Revelation
Existence is a process involving a bootstrapped creation. From the background of potency, creation is the drawing and maintaining of distinctions and thereby separation. From an epistemic point of view, separation entails ignorance and concealment. This is the primary source of 'evil' in creation. To offset the fact of concealment, deliberate acts of revelation are entailed.
There are many possibilities for revelation. There appears to be an historical preference for prophecy. Is this for the best? There is a major communication problem. The ability of the prophet to spread the word is severely restricted by technical and political considerations. There are likely to be competing prophets and 'false' prophets. One might wonder that there could not be more efficient and direct means of divine communication.
More efficient methods would have their own drawbacks. Significantly they would be more impersonal and would rob the spiritual community of its evangelical function. Much of the motivation for technical and social innovation would be obviated.
We are left with the necessity that all revelation is local, up until modern times. Geographic and ethnic bias is unavoidable. Is this unfair? In the context of the millennial and universal 'salvation' being urged here, the question of unfairness becomes moot. We are left with just the residual 'accidents' of history.
The present result is that the prophetic tradition is not universal, and it is fragmented into major sub-groups. It is the function of the pre-millennial messianic event to overcome these historical accidents and biases. The timing of this event is likely to be tied to a particular technical deployment. In this case I am looking to the Internet.
5/29/02