At this point, what do you think John did?

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Well, he did what Enoch and Azanath and Ezekiel did. He fell to the ground, overcome by the fullness of Christ’s glory. He had no idea. In verse 17, it reads, quote, “‘And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead.'” Now, John must have been terrified. As the ancient texts tell us that most are when they

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come into the presence of God in the fullness of his glory and light because Christ does the following in the rest of verse 17 and I find this so tender. The text reads, speaking of Christ, quote, and he laid his right hand upon me saying unto me, fear not. I love that. I think it’s great.

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Mircea Eliade notes that the peoples of the Arctic and Central Asia, the Tatars of the Altir, refer to God as the quote white light. The Ostiax and the Vogels refer to God as quote luminous, golden white, and good golden light from on high. The Buryats speak of where God dwells as quote the house dwelling with gold and silver, and the Alti peoples of a palace with a gold door.

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and a golden throne. Eliade also says this of Indo-European gods. Certain it is that the Indian daios, the Roman Jupiter, the Greek Zeus, the Germanic god, Tiazio, whose very names reveal the original twofold meaning of light and sacred. You know, there’s a litany of cultures who have associated God with the glory of the sun. The Maya god Hunapu,

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the Arabian god Malachabel, the Buddhist god Syria, the Canaanite god Baal, the Turkic god Goyash, the Persian god Mithra, the Basque god Ikki, the Greek god Apollo, the Slavic god Horus, and I could go on and on and on and on, but I think you get the picture. The ancient record is rife with descriptions of God as a glorious being of ineffable light. In Hinduism, in the Hindu scripture,

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The Bhagavad Gita, chapter 11, verse 12, it says this of the God Vishnu’s supreme form. It says, quote, if there were a thousand suns rising up in the sky, they might resemble the radiance of the supreme person in that universal form. Among the Hopi of the American Southwest, Tawa, the supreme being who created the earth, says this of himself.

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in the Hopi creation story that was recorded by New Mexico history. It says, quote, I am Tawa. I am light. I am life. Of course, what I’ve just given you is a very small sampling of all of the ancient texts and myths that speak of God as a being of splendid light. In modern times, we have additional witnesses to God as a being of ineffable light in near-death experiences. Now,

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I don’t believe everything I hear in near-death experiences. You never know what motivates people to put things on the internet. And there’s actually quite a few contradictory accounts out there. But when we stick to the stubborn bits, those parts of near-death experiences that seem to show up time and again, we find that seeing and or experiencing God as a being of light is one of the most persistent themes. So in this episode, I’d like to share a couple of these accounts.

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As you listen to these individuals share their experience, note how they both describe and experience God’s light. The first account comes from a woman named Diane Sherman, who died during a routine knee surgery. And I thought if I can just find one little tiny glimmer of light, one little speck of something to hold on to, I’ll be okay.

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And as I see this one little spot of light, I think, I’m gonna just hang in with it and it’s gonna be okay and I’m gonna be okay. And you know, I just worked that inside of myself. And as I’m staring at it, it’s starting to get bigger and bigger and bigger and it’s coming closer and closer. And all of a sudden it’s just, it’s everything around me.

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And I’m looking at the light and I’m thinking, what is this? Because it was like clouds. The white is a color I’ve never seen before. It almost has like all the colors of the rainbow in it, but it’s white. You know, it has this glistening effect to it. It wasn’t just light, it was substance and feeling. And it’s all around me. It’s all I can see, all I can feel, all I can experience.

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and I don’t have words for it. How do you describe unconditional love? I don’t know how to describe it. All I know is I have never felt so cared about, adored, cherished, safe. Anything you’d ever wish for to have in the world in that moment is what I felt.

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This next account comes from Tony Secoria, who died when he was struck by lightning.

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It was like I had suddenly fallen into a river of pure positive energy. There was a bluish white light that this energy emanated from. If you could imagine an energy that’s completely composed of love and peace, there were no other emotions, no other senses that I had except that.

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and it was it was just earth-shaking to feel that much love and peace coming from this source.

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And it came to me that this must be the God energy. This is what makes everything. And I thought, you know, this is the greatest thing that could ever happen to somebody to have this realization and to have this feeling. And that’s the only time I’ve ever experienced anything like that. And…

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in my whole life.

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This final account comes from a man named Bill Tortella who died from a virus.

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I left my body!

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through this beautiful fluorescent glowing mist hovering over my body, looking down upon myself. And when I recognized that body wasn’t alive anymore, this beam came from behind me so bright, it lit up everything underneath me. And it drew me right into the gateway, this beautiful tunnel.

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The tunnel was made up of magnificent color. And now I am starting to move. But I’m feeling this amazing feeling. I have a feeling like I never had before, a love. The love was so incredible that you actually become the love.

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Now you’re in this light, you’re part of this light, and I’m moving at what seems to me like the speed of light. No debris, no nothing, just light, beautiful colors whizzing by me, going through me. And this love is growing stronger and stronger. By the time I get to my destination, I remember distinctively saying, I’m home.

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I’m finally home.

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I think those experiences do a really nice job of highlighting the importance of God’s light. From the ancient Mesopotamian descriptions that were studied by Dr. Thavapalan to the ones that we just listened to in modern times who have experienced God’s light as part of a near-death experience, it’s pretty clear that God’s light is something far more than what you and I know as physical light.

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God’s light seems to have the capacity to do so much more than what physical light in our temporal existence has the capacity to do. God’s light appears to be much, much more powerful and efficacious than the light of the sun. Even though there are likely considerable differences between God’s light and physical light, there’s a scripture in the Bible in Psalms, chapter 19, verse one, that implies that the physical light that God created is patterned.

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after God’s divine light, or at a minimum that it’s a type of God’s light. Psalm 19 verse one reads, quote, the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth his handiwork. We haven’t had a chance to talk about this yet, but the ancients recognized that God created everything in the temporal world to testify of him, to teach us stuff about him.

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And there’s actually quite a few nifty parallels between the physical creation and God. We’ll explore those in a future episode. But just to give you a quick example, the ancients recognized that the sun and the moon and the seasons and even the days of the week all attested to the reality of physical resurrection and spiritual rebirth. And these were very important theological components of the ancient tradition.

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I think it’s perfectly plausible to surmise that when God created the world, He patterned physical light after His divine light so that we could learn more about Him, so that we can understand more about who He is. So let’s look at what we can learn about God’s light from what the ancients wrote down and some of the things that we just learned in those near-death experiences. Let’s look at a few of these.

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it’s pretty clear that God’s light has this unique capacity to transmit God’s love directly from his being into every single particle in the cosmos. And even more importantly, directly into the very essence of human beings. From those accounts, God’s light seems to be a really immersive experience. Being wrapped in God’s light is akin to being wrapped in God’s love.

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And did you know how the closer that Bill got to God, the closer to the light, the more intensely he felt his love? This is pretty similar to the physical light of the sun. The sun is 93 million miles away, but it has the capacity to warm every single particle on the earth. As we move closer and closer to the sun, the more intensely we feel the sun’s warmth. So much so that if we drew too close,

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and we didn’t have proper protection, we would find the heat unbearable. And if we stayed there too long, we’d be utterly consumed by unquenchable fire. And these are actually very similar to what things are said in the Bible about those who approach God when they’re unprepared or they approach God unworthily. Although light seems to operate in some ways that are pretty analogous to physical light, there’s actually some really important and

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actually pretty amazing differences too. For starters, we see here that God’s supernal light has the unique capacity to transmit love, to directly transmit his love and adoration to all of his creations. When I’ve stood in physical sunlight, I’ve felt warmth, but I have never felt love. Only God’s supernal light seems to be able to do that. Okay, number two.

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We learned from Tony Socoria’s account and from Dr. Thavapalan’s research in Mesopotamia that God’s light was understood to be quote, a literal form of energy. In physics, so if we’re gonna look at some physics, energy is the word used to describe the capacity to do work. In our lived experience here on earth, energy is required to accomplish literally every single aspect of our existence.

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For example, energy is needed to grow rice. Energy is needed to transform that rice into rice krispies. Energy is needed to box up the rice krispies. Energy is needed to transport the rice krispies boxes to the store. Energy is needed to power the car that gets us to the store to purchase the rice krispies. Energy is needed to make the bowl that holds the rice krispies. Energy is needed to pour the rice krispies into the bowl.

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Energy is needed to lift the spoon, holding the rice krispies into our mouth. So you get the picture. Literally nothing can be accomplished without energy. What the angels are telling us is that God’s light is radiating a literal form of energy, an energy that has the capacity to do great work. And as we’ll talk about more in just a second,

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God’s light radiates an energy that has the capacity to do never ending work, eternal work. We know here in the temporal world that physical light and energy are inextricably connected. See, physical light, as I mentioned earlier, is made up of those photons, quantum packets of light, and it’s those quantum packets that carry energy through space.

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When plants and trees tap into the photons of physical light, work is accomplished. The trees grow and oxygen for you and me is produced. And when Joe hangs a solar panel on his roof and taps into those photons, work is accomplished. Joe’s lights turn on in his fridge and his dishwasher and his TV work. The ability of light to carry energy across vast distances and through the vast expanse of space itself

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is one of the most remarkable aspects of physical light. We can harness the energy of the sun precisely because light carries that energy from the sun right down to us here on earth. And it’s that light energy that fuels the very existence of life on earth. Just ask the flora and fauna. God’s supernal light appears to be similar to physical light in the sense that God’s light can carry

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or is imbued with energy, the capacity to do work, and accordingly then the capacity to bring about life. This is a remarkable feature of God because it indicates that God has the ability to send energy into any region of the cosmos that he so chooses directly by way of the light that radiates from his being. This is amazing.

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Although God’s light appears to be similar to physical light, it also appears to be somewhat different. Here on earth, scientists are constantly looking for what are referred to as renewable energy sources, energy that can be replenished or regenerated naturally. But even this is problematic, because as we learned in episode number 14, the terrifying second law of thermodynamics, that our sun will eventually burn out.

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and will be left without a source of energy to sustain life on planet Earth. We’ll all die. This is where the energy radiated by God’s light appears to be different. See, the second law of thermodynamics states that, quote, in an isolated system, entropy will always increase with time. This means that without a force to reverse it, everything in an isolated system will eventually move from a state of order to disorder. And when that happens,

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disease, decay, degradation, disintegration, and death are the result. In this scenario, disorder triumphs. That’s terrifying. I hope you’re all following where we’re going with this. See, the ancients taught that there is a force in the cosmos that produces the opposite effect of the second law of thermodynamics, a force that causes everything in the cosmos

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to move from a state of disorder to order. And when that happens, peace, harmony, immortality, health, abundance, fertility, and unity are the result. Order is the result. And what is this force? This force that moves everything from a state of disorder to order? Now take a minute and think about this. In our last episode,

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What did we learn from the ancients was the only thing that could produce order in the cosmos? Any kind of order.

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If you said ma’at or tzedek, you are correct. The ancients taught that adhering to the cosmic law of rightness is the only thing that can produce order, period. There’s no circumventing it, not even God can circumvent it. It’s the law that governs the cosmos. So what are the implications of this law for the energy that radiates from God’s being?

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Well, what this means is that because God fully adheres to the cosmic law of rightness, that he’s not subject to the second law of thermodynamics. He’s not subject to disorder of any type. It’s the antithesis of who he is. Whereas in the temporal world, due to the second law of thermodynamics, all energy, because it moves from a state of order to disorder, will eventually lose all of its work potential.

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God’s energy because he is the Lord of Maat and the King of Tzedek, one who perfectly upholds rightness, the ordering power in the cosmos, will never lose any of its work potential ever. This is pretty mind-blowing because this means that the energy radiated by God’s light is eternal. God’s energy will never run out.

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It will never be subject to thermodynamic entropy, ever. God is the ultimate source of renewable energy. Let’s see if I can break down the connection between Ma’at and eternal energy for you in just the simplest form. So A, the ancients taught that a single, all-encompassing law governs everything in the cosmos. B, the ancients taught that this cosmic law,

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known as Ma’at among the Egyptians, is established on the principle of Rightness, sometimes translated as righteousness, truth, and justice. c. According to this cosmic law, Rightness produces order in the cosmos, all types of order, including the order of subatomic particles. And conversely, Unrightness produces disorder in the cosmos.

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types of disorder including the disorder of subatomic particles D Thus one who fully adheres to rightness God would have the power to produce order perfect order in all things including the order of subatomic particles E Under God the molecules or subatomic particles would not become dis

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ordered over time. They would stay ordered and thus would never lose their work potential. God’s energy would never be subject to thermodynamic death. God’s energy would be eternal, which is just amazing. Now if you’re wondering if God could ever kind of run out of energy, kind of like running out of gas, the answer is no. And that’s because if you recall,

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According to the first law of thermodynamics, energy can neither be created nor destroyed. So there literally would be no way to run out of energy. There’s an infinite quantity of energy out there in the cosmos. It’s just a matter of knowing how to order the subatomic particles so that they never lose their work potential, which is something that God, because he upholds rightness,

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has the knowledge and the power to do. I hope you’re beginning to see how truly awesome God’s light is. That glorious light that when John the Revelator saw it, he dropped to the ground as if dead. From this little discussion, we’re beginning to see why. Imbued in God’s supernal light is a source of energy that’s beyond the feeble comprehension of our mortal minds.

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for God’s energy is enough energy to sustain everything and anything in the cosmos that God so desires. That amount of energy is truly unfathomable when we consider that in 2022, just in the United States, Americans used over 100 quadrillion BTUs, which are British thermal units of energy. That’s an enormous amount of energy.

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Now consider the amount of energy coming from the sun. NASA estimates that just last year, some 44 quadrillion watts of power fell on the earth. So this is just on the earth. Now the average electric power plant produces one billion watts of power. So to put this in human terms, it would take 44 million power plants to equal the energy.

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coming from the sun annually. 44 million power plants. I don’t even know where we would put them all. The energy that radiates from God’s core is similar to, but different from the energy that we encounter in the temporal world. God’s light radiates with an energy that can ignite stars, breathe life into the void, and weave the tapestry of existence itself. Number three.

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building upon what we’ve just learned about God’s light, its ability to radiate divine love and to transmit energy into the cosmos. We learned from Dr. Thavapalan’s research that the ancient Mesopotamians understood God’s light to be more than a mere passive presence. They taught that it was an active force. God’s light didn’t just permeate the cosmos, it interacted with the cosmos, with his creations in a dynamic way.

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In other words, the ancient Mesopotamians understood that there was a literal power to the light, a power that Dr. Thavapalan said inspired awe and terror. This characteristic of God’s light is also similar to what we see with physical light. Physical light can be extremely powerful. Right now in the United States, the Department of Defense has a high energy laser program.

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and it’s appropriately called HEL, H-E-L, High Energy Laser, where they have successfully used high energy lasers to blow missiles out of the sky. That’s power, that’s the power of light, it’s light that can do that. And everyone knows that lasers are made of light, but did you know that lasers are an especially ordered type of light? Unlike the diffuse and scattered light that emanates from a conventional light bulb,

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The light in a laser is organized so that the photons move together in the same direction. And it’s that meticulous alignment or orderliness that grants the laser beam its extraordinary, powerful capabilities. I find that kind of interesting. If the US Department of Defense can use light to protect the US from a variety of enemy threats, one can only imagine what God can do with his light.

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how God could use his light as a form of protection and power. And there are a number of other ways in which physical light is powerful outside of blowing missiles out of the sky. For example, when we stand in the sun, our bodies convert sunlight into vitamin D3. This vitamin is vital for calcium absorption, immune defense, muscle function, mood regulation. And when we have the…

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proper levels of vitamin D3 in our system, we’re much less likely to get osteoporosis or to experience inflammation or get infections or suffer from depression. It has the power to heal. That’s power. That’s the power of light. Another example of the power of physical light can be found in a pretty darn amazing emerging technology called quantum computing.

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In regular computers, we have bits, which are like switches, and they can be either be turned on, which is one, or turned off, which is a zero. But in quantum computers, photons of light, which are referred to as qubits, quantum bits, can be in multiple states at once. So they can be on and they can be off, or they can be both, but all at the same time. This means, say, if you wanted to test various compositions of a cancer-fighting drug,

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In a normal computer, you’d have to test each composition one after another. But in a quantum computer, you could test all of the compositions all at once. So problems that would take regular computers hundreds of years to solve, like tackling the mysteries of the universe or cracking some super complex encryption codes could theoretically be solved in days or even hours. You can already see how this is gonna change the world.

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Right now, Microsoft is working on a quantum computer capable of carrying out one million operations in a second. All of this because of light. That’s power and pun intended, a quantum leap forward. If we human beings can do this with light, just imagine the powerful things God could do with his light. Have you ever wondered

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or pondered about the astounding capability God has to listen and to respond to the countless prayers lifted up to him daily? I certainly have. Or how about the profound notion that God knows each one of us deeply and personally, all eight billion of us on the earth, and is aware of every detail of our lives at any given moment? I certainly have. I’ve always wondered how God can do this. How can he know everything that’s going on

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on planet Earth in any given moment? Well, quantum computing might give us a clue. If the mere mortals at Microsoft have developed a quantum computer capable of carrying out one million operations in a single second, then it’s conceivable that God could use his light to process billions upon billions of bits of information simultaneously too. Number four, the last thing I wanna talk about in terms of God’s light comes from the Judeo-Christian tradition.

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In the Gospel of John, in the New Testament, we learn that God’s light has the ability to transmit truth and knowledge. John chapter 1 verse 9 reads, referring to Christ’s light, quote, that was the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. So let’s look at a couple of New Testament commentaries and see what they have to say about this verse.

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McLaren’s expositions argues that Christ’s light here refers to, quote, the illumination of humanity. Barnes’ notes says Christ’s light is a light that, quote, enlightens, removes darkness, error, and ignorance from the mind. Meyer’s New Testament commentary says this of Christ’s light, quote, a characteristic of the true light. It illumines.

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everyone, even though as a matter of fact the illumination is not received by many. In the pulpit commentary says this of Christ’s light, quote, the light of reason and conscience, the divine instruction bestowed on every man from the universal manifestation of the Logos life. No man is left without some direct communication of light.

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Each of these commentaries interpret Christ’s light as having the ability to transmit truth and knowledge directly to human beings. In our ever decaying society, I find this an incredible gift. Here John is telling us that each person born into the world carries some of Christ’s light, truth and knowledge around with them, in their being. This is incredible.

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I’m going to pause it along with the pulpit commentary that some of the truth and knowledge that God deposited in each of us when we came into this world has something to do with the cosmic law of rightness, ascetic. The internal knowledge that each of us has that allows us to distinguish between right and wrong. We all know the difference. We all know it’s not right to lie and cheat and still. We just know.

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And John’s telling us here why we just know, because God transmitted that knowledge to us through his light. Can you imagine a world where Christ didn’t transmit this knowledge? A world where human beings couldn’t distinguish between right and wrong? I don’t even wanna fathom it. God’s ability to transmit truth and knowledge directly to human beings through his light is an absolutely beautiful gift.

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A gift that if we want to conquer the enemy, the dragon, we must have or we will fail. Remember in episode number 20, epic swords, golden bows and ruby slippers, how in the legend of Fafnir, the high god Odin in disguise thrust an epic sword into the barn stoker tree and then told Sigmund, quote, the man to pull out this sword from the trunk shall receive it for me as a gift.

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and he will find out for himself that he never bore in hand a better sword than this. Well, the sword, the gift, is truth and knowledge. The truth and knowledge that Sigurd needs to obtain if he is to be successful in his battle against the terrible dragon Fafnir. In the New Testament, Paul says as much to the Ephesians in chapter 6.

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when he tells the Ephesians to put on the whole armor of God, and then he tells them in verse 16 to gird themselves with the quote, sword of the spirit. From John chapter one, verse nine, we see that God gives everyone who comes into the world a foundational understanding of truth and knowledge. But like we learned from the legend of Fafnir, not everyone can metaphorically pull the sword out of the barn stoker tree. Not everyone can obtain

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greater truth and knowledge from God, unless they do what God asks them to do to receive that greater truth and knowledge. I don’t know if you caught this earlier when we read John the Revelator’s account of witnessing Christ in his full glory, but in that account, John also connects the sword to truth and knowledge, to the truth and knowledge that comes directly from God’s mouth.

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And this is how John describes Christ in Revelation chapter one, verse 16. It reads, and he had in his hand seven stars, and out of his mouth went a sharp, two-edged sword. See, in the ancient texts, legends and fairy tales, the sword that slays the dragon, the special weapon that the selfless son,

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is gifted by God is a metaphor. It’s a metaphor for the special weapon that all of us need, that all of us must pull out of the barn stoker tree if we wish to conquer the dragon. And what is that weapon? It’s the truth and knowledge that comes from God’s mouth. Truth and knowledge that is transmitted to human

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to the theology of the ancient tradition. So we’ll definitely revisit it. Now, lest you think that this teaching is a purely Judeo-Christian doctrine, think back on how special weapons, especially special swords, played a critical role in all of the battles against the dragon that we’ve covered on this program, from Egypt to Mesopotamia to Ugarit to Israel to Norway to China to Japan.

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In all of these traditions, it’s the sword that’s the weapon that slays the dragon. I’m getting a little off topic here, so I want to draw you back to God’s light. It’s through God’s light that we obtain truth and knowledge. Just think on this for a minute. Imagine everything God knows and all of the truth that he holds. Now imagine him downloading that information into you through his light.

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Could you just imagine the things that you’d know, the things that you’d understand, the things that you’d be able to do? Imagine how you’d be able to discern people’s motives, discern who was lying and who wasn’t, discern what was true and what wasn’t. That’s the knowledge God’s light can relay or reveal to us. In the world we live in, I don’t know about you, but I need this. Now, the ability of God to transmit truth and knowledge through light,

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is similar to the way in which we see physical light used to transmit information today. And this is done primarily through fiber optic networks. If you aren’t familiar with fiber optics, basically the technology takes something like a simple text, text message, and turns it into flashes of light, similar to those ones and zeros, where different patterns of light represent different information. It then sends those encoded light beams down a strand of glass thinner than a human hair.

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The light blazes through the glass cable at nearly the speed of light, where it’s decoded at the other end. And this technology serves as the backbone of the internet and all of our modern telecommunication systems. Nearly everything you do all day long that has to do with exchanging information is done by way of light. This technology is amazing, not only because it can transfer information at nearly the speed of light.

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but also because these tiny fibers can carry an incredible amount of data all at once. Consider the way humans are already using light to transmit vast amounts of information. We shouldn’t be the least surprised to learn that God uses his light to transfer truth and knowledge to those wanting and seeking greater truth and knowledge. And we can take great, great comfort

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that the truth and knowledge we receive from God is never wrong, outdated, biased, manipulated, sensationalized, fake, spun, false, inaccurate, misleading, malicious, or untrue. No, it never could be. Why? Because as we established in the previous episode, first and foremost, God is a

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a Lord of Maat and a King of Tzedek. In the world that we live in where misinformation, disinformation, falsehoods, and lies are becoming the norm, we need the sword of truth transmitted via God’s light more than ever. In summary, ancients and moderns alike attest that

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of ineffable light. This episode has reinforced the notion illustrating the profound and immeasurable qualities of God’s light. His light has the ability to infuse every particle in the universe with His love. His light has the ability to produce the energy needed to sustain all of His creations. His light is all-powerful, capable of affecting His will.

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And most significantly in our times, God’s light possesses the extraordinary capacity to impart truth and knowledge directly to every single one of us, so that we too might come off triumphant and conquer the enemy. That’s an ineffable light indeed.

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That’s it for me. I’ll leave you with the words of William Shakespeare. Knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven. I’m Jack Logan.

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You’ve been listening to the Ancient Tradition. A Wonk Media Production.