Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Riders on the Earth: Why HWA’s Unfinished Furniture Model Doesn’t Work

 

Galaxies like Grains of Sand (Hubble Space Telescope, Fair Use)

Riders on the Earth

Why HWA’s Unfinished Furniture Model Doesn’t Work

By Scout

There is something we need to think about.  As Archibald MacLeish wrote, “we are riders on the earth together.”  We are a little group of people, and we ride on a planet called Eretz circling a star called Shemesh.  We are all riding on this bright cerulean planet as it moves through the grand expanse of the Cosmos.  And the grand expanse is thickly populated by celestial objects.  These shining celestials pose a constant question to us as we look up at the vault of heaven about human destiny that is not answered.  

There is a huge problem with the idea that our destiny is to colonize the Cosmos. Such a colonization is the basis of HWA’s Unfinished Furniture model.  That is the idea that the Cosmos is unfinished, is now in a state of disarray, and glorified humanity in resurrected form will ascend to the stars and finish it.  The problem is quantifiable.  There is not enough of us. The observable Cosmos is too large.  I will begin with the calculations. 

The Arithmetic

The famous Andromeda galaxy is estimated to hold about a trillion stars.  Earlier in my lifetime, nobody knew if there were any planets outside of our solar system.  I remember a deacon giving a sermonette in the WCG and fabulously calculating how many stars we would each get in the next life.   I wondered what I would do with a big bunch of hot, uninhabitable stars.  Roast weenies? Toast marshmallows? 

Then there was an epiphany.  Astrophysicists realized that as a planet crossed the disk of the star it was orbiting, at the right angle of viewing, it would cause the luminosity of the star to fluctuate.  Spectrographic analysis gives them further information about these distant planets. The astonishing conclusion they have made is that our galaxy is rich with planets.  There are more planets than there are stars.  After reading about this, it occurred to me that our Cosmos has an enormous potential for supporting life as we know it.  We don’t know how many of these planets are in the Goldilocks Zone, the orbit where planetary conditions would be conducive to life.  Some number greater than zero.  Maybe much greater than zero.

I will be brief with the arithmetic. The Andromeda galaxy contains about a trillion stars and is about 260,000 light years across the disk.  This means that it contains more than a trillion widely spaced planets, but I will assume a trillion.  Scientists estimate that 117 billion people have lived on the earth since the emergence of Homo Sapiens.  This population figure is inflated for Armstrongists because it includes what they would call pre-adamic men who have no salvific potential. If we deduct pre-adamic man, the population figure becomes 108 billion. I will use this smaller number even though I think it is still too large. In the Andromeda galaxy alone, then, there are about nine planets per person. 

What this means is that if you terra-form all the planets, as in the HWA’s Unfinished Furniture model, you could dump the entire population of all human beings that ever existed into the Andromeda galaxy, alone with each person living on a planet unimaginably distant from the next person.  This is not a kingdom, society, or culture.  This is isolation. 

The problem is that there is not enough of us, even with an optimistic population figure. It is estimated that there are 2 trillion galaxies in just the observable universe.  The problem is staggering.  This was not a problem in the ancient Semitic model of the Cosmos, where the blue sky held water, was not that far away, and had little lights twinkling in it.  But modern science has given us a different dataset.  All speculations, including HWA’s, are overtaken by enormity. The size problem suggests some larger, unknown purpose is afoot.  This means there will have to be some changes to our thinking.  I have a few conjectures. 

The Conjectural Options

Option 1: Humans Continue to Reproduce.   Most readers of the New Testament believe that at some point in the future, all physical human beings will have been resurrected and there will no longer be physical human beings.  The problem of colonizing the Cosmos suggests this might not be the case.  The Bible says be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth.   This connects human reproduction to the constructive use of the planet.  What, then, about the Cosmos? Maybe a strain of physical human beings will continue.  I don’t think the Bible specifically states that human physical life will cease.  Maybe this planet will continue to be the baby factory that it now is.  The downside is that with a nine-month gestation period and the investment of time in raising a child, populating the Cosmos is going to be very, very slow.   The upside is that there is an eternity to do it. 

Option 2: Maybe the Cosmos is already populated.  How would we know?  This distances are insurmountable for us now. Does it seem reasonable that there would be an incomprehensibly large Cosmos with only one tiny, out-of-the-way planet bearing a population?  What is the value of empty?  The upside of this option is that it solves the formidable problem of deploying a population from a single planet.  The downside is that if the cosmic populations are fallen, as we are, Jesus would have to go to each planet and be sacrificed.  Once is enough. So, this is not a likely option.  

Option 3: Maybe we are more localized than we think.  Perhaps deep space is not for us.  The Old Testament is very earth-centric.  And on earth, the focus was on the promised land.  The model involves a certain people living in a certain location with a set of national laws and blessings. With the Gentiles in outer darkness. How much of Creation do we need to be happy? Maybe our locus is this solar system, and the rest of the Cosmos is for another purpose.  Maybe deep space is so irrelevant to us that we will never even know its purpose.  Maybe for us, it is just a display for our aesthetic fancy.

Scenarios that Don’t Work

The HWA Scenario: The Unfinished Furniture scenario just does not work. There’s not enough of us to make it work.  Even if we were not bound by spacetime. We would expend a huge amount of time, it would seem like an eternity, nudging planets into the Goldilocks orbit and terra-forming them.  And in the end, the whole Cosmos would be made habitable, but there would be almost nobody to live in it.  It is an appealing idea, but the arithmetic against it is inexorable.

But even worse, we don’t know how big the Cosmos actually is.  We instead think in terms of the observable Cosmos.  We haven’t found any boundaries.  It could be a trillion times larger than what we can see. Or more.  As resurrected spirit beings, we might have great capabilities but there is the problem of sheer numbers – too much creation, too few beings. 

The Atheism Scenario: The atheistic solution to this problem is that there is no God, no afterlife, and nothing that links human destiny to the stars. Atheism does not have a big picture.  Philosophically, the difference between a human and an amoeba in a godless universe is only a matter of size. Both are just physical organisms, in the atheist view, in transit throughout life towards the finality of death.  But before the atheist solution can be applied to this downstream problem, it must settle matters way further upstream.  Like, why is there something rather than nothing? And why does the something have organization?  I am not persuaded by atheism.   

Summation

It is presumptuous to believe that our little population of riders on the earth will colonize the Cosmos.  We are too few in number.  And in addition, God says to rejoice forever in what he creates.  It sounds like the creation is just going to get bigger and bigger.  Even though we might have super spirit being capabilities, what would be the point in making the whole Cosmos habitable?  It’s like having trillions and trillions of beautiful mansions with only a few hundred people to live in them (The arithmetic is even worse than my figure or speech.)  We need to go back to the drawing board.  In all the homiletic glibness, we are missing something.

14 comments:

nck said...

Too few of us...... Obviously the writer does not know former Chinese and current US abortion statistics....... The Kingdom will be "black and chinese".

Nck

Anonymous said...

Uggghhh take off your negativity tinted glasses. How can anyone think the glorious future God has planned, that our meger human minds cannot begin to imagine, is problamatic?
Hey i think God has this. Trust in God not flawed human reasoning. Why worry.

NO2HWA said...

I always found the idea that we would all be given planets to rule over as an absurd idea. Herb's idea was that we would be with family and friends in our lives, whether from the neighborhood, high school, college, work, church, etc., to repopulate and replenish the earth to its original state. But where is the cutoff on who is actually on our planet? Your neighborhood friends would also want to be with their friends, and your college and church friends would also want to be included with all of their friends, the list goes on and on, and the amountof people expands dramatically. There has to be a cut-off point that says, You ned to go populate your own world, this one's too full. Even if there is a cut-off point with people, that means some will be separate from family and friends. There is no way around. This even applies to those who think heaven is our destination. Where does it end? Even Mormons can't explain this conundrum when they will be inheriting planets too.

Anonymous said...

All the host of heaven will rot away, and the skies roll up like a scroll. Isaiah 34:4

Rev 6:14 Then the skies receded as a scroll...

It is not even a given, that the universe as we know will survive the dissolution of the heavens, with the sky being rolled up like a scroll and stars falling.

Anonymous said...

Scout the party pooper. Definition: noun, informal, 'a person who throws gloom.'over social enjoyment.
Christ used the mustard seed in parables to illustrate the growth of His Kingdom. So planet Earth is just the beginning. Herb was selling his religion to potential members with the unfinished furniture analogy and members ruling (like tyrants) their own planet.
God hasn't given details, but I trust God on this matter.

BP8 said...

2 Scriptures come to mind:
Romans 8:19-21
"The creation itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruptible into the glorious liberty of the children of God".

Hebrews 2:5-8
" What is man that thou art mindful of Him? Thou has set him over (to have dominion, Psalms 8:6) the works of THY hands, thou has put all things in subjection under his feet, nothing is not put under him".

One man's speculation is as good as the next. Since we are doing that, why not go BIG? I like the imagination of the Star Trek writers, who envisioned whole planets and systems devoted to amusement (amusement parks, beer gardens, etc). Surely the glorified children of God can match that or do better.

In eternity there are no restrictions. Neither time or travel will be problematic. Sounds like good times to me!

Good post Scout!

Anonymous said...

Anonymous 11:31 wrote, “Trust in God not flawed human reasoning.”

With this essay, I am engaged in a small excursus into Natural Theology. Natural Theology entertains the question: “What does Nature tell us about God?” There is the Book of God’s Words but there is also the Book of God’s Works. The two, the Bible and Creation, will be in harmony otherwise God himself is inconsistent. This kind of study is sometimes polemical. Like politicians shouting “fake news”, fundamentalist Bible-thumpers yell “fake science.”

I am not saying that God does not have a plan. I am sure he does and that it is glorious. What I am saying is that human faculties fail us in trying to understand what that plan is. In particular, HWA’s Unfinished Furniture idea is a dog that won’t hunt. Note that I am not attempting the impossible task of plumbing the Spirit Realm. That’s not what I am up to. I am dealing only with the visible realm – matter and energy in spacetime. So, there may be something on the spirit side that makes the physical side comprehensible. Something that puts the Cosmos in its full context. That is not in my purview.

But for right now, the popular ideas in religious circles about the destiny of mankind in the Cosmos are deficient. Jesus said he was preparing a place for us. My little essay is saying that we don’t really know what that place is going to be like. And our conjectures about the Cosmos tend to be small and childish and really don’t tell us much. HWA used to often chide us for not understanding the two trees. His refrain was, “You brethren just don’t get it.” What HWA did not get was the impossibly large size of the Cosmos. So, he thought his Unfinished Furniture model was tenable. It is not.

If God wanted to render the Cosmos fully habitable with lush planets throughout, he could do that by fiat without our involvement. He might, like C.S. Lewis wrote, want to involve us somehow, as his children, to grant us the dignity of causation. I find that a reasonable and blessed gift.

Scout

Tonto said...

What planet and where, has that Hot Green Chick from Star Trek Original Series "The Menagerie"?

Anonymous said...

Something else. I am going to put this on the table while I am thinking about it. There is a theme in Armstrongism of simplifying God. I don’t think it stems from some kind of disrespect. I believe it is an honest misunderstanding that comes from the idea that humans are destined to become God-as-God-is-God. And to make this idea plausible, it is necessary to reduce God to something that can be reasonably understood and attained by human beings. It leads to the idea that God is not absolute but relative – just like us humans. And the idea that the difference between us and him is not a category difference but just a matter of degree. And maybe we will be able to close the gap. I remember a WCG minister back in the old days giving a sermon where he held up his hand with a tiny gap between his forefinger and thumb and said “the difference between us and God will be just that much.” I think that was supposed to be encouraging. It wasn’t. It was a depreciation of God.

The Unfinished Furniture idea is an example of this theme of diminishing God. It does not consider the incomprehensibly large size of the Cosmos that God created. And our failure to deal with the size is our failure to understand its purpose. Yet, the Cosmos that we can’t really understand (and display that all the time) is just another created artifact to God. In fact, one day he is going to create a new version. And we may be there to see it done.

Scout

Anonymous said...

In training to rule over your galaxy be sure to observe God's 3 fixed (moed) festivals or you might not get rain.

Byker Bob said...

I'm immature. So, what I'd like is my own medium sized Island! On it, we'll have a quarter mile drag strip, and a half mile dirt track, lots of hotrods and motorcycles, and the parts stores and speed shops to maintain them. There will be an outdoor pavillion where all my favorite dead rock stars can perform, and lots of ice cold beer. We'll have incorruptable ears so that loud exhaust pipes and screaming electric guitars will always be pleasing, and never damage the hearing. There'll be lots of pretty Mexican ladies who stay forever young, and really know how to cook! Yum!!!

Nobody uncool can come to our island. Everybody who is allowed to stay will be friendly, mellow, and share our communal interests. There'll be cigarettes that are actually beneficial to your health, and we'll be using plenty of slang. Family members will enjoy each others company, and watch out for one another's interests. We'll have interactive chips that can be attached to the brain stem so that if you want to get up and jam on "Free Bird" with the Skynyrd boys, you"ll be right at home and getting accolades. Or surf like Dennis Wilson!

I sure hope I don't have to settle for some damn planet off in a galaxy nobody's even heard of, and be sentenced to an eternity teaching Armstrongism. That would righteously suck!

BB

Miller Jones/Lonnie C Hendrix said...

Scout's essay confronts the problems inherent with the Armstrongist view of the cosmos and our future as part of it. Herbert Armstrong always ignored the greatest gift that God could ever give us. What could possibly be better than God sending his Son to this earth to shoulder our sins, make it possible for God to forgive our own moral failures, and remove that which had alienated humankind from the Divine? For Herbie, that simply wasn't enough - there had to be more - 10 cities, 10 planets, etc.

For me, the Scripture which came to mind in connection with this topic came from Paul's epistle to the saints at Corinth. He wrote: "I do speak with words of wisdom, but not the kind of wisdom that belongs to this world or to the rulers of this world, who are soon forgotten. No, the wisdom we speak of is the mystery of God—his plan that was previously hidden, even though he made it for our ultimate glory before the world began. But the rulers of this world have not understood it; if they had, they would not have crucified our glorious Lord. That is what the Scriptures mean when they say, 'No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.' But it was to us that God revealed these things by his Spirit. For his Spirit searches out everything and shows us God’s deep secrets. No one can know a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit, and no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit. And we have received God’s Spirit (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us. When we tell you these things, we do not use words that come from human wisdom. Instead, we speak words given to us by the Spirit, using the Spirit’s words to explain spiritual truths. But people who aren’t spiritual can’t receive these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them and they can’t understand it, for only those who are spiritual can understand what the Spirit means." - I Corinthians 2:6-14, NLT

God's Spirit gives us insight into this great plan which God had/has for us. Let us rejoice in it. Sure, it's fun to speculate about what might be out beyond all of that, but it is fruitless for us to make that our focus. There are so many things that are unknown to us (we have barely begun to understand the Cosmos and our part in it, and anyone who claims to have plumbed the depths of God's mind on this matter is a charlatan, imho. Let's rejoice in what God has already shared with us - isn't it glorious enough for us?

Anonymous said...

A experienced Pastor once said to me about himself; "If your in a hole of your own making...stop digging".
You never once mentioned Jesus or Nature in your essay.
I've never

Anonymous said...

I saw it somewhere recently that those wanting to have a star named after them has a gigantic selection to choose from; there are around 11 trillion stars known for every person currently on the earth. That is around 8,80000000000000000000000 stars. Or 8.8 x 10^22 stars.

But for everyone that has ever lived (using Scout's 107B people) it's disappointingly small; only a little less than a trillion or so stars to choose from for every person that has ever lived.

Yet, as Miller pointed out this is nothing to the gift of the Son.