Isaiah Roman

Triangles and Prisms

The movie “The Thomas Crown Affair” had a theme song composed by Alan Bergman and Michael Jean Legrand “Windmills Of Your Mind.“ The meaning behind the lyrics (written by Alan and Marilyn Bergman) are not obvious; but, they do evoke the spirit of the evolving social attitudes and the chaos of those times. In a poetic way the Bergmans were seeking to connect to an eternal truth, in a secular way. This is the problem. Their thinking was not founded and grounded in the eternal truth but on an interpretation of truth that was being sold to the youth of that time.

“Turn on, tune in, drop out” is a counterculture phrase coined by Timothy Leary, a leading proponent of LSD (“acid”) in the 1960s. The phrase came to him in the shower one day after Marshall McLuhan suggested to Leary that he come up with “something snappy” to promote the benefits of LSD. It is an excerpt from a prepared speech he delivered at the opening of a press conference in New York City on September 19, 1966. This phrase urged people to detach themselves from the existing conventions of society and embrace the cultural changes of the “modern” era. One means of releasing one’s mind from the mundane to a “higher sense of consciousness” was through the use of psychedelic drugs.

The phrase was presented in this part of Leary’s speech:

“Like every great religion of the past we seek to find the divinity within and to express this revelation in a life of glorification and the worship of God. These ancient goals we define in the metaphor of the present — turn on, tune in, drop out. (Wikipedia).

The expansion of the mind through the use of these drugs actuality bends and warps the mind. It destroys the capacity to reason and brings about disturbing flashbacks and, if continued for too long, a deterioration of the mind.

It has been interesting to see the progression of both good and evil through the 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s of the previous century. The trial of the 30’s that forged a hard generation of the 40’s, who in turn fostered a rebellious, spoiled generation of the 60’s.
The generation forged in the 30’s were forced to look back to basics, to live life simply and find the core values of life, community, and conscience.

The secular world is looking back to that great generation for a model of how to reclaim the freedoms they so willingly died to defend. As the “ever spinning wheel” turns it has brought about another return to the core values of life. But this return, for the ekklesia, calls us to the Sermon on the Mount, to prepare us for the end times. Rather than looking back on the reformation and the great revivals of the nineteenth century there is a serious, heartfelt return to the Apostolic age.

But “like a snowball down a mountain” the cycle of evil has also brought about the ground work for the raising up of the anti-Christ. Anti-God, secular forces to prepare for their final push for a the new world. They will reap judgment and usher in the new Jerusalem when the Christ returns to earth to take up His position on the throne of God in the New Jerusalem that will come down out of heaven.

Looking forward, this may well be the last century of the Lord’s “tarrying.” It could see the closing of time as we know it. This is not one person’s opinion. There has been a rising tide of people looking forward to the second coming. Across the past two centuries the tension has been mounting. It is possible that His glorious coming may be much closer than anyone believes possible. In the Windmills of your mind it says:

“Round, like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel.
Never ending or beginning,
On an ever spinning wheel
Like a snowball down a mountain…”

The spiral will wind down. It will end.

The circle has its place in architectural engineering but is not stable. Just as the wheel is unable to have support at the rim without spokes, the circle must have a support system to keep its integrity. The rectangle is not the strongest support system. It lacks cross members to distribute stress, keeping it from collapsing when force is placed on one of its sides. It is a well known truth in architectural engineering that the triangle is the strongest concept in building a sound, secure structure. The triangle and the cone are the strongest concepts. Any time width and height are added to a structure it is the triangle that makes it rigid and secure.

There is no mystery in using the double triangle, one triangle superimposed on another, as being the correct symbol to portray the living Creator of the universe. In creation God uses circles, rectangles and etc. but when describing Himself to prove His attributes, properties and actions it is the perfect prime, three, that is used. One triangle inverted and superimposed on another to form a hexagon is used to show the number of the perfection of God; 7.

The Creator used the triangle more often than any other symbol in creation and in ways some might not see as obvious. Walking is one example of a triangle. Lifting safely is another. Human sight uses a form of triangulation, where light rays converge in a triangle with its apex reflected off a point on a circle, to form a cone of light being focused on the retina to form images. Prisms (three sided crystal) are use to take bright rays of light and divide them into a spectrum and separate them into an infinite number of defined colors that thrill and lift the soul.

It is a prism that makes it possible for a righteous God to look upon a fallible, corruptible human soul without destroying it. There is a double prism, The Son of God and the Holy Spirit, through which God views human souls. The light of God is refracted through first prism, displaying the spectrum of souls that make up the Church as a rainbow of colored rays. It is this prism that makes the soul of the sinner beautiful or lovely to look upon. The second prism, the Holy Spirit, refocuses the light back into a single beam of pure, white light, and casts it back up towards Heaven.
The Christ and the Holy Spirit are the prisms through which God exercises His power towards the sinner. Through those prisms he is able to view and offer grace (unmerited favor) to forgive, save, and preserve the sinner, rather than destroy him.

In Scripture it is expressed by the Apostle Paul, “Likewise the Spirit also helps our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit [him]self makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered [human beings, corrupted by the entrance of sin into the world through Adam’s disobedience have not the proper concepts to form acceptable words]. And he [Father/Creator] that searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because he [the Spirit] makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God [the Father]” (Romans 8:26, 27 See also John chapter 17).

The Star of David, two triangles one super imposed inversely upon the other, inside a circle, is a perfect symbol representing the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God of love and justice. Mankind is viewed by God in this fashion. If this were not so, God’s righteousness would demand that His perfect justice be satisfied, transgressors destroyed instantaneously putting his love expressed in scripture (John 3:16, 17) in question. Divine perfect integrity is perfectly maintained and defined through this precept.

“Like a clock whose hands are sweeping, Past the minutes on it’s face…” Time is winding down. The eternity we seek is not in this realm. It is in the persons of God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit.