The first is to simply observe events.
Imagine you are watching the waterwheel in the picture below. Water drips from the yellow bucket into the multi-coloured cups on the wheel and as the cups fill and get heavier they cause the wheel to move one direction and then the other. Back and forth, there seems to be no pattern as the wheel spins chaotically.
If you look closely, you'll see that the wheel is hooked up to a computer that plots its every motion on a graph versus time. This is fairly common, produces the boring graph you see below and is the second way we usually look at information.
But there is another way to look at information and it's a way of looking at it outside of time when velocity and direction are plotted in something called "state space". In state space, the motions of the waterwheel, that once looked random and unpredictable, instead now form a beautiful shape resembling the wings of a butterfly
You may find it hard to believe but these are two graphs made from exactly the same data. When data that may have seemed random or chaotic takes on an ordered shape like this the shape is called a "strange attractor". It's an attractor because the data is attracted to the shape in the sense that it continues to draw the shape over and over and it's strange because... well, no one knows why it would form this shape.
If you look closely, you'll see that the wheel is hooked up to a computer that plots its every motion on a graph versus time. This is fairly common, produces the boring graph you see below and is the second way we usually look at information.
But there is another way to look at information and it's a way of looking at it outside of time when velocity and direction are plotted in something called "state space". In state space, the motions of the waterwheel, that once looked random and unpredictable, instead now form a beautiful shape resembling the wings of a butterfly
You may find it hard to believe but these are two graphs made from exactly the same data. When data that may have seemed random or chaotic takes on an ordered shape like this the shape is called a "strange attractor". It's an attractor because the data is attracted to the shape in the sense that it continues to draw the shape over and over and it's strange because... well, no one knows why it would form this shape.I've often looked at Biblical prophecy like an x/y graph, looking for patterns in the seemingly random happenings of the current events or past history to see if I could get some hint of where we are on the revelation continuum. This is probably at best naive and at worst, arrogant. Since God exists outside of time its likely that the prophetic books can't be read as if they are step by step lists of what is going to happen in sequence. Maybe each state relates in some way to the "next" state in the pattern but not necessarily to what happens next in time.
So many people have tried to predict Christ's return or Armageddon or the rise of Antichrist maybe they've seen some seemingly obvious sign that suggests that they can predict what will happen next or maybe there is some greater pattern that is being formed that we are unaware of or unable to visualize and the best thing for us to do is to just make sure we're awake
Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.” - John 8:58
Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you. - Revelation 3:3
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