The second coming of the Savior and the new signs

The second coming of the Savior and the new signs, is a subject where I have always felt blind, until March 12, 2021. That day I had the occasion to approach this prophecy from another angle.

Normally when someone asks me about the second coming and the new signs, I answer: «The truth is that this matter does not interest me much» And I am telling the truth. I know it’s a bit of a harsh answer, but I say it with a smile and so I avoid hearing strange things that indicate how close it is. And I also avoid talking about something where I never felt sure what to say.

Like you, I have faith in the restoration of the gospel, was converted and baptized at 15. But before that, at 14, I imbibed the Greek method of thought with the Presocratics and Plato. At that age I wrote my first book «A Profile of Philosophy» emulating Plato’s dialogues. I am a convinced Westerner, I mean that I support and sustain the values of our civilization: freedom, equality, liberalism in the economic field and science as a tool to understand and dominate the nature that the Lord gave us. I am sure of the convenience of democracy, I am aware of its dangers. I consider myself a follower of the science of my time.

In this personal context, my perspective is hybridized between the scriptures and Scientific American. Nevertheless, I know who my Savior and Redeemer is.

My disposition from the beginning

Allow me, dear reader, to give a biographical touch.
For as long as I can remember I sought a harmony between faith and science. Sometimes I had to give it up and sometimes I rejoiced like a child.
When I was eleven years old my father would bring me magazines and books on science and flying saucers. I would gather my friends and try to convince them of the existence of life on other planets. For that I would take them to the cement sidewalk on our street. With a stone I would start hitting the cement causing small impacts, then I would say to them pointing at them

«This is the universe and these points the stars, how can only one planet of one of them be inhabited?»
That seemed to convince them. With that fame acquired in my street, they would call me with another request and tell me: explain to this one why God exists. I would take them back to the sidewalk and hit it with the stone but with more points than before and say:
«This is the universe and these dots the stars how can there be so many stars with life on their planets without someone who organized it?»
It was amazing, but the same example on the same sidewalk, served to make them accept two different things.
Today I still pound on the sidewalk just as I did as a child, I try to find their footsteps in those dots, to unravel their hidden movements.

March 12, 2021.

I never liked to get into that doctrinal hornet’s nest that is the second coming, one usually comes out like Joseph Smith.

«I was left thus, without being able to decide whether this coming referred to the beginning of the millennium or to some previous appearing, or whether I should die and thus see his face.» (130:16)

So, dear reader, if you are waiting here for a date, I do not wish to bother you by wasting your time. However, I have some considerations that may interest you. And believe me this is the first time I have spoken or written on this subject. I invite you to follow me in my strange arguments.

On March 12, 2021 I was following the latest news about SpaceX and its tests with the Starship. After two failed attempts the SN10 prototype landed, although after 10 minutes it exploded. The reason was low Helium pressure from the header tank, it landed at 10Km/h instead of 5Km/h breaking the landing legs, this caused a methane leak and the explosion.

What does this have to do with the second coming?

It has a lot to do with it. Elon Musk has set out to go to Mars and he will succeed. He doesn’t have the US Congress looking at the costs (NASA does) and deciding if his project is viable. He has SpaceX a private company with profits. The goal of getting to Mars by 2022 and sending a million people by 2050 seems very optimistic but it is only a matter of time.

As I pondered this I realized that the second coming of the Savior is an earthly event, not a solar system one. If it were to occur in 2050, Mars would be excluded from the event and so would a million people.

Circumscribed to Earth?

The second coming is the end of human history. It is the fracture of human inertia accumulated over thousands of years, of the living and the dead, of the earth itself participating in this event. If the second coming occurs with a million or more humans on another planet, they will not be terrestrial, they will be alien to the judgment and the events.

Mars does not participate in our plan of salvation, it is an alien world. By colonizing it, those born there would see themselves as children of Mars, not of Earth. It would be breaking the symmetry between Earth, us and the plan of salvation. We have no scripture or revelation for this assumption.

In realizing this I hit a wall. Soul redemption was not in question. The redemption of the soul is not established in a geographical location but wherever we go, it is expanded by the merits of the Savior. But the second coming is the judgment and the advent of His kingdom and this is located in the geography of planet Earth.

«For I will reveal myself from heaven with power and great glory, with all the hosts thereof, and dwell in righteousness with men on earth a thousand years, and the wicked shall not stand.» (D&C 29:11)

The facts that I relate do not suggest a concrete time for his coming but they narrow the window of events. The restoration makes things very clear and leaves no room, at least for me, to look the other way. Although not yet, however, we do not have centuries ahead of us.

A revealing collision

The study of the scriptures and the direction of human history cause me uneasiness in this matter. Within me there is a collision of «particles» or ideas with seemingly opposite directions. On the one hand I marvel at the plan of salvation and my witness to the redemptive power of Christ. On the other hand I wish that the evolution of my world continues, that we reach Mars and especially Titan. May we discover the ultimate laws of matter. But the second coming of the Savior, supposes a tremendous collision of trajectories, nevertheless it is there where wonderful ideas arise, in that collision.

The sons of Elohim

With an extraplanetary humanity, not explorers but settled in the terrestrial exterior, if their coming does not occur sooner, we will need more light and knowledge for an extended plan. Otherwise, the alternative is the fracturing of human history at the second coming. There are no other options.

We are like that, children of our Father. We seek other worlds and the tree of life. Within us is the seed of glory, power and immortality. It is our vocation by inheritance, by dowry, it is not pride, it is our constitution.
Frankly, the state of probation cannot be prolonged ad infinitum. I was formed in that belief, an idea of an ascending and limitless future. At this point I imagined that I would travel in a flying car but I still have a combustion engine.

What I estimate is that in a century or so, we may reach, as humans, escape velocity, not only from Earth but from the plan of salvation. A version akin to immortality and an extended civilization in space, unlinked to the second coming.
Unknowingly, we seek a state of glory, aspire to the former and if left we will create our pseudo-garden of Eden but within a sad and lonely world. If He abandons us, we will jump into the void with our fig leaves, with our sins. We will reach out into the cosmos and seek the tree of life. We will break the flaming sword that guards it.
He cannot abandon us now, we need him more than ever, for our waxen wings will carry us to the Sun.

We are near a great crossroads, exciting but challenging at the same time.

The great confluence

This painting «The Creation of Adam» (1511) by Michelangelo located in the Sistine Chapel illustrates very well the idea I am presenting now.
The knowledge of creation is at our fingertips. Physicists have been searching for 40 years for a law describing the forces of the Universe, the unification in a single theory of the four fundamental forces (TGU, Grand Unification Theory). The standard model of physics gave the impression of arriving at the basic components of matter and the laws that govern it. Quantum mechanics added the strange behavior of particles at scales smaller than the atom. Relativity unites space and time by describing gravity but is incompatible with quantum mechanics.

Currently superstring theory (M-theory) is the candidate to achieve that unity that explains in a single vision all the laws of the Universe. It is the greatest theoretical creation of mankind. This theory uses 10 dimensions to couple the four fundamental forces. If mathematics capable of solving it can be invented, we will be able to understand creation in a way that is unimaginable right now. It will be at that moment that this painting will acquire its full symbolism.

Why do I talk about string theory to deal with the second coming of the Savior?

Because I believe that the Lord needs us to understand how this event takes place. I have a feeling that we will not observe his arrival as ignorant people but understanding what is happening and how it happens. For that we need a physical theory that unifies the forces of the Universe just as Columbus needed to understand the geometry of the earth to reach a new world.

I believe that as humanity, without knowing it, we are knocking for a door to open and we have to understand how it opens. I see a great confluence of space development, advanced physics and restoration. And all of this is happening in a time window of no more than 70 years. There has never been a time where the growth curves between the world and the gospel cut across time as sharply as they do now.

Nephi’s prophecy

«And I looked and beheld a man among the Gentiles, who was separated from the seed of my brethren by the many waters;
and I beheld the Spirit of God, that it came down and wrought upon the man; and he went forth upon the many waters, even unto the seed of my brethren, who were in the promised land.» (1 Nephi 13:12)

The fulfillment of this prophecy would not have been possible without a new model of the geometry of the world. Columbus knew that the earth was spherical, with that knowledge the Lord could have carried out his work. But not until then. It was not the journey of Lehi or Jared. It was the contact of two cultures and their nations, it required an understanding of the means, the geometry of the world and the associated mentality. Spain, and later the rest of the nations, assimilated a new reality, incorporated it into their own history.
In other words, the arrival to a world that was more than 7000 km away in the 15th century, the fulfillment of the prophecies, required the highest level of knowledge of mankind until then and a new geography.

The prophecy of The Second Coming will require from mankind the ability to understand the great waters of the Universe and the correct understanding of D&C 88:95. where it is described how the hidden dimensions will be unrolled. For it is not so much His coming as our coming into His presence.

Adam’s finger

The clearest confluence from my point of view is the collection of Israel and its facet in family history. Artificial intelligence is already being used in familysearch. We are going to see incredible advances with this technology in the workings of the gathering. This advanced technology is Adam’s vanguard finger, preparing the world to contact the second coming event. Something like the docking of two ships in space, accommodating speed and direction. We are creating a knowledge lock that facilitates the transition of the plan to a new stage, receiving the Savior and the nation of heaven.

The curve of the gathering of israel

«When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red.3 And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times? » (Mt. 16:1-4)

Throughout our history as a church, we have used technology just as Paul used the Roman roads to spread the gospel. We use everything that falls from science in the form of technology. We went through the printing press in 1829 and since that date we have wisely embraced each and every technology, TV (invented by a church member), satellite broadcasting, the Internet and artificial intelligence (points A, B, C and D). The result of this is an accelerated growth of Israel’s recollection, especially on the other side of the veil.

We think this is part of God’s plan. However I don’t think we realize that the upward curve of science, on top of technology and parallel to it, pulls us toward a deeper understanding of the world, doctrine and scripture. We cannot open our hand to receive the technical goods and close it for the theory from which they come, that would be a refined kind of hypocrisy of which the Savior speaks.

The visions in the restoration, its revelations, show more and more clearly the inhabitants of the kingdom of heaven. To them who naturally master physical dimensions that are now unattainable to us, but which we have begun to conceive and theorize.

The haste of his work

As I said before, string theory or superstring theory, which combines the five variants of the previous one into one, is the greatest intellectual construction of mankind. It uses 10 dimensions to couple the four forces of the Universe. It cannot be proven yet, because it is a theory of creation and we don’t have the energy to find it in an accelerator. But if beauty is evidence of its veracity, it has it.

If we read about the origin of this theory, we see the coincidence of finding the Euler function of the 19th century, the coincidence of finding in it answers to the strong interactions of elementary particles. The physicists themselves were astonished «physics is not done this way» said Francisco Suzuki. Another Venezuelan physicist discovered the same function weeks earlier. «In 1970 Yoichiro Nambu and Tetsuo Goto of Nihon University discovered that a vibrating string was behind its marvelous properties» (Hyperspace, Michio Kaku).

Eduard Witten, the world’s foremost string specialist adds something incredible.

«Humans on planet Earth never had the conceptual framework that would lead them to conceive of string theory intentionally…No one conceived of it intentionally, but it was conceived by a happy accident. On its merits, 20th century physicists should not have had the privilege of studying this theory.» (quoted by Michio Kaku)

I do not believe in coincidences

For me these are also signals. There is a normal sequence in physics, where one discovery is the beginning of another, Newton’s gravitation, Einstein’s relativity, particle physics, quantum mechanics… it’s like in school first add, then subtract, multiply and divide. But in this sense string theory does not belong to any sequence, it is as if it were a revelation of knowledge to accelerate, to make a leap. This case is compared to if we found a computer in the IXX century. We could learn how to operate it but if we looked inside it we would not have the slightest idea of how it works, because it belongs to the future. That is the case with this theory.

Behold, I will hasten my work in its time.. (D&C 88:73)

I do not believe in coincidences of this kind. I believe that the Lord hastens his work and he does it in the whole spectrum of knowledge. He does not distinguish between religion and science. When knowledge is poured down from the heavens, it floods everything, because its Sun rises for all honest men.

The second coming of the Savior and the new signs

At this point it may be convenient to summarize what has been said. Although I do not like summaries, they are dangerous.

• I believe that the second coming must occur before we are an extended civilization in space.
• I believe that if it occurs after that, we will need additional light and knowledge for an extended plan of salvation. We do not have it now.
• The second coming of the Savior, with the current scriptures, is a terrestrial location event.
• The urge to explore, to extend ourselves, to be immortal…is a sign of our divine nature, that vector is growing at an accelerated rate.
• There is a surprising confluence between Israel’s recollection and technology. This confluence must increase until it integrates science as one of its jewels.
• I believe that the second coming will not occur before we find a unified theory of physics. Then we as humanity will be ready to understand and receive it.
• The haste of his work includes advanced physics. There are miracles hidden in it that prepare us for the second coming.
• The times of His work in this dispensation cannot be extended ad infinitum. The last days cannot be centuries.
  Advanced physics shows us those intelligences «…the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.» (D&C 93:29).
• We saints should make an effort to learn the knowledge of the heavens, when they open we should not be ignorant.

The day after

After his second coming, trains will have to run, planes will have to fly, data networks will have to function, governments will have to administer. We will not go all at once to a 13th century farming or ranching society. The books of life of heaven and earth will have to synchronize. The new spaces that will open up will need to be understood, we will learn what they know. We will need time to reach the level of mental and spiritual pressurization for the next stage.
The millennial reign will not only be a bucolic scene of green meadows, flocks of sheep, idle and happy shepherds or crystal clear rivers.
It will also be the accelerated transition to being admitted into the nation of heaven, learning its laws and its knowledge.