Flatlanders

--by David Brandt Berg, March 13, 1971

THIS MAY SEEM LIKE A STRANGE LESSON ON THE SUBJECT OF DAILY PRACTICAL LIVING--to jump off the deep end by diving first into the realm of the spirit and spirits--the spirit world, that mysterious dimension of eternal realities, the living world of forever rather than the dying world of Now--the everlasting realm of Eternity rather than the temporary space of Time--that fascinating dimension which is largely unseen by us in mortal flesh rather than this mundane plane which is so temporary. Wherefore, brethren, "set your affections on things above not on things on the earth, for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal."..."For by faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter"--he could have been the king of Egypt--"but choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasure in Egypt, for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward. By faith, he forsook Egypt not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible!"

ALL GOD'S CHILDREN OF FAITH SINCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR AN UNSEEN WORLD, "a City which hath Foundations," Eternal Foundations, " whose Builder and Maker is God.--Not having received the promises but having seem them afar off, confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth that seek a country--a better country--that is, an Heavenly! Wherefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God for He hath prepared for them a City, just such a place, the Heavenly City, which will come down from God out of Heaven and dwell with men. This is the hope of all ages: that now-unseen Eternal World where we shall dwell with Him forever--the Heavenly City described in Revelation 21 and 22 and mentioned many other places. That's what we're all looking forward to: not pie in the sky but Heaven on earth--a new Heaven and a new earth with its Eternal City.

BUT EVEN NOW, HIS INVISIBLE HEAVENLY KINGDOM IS ALREADY IN OPERATION AND EXISTENCE! It not only surrounds us, but is within us. As Jesus said, "The Kingdom of God is within you"..."for if My Kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight; but My Kingdom is not of this world. "In other words, not after the fashion of this world with its earthly, carnal, flesh and blood kingdoms of evil men and evil spirits, but a now invisible Kingdom of His Spirit which is already within us and which "now we see only through a glass darkly, then face to face. Now we only know in part but then we shall know even as also we are known;" the amazing realm of the Spirit, the Kingdom of God, where everything is much clearer, more real and everlasting. For the fashion of this world passeth away, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever!

I COULD HARDLY BEGIN TO DESCRIBE THIS SPIRITUAL KINGDOM of the Now, much less the Future, for all we know about it is what we read in the Bible, have heard from the testimony of others, and witnessed in our own experience which is still very limited. But I have told you a few things and it may be that the Lord will permit me to tell you more and try to help you to understand!

TO MAKE IT VERY SIMPLE PERHAPS WE COULD TAKE A VERY CHILDLIKE LITTLE SO-CALLED SCIENTIFIC APPROACH with our tiny little finite minds to attempt some comprehension of this almost incomprehensible realm--not the one of the Future, but the one in which we are now living; not in the flesh, but in the Spirit--the Fifth Dimension. As you know, science tells us that there are four dimensions comprising the existence of matter; all material objects in order to exist must have length, breadth, depth--which comprise space--and one more which is called time. Einstein's theories brought this out very clearly--that time and space are definitely related in his theory of relatively, that nothing can occupy material space without time. It must have time to exist!

I HOLD IN MY HAND AN AMAZING LITTLE POSTCARD, a beautiful underwater scene of God's gorgeous and colorful Creation. Now the strange thing about this little postcard is that as I look at it edge-on I can really only see about two dimensions-length and breadth, and I am in the land of the Flatlander who can only understand his own little world of distance in two directions with actually no thickness whatsoever. He can't see anything else! And as I look at this card edge-on I can't see anything else either; and if I were a Flatlander I would insist that there was no other world beyond my two dimensions, just because I can't see it.

BUT WE ARE NOW GOING TO MOVE IN A NEW AND STRANGE DIRECTION UNKNOWN TO THE FLATLANDER--THE DIRECTION OF HEIGHT! We're going to go up into a new world of the Third Dimension! We're now looking down on this little postcard from above--and we find that it's a very amazing world indeed, because this little two-dimensional postcard of the Flatlanders is a very unusual postcard known as a three-dimensional postcard, which when looked at edge-on seems to have only two dimensions, length and breadth, but suddenly when looked at from above, from height, seems to have an altogether new dimension known as depth--and I actually seem to be able to see into the picture, some objects in front of others! A reed is growing in front of a lovely red coral, and fish are swimming in between, and the pebbled bottom fades away into the distance, even beyond my new three-dimensional vision!

SO NOW WE HAVE ENTERED A NEW WORLD, BEYOND THE SCOPE OF THE POOR FLATLANDER WHO CAN ONLY SEE TWO DIRECTIONS, if he could exist at all, and we are looking in a new direction which gives height and depth and a whole new beautiful world to explore! "O, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His Judgments, and His Ways past finding out!" We have become like a god to the Flatlander, a being entirely beyond his comprehension. Since we are now above his lowly plane of only two dimensions, we have passed completely out of his sight, because he can neither look up nor down, and unless we condescend to stoop to his lowly level he cannot see us at all, much less understand our new dimension. To reach his level at all we have to get on an exact plane with him, completely in tune with his two dimensions in an extremely limited area, for him to even be able to see us--if this were possible. But the moment we vary the slightest fraction out of his limited orbit we are truly "out of sight!" Isn't this "outta sight!" And our three-dimensional world becomes one of almost unlimited space, so much larger and greater than his, so vast, so deep, and so high that he could not possibly begin to understand it or us. It's simply out of his sphere, out of his depth, of which he has none, and beyond his tiny plane. A whole new world marvelous and magnificent, that he does not even know exists, simply because he cannot see it, and in which we live and have our being--because of the Fourth Dimension, Time. And although the Flatlander cannot see us unless we stoop momentarily to his narrow plane into his very limited line of vision, we can nearly always see him from almost any direction--in or out of his dimension --from above, beneath, or on his own level!

BUT HIS LITTLE FLAT BRAIN HAVING NEVER SEEN ANYTHING ELSE BUT HIS OWN DIMENSION and since our dimension is completely beyond his realm of Flatland science, he doesn't understand it, knows nothing about it, has never seen it much less ever been there, and he simply brushes such nonsense all aside and says that we and our dimension just don't exist! Even if it were possible to show it to him it would be so beyond his two dimension understanding that he would probably be like the farmer the first time he saw a giraffe and say, "There just ain't no such thing"! Or just like my kids when they were little and we tried to get them to eat some new food: I remember Hosea saying at about the age of four or five, "But I know I don't like it, Daddy, because I never had any before!"... "The natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit for they are foolishness unto him!" There just ain't no such thing because he never saw it before, and he knows he wouldn't like it because he never had any before!

THE FACT OF THE MATTER IS THAT OUR DEAR LITTLE FLATLANDER, IN HIS PRIDE, SINCE HE PERSONALLY CAN ONLY OPERATE ON ONE PLANE, HATES TO ADMIT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING BEYOND HIS LEVEL where he hasn't been; and in fact where he cannot go, unless he is given third-dimensional wings and time to explore it. Poor fellow! How limited his vision, how narrow his realm, how restricted his scope of operation! Since he can't go anywhere else, he just hates to admit that there is anywhere else!--And he is particularly furious with any other Flatlander who claims that at sometime or other he has been lifted up into that other world by some third-dimensional creature to give him a glimpse of what is beyond his own little domain. Since he never saw it, it doesn't exist! He refuses to acknowledge anything that does not exist or he cannot see on his own little plane in his two little directions. He's strictly a plane geometrist, and cubic measurements just don't exist for him! To hell with the cubist, he says, let's send them back where they came from!

O, FOOLISH FLATLANDER; how can he do this when he doesn't even know where it's at! But just because he doesn't believe in it doesn't make it not so!

AND SO IT IS WITH ALSO THE "4-D" NATURAL CUBIC MAN! He's a square-head, a block-head who refuses to believe that anything else exists such as a Fifth Dimension, a Spirit World, simply because he's never seen it or been there, and he's furious at anyone who claims they have because this really puts him down below their level, their Fifth Dimension--the Spirit World, the Heavenly, which he says doesn't exist simply because he hasn't seen it or been there.

THIS IS JUST AS STUPID AS IF YOU WERE TO SAY, "I DON'T BELIEVE THAT NEW YORK OR LONDON EXISTS BECAUSE I'VE NEVER SEEN THEM OR BEEN THERE!--And though you travelers in time and space claim that New York and London do exist because you say you've been out of my realm and visited these cities, seen them with your own eyes, I flatly refuse to believe you because I've never seen them or been there myself!" How ridiculous can you get? This is just as silly as the natural man who refuses to acknowledge the realm of the Spirit. You can even read him stories about it in God's Word! You can tell him personal experiences of your own visits there and what you have seen in the land of the Fifth Dimension, the world of the wonders of the Spirit, but he will refuse to believe you because he hates to admit you have a vision and a dimension that he hasn't got, a spiritual perception which he lacks--the Dimension of Eternity, which his tiny temporal mind cannot grasp, and does not want to grasp because it puts him down on a lower level, and he hates to admit there's anything beyond him! Poor narrow-minded Flatlander! He just can't face it!

BUT, BROTHER, I WANT TO TELL YOU SOMETHING! I'VE NOT ONLY HEARD ABOUT IT, READ ABOUT IT, SEEN PICTURES OF IT IN VISION--BUT I'VE BEEN THERE, so I know it exists whether you believe it or not! And unless you're willing to admit that I've got something you just haven't got and that you'd like to have it too, and humbly ask for the truth, confess your limitations, and ask the spiritual men to help you find a whole new world, you'll never know the joys, the beautiful scenes, the gorgeous sounds, and the ecstatic feelings of that marvelous and Heavenly realm! God in His mercy may even give you personally a glimpse of it through the window of the Spirit; but if you refuse to receive it or believe it and reject it, you'll probably never see it again! It's that certain something you see in our eyes that you don't understand, that light on our faces you can't comprehend, that almost tangible happy atmosphere that pervades our presence, that you can almost feel but find it hard to believe. You're like a fish out of water, a Flatlander out of Flatland; and you either have to receive new life and new vision by the Spirit or you'll die! You'll go back to your natural realm and be as spiritually dead as you were before! Poor fellow! Too bad! You may never know what you missed! Almost...But lost!

WELL, I HAVEN'T EVEN BEGUN TO TELL YOU ABOUT MY EXPERIENCES IN THIS FIELD, and I'll never be able to tell you everything. We're almost to the end of this little lesson, but just let me give you a little preview of a few samples: That's the way this whole thing started out, with a Spirit--God! "For God is Spirit, and they which worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in Truth." ... "In the beginning He created the Heavens and the Earth, and His Spirit moved upon the face of the waters." This is such a limitless subject, we cannot possibly cover it all here!--But just read your Bible, you'll find evidences, stories, and positive declarations of the existence of this Fifth Dimensional Spirit World throughout the whole Book! Some of its immortal characters having passed on into it through the glorious gate of Death even came back to tell us about it. Others were lifted up into the realm of the spirit to get a brief glimpse or vision of it, and many received messages from it...and some of us have been there!

"HE IS NO FOOL who trades what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose!"--Have you?

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