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SECTION 6
HISTORY-PROCESSIVE GROUP
Beginnings, Building, Proceeding, Prognosis
Organ of Sight (A
Spiritual Potpourri
Ch. 7)
with A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 8
(Going
Over the Top. at the Bottom) and
Ch. 9 (Engineering
Nature and Engendering Man) - including
matters of beginnings
The Biblical Workman
Ch. 7, TMR
Appendix,
News 87,
Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch.
8,
The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 8,
Beauty
for Ashes
Ch. 3,
Beauty of Holiness
Ch. 5 (movements from godliness assessable in
godliness,
and in the gyrations of incompetence, devastation and decline into the ruts of
the ruthless and the rutting of the truthless),
History,
Review and Overview, Bon Voyage Ch. 1
(history afloat, processive)
The
True God Has Go, Gives Grace and Glory ...
Ch.
3, 4 for
specific
areas of early history, spiritual developments at the strategic level,
and and its overall divine design,
The Pitter-Patter ...
Ch. 4, SMR Chs.
8-9,
Dig Deeper
3 (history has its points and panoramas as divinely designated)
Bon Voyage Ch. 1, SMR Ch. 10, Overflight in Christ Ch. 1,
Grand Biblical Perspectives Ch. 7 ;
Europe
Ch. 2 above as marked;
History, Overview and Review
1; Three Anzas, One Answer Ch.
5, Grand Biblical Perspectives Ch.
8;
and then for Israel ... (on which see Ch. 9 below where marked ):
The Face of God, Ch. 3,
Ch. 4
Israel
1,
The Pitter-Patter ... Ch. 9, with
emphasis on *1A,
for a broad perspective on Israel, the nations and the glory of God in
modern terms,
Lord of Life Ch. 3, for a
complementary presentation, including biblical grounds for concern for the
USA, about one month before the Twin Towers tragedy;
It Bubbles ...
Ch. 10, 11,
Ch. 7 and 7-2,
these giving in perspective some overview of God's design for Israel and the
Middle East, throughout His depiction of salvation and consummation, the last
two in verse couplets.
With these comes Bon Voyage Ch. 4, concentrating on the lack of effectual concentration in the concentrated world forces which in oblivion of truth, empirical fact, equity and compassion, pursue their polluted thrusts, many of the more visionary pairing in part with the murky depths of the plain annihiliationists who demand submission to their unregal regalia, as Israel is offered up as a sacrifice to Moloch, in modern dress, for peace in the Middle East.
Freedom without truth, right summoned awry in conflict with reality, manipulation without mandate, these proceed in costly deprivations of the 'free' world, as it seeks manacles for its own wrists (cf. Daniel 12:10, Revelation 13:7), mishandling democracy as king, in despite of the Truth who IS King. Liberty to be themselves, better than dictatorial parade, yet becomes licence to exalt their thoughts above the truth; and such will perish. Wise are they that listen to His word, for it is not only always effectual; it has love, peace and mercy back of it, never divorced from truth.
God, as clear in the demonstrably true Bible, has other plans than those of dictation to man or truth; and the conflict is ultimately with Him, with assured results (Revelation 19, II Thessalonians 1, Daniel 7:14,25-26). Many of His declarations of what is to come have come already, and many recently; far worse remains. Religion as a parade to still truth and a diplomatic immunity signal as it slaughters is no more sacrosanct than any other invention of man, coarse calumny or derision of divine dynamic and equity.
Intractable enmity to truth is a costly affair, both now ... and then. The cost is both progressive and cumulative, just as its cause is ultimately in one basis, futile departure from God, expressing itself like mould in fast-moving pollution and diminution of the strength of its victim, which is in this case the aggressor, in the ironies of divine exposition in that realm known as history.
Next come:
Christ Incomparable ...
Ch.9.
Journey to God or Fantasy's
Flight to the Infernal Ch. 6, and
Defining Drama 10,
with Bay of
Retractable Islands
19, exhibiting Israel and this world, whether
in its ultra-racial biological and bile-driven scenario, or its confused
sedation to reality and even identity, together with
Three Anzas, One Answer
Ch. 2,
The
Biblical Workman Ch. 3,
*1A,
Dancers,
Prancers, Lancers and Answers
Ch. 3,
Jesus Christ, Defaced ...
Ch. 4,
Massifs of Pure Splendour ... Ch.
4.
The Open Door, the Closed Mind
... Ch. 8, and its Appendix,
Of the Earth, Earthy ...
Ch. 10.
Further on the power and purity of God who is beyond history and not
merely presiding, but Creator and Judge, see:
Acme, Alpha and Omega: Jesus Christ
Ch. 8, and the section marked
below. .
At the level of spiritual warfare:
The Kingdom of
Heaven Chs. 8, 10, Parts
2, 3 -
the latter including the
poem, The Wonder and the Witch;
TMR 8, Epilogue; SMR pp. 591ff., 750B ;
Dizzy Dashes, Heady Clashes and the Brilliant Harmony of
Inevitable Truth Ch.
6,
DVA 7; Tender Times for Timely Truth
Ch. 8
-
cf. News 87, and his infernal
strategic plan;
Joyful Jottings 9,
Dastardly Dynamics Ch. 6,
and Satan's imaginative ways,
25
assaults on the divine plan, battles against the Lord;
The Christian
Pilgrimage Ch. 9 devices of
the devil;
The
Bright Light and the Uncomprehending Darkness Ch.
7,
and creeping callow concepts,
and in particular,
*2;
Cascade of Truth, Torrent of Mercy Ch. 5,
The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 4 esp. *1A,
*1B, *2 and *3;
End Matters including Plans
Overflight in Christ Ch.
6, on the thrust of satanicity to the end, Israel a stepping stone for
some, to the abyss, while in
His Time is Near
Ch. 4, there is found the flash of pity with
the flush of judgment, aligned precisely to the end.
News 87 overviews something of the divine plan, while Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch. 8 deals with the devil's infernal strategic plan;
The Majestic Might of the Merciful
Messiah: Jesus Chs. 3
and 4,
News 121, 122 as
samples of developments and modes;
Cascade of Mercy ... Ch. 5, Strategic Conversation in Hell (The think-tank in hell), Lord of Life Ch. 3 (plans and programs, putative possibilities for hell),
and Dastardly Dynamics ... Ch. 6, looks at his ways, 25 assaults on the divine plan, battles against the Lord.
INTRODUCTION
BEGINNINGS
The beginning is always important. It covers the concept of seed, if there is programmatic substance in the item in view, of conception from imagination, if there is creation in view, and the imagination displayed by the Almighty in His field of deposition of detail into life.
in dinosaurs to name but one, is found abundant illustration of the teeming multitudes of which Genesis 1 speaks in general approach to life; but on all sides, the evidence gives such exuberant emphasis, in diversities of method, exuberances of style, imaginative caricatures of sin, brilliant devices of astonishing ingenuity seen throughout lively creation, as to provoke both awe and a sense of humour. The sheer proclivity for variety of method and result with a thrust of overpowering facility in methods ingeniously devised to cover a spectrum of cases, sometimes this one being so like and so unlike the other, is awe-inspiring.
Let us illustrate a little, starting with The Defining Drama Ch. 10.
Thus, to take just one example, Denton in his notable work, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, begins his long journey of itemising the fact that never in nature is found continuity of development in kinds, only in the mind of man! This is from The Defining Drama Ch. 10.
Indeed, Michael Denton adds not only this, “nor is there the slightest hint of an evolutionary sequence among all the incredibly diverse cells on earth” (cf. SMR p. 120), which are of an ingenious intricacy, but that in the DNA and RNA record, now becoming available in microbiology, there is shown both an “extraordinary mathematical exactness in the degree of isolation” and a disjunction from any concept of evolutionary sequence for the various classes of living things.
For example amphibians, supposedly close, “are in molecular terms as far from fish as any group of reptiles or mammals!” (p. 285, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis). After survey, he concludes that “molecules, like fossils have failed to provide the elusive intermediates so long sought by evolutionary biology.” Moreover, their arrangements and character show mathematical precision, definitive design unlike gradational concepts, and no convenient continuity. In fact, he concludes from empirical studies that “The concept of the continuity of nature has existed in the mind of man, never in the facts of nature” (op. cit. p. 353).
Again, we find more of a similar them from Questions and Answers Ch. 3,
Meanwhile, let us look at the use of this technique in
a) the velvet worm - onychophorus. This appears in Creation-Ex Nihilo, March-May 1993, p. 8. These have some elements, in perfect form of true worms, and some of arthropods. Since, as always, there was nothing transitional in the form or formula for either of the components, but merely a mix, it was merely of interest - great interest to me, in terms of the evidences of method and originality mixed: as we have seen, one of the features of creativity.
Now however a development has occurred in understanding the creature further. Mitochondria of velvet worms, CSIRO scientists hold, shows that they are in fact arthropods, and so far from being primitive, are in fact highly specialised. THAT is creativity: user friendly components in fresh breaches into novelty.
b) Much the same applies to Archeopteryx, the bird with claws on wings and teeth. As Gish observes, this is a bird in terms of its feathers (citing E.C. Olsen in his Evolution of Life, in his own work, Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record, p. 103). The extraordinary complexity of feathers and their integration with wings and utilisation for flight is well shown by Dr Evan Shute, in his Flaws in the Theory of Evolution. He notes , for example, that up to 1,000,000 barbules may adorn a bird.
These? Barbules are hooked structures running along the barbs: those on the near side of the shaft, taper to a point, those on the underside, appear functional as hooks, which serve to lock feathers in place, so giving stability. The barbs for their part run along each side of the shaft of the feather, with broad surface at right angles to it. It must have the equipment, as always, to serve, and as with a car, leave out the spark plugs and you need not use it.
As Coppedge (Evolution: Possible or Impossible?, p. 213) point out: the feathers are even equipped in such a way that if the barbs should be pulled apart, a bird by preening can re-hook them! a remarkable utility!
Nevertheless, we find no stages towards feathers, nor any towards flight. We find some whales with teeth, some without. Some monkeys wear tails, some are without. Such features show mere variability (Shute, op.cit. 11). He quotes the famous Dewar (p.13), who notes: "It is most significant that no fossil has been discovered that represents a half-formed type of animal. The earliest-known insects are complete insects..." Again, to refer to writing, I often want to sharpen or alter in some imaginative way, something made: to remove or add 'teeth' to some prose is almost a way of life! The point: what we find is what we do. It is originality, often carelessly misinterpreted as stages, when quite factually, it is nothing to do with them. It is NEVER on the WAY; it is always A WAY.
The same applies to cells, which as we have seen elsewhere, Denton (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis) notes as being always most sophisticated, never primitive, never in a line to something advanced as if progressing: complete, replete. And these? With some quadrillion interconnections, they leave the phenomenon of feathers, like a jet! Indeed, Denton notes on p. 109 (op.cit. as elsewhere in this answer), there has never been found any cell which departs "in any significant way, from the universal pattern of the code". For this, he says, there is no analogue in the universe, except that used by programmers in computers. Cells do not 'develop' but are artifices of specialisation of the most intricate and knowledgeable kind, showing an engineering skill to stagger the imagination (Denton, op.cit. p. 250 *2. See SMR Ch.2.)
Just as, moreover, the effluvia of creativity harden into the rock of kind in the creations of life, so do the categories of government, the movements of history itself, the DESIGN of DEITY for man as a being, for matter as a basis for action, of mind as a closet for viewing, a sort of mental telescope, of spirit as a medium for communion with reality as creation, with God as Creator and with one another as parallel creations of one kind: so do all these become evident as KINDS of COMPONENT in the COMPOSITION of all things.
Designed, they operate according to design; spoiled by the liberties of man, they being defiled, bring attestation of delusion by negative dynamics. Then, restored in faith by some, they again proliferate with power, beauty and wonder. While the complexities of MANY DESIGNS in the realm of history, biology, sociology, morals and metaphysics, contrary to the truth and impossible for it (cf. TMR Ch. 5, SMR Ch. 3, Ch. 4, pp. 611ff., and Chs. 8, 11 infra) can for a time, delude the delusible, confuse those whose wits have been if not confiscated by culture, than dulled by time, they have their eventual come-uppance by being brought low.
They do not endure. Therefore man fabricates more fictions*1 , to this or that extreme, from the pomp of imperialism to the treachery of social or the tirades of communism, from the truth-defying reductionism of the antinomy of behaviourism to the aspiring madness of autonomy, from the inane lapses of determinism to the forlorn hopes of global rule*2 and these have their little day before being now so 'obviously' wrong, reprehensible and outré*3 .
PERSONS, NOT PERSONALITY PARTICLES,
REQUIRE PROFUNDITIES
History has its kind of development in which the sheer liberty of what are ludicrously deemed profuse personality particles*1 particularise their desires with pomp or circumstance, ceremony or unceremonious kinds of violence, and yet come to an end, and to a judgment. Of such judgment, God makes a point of giving many examples of prediction (cf. The Pitter-Patter ... Ch. 4, SMR Chs. 8-9), not so as to remove the element of surprise from history, but the reckless imagination that He does not control it.
On the contrary, its outcomes are foreseen and given draft in His own way, so that known to God are all His works from the foundation of the world (Acts 15:18, Isaiah 46:8-10 cf. 48:6ff., 45:4-7, Matthew 5:17-20). He even knows who will be His (Ephesians 1:4), and nothing is left out in His wisdom prior to the despatch of time to the foundations of man's world. Moreover, He provides the testable in magnificent and inundating verification, the more to confirm the invisible.
Freedom does not phase Him who made it, for its limits are of His own devisings and His knowledge construes, is aware of and indeed governs the end results, as madness has its fill and swill but achieves nothing to blench, bewilder or blight His will. If it slights His love, it does nothing to mull His majesty.
Thus does He act, as empires crash and His divinely proclaimed judgments take effect, and it is but one. They arise, they decline. In Daniel, He even forecasts en bloc, for several empires to come, and includes the one which will have the death of the Messiah in it, and the date for that (cf. Highway of Holiness Chs. 4, 10). Nor does He fail to exalt the nation which delights in righteousness (Proverbs 14:34), or to exhibit the defilements of those who love evil, as has been seen not only in the elaborately foretold history of Israel (cf. Amos 3:7), but outside it. Thus, in the Gentile world it has been seen in major and outstanding cases, in movement both upward and downward.
This is particularly clear in the cases of those formally or virtually Protestant nations, such as was England once in several major manners, and the USA once in much of its practice. It has been witnessed both as they have moved toward God or wandered as now, further and further from Him in their witness and ways, internationally. These trends are in the midst of multiple forces, but the integrity when it comes to God has an omnipotence back of it.
To be sure, nations may suffer for good, as may individuals; but their name and fame reaches upward while their detractors enjoy only temporary, temporal and terminating acclaim for their truthless truculence and tedious self-acclaim. The USA now is in decline, and the most recent offence against God of vast national significance were President Bush's notorious prayer Breakfast*4 in which different religions figured, and his deeming the Koran good. Since the false prophecy of this book omits the Redeemer and His name is dragged into the imagination of Muhammad, centuries later than the history occurred (cf. More Marvels ... Ch. 4, SMR pp. 1080ff.), that characterisation by the President, and this combination in religions, it is a vast step against the living God (cf. II Corinthians 6:14ff., 5:9ff., Jeremiah 23, Ezekiel 14, and consult Separation 1997).
The USA may well have lost the imperially crusading bin Laden in Afghanistan through treachery in the folly of its ostensible co-operation with Islam on such a basis as this; and it has certainly involved itself in what is NOT FAITH in fighting, which naturally enough has all the habiliments which were mercifully lacking when Elizabeth I presided over the destruction of the Romanist Spanish Armada! That was a massive deliverance; this is a massive waste. This is not to prejudge anything, but that it was a conflict mistaken in alliance, which wastes America in consequence.
Philosophies (cf. SMR Ch. 3, pp. 422Qff.) and religions likewise arise in man's empire of freedom, smashing into imperial follies of high-minded imagination, only to become denuded, except for that meta-religion*5 , that of the Bible. This was always as unpopular as the Cross of Christ signified, yet it continues unrocked like some Alpine splendour, immune in its granitic grandeur, to paltry movement (cf. Bon Voyage Ch. 1, SMR Ch. 10, Overflight in Christ Ch. 1). It for its own part, does not change, while the world for its part, it changes precisely as this word of God has proclaimed, and that as an explicit testimony from the beginning (cf. Isaiah 41, 43, 48, where God defines the case in indelible terms!).
Governments have their come-uppance, having seemed indomitable, only to come to their accrued mounds of immorality, bestiality, pride, ambition as so ingloriously but famously exemplified in the sad case of Alexander the Great who reputedly used some show of force even on an Egyptian oracle-giver, only to get the desired rule of the civilised world, just in time to lose it by death, in that most appealing (morally) but most appalling (sadly) case of irony. God is of course prodigiously good at irony (cf. Ezekiel 28:9), being of unlimited power and expressiveness, and man is exceedingly good at deserving it. Indeed, he even profits from it at times (cf. Proverbs 1, which is most edifying to the gambits of the 'great').
Amongst the various growth and development exhibits of the various elements of the DESIGNS of the Almighty, in the case of man in particular, equipped with facilities for designations by man, so that in his liberties lost, he can contentiously seek to outbid 'nature' or each one the other, what is to be found ? It is this.
There are vast arrays of types of design, whether spiritual, moral, intellectual, academic, social, historical, physiological, psychological, of the episodic, deployed in tests, trials, things didactic, evil probes from the delusive discourtesy of the devil who is used despite his flamboyant rebelliousness and ambitions (cf. Job 1. I Kings 22); and there are special cases. These elaborate the design and designate conditions equipped to forward enlightenment, frustrate delusion and rebuke darkness for its insatiable appetite for dispensing with light.
DESIGN IS MYRIADFOLD
Design is in things physical,
spiritual, moral, aesthetic, architectural, including that now better read DNA
in its quasi-computing technologies, set in its one only language for all cases
as bespeaks one mind and a great one; for the facilities of conception, the
functions of coding and the fulfilments of the threefold conjunction of orders
given, of matériel apportioned and appointed and of collaboration between the
systems giving the one and supplying the other: these do not prod themselves into being
by any extant law, evidence or means. These realms do not arise, either
empirically or logically, from what has no power to act in such realms, imagined
or perceived. Fairy myths are fun for kids, but not for adults. This is contrary
to the DESIGN of logic! (cf.
Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed:
Barrister of Bliss ... Ch. 4, The
Wisdom and the Wit ... Ch. 2, SMR
pp. 131-145).
You can breach these designs, to a point, depending on degree of understanding as you seek to fossick or counteract. You do not however replace them or their responsibilities which as designs, are designated with them. They are what they are, not what they are imagined to be by myths of a secular kind, based on nothing, fulfilled in nothing, evinced in nothing.
ALL the realms, then, visible and like thought, invisible, delicate or robust, individual or social, personal or political, psychic or historic: each in its own coded, characterisable or constraining manner, have their parameters, provisions and modes. The physical is what a child can see; but the mental is that with which he first sees it, and the spiritual the bounty for understanding or challenging or changing it. The vast panoply of design, designated for the world of man, is like a sky of its own, and on the earth beneath, its effects are to be felt.
Thus, designs in the psyche are no less apparent, the healing beauty of peace founded on fact, and the congealing horror of the ostensible founded on nothing, making of mankind a division, so that the ostensible and the actual meet like two liners passing on the one ocean, each with a wholly different life (cf. SMR Ch. 4).
The political is another field of exemplification of design, one where the facilities are based on enormous provisions of order and depth, only to be treated as so often is the psyche of man, by hands not governed by any understanding of their domain. Thus war becomes elemental and continual. World War I and II were almost incredible in their degradation, evil dynamics, enormous suffering and the former was readily avoidable in humility and honesty; but prime moving machinery of the lust of pride confronting Britain, she responded in the power given her.
Thus following World War I, not at first apparently, but surely did the enormous decline come about, with the reactions to defeat and the ambitions of callow racism a new dynamism, nearly deadly in Hitler's regime. This the Allies confronted using Stalin's USSR, with its no less atrocious exhibition of atrocities, following the no less futile orientation by class, and its dismissal nirvana, as a substitute for Hitler's delusion.
Neither race nor class, nor the presence or absence of either presents a solution to man's desire for any -ism to exalt, any folly to find rather than the God of creation, and the ironies of Stalin's horror in the name of comradeship were as acute as those of Hitler's supreme race in tatters. Man is always looking for someone, or some one, other than the actual One who made him, to look to, as if in an hysterical asymmetry of conscience and irrationalised reason, he could only err*5A, *6
In the historical case of WW II, with Stalin's co-operation alongside the Allies, the squalid horror of debased principle using one mass murderer's regime against another, smouldered. This lay latent, as they fought and soon was to become patent. Fighting does not remove principles, and submerging as here, the latter to gain in the former, is merely short-sighted. Churchill's reported statement that he would say a good word for the devil in the House of Commons were Hitler to invade hell, merely illustrates the point made in practice already (cf. War at the Top, James Leason, and see The Wit and Wisdom of the Word of God ...Ch. 6).
What chaotic compulsions, and what shallow faith brought then on the Cold War, an inheritance from unbelief, just as now the USA is moving on the same sort of defect, as noted above, to its own decline.
As man moves nationally further from God, the British Empire, for all its faults one with Christian background and basis, being now effectively finished and the USA one eliminating itself voraciously by swallowing up debt, what do we find ? It is this, that war is becoming endemic, not in outbreaks, but in the very system of international affairs, each war lingering in effects, as each participant now finds ever new ways to do what is old - forsake God! Even the USSR which failing, became Russia again, is now threatening specifically, because it is not happy with this and that defence against missiles for former slave-states; while the Middle East is becoming nearer to an American grave-yard, while its soldiers watch the wars of infidelity show their glittering teeth in the domain of the false prophet.
It is important in history to act according to design in integrity, honesty, goodwill, care and prudence, wisdom and purity of heart and mind. It is important to act according to the design imparted by deity, the will and wisdom, the wit and truth, the peace and profundity of the Almighty God Himself. Fail this and failure is the function involved! Our asinine human endeavours are the direct result of playing the fool with God (cf. News 121, 122).
The result ? It may wait before it pounces; it may lurk while its lead is followed; but its end is sure. Historicism does not help (cf. Christ's Ineffable Peace and Grace Ch. 7, *1), any more than pulling yourself up by your hair helps you avoid the pit as you fall. All endeavours, avoiding truth and personality alike (Deliverance from Disorientation Ch. 8, It Bubbles ... Ch. 9), to avoid reality by obsessive little flights into this or that feature, perhaps made inherent just so that the theorist himself, not being free of it cannot himself know the truth in order to declaim it: such strivings merely mock in theory, as they eventually do in practice, the deluded proponents*1 (cf. Bon Voyage Ch. 1).
MAN'S ABUSE OF DESIGN IS MANAGEABLE
Readily do enormous powers unleash themselves as man makes his vast wonderland into a grave-yard of bodies, hope and frustration. Man can use himself thus, but such follies are not designed though they are foreknown and implemented as deity deems fit; rather are their results designated for misuse of design, and that by the Designer. Does man learn ? It is, in the mass, only to fight with more feckless ambition, with more frustrated power till his acme in world rule evaporating in horror, the antichrist, that ultra-Hitler figure, that ultra-Stalin to come (cf. II Thessalonians 2), clad in hypocrisy, mighty in deviousness, burns and fizzles, first rises in puny power and paltry pride, and then is bowed (II Thessalonians 2).
It is better to bend to truth than bow to obliterative forces, meeting your foolish pretensions. When the God of reality is opposed by what He has made, whether it be insalubrity or irrationality, dream or drive, the ultimate result is the same. Reality remains.
So do all things go as Christ indicated, from the loss of Jerusalem to its regaining, on the part of the Jewish people, from the folly of the Gentiles to their come-uppance, many of those who were in many ways so cruel to those who in failure preceded their own lapses, now being sharers of the grief! (cf. Matthew 24, Luke 21 including 21:24 cf. Let God be God Ch. 4, SMR Ch. 9, Israel Ch. 1). This it grows while wisdom in the nations decreases, and their religious follies lead them as a wolf might lead a donkey.
On this, see Ch. 9 where marked, below.
Particular cases among the nations, however, may be further signalised.
One of these is Europe, given special treatment in this HISTORY-PROCESSIVE GROUP, since it is basic to prophecy and a wonderful example of its precise fulfilment over millenia (cf. Grand Biblical Perspectives Ch. 8). The ravaging frogs of debilitating deceit (rather like the Queensland cane toads) noted in Revelation have indeed worked ruin in the heart, while power is growing in the vast increase of nations and population involved. As noted in Pain, Suffering and Evil, such 'frogs' or evil spirits are from the mouth of the 'false prophet' may be Marxism, Freudianism and Darwinianism, or their neo-derivatives, seeking irrationally but ruthlessly to disestablish God from the minds and hearts of mankind, so that, manipulable by new gods, gods newly arisen, but in fact old nature myths such as made Rome of old so vain, and Greece so jejune, vulnerable man might be ruled from hell.
The point is not too strong. There is a competitive, resistant, truculent, invidious, envious spirit (cf. Youth 4, Youth 3) indeed which makes its evil menace manifest in the so often all but incredibly deluded and rumbustiously dynamised actions of man (*6), that the litter of lives lost in its accomplishments reads almost like a text on mathematics! It was active in menacing Christ Himself from the first (as in Revelation 12, and in Matthew 4), was a major confrontationist of Christ and Paul (Mark 4:21ff., Matthew 4, Acts 16, II Corinthians 11:13ff.), and is behind the disrelished brutality and intoxication of world empires and the all but insane efforts to dominate whether by race, as in Nazism, by ideologically debased people as in Communism, without relief from any balance of power and on a delusive basis, or by religious effrontery, as in militant Islam and other dynamic thrusts, which without ground, seek to make the ground the place for the face of the ruled, either in death or in subjection to this enforced belief system*6.
Other sects misusing and trying to re-invent Christ centuries later, and using His name for their own purposes, abound (see *6, section 4). This too is as it was to be (Matthew 24:24).
We have considered more of these basics in Highway to Hell, and as for the Freudian assault on the pysche, this like the assaults on man's social being by Marx, and his physical one, by Darwin, these are all alike impossible even as theories, before we begin to in great detail, to consider their tools of trade*6, *7 . The movement into a religious unity which is ludicrous in its inane lack of specificities or presence of contradictions (cf. News 121, 122), continues like a whirl-wind, and this, making man manipulable, losing logic, gaining fear and having desire for something that can control everything, leads inexorably on, in the tides of disfaith, to the wreckage surely to come on the shores of time, in no distant age. In fact, however, it will be the power of God which disestablishes this chaotic assemblage of folly, as seen in Revelation 19, II Thessalonians 1.
In all this, God has specialised and specific emplacements. This helps a sense of time and timing, and gives comfort as the plan, the designed end arrives from the designed beginning, along the path of brutal ravishment of design, leading to unlivable lives for increasing numbers, physically, psychologically and environmentally.
Another such emplacement is Israel, and a deviously related one is that epitome of the antics of autonomy, Satan (cf. Dastardly Dynamics ... Ch. 6), of whom we had already had cause to speak. This powerful and portentous spirit (cf. SMR pp. 590) is but a creation for all that, one who was defiled by reason of his beauty (Ezekiel 29), or devastated by his very wonder of talent and place. He literally could not contain himself but would export his power where it did not belong, contrary to design, designation and reality (cf. Revelation 12).
These satanic aspirations are higher than the stars, and as to Satan, his endeavours are lower than the pit. As in SMR Ch. 5 (cf. The Glow ... Ch. 8, SMR pp. 582-594, Tender Times ... Ch. 8), the devil's endeavours are part of the utterly total explanation of evil which is to be found in the staggering character of man's errors (cf. Grand Biblical Perspectives Ch. 7), though it always depends on a pivot which man supplies for the evil leverage.
The design for this deliberate devilry founded on delicate invention of liberty has given much scope, and has its own result when the designations of the devil being fully exhibited, remain an exhibit for eternity, of the love of truth and the truth of love, by contrast.
SPECIALTIES IN HISTORICAL DESIGN
As to Israel, which has vital importance as a STATEDLY chosen body of people in whom God used functions of various kinds for a series of listed outcomes, this is as outstanding as the Sydney Opera House. Its flair for significance remains high *8.
Its uses by God have been many and major. This, and not its size is the point. They continue.
These have included:
being the repository
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for His law to man, |
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of His Messiah for mankind; |
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of His discipline for treachery in
leaving agreed covenant; |
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of the vigorously wrought stages and major crises
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and being the site
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for His execution as incarnate |
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of Israel's expulsion as foretold by
Moses
(Leviticus 26), |
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of their breach so that no more are
they the servant who shows the glory of the Lord |
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of their national return as predicted |
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of His
return, the crucified Saviour now King. |
This devastation of all life nearly happened in Noah's time of deluge (cf. News 1). Only the Lord's personal return intervenes to prevent it happening not only nearly, but altogether, again. Thus the Ark of Noah becomes the Container Vessel of Christ, to whom all to be saved go, and with whom when the time comes (I Thessalonians 4, Matthew 24:30,35-44), all are gathered (Revelation 19:8) in a felicity of everlasting joy. Jews saved delight in their restored intimacy, for so long lost, Gentiles saved delight in their vast access, for so long ignored, all rejoice as one and in One who with vast wisdom has revealed Himself to all His people, those who have come to Him (Romans 11).
What then of the parallel of the flood and the finale of our Age ? While the flood allowed a residue of mankind to escape, in a staggering exhibit of divine judgment - such because of the inveterate patience of God, which however does not disguise truth as seen in Genesis 6:1-3! yet God Himself interposes to save a residue from the flood of evil that seeks with impudence and audacity, depravity and debasement, to capture the earth. Small wonder the flood, though categorically attested, is so unpopular (cf. News 1), as predicted II Peter 3:1-5. It is a hinge of destiny and a product of divine purpose, and what is more, a parallel for things to come, fittingly not in water but with fire!
The flood ? It will never be repeated, God declared (Genesis 9:14-17); but what is to come in our own time is more than that (cf. the chart in Member Contribution 1).
The earth, to be sure, is to be afflicted as it is now observably being afflicted, so that the 'Greenies' make their protests; but it is also in due course to be vacated not by death, but into life, by a vastly expanded Noah-type group, this time the Christian family, the Messiah-receivers, who having identified themselves on earth (Romans 10:9), are received into heaven. Not that this is all, for their subsequent coming WITH Christ (I Thess. 3:13, Zechariah 14:5, Revelation 19) is part of the fulfilment of that prediction for God's earth which is to follow (Habakkuk 2:14, Isaiah 11).
And that ? It is this. Despite a movement so vast, so fast, so drastic, so cumulative like a cyclotron in history, governing the degradations in history on this earth, towards its utter destruction, God having rescued His redeemed (Matthew 24:36ff., I Thessalonians 4) at the point of His own choosing (as in Acts 1), then acts decisively (Revelation 19:8ff.) at a time when even false churches are to abound to test the stability and reality of faith (as has abundantly been fulfilled!*9). Indeed, He proceeds to deal with the spirit of discord, satanicity, seduction, squalid rebellion (Revelation 19) in summary style (Revelation 20). Misrule is ruined and the Lord as King exhibits righteousness on a smitten earth which flourishes in grace (Isaiah 11, 65, Psalm 72).
Staggeringly, but in accord with His divine patience, He thus allows a time for a righteously governed earth to exhibit His long stated intention; and this verification is a delight which is to come, in its season, from the Creator.
This ? It is that "the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea" - Habakkuk 2:14 cf. Isaiah 11, Revelation 20.
TERMINAL EVENTS FORETOLD, AS THE
FLOW GOES:
DESIGN FOR HISTORY
From this released, the Satan makes a final bid, being always, from his own fall, being of this disposition, striving for inglorious power. His mark of this, at the incarnation, was nothing short of a rebellion-fest, as in Revelation 12. He does not change for the better! but is inveterate and so to the end pursues his inimical theme.
The terminus to irrational truculence can be of one kind only. Thus doomed, his end finds its place. With one last endeavour, he seeks like Napoleon from Corsica, to inflame, but fails. It is over (Revelation 20).
No more
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the false prophecies of the deluded
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or the
enormities of desultory fictions like organic evolution, |
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or the thrust toward world rule by organisers
who know not God but ambition: |
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no more will these exult or be exalted! |
The test is then concluded. What does not work, what indeed was on path to blow away the earth itself, this falls in its final processes to disrepute, always deserved for the spiritually sleazy. It is summarily dismissed into its due estate. The earth ? yes, sin has cost the earth, but the Creator has a new heavens a new earth in store (II Peter 3, Isaiah 66).
When One can operate at that level, there is no final loss. We create pictures, books, the Lord created the earth. There is no lack of power, creativity or imagination in Him, whom to know is to know the acme of wonder, the all-powerful and gracious God of all comfort.
The point of the earth, of its historical processes, its philosophical pollutions, its extravanganzas of ultimately frustrated power, its legacies of lust seeking to maraud and consume love, of its dishonesties and its martyrdoms, its glaring deceits and its unsparing honesties, of its beauty and its ugliness, its temptations to allure and its dissolutions of virtue: this is now plain, as it has always been to the open eye that examines the word of the Lord on the one hand, and the evidence on the other.
Test concluded. All personnel now go to their DESTINY, fitting for their DESIGN, and having designated their desires, find their place.
Thus have
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the design of creation and of
creatures, |
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the curse at the fall, affliction to
recall reality, by design, |
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the redemption for the fall,
foretold in design (Gen 3:15), |
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the judgment on what makes life
worse than not living in the flood, |
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the evacuation of a few with Noah, a
symbol of Christ to come, the spiritual ark,
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the restoration of civilisation,
with the design of the rainbow to remind: no repetition, |
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the inculcation of the word of God
through Israel, the challenge to Israel itself, |
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the judgment on Israel, in all their
affliction, He was afflicted (Lamentations, Isaiah 63:9), |
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the incarnation of the remedy, God
Himself in human format, |
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the demonstration of regal His powers,
designed as ONE authentication (John 14:9-11), |
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the remonstration of man at this
provision, |
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the world shattering fact of the
resurrection, |
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the world-wide proclamation of the
Gospel predicted in Isaiah, |
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the galloping movement of the early
Church to capture in one, an Emperor - |
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the false shepherd syndrome with
Romanism (I Timothy 4:1-5, Matthew 24:23,23:8-10), |
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followed by numerous others, the
whole array |
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the purification of those who
loved not their lives to death |
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the return of Israel to its land, at
first as a nation unbelieving in Jesus Christ |
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the division of Jerusalem in two at
this stage |
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the triumphant wars of 'weak' little
Israel over vast confrontational peoples |
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the continued tension in the Middle
East |
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the increase in knowledge
predicted by Daniel |
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the abuse of knowledge in recidivism
to myths, fables and unhistorical ramblings by errant |
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the arising of new syntheses of
religions with devastating effect in many 'churches', |
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the unleasing of a spirit of
compromise and power, |
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the release of a spirit of unity in
anything that will do, in accord with the design |
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the mutilations of terrorists as in
Revelation 6, leading on to the final synthesis of spirit and violence,
deviousness and dynamic, world rule and recklessness on the part of man, |
these and much more to come, duly arrived.
Thus was it predicted to be; and in superlative verification,
in the overall design as in its details,
so does it proceed (cf. News 87).
Such victorious verification, in much as in little, in detail as in scope, in developments as in dynamisms: this is an ample provision of the prophets and of Jesus Christ Himself. God not only provides, but demands test, and does it on the grand scale suitable to deity, and in the small parts, apt for the One who made DNA, that staggering feat of miniaturisation.
So has God moved in the time of utter abandon, religious corruption, undenied lust, teeming wickedness of thought, imagination and aspiration, abortion of beauty, discrimination against truth, that era before the Flood when the spiritual and the unspiritual were alike in recess, when life became a field and man the possessor, with right absolute (Genesis 6), in his molesting thoughts and exultant thrust. Such was the depravity, with evil in the imaginations of mankind as an drunkard is in the pubs (6:5), that God resolved to remove from the face of the earth, this prodigy of liberty, mankind; except for what found grace in His sight (6:8-9); and this with the family concerned, He redeemed.
This 'redemption' was in the sense of removing from the impending judgment of the coming flood, by instructing him, Noah, the preacher of righteousness (II Peter 2:5) on the way to escape, that is, the Ark which by the multitude and diversity of testimony over a long period*9A, seems to have been seen many times in its residual condition.
This massive container for kinds*9B was part of a plan so deep, and so foreknown in its wisdom, that it evokes the point, as Peter's coverage of the field suggests (I Peter 3:18-22), that the Ark is a symbol of Christ, to whom all must now come for an escape not merely of the physical body, through a blessed resurrection based on that of Christ, but for deliverance from the far worse pending misery, just judgment for sin uncovered.
Thus is Christ as the cover keeps life afloat, and mercy is in the Ark which is He. As to the anchor, it is as in Hebrews 6:19, firmly within the realities of heaven, in the divine counsel, keeping in that security, the people of God (cf. I Peter 1:1-8, Ephesians 1:11), who glory in His grace, placed in the vessel of salvation and sealed for ever (Ephesians 1:5, Romans 8:30), having been foreknown (II Timothy 1:9-10). But let us revert to the type, the Ark, that motif and marvel which focussed weakness in the turmoil, to bring the point of faith to the hearts of all men for all time.
Thus did the Lord, who in massive splendour poured forth the creation, in minimal containment preserve the top of the range of fleshly creation, mankind in a means so fragile before the massive tempests and flows of water and eruption, that this in itself is a message to faith which is not in the appearance of means but in the reality of Him who saves. This, applied to the New Testament, is exhibitive of the fact that Christ Jesus HAS to be realised for WHO He is, appointed Saviour as the eternal Word of God incarnate, before faith can be faith and not mere hope! Not realising this, rejecting or avoiding it, is the same as not entering the Ark in Noah's day. Just as God sealed the ark, so are those now sealed with the Spirit of God (Ephesians 1:5), not for mere time, but for eternity (Ephesians 1:11).
By this spark if you will, from the fires of life that was, did God preserve the race we call humanity, a name with less and less ground since the inhuman is becoming as forcefully apparent as has been the inhumane for long enough, and prodigies of enormities become expected and even praised.
In many ways, this our twenty first century period is like that before the Flood, and indeed Christ made an express comparison in some ways, as He indicated that just as man was busy with minor matters before the flood (Matthew 24:38ff.), so will he be at the coming, not this time of flood, but of Christ the King returning with many judgments in train, before that final opening of the books (Revelation 20:11ff.).
So at the time of the Flood, did God make the little the basic, and the apparently weak the way, moving the spark to the new fires of faith, and turning a whole world of wonder into turmoil, that by some He might preserve that magnificent hope and glorious opportunity which He gave to man. As this flame began to take heart in the residual world, He chose Abraham and the whole Jewish race for the annunciation of His word to mankind, and the incarnation means for His Son, into it. Not in the stupendous powers of those who abuse their privileges in the lusts of silly talk and unspiritual prominence to power, not in the wisdom of sages who start with blindness and provide many spectacles to try sight for their disciples, but with the slenderness of truth in the apparent fragility of the bark of the Ark, and then that of the life on earth of His Son in the culmination, did God act.
So time moved from Flood to incarnation, as Israel came and flowered, and then gutted itself in disgraces phenomenal, prototype for the forthcoming era of the Gentile World (cf. Matthew 24, Luke 21), that man should expose the nature of the ungoverned heart, and the vainglory of the godless spirit. This not merely severs itself from the living God, but glories in its shame, delights in undermining what it professes to believe, or in professing to believe only in itself and its appointees, idols name or in fact, while it vaunts in its vice and preaches in its follies (cf. Isaiah 59, II Timothy 3, Revelation 9).
From Israel came the Old Testament, that annunciation of the coming of the Messiah who would pay at last the fine for sin, in death for human life, and provide at last the now manifest path of liberty which so many, like David in the Psalms, had foreseen, and in effect used on account, utilising it in advance (cf. Psalm 22, 32, 69, 110). Him they foresaw (cf. Simeon and Anna in Luke 2:25-28), and Him many received, even while others ensured the fulfilment of the plan of salvation, by slaying Him (cf. Acts 2:23-28, I Corinthians 2:7-8, Revelation 12).
Thus in the wisdom of God has the wheel of time turned and the vehicle of faith has had its light in that acme of truth, a PERSON, even God, the personal God AS man (I Timothy 3:16, John 5:19ff., John 1:1-14), Jesus Christ. There is ONE GOD but as to man, he makes many gods, and he can have them, for all the good they will do to him! (cf. Jeremiah 2:23-38). So characteristic is this passage of Jeremiah to the type of decline, that it is good for us to contemplate it.
"How can you say,
‘I am not polluted,
I have not gone after the Baals’? {'lords' for 'faith'}.
"See your way in the valley;
Know what you have done:
You are a swift dromedary breaking loose in her ways,
A wild donkey used to the wilderness,
That sniffs at the wind in her desire;
In her time of mating, who can turn her away?
All those who seek her will not weary themselves;
In her month they will find her.
"Withhold your foot from being unshod, and your throat from thirst.
But you said,
‘There is no hope.
No! For I have loved aliens, and after them I will go.’
"As the thief is ashamed when he is found out,
So is the house of Israel ashamed;
They and their kings and their princes, and their priests and their prophets,
Saying to a tree, ‘You are my father,’
And to a stone, ‘You gave birth to me.’
"For they have turned their back to Me, and not their face.
But in the time of their trouble
They will say, ‘Arise and save us.’
But where are your gods that you have made for yourselves?
Let them arise,
If they can save you in the time of your trouble;
For according to the number of your cities
Are your gods, O Judah.
"Why will you plead with Me?
You all have transgressed against Me," says the Lord.
"In vain I have chastened your children;
They received no correction.
Your sword has devoured your prophets
Like a destroying lion.
O generation, see the word of the Lord!
Have I been a wilderness to Israel,
Or a land of darkness?
Why do My people say,
‘We are lords;
We will come no more to You’?
"Can a virgin forget her ornaments,
Or a bride her attire?
Yet My people have forgotten Me days without number."
It is in such settings as these, and in the thoughts that they evoke to those who will face them, that both the Flood and the coming judgment are to be construed and conceived with any sense of proportion and realism.
Indeed, it is not only in Isaiah 42,49 for example, but in Jeremiah 16:19 that we see the Lord turning to the Gentile nations with the Gospel, in the midst of a recalcitrant people (from whom nevertheless the Lord would choose some as missionaries of the Gospel - Acts 2-20! Mich 5:7, with Isaiah 65:13-15, 66:19-20).
O Lord, my strength and my fortress,
My refuge in the day of affliction,
The Gentiles shall come to You
From the ends of the earth and say,
'Surely our fathers have inherited lies,
Worthlessness and unprofitable things.' "
Now that the Gospel is completed in action by Jesus Christ, the fulfilment of events proceeds to the end of the matter in application, not only in surges of salvation's glory among some, but in concentration of cantankerous forces and voluminous vomits of flesh over the code of life, in many (cf. Matthew 7:15-21). Now in the Gentile era, man moves into that same flow which produced the Flood, but many, like Noah and entourage, take the Ark of Faith, Jesus the Christ, as they await His return, that other Flood, which is more tempestuous and utterly inevitable, but which can be escaped in the favour of the Saviour (Acts 2-3).
As God predicted that there would be one in particular, a false disciple, who would betray the Saviour (and so fulfil the plan of salvation, despite the evil intent, such is the wisdom of the Almighty), so are many churches in other ways, to do the same (II Peter 2, I Timothy 4, II Timothy 3-4, Matthew 24); and great is their shame (Jude concentrates in his focus on rebellion in Old and New Testament times, and its reward). Thus in Psalm 69 as in 22, you see the Saviour exposed in shame, which He vicariously took for man, and you find the betrayal in focus, while in 109 is he particularised, and in Zechariah 11 the amount for which the brtrayer sold the Christ is specified, 30 pieces of silver, the price of a plot of land.
No detail is too small, for the result is so large, the redemption of many from among men, so that the plan of life is consummated, the design called man can culminate spiritually, this supra-design personality, this man made for meta-design where he can examine and propose, so that persons of this kind may be called to the Creator not as clods or timber, but as a poetry of soul, and a wonder of mind, now convinced and convicted both of sin and of righteousness, freely delighting in truth and based on mercy. In this, Israel also contributed, not only as the called race for the body into which God set the incarnation through the womb indeed, but with the sent apostolate (Isaiah 8:16ff. details this as it moves to the Messianic focus more and more directly in Isaiah 9 and 11) ... and the betrayer, as above.
Off to the Gentiles (cf. Isaiah 66:18-20 with Romans 15, incl. v. 16) went Paul the former type of the spiritual SS troops when his name was Saul! to suffer what he had imposed and to win for the witness of Christ, many of Gentile kind to the Lord. So was fulfilled not only Isaiah 42:6 and 49:6, but 24:14.
So has God woven Israel and the Gentile contingents, according to consignment, neither forcing the sin, nor allowing it to rule, but directing the results in wisdom so foreknown in its encompassment, that He has both predicted and fulfulled His predictions to the uttermost. Man is without excuse; but mercifully, not without God, who remains available on His OWN terms (Galatians 1). That these are the most merciful, the most free, the most loving, the most tender and the most ungullible is the glory of it (cf. The Glow ... Ch. 8 and Section 10 infra). He despises ruthless guile but knows wisdom and understands the ways of all (Hebrews 4:13, Psalm 11:4).
It is God's design for history, love's design from the Almighty, life's design in the Lord, and exhibits the over-ruling and inordinate movement past creation and curse, to consummation.
MANY have been the designs for man; and designation has been given to him in no small measure; but in vast numbers and in leading edge power units, he has become besotted with power, vicious in vainglory, seeking in this nationalistic enterprise, or that international one, a glory that is not his, with a methodology which flouts design and makes of mankind a series increasingly of those who are enemies to themselves, to each other, to their environment, to their psyches, to their coming history; and to the end, it flows like a polluted stream pouring into the lake of fire, which burns, for what else can such things have for their destiny!
It is not necessary, it is no part of the design, hell itself is designed for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41); but when man is mutely mutant in frustrated defiance, and changes not, and refuses the transformation necessary for salvation, he has ordered his repast and embraces his reaping (cf. Ch. 10 below). Eating the fruit of your own doings is far the worst there is, for YOU are responsible!
Grand is the grace of God; for mercy presents a better way, and beautifully, it is seen to the very end in the word of God, in Revelation 22:17, asking man to take of the water of life freely. It never ceases this gracious appeal, provision, opportunity, so simple, good, free and costly to GOD, until destiny itself swallows up hope in culmination and consummation, where life is or bones remain.
THE SPECTACULAR WISDOM AND WONDER
IN FORECASTING HISTORY OVER MILLENIA:
DESIGN FOR FREEDOM
But let us consider the dimensions, depths and heights of the designs, as far as we are able. It is not only that the ingredients are brilliant, wise and governed, that they are precise, particular and historically verifiable and verified, nor simply that they are like parts of a superb costume outfit for some great lady, each part brilliant in itself and the whole a study in integral atmosphere, mood and light. Beyond all these accomplishments, in which history itself is the material, the mind of God is the inspiration and the thoughts of man are ingredients, there is the obvious, surpassing feature, beyond all except that it is the grandeur of the government of God, and the intense purity of His love which ends to His own glory and man's deliverance, but not by compulsion.
Liberty and love do not commandeer all; but all are commanded to repent, and many do.
It is here especially that eternity meets time and transcends it.
It is the field of this freedom which man has, and the fact that it is despite, or if you wish, within the apparent limitations - some would say impossibilities for prediction - of this feature that the power and precision of divine strategy, pre-announced and sequentially fulfilled, occurs. It is shown in detail how the Lord moves in this liberty of man to secure His sovereign will, in Predestination and Freewill, and how the composition of elements, biblically defined, provides the source of a harmony in this area which nothing else does or even can provide.
Briefly, once you take the biblical design, model and presentation, you find that God who made man, actually CREATED Him, is the One who of necessity wholly understands man's limits, laws, opportunities, scope, implicit standards, explicit organisation, conscience input, intellection and imagination, so that what is created in eternity in design, is manifest in history in outcome. Thus the rovings of man's spirit - simply because in the original disposition of his design and construction, they were entirely free within the limits of his powers and position, so that ethical decisions and the scope for rebellion or love were both present: these were not opaque to God (cf. Grand Biblical Perspectives Ch. 7). He knows the end from the beginning, and the middle from the outside.
To be sure, these most intimate things would be opaque to anyone else, for comprehensive creative, constructive and penetrating power, as infinitely above His creation, would be needed for such an exposure of the very spirit, heart, thoughts and imaginations, conclusions and aspirations of any man, as would enable utter knowledge in advance of outcomes. God has this power and knowledge, and it is His to apply. If it is to be for one, it must be for all, and in every application, cultural, national, tribal, joint, individual; for all interact. Outcomes require comprehensive knowledge of all. Outputs from the Creator, inputs from the Redeemer, these actions of the one God are His, and none need maunder. Seek and find; knock and be admitted: but knock on the divinely designed doorway, for the door is Christ, eternal Word of God sent into the frame and function of the Messiah. The design of love is not to exclude but to include (John 3:17). Let anyone outside Him then act in confidence: you are invited (Revelation 22:17). Come.
The spirit of man is so known by God, and its eddies and thrusts are not beyond the mind of the Maker. These can be seen, foreknown, without any difficulty of any systematic character whatever, as man, held as might be a character in a book by an author, before he writes, is seen and perceived in history as surely as would be the case if history itself were engaged before its time. When one is beyond time, time is merely an advertence for the mind.
More than this, God is no mere spectator. Intervention and compulsion are entirely two different things. One can intervene in an accident situation to avoid it, without directing someone else's life. The thoughts that led to the accident situation in the potential culprit do not have to be cancelled in order to avoid the accident.
Instead, the other car may be moved to swerve suddenly out of the way. If you were thinking in terms of a child and a system, the child could intervene in any way at any time. The extent to which the system would be 'injured' or rendered void would depend on what is done. If the child puts out a hand to still a swaying train, this is not to obliterate the system, but to intrude in a measured manner for a specific purpose. 'Nature' is not voided when supernature acts. Autonomy, an irrational concept for what is created, is hurt, but not liberty.
Thus God knowing all things, does not need to have them happen in time to be aware of them, nor does He for that matter, have to see things as eventive*9C at all, that is shrouded in the limitations which an event situation compels. He may see them, when and if He pleases, as potentials, spiritual fluctuations and movements, desires and their resolution, without any need to contemplate specific outcomes which history might make, or might have made. That is a separate question with its own divine answer. This too is known to God (cf. Acts 15:18, Isaiah 46:10).
Thus this is by no means to limit the one or the other mode, or indeed the divine knowledge to simply these two modes; it is but to point out that God can know the effectual outcome in the spirit of any person, even through the pathology of sin, which like disease has its ways, and to discern the dynamics past mere occurrences. While this has more in common with astute generals, surveying battle scenes and estimating the wits and modes, each of his enemy counterpart, it is far beyond such limitations.
Firstly, God does not guess, He knows. Secondly, while sin makes enemies of God out of men, there is a love from the Creator which surpasses the inimical, and looks at the fault line, to consider its repair. Such is the Christian-theistic fact, and it is this which we consider in seeing HOW God can know what is to be, and how wonderful it is that He thus assigns events, even though man has the liberty not merely to differ from God, but diverge, and to do so in any manner which his imagination may suggest. Thus we come to the fact that in this perspective, and it is the biblical one, God foreknows and assigns, both what is and what is to be, as in Romans 8:29ff., Ephesians 1:11, bringing things to pass according to the counsel of His own will.
That does not mean that any one is forced to rebel; but given the assessment of a rebellion against grace as well as the face of God, it means there is perfect harmony in God assigning WHAT and in what manner, the outcome is to be. This in turn is able to be related to the all but infinite number of other persons, events, outcomes and mutual involvements of persons, peoples, races, cultures, historical dynamics and the like. When you know everything, in time and out of it, in essence and in empirics, there are no limits to the scope for skill in mastering and assigning events, and declaring them in advance. Even computers which can perform billions of operations per second deal with numbers; but the essence and the will belong to God, who made the very minds which invented and invested the computers with such powers, this an indirect testimony to the God who made the mind of man.
Indeed, so far is this from making God the author or source of the madness of man's pathological imagination and lust, that it means He is the determiner of outcome when the income from man is of this or that type. He raises up an empire to rebuke a nation (as in Jeremiah 5), and can specify that empire in advance, and even the time in which the assault of that empire will result in trouble, such as exile, and who will share in it (Jeremiah 25).
He can rebuke the Empire for the manner in which it used its opportunity as divinely assigned (thus allowing liberty in the execution of the assignment, and so rebuke for its misuse) as in Jeremiah 50-51. In the case of Babylon, it was not to be exonerated from guilt because God assigned it to serve as a rebuking agent, but to be exterminated without redress for its vicious arrogance and godless heart, visible over time.
In this way, liberty is vast and it is not absolute. It is not autonomy. There can be only One with that, for His being limits all else.
Liberty gets its come-uppance as required, but is not obliterated before it acts! Its actions moreover may be touched, without limiting the nature of the will, on occasions such as may be seen in Ezekiel 21:20-23. Thus an enraged person has guilt for the rage if it is uncontrolled; and this being so, it is no loss of liberty for some thought or event to be brought to his mind or eye, which will influence the WAY in which the rage is vented. In the case noted in Ezekiel, the king of Babylon is considering whether or not to invade Jerusalem, but so vast is its evil that the Lord moves in His own way so that even a fouled or wrong auspices or divination, taken from the body of a beast, is yet deemed valid, and he invades anyway!
This is mere illustration of one of the ways in which liberty and direction may combine, and the Lord who acts, of course knows the outcome.
While this is relatively easy for One who built time and knows essence and outcome alike, the principial, the empirical, the essential, the heart, the spirit, the mind and the scope of possible and chosen events, even to the point of making possible what was not formerly so, by direct divine action called miracle, when He pleases: yet it is still of a profundity so far beyond the wit and wisdom of man as to be magnificent. The outcome harmonises with the power; but it harmonises with no other; and this, it is none other than God who acts.
Thus it is in the field where man has the liberty correlative to his mutual assignment of guilt by law or conscience, without being insane, where shame may be experienced whether or not the current legal or social system requires it, and even if it is CONTRARY to it. With such liberties, such licences to weigh actions and thought, and elevate principles at will, and operate on them, or fail to do so, in a mass of interwoven possibilities which only imagination and power limit, man is known by God, his spirit, his thoughts, their outcomes, the interaction of many events from multiple systematic or personal sources.
These before Him, God does not wring His hands and wince at what might happen.
He governs, guides, allows, permits, brings whirl-wind for wind when the case requires it (as it did in Hosea 8:7 cf. Amos 8:7), and in sovereign wisdom, He exposes, assesses, impacts and judges; and He records as He will.
Thus does He declare His word to tell man what is to be (cf. Amos 3:7, Isaiah 44-45), for He knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10). It is this power to predict in a situation of not autonomous, but genuine liberty for man, that makes the work of God in history, His sight not only overarching all the realms of antinomy and antithesis in man's misguided thoughts, but also discerning beyond the muddle, the action, so brilliantly composed.
This He makes clear and magnificently sure in its prophetic announcements. Not one jot or tittle of them, said Christ, will fail (Matthew 5:17-20), and as we see verification at all levels so we can only concur!*10. He can even reward a nation, an empire, for an action wrought and do it as a teacher might a child in a class. Such is the case with Babylon where, apart from its ultimate destitution and disgrace, as duly predicted and abundantly fulfilled, it was given temporary payment for service rendered (as in Ezekiel 29:18-19)!
In this field of precise and sustained historical coverage, the history of the Jews is the cause célèbre, for here there is profound, sustained, sequential listing of data concerning possibilities, requirements, outcomes and divine actions thereon to the point that it is an inherent system in itself, like a play, say King Lear, pre-written for the events. This, as shown, in no way prejudices the evil or the good which man may do, but simply unfolds as from the end, what is the beginning of this or that matter, its import, its importance, its spiritual nature and its divine result; and this is not only for an event, but for an atmosphere, attitude, for the work of centuries and the result after centuries, both in depth and with grounds assigned.
Such is as seen for example in SMR pp. 755ff., and further in that Chapter 9. Also to this point is *8 below.
The case of the Cross is an illustration even greater, to the point of infinity, since in this matter, deity Himself actually plays directly, or labours rather, in the events of that day, and by design long announced*11, suffering the humiliation of the format of man in a sinful world, bears death in order to break it, not merely as if it were some sort of wolf or dragon to be slain, but as One who invented it as the correlate of sin, and who vexed it out of existence for the conclusion of the drama. This He did by bearing the guilt of the sin and so removing the right of impact of death, in His own innocence, purity and power, exhibiting the principle in the power of His own personal resurrection and the coming impact in that of those who receive His salvation (cf. I Corinthians 15, Hosea 13:14).
Such is the outline most magnificently given in the Bible of these events, in detail as close as the place of birth for this, the Messiah, as the number of pieces of silver gained for His duly assigned betrayal, to the date of the occurrence and the nature of His feats when acting on earth as Messiah, and it displays the same infinite wisdom and knowledge for God ON earth as for the Lord beyond it. Nothing moves, when God acts: it is as listed (SMR pp. 939ff., 973A, *24).
The wonder of such wisdom which not merely does not annul liberty, but differentiates it from autonomy and knows its outcomes, and provides for its restoration from the enslavement because obscuring and forceful antics of sin, which like a plague, once begun can have a mind of its own: it is this which is before us. History does not move because of economics, or worms, or money, or power, or circumstances (cf. Christ's Ineffable Peace and Grace Ch. 7, *1). These things have their place, but so does wisdom, implacability, ability, agility, imagination and above all, the spirit of man as interviewed by, viewed and known before the mind of the Lord and His Spirit.
It is not the stage which runs the actors, however much its splinters may vex them; it is the actors in their own spirits who are accountable, but not dictators of events; for in the end, it is the Lord's own counsel which knows how to deal with the limited liberties which sin leaves for man as it vexes his system, spoils his design and affects his designations.
It is the Lord who is the authority over all, and His will is as far above mere observation of what is to be as is the heaven above the earth. His will finalises things (Ephesians 1:11), but the creation of liberty of man, in God's own image, able to have fellowship initially with Him, and to determine values and priorities and imagine things true or untrue, and know or not know the difference between these categories by sin of this or that kind, this precludes its own abortion. Proverbs 1 is eloquent on its operability in its own frame, reaching even to results that include eternity. This however is not the ultimate outage, but the basis on which, beyond mere sight, God is free to act. Man is free to reject, but God chooses (John 1, 3:19). In man's choice however, the divine disposition of events figures.
It is not an eternity wrought by a flicker of a flame, but in the counsel and wisdom of God, in the love of God and its application in purity and truth.
This liberty of man, then, is limited, like a limited liability company; but what is limited is not the liability but the scope for folly. It has its term. The empire rises to fall.
The horror of sin is allowed to be shown in its horrid elements, now in this and now in that way, before its fall. Empires even in sequence can be predicted as in Daniel 7, and an Age covered in a small statement, giving the date of death of the Messiah within it, as in Daniel 9:24ff.; so that the inspiration of man, good or evil, from God or the devil, of pride or meekness is both known and foreknown, and the outcomes being seen, understood, construed and declared in advance, are palled in their impudence by being so well known as to be predictable.
They are not however by this amazing fact, any the less matters of profound responsibility; for limited liberty is not none, and the mechanic who does not have the money to hire assassins, but can ruin the brakes in order to murder, is not the less guilty because his input was not unlimited!
Yet how precious is the reality that in all this COMPETENCE and POWER, WISDOM and might, the Lord IS love, and it is not His will to exclude (John 3:17), but to include what may in integrity of that love, be reached, attained, found, delivered, when indeed there is vast joy in heaven! (Luke 15:7).
To think that such an array of majesty is minded by such a splendour of love, so that God IS love (I John 4:7), that is, nothing contrary to it may be found in His desire which is of that kind, and the hatred of sin is melded into the devilries of destruction only over the vast inputs of His mercy: this is the purest of joy. It is so, indeed, because in the image of God, we can appreciate such things!
Thus does the mind, might and magnificence of God operate in history, through or beyond its processes at His own will, allowing the whirl-wind to expose the folly of the wind, of that of this or that sin or sinful attitude, while in patience bearing long. It is this which God did for long with Israel for centuries before the ruin of the Northern kingdom, and for longer yet before the exile of the Southern, and then acting.
So does He act in foretelling as He will, or indicating what is to be, if without repentance, then at times deep with lament, as in Jeremiah 9, 17, Jeremiah 48, Luke 19:42ff.. There may even be yet further exhortation or opportunity for deliverance of those obsessed with their follies (as in Jeremiah 17 where a glorious opportunity for sincere return to the Lord was offered in all simplicity); and when repentance DOES come, there is relenting from the thought of what would be, by action taken to quell coming judgment, as in the case of Jonah. Conjoined with due repentance, faith indeed moves mountains of what was pressing down with all their weight.
God in the Bible sketches outcomes, exhorts against them, declares what they will in fact be with great frequency, and using many means, operating with multitudes of cases, confronts with the simplicity of setting trust or rejection, reception or rebellion before man. This He does together with the power in love to secure what may be delivered without the abusive intrusion of mere force into the soul and heart of man; for this would merely obliterate the creation in kind, not deliver it: and the entreaties of meekness within the glory of compassionate majesty are long. His calling card, the Cross of Calvary, speaks for itself.
His word, in this He speaks, and what is to be, it is written. Thus experimentally and verifiably, empirically and actually, history has more than heredity and environment for man, than principles for matter, than reason for mind: it has God for surveyor and sovereign, before whom some come in repentance, the Cross the payment for the salvation free (Isaiah 55, Romans 3:23ff., 5:12ff.).
Even in the case of those who come back to the Lord of creation, to the God of redemption: they are not just possible outcomes, being chosen before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4). They come not for their peculiar susceptibilities to spiritual things, as if they were more gifted, for that is no freedom such as attaches to the shame, blame and aspirations of man. That would be merely programmatic explication, the outworking of character, the functionality of superiority once granted.
There is no shame in program, not for what is programmed; there is no blame for the directed, constrained by symbols or constitution's compulsion, where will has no determinacy to direct. That is the fault and flaw of what instituted the thing. Blame comes when, as with man, you can imagine alternatives, invent priorities, determine in your mind any kind of values, esteem what you worship and do it because you want to, play the fool or cease the play; and it is duly measured by man against man. It is neither merely social, as if all followed the rites of the current time, nor philosophic, as if all followed the latest fad, though assuredly for the unwatchful such things can almost appear automatic. Yet they are not so. The hideous, invisible lurch of the soul, of life towards this or that is not the less a responsible act because it was not even granted the grace of attention! A truck driver is no exonerated because he chose to read while driving and did not perceive ... what was coming.
It is by grace that they are saved (Ephesians 2); and in the pre-temporal realities where sin is not an agent, there being no superiorities as God sees all and where pathology has not indented its differential markings, God knows. He foreknows and justifies in time what He has thus called (Romans 8:30ff.). He knows the preference for darkness, redemption or no redemption being in view: all this is known to God; for He knows who are His (II Timothy 2:19), and those who are His known Him (John 10:27-28).
The curse on this world (Romans 8:18ff.) which has indeed been subjected to vanity is no cloud of obscuration before God, nor is the blessing of salvation uncertain before Him, that pardon which cancels sin's guilt and governing impact and provides for escape from the very environment of blinding sin; for He has made both creation and curse, and knows how to inject salvation. In all things needful for man, therefore, God has acted to speak and to do, and in nothing is any lost who might be won, and that without force which would cancel what is to be won, not win it. In nothing moreover is any left to his own mere devices, for God knows beyond the cast of cultural thought and psychic conundrums in the confused thoughts of man, and liberates in love what love finds.
He is sovereign in action, countervailing in power, exquisite in justice, bearing sin, the just for the unjust to bring them to God (I Peter 3:18), frank in love, not disdaining the unworthy or avoiding the corrupt. In fact, He explicitly affirmed that He DID NOT come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance, and that NOT to repent is simply to perish (Luke 13, Matthew 9:13). Impervious to light, knowledgeable perfections and self-righteousnesses are effective barriers. Even these, however, in His own way, God can penetrate (cf. Daniel 4, as in the case of Nebuchadnezzaar, who got the point, though not without travail). In this, the operation was successful.
Taking many with that love which would have all come to a knowledge of the truth and be reconciled (I Timothy 2, Colossians 1), God leaves those who prefer darkness to inhabit it, a model to dictators who love dynamic intrusion and invasion, the criterion for lovers who seek the desire of the beloved, the exemplar of wisdom, which understands that with which it deals, and the head of all realists, who hides nothing of either His love or man's guilt, but declaring the one and providing for the other, brings many children to the light for ever.
History had a task. It is now nearly fulfilled*12.
NOTES
See: SMR Ch. 4, Repent or Perish Ch. 7, It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, *1A, The Wit and Wisdom of the Word of God ... Ch. 2, Christ Incomparable, Lord Indomitable Ch. 3, The Merciful Might of the Majestic Messiah Ch. 5, Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 9, incl. End-note 1.
See also:
Tender Times for Timely Truth
Ch.
8;
The Grating Grandeur ... Ch.
2; SMR pp.
925ff.;
Beauty for Ashes
Ch.
6
(and Hong Kong, and the movement of nations in the last century a
concern),
See:
Journey to God or Fantasy's Flight to the Infernal Ch. 2, SMR pp. 750B.
SMR
loc. cit.,
Dastardly Dynamics, Delirious Daubs, Wandering Woes, Bleary Theories and
Immovable Faith Ch. 6
See -
Dastardly Dynamics, Delirious Daubs, Wandering Woes,
Bleary Theories and Immovable Faith Ch. 10,
including *2.
See Inter-personal Mankind and News 122.
See Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 13, News 100, Swift Witness 6.
See, for example, on the delusive and degenerate aspect, as the world moves into a logical vacuum and a spiritual trance, the following:
Ch. 8 infra., Ch. 2 supra, History, Review and Overview Ch. 5, Secular Myths ... Ch. 1,
The gods of naturalism have no go;
Dizzy Dashes, Heady Clashes and the Brilliant Harmony of Inevitable Truth Ch. 6,
Joyful Jottings 8,
Barbs ... 6 -7,
News 121, 122, SMR pp. 699ff., 857ff., 861ff.,
The World Belongs to Him and I am His,
Acme ... Ch. 9, Stepping Out for Christ Ch. 1
Tender Times ... Ch. 8, Dastardly Dynamics ... Ch. 6 (efforts to scuttle the spiritual plan)
Christ's Ineffable Peace and Grace Ch. 7, *1
Manifesto of Deity Ch. 8, *2.
Repent or Perish Ch. 5, Secular Myths ... Ch. 7, News 100,
.
See also:
On the Communist, militant Islamic and Darwinian aspects see:
On the rumbustious side, see:
1) On Islam, see the following.
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);
News
138,
Beauty for Ashes Chs.
4,
7
Jesus Christ,
Unfazed ... Ch.
5,
Acme ...
Ch.
9 ,
Great Execrations ... Ch.
3,
SMR
p.
1O88D
- three major religions in some ways in concert, astray.
News
138,
Beauty for Ashes Chs.
4,
7, SMR pp. 1074ff.,
esp. 1079,
1081ff.
(These latter shows this religion, with the other three major conspiracies towards
the ultimate - why conspiracies ? It is because men conspire, or breathe
plans together for a control, rule or oversight not ordained by God: these
are breaths of man, and the breath that matters is that of God, in and by
which all scripture is inspired by Him (II Timothy 3:16, Isaiah 8:20), in
the Book of the Lord (Isaiah 34:16), the Bible, and sustained and
implemented by Him (Matthew 26:54ff.): other ideas for rule are always
unruly, since they always tend to use power for what neither reason nor
truth compels).
See also SMR pp. 822ff., 986ff., 1O88D.
2) On Romanism and what may be grouped with it, see the following.
Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed: Barrister of Bliss Ch. 5, esp. *2,
Acme ... Ch. 9 , Great Execrations ... Ch. 3,
SMR pp. 912ff., 1032-1088H, p. 1O88D - three major religions in some ways in concert, astray,
Three Anzas, One Answer Ch. 5,
The Frantic Millenium ... Ch. 6 (News 101);
Secular Myths and Sacred Truth Ch. 8,
Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 14,
Acme, Alpha and Omega ... Ch. 3, News 101,
Massifs of Pure Splendour ... Ch. 6.
3) On Communism's delusions, and some associates, see
Tender Times for Timely Truth
Ch.
8;
The Grating Grandeur ... Ch.
2; SMR pp.
925ff.;
Beauty for Ashes Ch. 6 (and Hong Kong, and the movement of nations in the last century a concern), with News 98, News 37, News 97.
4) On broader movements astray in spiritual designs and misconstructions, see
Repent or Perish Ch. 5, *1
which lists sites and topics such as Earth Charter and the W.C.C., and that Chapter itself.
See also on sects - Things Old and New Chs. 2, 5 , and Appendix. Also consult ERRORS and Separation 1997. .
Cf. SMR pp. 611ff., Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 9, incl. End-note 1,
See It Bubbles. .. Ch. 1, Ch. 10, Ch. 11,
The Defining Drama Ch. 10, Three Anzas ... Ch. 2,
Let God be God Ch. 4, Outrageous Outages ... Ch. 11
Bon Voyage Ch. 4 for example.
The Biblical Workman Ch. 1 has this on the two-stage restoration of Israel, first geographically as a nation, and then spiritually, when that grand event at last comes (cf. Romans 11!), when the 'blindness' goes as the mist in the morning sun, the sun of righteousness, the Son of God, Jesus Christ.
At the point at which our excerpt begins, below, it has been speaking of Deuteronomy 32, and the fact that when the Lord at length categorically delivers Israel, there will be a Gentile rejoicing with His people (32:43 - cited by Paul). The excerpt is considerably extended since it does not have here the beginning of the Chapter from which it is taken.
THE COMING MESSIANIC INCURSION
WHICH WILL CREATE REJOICING FOR HIS PEOPLEIt is then that the Gentiles, the non-Jewish people are exhorted to "rejoice with His people", to accompany "His people" with their own rejoicings from beyond them, so that both peoples, the first and the others, should rejoice! The "nations" or Gentiles are to superadd their testimony of joy to that of the Lord's people, and again, statedly so!
As with Ezekiel 37, this is to have two fascinating criteria: it is a restoration which is not to result in further devastation of the city (Ezekiel 37:23-26), and it is to be one in which the Lord is in the end to be acknowledged as He really is. At that time, in repentance the 'pierced' Messiah (Zechariah 12:10) is to be acknowledged, accepted and indeed, there is much to repent of at the national level (NOT so much at the racial, for many Jews have long been Christians, and the apostles? THEY WERE JEWS! - and Christ was Jewish through His mother, when it comes to that).
From Ezekiel 37, as shown in Appendix A, SMR, we gain the detail here. The vast parable is seen as a depiction of the events in sequence. Like dry bones is Israel seen scattered in solemn pitiability throughout the earth. At the prophet's command, authorised by God, they come back PHYSICALLY. They are now a nation once more in the land. This however is not enough. A SECOND COMMAND is authorised. It is this. To these re-assembled dry bones, without life, like so many skeletons transported, there is an order that they live! Breath enters into them
In Ezekiel 37:12-14, the Lord interprets. The dry bones signify scattered Israel in its foreign 'graves' (as a nation, without home). The Lord will bring them from these 'graves' and bring them up. assembling them in their OWN land (v. 14). Sinews are formed, breath enters, life is given. What of this ? "I will put My Spirit in you, and you shall live." This is the SECOND COMMAND.
This, all of it, the dry bones are to hear. Home to the land, home to the Lord in two stages, by two separate commands, separated long enough for one to be able to see and reflect on the dry bones, already assembled (as now since 1948), but not alive (in Christ, who is
the way, the truth and the life, without whom none can come to God -gate-crashers are not welcome at the wedding party - Revelation 19:8, Matthew 7:21ff.).This, signifies the word of God by Ezekiel, is what is to be.
WHEN this happens, THEN "I will set My sanctuary in their midst forevermore." Who is that sanctuary (Isaiah 4:6, 32:1-5), but the Messiah, who is as the shadow of a mighty rock in a weary land (Isaiah 53), Himself priest and offering, temple and truth. It is then that the very walls will be salvation (Isaiah 60), since then God is ruling in their midst, Himself the King, the King of Israel as Pilate declared, having got at least one thing right!
Then they will know that He is the Lord, when He does this (Ezekiel 37:28). THEN the Lord's servant 'David' will be their King (37:24 as in Psalm 89, where indeed He is to be the King of all nations - 89:27, as the Lord's 'firstborn', for this seed will endure forever (Psalm 89:36), the seed which is David's own LORD! (Psalm 110), the Messiah (Psalm 2), the Lord who prepared the body (Psalm 40, Hebrews 1) for the purpose (Micah 5:1-3).
The restoration physically and geographically is to precede that spiritually, which is given in that place in scripture as a SEPARATE and SUBSEQUENT command to the dry bones. Nationally, they are reconstituted first, but only later and separately are they made spiritually alive.
They are a people who as in Ezekiel 36, first come and then are sprinkled, however objectionable that might seem to those of the Baptistic persuasion, and for that matter, sprinkled with water at the outset of the covenantal proceedings (cf. Ch.8, p. 144 infra). Future to the return, however, it obviously and necessarily is. They have to be there, to be sprinkled, and for the point, they are BROUGHT there and THEN sprinkled, as we see in Ezekiel 36. Their return is as NON-CHRISTIANS, and their re-instatement is as specified in the dynamic outpourings declared to come, in Zechariah 12:10.
How vast is the predicted mourning for their error, how grave their hearts as they are restored from the grave-yard of dispersion to the grace of God.
How wonderful that even in Jerusalem, now once more, the long tragedy past, they can wash in the fountains of this grace (Zechariah 13:1). Pierced because of His piercing, which despised meant they became absentees as a nation from redeeming mercy, now they are pierced to the heart at their fault and failure, given a Spirit of grace and supplications by which they see the Lord and seeing are saved (John 6:40). How marvellous this grace of God as shown in Zechariah and Ezekiel! How great that their king who as in Zechariah 14:3-5, is none other than the Lord Himself , whose feet come to that Mount of Olives in which He had prayed before becoming the sacrifice for sin!
Now the Gentiles rejoice with them, on 'special people' of the Lord together (as in Isaiah 66, Jeremiah 16:19ff., Isaiah 65:1ff.). Now is Paul's rejoicing attested, at the counsel of the Lord who rejecting both arms, Jew and Gentile, receives from each those who are His (Romans 11).
THE COMPLEMENTARITY OF THE PROPHETS A CONTINUING MEDITATION
Accordingly, and with that beautiful complementarity of the prophets which so precisely resembles that of the New Testament writers and the apostles, we find that
- "in those days and at that time I will cause to grow up to David a Branch of righteousness; He shall execute judgment and righteousness in the earth. IN those days Judah will be saved. And Jerusalem will dwell safely. And this is the name by which she will be called: THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS" (Jeremiah 33:15-16).
News 121, 122, SMR pp. 699ff., 857ff., 861ff.,
The World Belongs to Him and I am His,
Repent or Perish Ch. 5.
See for example, the excellent review of the data, archeological and aeronautical, geological and historical, in brief form, in Dr John D. Morris' Noah's Ark and the Ararat Adventure.
On this, see the impressive analysis and coverage of John Woodmorappe in his Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study, a work heavily endowed with technical references and review.
There does not appear to be a simple adjective meaning 'of the nature of, related to, or having the character or ingredients of an event'. Hence it needs inventing; and if anyone has used it before, so much the better. This is that 'eventive' appearing in the text of this chapter. One of the great things about English is its exoteric interest and non-glamorous insistence: it grows, as if it wishes to be usable to the uttermost.
See for example SMR Chs. 7-9, and the two volume work,
LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST.
The Biblical Workman Ch. 1 provides data here, from on the onset of the inset, the arrival of the Lord on earth, seen for example in Micah 5:3, Isaiah 40, 7, 9, and His continuance to attest, act, be betrayed, rejected, crucified, resurrected, to return and to rule. Such is found in Isaiah 11, 22, 48-55, 60, 61, 63 with its results in Psalm 2, 16, 22, 40, 69, 72, 110 and so on. SMR pp. 770ff. treats the arrival of the Lord and His action, as does Bible Translations 20. See also Ch. 9 infra,
The glorious concept, as in Jeremiah 31:22, of the outworking of repentance (31:18ff.), with the ensuing depiction of a woman encompassing a man, and this leading on to the New Covenant, which involves the crucifixion of the Messiah, as in Isaiah 52-53, Psalm 22, while as to this One, to be born, His goings were from everlasting (Micah 5), has the repercussions of eternity into time.
This shows of course the necessity of the announced incarnation for such a result.
God and sin being immiscible, a son of mere Adamic lineage would be a sinner and hence useless as Saviour from sin.
The power of God as Father to beget, in the Messiah, what is transformingly free from sin is His by authority and majesty. He is not run by His systems, but runs them, like any good engineer. In this way alone could sin be covered, in justice, precision, in all dutiful expectation (Hebrews 2), so leading to peace. In the process, ALL glory and honour and attainment is wrought by the Lamb, the Son, in the plan and design of God as a procedure, and the deliverance of some is thus by His merit alone, thus making differential human merit irrelevant, as to this one or that being saved ... or not. The love is toward all (Col. 1:19ff.), the guilt is borne only from some (Romans 8:31-32), who though they be many, and are mandated, do not come manacled, but freely.
In biblical terms, it is by grace, and not of works, that it might be by faith. Faith, moreover, is wrought by God, who foreknowing all, secures His own by His own power, not cancelling freedom, but ensuring that it is implemented (cf. The Glow ... Ch. 8).
Sin requires not only justice, but action. Deliverance is not merely theoretical, by design, but practical by designation.
One delicious aspect is this, that anyone who wants the Lord has only to call upon Him and trust Him, according to His word. HE did the job. It is to be accessed by faith.
In all of these ways, as always, we find the harmony of all biblical concepts, the one with the other, to have that ready intensity and yet easy grace which is one of the tokens of truth. Nothing jars, but its very reality; in itself, it is happy as the sunshine on the lambs, powerful as the energies of nature and more also, and as entrancing as the best of paintings, but more so, for this lives. Much confusion simply arises when people try to engraft into the biblical perspective, ideas of their own, such as human glory or autonomy, or divine incompetence.
Einstein may have made a colossal mathematical error on one occasion (cf. Christ's Ineffable Peace, Ch. 4); but God ? He doesn't! It tells, and you can tell it by looking. It is all there, written first in His book, and then in history. They agree, not in direction, for His word judges history; but in this, that what He directs as what is to happen, does so.
For this, see Answers to Questions Ch. 5.