All Our Yesterdays
"To the last
syllable of recorded time, and all our yesterdays. . ." (Macbeth V.v.)
A series of brief articles
dealing with Human Pre-existence
by Arthur & Rosalind Eedle.
28. George Ritchie's
experience
George
Ritchie writes - "It was the end of September 1943, and I was on my way
out to
He went on
to recount the devastating experiences he had at that camp, due to the weather.
Eventually, the dust, the cold, the exercises, everything reduced him to a
state of health that allowed a severe condition to develop within his lungs.
Running a fever, he was taken to the camp hospital, where on December 20th he
died.
Some nine
minutes later he returned to the land of the living, having received an
incredible "out of body" experience, of meeting the Lord Jesus, and
being taken through several different regions of the afterlife. He witnessed
the misery of suicide cases, the craving of alcoholics in a bar, the grisly
fighting of people still full of hatred, but then a change came, as he was
taken into a massive University-style area. This is where our present interest
lies, and we can listen to his account of what he found there.
We were moving
again. Or rather, the scene in front of us was changing somehow. Opening up. It
was the quality of light that was different, as though the air had suddenly
become more transparent, enabling me to see what had apparently been there all
along. Again, it was as if Jesus could reveal only as much as my mind could
grasp. First He had shown me a hellish realm, filled with beings trapped in
some form of self-attention. Now behind, beyond, through all this I began to
perceive a whole new realm! Enormous buildings stood in a beautiful sunny park
and there was a relationship between the various structures, a pattern to the
way they were arranged, that reminded me somewhat of a well-planned university.
Except that to compare what I was now seeing with anything on earth was
ridiculous. It was more as if all the schools and colleges in the world were
only piecemeal reproductions of this reality.
We seemed suddenly
to have entered an altogether different dimension, almost another kind of
existence. After the clamor of the wartime cities and the shrieking voices of
the plain, here was an all-pervading peace. As we entered one of the buildings
and started down a high-ceilinged corridor lined with tall doorways, the air
was so hushed that I was actually startled to see people in the passageway.
I could not tell
if they were men or women, old or young, for all were covered from head to foot
in loose-flowing hooded cloaks that made me think vaguely of monks. But the
atmosphere of the place was not at all as I imagined a monastery. It was more
like some tremendous study center, humming with the excitement of great
discovery. Everyone we passed in the wide halls and on the curving staircases
seemed caught up in some all-engrossing activity; not many words were exchanged
among them. And yet I sensed no unfriendliness between these beings, rather an
aloofness of total concentration.
Whatever else
these people might be, they appeared utterly and supremely self-forgetful,
absorbed in some vast purpose beyond themselves. Through open doors I g1impsed
enormous rooms filled with complex equipment. In several of the rooms hooded
figures bent over intricate charts and diagrams, or sat at the controls of
elaborate consoles flickering with lights. I'd prided myself a little on the
beginnings of a scientific education; at the university I had majored in
chemistry, minored in biology, studied physics and calculus. But if these were
scientific activities of some kind, they were so far beyond anything I knew,
that I couldn't even guess what field they were in. Somehow I felt that some
vast experiment was being pursued, perhaps dozens and dozens of such experiments.
"What are they doing, Jesus?" I
asked.
But although
Knowing flamed from Him like fire, though in fact I sensed that every activity
on this mighty "campus" had its source in God, no explanation lighted
my mind. What was communicated, as before, was love: compassion for my
ignorance, understanding that encompassed all my non-understanding.
And something
more. . . . In spite of His obvious delight in the beings around us, I sensed
that even. this was not the ultimate, that He had far greater things to show me
if only I could see.
And so I followed
Him into other buildings of this domain of thought. We entered a studio where
music of a complexity I couldn't begin to follow was being composed and
performed. There were complicated rhythms, tones not on any scale I knew.
"Why," I found myself thinking, "Bach is only the
beginning!"
Next we walked
through a library the size of the whole
Immediately I knew
this was impossible. How could books be written somewhere beyond the earth! But
the thought persisted, although my mind rejected it. "The key works of the
universe," the phrase kept recurring as we roamed the domed reading rooms
crowded with silent scholars. Then abruptly, at the door to one of the smaller
rooms, almost an annex: “Here is the central thought of this earth."
Out we moved again
into the hushed and expectant park. Then into a building crowded with
technological machinery. Into a strange sphere-shaped structure where a catwalk
led us over a tank of what appeared to be ordinary water. Into what looked like
huge laboratories and into what might have been some kind of space observatory.
And as we went my sense of mystification grew.
"Is this. . .
. heaven, Lord Jesus?" I ventured. The calm, the brightness, they were
surely heaven-like! So was the absence of self, of clamoring ego. "When
these people were on earth did they grow beyond selfish desires?"
They grew and they
have kept on growing. The answer shone like sunlight in that intent and
eager atmosphere. But if growth could continue, then this was not all. Then
...there must be something even these serene beings lacked. And suddenly I
wondered if it was the same thing missing in the "lower realm." Were
these selfless, seeking creatures also failing in some degree to see Jesus? Or
perhaps, to see Him for Himself? Bits and hints of Him they surely had;
obviously it was the truth they were so single-mindedly pursuing. But what if
even a thirst for truth could distract from the Truth Himself, standing here in
their midst while they searched for Him in books and test tubes. ...
I didn't know. And
next to His unutterable love, my own bewilderment, all the questions I wanted
to ask, seemed incidental. Perhaps, I concluded at last, He cannot tell me more
than I can see: perhaps there is nothing in me yet that could understand an
explanation. The central fact, the all-adequate one, remained this Personality
at my side. Whatever additional facts He was showing me, He remained every
moment the real focus of my attention.
Which is why,
perhaps, I was not aware of the precise moment when we left the surface of the
earth. . . . . .
[End of
quote]
Interesting, and
as fascinating, as this account is, the reason for bringing it into the
discussion of pre-existence has not yet been detected. We need to go back to
Ritchie, and see what he had to say near the end of his book, "Return from
Tomorrow."
One winter evening
in 1952 -it was around the middle of December because we had just had our
annual Christmas party at the Richmond Academy of Medicine which I had recently
joined -I sat in the living room reading a copy of Life magazine. The issue was
full of ads for brand name turkeys and hams, with jolly Santas on every other
page, and I was flipping through it without much interest when suddenly my
fingers tightened.
On the page in
front of me was a drawing of a gigantic sphere-shaped structure cut away to
reveal men and machines inside it. There was a kind of travelling crane mounted
on steel girders, turbines, a huge circular tank, stairs, catwalks, down in one
corner a small control room.
What set my heart
pounding in my throat was not the strange futuristic appearance of these
objects but the certainty that I had seen all this before. Not recently,
either. Somehow, years ago, I had stood staring, not at a drawing of this
enormous sphere, but at the thing itself. I had wandered about that peculiar
interior too; I had seen the stairway just there, peered into that vast tank of
water.
But I couldn't
have! Skimming the text I saw that what I remembered was impossible:
Last week the
Atomic Energy Commission partially lifted its veil of secrecy and allowed
Life's artists to make a drawing of some details of the prototype of the second
The article went
on to say that to avoid possible radio-active contamination scientists would
build the submarine engine inside the sphere, then submerge it for tests in the
giant tank. Baffled, I lowered the magazine to my lap. I had felt so certain
I'd seen this whole operation, yet I had never been to
Then I remembered.
It was in that tranquil campus-like realm inhabited by beings wrapped in thought
as monks are wrapped in robes, that I had stood in 1943 as the earth measures
times, staring at a huge sphere-shaped building, walking through its intricate
fittings. What was that realm? In what mysterious way was it related to the
life and thought of the world where I sat in 1952, with Marguerite talking on
the telephone in the hall and Christmas cards lining the mantelpiece? I did not
think about it very long, except to wonder if philosophers are right when they
say that certain ideas seem to drop into widely scattered areas of the world
from "somewhere" simultaneously. I had grown wary of inquiring into
super-terrestrial areas on my own. As long as Christ had been my guide, there
had been nothing to fear. But since my out-of-body experience nine years before
I had come across individuals who had become so fascinated by the
"spirit" world that they seemed to have lost sight of the Spirit
Himself. [End quote]
What was being
revealed to George Ritchie in 1943, that only became earth-reality in 1952? Who
were the beings in that heavenly environment? Were they actually planning
something that was to become real on the earth at a later date? And if so, what
does this tell us about life now? Does this experience of Ritchie’s explain why
certain people seem to be able to forecast the future with some degree
of accuracy? These and many other questions invade the
brain, and require answers.
However, Ritchie’s
final comment is of great importance. He realised that there is the possibility
of being fascinated with everything to do with the Lord, and everything
relating to the future, and yet fail to focus the spiritual eyes on the Lord
Himself. One is reminded of the words Jesus spoke 2,000 years ago to the
Pharisees. “You search the Scriptures, because in them you think you have
eternal life, and they are they which testify of Me, but you will not come to
Me that you might have life.” (John 5:39-40)