Tag: divine encounter

“There is an Inaccessible aspect of me”

July 2, 2026

I was guided to look into the ancient Mystery Religions, of which the Eleusinian and Orphic are the most famous. The Mysteries were cults whose rites were open only to initiates. Participants were sworn never to disclose what took place and, remarkably, none ever did. What little we know is thanks to historians’ detective work. The rites were apparently connected with nature and the seasons, and especially the harvest. After a lengthy training, the ultimate secret was revealed to the successful initiate: a single grain of corn in a stone bowl. Not much. But if God was in that drop of water I had encountered, He could well be seen in that grain of corn, that source of life. I was told that the Mystery Religions connected the polytheistic reverence of natural phenomena to Nature as an encompassing whole.

The Mystery Religions are a bridge from one to the other and also, and precisely because of or through, the inner dimension. The self is unitary, and when the self relates fully to nature, nature is its unitary opposite.

“So Mystery Religions are important?”

(Yes), because one way I manifest Myself is esoterically, and this heightens My own sense of specialness. I am not only the same as human beings but also different. There is an inaccessible aspect of Me that the mysteries apprehend and try to get at.

“And this does something for You?”

Yes, it lets Me get at that aspect of Myself.

I found this hard to understand. It seems that there is an aspect of God that, while not totally inaccessible, is manifested only esoterically, in some secret or private way. And this inner dimension heightens His sense of specialness.

I wondered whether this might be true of all of us.

“Lord, is there a less accessible aspect of each of us that heightens our specialness?”

Yes.

This is Where God’s Story Really Begins

June 18, 2026

All this was taking place on a flight to visit my Mom and Dad, who were in their eighties and living in California.  Sitting beside me was a nine-year-old girl, traveling alone.  She kept looking at me, wondering what I was up to.  Ignoring her was unkind, so I stopped praying and chatted with her.

After that, I returned to my own meditations and received a stream of visual images, a vision:  the sun cracking up, solar flares that zoomed out into the reaches of space.  I then saw, through the mist, an ethereal caravan of camels and their riders, coming up a valley, their long line stretching behind, down a winding road into the distance.  I followed the road back to the source.  I came upon vast winds, like a monsoon, then a world exploding—and then the vision abruptly stopped.  The caravan seemed to represent the long course of human history, traced backward, all the way to the beginning, and then nothing.

I had received hints about the moment of Creation.  Then, one day, He told me more.  This is where God’s story really begins.

 

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Just take in what comes to you.

March 12, 2026

Just take in what comes to you.

 “Lord, how should I approach the ancient scriptures?”

Get into the frame of mind for reading the (particular) work.  That frame of mind is reverential, quiet, respectful, open-hearted.  It does not consist of analyzing metaphors and stories of gods.  Just take in what comes to you.

That guidance cut against my own scholarly training, but from then on I tried to read not only with an open mind but with an open heart.

 

edge of infinity what are we to God

“The Eternal Already had the Potential to be a Person.”

September 4, 2025

“Lord, what was there before?  What motivates the act of creation?”

I received the following words and images which I recorded in my notes.

“A feeling of loneliness, of searching, reaching—not yet a Person.  Expanding into the great emptiness of Nothing, which is ‘infinitely empty’ far beyond (far more empty than) empty spaces.  ‘Who am I?  What am I?  Am I an I?  What is an I?’  A chaotic feeling of the infinite rushing at the edges.”

“Lord, why did eternity ‘shatter’ in this way?  Did the still, self-sufficient stuff explode?”

I received the sense:  “Brittle, crystalline, too perfect, static, isolated, removed, alone, bored, incomplete.  The eternal already had the potential to be a Person but could not do so without creating time.”

And I also got the feeling that God desperately wants to be understood.

 

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I Draw Man Forward . . .

August 21, 2025

 

What I had been told about Creation still bothered me and I was relieved when God started talking about the process of evolution.

“Lord, do You have to will creatures to evolve into homo sapiens or does it just happen by natural processes?”

That’s not a well-conceived question.  It rests on a false dichotomy.  Remember that nature is itself teleological, except it is much more complicated than that apparently simple statement.  I provide—I am—the telos or purpose, and I follow the telos as well.  However, I draw man forward to greater development in the very process of interacting with men (people).  At the time of early man, I am not yet sure what is missing.  I am not fully developed Myself yet, since I have not encountered beings who can call forth My full latent nature.  For the moment, call it a dialectical evolution responding to My need for development.

Here and elsewhere, “man” has the older sense inclusive of both women and men.

Tell My Story As I Tell It To You

August 14, 2025

 

“So I should read the scriptures of the major religions?”

Yes, I want you to read the early spiritual history of mankind.  I will lead you to which readings.  I would like you to pray as you read them and take notes as directed.

I grew up at a time when “man” and “mankind” referred to both men and women, and God spoke to me in my own vernacular.

“Lord, You said I was to tell Your story ‘from the inside out.’  But reading the scriptures is ‘from the outside in.’”

Yes, tell My story as I tell it to you.  The only purpose for reading is to give you reference points for understanding My story.

 

“Think in a Different Way”

March 27, 2025

“Lord, I have the feeling that you want me to read and think less, and to listen more and just write down your story.”

Don’t stop thinking, but think in a different way. Don’t work so hard to figure everything out, to make it rational, to make it fit your categories. Just listen and think through the implications of what I tell you.

“But, Lord, some of what I learn from You comes from worrying over what you say.”

Sometimes yes, but often no. Sometimes your questioning just gets in the way. The main point is to open your mind, to try to understand what I am saying on its own terms, and to see ways it might be true or understandable to you.

If something doesn’t make sense to me, how can I supposed to “see ways” to make it understandable? How do you get to that vantage point?

 

God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher – is the true story of a philosopher’s conversations with God. Dr. Jerry L. Martin, a lifelong agnostic. Dr. Martin served as head of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of Colorado philosophy department, is the founding chairman of the Theology Without Walls group at AAR, and editor of Theology Without Walls: The Transreligious Imperative. Dr. Martin’s work has prepared him to become a serious reporter of God’s narrative, experiences, evolution, and autobiography. In addition to scholarly publications, Dr. Martin has testified before Congress on educational policy. He has appeared on “World News Tonight,” and other television news programs.

________

Listen to this on God: An Autobiography, The Podcast– the dramatic adaptation and continuing discussion of the book God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin.

He was a lifelong agnostic, but one day he had an occasion to pray. To his vast surprise, God answered- in words. Being a philosopher, he had a lot of questions, and God had a lot to tell him.

experience God: An Autobiography

“Everything God has spoken, we will do.”

February 13, 2025

God Has Spoken:

One day, after breakfast at a little café in Alexandria, I was told,

Don’t go to work

It seemed to be a training in obedience.

“Lord, do you know we have to get that grant proposal in today?”

Of course.

My organization lived on grant money. But the voice said not to go in. What to do? Well, the sky is not going to fall if the proposal goes in the following day. I would go back to my apartment.

As I turned on the ignition, the voice spoke again.

You can go to work now.

I remember that incident because something was at stake, but usually I was told do something trivial, such as to listen to a different radio station or sit in a different chair. As these arbitrary commands continued—mounted as it seemed—Abigail expressed concern.

This sounded more like Boot Camp than spiritual guidance.

Maybe I shouldn’t do everything I was told. Maybe I should, as she put it, “use your intelligence.” I was puzzled. Was I supposed to second-guess God?

The next day I stopped at Border’s bookstore near Pentagon City. On the way out, I felt guided to move in a particular direction, like a dowser following his stick: first straight ahead, next to the right, then straight ahead, now stop. I was at the religion section. I felt guided down to the third shelf on the right, and finally to a particular book.

It was a book I never would have chosen on my own: John Calvin’s commentary on the Gospel of John.

I know that Calvin is one of the great theologians of the modern era, but I had an impression of him as stern and rigid. I picked up the book and it opened to John 8:28, where Jesus says, “I do nothing on my own.”

Calvin explains that “Christ wants to prove that he does nothing without the Father’s command … he depends entirely on his will and serves him sincerely … he does not just partially obey God, but is entirely and without exception devoted to his obedience.” It was a lesson in obedience.

Near the register, there was a display with another book I never would have bought on my own: The Ten Commandments, by Dr. Laura Schlesinger and Rabbi Stewart Vogel. Many people like Doctor Laura but the few times I had heard her on the radio, she seemed harsh rather than loving. I believe in tough love, but she just sounded tough. However, I opened it and my eyes fell on a line bold-faced in the text. It is where the people of Israel accept the covenant: “Everything that God has spoken we will do!” Another example of total obedience.

I had been led to one other passage in Calvin’s commentary. John 9:4 says, “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work.” Calvin comments, “as soon as God enlightens us by calling us, we must not delay, in case the opportunity is lost.”

The note of urgency reminded me of the story a village chief in eastern Brazilia told of his own encounter with a divine being.

He had encountered the being while out hunting, but was too scared to speak and the being left.

“At night while I was asleep he [the divine being] reappeared to me. … He led me some distance behind the house and there showed me a spot on the ground where, he said, something was lying in storage for me. Then he vanished. The next morning I immediately went there and touched the ground with the tip of my foot, perceiving something hard buried there. But others came to call me to go hunting. I was ashamed to stay behind and joined them. When we returned, I at once went back to the site he had shown me, but did not find anything any more.”

He had missed his moment. I did not want to miss mine.