Chapter Four – What Is the Unknown Dimension?

Next Part Evolution Exalted and Revelation Dismissed

The world is filled with problems of every imaginable kind. Disease, pollution, poverty, ignorance, religious confusion, war, terrorism, crime, violence, hunger, immorality, slavery, oppression, political upheaval, and many, many more troubles, evils and ills, now reach virtually every nation on earth. Also, with the passing of time come more problems, not less. And existing problems grow collectively worse instead of better. Why, at every turn, has man bungled and botched all efforts to solve his truly great problems?

What has been missing?

Individually, people have never seemed more incapable of addressing and overcoming their personal problems. As with the world in general, the passing of time finds individuals and families drowning under an ever-greater sea of decadence and seemingly insurmountable difficulties. More and more millions seem completely incapable of managing their lives.

What has been overlooked?

I have described in other books how men have created many amazing technological inventions, but at the same time they cannot create solutions to their problems. I have shown that man has harnessed the power of computers to help process vast amounts of information, but human beings cannot correctly process their personal problems—that scientists have discovered a great deal about the size, magnificence and precision of the universe, but they cannot discover the path to peace—that astronomers can find majestic, beautiful new distant galaxies throughout the universe, but cannot find a way to preserve the beauty and majesty of earth next to them—that scientists have also unleashed the power of the atom, but are powerless to unleash answers to life’s greatest questions—that educators have taught millions how to earn a living, but not taught them how to live. And most tragically, that theologians have amassed thousands of opinions and theories, while leaving billions without knowledge of the purpose for human existence.

Mushrooming Fund of Knowledge

A look back into the last two centuries of scientific progress reveals an exciting and fascinating history of many inventions and breakthroughs that have emerged on a host of fronts. This has included additional knowledge and understanding of the human body.

There has also been more knowledge—and insight—into the physical anatomy and functioning of sex and the sex organs that has become widely available during the twentieth century. But this knowledge has not been able to translate into happier marriages. Rather, it has escalated into the downhill toboggan slide known as the “Sexual Revolution”—the “New Morality.”

Just as the old morality with its “sex is shameful” approach failed to yield happy, fulfilling marriages, the New Morality has likewise failed in this quest. The New Morality—now meaning without any morality—has caused marriages and the social fabric of nearly every Western nation to further deteriorate. Why has this happened? Each of these extremes, along with man’s entire spectrum of knowledge, is missing a vital dimension, long since dismissed by professors of higher learning. Knowledge of this unknown dimension would rectify the ignorance that dominates this age.

We need to examine today’s knowledge explosion and come to understand its shortfalls.

The rapid upward acceleration in the total fund of knowledge began about two centuries ago. All this technical know-how was gradual at first, until the momentum advanced to the crescendo of what could be called a non-stop explosion by the mid-twentieth century. Some alive today can remember when horses and buggies were more common than T-model automobiles and other rudimentary cars of the early 1900s. Air transportation gained in momentum about this time, along with other modes of transportation. Telephone communications steadily improved throughout the 1900s.

By the mid-twentieth century, the jet age had arrived, along with the nuclear age just behind it. By the 1960s, the space age had truly made its début. All the technological advances that marked the 19th and 20th centuries brought in their wake a new level of wealth. With this influence, people became more materialistic in their outlook and lifestyle. Modern science came to be looked upon with awe and reverence—it would bring the solution to every known trouble and ill plaguing mankind! With this science as their new god, many sought to dispel the traditional crutch of religion.

Vast numbers were deluded into thinking that once man had advanced sufficiently in knowledge, he could address and conquer all the world’s evils and problems. Of course, even the casual observer can plainly see man’s advancement across nearly every field of knowledge in just the few intervening decades.

Yet, half a century later, it is just as easy to see that man’s know-how has not lived up to his previous exalted expectations. The spiral of unhappy and unfulfilled marriages remained widespread, while the most critical piece of the puzzle had been excluded in the materialistic world that he had created.

Modern Science—False Messiah

As mankind’s mushrooming fund of knowledge accelerates, we have seen woes and evils throughout civilization accelerating at the same pace. Since increasing evils have kept pace with increasing knowledge—and even exceeded it—something must be seriously lacking with this knowledge. This can be traced back to the principle—actually the great spiritual LAW—of cause and effect. For every effect there has to be one or more causes. There is a reason mankind’s fund of knowledge has utterly failed to bring resolution to the many crises besetting it.

Before the fast pace of today took hold in the twentieth century, humanity at large had continued on a relatively even keel for millennia. The knowledge explosion of modern times has produced a type of “future shock,” as one thinker labelled it, in which man attempts to adapt to increasing technological innovations that are coming at him faster than he can process them.

There is an extraordinary, but little-known, Old Testament prophecy in which this age of incredible increase of knowledge was specifically foretold by the prophet Daniel. Here is what God inspired him to record: “O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book [his prophecy], even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and KNOWLEDGE SHALL BE INCREASED” (Dan. 12:4).

Knowledge has greatly increased, and many are now able to travel thousands of miles daily by modern air travel, high-speed trains (as in Europe and Japan), un-ending lines of automobiles and by various forms of metro-transit. As man is bombarded with new innovations, he attributes this dizzying kaleidoscope of wonders to the false Messiah of modern science.

Whether in the areas of technological innovations, space probes pushing into the frontiers of outer space or the latest medical breakthroughs, often penetrating deeper into the recesses of inner space, people now focus on the materialistic approach in their expectations from modern science. Again, in reverence to this new god, many, within the last six to eight decades, have thrown aside what they have considered to be the traditional crutch of religion. Others have reduced religion to a simple feeling derived from attending a church, while entirely disconnecting it from any kind of behaviour or conduct—and from what the Bible teaches.