An Engineer’s Heaven and Mars

By J.C. Burge

This text is about religion, a very sensitive subject. The text is also purely fictional and very imaginative but still a sensitive subject. As I explain in the foreword, as a devout Christian, I try very hard not to even presume to have a right to claim to be a religious authority. I am a well-educated pragmatic engineer with an extensive folder of technical engineering achievements. If readers have patience with my setting up a purely "what if" heavenly earthlike similar daily living conditions, I point out that it allows me to (1) be assigned to and work on tasks to aid Christians on earth with very special other "heavenlies" per directions from heaven's management; the other heavenlies include the wonderful Saint Paul of Tarsus and my dear departed wife. (2) Currently, there are significant US spacecraft travel capability advances being made. The target is Mars, the only other planet in our galaxy capable of life support. Since God is a God of the universe, soon after Mars is colonized, heaven will start to include Christians from both Earth and Mars. This text includes some of the adventures and religious activities of a small number of early Mars travelers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685268077

Book preview

Table of Contents

Cover

Title

Copyright

Introduction

Chapter 1: Welcome to Heaven

Chapter 2: Heavenly Villages

Chapter 3: Village Number 2

Chapter 4: Honor Our Vets

Chapter 5: Village Number 3

Chapter 6: Village Number 4

Chapter 7: Saint Paul's Village

Chapter 8: Saint Paul's Assignments

Chapter 9: Heaven on Earth

Chapter 10: Purely Angelic

Chapter 11: Saint Paul's Finesse

Chapter 12: Saint Paul's Results

Chapter 13: Saint Paul's Village Number 2

Chapter 14: The Martians

Chapter 15: Life on Mars

Chapter 16: Saint Paul Sounds the Alarm

Chapter 17: Christ's Thoughts

Chapter 18: GP Restores Christian America (Quickly)

Chapter 19: China: Israel Military Supporter?

Chapter 20: More Israel Military Support?

Chapter 21: Israel Follow-Up

Chapter 22: The New Jerusalem

Chapter 23: My Bio

List of Illustrations or References

About the Author

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An EngineeraEUR(tm)s Heaven and Mars

J.C. Burge

ISBN 978-1-68526-804-6 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68526-807-7 (Digital)

Copyright © 2022 J.C. Burge

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books

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www.covenantbooks.com

Introduction

America's great worldly light, like every major previous nation's, is sputtering after more than 240 years of world leadership. What has always fed the light is sincere dedication to a plausible cause. The world's greatest and most defensible cause is religion.

The greatest and most defensible religion is Christianity, with its unique-in-the-world live Savior, Jewish roots.

Accordingly, this text addresses the following key topics:

Heaven! The Bible has many, many separate book references to the heavens. For example, in Joel 2:30 I will show you wonders in the Heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke. But; typically, there is no attempt to refer to Heavenly living conditions. As a devout Christian. I am very sure this is Biblically correct. I truly believe that the Bible is Gods perfection.

Once the theoretical heavenly system functions are identified, then it is immediately possible to address current earthly crises. This process results in some very intriguing results. For example, it leads to systems that can theoretically be used to address future earth political problems.

Mars. This is currently a hot topic. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune—our solar system. Mars, like Earth, is a planet created by the Lord God almighty. Also, there is a large amount of money currently being spent developing Mars-Earth interplanetary travel. This work appears to be nearing completion. Consideration of religious evolvement on Mars is very timely since colonization is likely to begin fairly soon.

So, what qualifies me as an earthling capable of intelligently addressing topics 1, 2, and 3?

When I was eight years old, my mother took me and my three brothers to church to be baptized. Maybe that does not sound unusual since my mom had been raised in a church-attending family. But she had at that time been married to my father for nineteen years. No one in our family had ever been in a church all those years. I'm pretty certain that my father's family when he was a child also never attended a church.

Eight years old is very young, but even at that age, my mother was a great influence, the baptizing minister was very impressive, and I idolized my oldest brother. He was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when he was six years old. He was always very positive and thoughtful. Unfortunately, he passed away when he was only nineteen years old. He was in the army at the time, and I was ten years old. His military funeral was so very awesome and impressive—in particular the precision symbolic folding of the flag then the handing of it to my mother.

From that time on, I became more thoughtful and dedicated to improving my life situation. I did not really appreciate the full significance of religion until I entered college.

After baptism, I did become more methodical in every situation and concentrated on my school grades. At graduation, I was ranked sixty-fifth in a class of 653. I had always admired MDs, so I set my sights on Indiana University Medical School. However, by my senior year in high school, it became obvious that I could not afford IU, so I reset my sights on an engineering career. This led to me being accepted as a freshman to Purdue University, where the costs were much lower than at IU. When I showed my acceptance slip to my father, his characteristic comment was, You can make more money laying bricks.

I was very fortunate at Purdue. I located a small local church that had a great pastor. His wonderful sermons clearly convinced me of the basic importance of a solid religious dedication.

I graduated from Purdue and had a very positive aircraft gas turbine engineering design and management career. I owned a consulting engineering firm for six years after retirement. I have thirty-five issued patents. This includes one USAF secret patent and one Israel patent. I had three PE licenses. I flew as a private pilot for thirty-seven years with no problems. I flew as a business passenger for two million miles to sixteen countries. I flew with my wife—five times to Australia, twice to New Zealand, twice to France, once to South Africa, and once to Canada. I was a Pratt & Whitney chief engineer. I was in the USAF reserve for eight years. I am a lifetime Pershing Rifles member. I am also the published author of a prior book. I was married to a lovely lady (Jane) for sixty-three years until she passed away. We have four children—all have one or more college degrees. One of my classmates at Purdue was a young man named Neil Armstrong. I met Neil a second time when he was a University of Cincinnati professor and I was there working on my master's degree.

Neil was a very quiet, focused engineer.

So, I believe that this extensive background provides the required knowledge and imagination to generate this text that is composed of a combination of facts and invented situations.

Chapter 1

Welcome to Heaven

All I remember was in the middle of the night, a sudden violent seizure then lights out. The next thing I recall was my encounter in a strange quiet space with no visible limits and a uniform lighting from no visible source. In my will, I had specified cremation. Yet, by some miracle, I seemed to be in my own body, wearing a beautiful robe. I had the strange inclination to pinch myself, to establish some sort of reality, but I remained silent in place.

Then a quiet voice called my name: Joseph (see fig. 4). This is God's waiting room. I am Archangel Gabriel, the Lord God's emissary. As one of God's probable heavenly chosen persons, you must speak with completely correct and reverent responses to my questions. Your next destination will be either heaven or hell based on your life on earth and how you answer my next three questions. Do you understand the eternal implications to you of what I just stated?

Even though I was baptized when I was only eight years old, still from that moment until now, I believe I had been prepared for this moment.

I answered, Yes.

Do you accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior?

I answered, Yes.

Gabriel responded, Thank you. You have answered my first question correctly. Now, my next question please. Would you, as did our Lord Christ Jesus, submit to crucifixion to save God-fearing mankind from death's curse?

My answer was, I, like all others who trust that they are devout Christians, would answer that we would never presume to be able or worthy to attempt to endure the Lord Jesus Christ's willing crucifixion suffering to defeat death for God-fearing mankind.

Gabriel responded, "Amen. That is an excellent answer. As you may