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GOING WITH GOD

THE CHRISTIAN ABIDING: THE LORD PRESIDING

The Brighter Way for the Declining Day

Chapter Four

TWISTINGS AND TURNINGS

AND THE WORD OF THE LORD

Many are they who have turned their hearts from the Lord, from His word, from His ways. Some simply fall into some sin, and cannot escape, though some crying to the name of the Lord, find that same supernatural power which can save, able to keep. Others, never having really believed, but endorsing Christ only in some superficial way, which kept the hard and unrepentant heart underneath, continue in their obfuscation and revolt (cf. Mark 4:16-17).

This last case deserves attention:

The case is not unlike that of those who but taste and never swallow the word of God (cf. Hebrews 6:4-5). Yes as in Mark, they may even REJOICE for a time, as illumination (as of the sun shining on the ground) encourages them; but their root is not there, since the heart is still hard. REPENT is the first call (cf. Matthew 4:17, 3:1-11). Hebrews indeed is a book in diverse ways specialising in this phenomenon, and was encouraging people of Jewish extraction or practice to find Christ and not to serve two or more masters, with pseudo- or quasi-faith, but one with utter resolution.

Many taste and grow tipsy, with dreams and worse as in Jude and II Peter 2. It is important therefore that the twisting from the enduring and impeccable word of the living God be not a practice in which anyone actually engages; though millions do!

Let us then, as we go with God, walking in the way with His word, as in this book we focus that very thing, consider twisting and turning. That may be all very well on a country road through some gorge, but when the way is straight and narrow, it is best to be straight too, and if need be, to be very straitened by it! Discipline in many ways, is a price of truth, and trust is an expression of it, if its focus is the invisible, living and glorious God of creation and redemption. His testimonies are not only unique, but they caress logic as a creation of Himself, as nothing else can or does^*1.

Our alerting to the sharia law matter especially in Britain, as seen in the last chapter, therefore leads naturally on to this examination of man, words on the one side, and above, the word of God, with special reference to Islam, which provides the sharia code in practice. We must first give attention to the status of the Koran.

RELIGION AND REALITY

THE WORD OF GOD AND THAT OF MAN

As the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol. VII points out concerning the Koran, "As to the originality it displays, there is now no doubt that while most of the matter is new, Mohammed wove into his deliverances bits of tribal tradition, popular sayings, legends beloved  by the people which he had gathered from his converse with Jews and Christians, though in the latter case, the real origin was apocryphal rather than canonical, while the Jewish matter was haggadic rather than derived from the Old Testament."

Let us emphasise those word re the Koran and the Old and New Testament: "the real origin was apocryphal rather than canonical, while the Jewish matter was haggadic rather than derived from the Old Testament." The point regarding the Old Testament will be pursued in the inset that follows. Part of the text of this Chapter, it is seen in its logical thrust better in this way.
 

The Old Testament prophets had very special sanctions to meet: in this, that ANYONE who assumed that he had the word of the living God was subject to death if the word did not come to pass. This tended to inhibit, but not to prevent, false prophets, of whom Jeremiah declares this, in the name of the Lord, "I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran" (Jeremiah 23:21).

Of their words, God says this:

" 'The prophet who has a dream, let him tell a dream,
And he who has My word, let him speak My word faithfully.
What is the chaff to the wheat ?' says the Lord.

" 'Is not My word like a fire ?,' says the Lord,

'and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces.' "

Thus Deuteronomy 18 OF COURSE has this death penalty for playing with the word of God, presuming that a mere dream or vision constituted it. In general, the actual word of God came on far more weighty premises and certain knowledge, based on  years of deep involvement with the Almighty and faith which was conclusive, with results which were no less so in practical terms.

By these,  all prophecies were tested.

Some prophets like Elijah, Moses and Jeremiah of course, became so constant in criticism of sin, in elevation of the name of God, in the mighty works which followed their words and their actions, that when they spoke in the name of the Lord, the matter was already a closed one. Yet tests always applied as this was part of the Law (Deuteronomy 18:19-22). Anyone beholding what happened in the case noted in II KIngs 1, for example, would not be too bumptious in challenging the authenticity of the prophet! Nor for that matter, those who had seen the multiplied works of practical power and helpfulness, as visible in Elisha for example (II Kings 4-5).

It is for this reason, His power and precision, majesty and historical relationship with His people,  that the challenge of the Lord can be so overwhelmingly incisive, as seen in Isaiah 41, 43 and 48. Here He chides them for their unbelief, slowness of faith, asking them what other word ALWAYS comes to pass, whether prospectively or in retrospective confirmation, and with the ire of the truth, condemns their deceptiveness, in trying to invent or to circumvent relative to the word of the Lord, to assign HIS sayings to idols, and or assert that they already knew it. This is exposed. There is not other than He, the Creator of both man and the universe, of the directives for history: into the slow minds of the unreceptive, He instils this, and He reiterates the thrust in Isaiah 44-46. There is but One, there is but one authorised word from this One to man, and it is obvious in kind, in measure, in effect.

The matter is factual, scientifically based, empirically true and incontestable, as it had been since the multi-miracle deliverance from Egypt, the Exodus, the Wilderness Wanderings and support of Israel in its vast multitudes, with water and food in the desert, and continued to be through the day or Joshua and its miraculous divine support and beyond. In view of these things,  the pock-marks on the body of the nation arising from following surrounding cultural norms were all too visible, and their spiritual incontinence excoriated.

The language in Jeremiah 23,  therefore, as in Matthew 21,  used about rock, and breaking all that it hits, is just and in force wholly applicable! There was as there is, no answer. The Biblical vulnerability in its vast-schema of prediction and asseveration is surpassed by its divine vigour in fulfilment down to the last detail, as Christ stressed, in the middle of playing His personal role in this situation. It is when something is readily tested that its status is readily found, and the more testable, the more fragile its assertions in the robust realm of fact, the more sure it is, as Karl Popper correctly asserted.

Christ, for His part, fulfilled the word of God as then written,  to the last drop of blood in the precise place and mode and time of death, forecast for centuries (cf. Highway of Holiness Ch. 4); yes and for the cause, and with the consequences foretold, not least of which is the precise form of the Gospel of Jesus Christ (cf. SMR Chs. 8- 9). 

 Christ implicitly refers to Himself as this same Lord in Matthew 21:44 when He declares that "whoever falls on this stone, will be broken, but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder." The stone in view here ? It is perfectly clear in the situation there described. Christ had challenged those disbelieving in Him with a quotation from Psalm 118:22-23, concerning the stone which the builders rejected. It was for all that, to become the headstone of the corner (cf. a parallel parable in Mark 12). The context was entirely personal centred on the Messiah Himself.

This of course, as with all the Bible says, happened! He did indeed break every contrary opinion, and even His death through the power of evil, was as forecast with sublime wisdom as in Isaiah 49-55, Zechariah 12, Psalm 16,22, as one using the evil of man to secure the outcome in terms of that sublime grace and love of God, which He had desired. THAT, it is the work of deity only! Thus were the actions of the only, the correct, the date-fixed Messiah whose works covered the astounding prophecies for Him, and whose actions displayed the power of God without interception.

Interestingly, the Greek for the translation 'stone' here in Matthew 21:44 is liqos, a term used for BUILDING STONES. Thus in the context, Christ is referring to Himself as the HEADSTONE of the corner, so selecting this term, just as in the annunciation of Matthew 16, He selected Peter's personal name, stone, petros, in the play on different related words, for contrast with the petra which referred to the question already in hand, that is HIS OWN IDENTITY. Petra refers rather to a living mass of rock, Christ as foundation as in I Corinthians 3:11.

The challenge to the object of faith brought forth from Peter, through the stated intervention of the Father's inspiration of that apostle on that occasion (Matthew 16:13-19), the correct designation for Christ: that is,  the Son of the Living God. On that correct, spiritually discerned assertion the Church would be built, Christ indicated, that is, on Christ AS the Son of the Living God, seen by faith and so received as illustrated by Peter. As I John shows continuously, this is the case.

It was more than an interesting historical additive, than the eminence that some would like to attach to Peter as if Matthew 23:8-10 and I Peter 5 had never been written, was at once exposed as nonsense when Peter at once being perhaps for a moment carried away, as some have been for centuries, counselled the Christ of the Cross to omit the death part! So was His contribution at once negated in terms of anything beyond administrative and personal reliability in general, for the Gospel would be gone if Peter as 'his eminence' had had his way! Instead,  GET BEHIND ME SATAN, came the divine rebuke for you do not savour the things of God, but those of men!

It is easy to do that, to savour the things of men, in pomp and ceremony, in adding traditions of the Church, Canon Law, to the word of God, just as in Christ's day, the Jews were adding in their Talmud and related writings and Rabbinic approaches to things. It is however quite deadly when these things are made as if of one weft, or to the slightest degree are given place, that of the finite, next to that of the Infinite God. That He condescends to tell us, it is one thing; but that this condescension is that of Infinite Majesty, that is the other. His word is truth. It both gives to it its definition and place, and its grace and results.

Truth is like that, and since God is the truth (John 14:6), Christ its Word, the word of truth and display so that He could say, I AM THE TRUTH, there is its testimony. It happens; it is not proud or boastful; does not depend on force (cf. John 18:36), and happens always. It does however make itself utterly contradistinct from the word and way of man.

Thus, as noted, the Old Testament prophets had very special sanctions. This, as in Isaiah 8:20 is dealing with empirical, actual, historical declaration from the omniscient of God, and death is the penalty for playing with it, intruding into it with your own words or visions or dreams without sanction. Death was sure if your dreams did not happen; for truth is factual, and imposture in the name of God is deadly to all who swallow it.

Hence anything from haggadic sources, not having the imprimatur of the word of God, but being rather expository or para-verbal to revelation, does not have this basis, test and assurance. It is the word of man, however hard man may try to be faithful, or with, on the other hand, whatever short-sightedness or prejudice he may speak.

God is not like that; man is susceptible to such things. The word of God is seven times refined (Psalm 12). The standards are thus, and its testing confirms it, century by century, word by word, millenium by millenium. THAT, in turn, is the very testing God demands they make concerning His words as in Isaiah, that they may SEE objectively the realities of the speech of God, and not be impressed with that of idols. Their task is NOT to follow the erection of man's wisdom in his own thoughts, whether or not he calls it God, or just god or gods, who speaks. It is to eat wheat, not seek to digest chaff! Whether the intention be good or not; whether the thing be tradition or not; whether the teaching be basically sound or not, to FOLLOW man is as excluded in the Old Testament as in the New (cf. I Corinthians 3).

Hence, to the extent the Koran uses such haggadic sources for intimate knowledge from the history of the Jewish people and their revelation, there is what the Bible abhors, defies and expels in advance. Such use is twisted from truth. This is the divine perspective. Speak in God's name, of truth, and if it is not in fact according to His revealed, canonical, stated word, that of the genuine tested prophets of the day or days concerned, centuries before Muhammad, then it is false. It may not add or subtract (Deuteronomy 4, 12, Proverbs 30:6, Revelation 22:18-19). If set forth as truth without this imprimatur, more or less, diverse or divergent, with opinion or option, it is twisted away from the truth. The criterion is one: the word of God. There is stability; beyond or as well, instead or with other authority, this in itself, it is dead in the water, sunk with the submarines, in deadly dives to the nether regions.

Thus far the Old Testament and the Koran, and any comparison in biblical terms; and this, it has the further corollary of the refined accuracy, the refining basis for any such claim as to being the word of God, the collaboration with Christ when He came and asserted that the law and prophets would be fulfilled to the jot and tittle, and then the fact that both Testaments are just like that. Shortly, then, we look at the New Testament and the apocryphal writings, in some degree of parallel to those of the Old and the haggada: that is, at the boundaries of the word of God, and the subjugation or even condemnation of what is it not, depending on the way it is treated and its nature.

The division between what is the word of God and what is not is profound, like the great depths, like space, like the mountains that are bared in their snowy skins to the azure skyies.

Empirically, the words of the Bible pass the test. Like the sudden almost vertical arising of the upthrust mount at Milford Sound in New Zealand, so is the word of God in its canonical certainty and its precise articulation. There, like the waters, are the people; and there in one vast upthrust is the dominance of the word of the deity.

What of this soaring massif at the Sound ? It represents that of the glorious presence of the word of God, written for our instruction and inspiration, incarnate for our redemption. The two agree in all things, the written and the smitten, the Bible and the Saviour. They embrace each other like twins (cf. Matthew 26:52-56); and what would one expect but this, for it is of GOD that the word comes (I Peter 1:10ff., I Cor. 2:9ff.), and it is AS GOD that Christ came (cf. John 8:58).

Logically it is the same (cf. Ch. 1 above, *1). These words, they are in this factual matter, both exposed to verification, and continually verified. When Christ came,

His very life as the Messiah was precisely of this kind, so that in so single instance is anything attested but this (cf. SMR pp. 939ff., Ch. 9):

	He answered with unanswerable strength and truth, any challenge, whether to wisdom or power to accuracy;
	He healed without any record of failure;
	He raised the dead.

This He did in a way so spectacular that it became a chief ground for His death on the part of envious and uncomfortable priests, who did not recognise their God when they saw Him, but instead carried out the prophetic program which had been set down for time and mode, method and meaning, result and power, for centuries in their own Law and Prophets! (cf. John 11). They killed Him. He knew they would, often said so, and expounded the predicted brilliance of the plan as in Luke 24 more fully (24:13ff., 24ff.). In a sense, they tricked themselves in their own cleverness, for no one, but no one can deceive or manipulate the Lord! (cf. I Corinthians 2:6-8).

To this He added His personally predicted rising on the third day as foretold, at the date foretold long before His coming (cf. Highway of Holiness Ch. 4). ANY ONE THING was all it would have taken to dismiss His claims. Consider for example Mark 2 and its challenge and test!

^"When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, 'Son, your sins are forgiven you.'
 

"And some of the scribes were sitting there and reasoning in their hearts,
^'Why does this Man speak blasphemies like this? Who can forgive sins but God alone?'

 "But immediately, when Jesus perceived in His spirit
that they reasoned thus within themselves, He said to them,

'Why do you reason about these things in your hearts?
Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, "Your sins are forgiven you," or to say,
"Arise, take up your bed and walk" ?

" 'But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins' -
He said to the paralytic,

'I say to you, arise, take up your bed, and go to your house.'

"Immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went out in the presence of them all, so that all were amazed and glorified God, saying, 'We never saw anything like this!' "

When it is of God that one speaks, omnipotence and omniscient enable a uniqueness of kind! You don't need great swelling words such as false christs may employ (cf. II Peter 2:18). These may be empty; but the works and words of Christ are full, and they agree, as one would expect in view of His being deity!

The word of God is by its nature and power unique, since there is only one God, and His Spirit conveys truth just as His living and eternal Word, Jesus Christ (John 1, I John 1), is it and stands and lives; and nothing can stand when His will and word acts, one God in infinite intimacy of unity (as in Isaiah 48:16, II Corinthians 13:14, Matthew 28:18ff., John 5:19ff.). That He is merciful and patient, loving and seeking, should never obscure the fact in the mind of any, that His word is as precise and powerful as a cutting sword amid the meat! (cf. Hebrews 4:12-13).

Now as to the New Testament area,  apocryphal writings abounded. False prophets and heretics on the one hand surged in just as Christ and Paul foretold (cf. Matthew 24:24, Acts 20:29ff.). Their writings sought to omit, as with Marcion, or to add, or to abound with new stuff, or to subvert, or simply to narrate; but never were they taken as the formally listed Canon. There was a vast and abounding multiplicity for anyone to heed, who might come into contact with Christian people in different scattered places, just as there was in the other case, that of the Jews, who had hermits in the desert, in huts and caves, and a presence in Arabia where they were called "the people of the book", Schaff-Herzog notes. That is a term used in the Koran, as in Surah 5:64-65,  and attests some intercourse with such. It also implies that Muhammad was well aware of their Book and of their presence and had some kind of relationship with them; indeed, he made diverse requirements concerning them!

The same rules apply in this area, as with the Old Testament. In the case of the New, since theocracy is past as noted with its implications in Ch. 1 above, there is the difference that no one nation as such is any more involved, nor are they, accordingly, civil laws for such.

However, the severity of the exclusion of would-be prophets or apostles is most apparent, as in Jude, II Corinthians 11, I Cor. 2:9-13, Acts 8:14ff., II Peter 2 and I Timothy 4, II Timothy 4. In this, the parallel with the Old Testament is total and complete.

There was as much room for substitutes for the word of God as there is for flummery for concrete, when one is building. Nevertheless, some of the entrants for exchanging the word of man for the word of God, truncating it, embellishing it, distorting it in the interests of rejecting Christ subtly or not so subtly,  abounded. There were more and less famous cases. There was no difficulty, if one listened to what people were saying, here and there, as Christians and those professing the name were scattered as they often were (cf. Acts 8:4ff.).

The Koran is not different in its ways, on the topic of Jesus the Christ, from these.

It is the Bible which has the record, well earned, unique, clear-cut, and what it says and what it 'does' if you look at it that way, are the same.

From this tested and verified source, then, there are many twistings from its authority, as there always were from the days of the earlier prophets in the Old Testament times; and these have sought for millenia to displace it. Indeed, Satan sought to displace the word of God to Eve at the outset, and to some extent did so, with fatal results. Written examples of such turnings away abound.

Of these, Romanism is one, arising some centuries after Muhammad, and his own words are another. Both use Christ without adhering to the contemporary records as the whole doctrinal basis, sometimes assert what it says, often do not; and they constitute this amazing additive to Christianity, that when you put these sects together with the Church, those following the words of the biblical Christ and those inventive, you have billions of people, a large percentage of the globe, involved deeply with Christ, whether to worship Him, or bread^*2, or one who constantly wishes Him peace, detects in Him no sin, but remakes him centuries after the event, and presents the world with another Christ in the Koran.

Indeed, there are not only these, but all the sects, usually much later, have much the same impact, in altering Christ, and making new messiahs on this and that corner!

The word of God does not change in its exclusivity. Says Isaiah (8:20): "To the law and the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them."

Some says Peter (I Peter 2:8), stumble at the word of God to which they are ordained. This does not shrink compassion since we do not know when some one precious person will be delivered from the most difficult perversity of spirit and mind. Nor does it alter the fact that God would have ALL to be reconciled to Himself, and knows who are His own (Colossians 1:19ff., II Timothy 2:19).

NOTES

*1

On this, see Ch. 1 above, *1 and more fully in method, What is the Chaff to the Wheat! Chs. 3 and 4. As seen in Search, there are in this site, sets of volumes given up to naturalism, predestination and will, scientific method, suffering and its exemplars, the necessity of remedy for man, the verification of that remedy and validity of the same. These take various elements or aspects, and some specialise in the comprehensive aspect! such as Deity and Design... and Light Dwells with the Lord's Christ

*2

See SMR pp. 1032-1088H, especially pp. 1088Bff.. It is always necessary to distinguish carefully between intention and actuality. While intention matters, actuality is decisive, whether in science or in spiritual things. The rock which shatters to dust (as in Matthew 21:44) is a factual matter. One either worships God or one does not. He is not keen on substitutes! (cf. Jeremiah 23, Ezekiel 14, Jeremiah 44:2-17); and as to traditions, one needs to consider Mark 7:7ff..

When it comes to God, there are neither substitutions nor subtractions, additions nor supplements.