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CHAPTER 1

Master, not Maitreya

He is COMING, the LORD JESUS CHRIST,
but the Imaginations of Mere Musing Man are Going

In Acts 1:7-11 we see that just as surely as Christ was to come (Genesis 3:15, Luke 2:26-32), and came as Saviour, with the vast detail in time, place and method of His execution and time of arising from the dead incorporated over the millenia in the Book of the Lord, the Bible, SO He is to come, this time as King. He planted the foundation; next time, He raises the building and dashes fraud (Matthew 21:44, II Thessalonians 1).

Like a thief before police, man flees in thought and deed, often making futile stands of aggressive defence.

Man has this delicious freedom which he utilises, scarcely ever more in practice than in denying it in theory, as he seeks to escape the responsibility which for all that invades his every moment, as he sets up his OWN priorities and preferences, principles and positions on the basis of a chosen model. This may come from early Greeks, as in atomic theory, or evolutionary dreams in a sort of ultimate totem pole and naturalism, such as Isaiah and Jeremiah mock, or any other idea that fixes itself on him, like an implacable octopus.

From his heart, with its deep desires controlling all, he loves to assert, the compelling notes come as if he were a pianola of preference, a thing he then miraculously knows! Master of truth, modern man  with Pilate laughs at truth, expert in what he excludes; and he bombasts his way to ever more ludicrous ideas, seeking escape in these  or any other scape goats he invents, so that man of the twenty first century might be what he wants and shrug off cause and destiny alike, making of himself a god, an ignoramus oddity, not deity, and certainly not divine.

It is moreover as no god that he acts.

It is an illustration to hear of the Queen Mother allegedly having told 'those queens in the kitchen' that 'this queen' would like certain commodities, I think of food. It is all very well to throw a name around your desire, or nature, and then, for all that, be what you really are: that is a dream. When however you come to the fact, the real, the actual Queen in that case, and the actual LORD in this, it is far different. In fact, you move from rambunctious roving to authenticity. You are forced to face up to facts.

One of the models that man thus idly manufactures is the myth that from the scripture, the Bible, it may be seen that early Christians thought that they were soon to have Christ back! This needs removal with other garbage man collects as he does his little god act.  

 I THE RETURN OF ROYALTY IS AS REGALLY DETERMINED
is VERY SURE

Thus Peter in II Peter 3:9 tells us that even from THAT early day, his own so near to that of Christ, there is to be NO thought of the Lord delaying too long in His return. History has to happen first. The ground is laid, as if a factory were built; NOW it has to operate for long, before the ... assessment of the owner. Christ makes the same point at the end of Matthew 24: many of His alleged servants may begin to live to enjoy themselves, but they had better beware, for HIS RETURN, WHEN it comes, will catch them by surprise. Again, He speaks of Himself as a nobleman (Luke 19:18, Matthew 25:14)who owns a property, who will go on a journey to a FAR country, and then return. The term 'far' in those days, was all but synonymous with a long TIME, since travel was slow.

Thus again,  in II Thessalonians 2:1, Paul is at pains to remove any thought of an imminent return of Christ. Just as Christ Himself in Matthew 24 showed the immense canvas of history of nations, and the multitude of things which had to occur before His return, even outlining a whole course of action which was to be merely the BEGINNING of sorrows, before the final action, so does Paul here in Thessalonians.

The mystery of iniquity, the apostle there indicates, already at work in the world (as Christ told in terms of the prince of this world, in John 14:30, who has 'nothing in Me'), has yet to be consummated. As to that, it is only when that which restrains, is taken out of the way, he declares, that the man of sin will reveal himself, revelling in his notion that he is as God, and so showing himself to himself. Meanwhile, there is NOTHING of that final order that CAN happen. So he re-assures the people of his own day.

DO NOT THINK the day is imminent, impending, threateningly close, says Paul in II Thess. 2:1. The term, as the Greek dictionary of Thayer points out, properly indicates the impending, the near at hand, what is thrusting into existence. It may be used in other senses, but this is the one also to be found emphasised in Liddell and Scott's classic Greek dictionary. The day of the Lord is not something coming INTO EXISTENCE now, says Paul. Much has to happen. Nor, for that matter, is it a question that it is here already. If that were the meaning, then there would be the ultimates of power devastating the ultimates of rebellion. It is not a quietus but a confrontation that this involves, with ALL power on the side of the Lord.

No, says the apostle, the day of the Lord is not threateningly close. It does not impend. Much has to happen first, there being a FALLING AWAY before the end turmoil and the decisive action of God. The testimony of Christ in the world has to rise, before it falls, as now in our own day, in many places and ways. The whole Christian sweep across the world, of which Christ spoke in Matthew 24:12 has first to happen. It is then that there is a falling away. It is only then that the next step comes, with the revelation of the man of sin and his decisive engulfment in the fires of God. RESTRAINT was the condition, therefore,  in which the early Christians found themselves; a restraining force was operating preventing the direct end confrontation, and even its early coming.

REVELATION of God was what was to come, and that done, in God's own due time, there would follow personal confrontation with the evil lusts that seek to make of men, their own gods, and of a man, a master to rule them. All THAT, says Paul, is yet to come, in its complex steps. Now, do not be confused by alleged talk, letters or the like, he urges. It is a future thing, this day of the Lord, removed from your present horizon. Indeed, they already knew of time of waiting, the future events of the day of the Lord (II Thessalonians 2:5); for they had been told of it before by the apostle. What he here therefore is emphasising is this (as in the AV and the NASV), that all that is NOT EVEN NEAR.

So knowing of course that it is not the day itself, they must also realise that it is not impending. Sight tells them it is not present; revelation tells them it is far off. That is the fact of apostolic teaching in that day.  So too Peter in II Peter 3:9 declares that they must be patient. God is NOT slack, says Peter. He does not delay incontinently, unnecessarily. Consider HIS time frame, says Peter. In terms of making human history conform to His will, a thousand years is as a day.

That indeed is not the case when as in Genesis 1, God first defines hat HE means by 'day' in creation itself, a thing of darkness and light in alternation, morning and evening, and then declares how in defined terms He made the universe. This is the opposite. He is telling how in a made universe, one now limited by time, where the message of the Gospel is to penetrate throughout the earth before He acts to end it all, a thousand years is as a day. Multitudes of man-made historical things have to happen within the plan of God.

It is therefore if TWO days, for example, in the time frame that Peter here uses, then two millenia before the return of the Lord to this earth. That is PRECISELY the time frame now. It is around two thousand years since the time of Peter: two eschatological 'days'. Days other than the sort we now have,  in order and sequence are not a biblical usage; but one day may have its own dimensions. Thus thousands of years was for Peter the type of time before Christ would return.

That the time is NEAR (another word found in Peter for example) in the perspective of God, is true. The whole historical background is already complete. God created the earth, rebuked its foulness in the flood (II Peter 3:1-5), put in the rainbow to remind us that this is not to be repeated, and as a token of mercies, foretold His Messiah, the time of His death and the nature of His gospel to come, then sent that same Messiah come and suffer as a sin offering, proclaiming that no other Gospel being permissible or in view (Galatians 1, Ephesians 1:10), had Him rise from the dead just as Christ Himself had raised others, removed Him after 40 days to welcome acceptance in heaven until His return (Acts 3:19-21).

All that was DONE. That meant that ALL the preliminaries of divine power in preparation for blessing were complete. In that sense, in the divine historical time frame noted, His day is near.

This however is in the view of the Lord in this domain, where a thousand years is a day. Thus we find references to this facet in this same Peter himself, I Peter 4:7 (time is near),  as in Paul, I Cor. 10:11 (the end of the ages), Phil. 4:5 (the Lord is near), and James 5:7-8 (the coming is drawing near).

Yet NOW it IS near, for 2000 years or so have now passed. The case is that it NOW IS imminent. This we see from the restoration of Israel to Jerusalem and many other features in concert, like a complex pattern before our eyes. WHEN this happens, we are INSTRUCTED to look up for our redemption (for Christians, that of the body), this is now near (Luke 21).  

 II MYTH AND MASTER DO NOT MATCH

Ignoring God, as in morals (paralleling Romans 1 in its prophetic analysis of the fast fall of man, and where it ends!), so in spiritual life (II Timothy 3:1-5 predicts this like a mirror image of our contemporary world and its direction), man bypasses Him also in hope. He seeks for an ending, a happy landing from hope not faith; so man acts from desire. Ignoring a third time, tossing out divine declaration, man proceeds now to his end. It is not a pessimistic view to say so, for here to be found is the glory that MATCHES not man's desire, but his state.

Examination is fearful only for those ill-prepared!

God has something better. Relieving man, as many as come to Him on His terms of surrender,  of folly debunked and pardoning folly, through redemption and transformation in the Gospel of divine grace, God provides the consummation in resurrection at Christ's return. This is not a thought or a theory, but an action enshrined in Jesus Christ, the foretold, the fulfilment, the centre and the exemplar from God for man, Himself raised from the dead. Yet man is immersed in his idle thoughts, escapist theories and degrading debasements. Let us examine some of the ... dreaming hopes for a moment.

Thus an interesting News item in The Australian, which appears to have the date Nov. 5, 2007, talks of 'deviant' Muslim disciples in its heading. It notes that there is a Muslim sect with tens of thousands of adherents spread across Java, South Sulawesi and Sumatra. Turning from gambling, adultery , murder and the like (a welcome change in the last), it is not terrorist-linked, apparently, and some seven years old.

After much fasting, its leader found a revelation, he asserts, like Muhammad. It is this: he is the new one, appointed as the next prophet after Muhammad. Muhammad's relegation of prophets now has its own come-uppance! Why not...

Once you start without verification or validation, and using force, as Muhammad did, there is always the next one train of thought. If he could start from no basis testable, why not the next ? This is the precise nature of false prophets, and this development shows up the superficial unreality of the earlier distortion of Jesus Christ by Muhammad, without evidence, 600 years or so too late for him to be a witness!  As to this successor ... Islam is to be perfected, he cries, just as Muhammad tried to 'perfect' Christianity and Judaism.

A similar sort of sect is noted in Pakistan, with perhaps 500,000 followers in Indonesia, as well as many in Australia, Britain and elsewhere. This Islamic sect does not take Muhammad after all, even in that religion, as the last word. Indonesia is thus debating the nature of their religion.

This is good to the extent that the basis of Christ, already tried, tested and come after long predictions fulfilled, before Him and by Him, can be registered and compared with that of those who seek to supplant Him, or like Muhammad place Him, ex-redemption, ex-deity, in some anomalous invention that ignores the historical facts and prophecies alike. Many are those false prophet and false follower alike, who seek to replace or act to deface Him, as did Israel of old. They paid; other payments come later. Baulking at truth is like ignoring the face, as the old saw had it, that there is something to face, for "what are you going to do when the rent comes round!"

Relative to Christ, there is no evidential comparison: there is nullity. No contest is the result!  There are others who similarly are trading on that name of Jesus Christ, one that earned its place in unique prodigies on all sides in fulfilment of precise prophecies which cynics can neither exclude nor debase, things wrought before the critical eye of the unbelieving, maximally motivated Jew of Christ's day, performances at the level of deity that left no option to such inexorably envious power-retainers except murder! (John 11). The One, He is sure; the others are equally surely without any support of an evidential or logical kind.

Recall this: If you want the fulfilment of something, firstly, it needs to be testable and secondly, it needs to be truth. Thirdly, it needs to have what it takes to do it; and to SHOW this!

God has what it takes, has shown it, in only one place, in one Person with many prophets before and after focussing this same Jesus; and the perfection is not in thought alone, for what does this accomplish, when in opposition to truth! It is in fact. It is as in the incarnation, so in the return, thundering ever more nearly into sight, like the roar of the express train, clearly audible if you put your ear to the rails, and then, a little later without even that help! (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5). It is something done by God, as indeed in the creation in the first place. 

Others manifestly and munificently LACK THIS! (cf. SMR pp. 829ff., 1080ff.., Chs. 1 & 10).

Let us look at the point most keenly. God has all that it takes. He has displayed this  in just one universally authoritative place (the Bible - Matthew 5:17ff., Galatians 1, Revelation 22), in just one definitive and physically seen Person, attested with verifiable precision, cumulatively and resonantly by many prophets before and after. It is this Person who is seen, His words which are focussed. Human thought cannot contain or duplicate these words, but must notice their practical authority and power, nor can man approach that Man; for in his littleness,  phrases and dazes do not approach the works or the words of Him who came from heaven, nor do they draw near to their their never mutant combination.

In Him,  truth lives; but in man's contraptions, change is the constant and defeat is the dynamic. Modern man grows in knowledge, but loses a foot in folly, so that in walking, he stumbles; in day, he is in the dark, alive with pride, dead in sin.  It is not in such dreams man can live.

It is something done by God, as indeed in the creation in the first place. 

The coming of Christ, long foretold, came WHEN specified, WHERE and with WHAT RESULTS and for WHAT REASON God specified. Nothing lacked. All was as attested. The nearness of the return of this same Commander and Leader, Jesus Christ is attested similarly in its galloping, its grunting, its anguishes, its wild betrayals in many churches, people and nations (SMR Ch. 8), and its fatal results, enlightened only by the joy of the Lord, and the delicious delight that this salvation is freely available to any who calls, as the Lord statedly desires for all, in terms of His own Gospel and grace

It is the inexorably evident fact which matters, the inalienable reality buttressed like a great cathedral on every sides, sustained not merely by physical law and the architectures of reality, but by the dynamics that demands a cause for every result, does not pick roses from the junk heap and is ready to perceive the spectacular as it stands over unbending centuries. It sustains itself by divine nature,  binding as Christ has done continually by that Bible which is the word of God, through events as the mirror of the word, obeying in profusion that PERSON who ONLY ONCE came to earth, there exhibiting both His nature, compassion and control as freedom lusts and is paid in its wanton sallies, by His working sacrifice, so that pardon is munificently and freely granted where received in His own and only appointed way: for God does not dither).

His word and Gospel has captured vast parts of the earth, formally or functionally, lending the power personally, principially in law, and testimonially in every science, art and psychological application available, as in logic and the testimonies of the results when the banal abuse of logic in misology, antilogy and antinomy is nullified (cf. Deity and Design Ch. 8).

God then has what it takes, by nature and demonstration; others demonstrably LACK THIS, both in invalidity, non-verification and having nothing even comparable at all (Deity and Design).

Excuses lack, abuses are condemned BECAUSE there is no competition at the relevant level. Like breathing, it is necessary for the life of man, who has not merely body, but mind and spirit, and his Author to face, just as he now has no less, His Saviour to give grace. Shutting the eyes is not the same as having none as you see from Christ in Matthew 13!

Indeed, so great is the grace of God that Christ even made it clear in His time in Israel, that IF they had not seen the works that He did and heard the words that He spoke, those in both cases like those of none other (categorically, testably), they would not have had sin! (John 15:21-23 cf. Colossians 1:19ff, which even the dead could all but understand!). In context of salvation and condemnation, this meant that without this direct exposure, or what He deemed its equivalent, judgment would not for its own part, occur. THIS was a PRINCIPLE of His grace.

Thus, heaven and destiny being in view, this in John 15,  is a great grace; but it portends a greater disgrace if neglected. Thus does He rule, in love, for love, and does not love what rejecting love, moves in step with sin,  into the domain of surrealistic self-aggrandisement, disbelief and works in wooden refusal or dynamic rejection. Indeed, in many cases, it is with war*^{1 part C infra} in view, psychological, academic, political or military, as the case may be; or some combination. So does earth spoil itself with its greatest menace, this world's own ways.

Indeed, one of man's mesmeric follies, his fascination for which is as deep as his alienated life from the God of creation, is war. Made for wisdom, he betrays himself in inveterate follies of pseudo-autonomy, self-assertion, forgetfulness of his spiritual blue print, the handbook and the definition of desiderata, in which the truth figures like lightning, which if not watched, can strike with disturbing power that in the end ruins the flimsy dreams (cf. John 14:6, 8:12,24,40).

He is not however, in himself, as a race showing this created potential.

Instead, he blasts with ever more powerful weaponry, the co-creatures of God's creation, his fellow mankind. There is little too horrid, too torrid, too inherently wicked, for him to embrace. Hr id as an enemy to himself, because he will not make peace with his Creator, or bear the rule of his King.

Nations are as prey to man. If he is not destroying their churches, their bridges, their railways, their health with poison or nerve gas, as in Iraq and in Europe before that, then he is indoctrinating their children with the desire to be 'martyrs' by marring children and destroying youth abroad in the name of some suppositious but meretricious god whose will is submission, but whose methods are as shown by those who claim to know and do show him. If this were God, alas for man; but it is not so (More Marvels ... Ch. 4, SMR pp. 1080ff., Divine Agenda Ch. 6).

Carnage multiplies, and indifference to lives of misery lived by thousands as a result of indiscriminate social bombing, not in martial field but in suburbs and shops, in restaurants and in the forces for order, this is mandatory for the merciless. And what to the residues of life left to maimed children and severe repression at the level of gender and pity, what remains ? It is woe by aggression, land by intimidation, glory by force and error made mandatory, as has been the case in Romanism's Inquisition and Nazi anti-semitism, now joined by newly packaged brands.

The "god of forces" of which biblical prophecy speaks*¹ part C infra, that worship which involves FORCE as an emblem and SUBMISSION as a tool, which requires martial power to implement or SUPPRESSION to militate over the populace, this is seen on all sides, aspiring like a wolf for more and more. It is in much of Islam, has been in Communism - where it still is, where that is left in any but transmuted and metamorphosed form, as in Nazism, in Romanism as appalling for more than a century in the Inquisition (Ancient Words, Modern Events Ch. 14), and it is to be found in foolish sects, as in Jonesville, and in foolish notions, such as transfer through death to some planet, with suicide the vehicle to get there. People have believed such things, acted on them; are dead.

As it was to be, so it is. But this is not good enough. Force by its very nature is not faith (cf. Divine Agenda Ch. 6, The Meaning of Liberty, the Message of Remedy Ch. 9 ). Force may secure lips that lie, but not hearts that live. Man is just not like that. These prescriptions are folly. People may call on others to help Iran, whether from Australian clerics or elsewhere, but the idea of battling with the nuclear for supremacy of religion is as ludicrous as is that of marrying for money. It falsifies the point of life. It makes morality a machine tool, something to be working at power levels; but the heart is not so.

Great players receive recognition; this player is the Worker whose word always DID work, empirically has worked, and has in this NO OPPOSITION. It is He who has adorned it with His own presence, open to criticism as to crucifixion, always winning in any assault, even that of the Cross which both He and the prophets foretold, which was but prelude to that laboratory demonstration that even given a millenium of warning, man in unbelieving unfaithfulness could stop neither His vacation of the tomb, nor His doing it on the predicted third day.

Thus with effortless seeming ease, having endured the agony justice demands of sin, vicariously for all who receive Him as He is, having consummated His earlier raising of such as Lazarus, a fact which drove the priests to action, since otherwise all the world would be after Him, as they discerned (John 11 - what a tragedy! look NOW at this world ...), in that most glorious arising in trinitarian power from the results of man's ravages, in this case transferred from their sinning selves to His sinless and sacrificial Person: Christ ravaged ravishment. He overcame death not once, but once only in His own case! He had the power that created us and NOTHING could stop it, whether in salvation, or judgment, which unbelieving Jerusalem suffered a generation later, in AD 70, an event which He foretold (Matthew 24), with pain of heart (Luke 19:42ff.).

None could countermand what He did. None could point out that this or that point in the Old Testament had not been fulfilled in its place (on the contrary He showed the total fulfilment of all applicable), either when He was present, or in the Pentecost day depiction of facts. The reason was neither lack of motivation or mortal power. It was that when God actually acts, man actually CAN do nothing to stop it (a fact noted in Isaiah 43:13). The illustrations stop nowhere^*2.

Even the failure of so many large churches in the day scripturally defined as near to Christ's return (Luke 24:21ff.), is merely as predicted (II Thessalonians 2, Matthew 24:11ff.). Nothing either can nor does move one jot (cf. His word in Matthew 5:17ff.) from His directions for stage management and to history. His permission of evil this licence is all controlled, and when centuries of Gentile folly now follow those of Israel earlier, making a 'nice' balance, the cyclotrons of sin and human responsibility are working overtime.

Revival after revival especially since the 1700s, after the Reformation, have hit like cyclones of an opposite and beneficent portent, and the spirit of man in millions struggles to assert itself in ever new exemplars of the 'beast', that godless, pseudo-soulless secularism which makes false gods, such as naturalism, existentialism and supernaturalistic imitations with neither the power nor the permission of God. The 'god of forces' syndrome which drives dictators and afflicts their victims whether in militant Islam, Communism or inquisitorial acts of Romanism and their ilk, masticates man like a giant jaw, driven by confusion, exaltation of man and the magics of delusion^*1.

Playing with God produces wars enough, as Islamic contests from the first have shown to those disfigured and despatched, subordinated, not least women, and ground down. The same is true of Romanism, which making a Christ out of bread, can move Him about at will, as if He had committed suicide in the Last Supper, though He being true man, has but one body (Hebrews 2). For this duplicative figment, they have murdered, demeaned, tortured and expropriated this world's goods (stolen them) from many, over centuries.

These religions of force are equally those of the imagination of men. They come as a divine rebuke, both in partial judgment and early warning, and as an endemic result of frustration and aspiration for power and rule, deceit from the devil and from the devious heart which will ignore its maker and His wonder. With or without explicit acknowledgement, with philosophy, education, law they seek to dominate, rule, depriving man of his stature, in a spiritual swap of unutterable confusion, the direct impact of hell itself (cf. John 8:44).

But the Christian looks not for this but the dealings of God.

Strong but in the end futile in their desire to command are the forces of alienation (cf. Ephesians 4:17ff.).

Thus we also read of different Muslim groups expecting a new religion, a new prophet, a post-Muhammad extra, an ultimate leader, the coming one and so on, as they imitate Biblical truth with their ideas of later origin. Thus the unsatisfied yearnings of the Islamic revisionists are focussed, parallel indeed to the Buddhist development of Maitreya, in a generic of generations: in the thought of one to come. In line with the Buddhist concept of half-way houses of enlightened pseudo-saints in the heavens or some kindred spot, they all, Buddhist or neo-Islamic aspirant, have this expectation. In this, they but prepare the more for the coming 'prince of this world', who as in John 14:30, was to operate in his fallen power and broken brilliance when Christ left (cf. I John 5), but who is to find his role in egotistic, delusive culmination.

This is to occur,  as in II Thessalonians 2, when the end of the Age ushers in the 'unifying' liar, this ultra-Hitler to his own end in a delirium of destruction amid fallen glory, which is both his due and his due expectation!

What does it matter whether it emanates from Buddhism, itself a Hindu development starting about the 6th century B.C., or Islam, with a false prophet development, creating a new Christ and a new religion on his own visions, around the 6th century A.D.! It is all many centuries after Moses (Deut. 18), and lured by distorted longing that error tends to engender, just as truth the corrective, fulfils. Thus, this was long before the alien faiths, interpreted in terms of the Creator and Redeemer, the Lord. Mangled, these merely move in illicit paths to the same end; except that there is that little question of NAME, and what it means. We have here, as in the current election, the ME TOO phenomenon, which is so sickening. Truth acts; dreams imagine (Jeremiah 23:16-29).

Thus you could have a pack of young men dreaming of wives, and one of them might say, I have the idea in mind of the wife to come, the one who is to be perfect; and they might all agree, and go and write about the exact nature of this wife; though they might well fail to agree on her precise identity! So here. God has shown to the longing, deluded and defiled soul of man what HE has in mind for peace and destiny and ACTED on it to show it over millenia. He declares in word and deed HOW it may be obtained freely from Himself who as in Creation, will do (as He has done) all needed to make this happen.

Then man, much later, invents his own ideas of the desired destiny, like a young man dreaming in an office of future management power, or a supposedly better boss, and lays this down; but it is but dream. The dream, as we see however, has a basis both in NEED and in the revelation: the former needs to be examined, but the latter in the Bible ONLY is testable, valid and verified as the work of God. It points to what is coming; but at this stage of expectant history, the developing path taken by this world, though strong for change, is foretold as being in the wrong direction! So does drab humanity riot and regale itself as if possessed increasingly. God does not change; He does not need to do so. It is always from God that the good will come.

To the end,  the Bible points, and to the phases of history, as this is approached,  it makes reference clearly. For the rest, all this futuristic pointing in unreasoned mimicry is but a sign and a portent, a signal and a reminder of the latent desires and fires of man, who being deprived wilfully of truth, invents fiction in the same area!

Similarly, to whom does an unfaithful husband go so readily, as to another woman! It is at the truth that it fails, with explicit or implicit religious, lust; for it goes not in the valid hope, but in the hiatus created by its own thoughts; for power lacks without God, and the Creator-Redeemer is not involved in flimsy dreams (as in Jeremiah 23), changing now this way, now that. He has spoken consistently for millenia, and changes not one jot! It is written and remains and history simply follows it. You may change from concern for God to gods; but He changes not.

This Buddhist Maitreya, this Islamic new leader idea, it is as  with many another human longing, based on need, on the very nature of our construction. When this is perverted from its divine rest, it is subjected to that ceaseless human unrest (as in Isaiah 57:19-21), which brings not peace but pieces of power and vainglory. It provides conflict and bloodshed, foolish aspiration and proud domination until its day comes and its lessons to and in history being done, its number is called. Then, it too joins the dead, the deceased, the demoralised and now demobbed forces of the god of forces (Daniel 11:38), and ends in the pit.

The resolution of the need is not in vague and variant imaginations however, but in the truth of the word of God, long before made known and long since verified on all sides.

Like the longing for a home, so the longing for a home-maker long diverted, is based on our creation, made the keener because of our sin. Yet with the ONLY POSSIBLE answer in the far older, long continued, always-confirming-itself WORD OF GOD, man bellows in his frustration, roars in his desire, and makes homes in heaven or on earth, in his imagination, like a wilful child eating chalk, and refusing dinner: and then complaining that it hurts!

Without CHRIST, it will not rest; without truth, the lie (Romans 1:25, II Thess. 2) rubs; and restless it riots. This it does with increasing obviousness,  in all the godlets and gussets of unreason, using to an increasing degree, the force of arms, teaching, demanding, condemning to prison, torture or deprivation, where the force of evidence and proof is missing.

As to the truth,  JESUS is He, the Bible the book of the Lord (Isaiah 8:20); and Christ has already SHOWN who He is^*2  with overpowering manifestation on all sides,  and where His heart lies. It is no more a question of the heart speaking, but of the Lord TELLING! He who has seen Me has seen the Father, said this same Christ (John 14). If you don’t believe Me, He indicated, believe for the works’ sake. There is no 'god in man' about this; God created man and condemns his presumption and pride.  2000  years of wriggling leaves only riot or else, by return to the Redeemer, rest (Matthew 11:28ff..

Like the Gospel (Galatians 1, Ephesians 1:10), He never changes (Psalm 102, Hebrews 13:8).

III THE JOY OF THE LEGITIMATE ASPIRATION:
THE ACTUAL RETURN OF JESUS CHRIST,
AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

In II Thessalonians 2:13-17, Paul proceeds with the conclusion for practical living.  

"But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you,
brethren beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth,
to which He called you by our gospel,
for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

"Therefore brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught,
whether by word or our epistle. Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself,
and our God and Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation
and good hope by grace, comfort your hearts
and establish you in every good word and work."

What beautiful words are these. Give thanks that it is all DONE. Realise that you are chosen through SANCTIFICATION, just as an athlete is chosen with his regimen attached. This is not what makes the athlete (chosen first), but the way of the athlete. This is seen in II Timothy 2:4-5 with 1:9-10! the former the way of it, the latter the basis for it, which embraces the beginning AND THE END, for the Christian, there being no variation.

This expectation, it is a thing of glory. It is personal, it is destiny; and it relates to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and not another, at His time and not another. It acts with the completion called, and in its basis, accomplished. It includes standing fast in the apostolic teaching, not varying at all. God has DONE and the apostles have STATED, and it is all fixed, as indeed in the mind of God before the creation was (Ephesians 1:4), and it has been stated for millenia before Paul, the Gospel itself included as in Isaiah 49-55.

Here is not only hope, but "everlasting consolation" with "glory" that of Christ.

It is not hidden (cf. Isaiah 45:18-19). It is not unknown, but very known, very displayed, most manifest, settled in heaven and shown in earth in the first coming of Christ. God is not playing us for suckers, but calling us to be saints.

THEREFORE be active in every good work, and with joyful expectation LOOK for His coming as Hebrews 9:28 exhorts us: "To those who eagerly wait for Him, He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation." THIS SAME JESUS, said the Angel in Acts 1:17ff., will come again in a manner like that of His departure. THEN is our departure.

Lord Jesus, come quickly, we say with all His people alerted in His will and Spirit.  

NOTES

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