Perfect prophecy requires a supernatural source of information of future occurrences.  This, of course, requires that there is a supernatural being capable of making such prophecies.  A more common name for such a being is God or the intelligent designer of the universe.  Without such a source, of course, there is only free will.
 To demonstrate this more scientifically, let’s look at what constitutes an impossible probability.  Please consider three probabilities:
 

1. If you roll one of two dice just once, the probability of a “3” ending on top, for instance, is one in six,  as each di has six sides, that is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.  The one in six probability is “short handed” as 1: 6 or 1 to 6.  For the result to be a 3 then a 5, the probability is 1 : 6 for the first di’s 6 possibilities, and then 1: 6 the second di will be a 5.  Thus the combined probability becomes 6 times 6 or 1:36.       2. The original Texas Lotto had 17,000,000 possible choices of sets of numbers.  Suppose that a gambler made an offer to a person that if they were to choose any one of those sets and that weeks Lotto equaled that set, the gambler would give the person $10,000,000.  People do bet on the lottery and almost all of them loose. However the possibility of winning so much for such a little cost makes it worth the risk, (for a few people.) If, however, the set chosen was not the winning set, and the person’s cost were instant death, almost no one would undertake that contract.  Thus, we may say that it is very close to being impossible, but as there is a tiny possibility, we will call it highly improbable.       3.  Now let’s move to very large numbers of probability.  For those readers not familiar with engineering notation --      Notation    = Value   100 1 with no 0 after it (called 10 to the power of “0”)   101 10 (a 1 with one 0 after it.)   102 100   103 1,000   103740 1  with 3,740 zeros after it

       Please remember that two dice, each having six sides, have 36 possibilities.  Each position in each of the above numbers have 10 possibilities (0, 1, 2, 3, etc.) Thus any event with a probability of 1 :  103740 is so great, that its ever being achieved is considered by statisticians as being improbable to the point of being impossible.  AND we know of no mathematically based science that would consider it anything but impossible.
       It has often been scientifically provided that the chance of the “Big Bang” having the results that it has is greater than 1:103740.  This is, in fact, the probability derived that each atom in the observable universe will be composed of a positive nucleons equal in number to the number of negative electrons with the electrons orbiting the nucleus in discrete, predictable orbits. Further, there exists in each a mysterious “strong force” that keeps the nucleus from flying apart.  (Remember, like forces repel each other.)  Thus, the possibility of the Universe having been formed by chance is a statistical impossibility.    
       The reason for the above exercise is that it gives a means of demonstrating the Universe must be of intelligent design.  That is, if it could not have occurred by chance, it must have been designed by “an intelligent designer.”  Call that designer anything you like, we’ll call it God.  You may wish to choose a different name.
       Let’s consider one of the most complex prophecies of the Old Testament:
 The prophet Jeremiah told the Israelites that because of their transgressions against God they would be taken into captivity and serve as slaves there for 70 years.  They would then return to Jerusalem.  Fifty years after their enslavement (as predicted) a very beautiful girl was born to one of the slave families.  She was named Esther.  About 18 years later the King divorced his wife for refusing to entertain his guests at a banquet.  He then decreed that all of the most beautiful single young women in the land were to be brought for consideration by him as a replacement to the divorced green.  The replacement chosen was Esther.  The King very dearly loved Esther and after two years of her marriage to him a situation occurred which enabled her to convince the King he should send all of the Israelites back to Jerusalem.  This he did do! Again, was this just a coincidence or were all of the prophecies told of by the Hebrews centuries before the birth of Christ true prophecies?
       All of this begs the question:  “Were the Hebrews nothing but “puppets” controlled by a “higher power” doing exactly what God wanted them to do to make his prediction come true. Or we might ask, “Did God produce and direct the two prophecies?”  
 After reading the Old Testament Book of Ester, we must ask, “Did He control each of the decisions that were made by the prophet, by the King, by Esther, by her uncle, by the evil prime minister and so forth?”  That is, were they merely puppets on strings controlled by God? The extension of this is, of course, that we, like they, are not responsible for any of the things that we do say or even think. If this were the case, might we infer that none of us has free will? Said another way, if the puppet theory is true, there is no such thing as free will? 
        If there is no free will how can we possibly be held accountable for any of the decisions that we make and the entire concept of Grace is nothing but a wish on our part. From this line of reasoning one has to accept the argument that God has taken total control of everything that occurs and all we can do is participate in the activities like actors in a great play.  For example, Abraham’s taking Isaac to the mountain to be sacrificed was not really a demonstration to God of Abraham’s faith, but rather it's something he had to do because of the puppet strings attached to him.  Similarly, Isaac’s son Jacob did not cheat his brother out of his inheritance; he merely did what he was caused to do by God.  And that might lead us say that none of the great religious leaders in the Bible are real.  They were merely actors doing precisely what their puppet strings caused them to do.  
       I think you would agree such thoughts are abhorrent to all of us.  But, if God knows what we are going to do hundreds or even thousands of years in advance, how could we argue otherwise.  Again, “If we do not make our own decisions, it would also follow that there is no such thing as Grace.” Can we argue otherwise?  Of course we can, and if you're interested in the proof of that, please read further:
     How Can God or a Prophet Accurately Predict the Future without Having to “Force” It?

      If you are a “Trekkie,” you know that warp 9 is the (fictional) limit of the speed that people will be able to travel in the next two or three centuries.  If you are a science fiction fan in general, you may prefer a more generic, “512 times the speed of light.”  “So,” you ask, “Why would anyone want to go more than the speed of light much less 512 times it?”  
      The combination of modern physics Professors Einstein and Lorenz answered this by proving that if we could travel at near the speed of light, we could go forward in time as far as we choose.  And, if we could exceed the speed of light, we could go backward in time as far as we choose. Let me say that again another way.  Multiple light speeds would allow us to travel to anywhere or any when we chose. In short, if such a traveler can go anywhere and see any time period at that place, we may say that for that traveler all of time exists all of the time.  For convenience, let’s call such a traveler a Spirit.  Imagine seeing father Abraham and his wife Sarah, hearing ancient Greeks discussing the value of democracy, or watching the form of electricity being proven by Benjamin Franklin doing his kite-flying experiment. 
        You may very well then ask, “If this is possible, then why haven’t we seen someone from the future already?”  Well, you see, there is just one problem.  To exceed the speed of light if you weigh anything at all or even contain any energy in your being. you would need all of the energy in the universe. “Not fair,” you say.  I’ m sorry it’s true.     
       Any who are interested in the mathematical or physics details of this; please check out a good book on the subject from your neighborhood library or the Internet .  For our purposes here, please rest in the knowledge that it has been an accepted scientific principle since the 1940s.  
       Which brings us back to, why would anyone in a religious discussion care about such things?  To answer that, let me take the position that, “Since for all in Spirit form, all of time exists all of the time, God is thus able to know the events of all of time, past, present and future. without changing it.”  He would obviously know the future was exactly as He planned it, and could pass this information on to his Prophets.  Thus, any real Prophet of God would never predict in error.  This has been given Biblically as the true test of being a Prophet (Matthew 7 and others). Think about that one for a minute.  
        What was just said is perhaps best explained with this analogy. If we reduce a story to a series of pictures, like on a motion picture film, we can, with the aid of a projector, see the actors and scenery and interpret what we see as though it were in three dimensions.  With the addition of sound, we can experience the emotions, motives, and life forces of the story.  And all of this is contained a single strip of celluloid.  That is, all of the events of motion and emotion in the story exist all of the time on that single piece of celluloid.  
        We can go back to any event, scene, or sound in the story at any time we wish.  Of course, we cannot be observed by the actors or move anything seen by those who produced the film for without mass or energy how could we change anything? Now, if each and every event of all that has ever happened, or ever will happen, is somehow stored on a time-independent “film,” then, for any time-independent being, e.g. God, all of time exists all of the time. (Ecclesiastes 3:15  That which is, already has been.  And that which will be, has already been.  New Life Version.  Or, That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past.  King James Version.)
         Here are some questions to debate with yourself and others:
 
 

a) Does this mean that everything has already been predetermined? Or    b) Is it that God only goes in and fine tune a few things to change a general direct of humanity that He wants changed?    c) Is this “film” something He put together for His own amusement or does it have a purpose?  d) If it has a purpose, what is that purpose? e) Does each of us play a role in the story only once or do we each get a chance at every role?  (You may wish to look at      Hebrews 9:27:  And it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.) f) What happens to us?  There are three alternatives.  One, we are just bit-part playthings with no free will, who vanish after our parts are played out.  Two, we are God’s children who are playing one or more of these parts to learn what we need to know to be able to advance to the next level of learning.  (And, what is that level?) And the final alternative is the one accepted by most Christians today:  Our Spirit has only one corporal experience and is then judged by God as to whether our Spirit should live in eternity or die after judgment

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       Let’s look at each of these thoughts in brief before venturing out to find true understanding:

       The concept of pre-determination has been considered for millennia. It begs two questions:  
 First, if it is not pre-determined or controlled, the possible result is chaos.  This makes b) through f), above, logically unimportant as it means that there can be no desired result. This implies our creator has no plan; it and we are just for His entertainment.
 Second, if everything is pre-determined, does this mean that we have no ability to change anything, no ability to learn or grow?  On the contrary, it enables the only practical way for us to learn the great many things God put us, his children, here to learn.  
 Therefore we can truly say that your Spirit will be able to learn, grow, feel emotion, learn the meaning of love, and most importantly, feel the presence of God.
        The next logical question is what does God want us to learn and to do?  A prevailing thought among Christian theologians is that God sees us as His children: Like all parents, He wants us to grow into being His adult companions.  This is expressed in both the Old and New Testaments.  May we thus assume that we are on a long process of learning enough and loving Him enough to be able to function in His spiritual world? What must that be like?  Let’s first talk about that, and then what we must do to “qualify.”  

     Dimensions Of Existence
     As children we were taught that there are three dimensions: length, width, and breadth.  With these concepts we can measure any object.  Science now accepts that there is a 4th dimension: time.  This is reasonable if one agrees that weight (mass) is another needed description of any object.  To observe mass one must move it.  And motion, e.g. feet per second or miles per hour, is a function of time.  However, we may only claim that we are 3½ dimensional beings, as we cannot move throughout time, only with a small portion of it.
      Envisioning life in the 4th dimension can be made possible for you, a three and a half dimensional being, without adding to your current knowledge of physics, your religious beliefs or even just modifying them.  To do this within the limits of this book, however, you will have to be asked to accept that the mathematics behind the physics has been done.  (Again we refer you to Appendix II of Life After Death, a Scientific Proof, by Dr. Al Bieser.)
      For example, let’s look at the first year physics problem of the treed animal and the hunter.  The hunter is on a cliff and sees the animal in the tree.  As it turns out, the two are both at the same elevation.  Just as the hunter shoots directly at the animal, the animal jumps.  The question then becomes, will the bullet hit the animal?  One might assume that by the time the bullet got to the point at which the hunter had aimed, the animal would be well below it.  That answer is incorrect, as the bullet was aimed at the animal but was “falling” just as fast as the animal.  Mathematically they are both accelerating downward at the rate of 32.2 feet per second, per second.  This math is, as you can see, interesting but has no effect on the physical “philosophy” that two objects dropped at the same time will fall at the same rate. (Provided that their wind resistance is the same.)  
       Continuing with this emphasis on physics philosophy rather than on physics mathematics, let’s start our journey by considering an earthworm.  The worm knows only one direction, ahead.  He moves toward heat or away from cold.  One may say that he is a “one” dimensional being.  He only knows distance to or away from something (length).
 The next step is the bug that crawls upon the ground.  He knows right and left as well as ahead and back.  Truly he is a 2 dimensional being. He knows area but not volume.  The limits this places upon him is covered in detail in a book called Flat Land .  Just imagine yourself in a world in which you could not envision height.  People you know would appear only as lines.  The concept of a circle could only be sensed if you were inside one.  There you would only see a line totally surrounding  you.  
       Let’s look at a 3 dimensional world.  Here, we see a bird, for instance, swooping down to pick up our bug.  The bug’s 2 dimensional friends would only know that our bug had just disappeared.  They would have no way of even conceiving to where. (Heaven, perhaps?) The bird, however, well understands three dimensions and where the bug has gone.  The bird knows that food exists under him and his friends or enemies may be to his right, left, forward or behind him as well as at some other altitude. Is this not rather analogous to the people left behind us upon our death?  Our spiritual self will then be a part of a 4th dimensional system and will understand it clearly.  However, our friends and loved ones left behind in a lesser dimension can only imagine where we have gone.

       Now, we come to human beings.  As we mentioned earlier, we are three and a half dimensional beings. We are interested in where something is located relative to where we are now. And, we are also interested in its weight.  (I know, we are talking about mass here, but the concept of weight is more intuitive.)  However, we must move it to determine its mass. Motion means that we must accelerate the object from rest, stop it or change its direction.  As we have just said, all of these involve time, as acceleration is measured as a change in speed (velocity) and speed is distance per unit time, e.g. miles per hour.  Thus, we may define the 4th dimension as time for it is used to further measure a 3 dimensional object. 
 However, while we are able to move anywhere in space, we can only move one direction in time.  Once again, one must say we are 3 ½ dimensional beings.  
      Perhaps our next level is being a true 4th dimensional being.  To do this, of course, we must neither have any weight (mass) nor any energy. From Einstein’s experiences and The Lorenz transform we know that to move even an infinitesimal amount of mass at the speed of light would require infinite energy. ( That is, all the energy in the universe would not be enough to move just a grain of sand at the speed of light.)  
       “But, why can’t a packet of energy be accelerated to the speed of light?” you may ask.  To answer this, consider two things:
 

1) The results of throwing objects at an immovable elastic wall:  For instance, steel is an elastic material (they make springs of it, don’t they?) and if a steel ball is thrown at a steel wall, the ball hits the wall with twice the force of a mud ball, equal in weight to the steel ball.  Why?  The steel ball hits the wall with the same force as the mud ball and, like the mud ball, is deformed by that action.  However, the steel ball now returns the energy to the wall as it returns to its original shape and in the process pushes a second time upon the wall.  Thus, the wall is “hit twice” by the steel ball.  However, the mud ball does not return to its original shape and consequently the wall is only hit once by the mud ball.     2) The photometer:  This is a device consisting of four small squares arranged like the vanes on a wind speed vane.  The squares are dull black on one side and mirrored on the other.     If one shines a light  on the photometer, the light strikes the reflecting, mirrored side and pushes it harder than it does when it strikes the dull black, non-reflective, side.  This causes the device to spin like a wind-speed indicator on a weather vane.  Thus, the energy seems to take on the effect of a moving mass when it hits the photometer and then returns to light energy after it is reflected back.  That follows the Einstein equation, E = MC2, which shows that mass and energy are interchangeable under the proper circumstances.

      To put all of this in a few words, we know that any mass at all would require infinite energy to be pushed to the speed of light. We also know that any electro-magnetic energy, such as radio waves, x-rays, light, etc., cannot achieve 100% of light speed as they will be treated like mass when approaching that speed. We therefore see that only some other form could achieve or exceed light speed.  This form has never been named by science and thus has no official name.  For our purposes here we have called it Spirit.  
 Please consider that from the above; Spirit can be caused to go to any where in any time frame.  I don’t know about you, but I can hardly wait.  Sorry, I’m getting ahead.
      Having progressed thus far, one is tempted to ask is spirit the next level.  To figure this one out, let’s recap: 
       We began by looking at the progression from one dimension to the next.  This is very straight forward and it turns out that each dimension must be capable of fully enabling the one below it.  That is, a 2 dimensional being can observe a straight line, a 1 dimensional being cannot.  A 3 dimensional being can understand “where the bug went.”  A 2 dimensional being cannot. He cannot even comprehend the “shape” of a circle.  A 4 dimensional being can understand observing without interaction with 3 (or 3 ½) dimensional beings.  A 5th dimensional being would be needed to produce the energy that fills the universe, e.g. ether, from which all mass is composed (E = Mc2)  A 6th dimensional being may be able to convert the ether into mass and back into energy.  Thus, a 6th dimensional traveler could create mass objects and place them in 3½ dimensional spaces and later retrieve them if desired.  E.g. creation of the Earth, Moon, Sun, etc.  and, of course, mankind.
      We have surely just defined God. And while His 4th, 5th and 6th dimensional states are obviously conjecturable to us,  we can never truly understand them, given our limited ability to comprehend.
 These ideas are not new to man.  The television series and movies Star Trek contained the concept of machines that converted energy into any food, part, or other substance the starship crews wished.  They could even convert the crews, themselves, into information and recreate themselves somewhere else (the transport.)  Further, their medicine was nearly perfect at eliminating almost any disease known and being able to repair nearly any injury. Their holideck machine could make them feel as though they had instantly traveled to any place in their galaxy without danger.  They demonstrated the concept that everything in the Universe was made of energy, PLUS a spirit’s design and intention to convert that energy into whatever body, thing or potential energy system he/she wished.  Such a creation could be as small as a microbe or as big and complex as an entire galaxy.  
      This, of course, implies that the system giving meaning to the 5th dimension is the entity having the intelligence and power to create the 5th dimension and to make use of it.  As we said, a proper name for the 6th dimensional being is God. 

   Dimensional Transition Rules
    The prospect of becoming a 4th dimensional being is exciting almost beyond belief!  So we must come back to the requisites for graduation to the 4th dimension within God’s educational system.  This is the point at which we leave the world of speculation and go back to the things we know from experience and education.  (A number of books have been written on this relating numerous “Out of body experiences” which show that at death, a human’s ego, can we say spirit, leaves the body and takes on 4th dimensional form.  E.g. Life After Death, A Scientific Proof, by Dr. Al Bieser.) All of these agree with numerous passages in the Holy Bible.  From these passages we learn:
      That to be assured on our spirit becoming immortal all we have to do is be his friend and we will never suffer death.  To be a bit more specific, we must do the following things as spelled out in Acts 1:5 – 37:  
 First, we must repent of our sins, not for fear of punishment, but because it hurts us that we have hurt someone else.  
 Second, we must declare, before both God and man that we wish to befriend and follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ.  
 And third, we must be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.  This third step, some believe must be done by a disciple (minister, pastor, priest, etc.) of Jesus along with a symbolic washing away of our sins by immersion in water.  Others take from these same scriptures that shortly after their declaration; they will receive the baptism from the Holy Spirit.  
      The reader may wish to study Acts Chapters 1 and 2 for further understanding. 
      Once these four steps are complete the new follower of the Christ will be empowered to ask for and then to receive the Holy Spirit.  The advice he or she receives from the Holy Spirit will be given to help but will not be forced upon the believer.
 And, of course, as a 4th dimensional spirit we will be able to go to any where or to any when we choose of God wished to send us. That is, at that time we will be able to see the future, but cannot change it, just as the prophets of the Bible have done in the past.  Further, from the Book of Revelation, we learn that those of us who have done as required in the above four steps will be asked to assist Christ in ruling God’s Kingdom.  

    Truly, Prophecy CAN coexist with Free Will.  Neither inhibits the other.