“In the beginning ...”, as the bible begins, isn’t the beginning of God. This should be obvious because God created the beginning of everything that humankind knows.

 

To an everlasting being, there can be no beginning, there is only being. So, ‘in the beginning’ refers to the beginning of humankind. Humankind could not exist without a universe, so God first created the universe to suit humankind. It has taken a great deal of time for all this to happen and bring humankind into today’s world.

 

The beginning of the universe, however it happened, was the creation of life’s incubator. A place; where the temperature, humidity, pressure and light are well controlled, where occupants are nourished, cleaned and changed, and where the occupants are protected from the elements and the animals. Once the universal incubator was ready, life began and began evolving. Nine million species of life have evolved, so far.

 

Out of all the insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, only one species has developed the cognitive abilities to contemplate the beginning of everything. Still, we don’t get it. How did it all begin? How did humans gain such higher intelligence and ineligibility to become capable of contemplating the beginning?

 

An obvious answer to how anything begins is that something or someone, prior to that beginning, had a prearranged design. The seed contains the design for a tree. Human DNA has designs for our minds and bodies. Gravity designs accretion to turn dust into planets and moons. Large stars are designed to exhaust their fuel, implode and form black holes, then eat the planets and moons. My mind had designs for this new paper titled Graduating Life.

 

God has a prearranged design in mind for our universe, how it evolves, how life evolves within it, and how humankind will evolve through it all.

 

Why does God want to design and develop a universe with evolving life? “So God created man in his own image ...” - Genesis 1:27. God is creating people in His own image. God is evolving humankind into beings that are like Him.

 

So, what exactly is this incubator which we call our universe? Many people have speculated and supposed that all life, as we know it, exists within a massive, ultra advanced computer system in a programmed, 4D virtual world. They may be right.

 

“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” - Isaiah 55:9

 

God knows how to create an entire universe and direct it’s evolution. God’s universe can be thought of as a single, non-artificial intelligence computer system. Some scientists argue that the universe itself is intelligent, even beyond the intelligence of humans. So, let’s combine the two theories.

 

The universe is an intelligent computer system and we are all simulations within that computer’s programming. God is the system designer and programmer. The ‘big bang’ was the computer system being plugged in to God’s power and turned on for the first time, then everything lights up and takes it’s place.

 

The Programmer didn’t create a computer game or a productivity program. God created the universe to be our virtual world. This is the world in which we learn how to live in the real world, the next world.

 

Think of our universe as a fully immersive, 3D space ship simulator program, designed to train people before they fly an actual space ship. In our sim universe (our temporary world), we must learn what it’s like to live in the actual everlasting world, heaven.

 

Just like any simulator program, the ‘user’ must input their knowledge into the simulator program with the hopes of achieving ever better outcomes. With ever better outcomes, we learn more and grow closer to the original programmer’s knowledge. Thus, we grow closer to the programmer Himself.

 

To start the program in our current sim universe, we are born, and (once we’re able to) we start making decisions. Our decisions set the course of our life’s learning experience until our lives or the program ends. At the end of the program we are all graded on our overall performance. Those considered to be successful are rewarded accordingly and are advanced accordingly, while those who don’t complete the program or fail in their decisions, forfeit any rewards and are discarded accordingly.

 

Let’s keep in mind that this is just a simulation. Simulations are never exactly like the original, but they sometimes come close. It’s the original that we’re training for and it’s the original that we were made in the likeness of.

 

The Originator of our sim universe is training us to graduate from the sim. That’s not where we become like Him. We become like Him once we graduate.

 

Just like any graduation, we move on from our training to our true profession, our true calling and our true everlasting life in the real world.