Revelation -- Turning
In this blog we cover the forward turn in Revelation. Before that, project status and some clarification on ciphers from last week's blog.
The Great Reprint
I posted a picture to the Telegram group showing the farm as it was beginning to reprint all of the basic 3d models. Let me give you some statistics on what happened.
I set out to reprint all of the letter related 3d models. For this round I was interested in getting correctly sized models, using the correct pen. I did not want anything decorated, so for example, no working balance. Each part needed a base. All of the composite models, so the silo, well, sower, reaper and all the plants were also reprinted, along with their respective bases.
I am not printing any cases at this point. Cases are a future task as they are Tabernacle articles.
I also printed a set of tiles that show how to draw all of the 2d shapes against a graph paper like grid. These were 3 color prints, with 3 different filament changes within each part.
I have 5 printers. The oldest printer, with 5300 hours run time, lost the extruder motor a few days before. Because that printer was calibrated, I grabbed a motor off the rebuild printer, so I was down to 4 working printers. Then I borrowed 2 more 3d printers, so I was running with 6 printers for this great reprint.
It took essentially 10 days for those 6 printers to reprint everything. I was checking redesigns as I went, and there were some bases that had not been designed when this started. Some of those new designs needed reprints.
I was letting long prints run into the evening. I was also starting long running prints in the middle of most nights. If this was in an office setting, then this would have stretched past 10 days.
Lessons
I have never run this many printers at the same time, and there were lessons there. Once there are many more printers running at the same time, the available plastic colors become an issue. Each set is in a different color, so red, yellow, green and silver. All of the bases for all models are in white. The tiles were 3 color, white, silver and then one of the other colors.
All of the bases take much more plastic than their matched parts. So I should have started with 3 printers just running white bases. I needed as many spools of white plastic as printers running white. So I should have started with 4 spools of white.
I figured out this problem a few days in, so the bases stretched out into the last couple days of the print run. At the end of the 10 days a few of the 3d printers were finished, but 3 printers were still running white.
The 'pipe' series that generates the silo and well had a bunch of rework based on the Eden Map work from late last year. The basic shapes are still the same, but the map work showed how to handle the dots. Everywhere a ring spins up there is a dot in the middle. This is now factored into the parts designs. These become drips in the well and seeds in the silo.
Several parts printed OK, but when threading mono filament fishing line the line was threaded through and glued into wrong holes. This happened many times and each time needed a reprint.
The fix to this problem was to add 'builders marks' on the parts to mark threading holes against the tie off holes. I have added those marks to all designs, even those where I got it right by accident. This has made the threading and gluing step much less error prone.
The tile set needed plastic changes about every 23 minutes. So that printer needed constant attention. So the printer room needed to be basically manned whenever that printer was running. Those parts could not run overnight. That entire series took most of the 10 days by itself, since it could not get ahead after hours.
For slicing parts I used the 2.6 alpha version of Prusa Slicer. It has a new 'organic' support option. This is brand new and getting rave reviews. This was a serious improvement over previous versions of generated support material. Organic supports swerve around the model whenever possible. This looks very strange at at first. But once the print is done, when removing support material from complex parts, the finished part is significantly better. For the Sower, Reaper, Silo and Well, especially, this is a fantastic change.
Distractions
Years ago I regularly took my dad to a major well respected hospital in Seattle while he was undergoing cancer care. At that time they had another patient die of poisoning, a mis-administered drug. It was a huge scandal. They had a task force go figure out why this happened. They found the death was caused by a question. A random non-work question was asked of a nurse while she was setting up the dead patient's medications. That nurse was distracted, then picked the wrong drugs, and the patient died.
To fix the problem the hospital reworked nearly all procedures for labeling, storing, and handling drugs. The most profound was marking certain drug storage rooms where saying anything out loud in that room would get the speaker fired. Those rooms were marked with no-speaking signs on their doors.
I found the same going on when I was running these prints. I found myself easily distracted because I was thinking about everything going on. This was not just monitoring 6 printers, but also included the design work and rework I was doing to keep the printers running.
Everyone in the house wanted to know progress. I was trapped in the shop, so they had to come to me. They would come to the shop and ask how things were going. Normally, that is not a bad question, we all wanted to see this finished.
But, that level of distraction caused many failed prints. It caused me to change filament to the wrong color. It caused unneeded duplicate prints to be printed and it caused stuff to fall on the printers.
This was a big lesson for future use of the farm. These 3d models themselves take the least amount of print time and plastic. The bigger articles, cases and trees and many other things will take much more time to print. Not letting distractions happen while 3d printing will become more important going forward.
Renaming
Finally, I do not like many of the names currently used on the parts. I will rename many of the parts and their related source files here soon. I am waiting on this step because one of the parts is still being reworked and more builders marks are needed across the set.
Once everything is renamed I will be posting this set to bom.paleo.in. Perhaps another week to get this finished. I will post back here when that happens. For those waiting for these files, bear with me, the wait will be worth it.
Notes On Ciphers
Our understanding of the cipher system is still very tentative, and subject to much more understanding as we work through this aspect of the problem. With that caution, let me elaborate what we think is going on.
There are 2 fundamental problems with the ciphers. The first problem is developing the cipher tables themselves. The second is applying the cipher to the text.
We think the cipher tables come from one of the panels in the Eden map. I just need non-distracted computer time to see if this hunch is correct.
Last blog I discussed how we think those ciphers work against the base text. In a normal cipher there is a 1-to-1 map between inbound and outbound letters. The cipher itself would map, for example, all Wa letters to Ta letters. It would map, for example, all Ba letters to Qu letters. The cipher would then continue through remaining letters of the alphabet.
In a normal cipher setup, if there was say 1000 Wa letters, and Wa ciphered to Ta, then there would be 1000 Ta letters in the result. This should not be a surprise.
This is not exactly what will happen here. We expect a preprocess step that adjusts the aggregate letter counts going into the cipher. So 1000 Wa inputs to this system will not generate 1000 Ta letters in the resultant document.
There will be some other letter count for each letter coming out the back end. Sometimes, for some letters, the result will be higher. Sometimes the count will be lower. The total number of letters in any given document is still constrained. The inbound total count of letters is the same as the resulting letter count.
Fractional Results
We expect each book, conceptually the books currently in the TT, will go through some set of ciphers and generate a set of additional volumes for those books. As I suggested last time, perhaps 16 or 17 total additional volumes.
This means that, say, Enoch generates the first bits of all of those volumes. Noah then generates an additional bit for each of those volumes. The same goes for each additional inspired passage. This is how living waters were found even in Isaac's day.
So at the time of the start of the NT, all of the OT material could be run through the cipher system. So about 1/2 of the inspired material we know now was able to generate about 1/2 of the total additional writing. Once the NT was written, it too could be run through the ciphers.
This would be the definitive way to prove inspiration. Since it could be done immediately. Any inspired writer could check their own work. Job hints at this when he wishes his writing to be engraved on stone. Monument quality text, as Job wrote, is the stump that grows up to other volumes.
So once the NT was written, each additional volume could now grow too. They would each became about twice the size. This is because the NT would add to each of those other writings.
This is strangely open ended. So if there was any more inspired writing, say an account of Joshua's return, it too would be adding to all the volumes. This is of course wild speculation, but it helps to think this way in order to demonstrate what is going on.
Bits Of Other Volumes
So this system of ciphers had to be known to anyone writing inspired text. The ciphers themselves are explained through the articles in the Tent of Time. When the Tent of Time was setup publicly, additional volumes had to be known and floating around. The tent has little purpose if it is not doing this.
It is possible that some of those additional volumes got picked up in Nebuchadnezzar's day and included into the Bible we know now. This is a strange case that we will be watching for as we work through this problem.
The Turn Of Revelation
Last blog I was dealing with topics from Revelation chapter 12. In that chapter there are clues that the story is referencing events in Eden. There are also clues related to the textual purpose of Revelation which is to deal with the small, sealed, scroll.
To get to that chapter we were backing up across time. Now the question is what happens next?
Are we backing up even earlier in history? Does the story stay stopped at Eden? Or does the story reverse and start going forward?
The only story that we confidently put before Eden is the parable of the Lost Sheep. The sheep that has wandered off is all of Adam's offspring. There are 99 other branches of the human family that are in no need of repentance. Those other branches exist out in the stars. The shepherd, Joshua, has gone on a mission to rescue that sheep, which is all of Adam's race.
It is possible for Revelation to go back to that period of history. But there does not seem to be much purpose for Revelation to do that. We would not have any grid to use to filter Revelation itself. If Revelation is backing up further, then it would be a single witness.
If Revelation stays at Eden we might be getting a bunch more about that era. But Eden does not replay in serious ways like other times in history. We are not particularly for want of details of Eden.
So the final case is to see if Revelation reverses at Eden. If it does this then it should start working forward. We should be able to find evidence of this by finding more historical pairs, but going forward in historical time.
Continued Purpose
If Revelation is reversing, then the literary purpose may have some other application. So far, the general story of Revelation is out from a sealed document and then down to the issue of more volumes. What is left for it to cover?
So far, Revelation has been a parable about the audit systems and recovery of inspired text. It has then explained how it generates additional volumes. Those volumes are like the children that are birthed in pain.
To stay within that purpose, Revelation is now likely going to tell us where in history those children documents provide more details. So going forward, it might be giving us the context for what to expect from those volumes.
Modern Application?
At first glance this would mean they don't generally have modern application, but consider a strange idea. History is fractal. Historical events repeat at various scales, in various ways, at specific times all across history.
So more documentation on Eden itself would explain what to look for every time the timeline starts to repeat again. Same for Noah, and so on down through history. But, awareness of what was really going with the human condition might cause future replays of those events to not replay badly, like they often do.
I suspect this is what is going on. Revelation going forward tells us where additional volumes that come from the small scroll will apply in historical time. It may even be giving the sequence or way to sort them into volumes following the material in the TT.
Dragon Cast Down (Rev. 12, BRB)
The link here is to Revelation 12, same chapter as last week. This time look at the story of the Dragon being cast down. This is not the same as what happened the first time around. Adam and Eve were cast down.
So this rerun of history is different. Adam and Eve are not failing. This time the Hivite/Serpent is failing, and he is cast out. Not Adam and Eve.
To stay within the literary purpose of Revelation it is suggesting that once the small text is recovered that future replays of this story are not failures, but success.
Let me suggest the first additional volume is going into the Garden of Eden story. As that volume progresses it may start with back story on Eden itself and Adam and Eve. In particular, it could provide more details about how they failed. By the end of that volume it may explain something that gets Adam and Eve and all of the rest of us some sort of permanent victory.
Flood
By Revelation 12:15, there is a reference to a flood of water. Caused by the dragon/Hivite. The story is advancing forward to the time of Noah. It is adding that this was caused by the same characters as we found in Eden.
Again, this is a point in history where even regular Bible readers want to know more. This is suggesting that documentation exists in an additional volume.
Note there are time references throughout the rest of Revelation. Usually cuts of 1260, or 1/2 of a 7 times interval. These do not match well against historical time. Either they are not inspired or they are decorations on the longer historical timeline.
At this point I have given some evidence that Revelation turns around and starts moving forward.
The purpose of Revelation from here to the bottom appears to be showing where those additional volumes provide additional information.
This makes The Testimony an outline and introduction. Revelation seems to sit at the back of the TT, and is introducing the volumes that come after.
The 1st and 2nd of those volumes are likely on Eden and Noah's flood.
We will continue this tour next time.
More Later,
Phil