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CHAPTER 4

PULSES, IMPULSES AND THE POWER OF TRUTH

Earlier, attention was given to Luke 22:67ff., a monumental passage with vast similarity to Jeremiah 38:15. This was found in Red Heart, Dead Heart and Pure Heart Ch. 7. This has been considerably revised, and now has an Extension in further detail at the end. This, aptly for our present title, moves into evidence and reality, the Prince and the proof, and the constancy of Christian testimony to the invariant truth, compared with the fickleness of the only other option this world persistently practises, that of force. Thus, with this addition, extension and revision,  it is able to  illustrate adroitly, the concept of Evidence and Reality, The Prince and the Proof, The Constant Christian Faith and the Fickle Frenzy of Force.

In Ch. 5, in Red Heart, Dead Heart, and the Pure Heart, there were three illustrations of the words of Christ, used in the survey of the wonder of the Messiah.

One of these related to His answer when an official of the High Priest (or his associate) struck Him. If I have done wrong, bear witness of it, and if not, why do you strike Me ? was its tenor (John 18).

As in all narrative, it is always possible to take one piece of it, and leave the rest as not necessary for one's purpose, or at times, even essentialise it, depending on the purpose, making sure merely that if it is in inverted commas, it is word for word, and if it is not, it is a precise, apt, just and due summarising.

In this case, however, the phase of the development of proceedings  of Luke 22 is different from that in John 18:23. In the latter, an initial appeal to the public nature of His words during the day, is make the stimulus for a slap from the official. Here in the record of Luke, things have moved along. The irritable sounding call is now, "If you are the Christ tell us!"

Probably, it would seem, the appeal to the public character of His utterances, this was followed by the tempestuous demand. That in turn, as recorded of that stage of the proceedings in Luke 22:67-69 provides us with a pearl; or to use our current imagery, a sharpness a razor might envy. Both of these aspects of the case will now be considered in their intent and portent. They will show the rapid fire exposure of the whole ungodly and ungainly plot.

It will show much more. 

This being the sequence in view, let us then consider the early case, as noted in John 18, before proceeding to the development to be found in Luke 22. In John's report, we see the probing and apparently preliminary question is one of HIS DOCTRINE! Doctrine? it is as if Christ explained, you have been here all these years and do not know what My doctrine is ? You ask me in secret what has become a proverb in public ? Can you be serious ... or are you subverted into an evening wolf. He did not in fact say this, but the overtones of exclamation and the pith of the point moves along such lines.
 

 

We already looked at something of this scene in Ch. 5 Red Heart ... but now it is time to seek deeper.

Six elements readily appear for the case as it progresses. First however, let us remind ourselves that in John we are also provided with the early reply of Jesus to the question of His doctrine:

"I spoke openly to the world. I always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where the Jews always meet, and in secret I have said nothing."

"Why do you ask Me ?

"Ask those who have heard Me what I said to them. Indeed they know what I said!"

Then, at the ensuing slap, the words are these:

"If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil, but if well, why do you strike Me ?"

In this we see the force of evidence, of reality, and of arm in open conflict. Many have felt it; here it is essentialised, for at that time truth met fraud and lies direct.

Consider now the conflict.

1) The appeal of Christ is reasonable, evidential, public, incontestable, apt. It is to the public character of His discourse. NOTHING in secret has been cooked, prepared, stewed, given like dope to the minds of those being 'conditioned'! This is the first part of the impact of His reply.

If it were subversive, why the need for this haste and arrest in the middle as it were, of nowhere: that is, while He is quiet and not speaking. If it were dangerous, why was the danger so long so freely borne ? What is the matter with the official party, with all its power, deployed now at night, that it is unable to protect the people when they are obviously been duped (if that WERE the case). If the ‘dangers’ in the broad daylight were ignored, and people then left to their alleged peril, why must the authorities now actin this surreptitious swoop, when nothing is happening to the point at all! It is inconsistent.

2) There is more.  If it really were dangerous, perilous, requiring the paraphernalia of police to protect people, something awful in its pollution, why was it suffered so FREELY in public ? One should have thought that many stirrings would have occurred, warnings being given, people being questioned, officials being despatched to learn first hand, priests mingling with the crowd with due and true pastoral concern, bringing things up to authority diligently, the authority in turn personally witnessing these things and knowing first hand IF IT WERE SO WRONG!

In other words, the question of Christ the Subversive is tainted. How was it so long borne, so feebly pursued, so freely permitted, not merely over time, but in manner, so that in the public places it was a part of Israel's life, as was the case with the former prophets, who were, however, in some cases killed and in Jeremiah's, imprisoned.

Why hands off for so long ? and again, why freedom so liberal ? why so little for so long and why so much now, and so suddenly, with the power of arms, in such darkness ?

3)  This is not yet finished, not by much is it over!

Thus also implied is this: If Christ had spoken in some obscure synagogues, hidden in the hills, in some inconspicuous if open places, and the officials only slowly had become aware of His activities, then perhaps there might have been some question of their coming to a slow realisation resulting in the intemperate haste of the evening arrest.

However He had OFTEN spoken in the very precincts of the TEMPLE, like a mouse dancing with delight on the mouse trap! How is it that it did not utilise its spring, so taunted, act when so openly displayed as ineffective, IF IT WERE TO BE A CASE FOR A TRAP! Would some 'spy' use a public loud speaking system in the KREMLIN, in the days of Stalin's terror, for YEARS and then have the KGB come for him at night, in the third year! Obviously, this is no lack of information case: it is nothing requiring action AT NIGHT. It has been witnessed freely, publicly, intimately, continually, and in the THRONE ROOM, if you will, of the officials, in the heart of their symbolic structures, in the very midst of their power, for years.

Clearly, guile and method are in view; and equally clearly, leadership has had problems of a paralysing kind, now being exposed to an evening entertainment approach, to resolve them.

Indeed, either they did not know if it was wrong earlier, or they were in debate, or they had been impressed and only now saw the danger; or else they feared the people and did not want a riot, or feared the Governor and did not want a complex situation with strife, or they found the sheer power and popularity of Christ grown to such proportions that only haste, night and darkness would suffice. This would be accentuated now that Lazarus was risen and the whole world (John 11:48ff.), as it were, in the land was at His feet (if not some of envious and fearful dispositions, at His throat, for their personal power or national skins). Just as the Egyptians resorted to making the populous segment of Israel in their land, to be slaves, for their safety, so now the authorities in Israel resorted to death.

Ironically, of course, it was for death, their own, that they imparted His; and as to Him, He was resurrected as He never ceased to affirm, in the third day (cf. SMR Ch. 6, Joyful Jottings 21-25, Matthew 16, 17).

4) Why should they ask Jesus Himself, as if it were not long and freely, most popularly known, open like a book for years to the eyes and minds of the persecutors ? Is HE to testify of some evil, as if they did not know how to find out without Him ? Or are they trying to find out MORE so that they could nail Him on the spot ? If they are trying to do that, why ? Is it a crime NOT to have said something, so that you incite to crime in order to secure guilt ? Does a police car come up to some dangerous young spark and say, Race you mate! bet you can't beat a police car!

Let's see what you can do!

Scarcely!

Did they want Him to speak apart from His actions, so beautifully melded and wedded to His words and did they want hostility to be the witness to the words of peace ? How BRAZEN and HOSTILE they were displayed to be, and how unready for the words of God, the words of salvation, for which He came and which were His!

From this we find two things, one of which is the current point. IF CRIME is to be attributed to Him, why is it not cited! Are you to COMMIT a crime at request! Is this the way of justice ?

5) Why should they ask Him ? Is not the crime an open one, if it be one ?

Are to ask the house-breaker, Oh I say, old chap, was it you that they saw when that window was being broken ? They were not entirely clear if it was you or somebody else ? Would you mind telling us please ?

Are they so deficient in evidence that they have to ask the assumed culprit, already struck, itself a form of punishment ? are they,  still worse, to have somebody not proven guilty to be openly attacked in their presence, on the basis of the open character of His work, and His implicit request for attestation from those affected by any 'crime' involving what in the world it was supposed to have been ? Is logic an offence ? Is reason to be whipped ?

6) His words indicate that what He has said is KNOWN ALREADY, so why is He not charged according to the most replete abundance of the evidence! He ALWAYS spoke openly, not just on a small number of select occasions. On the contrary, the place was thronged with His words, the throngs submerged in them, the air voluble with them. What is all this about a night arrest ?

Is the night a necessary element, and is the absence of the multiplied witnesses because of it, and because of the haste which did not EVEN SECURE THEM during the day, not an admission of the guilt of the governing body, disorderly, ill-prepared and acting as if ignorant, as if the case were strange and difficult! Difficult ? It is like a newsboy (if they still have them), calling out on the corner of Flinders St and Swanston St in Melbourne, where the crowds descend like an avalanche around 5 p.m. on week-days, over the years, being brought at NIGHT to a HASTILY assembly meeting of police, in some dark court, and being asked this question.

'My boy, what is it that you have been calling out in that crowded corner ?'

'Gov'nor' (dated to be sure, but still...), 'I think you know, for I have been doing it for years.
Ask any of the thousands who have heard me ? What are you trying to do to me ?'
 

• These sharp words, then, expose the haste, the inadequacy of the case, the ill-prepared nature of the prosecutors, the reliance on darkness in heart and in style, as well as in illumination visibly, if what is dark has illumination. It was dim indeed in every way.

ARE YOU THE CHRIST, TELL US ? (Luke 22:67).

As we read in Mark, the answer was sharp and clear (Mark 14:62). In the end of the testimony, He not only told them directly, but added words of the most inflammatory possible kind, in terms of the truth, that is.

Accordingly, He attributed to Himself the powers of judgment in John 5:19-23, and identified with the Son of man of Daniel 7, whose majestic glory and glorious majesty lies in the area of the ultimate in divine intimacy and overall authority. In the very presence of God, He acts as God (cf. Psalm 45). True, in Daniel 7:13, He is brought before the Almighty, but in awesome pageantry He is accepted as Lord over all creation in an intimacy of involvement which is both absolute and all-encompassing. Daniel too, in 9:26 has His humiliation, so from this is He brought to that very glory which He announced as this forecast Messiah, now rejected then regal in a reality which knows no end.

• "I am. And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven."

So does the priest play the beast (in the Danielic sense), not to be sure as part of one of the main empires of that ilk, but as a subsidiary power recognised by Rome. The mere power to exterminate (as it might appear) the life of the flesh is as nothing; the God who made it and its carry-on procreative proclivities is well able to remedy such a defect. It was and continued to be in resurrection, then episodic of those whom the prophets and Christ raised, and in Himself without any visible aid, in the three days forecast precisely, but soon to be generic for His people, and in the end as Revelation advises, for all for their diverse responsibilities as they have responded and been found, or left lost.

Christ has no fear; His word is truth, and even as He speaks, handing the priest the power to accuse mordantly, the sense of impending judgment, not on Christ, but on such as his 'judges' flashes like lightning in the dramatic confrontation. Let us then examine further in Daniel, this time Ch. 9, which gives further background to the words Christ cited from Daniel 7.

There in this same Daniel, there is both a poignancy and a piquancy about the words, "and there is nothing for Him." No appointment, no place to lay His head, no acknowledgment by the nation as such, no official realisation that the Temple is now redundant since HE is the new and living temple in whom is the sacrifice of sin to be found, not for one or a nation, but for all nations for as many as receive Him, as sacrifices always had to be received, by faith (cf. Deuteronomy 29). Nothing indeed is for Him as He is being persecuted before the vainly attempted purge by priests! This citation from Daniel carries all these kinds of overtones, and struck hard into the well-educated but mischievously ill-directed thoughts of the priestly party.

To those who study the word of God, this Bible of truth, there is then precisely that background of first the sufferings and then the glory of which Christ had spoken as recorded in Luke 24. There is both the poignancy of the present and the power to come. If before honour is humility, then before the glory of the regal rule of the Messiah is the suffering of salvation, what it took to impart it! This glory then is to come, and can be cited as might be the inheritance of a fortune. .

In Luke however we are at the first, as we move from 22:67, still in the realm of process. They are trying to exploit the situation, and we see the interplay, if such a work as this could at all be called a play. Thus we find in Luke 22:64-65, that one had struck him and then, having blindfolded Him, they asked in an insidious, invidious blasphemy, "Prophesy, who is the one who struck you ?" (22;64).

Now the important thing here is not only the disorder in the court, the flagrant violation of any sense of justice at all, the mockery as the mode, but the following words: "And many other things they blasphemously spoke against Him." In other words, the account is taking cardinal elements only, but the actuality involved multi-faceted, protracted and complex. Interchanges, clarificatory or in the realm of artful elicitation, or hideous rebuff: these were the order of the day. Fuller or shorter statements, like more or less astonishing acts of violence, were to be expected.
 

THE FORCE OF THE PARALLEL FROM JEREMIAH

Let us now hear the words of Christ, cited in Luke,  in answer to the question, Are you the Christ ?

"If I tell you, you will by no means believe. And if I also ask you, you will by no means answer Me or let Me go. Hereafter the Son of Man will sit on the right hand of the power of God."

In answer^*1, Christ first makes a fairly direct parallel with Jeremiah who had answered a royal query, when summoned by the wicked King Zedekiah, before whom he had already suffered much, even the risk of his life, from which doom he had been removed with difficulty by Ebed-Melech, a servant of the king. "I will ask you something," said the King. "Hide nothing from me."

The reply of Jeremiah, in 38:15,  is strikingly akin to that which Christ, presumably purposefully, used in answering the query put to Him, in His own day on this earth. It was this:

"If I declare it to you, will you not surely put me to death ? And if I give you advice, you will not listen to me." That was the response of Jeremiah. It was true. The king would not listen; and he did not; and so came to have his sons slain before his eyes, and then his eyes put out by the barbarous King of Babylon, for his pains (II Kings 25:2-7). If he only HAD listened, for Jeremiah promised life and deliverance for the city of Jerusalem. If he would not listen, however, Jeremiah predicted peril for the king and doom for the city. This all happened.

Thus, in making what to those at that time so acutely versed in the Old Testament, was such a parallel statement, Christ was giving a warning, a challenge and providing an opportunity. if THIS did not strike their deaf ears, then would Big Ben if they had been translated in time, and taken by helicopter to within a few feet of it, listened to it striking twelve. It was indeed twelve for Jerusalem, about to secure a blood bath in the coming times, and not one only! It was not however one which, at that time, which would clean.

The other side of the relevance of this close and famous word of Jeremiah, to Christ's own response to the corrupt High Priest was this. Not only was the King Zedekiah, not heeding the prophet,  in folly, driven to his doom; as in that later day, was the High Priest's foolish hope for securing Israel's peace by murder of the Lord. Not merely, again,  was the court official's way in Christ's day, a mere travesty from a heart already set on its ways, as was the case with the poor King Zedekiah, AFRAID of what would happen to him if he surrendered (nothing compared with what DID happen because he refused).

It was more, the parallel in the case, than merely that.

An implicit DEATH penalty had already nearly been placed on Jeremiah, his rescue being at the initiative of a SERVANT of the court. In terms of the parallel (cf. Matthew 23:31-36, something of its force mirrored in Acts 7:52), death as a penalty would surely be in the air with the High Priest also. Had not Christ consistently and insistently told the disciples of His forthcoming death (as in Matthew 16:21, 17:22-23)!

Had not indeed, John the Baptist made it clear before Christ was so well-known ? (John 1:29). Had not Jeremiah in parallel insistently and persistently told of the coming fall of Jerusalem, amidst many appeals, and much sorrow (as in Jeremiah Chs. 5 and 9), so that in the end, heedless, it fell, and murder of heart was rising like a storm, against him. An implicit DEATH penalty had already nearly been placed on Jeremiah, his rescue being at the initiative of a SERVANT of the court. Death as a penalty would surely be in the air with the High Priest also. Had not Christ consistently and insistently told the disciples of His forthcoming death (as in Matthew 16:21, 17:22-23)! Had not indeed, John the Baptist made it clear before Christ was so well-known ? (John 1:29).

This close parallel to the words of the prophet Jeremiah, then, on the part of Christ, was a clear warning, an exhortation and an appeal, a grave nod to the index of thought, a testimony in form that laced and enriched the testimony in meaning to come with it.
 
 
 

Jeremiah if a false prophet, could be put to death (Deuteronomy 13). Hence his reference to it, in speaking to the enquiring King, not only because of what he had just suffered in the stinking well, sinking to the near extinction of life, from which his rescue was timely, but in salient prospect! So Christ, if claiming falsely to be the Messiah, and hence appearing to the disbeliever to be a false prophet, could be put to death; or they could try to secure this 'favour' from Pilate, the Roman Governor, at their request, made on religious grounds, as indeed later they did.

Hence, Christ's telling the unbelief of nocturnal birds of prey, that He was indeed, the Christ, the Son of God was like a death penalty. He was making their prior prejudice apparent, just as their failure to use proper rules of evidence made their guilt obnoxious. In this, the parallel with Jeremiah is intense.

Now Jeremiah went on to dwell on the point that EVEN IF he should give Zedekiah advice, the royal ear would not hear, not heed, not act while there was still time. That King was in the midst of a situation of approaching doom, himself, as clear as was that for Japan after New Mexico yielded a positive mushroom cloud. However for long he had utterly failed to alter his ways, and even some alleviation of the oppression, had been only temporary (Jeremiah 34).

Christ here did not say, "If I tell you, you will not listen," but rather, "If I ask you, you will by no means answer Me or let Me go!"

What then would He ask, especially, what could  He ask that would be akin in any style to Jeremiah's word to Zedekiah, since this seems so patent a parallel ?  Why, Christ could ask the Court, who after all were but men,  as He had asked the disciples,

Whom do you say that I am ?

He could ask them to attest that He was a true prophet of God, and hence should be heeded, so that they might escape the doom coming to both themselves and to the city. As true, of course, He would truly be the One whom He claimed, the Messiah. Thus He could give to them, His oppressors the opportunity to declare their faith.

This differs from the Jeremiah case in this, that Jeremiah was not the Messiah, but - exalted as such a post is, a prophet only. He was infinitely less than the Christ, therefore, whose goings, says Micah, have been from eternity.

Hence the substitute for the 'advice' which Jeremiah could give to the King, was the QUESTION which Christ could give to the persecutors:

WHO AM I ? YOU answer.

The point would thus become this.

It is for you to answer, rather than I, at this stage, for the real question is not, as has been made clear so often and so very publicly, in so many ways and for so long a time, who I declare Myself to be, but WHOM YOU DECLARE ME TO BE.

It is really, in the eternal dimension, and the ultimate, YOU who are on trial. My judgments will be overturned in innocence (as in Isaiah 50, Psalm 22); but yours as in Psalm 2, where the dissidents from the Messiah sent from above, are exposed, have a result which is very different. My words are unheeded but will be fulfilled; yours are in power now, but will die with you in shameful horror, and aweful testimony against this city. It is so even for the city for which Christ wept (Luke 19:42ff.), because in this their day, they would not heed.

What a profound message this carries for all who consider Christ!

What then is Christ declaring as He shows up their perfidy and time-serving, city-serving, tradition-serving folly, these things merely multiplying and intensifying the follies of Israel's authorities in Jeremiah's day ! There He is, constantly affirming the way to peace and rest, joy and harmony with God, and there are they about to kill more than a prophet, yes their own King. There are the alternatives, the one as He says and demonstrates, the other as they do in death. The two paths are very clear. 

In this, is your deliverance. In this, is your hope. In that,  is revolution of the utmost kind, depravity to the uttermost, so what do you expect!

Here is your office as men, where not as gods, judges, lampooners of true majesty, and vocal yokels of unbelief, you are now revealing your inveterate prejudice to your own assured destruction.

That such thoughts were deep in the heart of Christ is seen most clearly in Luke 19:35-48:

"And they threw their own clothes on the colt, and they set Jesus on him. And as He went, many spread their clothes on the road. Then, as He was now drawing near the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works they had seen, saying:

 ‘Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!'

"And some of the Pharisees called to Him from the crowd, 'Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.' But He answered and said to them, 'I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out.'

"Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, 'If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. “For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.'

"Then He went into the temple and began to drive out those who bought and sold in it, saying to them, 'It is written, "My house is a house of prayer," but you have made it a "den of thieves." '

"And He was teaching daily in the temple. But the chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people sought to destroy Him, and were unable to do anything; for all the people were very attentive to hear Him."

Hear you see the gamut of things implicit in the confrontation by the nocturnal assailants to which we are currently attending.

You see here on that Palm Sunday, the following relevant elements.

1) His fame was notorious and abundant.

2)  The place ascribed to Him was that of deity, the Messiah (as in Isaiah 48:16, Psalm 45, Micah 5, Zechariah 12,Psalm 118).

3) He had been PUBLICLY challenged on this, but dismissed the challenge and accepted the place accorded to Him.

4)  In so doing, He had testified to the effect that so obvious, manifest, clear and assured was His post as the Son of God, that if human voices were stricken dumb, the very stones would cry out. In this, there is even more, for the 'stones' have an archaic signification as well, as the silent witnesses of much for long. Thus, the whole incubus of prophecy was upon the Messiah, and as Paul implies in Galatians 4:4, it was now the 'fulness of the times' for it was the date prescribed by Daniel (SMR pp. 886ff.), and the works required to identify the Messiah had been performed most amply (cf. for example, Matthew 11:4ff.). Thus the whole history of revelation, if He were not the Messiah, would be squashed, squelched underfoot as by Hitler's latter jack-booted soldiers, so expert in clearing out the Jews for the slaughter^*2.

Little more categorical, summary and sovereign could be imagined, more public, more incontestable and better known, then, than Christ's words. Had not those very authorities been INVOLVED at the time! What then is all this hou-ha about what He had or had not said! Was it not by this time the common property of the nation, to the one superb in situation, or lowly in status, alike!

5) Jesus wept over Jerusalem, at this time, foreseeing and declaring with a poignancy of grief and a depth of personal anguish, that it would be destroyed, because it had failed to recognise its ambassador from heaven, its Governor from glory (cf. Jeremiah 23:5ff., 30:21-22 with Ezekiel 34, Hosea 13:14, Psalm 2). Thus the concepts of interchange with the 'mighty', dialogue with disputants, with the critics, and depth of passion for His people and compassion on them,  for the results of their folly, are not only both present previously, but conjoined in this intimate way.

6) If someone had gone to the Kremlin, and after and indeed during years of teaching against Communism, had proceeded to some of the churches  under the heel of the KGB in notoriously many cases (they even had a KGB representative, one learns from the glasnost era, in the WCC!), and if such a person should cast out the false priests, the stooges, then surely the powers of the USSR would not have been idle! Even more surely, they would not have had any ground for pretence that they really needed to know what he had said.

It would have been - in that case - a national sensation!

To have allowed Him (as seen from John 2) to have gone for years, and to have repeated the purging performance (as in John 2, Luke 19), makes it clear that nothing of KNOWLEDGE was their need. SOMETHING had inhibited their action to a degree so amazing, it would like sniffing ammonia, and mistaking it for a perfume! Moreover, as to the priesthood, they were anything but sedated!
 
 
 

Thus as often  most manifest with Jesus the Christ, there is immense depth in His thoughts, in His references and in the results of IGNORING THEM! That of course is precisely what one would expect of the Son of God, come as man to man, and for man.

The priestly party however,  to its own destruction, continued to do, just as with Zedekiah, precisely what its own will declared, following murder and manipulation, in the face of an overwhelming truth which neither they nor any other could contain. The destruction to come in their own case, however, was far vaster, for not 70 years' exile in Babylon, as predicted by Jeremiah (Chapter 25), but 1900 or so years of exile in the world, would follow before long, for the whole nation!

Thus as often with Jesus the Christ, there is immense depth in His thoughts, in His references and in the results of IGNORING THEM! This however the priestly party to its own destruction, continued to do, just as with Zedekiah. The destruction to come in their own case, however, was far vaster, for not 70 years' exile in Babylon, but 1900 or so years of exile in the world, would follow before long, for the whole nation!

Small wonder then that Christ in so many ways, to so many groups and castes of people, here with subtlety, there in openness, here with parable, there with lament, made things so clear. It was like talking to those in Hiroshima, before the bomb. But no! they WOULD continue just as they were, and condemn the one who warned. So be it, but it was a matter of the uttermost depth in the heart of Christ that this people so warned, so given testimony as none ever did or could give (John 15:21-23), so presented with the ANSWER in His own person, should display the admittedly predicted, but no less horrible for all that, dispassion, disbelief and so appeal for disaster, as a ship-wrecked human flotsam might ask for help!

How inverted, how perverted the ways of men! how too well illustrated in this. How the red heart of violence, arid like the Australian centre, pulsating like a body in fever, and the dead heart of sanctified sin, the whitewashed sepulchre syndrome, the graves on which men walk without knowing situation noted by Christ, oh how it continues, acrid to the death, dead in its acridity!

Let us however return from our reflection to the plight of the persecutors, of which they were so astutely oblivious, blinded like brilliant fools with the sparks of their own gullibly glittering but ignorant wisdom.

Thus the reference of Christ to what might be their ANSWER if He QUESTIONED them, would imply their lack of faith, lack of willingness to attest Him; indeed, it was all too obvious in their clandestine and ludicrous proceedings, and obvious endeavours to snare Him then, as so often publicly before (as in Luke 11:50-53).

This time however not logic, not truth but power in the darkness was the method, the weapon, and how they wielded it, exasperated from years of loss, of rebuttal, of exposure (as in Matthew 21:33-46, 22:42-46), until as we read here, they no longer dared to ask Him any public questions. Now! power would prevail over the mouth, and darkness over the light. The Light of the World could be extinguished in the dark! When would it shine again!

Alas for the nation, that question must now be asked with a renewed sense of urgency, and a deepened sense of pathos, for the need now as that then, is intense, immense, and the price of further delay is all but incalculable. Mercifully, however, the time is to come (Zech. 12:10), when they will repent of the murder of the Messiah, and it is about that time that the world will learn something a little further of its own sins, and of its own killing of Christ in the heart, as the nation of Israel had killed in the flesh (cf. Hebrews 10:28-29, John 3:19,36). We must remember also, that this, it is not a racial matter, for it is PRECISELY FROM THAT RACE that the Christian church itself was begun!  The apostles were Jewish...

As we read in Isaiah 51:17-23, 59:15-20, 63:1-6, 66:9-16, as in Micah 7:15ff., Jeremiah 30:12ff., Joel 3, Habakkuk 3, Ezekiel 37-39 and Romans 11:25ff. with Deuteronomy 32:43ff., the time comes when the assailants of Israel find that the Jew is not the dummy substitute for the display of their own sins. It becomes an occasion for the display of their own follies!

Such a time would appear to be near to our very contemporary doors, but the world does not heed, not any more than did Zedekiah heed Jeremiah, or the priestly power, heed Jesus though He was, as He is and remains, the very Christ! Of Him there was, is to be and has been but one, just as there is ONE GOD (Isaiah 45:18, 43:10-11, 48:16, 52-53). The Redeemer being God, and the Creator being God, there is only one; and He has come to do what mercy desired, love directed and wisdom declared on this earth, and He has done it. Next is its inspection tour! (Zechariah 14:5, Hebrews 7-10, Acts 1:7, II Thess. 1-2).

Failing to receive Him, and hence rejecting Him, they would naturally invoke the death penalty, which would at the same time remove from them the physical presence of the unanswerable Christ, the healing marvel, the popular Prince, the core and treasure of God's mercy.

It is strange, how men will do these things; but they do, and they suffer. The lament however is as real today, as ever, for God does not change. Thus there is always time for the ungodly to turn to the Lord; and His mercy is ever a joy to Him (Micah 7:19-21, Ezekiel 33:1 with Luke 15:7); for "there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety nine just persons who need no repentance."

GOD IS personal, and loves persons, has actually acted personally, and with no mere personableness, has prevailed so that it is like a new environment, pollution free, for man that is offered within, attested without, and is to be amply provided, governed in glory; but most do not treasure it, and unbelieving against all reason, truth and evidence, testimony and indeed need, they continue to travail in their tasks of sin, as if the very life of the world depended on it. In fact, it depends on their NOT so acting, but, like Zedekiah, like the Sanhedrin of yesterday, they will not hear; and if asked, they will not answer.

    EXTENSION

I

Riposte of the Lost

"If I tell you, you will by no means believe. And if I also ask you, you will by no means answer Me or let Me go. Hereafter the Son of Man will sit on the right hand of the power of God."

Let us consider further elements in these words, this emblem of profundity, from the Author whose are the heights and the depths.

A) The DIDACTIC

`We will this time take these words in segments.

"If I tell you, you will by no means believe."

If Christ were to TELL them, then this would be to give them the key, so that it could constitute a test, rationally, to be pursued (cf. John 14:10-11), His words being then compared with and construed amid His WORKS.

Even then, however, a paralysis of purity would intervene. They will yet still withhold faith as those who artfully strive with a competitor, withholding credit from one who beats them, imperilling their authority, exposing their counterfeit, showing by contrast their pastoral deficiency and their destitution of spiritual power in all its dimensions.

NO, they will by no means believe, for they are, by their own pollution, programmed to do so. There is thus no point in His doing so at this stage of the proceedings, TELLING them. Here lies a tableau without parallel in history, though it has a precursor in Jeremiah, one in total conformity to prophecy and meeting the needs of the people as GOD HIMSELF SAID HE WOULD PERSONALLY DO, in disgust at subterfuge and faithlessness in the 'shepherds'. This we see in Ezekiel 34 where His plan is spelt out in great detail, the requirements for His coming being defined not only in terms of the magnificent pity and purpose of His heart, but in those of the defective and selfish loutishness of the false 'shepherds' who with such superb impudence went through faithless forms, spoiling the very nature of their office by their plunder and greed.

Here now He is, for He has come when and how He declared in advance in the prophetic words (cf. Highway of Holiness ... Ch. 4); but they will not believe Him, for what else would you expect faithless shepherds to do!

This is one more example of resonance in the Bible, one passage opening out by another in harmonious interchange, like the gazanias  at Carrickalinga's beach, Adelaide, which cover in stupendous and beautiful variety, much of a whole hillside and sprinkle artistically in a whole domain by their multiplied thousands, dressed in colour and shape varieties so exquisite, composite and artistically complex, now soft, now smart in multiple contrasts, but always appealing and apt, that it is almost overwhelming as they toss with such artless art, their brilliance below the Summer skies and in overlay visually, on the moving seas. These in turn adorn the scene as much, their contribution too being  of one kind but with multiple assortments of view and wave, beyond them, making an entente naturelle!

Thus ALL the word of God attests the one mind behind it with the consonance resultant. As you realise and apply this, there seems no end to the intimacies with Him who speaks His mind, just as with the flowers,  in our case, the created gazania: it is with God WHO MAKE THEM, masterly in information, brilliant in disposition, subtle in hue and intonation.

B) The HEURISTIC

"And if I also ask you, you will by no means answer Me or let Me go."

That has dealt with one aspect or possibility: He could have TOLD them who He was directly and at once.

Now Christ turns to the other. He could ASK them, elicit, apply the heuristic method, let them find out by discovering for themselves, applying their minds to this present Subject with facility of memory, power to check and investigative scope. If then instead of TELLING them, He should ask, what then ? Then they would by no means answer Him. They might toy, tirade, attack, accuse, assault, but as for proper logical questions and factual zeal, this is not on the agenda as had already been shown in their explosive physicality (Luke 22:63-65).

The nocturnal arrest, more see-through than nylon gauze, displayed to the mind the guards sent to arrest in dim darkness, so that they could not this time, in the quiet of night, be arrested themselves by the sheer power, truth and authority of His words, as had happened when they had been sent on an earlier occasion (John 7:45ff.). Nor could they be imperilled by a popular uprising if they took so great a pearl from the marine floor of popular proceedings,  in daylight.

What then of the tortures after the arrest ? The bludgeoning, mockery, these were more apt, if ever so, for a criminal condemned to social surgery and battery, than for a man to be investigated.

Thus if He asks these paragons of priesthood who He is, and lets them find out, in a parallel to Caesarea Philippi (Matthew 16), then there will be no informed discourse, far less open door to exit. Their impulses are blind, their minds are in chains to desire. Facts are not in view, except in a sort of ultra-violet light of disfigurement, which they decidedly had long planned for Him.

No, if He asks them, they will not respond with sustained enquiry at all, but setting their teeth in grinding rage and their eyes to blinded knowledgeability, they will neither seek truth nor let Him go (cf. Luke 11:53).

Thus He makes a decisive declamation.  "Hereafter the Son of Man will sit on the right hand of the power of God."

Having been blindfolded, as if to become a vicarious expression of the priests' own mental state, but seeing all, He announces in the darkness of this devilry, the light of life once more.

Leaping at a chance to turn covert hatred to open and grisly condemnation, they now were quick to pursue a fact in isolation from all justice or evidence, as if it were some proxy Communist trial before its time (but the dynamics of devilry are a family of kindred), they quickly come to the pith for penalty.

"ARE YOU THEN THE SON OF GOD ?"

Affirming this to be true, Christ engages the voluble condemnation of the authorities. What more do we need ? Out of His own mouth, we have Him nailed! What delicious and delectable delight for them:  their psychic splendour seems to know no bounds. WE HAVE HIM! This is a capital offence.

But WHAT precisely is this capital offence ? If it is so deadly to tell the truth ? Is truth so to be investigated that facts are the ONE thing which are not brought into play, in ascertaining results ? Is preliminary battering and mockery, buffeting and manhandling a proper preliminary to a due judiciary ? Is evidence so overwhelming that they could not even arrest Him in public, and their guards could not bring themselves to do so, that they have no arguments but one based on MERE PRESUMPTION with no evidence given or received ?Is this farce to be ignored! Certainly, yes, that is the way of it.

In Mark, we read more in these interchanges. As we have seen the setting is prolonged and appears to allow plenty of interchange. There, we read this also: that He would be sitting on the right hand of power and "coming with the clouds of heaven" as in Daniel 7.

Thus, following His announcement, "Hereafter the Son of Man will sit on the right hand of the power of God, "  we have the judicial question for the kill.

 ARE YOU THEN THE SON OF GOD ?

It is as you rightly say, the KJV has it. Then it appears the flowing fulness of deity transmits itself before the kill, to speak in splendour that nothing could dim.

Christ then released their desired phrasing, as we see in Mark: I AM. In Luke, in sequence, His apparent preliminary statement is quite enough for vast rejoicing, as they say, WHAT MORE do we need! The rest is sheer glory for vainglory, as He gives them fuel for foul play: the thing being done, is done most amply!^*2

^{What man has done continually to grind down the power and the presence of God and His salvation in Jesus the Christ, sometimes viciously assaulting, sometimes cunningly combining, at other times subtly abusing and seeking to destroy the credentials of God's people by slander and false accusation: this is met continually by God, here in revival, there in healings, again in the attraction of whole nations to give an astounding testimony. In tribes, peoples or  in churches, He has met with a whole generation in amazing power and maintained the truth while man vomits virtue and spits blood, mostly that of others, seeking to rule the world, if necessary the universe, but never himself.}

^{Meanwhile, looking at the book of Acts, we see the commencements phases, the evidentially rigorous, things that, had they failed, would have left not the sustained testimony of the Almighty for two millenia since Christ, but a witless residue of ashes. The fire however burns, and the bush of life is not consumed. It glows instead.}

II

Reveille of the Found

A

Guards Arrested

Let us for one moment recapitulate the case of the arrested guards, as seen in John 7:45ff.. Hot-footed from the priestly lair of murderous intent, despatched by an evil hierarchy, they go to surprise and take a man of vast good works and unanswerable speech. This is the norm of brutality, and here looms the acme of horror. Does this world not NEED these things ? is not rigorous power with durable goodness in the very heart of its practical need ? Can it afford then to dispense with God when He comes in vigorous but humble humanity to deploy His dynamics and show His heart by His deeds !

Does this world not need the foretold and testable reality for peace and purity, for power and goodness, indeed the very word of God, unique in source and in substance, in effect and in testability, and need it the more, since so many are inventing what is to occupy such a place in function, but not in fact! Are millions ruined, whole nations ravaged, visionless or betrayed ?

Is the beauty of truth dispensable!

Is loot unthinkable, or rather lust intransigent in its unlovely defilements, weakness in its unworkability while yet apt to incinerate the earth, lest truth be found! Must factions of defeated fictions rule the wounded spirit of man lest God be realised ? or must the god-within concept of man as virtual God, his thoughts the rule, be excluded as wild boars might be, from a dinner conversation! This world has taken its choice, and as the Age mounts to its end in lusting power and treacherous deeds as the increasing norm, the treatment of the Christ initially becomes more and more a mirror for the culmination. Last time it was crucifixion; this time it is meta-crucifixion, the deceit of the mind and the funeral of the soul with its life source no more available, but defamed nonetheless.

Yes, this is precisely the way of it, and Israel in the day of its 'visitation' (Luke 19:42ff.) merely contributed the essential thrust in the genre, dealing direct with God Himself as many have dealt with His word, jabbing it and clouting it with unintelligible licence, as if it could not be read, as they, donning philosophical glasses, as carefully avoid its message as those others in Christ's day, avoided His word of truth and trust in its Author. To be sure, many did so trust, in Israel itself which became an epicentre for the Gospel missions; but most did not. You pay for folly. The world is nearing moral, intellectual and political bankruptcy; and this, it is a mere portent of what lies far deeper.

But let us revisit the scheme, moving back from the schema. We see the guards sent by the priests of their day, impotent authorities whose power is to be vaulted over by the vigour of God, they go, they listen, they DO NOT act, they return empty handed, but not so empty headed as they were!

Thus when the guards came back, without Christ in their hands, but His words about their hearts, and then report the reality of Christ that makes Him in their view, beyond arrest, then the priests in their turn, reveal an ignorance both pitiful and woeful. Have any of the rulers believed in Him ? they ask (actually Nicodemus was in train to this, and later Gamaliel sounded a warning). That is entirely irrelevant if truth is the aim. How often have NO rulers in a conflict realised the fact, and any that do begin to do so, are either removed or refreshed (re-educated ? ) with the majority view! But then it was worse.

Nicodemus came out into the light for a little while, asking this: "Does our law judge a man before it hears him and knows what he is going ?"

First, they use the well-worn ad hominem approach. Are you partisan for him because you also come from Galilee ? they ask, as if geography made history, like a mouth.
"Search and look," they ludicrously challenge, "for no prophet has arisen out of Galilee."

This 'has arisen' is a look back on the scriptures, and hence is not a mere matter of history, but of expectation. Accordingly, the prophets often used the past tense to describe the future, since before God it was present, and sure, certain and as good as done in perspective. But what then of Galilee ? Had any prophet spoken of this place as a site, centre or base for divine action and messianic marvels ? The priests averred not.

After all, if any WERE to come from Galilee, that is if any were prophesied to do so, then that would be the relevant point. We could perhaps paraphrase like this: "Take a good long look in the scriptures and see if you can falsify this relevant point: from Galilee is no prophetic material. Go on, check it out!"

In fact of course Isaiah 8-9 makes a vastly impactive transition in messianic terms, that cites Galilee in just this regard. It is rather humorous, as if some mathematics professor were to ask his students in a fit of exasperation, "Go on, see, check it out, has there ever been in any significant text or substantial research, the concept that 2+2=4! What nonsense to believe such a thing.

Thus in Isaiah 8-9, you have the distressingly obvious fact. Yes, there is and has long been such a prophetic text!

Let us look at the end of Isaiah 8. Moving from desolation, misery and anguish in darkness, as the desolatory disciplines strike Israel, suddenly to GALILEE we move in Ch. 9, to the place where light, the very light of God is to come, a "great light", and it has SHONE on them. SUch is the prophecy concerning the Messiah in Ch. 9.

We continue in Isaiah 9 to find this, that here the grounds of peace are going to be found, a peace past the political in this, that it is founded on the Counsellor, the Mighty God, and it is to be imparted through that same child, noted in Isaiah 7, God with us, the name, of the expansion of whose kingdom there is to be no end (Isaiah 9:7).

Nothing about Galilee!

Nothing of a prophetic nature from Galilee! Only God coming as promised, in the form of a man, as in Ezekiel 34, as in Hosea 13:14, as in Psalm 22,102, to die for sin as a spotless lamb, as in Isaiah 53, in order to give free salvation for ever, as in Isaiah 54 and 51:11: that's all.

What profound ignorance! how readily does a junta, a coterie, a category of power assume what is obvious not to be so, and invent what is dilatory and confused, and make it so, until they die in their power, or rot in their pseudo-regality!

Thus the guards were an arising in the midst of the darkness, and the ignorance of those who challenged Nicodemus was another spark in the dark, in this, that its very blatancy augured the coming of truth with impact, as it did! The priests in other words, these were a good part of the DARKNESS of the people who sat in it, who saw the great light, and the soldiers were one of the many attestations. To call that glaring luminescence darkness, its luminosity unlovely, this was to them inconceivable. They were 100% right, their instincts and intuition, their ears and eyes, the testimony of reality inevacuable. They would disobey orders as if ordered by what they saw. They would act as soldiers of a better regime, and a true Ruler.

B

Fearless Courage, Power and Prayer, Evidentially Attested

If Nicodemus was judicious, Peter and John were bold with that weighed, rational and testimonial courage which personal sight and touch enable. Theirs was no inference; they knew, heard and were part of that blessed resurrection occasion, test, testimonial and reality. Hence as Christ had shown by power, and others by its impact, the presence of the incomparable deity, so now courage, fluency with simplicity, directness and pointed arrows of desire were sped from the apostles'  lips and faces, to speak on and act consistently, filled with the ineluctable evidential reality.

Thus in Acts 4:13, some time after the apostles' healing of the lame man, in Solomon's Porch, a case so bad that he had long been carried to his place of appeal, and his leaping fulfilment of the prediction in Isaiah 35, precisely, and after again, the address seen in Acts 3, which followed - incisive, decisive, declaratory with result immediate for those who would believe: more harassment follows. As to the testimony of truth, of Jesus,  there is a decided don't in the air. The priests, immune to mere results such as these, from the baptism of Christ onward, from the multitudes forward, from the words to the detailed fulfilment of the agony and of the humiliation, and the foretold rejection which they themselves wrought: they had a very sure decision. It was this.

These apostles, for all the good done, nevertheless were a challenge. They must stop.

Thus the power and speech from the Lord were once more set against that of sin in its heartland (cf. Isaiah 1, 59), where the beauty of truth had been polluted with the impudence of tradition that nullified it (Mark 7). They were, we read, these detractors, "greatly disturbed that they taught the people and preached in Jesus the resurrection from the dead, and they laid hands on them , and put them in custody."

Meanwhile, many hearing the words of frank truth and evidential reality, and knowing much of what the three years past had presented, believed (Acts 4:4). FACT and EVIDENCE both from the past and the present, in word and deed, continued an uninterrupted performance; for had not the apostles been anointed with the Holy Spirit as Christ foretold in Luke 24, would be the case, not many days thence!

Thus when asked by what authority or power they performed these deeds - the apostles now being in personal focus, with Christ no longer in Jerusalem, they received not a word, but an address! (Acts 4:8-12). Are we judged for a good deed ? are we entreated to tell how this was done ? that the helpless can walk ? Let us tell you. It was in the NAME of Jesus Christ of Nazareth WHOM YOU CRUCIFIED, and whom God raised from the dead, that this deed of goodness and power was done. THAT (evidence) is WHY this man is able to stand before you, the healed cripple. As to this Christ, this is as appointed in the prophets, for it is HE precisely who is the stone which you builders rejected. YOU are fulfilling prophecy in your very negativity.

That was the tenor of the reply!

It was more than bold; it was mordant; it was more than impactive, it was a verbal arrest!

The next evidence is what the authorities themselves perceived. This kind of boldness, factual, precise, impelling, undeviating, lethal, it was one which suggested one thing: these men had been with Jesus (Acts 4:13). There was something in their certainty, factual insistence, peremptory assurance, undimmed courage and felicity of declaration which reminded the priests of Jesus.Indeed, as in Colossians 1:27, Christ was IN them! by His Spirit.

Then the authorities counselled together. It was useless to deny incorruptible evidence, such as the healed man. What then were they to do ? The question, Christ murdered, the men continuing to assert it, was like a recurring headache. Let's then command they speak no more in this name. Yes, let's adopt this posture. So again the authorities acted.

This rather reminds this author of the time when he was lecturing in a tertiary centre, and commanded to have no MORE on the topic of creation and scientific method in his lessons on the latter topic. Logic had to be forgotten; evidence did not count. The point was precise and particular. Challenge was issued back to the authority: WHY ask me to STOP that for which I have reason and evidence ? WHAT ERROR have I made ? Cite it!

Is not your University in arrears with truth, do you not continually put one approach, and when I put another, one which I challenge you to falsify in any particular which I have put, is this to serve truth to shut me up ?

Such was the tenor of my protest. Yet ALL THIS must stop.

For this reason, I could not return, and said so. Truth is never negotiable. Prejudice is never allowable, as a ruling force.

Thus Peter and John gave us the great example for such cases. In effect they said this: Whether it is right in the sight of God to obey you rather than God, work that one out for yourselves! (cf. Acts 4:19).

It was crisp, challenging. What of GOD could these authorities present, when lie was their only resource, and force their best friend!

We can ONLY speak the things we have SEEN and HEARD (Acts 4:20), continued the valiant pair. After all, it was a 40 year old on whom this miracle of healing had been wrought.

They then proceeded to the power house of prayer, in the Spirit, and indeed as they prayed for boldness in testimony, fearless courage, citing Psalm 2 (vv. 25-26), rehearsing the FACTS of the coming and stature of Christ, seeking the healing power of God and His action in their midst, they found the whole place was shaken. Such a thing is reported in far more recent times, in Andrew Murray and His Message, W. M. Douglas, p. 87. There is no limit to what God may choose to do, and it is just as foolish to try to 'manage' His response, as not to believe He will do so at all! He, He is an artist...

Thus the apostles and the Christian people prayed for boldness, factuality and power, the opposite to the combination so many contemporary exponents present, who prefer harmony on all sides in some 'emerging' church of who knows what calling, and culling, leaving out what is too sure, and including the inclusive.

The broad way (Matthew 7:13), a kind of Broadway of indulgence, imagination and popular appeal,  is always available to the spiritually profligate, the religiously promiscuous, even though the strait, the straitening, the narrow gate is, in Christ's own declaration, assigned as the one to be taken. What then is going to emerge from this delightfully socialistic substitute of what people think for what God says, for sharing and comparing instead of proclamation of what the Bible declares, for a communal consciousness in the area of religion, instead of a preaching in the spiritual arena with the Bible not a source book, but the very authority of God in EVERY particular ? (Matthew 5:17-20, Isaiah 8:20, 34).

Such a smog-filled saloon 'christianity', devolving on man's midget mind, and not on that of the all-wise God,  is assuredly not what God has ordained for the body of Christ; for there one must rebuke, exhort, rebuke with all authority (II Timothy has much on this), and not receive with all meekness the engrafted word of man, but of God who commands, and does not suggest, the way of life, the way of His body the Church as its head, not a resultant of the body, but its very Director!

It does not matter especially much whether some Liberal theologian, or fantasising neologian, or social group is the source of that statuesque and impactive dignity which makes what people feel or find more important than what the text actually says in context of GOD and HIS WORD. The case is relatively indifferent: it is all one, like having cancer of the throat, tongue, or ear. It is one genus.

It is in all such cases not culture and the ideas of flesh, which is required; but it is precisely this which is illicitly presented.

It is all one in the end. Die in ten thousand options, but taking any one, you are still dead.

When ANYTHING takes over from the simple, absolute authority of God, and His word the Bible, then flesh rules, in misrule, and that, it is enough to make a fool of any man, a wanderer of any woman, a chilling debacle of the life of any child. New christs^*3 then are two a penny, clowns, social revolutionaries, impotent weaklings, popularists, carrying crosses about instead of being crucified on them, poetic about resurrections but omitting the act. So does imagination run riot without history (cf. SMR Appendix   C and  D), and with man as the co-author of the word of God, a sort of kindergarten teacher put among the celestial words of God, impenitently penning what they will, plagiarists, propagandists, pollutants.

There are other moorings for the vessels which serve Christ, and brotherly love, than these, more assured, wholly immovable (cf. Isaiah 33:20ff.). Indeed, the second commandment is NEVER to replace the first and greatest, nor is one EVER to imagine that the love of the brethren is shown contrary to loving God and keeping His commandments, as the apostle John imparts (I John 5:2).

The LOVE for Christ is shown by this, that you keep His words (John 14:21ff.). Whereas among men, children and youth, love may be recessive in authority in some affairs, allowing various entreaties and perceptions, perspectives and interchange, yet when it comes to the word of God, WHOEVER treats it and HOWEVER it be conceived, in the end the criterion is clear. KEEP IT, or stop, except in hypocritical terms; set your heart on obedience, or cease talking of love for Christ. This is by no means to expect perfection; but the point is simple. Rebellion is one thing; rule of the word of God is another. Blessed are they who wait for the Lord and in Him,  for His word, which being that of the LORD, is no ornament, but the action module, no imagination but set beyond the tides of time (cf. Proverbs 1; 8:33ff.).

What has been said, seen and heard, that is Christianity; and the One who said it and presented the entire foundation is Christ (John 12:48ff., I Cor. 3:10-11), sent by His Father not as an example merely, but a witness, a worker and the Saviour, who being Lord, but takes His own, which it has always been from the creation, since He created it (Colossians 1:15), as His due. That, not dictatorial dynamic but loving cherishing, is back of His authority. Following Him and His words in His book: this is not to diminish it; but to delight in it. It is to avoid touch-up and touch-down on other planets of misconception. It is to be wise in your own day and generation.

So was and is the testimony of power and authority, as the apostles acted in the power of the name of Jesus in the inception of the Church of Jesus Christ, not of 'latter day saints' but of first day foundations (cf. Romans 16:25ff., I Cor. 2:9ff., 3:10-11, 14:37, John 14:26). The authority of the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ was not an emblem, mantra or mouthing, but a fact of life in those who were inhabited by His Holy Spirit, sent from the Father (John 15:26), and His power was not to manufacture some other name, such as that of the church, disciples or culture, but to sustain His own (Acts 4:11-12).

When the name of God, of the Lord, is discounted, then Christianity moves from being fact to farce, a name of wonder in that Christ is its criterion, to a name of plunder, in that His name is abused as any victim of force. It is faith, and not force which matters; whether it be in the book or the Saviour, as the expression in definitive mode, of God Himself. Leave this and you wander. Leave that and you meander; and if you become strong in disfaith, then you march, a militant for mischief, a rebel like Ahaz. As his answer of disbelief, Isaiah declaimed this:

"Hear now O house of David!
Is it a small thing for you to weary men,
but will you weary my God also!"

But what is it like ? It is like someone falling in love, and then insisting on having plastic surgery on the bride, just before the ceremony; for the time of His return, whose actions and words have made the earth, man and all that is to be (Isaiah 44-46), it is drawing near (cf. Luke 21:24ff.).

Boundless is the power and precision of God who made us able even to conceive of precision; but unbounded, except by this power, is the impudence of man who would remake anything to his pleasure; and having not stopped at God, when he sought to un-make His body, as incarnate in Christ, he proceeds in this quest,  not by ANY means with impunity or immunity, but with an impudence which is woeful, for its end is under penalty and judgment of the truth.

Let us then return to the beginnings and see the evidential power and confidence.

C

Extension of Resurrection Technology in a Different Case, and Persistence with Panache

When therefore the suppression of Peter and John was attempted, it was FACTS that met the persecuting authorities. HOW ELSE could we speak but in those terms! is in effect the expostulation of the apostles, as we have just seen. The next effort to continue the war on Christ, the next suppression order to be noted here is the imprisonment of the apostles as seen in Acts 5. Where words cannot prevail, they try hands.

They 'laid hands on them.' After all, the thing was coming to be a national phenomenon of the first order (Acts 5:1-17). It was time for any tyranny to act, even if a subordinate one, under Rome.

Preaching through Jesus the resurrection was too much for the Sadducees (Acts 5:17), so lacking reason, evidence and revelation alike, they used force. This became a close parallel to the crucifixion of Christ in this regard, that exasperation and frustration mingled with fear on the part of the authorities led to arrest and confinement. With Christ they added death. In Acts 12, we see that death for Peter was held in store; however this did not eventuate, just as in the life of Christ, resurrection did.

Instead, in the earlier case, as we read in Acts 5, an angel of the Lord opened the nocturnal doors, instructing the apostles, a thing of the utmost boldness, men who had just been imprisoned for saying and doing too much for and in and through Jesus. What was this instruction ? It was to DECLARE the words of THIS LIFE. Where ? In Siberia ? not at all, in the TEMPLE!

Thus the testimony of Lazarus raised from the dead, of Christ raised after the 3 days without human intervention at all, as befitted the deity, of healing in the NAME of Christ and boldness and evidential insistence concerning the facts of His life and resurrection, now had this addition. The apostles, such as were imprisoned, were now led out of it with all the facility of the resurrection morn, where the stone of the tomb was rolled away, and an angel sat on it! This power did not act to remove suffering however; it was to remove unbelief, provide testimony, and to bring salvation and show its power ever afresh. Taking up your cross and following Christ, just as the crucifixion itself, it is not a leisure activity!

There is however a measure of restraint still operative (cf. II Thessalonians 2:7). When the authorities again took the apostles, they heard the SILENCE RULE from prominent figure, Gamaliel. He gave advice. If this is of God, he reasoned, you leave it, lest you be found even fighting God. If on the other hand, it is merely some foolish rebellion of man, we have had some of those, and they come to nothing. Therefore leave these men alone! If God uses it, then we are powerless to prevent it; if man is making it, he will be powerless to make it stick.

That then was his advice (Acts 5:35-39).

They agreed like sheep, with Gamaliel; but they beat the apostles anyway, perhaps in order to ensure that it might fail in any case, through bruising and fear, and so hasten things. Justice did not seem to occur to them, nor the experimental approach. Prejudice propounded their course, and naivety their thinking. Restraint gave some pause; but no more.

The apostles however, their work not being of men, but sent of God, to continue (Luke 1:1ff.) the now completed sacrificial work of Christ (Hebrews 9-10), as part of His body, did not pause. They continued; and so in a little while the unruly King Herod, seeking to ingratiate himself with the people, had James killed and Peter put in prison. The business of escape from or through death (as the case might be) was becoming virtually habitual by this time, as if the smile of divine irony were showing through the gloomy clouds of human violence.

Thus in Acts 12 we find these last things, and in particular, that the clever Herod, not believing and not wanting to lose a trick in the midst of such losses as had already occurred, put Peter not merely in prison, not merely with a guard, but with what appear to have been 16 soldiers to keep him company. These guards no doubt were not without knowledge of the dangers of letting prisoners escape in Roman law, nor were those attempting to guard Christ. God however is not impressed by human numbers - a fact David needed to note rather more carefully! (cf. I Chronicles 21).

However, just as Christ left the tomb, adding His own death to the list of healings, power and clear signals from God, so an angel brought Peter out AGAIN, his chains falling off. The things of this world are like chains. Beautiful they may often be; majestic from the hand of their Creator, they often appear: but when they are trusted in or relied on, they are like chains which God, breaking, puts aside so that one can live and work and think or write or perform works in His power.

It is noteworthy in Acts 12 to see how many and how comprehensive were the liberating commands of the angel. Be quick! Gird yourself! Put on your sandals! Put on your garment and follow me. Nothing was left to guesswork or mere surmising. The rescue authority was that of the word of God, for the word and the work of God come from the same source, and even in escapes, His word rules.

The tenderness of the Lord's patience and mercy, however, appears quite clearly in the midst of such works of power. Thus, we see the strenuously praying disciples, when Peter reaches their door, now free and knocking! How do they respond to the report that the object of their prayer, imprisoned Peter, is free and at their very door ? It was like this:  thinking the servant girl who answered the door MAD, because she asserted what in fact  meant that their prayer was answered, they were slow ...  before believing because seeing, the fact of Peter's release!

This is that great Shepherd. Powerful, prevenient, precise and detailed, yet tender and gracious, discerning and not merely directive. THIS is that very Shepherd who in Ezekiel 34, God Almighty in His own Being, declared and foretold that He would come with touch and concern, effort and application to deliver the misused sheep under false prophets; and now, He is here! His Spirit continues until His return.

The evidence continually attested the facts, irrevocable, irretrievable in result, inexorable in pattern, sustained in principle, never failing because He who never fails was back of it. It is ever so easy to describe the powerful results of an experiment set up to prove something, when they work. It is only when they fail that those infatuated with some false theory pirouette with pique.

*1 A further treatment of these words appears in the Extension at the end of the above text. It moreover extends the account of the confrontation of divine power with political power, and divine truth versus obfuscation by priests, so that the persistent consistency, not void of suffering but void of error, continues to attest the facts on every side.

*2

 
  In fact, since He was AND IS the Messiah, such horrors were to come not only from Hitler, but for centuries before in Europe, and indeed Russia in its pogroms, through the whole nauseating affliction of pious pretenders, grabbing from the Jews, while asserting evils of them.

It is God who afflicts, and when man makes himself mentor, he suffers, as did Europe - and no less Russia,  in its two horrendous wars, with all that preceded these, and in her case in between them as well! How did Europe suffer, even she who in so many nations for so long had so harassed, mocked and derided a fallen people, who however have future hope for many of them (as in Micah 7! cf. Jeremiah 30:16-17 and The Biblical Workman Ch. 1), and there is no small national action as well!

It was to come, and in no small degree, is already fulfilled since 1948, both the restoration, the high-impact astounding wars (as in Zechariah 12), stupendous in their disproportion and amazing in victory against such organised and long-standing nations, and on the other hand, the continuing tension regarding Israel,  because though God has been faithful in restoring them (cf. Ezekiel 36:22 cf. SMR Appendix A), they have not as a nation yet been faithful in blessing Him who came in the name of the Lord! The conditions continue to apply.

God has His own points to make (Ezekiel 37:25-28, 38-39), and will of course duly make them. Truth is not dispensable. See for the preliminary works which the end merely consummates, in the EXTENSION above.

*3

See Deity and Design ... Ch. 7 as marked.

Israel My Glory, a magazine which often has useful articles, though marred by dispensationalistic tendencies (cf. Bay of Retractable Islands ... Ch. 19, as marked) makes certain points of interest in its September/October 2007 issue, pp. 26ff..

It indicates certain developments in church deviationism, affecting many, giving a fine article on the trend into the fashioning of  programmatic churches, followed by their development into emerging churches. Thus it is construed that there was a trend at one time to make the sermons a convenient, if rather short, summary action along with many other social and church activities, as an increasingly one stop 'shop' for such aspects of life. This sort of 'church' was a social centrepiece, embracive, displacive (a word that is needed - put  instead, if you will, tending to embrace as much as to displace). The Bible was inferentially downgraded, man upgraded in the testimony that held sway.

This was followed by the concept of the emerging church, in which groups held sway, with opinions a centrepiece and colloquy, conversation and findings the way. This has of course been ideal for new forms of deviation from the Bible, and tends to be based on not having it as doctrinal basis, rather  making  a community a ruler, if indirectly. The Bible of course has its ASSIGNED place, and is used rather as the royal coach might be used by royalty in Britain. It has its place, makes its point and has a splendid traditional feeling.

A few choice words about not worshipping the Bible might suffice to bring on a total freedom to mix man and God, not in incarnation but in incineration of the authority of the Incarnate Christ. It can even become a matter of parading a church AS the christ, or indeed, Church as the christ.

Naturally, it may be manipulated even as it tries to manipulate, or control, and so in terms of human rudders, divine words, social diction and group management you have a yielding sort of elastic which is ideal for the deposition of the foot of the coming prince, the prince of this world, who wants as much exposure of all things to each other as convenient, while in the end, he makes the foothills of psychology, sociology and agreeableness about someone else's business (the Lord, whose word is in view), a mere preparation for the impact of the self-revealing god whom he assumes himself to be (II Thessalonians 2). Unmoor the boat, and since the thing can float, watch the tides; and for that matter, currents of desire.

Thus does man prepare in multitudes of ways, in many religions, true or false, in the latter by cunning extension, in the former, that of the Bible, by equally foxy disestablishment of objective truth through the apparent compliment of group findings according to the mind of whoever and whatever speaks its mind as it will.