The Eternal Instant

Several years ago I met John Robert Keyser while giving a series of lectures in the northeastern part of the U.S. Mr. Keyser was a writer and he had a manuscript that he wanted me to read. The manuscript was a philosophical and theological discussion of issues we have attempted to deal with in a scientific way. I felt that Mr. Keyser had a great approach to these issues that would appeal to people who did not like the science approach that we try to use. Mr. Keyser has been able to get his book in print now, and others will be able to study his ideas and use his approach

The cover of this book tells us the questions that Mr. Keyser attempts to answer in the book. They include:

where did God come from? why was man created? what are angels? where did matter originate? what is time? what is the soul?

is deja vu real? predestination or choice? what is worship? what is judgment? why pain/suffering? what about psychics?

This book is divided into two sections. The first is titled, "The Document" in which Keyser's concepts of the spiritual are defined and explained. The second section builds on the first and is titled, "The Role of the Unknown in the Authorship of Faith." The author has unique concepts that he develops to explain the questions he tries to answer. A good example is this sentence:

Matter has evolved from non-solid conceptual thought (occasioned by friction or agitation between two opposite and eternal non-material concepts), just as non-solid terrestrial thought proceeds from physical gray matter (page 123).

To understand the sentence, one has to study what Keyser means by virtually every word in the sentence. When you do this, you find the author has some unique and brilliant ideas and he expresses them well. Those of us more acclimated to the physical sciences than philosophy and theology find this slow going.

Virgil Trout commends Keyser by saying "Philosophical inquiry simply requires coherent, logical presentation and careful use of terms. You are following those guidelines."

We recommend this book highly. It is unique with lots of new ideas. It uses copious diagrams and excellent descriptions to make its points, so even when the reading is slow it is not ambiquous in its expression. The level of the book is quite high making it very useful to college students, advanced high school students, and students of the Bible.

Back to Contents Does God Exist?, JulAug98.