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Chapter 4
THE WORD, LANGUAGE AND SYMBOL
THE FRUITION OF CREATIVE CONCEPTUALISATION:
in Life, in Death, in Program and in Personality
WORDS, WORKS AND WONDER
A fascinating question, this: What is a word ?
It might be defined as a discrete, semantic element, housed in a cognitive unit of expression.
This, being interpreted in less formal sounding terms, means: a separable and separately conceived piece of expressive action which involves thought and displays meaning without composition.
For a word to be unspeakable is a contradiction of terms. For it to be meaningless is not, except that the meaningless element must be confined to some; for if it were to ALL, then the item would not be a word but either an item, or a jumble of drawable items, artistic or otherwise. Chinese would perhaps be suggested in some cases, by the latter; but this is not what they ARE in that case, since as words they do not descend to that level. They have meaning, are interpretable and are discrete, capable of combinations with meaning.
In the case where the language, of which words are ONE of the components, is not co-extensive withy the gamut of human experience and thought, it may be termed a proto-word. This means that it is of the genus word, but that it does not have the full environmental and functional involvement to which words in the total scope of languages among races, are assigned. They are like medical specialists, in that case: they are of the type of doctors in their generic use, but not of the breadth of the GP profession.
Such have the features of a word, but in a more limited setting. It may indeed be more complex in its phase, than the broader language admits, simply because of the high degree of specialisation of knowledge back of it. Indeed, in the most extensive dictionaries, all the proto-words might appear, though normally not with quite such a background as might be used in a specialist dictionary itself, such as one of musical terms, or medical. However, in essence and type, these are words, with whatever limited measure of extensiveness, intensiveness and specialisation; and their setting is of the type of that used in words, though more limited in scope.
We move to combinations of words. Where a semantic, cognitive, symbolic combination of words and syntax makes sentences, through organised and rule or customary pattern bound synthesis, language arises. It requires more analysis, leading to greater synthesis than in the case of a word, for in this latter case, only one item is in view, whereas in the former, that more grammatically extensive, it is to be confined by constraints of thought and intent, like a bird in a cage, a fish in a pond, by the chosen environment which gives meaning to the totality of word and structure. It becomes like a room, no longer merely a piano in it.
With phrases, you have a small room, with clauses, somewhat larger, with sentences, whether long or short, you have houses, containing a connected structure of thought, meaning and use.
In sentences themselves, you have the semantic, cognitive elements groomed into meaningful composition of thought, concourse of action, issuing not merely in a unit of meaning, but a unit of exposition of meaning. This relates to the composer and the reader or listener, their intents or needs, at verbal level, which is that where persons express and ingest in terms of thought, action actual or possible, purpose, imagination, order, suggestion or proposal. This sentence structuring of words in essence, covers topics without limit.
Just as proto-words are in essence words, but limited in specification or scope extensively, so limited language has a co-ordinate reduction.
It is only where written language or its objective equivalent is available that a universally cognisable standard, free of subjective intervention and variation at nuance, mood or desire, with little limit, is avoided. It is then that a universally standard, reliably discrete, measurably graded word-meaning synthesis becomes not only possible, as it is in speech only, but adequately testable past such limits as visual signs or signals, or oral interchange: these latter items in isolation being susceptible either to reduced scope of definition or increased scope for unchecked diversification of content, reducing assured accuracy and ultimately, utility at any larger level.
It may be urged that written language may be invented and deployed to INTERPRET limited language, that equivalent of proto-words. This however merely illustrates the point. This is far from meaning that limited languages are not actual languages, for it merely allows for means available to man by which to render more complete their purport and attest more surely their functionality. Thus a signal or sign language, with a handbook for interpretation, no longer has the sign or signal limitation, in principle, now being confined to, constrained by and analysable through the written version.
Thus DNA is a limited language, but one enshrining the full force of language once expanded into written equivalent. A language specialising in command is no less a language - merely, like a piano concerto for example, limiting itself to a specified form of expression, or a pianola, really music in nature and expression ideally, but subjected and subjugated for expression to modes of command. This does not ruin the creativity: it marshalls the form of its expression for repetition without direct engagement.
The input which can by writing be tested or expanded, is the same as for all languages - a correlation of will, purpose, concept, semantic instrumentality through symbol in a person's production, interpretable in principle by persons, expressible in written language when the form of the symbolic conceptual complex has been understood through wit, observation, intelligence and the fact that we ourselves use words or signals or codes in just such ways.
This is the symbolic counterpart of the production and assembly line biological and cellular techniques to which Michael Denton refers in his Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. Some of this is noted and quoted in SMR pp. 119-122, and this treatment here has been somewhat extended. (Red colour is for emphasis in terms of our own topic, only and is added to Denton quotations, or original text of SMR, where made. Italic bold is either in the original SMR text (q.v.) or added.)
SECTION 3: Design and Language
Language: this is a way, not only to enclose thought and express it, but to secure action, in particular, with the operation of codes. It is now to our purpose to construe the place of language in the physical sub-structure of man. Man uses it mentally, but is programmed with it a myriad ways, physically. What is its place and what does it imply, and in what way does this achieve any verification of the power, presence and operation of the Almighty God, the Creator ? Let us then examine the matter.
Denton (p. 330) notes that the total number of connections in the human brain is near to 10 to the power 15, or a thousand million million. Imagining an area of the U.S. half the total, he conceives a forest at ten thousand trees to the square mile, each tree with 100, 000 leaves- and indicates the leaves in that forest equal the number of connections in one human brain. They are however co-ordinated as one whole. Thus:
Despite the enormity of the number of connections, the ramifying forest of fibres is not a chaotic random tangle but a highly organised network in which a high proportion of the fibres are unique adaptive communication channels following their own specially ordained pathway through the brain.
Using language such as this (p. 334) - "the perfection of the goals achieved" and "the genius of biological design" (cf. *31), in referring to the way the cells work, Dr Denton ponders the development recently of information technology by human intelligence, but then notes:
A chemical solution to the problem information storage has, of course, been solved in living things by exploiting the properties of the long chain-like DNA polymers in which cells store their hereditary information. It is a superbly economical solution. The capacity of DNA to store the information needed to specify an organism as complex as man weighs less than a few thousand millionths of a gram. The information necessary to specify the design of all the species of organisms which have ever existed on the planet ... approximately one thousand million, could be held in a teaspoon and there would still would be room left for all the information in every book ever written.
Not satisfied with noting this micro-assemblage of maxi- information, he refers also to the "genius of biological design" in the cell's capacity to synthesise organic compounds. His descriptions in minute detail bring realisation of the exquisite care and intelligence used in such intricate models of design efficiency, solutions to delight the pure mathematician and astonish the engineer. His comparison of a cell with a city is an enthralling exposure of the detailed, intensive and extensive use of intelligent coded language to secure a vast collation of vertically integrated industries .
Part of the marvel aspect is this. "The size, structure and component design of the protein synthetic machinery is practically the same in all cells. In terms of their basic biochemical design... no living system can be thought of as being primitive or ancestral with respect to any other system, nor is there the slightest empirical hint of an evolutionary sequence among all the incredibly diverse cells on earth." (*22).
Indeed, comparing this with the "great morphological divisions, where empirical evidence of intermediates is lacking", he notes even a conceptual problem for any idea of evolutionary development. (Op.cit. p. 250.) (All emphasis added.)
The unique yet identical language used in all living things, in the code format, together with the above noted design paradigm, is of course precisely what a mind in charge would be expected to show; or at the least, it comports to perfection with such an activity. Strivings for effect - as in a poet's forsaken first drafts, are not necessary when dealing with the Almighty. Behold, the linguistically codified cell!
Darwin's frankly admitted problem with the eye is of course not only multiplied in degree, vastly, by all this wonder of mathematical complexity; but the whole exposure to intellect is so total and precise, the whole structure and function so overwhelmingly more than human in the intelligence of its scope and format, that the idea of postulating that intelligence was not operative in producing the highest known exhibits of intelligent design is perversity in process! It would require a re- definition of terms.
Denton, as we earlier noted, considered the number of connections between cells in the brain. However, beyond this, there is the multitudinous variety of the assemblage provision within each one of the cells, including those for its own reproduction. An intensively coherent, pragmatically proportioned, technical brilliance of a virtuoso, minus... the essential virtuoso, is the problem... of the evolutionist.
No hypothesis could be more total in disregard of the facts than this. Seeing baby watches operating on a beach, each timepiece spawned from older ones by invisible processes: this would be nothing compared with what every one of us has in the body. To specify chance as the cause not only of law, but of logic, language, brilliance of concept, efficiency of architecture, subduing of materials to specifications not only statable but stated: this is merely to 'take' from definable disordered disorganisation the height of law and logic, to invest them with design and reduce it all to language. That, in turn is a contradiction in terms. Neither language nor matter is so mastered. The only way such things happen in this universe, is by having them pre-slotted, so that things fall into place simply because there is somewhere to fall. Things falling upward... this is self-contradiction. But what of a pre-programmed universe so slotted?
Such a programmed universe required to subdue chance to its order would need a programmer. However no evidence of such processive, progressive programs for leaping the 'gaps' or, indeed, making the declivities, is at hand. Evolution stoops to the ground and is confronted only with more microscopic evidence that creation not only occurred but is not occurring; that there is not even any discernible method for it to occur in the arrival of the prodigies, so desperately assigned to its ... hand ? but then, it has no hands, nor anything to help, being merely a conceptually self-contradictory mirage in the machinating mind of man.
Denton on pp. 32 ff. gives more data on the 'marvel' which is the cell. It is fascinating that the technology is far in advance of at of our own civilisation with its hundreds of years of applied intelligence (*23); and that this technology is basic to the most elementary known life (*24).
As with instincts, so with cells, the level of thought and language control implicit, is intense. If instincts are frozen thought, programs if you will, then cells are 'frozen language and engineering': the 'freezing' taking the form of an institutionalising of thought into form.
Reverting to the expertise shown, we note Denton's statement (p. 329):
We would see that nearly every feature of our own advanced machines had its analogue in the cell: artificial languages and their decoding systems, memory banks for information storage and retrieval, elegant control systems regulating the automated assembly of parts and components, error fail-safe and proof-reading devices utilized for quality control, assembly processes involving the principle of prefabrication and modular construction... much of the terminology we would use to describe this fascinating molecular reality would be borrowed from the world of late twentieth-century technology.
Here the interesting feature is that our created minds are, after thousands of years of effort, often with the complacent assumption of breaking into hitherto unknown areas of conceptual brilliance in a dead universe, moving nearer the work of what preceded them! Our minds can follow that mind which made our minds. There is a cognate quality in our minds' operation, and the operation of the biological engineering we employ. Our 'language of thought' is correlative to the thought in the language of our cells. One mind has its thoughts in our type of thought and the type of thought background to our cells.
That of course is what creation implies. This cohesive correlation and constant inter-relation of language and system in ever-expanding circles of interaction: this is what a mind so readily and characteristically does, when it is effective. We are observing the operation of God's mind in the work of ours: His work on our sub-structures, and our work on understanding the same. To 'explain' the unique criteria of mind, by its absence... that is a work of rebellion, not reason. The fact that a theorising does not work, is not seen to work, and has no 'theoretical basis' is merely another way of saying that it is obstructionist fantasising. (Cf. pp. 13 supra, 135, 213, 263-268, 291, 307 infra.)
What is definable as creation is what is observable; what is definable as non-intrusive operation of matter is what is not observable. To use the latter form or formula to 'explain' what is found is neither academically possible logically, nor anything other than abuse of terms. This applies whether the language phenomenon of DNA or associated directive constructions, or the very nature of material entities themselves outside this delimitation, be concerned. Definition of entities requires acceptance of type. If some areas still defy analysis, in practical terms because of human limitations (cf. SMR pp. 419ff.), this is no exemption from characterisation of the whole, or each part, since nothing is contrary to the one in its due differentiation, or in accord with the other if it be truncated to meet the specifications of the other.
Denton's description (pp. 328-330) of a cell in terms of a city is a modern engineering allegory: "To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometres in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York... an object of unparalleled complexity... If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity. We would see endless highly organized corridors and conduits branching in every direction..." The account deserves full reading and study.
In terms of circuitry rather than the organic chemistry of code - of the 'wiring' rather than the composition of the matrix of the cell, and its cytological reproduction, an article appearing in the Adelaide University Student paper, On Dit, 1988 is of interest.
Here we find that advanced analysts are taking thought to make cerebral study somewhat simpler by studying 'easy models' such as that of the fly. There are the 'wires' themselves, their connections and then the 'master genes' to which are given the power to provide 'instructions on how the wires were connected' - so that slave chemical systems could perform this. Beyond that again, there is the correlation of the wiring and material manufactured for wiring- one is tempted to say 'hardware', during the brilliant arousal of advanced technology in embryogenesis.
In all things, the modes, or better, employed by human intelligence, the conceptual-order-symbol correlation of code-command operation, the specification-creation, the inbuilt-maintenance methods are provided not only with the correlates of acumen, but frequently with the performance criteria of brilliance.
Logically, creation is not an option. It is a necessity (cf. SMR Chs. 1-3, TMR Chs. 1, 8, ). Evolution from a non-purposive, non-imaginative, non-intelligent, non-conceptual source is an 'explanation' which ignores nothing but the facts. Empirically, it is irrelevant. Logically it is absurd, and its relation to the structure of thought is zero (Repent or Perish Ch. 7) . Pragmatically, in terms of new information of design innovation, it is unexampled (see on Gitt below). Empirically in terms of observation in its required domain of conceptual-information increase, it is absent (cf. SMR pp. 140ff.).
It is the student given the Exhibition, who never attended, nor provided any work. In clumsiness it is absolute; in hilarity it is the enlarged proboscis of the clown.
As an example of human perversity of intellect, irrationality of procedure, anti-scientific method enormity, linked at different degrees of intensity with anti-Creator invective, it is perfect. That is the only good thing about it; but this, it is exceedingly good. It is like finding the cynical papers of Lenin about socialism-communism, as in the era of Gorbachev. It speaks volumes. It declares the matter freely! We are left in no doubt of its source, because of its semantic dismemberment, and imaginative disjunction from the scene of action and the world of aetiology. It is as if, in in time of war, one were to spend one's time whistling in the dark, lest one should see by some means, or discern by inward realisation what is occurring, and taking no steps to meet the causative elements of destruction, continue in intoxicated disregard of reality; except that in this case, we are the more concerned with the requirements of construction, both more demanding and more impelling than the field of devastation!
The precision, checking devices and semantic efficiency of the one language chosen for life are testaments, as in its way is the pianola, not to the absence of the musician or the knowledge of music, but to the addition of ways of its conveyance; and in this case, the ordered, enriched, creative, effective, unitarily composed composition is not only in language, but through the wedlock of this with the artifices of executive command in a world responsive to this, as a dog to its master's whistle, in expanding and multiplied construction. It is like the very marvel of composition, orchestration and presentation freshly made in each creative event in new cells, in bodies, in offspring, like the playing of the same piece written years ago, on the radio station.
In this case, however, it is not merely sound which is emitted, but makers of sound; not merely configuration with imagination, but figures possessing imagination for themselves; not only cognition and cogitation to stir the heart or move the thoughts and feelings of the soul, but typed creations of a kind which can create. So is the marvel of language, the effort of the engineer, the composition of the architect and the resourcefulness of the entrepreneur engaged with the brilliant uniqueness in the case of man, of the creation thereby, by means programmatic and the personal, of those able to develop understanding of architecture, and in their own small ways to illustrate it imaginatively, of law, of language and of history.
With the form is the function, and with the visible is the invisible, and the aptitude to move and purpose, to imagine and construe, to invent and to manipulate within limits, in that domain. Spirit and matter, form and function, the personal and the programmatic hence are composed in that exceedingly vulnerable, amazingly robust and slenderly enabled being called mankind, whose works anoint history, now with horror, now with grandeur, now with grace, now with gumption, now with folly unspeakable, now with rude denial of its very source, as if intoxicated, and seeking to collapse the Creator, remove the Redeemer and sin with dalliance, dynamic and disregard for ever.
As the invention of man and of the universe is not of the unlimited, but of the limited; and as the thought enabled in man is not suppressed in imagination, nor is his spirit disenabled from ambition of whatever gross or grotesque character, or benign, both man and his earth are in danger of collapse. If the pride is undiminished which brought forth ruin in the Fall, the earth is diminishing in its availability for exploitation, prostitution and abuse. The very psyche of man is being rendered so stressful and unsure, as Christ predicted (Luke 21), that many consult psychiatrists as if they were gymnasts, and pop pills as if they were meat. When you ignore what you are, you become what you would not!
Let us however return to what is, leaving the imaginative relish for irrational ruin, before we ponder further the language of the Lord at the final level, and so now watch its ways at the more minute.
GLEANINGS FROM GITT,
DETAIL from DENTON,
the CONCEPT of GITT'S CHALLENGE,
and MORE
The German scientist, Dr Werner Gitt, specialist in information science has some points which fit here so snugly, as to make it apposite to adjoin them at this point. Thus in Little Things Ch. 3, *3, we have this which follows.
The delicious delights of snowflakes, like the little, to the naked eye invisible desert flowers, seem so much integumental to the mind of childhood, that one is constrained to add this reflection here. Almost fastidious fancy is inherent.
Dr Werner Gitt, the
notable information scientist who lectures and writes so broadly, has in his
little work, "Stars and their Purpose in Space", a reference to
the notable symmetries and geometrical specifications of snow-flakes. Facing
p. 29, he sets out such structures visually.
The appearance is of
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a) intricacy |
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b) facility with tiny things |
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c) compression of thought notionally in elaborate features of ornament |
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d) extraordinary similarity of structure mixed with equal diversity in detail and |
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e) work so fine as to be daunting to the nimblest fingers. |
What does NOT appear to the appreciating eye, however, is this interesting reflection from Gitt. He notes: "All snowflakes are hexagonal, varying in size from one to three mm." That, it is interesting in terms of cognition: a cognitive device has this sort of characteristic. He continues: "Their weight varies from one-half milligram down to one-200th of a mg. It has been proved mathematically that every single snowflake is unique; the same pattern is never repeated."
This is eminently surprising. Like individuals in face, the difference may be slight, but it is there. Conformity is not the mode; type is; within the type there is an industry of differentiation startling to behold. Thus it is with so much of nature, that to ignore it is anti-scientific (not merely unscientific), it is to dismiss primary attestation so viable and vigorous, that it would resemble a judge who, being told that the bullet in the victim was slightly different from the one which could come from the standard gun of the presumed assailant, went on to emphasise the sameness!
These hidden marvels, like much more now continually being found about the nature of creation, attest its finesse of construction, abundance of capacity in design beyond any need of any kind, except as a spectacle of wonder and an ingenuity of thought; but then, when one IS ingenious, as is the case with the Creator, who created both the capacity for it in man and for verbalising and conceptualising it, and co-ordinating all three, THAT is what one would expect, and constitutes just one more of the myriads, ever expanding in thought, of such verifications. Patterns can be cognitive or apparent, submerged or obvious.
Thus the similarity in construction in wing and limb, by contrast, shows the co-ordinating thought back of it all, for this is precisely what thought tends to do: to see similarities for adaptation, and to render them thriftily in moving from thought to detailed action, in making a co-ordinated series. They do not however move splendidly from one to the other in engineering, or in anything but thought; for the commotion required to co-ordinate and specify for material, living things more than for the mechanical and not the less because of the intricacies of DNA: this does not waft in like some Summer breeze. It requires honest toil and new prototypes to be constructed, depending for their challenge, on the material.
This tendency for patterns to be related in an authoritative sort of way, as sub-types under a cover-type, is noted by Denton in his "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis". On p. 137, he notes this:
He notes that the new more clinical method of emphasising "the defining diagnostic characters of different groups" also is helping to highlight the distinctives of different classes of biological beings, and the discontinuity aspect in nature.
This, as he affirms so realistically and robustly, is the real empirical fact; for continuity (as over all different kinds of creatures, and as over all creation indeed) is present ONLY IN THE MIND OF MAN. Thus he concludes: "The concept of the continuity of nature has existed in the mind of man, never in the facts of nature" (pp. 353-354). In fact, the diseased and frustrated desire for a unity OF and IN creation, of a generative kind, makes nonsense of the facts of invention, and vice versa. The unity is in the mind and thought of the creator, where, as in creation even in man, many things are basic considerations, and many more are imaginative and diverse in the extreme, relating to things highly varied, with diverse purposes and comprehensibility in full, only when those are known. See Divine Agenda Ch. 4, Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium Ch. 13, Ch. 8 (News 100), That Magnificent Rock Ch. 7, SMR pp. 620ff..
In other words, one point made includes this, that the very means of classification are requiring more and more realism about what is there, not what is contra-principially imagined, and that this is returning more and more closely to the pre-Darwinian empiricism.
A little further on from the point in Little Things cited, we have this reflection:
Have you never considered just what it does, from mushroom clouds to penetration of space... ? but then: it withers, and it is gone from the surface of the earth which it attacked, for wonders or woes, with such vigour. If you have not, it is high time to ponder.
This particle, this potential,
this human property, this self-activated potentate,
this semi-automated marvel,
so precious that people may want to adopt one, bring it up, feed it and educate it, learn from it, listen to it, consult it... ?This devastator, this procrastinator,
this aspirant to divine glories
in many cases: it dies.It stops breathing.
You look for its place and it is not.
You consider its future, and it has departed from your sight.
You reflect on its past and look how it mounts; but now that is past.
Where did it come from, whose was it, from what did it come, whose construction was this invisibly manufactured being, this imaginative creation, this creative product, this mentality, this will, this purposeful performer!... it appeared without the noise of its construction, and wore out as it used itself, or was used, whatever was the case.
One can never cease marvelling at the blindness of man, the simple fat-heartedness, that so many do not face this simple fact, nor seek to know the One who made this manufactured being, this highest of all designs amid creations visible; nor so they find it a desirable, an intensely desirable thing, a consuming passion indeed, to know that Being, and to be acquainted closely with that person. Rather as in many a divorce, so in this one, the revulsion from realisation and communication is almost unspeakable, its speech more to express the revulsion than return, either to reason or to relationship.
As noted in History, Review and Overview Ch. 5:
The endeavour to thrash the personification called 'Nature' into having the results before the eyes, which it merely incorporates, it is rather like seeking to make the automobile, with various faddish and Mad Hatter-ish options proposed, by personifying industry. Phrases however do not create their topics, but simply describe them. For the action, you need the power, precision and performance criteria of what is causally called for in automobiles. Otherwise, of course, they do not run, or indeed even arrive. You can make a car by phrases ? let us see it.
Why not then by these phrases or personifications ...
a) make another (difficult... with the universe).
b) make wisdom appear from steel and oil, plastic and gasoline (undiscerning).
c) create integrable entities meaningless apart (rather planless).
d) inter-relate the integrable entities, meaningful when integrated
(time for the plan, though a little late).
e) compose the type of integer desired (decidedly Puckish flitting, much too late).
f) make it operable and apt for exploitation or due use, as the case may be,
as it is for mortals among men (should have thought of this from the first,
in order to make it ... relevant).This is the exact nature of childishness, quaint and even romantic when read in Calvin and Hobbes, when many impossible things are imagined with the lust of a listing for such things; and we laugh at the simplicity and folly of the untutored mind. How it has ever come about that a certain solemnity has been made to attach to the childishness of shrieking to 'nature' to do what it shows no inclination, disposition, equipment or mentality for doing, prodding it here, pushing it there, tormenting it in some other way; of seeking to put mental conceptions into material things, and spiritual realities into mere analysis, which by nature merely reveals what is, at best: this is one of the marvels of the last two centuries. Failure in every endeavour to show this or that in naturalism, is endemic, inveterate, predictable and verified without limit.
NOTHING co-operates. Man operates. Nature smiles, like Mona Lisa, and gets on with its business.
It is in the preceding chapter of History, Review and Overview, that we see the challenge of Dr Gitt with some of its implications.
Dr Werner Gitt from Germany's Federal Institute of Physics and Technology in Braunschweig, has made a flat statement which for years has gone unanswered. This fact was noted in Creation, Sept.-Nov. 2001. It was made in 1997, in his work, In the beginning was information. It is this:
"There is no known natural law
through which matter can give rise to information,
neither is any physical process
or material phenomenon known
that can do this."What makes it the more interesting is the combination of his eminence in his field of information science, where he is an acknowledged leader, and the fact that this statement was presented with challenge for anyone to falsify it. The absence of answer, over the years, represents the inability to show otherwise.
Imagine the philosophical naturalist, dedicated by religious conviction, to the concept that what lacked mind, spirit and intelligence, did the thing anyway; and then, despite the logical lapse involved, the scientific method solecism in omitting the needful parameters of relevance and operational visibility or its equivalent, he meets this new contradiction like a panzer division on the march against him. Imagine his new fiasco. NO WAY can information 'arise' - that most unscientific of terms anyway - either by PHYSICAL PROCESS or MATERIAL PHENOMENON that is known.
Information in billions of units wed to integral results in the form of living creatures of almost incalculable complexity of governing code, chemistry and operation, of mathematical sophistication, must be generated from nothing, or from something which lacks the means by any construction or sight, and which in turn must be generated from nothing, or magic, according to preference. Further, information must be generated by a law or method which opposes that of science in this specialised field as does the hypothesis in each other, so that Information Science puts flowers on the grave, these too grown without information. Information 'arises' without occurrence, functionality or propensity known to man, and the empirical fact stares down the meandering miasma of imagination without discipline.
For this magical contrivance to which so many lie vacant, like empty houses awaiting squatters: Logic dies; things 'arise', nullity is king and obfuscation is the Crown Prince.
What then ? In information science, there is this to add to the rest: NOTHING is found of this kind. Not one iota is to be discovered of design uplift, informational innovation.
This has long past the bizarre, and represents the height of obscurantism, the nadir of scientific method. and the demise of logic on a lonely hill. Information science, like every other form of disciplined science, can only say: IT IS NOT HERE, this is not where law or observation, function or facet is to be found for the task. It was only to be expected, since in every other aspect, the thing is null. Go away, we as part of natural phenomena cannot tell you where it came from; it is not with us. It thus joins the ranks which cannot conform to such myths*1A.
Empirically, and in terms of scientific law alike, chance does not produce law, matter does not chatter logically cohesive symbols from their absence, contrivance does not arrive from the a-logical and what lacks grounds does not produce has requires them. The GIVEN character of matter and energy, the REDUCING character of specialised construction, the non-arrival observationally of life from non-life, even with big intelligent pushes which make it irrelevant to the issue anyway: these things sum up scientific laws; and the effort to circumvent them in this is the reverse of all scientific method.
Such laws are MADE from what is deemed data, given facts, and are not law when contravened. To assume their contravention in order to account for a particularity is the reverse cycle in scientific method. If you can SHOW that there is an exception, the thing is not a law in any case. If you cannot, then you abide by it, and find a way from evidence and reason, within the bounds of known law, to account for it. Here it is ludicrously the opposite, you seek a means, not observable, contrary to all known law, and suggest it as an hypothesis, even when it is starkly refuted by independent evidence, at the level of verification.
As noted in Downfall from Defamation Ch. 2, the whole use of the personification 'Nature' and the capitalisation is mere effrontery to language and truth.
'Mother Nature', The God of Creation and The gods of Defamation
This chapter has been severed from Ch. 1 which precedes it, for convenience: but its thrust proceeds directly from the end of the first Chapter.
THE WRONG MOTHER FOR THE WOULD-BE ORPHAN:
NATURALLY, YOU MUST LOOK TO WHAT BEGETS IT ALL'Mother nature' is from the first, now as so often in man's alliance with myth, a ridiculous personification of the whole delusion, as if the blind, and purposeless were any kind of a mother; and her frequently found specification as striving for solutions and wisely deploying things in such a way that they will ultimately work is merely the result of arrant and unscientific personification.
It is things natural and things mental and things spiritual which are the actual trio; the natural being MERELY natural, without power to think; the mental being MERELY mental without power to purpose, and the spiritual being REALLY volitional and equipped with the mind, with power to purpose, but not with ability to replace the Creator. Its place is merely to act on His creation, and to twiddle dials betimes, rather ostentatiously, as he finds them, in his own design, and to accept rationally or reject irrationally the necessity of His being.
In terms of twiddling the biological dials, for example, at times, man does this in order to replace broken or smashed or defective parts, when mutation as in any other design, brings on anti-specification faults into the default lair; and if this is done discretely, why not ? To repair is always in order, if you do not impair in the process, and make yourself into a god as a side-issue!
Thus the use of tissue and stem-cells to effect repair is a wonderful idea, so long as you do not create artificially and for this purpose, with defective means, what is an abortion of life, without indulging in actual defection from the womb. That is to say, it is well if you do it without making of life your plaything (whether or not you are feeling actually playful - some seem as if they may do so, in this realm).
How WOULD you do this ? You could do it by having special artificial insemination processes NOT for the enablement of child-birth in the barren, but for your own purposes, to investigate or to alter design by mutilating it. You could have artificial insemination products which are because of selection of some for other purposes, defective by comparison with the best, or you could allow embryos artificially made as to procedure, to be hurt, and this includes not only the feeling of pain, but the case where this is suppressed even though it would be felt because of interference, were the drug to suppress it not present. It is violation of life in these cases.
The PURPOSE must be right - repair, not creation. The METHOD must be right - use of means to supply what through damage for any reason has become defective in operation, without abuse of those means. The MATRIX must be right: sound elements in the procedure, not damaged or unknown ones, involving fragile or defective things stage-managed with the cavalier disregard of ignorance or oblivion of vital delicacies.
Cloning of course is an entirely different procedure for man, and becomes an invasion, an assault, a defilement of life and a defiance of the Creator. In this sense, it is merely a technical expression of the assault on God, be it intentional or otherwise.
HE has made the design, and repair as usual is a sound objective; but to seek to re-create, or dis-create, which is to desecrate whatever the intention: this is mere valiant rebellion. Such extravaganzas of ambitious thought tend either massively or discretely to compromise quality, and their usage is an abuse of life. Where they produce from only one party, they interfere with the integrity of life. Just as the embryonic material may be compromised in various procedures directed to tissue replacement, so too the cloned material, being merely a case massive in scale, has a similar error.
Man however is proceeding to seek always more and more with his newfound knowledge, just as in sexual matters, where it is not enough to ignore the physiological dangers objectively present in perverse intercourse (since the normal type has its own defences). Now the case with many is that they must have people go to Holland for 'marriage' of those whose designs are ignored, and whose products are artificially prevented from having their due outcomes. This, as in Romans 1, is precisely in the area of the predicted outcome when man makes a god of 'nature'. This is what the Bible traces as part of the prognosis of systematic neglect of God and elevation of 'nature' to His rank. It is one more verification of truth, vindication of its precision, and warning to mankind.
It is in fact, in principle, SO ridiculous, to look at ANY 'nature' and to begin to be inspiring it with powers it does not have, whether it be a book or a cell, and to imagine that because it has marvellous and brilliant stuff in it, whether verbal or vital, it is self-creating! It is always necessary to find the cause of the laws, the ground of the existence, and to honour the reality on which such things are based. To contest with truth, is to be bound by lie.
What then is it like to do so ? Then a person may readily become like a baseless proposition, circling the planet in chosen anonymity, charging about without knowledge, ready to be impaled in his own fantasies, by what is real. Psalm 1 declares just that. It occurs to individuals, nations and empires, cultures and theories, cluttering the skies of history, demeaning the scope of geography, as the freedom bowl of this earth is abused beyond all recognition.
As to the concept of such 'natures' and their sufficiency, naturalistic natures, founded on nothing, aspiring to anything and everything, as if they could with wisdom meet life: nothing could be further from the truth.
Whatever the 'nature' of anything, it is a matter of characteristics and whatever further integralities may be present. Thus a chemical has such and such boiling point, combining characteristics, is placed if an element in such a spot on the periodic table, is to be seen as an individual in a series of correlated possibilities or actualities, depending on the case. In turn, it may be part of an item for use, and thus may be put together with other chemicals, some derived from living objects, and some from the world of the inanimate. This may be made subservient to various shapings and additives for the comfort of the one to handle the object, and so there may be further chemicals, with their physical attributes carefully chosen, and combined, in order to prepare the final product for convenient usage for a purpose.
We do not even begin to imagine it doing this of itself, for all the components have their known and testable features, their limits and their designations. The fact that all of these things are combined with due regard to an overall constituency does nothing to endow or endue it with power to make itself; for it merely attests that the various items of designable natures may be combined for a purpose, to achieve it.
It is to the designer we look, to his knowledge, fashionings, skills, imagination and powers. If they are strong mentally, then we may expect that there may be combinations of chemicals, organic or inorganic, elemental or compounded, normally occurring in the broader world of 'nature' or synthetically produced, and that this entrepreneurial action will have increased the options available, with cost in view. This is for the fulfilment of the purpose of the thing, whether it be a man's sandal which we may find on the beach, or a biro. They do not because they cannot make themselves, simple though they be. They are designs.
'Nature' is a most unfortunate thing to endow with imagination, creativity and intelligible because intelligent productions. It depends on one thing: the nature of WHAT!
If it is the nature of the designer of the sandal (and some have marvellous proficient thought put into them, and others do not), then his nature will have what it takes to investigate, understand and manipulate, according to their characteristics and the relevant laws in that domain of the broader realm of the creation, and then to execute what is imagined or desired.
If it is the nature of his dog, this 'nature' of his as a designer, will prove inadequate, though it is a most complex and wonderful nature at that! If it is the nature of a moron, that too will prove alas, though having some intelligence, to be too deficient to contrive even more minor things. If it is the nature of things inanimate, then intelligence and imagination may indeed be made manifest in their CONSTRUCTION, but not in its power of action. They SHOW the creation; they do not possess that particular form of skill.
Again, if it is a car, then its 'nature' may be such that it has multiple purpose-built equipment, possibly costing a good fraction of the price of the car, when it is a marvellous one, which may be activated (such as light headlights coming on and going off depending on conditions, automatically) by events, environment, or touch controls. This makes if you will, a sub-order of the car; but this is within the design. It may also have an accident; yet this may be partially covered by automatically and extensively, yes and expensively inbuilt equipment (such as air-bags, or architecturally designed pockets of space), which may protect certain features.
Although the residue after the impact may seem different from the original car, depending on the case, the car may still be stable and able to act; indeed depending on the use desired, it may be quite viable, though of course VULNERABLE now under certain circumstances. The design is harmed, maybe mutilated; but it is not dispersed.
As noted once before, it is conceivable that it may even benefit the use of the car, in some circumstances: thus a projecting piece of the car which hitherto had always scraped on the side of the garage when being parked there, may be knocked off, so increasingly the facility of parking, though decreasing the beauty of the design for purposes other than the immediate transport function, and increasing wind resistance!
The 'nature' of everything has to be quite strictly, stringently and scientifically considered and construed when you look for its viable products. When we as mankind come to mind, you have the designable features to institute its products, functions and fulfilments; when it is will, you have the arena of purpose and imagination, allied in the case of man, to ultimate purpose FOR man, as a product with a nature. For each, you need what it calls for, the domain dominance required, to create, to institute, to constitute, to combine in the triad of mind, matter and spirit, each forged and formed for the particular case of man.
THE PLASTICITY OF MAN IS CONSIDERABLE, IN MIND AND SPIRIT,
RATHER THAN BODY:
WITH POTENTIALLY DEADLY OR DELIGHTFUL RESULTSIn this case, however, there is a subtle complication. Man being made with the capacity to integrate thought and conceive imaginatively meaning, his is more than a comparable nature in general, in the less equipped orders of creation. Thus, his nature may change because of his spirit, his purpose, his imagination and his preference, which includes the concept of who he is, what he wants to be, and how he conceives or even wishes (even if foolishly and futilely) to conceive of himself.
This includes illogical ideals and irrational aspirations as well as the purposes for which he was himself built; and he is so made that he does not have to buckle down to the latter. Hence there is a veritable rainbow array, except often in the domain of dark lights and subdued indigoes, of man's nature.
One thing however remains common, and that is the nature of his nature. That is to say, he is what he is, whatever he does with it; and there are limits to the defilement and defoliation of his beauty, duty and purpose. If he acts ruthlessly, conscience, though it be made sick, as a stomach may be, is still available, even when not desired. There are moments of lucidity to imperil rebellion's swagger, and facts of life to stir deliberation on default.
Thus man cannot become angel or God, for he is made and non-eternal; but he may become devil, in that his whole being may become devoted irreversibly in some cases (the unforgivable sin of which Christ spoke, one which however may not be operative until the person does not COME to Christ, for those who DO have promises made - John 6:37).
This devotion could be to the power of evil, affront and ambition in the presence of God Himself; and that is the underlying passion, however far from intending it may be some of the exponents of non-design.
Non-design then for what ? It is for what by definition has to be the most profound materially invested design known to man on earth (SMR Ch. 2, cf. Dig ... Ch. 2), one which is working itself out in the current culture of design dismissal. The design of God for what He has thus designated is not that it should seek to 'explain' what is in its own terms inexplicable, making of man God and of derivation, ultimacy, of nothing something and of eternity inadequacy. Indeed, He condemns this nescient nonsense for the arbitrary eccentricity against all reason that it is (Romans 1:17ff.).
He explains its origin and future right there, in that Chapter of Romans; and at the same time shows the mode of re-creation (John 3, Titus 3:4ff., II Corinthians 5:17ff.), in order to avoid the mischiefs of misapprehension, mistake and murmuring malady through misconception: in a word, sin. This is not only to give a way to avert judgment, diverted onto Christ as vicarious sacrifice for those who receive Him by faith; but it is also in order that man may become remade in the image of God, without the default mechanisms of sin defiling and disturbing thought, behaviour, spirit and heart, a phenomenon producing our current exhibit of both mind and world out of control.
We must return to reality. What is needed is not phraseology, but power; not blatant ignorance of alleged resources, but knowledge; not consignment in defiance of verification, but assignment in accordance with it, not defiance of the realm of attested and adequate power, but acknowledgement of what meets all specifications, is verified in all predictions, covers all logical abysses with ease, and meets ancient and modern evidential criteria alike
History,
Review, Overview ... Ch. 5,
Deity and Design, Designation and
Destiny,
especially Section 8;
Light Dwells with the Lord's Christ,
who Answers Riddles and Where He is, Darkness Departs
).
A WORD ON WORDS
It is now time to review the nature of words, for this aspect of creation is impelling. We found this...
A word might be defined as a discrete, semantic element, housed in a cognitive unit of expression.
This, being interpreted in less formal sounding terms, means: a separable and separately conceived piece of expressive action which involves thought and displays meaning without composition.
For a word to be unspeakable is a contradiction of terms. For it to be meaningless is not, except that the meaningless element must be confined to some; for if it were to ALL, then the item would not be a word but either an item, or a jumble of drawable items, artistic or otherwise. Chinese would perhaps be suggested in some cases, by the latter; but this is not what they ARE in that case, since as words they do not descend to that level. They have meaning, are interpretable and are discrete, capable of combinations with meaning.
DNA commands meet this definition; and any OTHER definition, which omits the salient concepts or any of such, in the above, does not meet the functional criterion, empirically, of what a word is. DNA commands are words, and they require causatively precisely what words require. To be sure, some one could have a different array of abilities, so long as it was not less than those of man, and still produce words. The purposive, imaginative, conceptual, co-ordinating, analytical, synthetic series of capacities is needed: they do not 'happen' - which signifies, to arrive without causative basis, in the realm of magic, the non-scientific, the abstrusely absent from the actual world of logic and event.
The human body and all life forms which have the same 'language', is not merely in terms of the cognitive, semantic and aetiological, necessarily the product of at least the equal of man in terms of IMAGE, that is, of the type of capacities to the point such as inhere in person, but it is the product of ONE SPEAKER in one language. It might be urged that it could be a different speaker for each life form, and that they all used the same language by a fluke. However, this would be a linguistic phenomenon never met and contrary in principle to what is: for the same language comes, in practice, from just that series of behavioural, purposive, communal, perceptive, personal and imaginative, that conceptual and creative milieu and machination, or origination and utilisation, which becomes one body of words and syntax, one organ of semantics, by such a standardising pressure and systematic capacity.
Even if it were not so, and one imagined gods making each one, some species or kind, still, they need the power to communicate and correlate in order jointly to make a unified system, and this requires a basis for the commonality, communicability and systematic integrality, which in turn requires ONE GOD. The point thus is irrelevant. It involves the Creator.
That is the word.
In fact, it is the WORD of GOD which is the Creator. He did not use peanuts or banana skins to invent the system which is back of life and matter, in its format-formula co-functionality, one which so fascinated Einstein in the case of matter. He used what it took, and this is the least that it takes. God is not limited to man, but has all it takes to be man, by imaginative self-expression in human format if He pleases, and to be man's Creator as well.
That last is obviously categorically beyond man, and since it involves the origination and structural characteristics of all creation, it is infinitely beyond man, who is limping along trying to snip and clip in the case of already invented DNA, and to act in his derivative dynamics and limitations, in the entire system, power, and purpose of life.
Man's purposes are not always those of his Creator. In the very nature of the case, this is necessarily so. It would not be so if man had not divorced, diverged and departed from God, which makes the entirety of the human problem, curse and deformities, with calamities the result. The disorder of lust and war is the direct result of the divorce from the Creator. He moreover is not to be found by trying to imagine Him deficient; for if He were, then there would be a standard imaginable by man, which would be beyond and above God, and with respect to which God could be analysed and condemned. That very standard, however, would then be the arena of the actual Creator, for whatever has anything beyond it, is not God, but a creative or created component.
Man has fallen. Much has fallen on Him since that event. Just as there is a necessary consequence of his wilfully ignorant nescience, arrogance and misaligned computation, so there is the necessary provision for his condition (cf. Sparkling Life Ch. 4). Without this, the calamities which accelerate themselves with the intensity foretold for the end of the Age of Remedy, the Gospel Age, would not occur. It is one thing to test; it is quite another to bring calamity. It is one thing to deserve devastation, without contrition; it is another to continue into it, without need and without opportunity. It is not that justice could not so act; it is that a deviating and evil system of misuse and consequences both social and personal, could not continue in defiance of the creation and sufficiency of God, without removal or remedy. The former is absent, though not for too long in time to come; so the latter is present, and has been for millenia (cf. Barbs ... 17, TMR Ch. 3).
Let us consider.
God has no need to gain anything from man, and if He did, He would be merely a created particle or part, constitutively defective, deficient or inefficient. This would require the God who in fact made such a muddle.
God has need of no spiritual, mental or physical feature from man, either to incline Him to occasion calamity or anything else destructive of His creation. His knowledge is such, that if it were to grow, then this 'god' would merely be a projection of the philosophy of man, something equipped with potential and power, in a system from which he would need first to receive and then to reach out and achieve things for his continued felicity or growth. To be so equipped and delimited, such an imagined 'god' would himself require the Creator who so delimited him. Delimitation is merely a facet of creation.
Man is in the case he finds himself precisely as the Bible declares. He has fallen from grace. He has achieved a defect, and is living it out, in the folly of mangling thought, defiling his nature and defying logic as if kindergarten were still his place, however brilliant any individual rebel might be. That is the nature of rebellion of heart. You see it likewise, at the merely worldly level, in terrorist bodies like al Qaeda, or Hamas. In their delusive dynamic, they cannot stop. They seem immune to reason. They follow what has no logical base, and mingle a religion of invention with a task of acquisition to the entire repugnance of peaceful persons*1A.
It is a mimicry of the power of God, and denies it, even in its most desperate efforts. Even when such a body as Hamas, by report or even boast, has civilians die in Lebanon, rather than its soldiers, by emplacing the latter deliberately among the former: we find the implacable, the inveterate and the inexorable nature of the hatred. The objective is to gain every inch of Palestine, including all of Israel. It is stated in written and official form.
As many sleep, trying as if in a nightmare, to squeeze from betrayed Israel (It Bubbles ... Ch. 10), more of its shockingly sequestrated land, and imagine peace can come in this way, even when the Bible quite clearly has handed the place to Israel (Galloping Events Ch. 4), including what has been stolen back already from the Balfour Declaration's provisions, then what do we have ? It is the rebellion against the Lord which here merely augments itself, as in the case of cyclotron particles, being accelerated to the point of desire. The result is unattractive. Collisions with superior and immovable forces through dreaming indifference to reality is like that.
The word of God has been issued. Applicable from the first, it has presented at the outset the solution to sin, as nothing else has done, and it has defined the evil and provided the exemption from its judgment, as nothing else either does or could. It has attested itself for 3 and one half millenia, or so very nearly, without dabbling in error, or changing its message. It refuses restoration without repentance and redemption, appalled at the pride of man as if he, being deep in sin, could in any way atone for, cover his sins as if they had not been, and achieve in part or whole his own salvation! (Isaiah 64, Romans 10, SMR pp.1080ff., 50ff., More Marvels ... Ch. 4, Barbs ... 17, Repent or Perish Ch. 7).
It is like expecting someone with a broken back to climb a rope into a helicopter, equates qualification for entry with achievement plus, and makes of the marred soul and spirit of man something able to be acceptable to God. It blurs sin with effort, and makes of heaven the recipient place for uncovered man, sallying forth with his own works, as if to impress God despite his failures and falls, enough to overlook them and make minus 10,000,000 equal to zero, selectively, as it occurs to Him, making allowance here for this, there for that, in this person now, in that one then. With all of these things imperfect, He is yet in effect envisioned as making of pardon the plaything of human valour, this an incitement to pardon, where just a little more might have made an eternal difference.
Not so is the verified and validated word of God (Repent or Perish Ch. 7, SMR 50ff., TMR Ch. 5), alone in its place, which condemns all prophets in advance after Christ (Matthew 24), who would change His way, will, work and witness at all; for it is HE who does the works which satisfy His Father for all who come to Him as Redeemer, and this perfection, alone. In Him there are no gradations, for HIS is the perfect work, and in, with and through Him, it is attained, granted as gift, so that grace alone through faith alone brings peace in truth alone. Thus it was in the Old Testament as in Isaiah, in its prophets, cited by Muhammad with approval despite his entire alteration of their redemptive message, and thus it is in the New (cf. Titus 2-4, Romans 3:23ff., Ephesians 2).
It has foretold the Redeemer and the date of His death, some 2000 years ago (cf. Daniel 9:24-27, and see Highway of Holiness Ch. 4). It has told the world what is to come, and it comes. God did not leave as if in a dream, the dynamics of revolt. He at once foretold the result of it, the need and the means for meeting it (Genesis 3). His word does not change, and His presentation of the Messiah being past, it is only His return in judgment that awaits (Acts 17:31).
What then ? God has of course not even left His creation to its own devices, but provided whatever it requires. He could indeed have obliterated it, but it is doing much the same to itself even now; and He did not, in any case. He instead has provided the ONLY way in which conceivably mankind could continue.
That is by the provision of remedy to cover the results of the fall. Without this, God would be compromised in nature and principles, so that He would be behind the creation of what denied His own nature categorically, in the performance of flagrant breaches of His constructions, as Creator (cf. SMR Ch. 1, Barbs ... 6 -7). The source of truth would in such a mute case, be upholding specialists in lying, revilers and defilers of justice in its apportionment of what belongs to each man, by their ruinous action grossly contrary to need, as in the enablement by non-destruction, of human vultures, feeding on the livers of men, violating by vileness the beauty of creation and exacting, man from man, what God neither needs nor parallels.
This word of God which created, it is personal as is man; this word of God which proclaims the remedy, it is also personal as is man. He does not change, being the Creator of time which is the environment for change, and knowing all things, and being beyond this delimitation in Himself, He is one and the same without limit.
Similarly, His Word does not change. His Good News, the Gospel does not change. Its needs do not change, that the power and purity of God be met: and how ? by repentance and faith in the slain Christ, who died, the just for the unjust to bring us to God (I Peter 3:18).
The judgments on the judges and violators of the earth, who erect in themselves or their culture or invented religion what they are to do, in absenteeism from the work and word of God, these dire responses do not change - unless there be repentance. The kinds, they do not change (The Defining Drama Ch. 10), but rather is there retrogression as is common for designs exposed to the elements (cf. Wake... Chs. 4-6). The defacement of the face of the Lord, the defiance of the Gospel, the desecration of morals, the spiritual uplift to buzz about the throne of God as if in no need of pardon before appearing: all these things alter nothing but the destiny of those who indulge in them.
When God speaks, there is no change out of it. It is as it is proclaimed, and every new moral, oral emission impertinently alleged to be from the living God, every new thing not present from the first to meet sin, this is merely further provocation.
The final fruition of creative conceptualisation in man is fascinating. The first was man himself, the creation. The next was man's misuse of the glorious and intriguing gift of liberty*1 . The third was the preliminary presentation of the Gospel (Barbs ... 17, TMR Ch. 3). The fourth was the payment for the pardon in the Cross of Christ (Galatians 3-4). The fifth has been the post-event proclamation of the very Gospel which in Isaiah, for example, was purveyed and conveyed some 7 centuries before it was paid for, precisely as Isaiah predicted would be the case*2A: for in God, time is not a limit: it is merely a condition for man.
The sixth will be the End of the Gospel Age in which Christ returns (Acts 1:7), to deal with the eventual products of the Cyclotron of Sin, which works incessantly, and to rule in this world which will for a time*2 (called the millenium), be such that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14).
When after the final efforts of sin (Revelation 20), this earth finally is removed, mercifully to be burnt up with all the byproducts of sin (II Peter 3), the truth being that God has been magnificently lenient and gracious in allowing so much time before doing this (II Peter 3:9), continually teaching us all throughout history of His grace, holiness, mercy and truth (Acts 20): it will not be before time.
The word of God has arrived IN us from the first, in our very construction; TO us to the last of the Age in the Bible, and is FOR us in the Gospel of divine grace. We are written. It is written. He was smitten, that we might be adopted back into the family of God (I Peter 2), raised from ruin and restored to fellowship with the word of God, who remains as always (Psalm 90), having shown in time the heart of His love and the profundity of His power which created us. Using it and having it used in His life on earth, He came to exhibit as the Prince of Life what it is for, needs and how those needs may be met. This was accomplished cardinally at His death, which became a mere preliminary for pardon, as life triumphant and dominant mocked the grace and the macho principles of sin (Psalm 2, Acts 2:24,29-30), and in His arising bodily from the graveyard for sin, for which all men are due, brought mercy near for those who receive Him.
There is, for redemption, a Reception Office. It is found in His flesh. There is a building for it: it is provided by His mercy. It is read in the Gospel. There is an entrance to it: it is found in His resurrection, so that personally He conveys His people to His kingdom (Romans 1:4, I Peter 3:21-22, Romans 10:9, I Corinthians 15, Luke 24, John 20:24-29). There is no exit from it, for it is eternal redemption which He has purchased (Hebrews 9:12), and He is the anchor which holds those who have moved with faith to Him (Hebrews 6:19), who by ONE sacrifice has sanctified FOR EVER, those who come to the haven of the kingdom of heaven and to eternal life, through Him (cf. John 6:50ff., 4:14ff.).
Part of the beauty of it, is this, that such persons, even now, have this promise that out of their innermost beings will come rivers of living water (the spiritual realities of God moving through His own power). Nor is this all: the spring of eternal life is arising in its fluent grace within these very people, who not being limited by needless thrift, are such that the waters move even on and through them, as the Lord works (John 7:37ff., 4:14).
That He who was defaced, unfazed, stricken but arisen, forgiving not horrid, should act with this massive liberality and delicate grace, ready with mercy, delighting to give it (Micah 7:19ff.), and do so for so long as the years progress to the end: this is ... just like Him! (II Peter 3:19). The Lord is like that, and this is the way in which He has acted. He has nothing to gain, as a need; but having all, in gaining souls from desolatory ruin, His love is active, as is His way.
NOTES
See:
More Marvels ... Ch. 4, esp. *4,
SMR pp. 829ff. ,
Dancers, Prancers, Lancers and Answers Ch. 3, *1A
Lord of Life Ch. 3 (and force), 1081ff. (and faith), Outrageous Outages ... Ch. 5;
His Wounds Opened Eternity Ch. 4; 3
Stepping Out for Christ Ch. 9,
Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch. 8 (in perspective), see also *1,
Divine Agenda Chs. 6, 3 (an overview of religious truancies, including Marx, Darwin and Koran);Highway to Hell (Koran citations in both, with ideational parallels in perspective, in the former; and in the latter, futile depravities in endless ideologies such as Sudan has shown so significantly, Islam ablaze without glory),
cf. Overflight in Christ Ch. 1 (and the Koran's musings).
See:
Christ Incomparable, Lord
Indomitable Ch.
2, News
52
What is the Chaff to the Wheat! Ch. 4,
Overflight in Christ Ch.
1.
See SMR pp. 763-764
Sparkling Spirituality ... Ch. 10 cf. Index.
