Indelible Recording

Indelible Recording

1985 7 July 18 Indelible Recording (428) Just as human technology has developed means of making recordings, so it has developed means of erasing them. A recording which does not meet with one’s satisfaction can be wiped out, as if it had never been made in the first place.

Tony Benn, Labour MP for Chesterfield in the British House of Commons, was visited recently by a reporter hoping to interview him for the BBC Radio programme “The World this Weekend”. A little way into the interview a sharp disagreement occurred about the way the conversation was developing. Mr. Benn was determined that no part of the interview should be transmitted. And so it was that, before the reporter’s astonished eyes, he reached into a cupboard and produced a powerful electro-magnet which he duly plugged in and waved over the tape, thereby completely erasing all traces of the conversation that had just taken place (The Guardian, February 3, 1985).

This simple incident gives us an important insight into the difference between this world and the next. When one is caught in a tight spot in this world there is always some way of making good one’s escape. Even if one’s words have been recorded on tape, there are devices that erase every word one has said, giving one an absolutely “clear record”.

The next world, on the other hand, will be a world of realities. There, deception, delusion and concealment will have no place. The recording that has been made on God’s cosmic tape machine of all men’s words and actions will be replayed. If it is not to our satisfaction we will grope for some new, powerful technological weapon with which to erase it, but none will come to hand. We will be answerable for everything we have said and done, and upon it our eternal fate will hinge.

The trouble is that because we can get away with anything in this world, we feel that the same will be the case in the next. This is our test in this world. Here realities have been covered in a delusive veil. Man’s inherent powerlessness has been clothed in a coat of power. In the next world reality will come out into the open in undeniable and inescapable form. Everyone will be forced to accept it. Successful are they who live in accordance with that reality before it is forced upon them; who make themselves powerless in this world, while they still have the power to rebel; who control their words and actions, even though they are outwardly free to do and say as they like.