What happens after?

[AmericanFirst]

I'd like to quote our conversation like you are. It makes our responses to specific questions easier to identify, but for some reason, I can't use anything on the board. I don't know why, but it makes my posts a little harder to follow, so bear with me Dragon.

Here's how you do that. After using the "quote" button, you'll see some code at the beginning and end. The word "quote" appears between brackets [] at the beginning and "/quote" at the end, also in brackets. The first quote begins the quote formatting, and the second one ends it. To put something in quote formatting, simply type similar code at the beginning and end of the section you wish to set off.

Actually the code at the beginning says "quote=" followed by the name of the poster being quoted and some stuff at the end; this results in the text "Originally posted by The Irish Ram" at the beginning.

I understand your premise, I don't understand it's purpose.
If you are not two, but one, and the illusion of you is God wearing a mask, my first question is,
Why does God need a mask?

An excellent question, and one without a completely satisfactory answer. Probably the best two I've seen are the two I used at the beginning of my novel The Golden Game, this one from William Blake's "Marriage of Heaven and Hell":



The other is from Liber Al Vel Legis by Aleister Crowley:



Unity means stasis, because there is no distinction between one moment and the next -- and since everything that happens must happen in time, division therefore is necessary for anything to happen. Of course, that only takes the question back a step, because one must then ask why anything needs to happen. Perhaps Crowley's answer is the correct one, and it's all for the sake of love, which requires two at minimum.

In fact, this sort of speculation is one reason why I reject the idea, which one can find in eastern religions or some interpretations thereof, that incarnation and material existence is a mistake to be rectified. Since all is/was One ab initio, if the goal were to get back there, why are we here? Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

A parallel error IMO is the comparable idea in Western religions that the point of life is an afterlife. Although in specific these two are different ideas, they have a similar implication that our "real" lives are somewhere other than this world. I wrote a blog entry on that called "The First Noble Falsehood," which you can read here if you're interested: The Dragon Talking: The First Noble Falsehood

Be that as it may, and as I said earlier, I don't have a complete and uplifting story to offer here. All I know for certain is that there is the All, which is the true I, and there is the division of the I into fragments (not only in space but also in time), and my own ego or limited self-sense is an organizing method for one such fragmentary division. Perhaps the All isn't God in the sense you mean; perhaps God is something that is evolving still, a potential to be realized way down the road, and in prayer what we sense is a sort of "virtual God."



No, that doesn't follow, because morality is not something that's founded in the All to begin with, but is a function operant at a lower, more particular level. Consider that you have to have division and hence the possibility of action before you can prefer one action over another. So while one can argue that it's all the same to God (with perfect justification IMO), that doesn't mean it is, or should be, all the same to US -- by which I mean the ordinary idea of "us."

Part of chopping wood and carrying water is making moral judgments. That's something we do because it's how we're put together. And I am familiar with the argument that since we're all God anyway compassion is pointless, but if the division is for love, for the chance of union, that's hardly true -- and anyway, lack of compassion is equally pointless from that cosmic view, so hardly to be preferred. And we have lower-down reasons to prefer compassion.



There are ideas ABOUT the senses which are, but the senses THEMSELVES are not. You don't have to reason logically to know that you are hearing something, or that any experience is happening. This is something you literally cannot doubt while it's happening. The same is true of mystical experience: it can't be doubted while it's happening -- literally. I don't mean doubting it doesn't make logical sense, I mean it's literally, utterly impossible to doubt it.

I would have a very hard time explaining that, though.



Hmm, not just that. But the spiritual experience really is, operationally speaking, what God is -- the reality underlying the ideas. Or rather, whatever reality gives rise to spiritual experience is that.



Oh yes, all of those are time-honored methods of altering consciousness, as is meditation, prayer, religious ritual, and it can also happen spontaneously. Sometimes I get into the state while writing poetry. I've seen it done through dance, through sex, through all kinds of things. However, it's also possible to enter a drugged state and come nowhere near a mystical experience, so it's not as simple as it sounds.



No, it's a set of ideas about who you are. Awareness remains. Let me tell you about one exercise that helped me and has helped students of mine from time to time. I call it "going in/going out."

Start with a breathing exercise for a few minutes. Then discard in your mind your identification with various parts of your environment -- your possessions, your body, your mind, your feelings. As you do this, if you do it right, your body-awareness will dim and your mind will quiet. You will eventually be left identified with nothing, with an infinitely small part at the center.

Then take up these parts of "yourself" again, and now expand outward. Let the dividing line between you and your immediate surroundings be expanded so that they are included in your perception of "self." Keep expanding that line so that it encompasses the planet, the solar system, the galaxy, the cosmos (at each stage, if need be, you can recognize the physical interaction which identifies all of these as a single system.)

The end-point experience of both going in and going out is similar. But at all stages of it, you remain aware, you just change your understanding of selfhood, and so come to see, on a visceral and experiential level, that the normal concept of selfhood is a convenience, and arbitrary function of memory, and in a very specific sense an illusion.



What Jesus started was a Jewish sect, which the Apostles and their followers continued after the Crucifixion. What Paul of Tarsus started was a diverse non-Jewish religion that followed Jesus' teachings and certain ideas about Jesus that Paul promulgated (although branches of it spun wide of those ideas). What the Emperor Constantine, via the bishops of his time, started was a political body that employed Christian doctrine to uphold the authority of the Empire. And it is from this Imperial Church that modern Christian doctrine in its standard form, as shared by the Orthodox, Catholic, and most Protestant Christians, derives. The idea that Christian theology and doctrine derives directly from the teachings of Christ is one for which there is no evidence, and there is much evidence from the Gospels and from the forms of worship followed by the earliest post-Crucifixion Nazarenes that he never intended to found a new religion at all.



As I said, all of that derives from accounts of other people who have undergone mystical experience. That includes Jesus, of course.

Everything in religion that is not mysticism is make-believe.



If that were true, there would be no difference between a prophet and a psychic. A prophet is not a fortune-teller; he is someone who claims to speak for God, and he can make that claim only on the basis of personal experience, and the only such experience that ever happens to anyone is mystical in nature. If he does predict the future (some prophets do, some don't), that is a power derived from his or her experience of God, and it is the experience of God that remains primary and defining.

Through his prophets, I have a tangible map of the events I am watching on TV. My God lets me know what to expect on this earth.

An interesting claim. Care to make some of those predictions public so we can test the theory?

Gentle Dragon,
Satan can make you feel like a million bucks.

I know you mean well, but you are giving kindergarten lessons to a postgraduate student. There really is not much point in doing that.

Einstien thought he was smarter than God also. I guarrantee he wasn't, and by now realizes that fact. So you are a post graduate student, congrats. You are still wrong.

 

[The Irish Ram]

Nothing happens when I hit the quote button, or the bold, or size, or color, or emots, and I don't know why. I'm broke.

 

[edthecynic]

Einstien thought he was smarter than God also. I guarrantee he wasn't, and by now realizes that fact. So you are a post graduate student, congrats. You are still wrong.

Satan convinces the wicked that they can read the thoughts of the living and the dead.

 

[The Irish Ram]

I'd like to quote our conversation like you are. It makes our responses to specific questions easier to identify, but for some reason, I can't use anything on the board. I don't know why, but it makes my posts a little harder to follow, so bear with me Dragon.

Here's how you do that. After using the "quote" button, you'll see some code at the beginning and end. The word "quote" appears between brackets [] at the beginning and "/quote" at the end, also in brackets. The first quote begins the quote formatting, and the second one ends it. To put something in quote formatting, simply type similar code at the beginning and end of the section you wish to set off.

Actually the code at the beginning says "quote=" followed by the name of the poster being quoted and some stuff at the end; this results in the text "Originally posted by The Irish Ram" at the beginning.

I understand your premise, I don't understand it's purpose.
If you are not two, but one, and the illusion of you is God wearing a mask, my first question is,
Why does God need a mask?

An excellent question, and one without a completely satisfactory answer. Probably the best two I've seen are the two I used at the beginning of my novel The Golden Game, this one from William Blake's "Marriage of Heaven and Hell":



The other is from Liber Al Vel Legis by Aleister Crowley:



Unity means stasis, because there is no distinction between one moment and the next -- and since everything that happens must happen in time, division therefore is necessary for anything to happen. Of course, that only takes the question back a step, because one must then ask why anything needs to happen. Perhaps Crowley's answer is the correct one, and it's all for the sake of love, which requires two at minimum.

In fact, this sort of speculation is one reason why I reject the idea, which one can find in eastern religions or some interpretations thereof, that incarnation and material existence is a mistake to be rectified. Since all is/was One ab initio, if the goal were to get back there, why are we here? Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

A parallel error IMO is the comparable idea in Western religions that the point of life is an afterlife. Although in specific these two are different ideas, they have a similar implication that our "real" lives are somewhere other than this world. I wrote a blog entry on that called "The First Noble Falsehood," which you can read here if you're interested: The Dragon Talking: The First Noble Falsehood

Be that as it may, and as I said earlier, I don't have a complete and uplifting story to offer here. All I know for certain is that there is the All, which is the true I, and there is the division of the I into fragments (not only in space but also in time), and my own ego or limited self-sense is an organizing method for one such fragmentary division. Perhaps the All isn't God in the sense you mean; perhaps God is something that is evolving still, a potential to be realized way down the road, and in prayer what we sense is a sort of "virtual God."



No, that doesn't follow, because morality is not something that's founded in the All to begin with, but is a function operant at a lower, more particular level. Consider that you have to have division and hence the possibility of action before you can prefer one action over another. So while one can argue that it's all the same to God (with perfect justification IMO), that doesn't mean it is, or should be, all the same to US -- by which I mean the ordinary idea of "us."

Part of chopping wood and carrying water is making moral judgments. That's something we do because it's how we're put together. And I am familiar with the argument that since we're all God anyway compassion is pointless, but if the division is for love, for the chance of union, that's hardly true -- and anyway, lack of compassion is equally pointless from that cosmic view, so hardly to be preferred. And we have lower-down reasons to prefer compassion.



There are ideas ABOUT the senses which are, but the senses THEMSELVES are not. You don't have to reason logically to know that you are hearing something, or that any experience is happening. This is something you literally cannot doubt while it's happening. The same is true of mystical experience: it can't be doubted while it's happening -- literally. I don't mean doubting it doesn't make logical sense, I mean it's literally, utterly impossible to doubt it.

I would have a very hard time explaining that, though.



Hmm, not just that. But the spiritual experience really is, operationally speaking, what God is -- the reality underlying the ideas. Or rather, whatever reality gives rise to spiritual experience is that.



Oh yes, all of those are time-honored methods of altering consciousness, as is meditation, prayer, religious ritual, and it can also happen spontaneously. Sometimes I get into the state while writing poetry. I've seen it done through dance, through sex, through all kinds of things. However, it's also possible to enter a drugged state and come nowhere near a mystical experience, so it's not as simple as it sounds.



No, it's a set of ideas about who you are. Awareness remains. Let me tell you about one exercise that helped me and has helped students of mine from time to time. I call it "going in/going out."

Start with a breathing exercise for a few minutes. Then discard in your mind your identification with various parts of your environment -- your possessions, your body, your mind, your feelings. As you do this, if you do it right, your body-awareness will dim and your mind will quiet. You will eventually be left identified with nothing, with an infinitely small part at the center.

Then take up these parts of "yourself" again, and now expand outward. Let the dividing line between you and your immediate surroundings be expanded so that they are included in your perception of "self." Keep expanding that line so that it encompasses the planet, the solar system, the galaxy, the cosmos (at each stage, if need be, you can recognize the physical interaction which identifies all of these as a single system.)

The end-point experience of both going in and going out is similar. But at all stages of it, you remain aware, you just change your understanding of selfhood, and so come to see, on a visceral and experiential level, that the normal concept of selfhood is a convenience, and arbitrary function of memory, and in a very specific sense an illusion.



What Jesus started was a Jewish sect, which the Apostles and their followers continued after the Crucifixion. What Paul of Tarsus started was a diverse non-Jewish religion that followed Jesus' teachings and certain ideas about Jesus that Paul promulgated (although branches of it spun wide of those ideas). What the Emperor Constantine, via the bishops of his time, started was a political body that employed Christian doctrine to uphold the authority of the Empire. And it is from this Imperial Church that modern Christian doctrine in its standard form, as shared by the Orthodox, Catholic, and most Protestant Christians, derives. The idea that Christian theology and doctrine derives directly from the teachings of Christ is one for which there is no evidence, and there is much evidence from the Gospels and from the forms of worship followed by the earliest post-Crucifixion Nazarenes that he never intended to found a new religion at all.



As I said, all of that derives from accounts of other people who have undergone mystical experience. That includes Jesus, of course.

Everything in religion that is not mysticism is make-believe.



If that were true, there would be no difference between a prophet and a psychic. A prophet is not a fortune-teller; he is someone who claims to speak for God, and he can make that claim only on the basis of personal experience, and the only such experience that ever happens to anyone is mystical in nature. If he does predict the future (some prophets do, some don't), that is a power derived from his or her experience of God, and it is the experience of God that remains primary and defining.

Through his prophets, I have a tangible map of the events I am watching on TV. My God lets me know what to expect on this earth.

An interesting claim. Care to make some of those predictions public so we can test the theory?

Gentle Dragon,
Satan can make you feel like a million bucks.

I know you mean well, but you are giving kindergarten lessons to a postgraduate student. There really is not much point in doing that.

I'm not so sure about that. Thing is, some of what you say, I can't argue with because it is similar to my belief.
But there is an old saying about Satan, He'll give you 99% truth so you won't notice that 1% lie. And there it was. Cosmic memory.
I can't agree with your spiritual experience because of the omission of Christ. In my mind, Satan has given you a 99% glimpse of the essence of Divine, so you'll know it's real, and then side tracked you with the rest.
Satan doesn't want you to know that not only is God Divine, but he has a personal interest in you. He's your Dad. He doesn't see a mask. He sees your heart.
And I do mean well, but you don't even believe Satan exists, so you aren't even on guard.
To me, you're a siting duck.
I don't think either of us will convert the other, but it's cool to hear another view. And there is no reason two enlightened such as we, can't be friends.

And I think an end time prophesy thread might be interesting. How about the old, "In the end times all eyes will be on Israel." So, are they going to pre-empt or not? Inquiring nations want to know.

 

[Dragon]

Einstien thought he was smarter than God also.

I don't think I'm smarter than God. I just think I'm smarter than you.

 

[Dragon]

And I do mean well, but you don't even believe Satan exists, so you aren't even on guard.

That's incorrect. While I don't believe in Satan as such, my magical experience, of which I have beaucoup, tells me that evil spirits are real. I am quite definitely on my guard.

And I think an end time prophesy thread might be interesting. How about the old, "In the end times all eyes will be on Israel." So, are they going to pre-empt or not? Inquiring nations want to know.

Well, given that Israel even exists, at some point or other they're bound to be in the center of the public view. In fact, that's already happened more than once, but seemingly the "end times" were not upon us. It may happen again, but if it does I will not take that as a sign of the Second Coming anymore than I did 1967 or 1973.

 

[hortysir]

I'm not so sure about that. Thing is, some of what you say, I can't argue with because it is similar to my belief.
But there is an old saying about Satan, He'll give you 99% truth so you won't notice that 1% lie. And there it was. Cosmic memory.
I can't agree with your spiritual experience because of the omission of Christ. In my mind, Satan has given you a 99% glimpse of the essence of Divine, so you'll know it's real, and then side tracked you with the rest.
Satan doesn't want you to know that not only is God Divine, but he has a personal interest in you. He's your Dad. He doesn't see a mask. He sees your heart.
And I do mean well, but you don't even believe Satan exists, so you aren't even on guard.
To me, you're a siting duck.
I don't think either of us will convert the other, but it's cool to hear another view. And there is no reason two enlightened such as we, can't be friends.

And I think an end time prophesy thread might be interesting. How about the old, "In the end times all eyes will be on Israel." So, are they going to pre-empt or not? Inquiring nations want to know.

Absolutely would

 

[Urbanguerrilla]

That's incorrect. While I don't believe in Satan as such, my magical experience, of which I have beaucoup, tells me that evil spirits are real. I am quite definitely on my guard.

.

You think you're a real dragon dont you?

...a magic one...is that it?

 

[jan]

Define "hell".

I think I should probably let AF define hell. He believes in it, I don't.

Not hard. When a nonbeliever dies they go to the grave to wait judgement. This has been described as hell. At the Great White Throne of judgement the grave, or hell, will give up the dead to be judged and then are throne into the lake of fire. Believers who die their spirit goes to Heaven and are judged at the judgement seat of Christ. Their spirit and their body are reunited at the rapture when Christ will raise the Church to heaven.

That whole "throwing in the lake of fire thing" makes me question the purpose for God to create those humans who will ultimately succumb to that torture in the first place. If God is God, wouldn't He have known those folks would wind up on the trash heap? If God doesn't make any junk, why did He create those who would wind up being nothing but trash needing to be burned up into oblivion? That whole scenario doesn't really make sense in the grand cosmic scheme of things.

The Bible says God knows us in the womb...that even the hairs of our head are numbered, so why would He throw away His creation at the end into a lake of fire? Did He mess up in the first place by making them?

 

[Two Thumbs]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czja6XI_s5k]Worms Crawl In - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Dragon]

That's incorrect. While I don't believe in Satan as such, my magical experience, of which I have beaucoup, tells me that evil spirits are real. I am quite definitely on my guard.

.

You think you're a real dragon dont you?

...a magic one...is that it?

I think I'm a real mage. The Dragon is my totem spirit, a guardian as it were, and expresses a part of my nature. Whether that makes me a "real" dragon or not, depends on what you mean by "real."

 

[Barb]

AF said:

"Einstien thought he was smarter than God also"

For one thing, its Einstein, and he most certainly did NOT think that.

In the view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognise, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support for such views. (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, p. 214)

We know nothing about [God, the world] at all. All our knowledge is but the knowledge of schoolchildren. Possibly we shall know a little more than we do now. but the real nature of things, that we shall never know, never. (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, Page 208)

I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know his thoughts. The rest are details. (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, 2000 p.202)

The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.
( Albert Einstein - The Merging of Spirit and Science)

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. (Albert Einstein, 1954, The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press)

I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being. (Albert Einstein)

http://www.usmessageboard.com/religion-and-ethics/206884-what-happens-after.html

What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos. (Albert Einstein to Joseph Lewis, Apr. 18, 1953)

Albert Einstein: Quotes on God, Religion, Theology

so there, smart ass.

Einstein figured, much like Lucian in the second century, that there will be things that will always be a mystery to us. Einstein would have liked to figure it out, much as he doubted the human capacity to do so, and like Lucian, he figured it might just be okay not to know. I figure the same, and have no interest in the speculation of human kind. I'll wait and see. I like surprises.

 

[The Irish Ram]

And I do mean well, but you don't even believe Satan exists, so you aren't even on guard.

That's incorrect. While I don't believe in Satan as such, my magical experience, of which I have beaucoup, tells me that evil spirits are real. I am quite definitely on my guard.

And I think an end time prophesy thread might be interesting. How about the old, "In the end times all eyes will be on Israel." So, are they going to pre-empt or not? Inquiring nations want to know.

Well, given that Israel even exists, at some point or other they're bound to be in the center of the public view. In fact, that's already happened more than once, but seemingly the "end times" were not upon us. It may happen again, but if it does I will not take that as a sign of the Second Coming anymore than I did 1967 or 1973.

This is all so interesting. Thanks for taking the time to share it with me, Dragon.
Tell me about the evil spirits.
How do you know they are evil?
If there are evil spirits, are there also good spirits?
Where do they come from?
Are they part of the cosmic memory?
What harm can they produce?
Are they clever?
How do you guard against them?

There is a God out there that does not rely on man to experience reality or life. He has already experienced it, and has provided us with the future. To let us know He is real, that He is in control, and that He is our guard against evil.

The Millerites latched onto a calculation, and sold everything they owned, and sat on a rock, waiting for Christ to come.
Christ said when you see these thingS......... Luke 21:28
We need to recognize the thingS he referred to and not jump to conclusions concerning this one or that one.
You referred to a prophesy. If someone would have said to me, "This war is what God spoke of, the end is near", I would have said, "Yes it is, but has God returned the Ethiopians Jews to the land of Israel"? If they say, "Yes", I would say, "have the countries of the world united under one leader yet"?

We have been given a time line to follow. As prophesy is fulfilled, it is so precise, that we will come to a point where we can literally stand in front of a calender and mark off the days, until the foot of Christ touches down on the Mt. of Olives. We are furiously pushing for that countdown to begin. And you can monitor it on our nightly news. It will begin with a pen and paper.
It is not one, or some. God is perfect. It's all.

 

[Dragon]

This is all so interesting. Thanks for taking the time to share it with me, Dragon.
Tell me about the evil spirits.
How do you know they are evil?

Often you can sense this; there's a feeling of malice and malevolence. It's a telepathic thing, involving the perception of emotions. Otherwise, have some dealings with them and observe how you get screwed over and the general idea becomes clear.

There are in fact whole magical systems out of the Renaissance era that involve summoning evil spirits and either making deals with them (so called "black" magic) or compelling them to obedience using the names and power of God (so called "white" magic). The concept on which both of these are based is essentially Christian, the belief that "this world" is under the dominion of Satan, so that in order to accomplish anything practical in the world you have to turn to the dark side of the Force (so to speak).

I don't accept this theological concept at all, but evil spirits are as real as evil itself (see below). Also, in the past, I did play around with some white magic systems for a while, before getting a clue that none of that is necessary. I ran into some trouble with them, too.

If there are evil spirits, are there also good spirits?

Of course. There is evil and there is good. Thus, there are evil spirits and there are good spirits.

Where do they come from?
Are they part of the cosmic memory?
What harm can they produce?
Are they clever?
How do you guard against them?

Lots of questions, and I can in some cases only give you my own theories, which I believe to probably be true but which other mages may disagree with (and I know for a fact that many do).

I believe that spirits are a product of the interaction of human imagination with powers, forces, and concepts in nature and in society. The human mind creates them, but nevertheless the powers, forces, and concepts with which spirits are associated exist independently of the human mind (or as much so as anything does). Most spirits don't fall into those neat good-evil categories, but since evil and good are both real elements in human society, spirits of evil and good can both be generated. The creation of them, I should add, is not always or even usually conscious and deliberate. Also, when they are given names, images, and other associations these can be communicated to other people and that solidifies the reality of the spirit.

I believe all things to be part of the cosmic memory, although I'm not altogether clear on what the cosmic memory is exactly.

What harm can they produce -- well, these are magical beings, and all magic operates by altering the probabilities of indeterminate events, so they can do harm by making bad things more likely to happen. Since many of the body's systems and much of the brain's activity are indeterminate, the capacity to bring about disease and to confuse thinking and feeling are especially noxious.

They take their cleverness from us, so -- yes. Sometimes, anyway.

Guarding against them. I would say the first thing is to deep-six those old Renaissance black and white magic systems and don't call the bleeding things up in the first place. There are also rituals of cleansing and protection and banishment which can be used against them.

There is a God out there that does not rely on man to experience reality or life. He has already experienced it, and has provided us with the future. To let us know He is real, that He is in control, and that He is our guard against evil.

Now you're speaking dogma. The thing is, no matter what we're talking about, experience is all we have. All WE have -- you can say whatever you please about God, but we really have no evidence there one way or the other, except that we are capable of knowing some things about reality in its various states and so can know that some things are simply impossible.

Whatever God is in and of himself, for us there is the experience of God -- or of the All -- and we have nothing else. That experience is the reality we are referring to. Everything else is just conjecture.

The Millerites latched onto a calculation, and sold everything they owned, and sat on a rock, waiting for Christ to come.

Thus demonstrating the hazards of obedience to dogma, poor things.

Christ said when you see these thingS......... Luke 21:28
We need to recognize the thingS he referred to and not jump to conclusions concerning this one or that one.

I assume you mean the entire chapter and not just its final verse. If you look at the specific predictions Jesus made here, you can see that they came to pass not all that long afterwards. Jews refer to the result as the Diaspora. Obviously, then, this has little to do with the second coming as Christians think of it. He also gave specific predictions to the Apostles concerning their own fates, some of which came true but others did not. (An example of the latter is his statement that, "Still, not a hair on your heads will be lost. By holding fast, you will gain your lives." Clearly, this was not so for a number of the Apostles, including Peter.)

I am of course more skeptical of Biblical prophecies than you are, although because I'm acquainted with the phenomenon of predicting the future I know that this sort of thing is possible -- and I also have some awareness of its limitations.

My own belief is that often when Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of God (although not necessarily in that passage), he was speaking of a state of awareness or of being rather than either a political regime or an afterlife. As he said on more than one occasion, the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.