W W W W  World Wide Web Witness Inc. Home Page   Contents Page for this Volume  What is New

Chapter 1

THE MUNIFICENCE OF MAGNIFICENCE

Christ the Creator, the Restorative, the Celestial Regality

The ocean walk was magnificent, for the oceanic glories in the midst of the atmospheric wonders of could and light, gleams, beams, clouds, tinctures, inter-surface motions of light and wave, were an artistry of devoted achievement.

The author of all this, one mused, is an artist; for nothing has no beauty, and beauty has no capacity to be 'there' just because some reductionist-consolidationist likes to dream about everything in particle terms, as if, to take a further illustration, digital cameras were not concerned with pictures because their MODE of operation particularised things. Physical components, whether in brain or camera are one thing; functional totalities are another. It is not only contrary to engineering realities to ignore the difference between thought and deed, means and ends, but the ignoring of ALL that is presented, whether by this or that means.

Results have their functionality and their occasion is not a matter of fictions about what lacks their depth and symbolic programmatic or aesthetic magnificence. Blindness to what is there may occasion religious relief to the ungodly; but it gives no scientific credence to the absent-minded theories which omit the spectacle and the functionality which confronts them. Using a reductionist theory to bolster imagination about what is there is merely a double whammy: it neglects the field and its ground jointly, like having not one eye only open, lest one be called one-eyed, but shutting both in an incredible act of solipsism which has become popular with the oppressed; though in this case, since sin is attractive for a time to many, they do not know it, nor heed it, very much like those drunk from another cause, as in Proverbs 23:33ff..

The car is more than a summation of parts: it is not even meaningful as such. It is a totality of design; and that is all there is about it. Things happen for causes; and no one field of causation, or facet of observation,  is to be given an imperial, exclusivistic right because some faddist is obsessively pre-occupied. Science must concern itself with evidence, not theories of origin which hide away from the origin of the originals, just to be begin with, or imagine death is equal to creation, as in survival of the fittest. Always it is the same: WHAT OPERATES at a level correlative with results is ignored. That is aetiological oblivion.

It happened that as I was so musing, I met ... what appeared to be another person. The light was so intense and variable, the sound of the waves so lulling and then suddenly, so boisterous, the whole atmosphere like a Turner painting linked to a Dickensian storm, except not so boisterous as his, that there was a certain feel of surreality.

Of course, he said, I thought rather abruptly since we had not precisely met: it doesn't issue commands.

Who ? the sea ? the sun ? the light ? Whichever it is, of course, that is true. Material things without life do not issue commands.

So musing at his speech, I thought of asking him to define the object of his reference, but thought better of it, since he seemed so absorbed. Then he replied, as if he had read my thoughts.

It can't, he continued. Material things don't. They obey them. That is the stuff they are. The illusion that they issue commands, which involve desire, and means of communication and reception, is ludicrous. How can death desire ? where is the notional function of matter to be found ? Where is the source of symbolism used in commands as in DNA, to be found in the chatter of matter, as it moves on command, functions in terms of its situation, acts as befits the fit-out which it has inherited ? Who invented it ?

Indeed, he pursued his point, by what means is matter thought to be universal ? How can thought err when it is utterly determined by the fits and starts of matter ? THEN there is merely necessity; and what is the point of calling that error which can do no other ? and when you think of this as all, it is virtual insanity so to speak: except of course that man being made by the Sufficient Cause for what he is, he NATURALLY acts in terms of the realities, and so when blind to God, makes up ludicrous self-contradictions. It is the fever of his disease which does it to him.

Why are not these non-experimentally verified, heritage-listed results of naturalism to locate ? Why should the fairies win ? Why should people call other people wrong in fact when their very model precludes facts and allows only reactions! If truth is, so then is the absolute who has it and is not a reactor but an overseer, beyond impacts and the calls of necessities. SINCE He is, atheists are mere chatter-specialists, speaking what they CANNOT know. If He were not, they COULD not be right. The very motivations of men are idealistically thematic, expressive of various perspectives and approaches, evaluations and considerations of thought, none visible, not of any colour or magnitude. Matter if for man what life is for spirit: a field.

Now in all this, there was a certain diversity of impact, of notation, and one could not but admire the singularity of his theme in the multiplicity of his illustrations.

I was rather rapt in his concentration and hesitated to disturb it.

He continued, gesturing with his hand over the grandeur of the ocean, amid the gustings of the wind and the cries of the sea-birds, glancing at me, as if he knew me, and were used to such conversations, or as if I were one of a group with whom he felt close. That close co-operation of thought and creativity which ASSIGNS a meaning, operative or direct, it does not make any aetiological difference, except to intensify what is already indisputable, meaning to symbols, and that directive skill of conceptual, creative thought which assigns materials to symbolic calls on them, expressed as orders, so that they both arrive and connive with the symbols.

Thus these,  he proceeded, their categorical combinations of giving command, and effecting it, in a cluster of quasi-conversation, they have the work of creative-conceptual-codal^*1 and administrative, directive ideational control. In it there features a use as subservient, of what can verifiably respond to such, calls, but never verifiably take the initiative in such areas or arenas. There is thus the call and the issuance. To it are wedded all the conglomerations and concatenations, the wonders ...

What issuance ? I at last asked.

Why in what we see, in ourselves for example, in the composite, correlated combinations which constitute a spirit of beauty, for another.

Oh I see, I responded.

Of course you see, he added. THOSE THINGS have certain functional proficiencies, efficiencies and disposing powers, and those are in turn based on certain conceptual, ideational facilities and what they dispose is based on a correlative input so that it CAN respond, and the interface is wrought in the same "WORD" or logical co-ordinative display; and taking all this for granted is the same as saying 'electricity is' or 'magnetism is' in a thesis on the topic and leaving it at that.

What it takes, produces it, he added; and when you move from the means to the results, to ignore the latter and dismiss the arrangements is far madder than imagining that flowers arrange themselves in vases (like our bodies) with exquisite combinations of aesthetically arresting graces and nuances that stir thought in one direction, but with many charms. To imagine that all flower arrangements must be auto-productive is merely to be blind and to be proud of it.

I agree! I responded. It did not seem necessary to add very much to this.

Agree ? he interrogated. Agree, you do not have to agree. It speaks for itself. Man is becoming increasingly inane, blind to what is plain, merely making aetiological holes all over the universe, lapses in thought, exiling logic, and then daring to defy his Maker with such barren oblivions to reality that a child can, and often does see through it.

More child-like then, more open to evidence, we should be ?

Of course. Though I must say, being childish seems to be more and more a sort of make-weight, and the nations deceptively, immorally, with ludicrous pretences softened at times by devious pretension, as if ideals could slither into the maelstrom of delinquent desire and foxy features, ignore reality. This they do,  while they invent mutual scourging, as if all manner of understanding had been denied them, and the obviously limited character of our birth-death spans in this globe, and of our environment, vast as is the scale, scope and wonder of its multiple features, despite the curse, were to be ignored. That is the way with lust: NOTHING MATTERS but satisfaction. Instead of analysis, there is a silly synthesis which omits as if by drug-deletion of mentality, the major points of WHY we think WHAT we think and differ as we do, while many have models which excluding truth, yet assert it. Obviously, there is a mental, a spiritual dynamic in man as obvious as that which inheres in the commands which construct his body; but he is becoming a twofold fool.

A fool ? I queried.

Certainly a fool, in the movement of his deluded spirit, which debases him from the heights for which he is made, and to which he might otherwise attain. On the one hand, he ignores the potencies and causative necessities of life, ignores the Creator, if not in theory then increasingly in fact, and then demeaning life, specialises in death, killing countless millions, if not in centuries past, in the Romanist Inquisition, then in the Stalinist quasi-religious fiesta, where man taking mankind as matter, though it did not matter to apply its mind to deleting people for ideological reasons. Mao was no better in the China horrors of our Age, and petty dictators with morbid magnifications of their 'rule' wallow in wealth while they debase their lands and act as if the gods were on the ground; nor is North Korea better, according to recent reports of the dehumanising of love, and the commercial exploitation of sexuality as a reward, without choice, for hard work. Man is going to the gutters, as if mesmerised, and leaves his creation in order to desecrate himself, as if lie were lord, and loot were life.

I agree! I responded. I thought to myself: I must say this fellow, while perhaps at times a trifle on the blustery side, which matched the ocean-scape before us, hit the mark rather freely. It was good to have it stated so abruptly and without the too normal obeisance to the dishonest drivelling usually to be found in any pretended meeting of minds.

It seemed however time to get to know my interesting visitor; but as I turned to speak, he seemed suddenly to become a part of the light lashings which spent themselves as they moved from the sun to the atmosphere, then on to our intimate personal atmosphere at the shore-line, with contributions from numerous waves and surfaces multi-abundant, he  became quietly less visible. Indeed, while he lingered for a little as if dissipating gracefully, for obviously he was in touch with the idea of grace and the form of beauty, yet suddenly at last, he really was gone.

It would have been nice to talk in more depth with him about his background, his obvious directness of approach; but when it is gone -

	like a sunset,
	like a tender look of understanding which evokes of course the understanding back of the look in order that the look could be meaningful, for ALL things have a background in creation, and all meanings have a basis without which they are mere occurrences, whereas invisible things are structural for thought and personality, capacity and objectives (cf. It Bubbles ... Ch. 9) -

it is gone.

He might have been a joy to know.

Still, what he said stayed with me. It seemed all one spirit with his power to command speech, the power to command the means for that speech, the power to command the spirit which would WANT speech and the facility to understand it, in that series of potential-fulfilment architectural strategies in which we all consist - with of course the spiritual means to deploy such things, with the potency which the source of Spirit has supplied to it, in which it works, and without which it shrinks.

The ocean surged, and it was rather wild , but still, there was nothing in its ordered sonorous discourse and geometrical continuum to compare with the wild violence of disordered, self-forgetful, selfishly domineering man,

	persecuting and being persecuted,
	hating and being hated,
	sly and being under-slidden,

in society, or among the nations. It is found in that spirit of disobedience which contrasts so sharply with the obedient between the DNA and its counterparts in fulfilment, in the realm of the material, into which it surges like the waves: meaning surges, often with a view simply to the destruction of millions who think, by what does not. What ingratitude this race is falling into, and what madness to imagine it will not at last, despite much grace and long patience, find its due retribution, for one massacre (for there is much in one), and how much more for that of millions!

Amid these failures in mere violence, what displays there yet remain of the dappling of artistic thought, creating beauty, of beauty inspiring artistic thought, this often using the very liberty which it loves to deny while in guilt it proliferates and splendiferates, through ...

I looked at the time. Darkness in its orderly manner was surging in as the mists from the sea's face had done an hour or two before, moving as if with stealth into the silently receptive landscapes nearby.

Yes, beauty still exists, one mused, in the hearts of some ... perhaps some millions, and the understanding of the invisible is still found, and the love of the Creator is yet discoverable on this earth, while there continue in increasing numbers, the brutal, sophomoric nonsenses that seek to start with nothing, or just have the means sitting there in a naturalistic fallacy and irrational ignorance substituting for consistent and empirically grounded science, "I do not know" or speaking without any means or form of testing, in alogical omission^*2. Christians still are to be found, who love the Redeemer on account of whom ALONE we still have the opportunity to show hate or love, knowledge or ignorance, logic or irrationality.

Otherwise, one pondered in the increasing dusk,,  this guilty race would be gone already, like rubbish to the tin of exclusion. In love it is protected for the time, in mercy it has had an abundance of grace through the Son of God, sent to shrive the soul, pardon the heart, bring peace to the spirit which so finds the God who made it. For reply, some come to Him in faith and are His; but many curse with the very name which is His who has brought salvation. What a progression in this, the Gospel Age, which will continue, yes as the day comes and grows on till dusk ...  until the time comes for even this to depart, indeed for the world to depart (as Christ taught - Matthew 24:35), when the issues being past, the eternal life of God continues in the beauty of holiness in those who have received Jesus Christ in heart and life: not some substitute of their own manufacture but the VERY ONE WHO IS GOD, as in Acts 4:11ff., John 8:58.

It was getting on, the time; as it is in our Age. It is high time some became lowly, and sought from where they are, the One for whom and by whom they are, and were thankful that the Lord God of creation has not yet removed all liberty and instituted judgment. Jeremiah 13:15-17 came to mind:

                          For your rule shall collapse, the crown of your glory."

The love of Christ was always the same in heart, and when HE wept for Jerusalem and warned the world of the same judgments, He spoke the same message.

"Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, saying,

'If you had known, even you, especially in this your day,
the things that make for your peace!

"But now they are hidden from your eyes.

"For days will come upon you when your enemies
will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground;
and they will not leave in you one stone upon another,
because you did not know the time of your visitation.' "

It happened. His love then returned Israel to the land after 1900 years or so, as He had promised (Ezekiel 36-37, Micah 7 ... in the way shown in SMR Appendix A indeed), and soon many will return, even of them, to the Lord as promised (Romans 11, Zechariah 12:10-13:1). The plan has its movements, like a symphony, but the theme  is one! So the Age of grace passes, many in supreme disgrace, but some returning to the Lord, before the time comes, as it does physically, for the appointment that clears it all, to where it goes.

A couple of thousand years since Paul articulated it in Acts 17:30ff., and yes and before that too, it is, this dynamic Gospel (as shown in Barbs  ... 17, and TMR Ch. 3). Man can be very stodgy, one thought, very indifferent to what matters most: as if trying to blow up his employer without realising that it is all covered in the in-house TV. God knows: He has even accurately predicted the steps to be taken, both by Himself and by man (as shown in SMR Chs. 8-9 for example, in considerable measure). His enemies are foreknown, despite the love which embraces all, though it be rejected by many; and their devices do not surprise, though they are surprised by His omnipotence, who has made man no slave, though he makes slave of himself to material and ideational monstrosities, and knows who are His own.

You would think the madness of milling mankind, a sort of spiritual pandemic in progress, would begin to manifest itself to some. Of course it does: but they who receive Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord according to His word,  while perhaps millions in all, are yet a small percentage, as Christ indicated in what is found in Matthew 7:15ff.. Even then, the word of God is so added to by traditions, reduced by liberalisms without liberality, waffled about by false prophets and ignored in much of the teaching given to man, that what some say is already confused. Indeed, many will come demanding entry to heaven only to be told, "I never knew you!" (Matthew 7:21ff.). When you create your own christ, like a cigarette, do you expect confetti on the spiritual wedding for that! (as might appear to thought, when one looks at Revelation 19:8).

It is good that the beauty is still kept undisturbed in the Bible, in Jesus Christ, immutable ... God is like that. He keeps the way clear, before the earth is cleared. Impatient ? No, the contrary as in II Peter 3:9. It really is an extremity that He is enduring, as the world ends its little course in the self-inflicted wilderness of confusion. It ways become so abominable that a continuance verges soon on an adversity worse than discontinuance and judgment!

It certainly teaches one patience; and the correlative need for purity. For us who believe and receive Him who died and rose again for us, delivering mortality from death and immortality to the light of life, our God is our sufficiency. It is listed in ONE GOD, the Father in whom is the will to send, the Son sent willingly and the Spirit, who broods over the people, and applies the truth, as in John 16.

It is so simple; but that, it is because made by Him. All our faculties reach for Him, and in Him find rest, in Him alone, whether this be logical, aesthetic, metaphysical, administrative, psychological, emotional, moral or spiritual. How wonderful is the ocean maker, the beauty purveyor, the command-giver! It is as in Isaiah 55.

                           For an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off."

Those in Israel who believed  in the One who fulfilled this were at first thousands, a good body though a small percentage;  and now those who have been reached through the New  Testament fulfilment in Jesus Christ, number no doubt some millions (allowing for what is weed but not wheat, though the former can have some similarity in appearance ... at first).

The light faded; it was time to be home. When He comes back, we will BE home ... who are His. Home is a good place to be: with Him who started it all, make vitality, created thought for His designed bodies, and minds for spirits to think and will, who understands ... understands all, with truth and accuracy. What rest, when we rest from our labours; just as there is a proto-rest now, rest in His glorious presence, amazing love, inimitable peace and staggering companionship of help and kindness.

NOTES

*1

There OUGHT to be a word like codal, as adjective for code. Admittedly it already has another meaning, but there is no linguistic law - anything but - which precludes a word from having more than one meaning. It is not like that recent cricket authority who seemed to imagine it irrational to put life above 'the sport'.

Life is important, and vitality has many nuances and originalities: that is what we are because of the cause we have, originality itself, the Creator.

Codal is a useful short word for a simple concept: why need circumlocutions when it is there. Context should nearly always be enough to identify it, and with intelligence, enough is enough!

What then, if it isn't there, then make it. Others have had to do this sort of thing in the past. That is one reason why the English language is what it is. Why stop! Why agree to decline!

*2

See Repent or Perish Ch. 7 for discourse in this area; and more broadly, Design and Deity ... and for verification specialisation,

LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST

 WHO ANSWERS RIDDLES

AND WHERE HE IS, DARKNESS DEPARTS.