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SECTION  12

The marvel that is Israel, the directives of God, the machinations of men,
the speech of Obama, the synthetic syncretism, the veiled belligerence, the valid response, the dream that fasts and the truth which overwhelms:

these figure among the themes in this Section.

God is exceedingly active as His word shows; but man is exceptionally remiss,

not even deigning to find the redemption already paid for,

but talking like a fog horn,

about war to be, annihilation to come,
about reduction of the tiny State of Israel,

by international liposuction, skilfully to be applied,

though she is spare enough already,

about the removal of wrinkles by skin grafts,

which require other skin territories to be reduced.

Altogether there is such a welter of woe in the concoctions of man,

as history makes its final sprint efforts before the return of the Lord
(Acts 1:7ff., II Thessalonians 1, Matthew 24:32-51),

that it is like watching old men do a cross country race,

with all the fanfare that might attend an athletic world championship race.

 

As for this world and its woeful ways and vaunting taunting,

it has lost already (John 14:30ff., John 3:16-19,36),

and the results are not far now from pronouncement.

To be sure evils arise to seek to overcome the invincible,

the God of power, of peace and glory

with wars as senseless as extravagant;

but the weakness of man before his own

spiritual, physical and psychological bullying,

is a farce of force, for all the blood it loves to shed, to make the play more realistic.

The curtains that come do but veil the next act
which includes judgments one laments
to see enacted,

but which come where divine mercy is mutilated

by oversight or rebellion:

for the rebelliousness in the face of favour,

the folly in the face of wisdom,

the futility in the face of a grand utility,

and the rejection of a reality of which Israel merely reminds,

and from which history neither can nor will be divorced.

 

The Chapters below are taken from:

The Unsearchable Riches of Jesus Christ
and the Aggregating Debt of Dismissal

Chs.  1   ,    2,    3,  4 and  5

                                         (Current at the time of publication)

 

Contents Page for this Volume 

CHAPTER ONE

HISTORY THAT RECITES REVELATION

BY FOLLOWING IT

so that we can forget ?

or lest we forget!

Part I

Transplanting into Ashes, No Growth Allowed ?

and the Comparison with Biblical Truth

Forget it, if it is not recent. Forget history. Forget the fact, simply forget it, that over three quarters of the Palestine granted by international determination for Israel, the people who were to make their homeland in that country, has ALREADY been granted to a largely Palestinian people.

Forget likewise that in the beginning, it was declared that this East of Jordan area which had been set aside, was NOT INTENDED to be a State, but a sort of reservoir for Palestinians who were in need of an area, in view of the fact that Israel was now being installed in the West. Little was the bit left to Israel, but in practical terms, Britain felt the need of an  Arab surplus place, and it so appointed. Thus, what became Jordan was it, perhaps understandable, except that it was FOR Palestinians, a massive three quarters or so of the entire place. If this were a four bedroom house, in which other peoples with their cultures and ways were not to be oppressed, but treated reasonably (implying of course that Israel was to have the whole place, for otherwise, why is it limited to this sort of graciousness!), then three of them were for Palestinians who would need a place in order to BE.

Three-quarters of Palestine is the new donation^*1. A start ? Yes, it was certainly that, like have a start of 5 metres in a hundred metre race. Granted ? yes, by the Umpire. What more could they gain ? Joking ? Not really.

That, then, pre-empted a vast area of Palestine already, unilaterally wrought by Britain. Then the idea of exterminating Israel, like blow-flies in the kitchen, became incendiary (as if to do it with a blow torch, which of course, as a method is sure to cause damage in the place, which it has done ever since). So a number of nations decided to pick on the scraps from Auschwitz and such other sites as Obama is now offering to show to Ahmadinejad (who prefers to blink or wink, it would seem, rather than think about what happened to the Jews in World War II). What sites ? why those where some 6 millions Jews and their fortunes were physically exterminated - except that as far as the fortunes were concerned, they were merely terminated as to their former owners.

The multi-national invasion forces that then blasted little, residual Israel in 1948,  did not obliterate, after all, a people who were NOT EVEN ONE NATION at the time, but a sprinkling in a land to which Great Britain (surely never smaller) handed the keys to another party, the Arabs, as they left. With such advantages (like have a team of 1000 players against one with 50, the former also controlling the lights and the real  estate), Israel did not fail and it was for the simplest of reasons. Indeed, it made itself into a team ONLY during the war: as if a team were just some people around the grounds, who had to assemble, organise for the war itself and fight as one unit, all while the others, all dressed and rehearsed, went on playing in the interim.  To be sure there were some organisations within the land, but as this war commenced, there was no STATE of Israel to withstand this onslaught, one bent on burying, or better still, drowning Israel or whatever it would be while the fight went on.

Hitler would have been impressed with the anti-Jewish oratory and inclination, intention and sheer utter use of deadly force for their deletion. If he had been able, he might have sent a panzer division or two, or some Stukas along.

Hitler Mark II was now enrolled and active.

He failed, that is his shadow failed, just as his body did, in a bunker in Berlin it seems, while his  vast  millions of forces, despite a deadly and controlled ferocity, did not manage to remove the Jews despite the most horrific of intense deletive dynamics one could imagine!

Hitler Mark I and the Shadow Hitler,  Mark II, both failed. In fact, the ragtag army of Jews won a few things. First of all, declaring themselves a State in May 1948, they achieved a potential site far better than the treacherous UN had offered (and which the Arab-Palestinian side - that is the part which did not, overall,  take up not only what was to be called the Jordan site, but much more of the Western area from Jordan, still considered too little!).  What! it was too little to have Jerusalem  an international city ? to have Jews  limited to bits and pieces of land in Palestine, oddments of real estate, with Jordan already out with a new nation's name, helping it to hide the reality of this three-quarter donation ?

This, even this, it was too little, AFTER most of Palestine had already been both sequestered and sequestrated for Arabs ? What other than the Hiterlesque blitzkreig on the Jews, extermination, could then be in mind ? They must GO, for they were the CATASTROPHE in BEING THERE.

Not very good really.

So that had another 'go', attempt at an entente that was anything but cordiale! In 1967, they would choke Israel in maritime manner. It did not work too well, for the same reason as in 1948. In fact, the Egyptian Air Force lost a pile of planes on the ground. Russian tanks (courtesy of Egyptian workers) were hit by the Israeli Air Force, therefore, when they piled in and set off to take over from the Jewish rump which had taken half of Jerusalem and some parts of Palestine when refusing to be exterminated, according to plan. Cheek of them! taking over a small section of the Palestine, in which was to be their homeland. Obviously, pushed into the sea, that was the Colonel Nasser approach. That's what THEY needed! Nasser lost.

Israel thus regained the rest of the area which Jordan had grabbed in the 1948 war, that is what is now called the West Bank, disgorging this addition to the vast estates already given to that side of things. Accordingly,  this 1967 intended incursion into the residual Jewish area, after the East was eaten up by what would be the fatherland for Palestinians, Jordan, did not remove Israel from nationhood. In 1948, the Jordan grab had made Israel  more slender still, and meant that in addition to losing most of the homeland provided, they also  lost some on the far or West Bank (from  the point of view of the land made available for Palestinians on the East), and were narrowed in their take, towards the  Mediterranean. Now this part of the residual area, the West, was back with them. No more was there the take of three quarters to be augmented by still more.

In this way, they put up with Hitler Mark III has they had done with the other marks. People then were astonished at this triumph, but it had the same reason for it, as before in 1948. God is very reliable, and He had, as He has affirmed repeatedly, certain commitments.

Time went on and so did the desire to deprive and deplete and perhaps annihilate Israel. Again, it is not really so very nice. Of course, Jordan DID make itself available for Palestianians as citizens, at one time, but since they insisted on attacking Israel instead of getting on with their sector, and war arose in the land, they were not so very welcome. When you lob bombs from the kitchen window of your host, he is often, one would think, unwilling to regard you well as ... guests. In this case, of course, it was properly there place in the three-quarters gift. Yet in this case, reason is never apparently thought of as relevant. It is desire and passion which has clout when it comes to the negativities surrounding Israel in its homeland. This complicates for the people or partisans, such as the Madrid Quartet, whom one might almost think, from their behaviour, to think they own and so created the place. Actually, the Being who did this, is called God, and His words indicate His will.

That, it is not an international commission but a divine communication. Ignored, by united nations, some Arab, some other for their various purposes, this constitutes not a breach of international code but of divine declaration. It is rather silly really, for you pay in the end, for inventing as if reality, what is merely your own will. What else ? Proverbs 1 is very eloquent on this, as is Ecclesiastes 11:9-10. However, this continual alienation is predicted, as is the result (as in Micah 7, Deuteronomy 38-39ff., Isaiah 59,66), and it is useless to blame God who makes both His will and His method so very clear, even decisively and dramatically so. There are always those, be they individuals or nations or groups of nations, who refuse to follow. Egypt showed in a little time, the result: they wallow. Recall the Exodus ?

Time once more moved on. In 1973, Hitler Mark IV, another shadow dressed in military uniform still,  came on scene. On the Holy Day (par excellence) for Israel,  the cream of conflicting forces descended like the Assyrian of old who also lusted for Jerusalem in the days of King Hezekiah of Judah; and the result was not very dissimilar. You read of the Assyrian case, courtesy of Sennacherib the initial action, in Isaiah 36-37, both the taunts and the temple, the prophet and the proclamation, and with all that - the decimation of the forces of Assyria (37:36-38) - this time by means directly divinely ordered.

Let us return however to the 1973 case.

On came the blitzkreig (the Jews did begin it in 1967, but were then being subjected to maritime methods of extinction which they did not intend to allow completely to choke them - people often do that, object to being choked, for after all, it is not very nice at all.)

Now in 1973, it was a direct assault. They were for once, not  well prepared, and it seems, tricked, surprised. Their existence (unlike that of the invading Arab forces) was under threat. Lose this war and Hitler Mark IV would grin, positively grin, and Allah - an invention of Muhammad some 600 years after Jesus Christ,  complete with an imaginary version of 'Jesus', another one,  non-redeeming, non-deity with a questionable death, he appeared confused in contradictions on this point^*1A- would be pleased. Such appeared the hope.

Jihad in his name, that was the thing! Off they set with such hopes.  Make it holy and go for it! For what ? Why submission as the name of the religion implies, and as had been practised for centuries in assault on Europe! The Jews must submit to more suitable placement, in this case, such as the sea.

Jewish reserves were called up. The USA on this occasion was stirred as it seems rather unlikely to be stirred now. A circuit of transport planes circled about with supplies; Jewish ingenuity used them with address, and the client of the USSR suffered, being driven back with the rest, and to add to the worries of an Allah evidencing his self to be anything but almighty, the invading army from Egypt was pushed back beyond the Suez Canal and encircled for good measure. By whom ? Why by little Goliath, and yet by the Lord in His predicted grace, acting!

From Intelligence Digest, it appeared that a nuclear alert went out, USSR considered paratroopers, Nixon was not standing at ease. Then it settled down. Israel dis-encircled the trounced army, it divested it from its encircling arms, and began to return. It had defended Jerusalem, amongst other things such as its national existence and physiological life (Hitler I, II, III and IV were not intensely keen on this), and it retained the key. What key ?

Key ? Why of course the one God had put in its hand. Which god ? There is one God, as has been explained repeatedly (cf. SMR, Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 13, Swift Witness Ch. 6), and He does as He pleases; and says what He pleases, and then does it. You can't help noticing that if you read two books.

But which are these two ? They are called history, and the Bible. They are a pair. The second is first, and it says, like a lab note book for students in the University, what is supposed to be going to happen; and the first, it is the lab results, in which you record what in fact DID happen. In a well-run academic institution, they are normatively the same. In God's created world, they are always the same. Nothing else has this advantage. It is called truth. The God of the Bible is shown in the lab of history to be Almighty. It is no use moaning about it , or inventing lab exercise books which don't get it right. You can use only the one which works, in any place where truth matters. It is the one with the words that work, that is needful.

The rest has only one place: the rubbish tin. Let us be practical (cf. SMR Chs.   8 -  9), and not waste time and wars for nothing, desecrating the earth with a futile blood, in honour of rebellion against the Maker of man and beast, stage and setting alike.

The Bible has declared as shown in the above Chapters and multiply elsewhere on this site, what was to be, both broadly and in myriads of particulars. In our present interest, much is to be found  in such sites Zechariah 12-14, Isaiah 48-55, Deuteronomy 30-32, Leviticus 26, Matthew 24, Luke 21,for example. Today, the procession and progress in retro-rockets, or drift if you like, in terms of where you would expect 'progress' to be, this is the topic. We are tracing something of their trajectories, the dynamics of human life on this planet, and ... change.

In one phase, currently capturing our attention, there is action on the part of those who desired the deletion of Israel. Among these, are such as the most declarative President of Iran who is busily getting his nation nearer and nearer to atomic competence to make bigger holes and more important assaults if you consider only the vaunting taunting against Israel and its existence, and the state of the case in his country, atomically. Presumably the power is for a purpose, and if it is peaceful, then he is not being very inventive, given his STATED INTENTION! - that's all.

The 'West Bank' - the bit Jordan snatched, pinched, grabbed, attained, took over - use what language you will, it got it unilaterally in 1948, this being regained by Israel in 1967, leaves that nation no longer so punctured. That is, currently Israel is not entirely devoid of what is close to being the historic land of Israel and Judah, a homish sort of thing for a homeland such as was GRANTED to Israel in Palestine.

This bit of land, this intimately involved historic segment of Israel, it has became a new focus.  A style of language was invented to make it be 'occupied territory' rather than a section of West-Bank to Mediterranean Israeli RUMP, left after the Eastern area of Palestine had been  detached for PALESTINIAN reserve^*2. The desire then was that the piratical plunder of Jordan should be respected multi-laterally, even though its grab was unilateral, and the myth that it was in some sense an intrusion by Israel was manufactured in the areas where such things are made.

In Punch magazine, once a massive and sobering place of intensive humour, they had a delightful skit on the Aberdeen Joke Factory. Here you saw in a series of cartoons, the dour Scot factory workers coming to punch in their notification of presence into the machines showing their drab entry to the joint - it had a robustly humorous air in contrasting the humour and the humourless, the result and the agents!  Then in little rooms, there were those reading the jokes, and those listening. The solemn faces of the auditors spoke volumes. Eventually, tired after a hard day's speaking and listening to this humour-stuff, they were seen trudging out of the laborious premises, to participate in the weary home-going of workers.

So here, there is labour, work, hard work, to make up the myth, the grimly uproarious myth that the West Bank is in some legitimate sense ARAB territory, and naughty Jews have insisted on having some sort of real relationship with it, in despite to the sanctified Arab presence, which not having been gained in a series of actions by a series of nations, is now to be gained by a series of actions by another series of nations, who extracting it, will give most of it to the nations who failed to get it, while these seeking to exterminate one little tot of a nation, called Israel.

This myth is made the more mirthful in this. Israel did not envisage with joy the prospect of  being choked to death on land, as they had been in train to being at sea, and not having enough room to act before being cut militarily into two sections in their erstwhile homeland in which they were not to be oppressive to the existing inhabitants, who had been given the territory to become East-Bank Jordan for their needs. Hence, in a manner apparently almost unforgivable, the place had the effrontery, the gall to seek to extract its head, first from the maritime noose, and then from the land one, and even to give its neck plenty of room while it healed! Dashed awful behaviour, don't you think!

It is sad that so much suffering is caused by such myths, when the original plans and provisions have so often and so shamelessly been rejected by those who from 1947 onwards - with the UN giving so much so rejected by the Arab and Islamic forces, even as a GIFT! have sought ruin for Israel, at least.

Jerusalem, the capital which Israel held for millenia, the capital of no other nation, which it took back for its homey homeland, this too became occupied. Occupied ? Yes by Israel. It dared ... to occupy its capital in its homeland. Well, it came to be its own while it was not being annihilated.

Israel took it in two stages as the Bible has indicated would occur (Zechariah 14, Luke 21:24), and while this nation was belligerently - if you can call it belligerent to take action to prevent annihilation -seeking to live, this little city fell to be its very own. In 1967, it had it all (quite properly allowing for the feelings of others, even letting the Mosque stay on the old site of Jerusalem). In 1980, some 29 years ago, it officially declared in the Knesset, that this was its Capital. It is its eternal Capital, it has been declared quite often, since that time.

That is, as Christ clearly indicated,  the note that strikes an end to the era of the Gentiles, and you see that in the mundane ruins coming ever closer^*2A to the ambitious resolvers of difficulties and disposers of the earth.

It is not quite clear why the occupation of the famous, historic and unique Capital of Israel, so used by no other nation, and long used in the most indelible history by Israel, should be regarded as an Occupied Territory, in part or in whole, when it is the most intimate thing conceivable in the way of homeland for the Jews in Palestine^*3. However, this joke has been created, and the pity of it is this, that it is being pursued in deadly earnest, as if the factory in Aberdeen, transplanted, were getting a little beyond itself! imagining that imagination with a little lustre of wit, was reality!

Then the Obama adminstration got on board. We learn that they will mightily defend Israel's right to exist. Not only do they wish it to exist, think it only right that it should exist, but they are even committed to its existence^*4. However, this is not to say that we are to get too intensely practical about things. It is the myth that counts. Here, it is to see that SOMEONE cares. It does not care enough, however, to ALLOW Israel to have natural growth in this regained territory in its homeland in Palestine, in sites already built. That is rather limited and limiting. Perhaps the Indians should have told New York that further growth was disallowed, and the while place had been theirs. White men had not owned it at all, they might continue. They themselves had some sort of divine right, having got into the vicinity in general first, to own all of it all always, as in the aboriginal concept in Australia, to some extent.

But no! myths are stubborn things. Once created, their latent humour can be persistent, like an infection. So the micro-management of Israeli cities in the most intimate part of the homeland site, the biblical historic field,  is to be regulated to an unnatural harshness. Not only is this so, but the whole can be viewed as an international site for sovereignty, the land of the United Nations, or of the Madrid Quartet, being leased out to Israel, not granted as originally stated as a site for the homeland.

This is new. It is novel. Moreover, much of this land must join the three quarters already given to the Arabs. The reason for this is part of the joke. If you lose a lot, lose more, for the creditors push hard! Justice is the joke, steadiness of purpose is being parodied by its opposite, all being intoned in solemnity by the Obama administration.

Yes, maybe Jerusalem should in part be grabbed for Palestinians too, so that they can add to their multiple capitals available for their (chief) religion, in the many surrounding Moslem or largely Moslem lands, a new one/.

Yes why not, have one never so used before, with no historical ground as a CAPITAL, this one, and so complete the scoop. Which scoop ? Why the one which gave them the lion's share of the land for the homeland for Israel, in 1920, and now wants to regard large parts of the little residue in some sense 'theirs'. "It's mine I tell you!" seems to be the reason, or a jihad may declare it so, or even Allah may be deemed to do so. But in fact, this is not so. It is an international area of conflict, in which Arab or Moslem nations are now joined by an International  Assemblage of Nations, to which the USA is becoming more and more an  ardent supporter, which is seeking to further dismember the house, so that not three of the four bedrooms, suffice, but the lounge room and kitchen complex must be shared as well. Evacuation is the name of the game; donation was the name of the work: the thing has changed as did the house prices in many parts of the USA recently.

This ethical disaster concerning Israel, it is one which ignores one important fact. It is not a question of how much oil, power, danger, peril of war and unrest, problem for oil distribution and pricing (Bevin of England^*5 was very explicit about this motive and motif), of how much peace you can hope for when a few miserable millions of Jews are manhandled, or brusquely contained  in the interest of appeasing or hoping to appease potentially hundreds of millions of Moslems, and a potentially invasive cluster of nearby nations adverse to Israel's existence. That is beside the point. Seeking to survive is a work of those already dead. It is what you are alive for, it is this that matters. Routinely, as we saw so well illustrated in  Chs.   8 and 9 of  Track of Truth, Meadows of Mercy and Peace of Pardon,  survival as an aim is like worshipping a flame, while leaning over it. It burns, as it might well.

Have your productive oil, appease your potentially infuriated suppliers, seek to remove the risk of bombs which given for  religious reasons might conceivably destroy an entire civilisation, talk religions as if they were playing cards in a game of Bridge, to be used for the purpose of winning the game, and presto! you get what is coming to you. It may take a little while: as they say,

Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

Enjoy the moment.  Rescue some more months before the judgment!

This, or even its ground plan whatever the motive, it is short-sighted; for justice WILL OUT. In this world, there are multiple scenarios being played, and among them is the demonstration aspect. Things are often given enough rope before it is apparent that they are hanging themselves; and sometimes they swing about on them like lunatic apes, claiming 'victory'. But the sordid once is the sordid again, and truth though at times lying stricken in the streets (as in Isaiah 59 in its prelude to the coming the Lord in judgment, of the Redeemer 59:20), has the last word.

That is what makes human life, a matter not the least to the point, so meaningful. Love has meaning; justice has meaning; sincerity of purpose has meaning, and truth while you are at it, this too has meaning. Mercy may distance judgment; patience may allow slowness; peace may disguise evil: but in the end, truth will out. It is not that it will be put out, like the cat at night, for convenience; though this is certainly normative on this earth, when certain interests are aroused. It will put out what it is, and judgment will be accordingly (Romans 2:1ff.). If in this earth of multiple procedures and purposes, illustrating evil and blessing good, allowing virtual books to be written for the demonstration of what is wrong and the remonstration of what is right, if here justice has sometimes the most profound, not to say ironic impacts (Psalm 50:21-23), then tremble for those unrepentant, whose sin is uncovered before heaven, when the time comes.

What it means is to be found in  three major items. One ? it is this. Judgment comes at first in measure on this earth, and at last without measure from heaven, when the suffering Saviour takes the second Chapter of His Mission and judges (Acts 17:31).

One of the things in the course of these end-time events is seen in Micah 7. The Lord knows how to abase the proud and to deal with the merciless mighty. He always did (cf. Isaiah 37-38, Obadiah, Ezekiel 29-32). He often shows it, and in the Bible, Edom, Assyria, Babylon, Tyre and Nineveh are prime examples (cf. The Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet Ch. 4).

The second is the truth, according to which in the end, judgment will occur. Clamant claims to have an international control of what God has appointed for a purpose including the existence of Israel, the use of Judah with its Jerusalem for the death of the Messiah and His resurrection,  and the assignment of the land,  despite a foretold exile for sin, to Israel: these exist. But so does the claim of the MAKER of the land. They manifestly do not agree, not in the slightest.

It will be fulfilled, and foolish will seem all this talk about expropriation of Israel from more and more of its minimum residue of Palestine. Is this to be an Obama region, a Madrid Quartet propaganda pasture ? Its deployment for international enjoyment  seems to start rather recently in thought, as the criterion. The latest thrust seems to want to follow the process of appeasing Islamic Arabs and friends by continually proceeding on the line of taking some more of Israel than before was taken, taking it from the spoils of victory, gained in the midst of wars of many nations directed to annihilating the State, and giving it successively to Arabs. Talk, seize verbally some more, ignore the violation of conditions, ignore the increments of danger, then insist on seizing it by diplomatic force, or threats or the like.

In this way, the Islamic billion can be reinforced by the international 'community', whatever that may be supposed to be, if not a rapacious seizure group, bent on a plan of their own. If it is not this time for total settlement, it is for a settlement of plans which give total international control, always siding with what offends anyone not Israel, and keeping Israel alive in intensive care by international controls. As to these, their vitality was seen when the UN forces collapsing, departed from the way of the terrible Colonel Nasser, in the war of 1973. Words! they come like migrating birds in this affair, no sooner landed than arising for other realms, forgetful of their pleasant stay, except in this, to use those pastures soon once more.

Obama is bringing the USA into extreme danger, and this, far beyond any danger he poses in his limited, short-sighted and unjust approach, his appeasement, his diplomatic blindness, towards Israel. GOD will look after them. THAT is why they won the earlier wars. They still have to be chastened, it is true, since the nation which, together with ROME, as the centre of the Roman Empire, which was guilty of the crucifixion of this world's only Messiah, has yet to repent, though in large measure this is to come^*6. Yet they are not forgotten by God, whose faithfulness is so profound that the depths of the sea seem shallow by comparison, the heights of the stars but a tent, and the splendour of the sun's incandescence, but dim warmth.

             And performs the counsel of His messengers..."

At that time, it was for the rebuilding of Jerusalem AFTER the Isaianic prophecy of its destruction was fulfilled. Since then, it has been destroyed again as Christ foretold (Matthew 24:1ff.), and restored to Israel as equally biblically indicated would be the case (Luke 21:24ff., Ezekiel 36ff.), this being near to the royal return of Jesus Christ as in Zechariah 12-14. That God does not forget Israel, just as the nations do not forget to persecute her whether with fire or oily words, leading to deprivation, is shown in Ezekiel 36:22 and the sequences in the prophecy. That God does not forget His own plan that Christ should there rule before this world goes, is also no less sure (as in Micah 4, Revelation 20, Isaiah 11, 72).

There is an order to things. God is behind it; and disorder as the penalty of distrust, disbelief, rejection of redemption, that is part of the penalty of being innovative about His will, word, plans and being, as is the Obama speech. Nor is his the first such; nor will it be the last. That too is sure as seen in II Thessalonians 2.

Let us here hasten to add this. The THIRD of the three things just noted, the justice and the truth, is the mercy of God. In Ezekiel 36-39 we see much of the truth and justice; but it is in Ezekiel 33:11 that we see that all this froth and wrath of man, which does not serve the glory of God, is not the end in itself. It is only when it is in entire recalcitrance and obstinacy made the milieu, the mode of life, the state of the case, with God not taken AT HIS WORD, redemption not seen as indispensable, His mercy not taken where it may be found, when He is treated as if slow to learn and needing to know what goes with this earth, this world, that it is missed. But it remains available for men and for nations, for women and for children, where it may be found.

Thus Isaiah says this:

             And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it...' "

It is HIS word which is sure, true, seven times refined (Psalm 12), enduring for ever (I Peter 1), and wise is the one who follows it, not prescribing what is acceptable, as if Obama gives what all must accept, and is not too bothered about even divergencies such as may 'occur' from the religious roadmap, whether in  Christ or plans or programs or intentions on the part of the God of creation,  redemption and judgment,  whose word is His own, whose mind is His own, and whose will. It is He who is not dependent on man to dismiss most of what He says in the interests of a few phrases! That is what in effect Obama has been doing in prescribing that all worship 'GOD' from these various emplacements of religion, while he hammers a few notes which he deems a good thing and imagines to be held in common, on grounds not at all obvious, even at that: and this, as he proceeds towards a synthetic syncretism, on such a basis, which in turn is so slender, even if it were true in what it does contain,  that it makes the waist of a wasp seem elephantine by comparison!

The enlistment of the USA so obtrusively in the Israeli Strip Night Club, a work of darkness, is a tragedy for that great nation. It has been moving in that direction in the Clinton-Bush^*7 area, but now the belligerence and intolerance is becoming categorical, and without any apparent relaxation such as Israel and some in the USA claim as a diplomatically secret AGREEMENT with the Bush administration. That, for example, was to allow natural growth in Israeli towns in the West Bank. Whether or not such an agreement was the case, it is being claimed to be so, by numbers of those involved.

At all events, according to the rigors of Secretary of State, Clinton and now Obama, it must all stop, expansion, extension, growth and all in the West Bank. Abort growth. Consort with entire containment. Not pleasing was this to Sharon in his day, who asked this, of such an enclosing, no-growth situation: Must the children be aborted so that the cities may live in their bounds! Wikepedia has this on the topic:

 

On May 12, 2003 it was reported that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had rejected Israel's main road map requirement, a settlement freeze, as "impossible" due to the need for settlers to build new houses and start families. Ariel Sharon asked then US Secretary of State Colin Powell "What do you want, for a pregnant woman to have an abortion just because she is a settler?".^[2]

This proviso, it seems, on any natural growth, it is to go. Such is the edict from the Secretary of State of a nation named the USA, and such is the determination despite the breaches of the Road Map, so numerous as to constitute an abortion of any agreement, declared by the President of that land.

Israel is a STRIPPING STATE and must earn its keep, and the warrant for its existence, by being stripped of any pretence of going back to a homeland with which it had strong historical ground for having for itself ^*2 . it is to exist on sufferance in a nominality which is to do justice to the calamity which for many is the real problem. Existence is the victory; subjugation is the cost. Try it on London, historic capital of Britain. It is possibly in view for Jerusalem, to be divided up among the throng in the granted homeland (like the East End for YOU, and the West End for YOU!).

Thus, using diplomatic blindness, the enemies of Israel can strip it till the lustful eyes bulge, and leave it so defenceless because of narrowness of territory and ever new areas for military blasting or the threat of it, that it CANNOT exist except by international accord. What THAT means is already so clear that even the blind might be esteemed capable of discerning it, if not by sight, then at least by hearing the shouting, KILL, KILL! and REDUCE! and BE DELETED!

God, He has other ideas (cf. Galloping Events Ch. 4). The Jewish homeland is not just, as declared ^*2 , given in view of a strong historical association, nor at the whim of nations, or in gratitude for service to the British Empire, via Dr Chaim Weizmann^*8. 

It is an appointment (like one with your doctor). It is accorded by authority not of one who makes you merely better, but makes you! He wanted it that way. Israel has been a profound disappointment in many ways, but He knew it was coming (Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 32). On the other hand, HE is never a disappointment. If you know Him, you know that. Thus to the fading people, persecuted by this world, and with the heavens like brass above them as God foretold for their disagreeable behaviour (Deuteronomy 28:23), even mocking Him whom they supposedly adored, when it came to the criterion in Christ, and before that, as you see in Malachi, and in Isaiah 1, in different ways: even to these,  HE remains faithful (cf. Ezekiel 36:22). HE would (and He did) bring them back.

Like scattered dry bones they were (as in Ezekiel 37, leading on to the rule of the Redeemer), they were to be brought back from the nations, and they have been so brought. Like skeletons they were now in place, but needing the life from God. That is their present position. Like vivified skeletons - that was the depiction in Ezekiel 37 -  nationally, they will be inhabited by the Spirit of God, or a large proportion of them, and find anew in the crucified Christ a ground real enough, for their repentance (Zechariah 12). In the meantime, they are constrained on sides both divine and human.

But God has it all explained: HERE is mercy for those many who will receive it, on the same basis as in Isaiah 49-55, as the Gentiles - 49:6. EVENTUALLY, however, judgment comes where mercy to the end is manhandled, God is muted or disputed, and His word and way is not taken to heart. It comes to the nations (Micah 7) who need it; though some will rejoice with the outcome for Israel. God handles both sides. All in its time, it comes, it happens, even when there never was^*9, as Ben-Gurion rightly insisted such a nation as they. That is simple: it is because there never was such a type of relationship with the Lord, except by their theocratic nation in its Old Covenant, from which it did not merge into the fulfilment in the New.

Repentance on the part of all from HANDLING God's business with man's discordant and presumptuous hands, this is needed.

It is not only in the highly visible profile of the Obama administration that this is needed, but by the rest of the Madrid Quartet. Is this a warning ? Call it what you will (for man DOES have freedom within), it is an intimation. It is an expression of concern. It is, if you wish, the appeal of a friend who loves justice and meekness and righteousness, as found in our Founder, who bears the name of God, who bore the Cross in His expression, Jesus Christ, and who will not bear with untruth. In the end, the washing is done and the remnants that refuse washing, are simply not acceptable. Being human, in that case, is far worse than being in unclean clothes, or with unclean heart. If you are not clothed in the righteousness of Christ as a gift to the repentant and believing heart, Lord of all and in all (Isaiah 61:10, Romans 5:17ff.), and yet hear His word, what is this ? It is wilful self-exposure, not to human eyes, but to judgment.

Why die that death ? (Ezekiel 33:11) It lasts too long (II Thessalonians 1), is too dynamic, and has nothing of goodness whatever about it.

NOTES

*1

See It Bubbles ... Ch. 10, *1A.

*1A

Dancers, Prancers, Lancers and Answers Ch. 3, *1A

Compare His Wounds ... Ch.  4  (some fatal flaws in the Koran).

*2 See The Track of Truth ... Ch. 7, esp. as marked (1),  in the series, Chs. 6 and 7.

The British Mandate for Palestine included this point, that - "recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for
reconstituting their national home in that country."

 At the same time, more could be found on the historical background of the present situation. This too is at the above noted site, relating to what was to become 'Jordan'.

From Palestine Facts we find a useful datum, confirming this point.

According to Sir Alec Kirkbride, the British representative in the area, Transjordan was:

• ... intended to serve as a reserve of land for use in the resettlement of Arabs once the National Home for the Jews in Palestine, which [Britain was] pledged to support, became an accomplished fact. There was no intention at that stage of forming the territory east of the River Jordan into an independent Arab state.

*2A

The assemblage of events has been given some relevant attention in Outrageous Outages, Awesome Inputs and the Courage of Christ, Ch. 1, from which an excerpt follows for information.

 

Meanwhile, there continue those awesome inputs of divine patience and power which sustain the minds which chomp on the texture of their own wills, and trample on their own rationality, and for the time, now two millenia almost exactly (Christ was born about B.C. 4 by all accounts cf. SMR pp. 943ff.), does the God of truth restrain judgment from the obliteration of this earth in its entirety.

It is a good time to reflect, then, now that some 2000 years have passed since the arrival of deity in human format. It is more than unfortunate that man has surged in Europe, in Britain, in the USA in particular with both sound presentation and more recently horrendous perversion of the truth concerning Him; but that is what He predicted (Matthew 24:24), and that is the way it has duly come to be.

Now that much of Islam, devoid of reason, without evidence, sheering off sections of the New and Old Testament without authority, without historical basis, without eyewitness account, without ground or government of ideas, is surging into violent self-affirmation, using money from oil gained from creative countries who had it, there is an augmentation of the evils (cf. More Marvels Ch. 4, Divine Agenda Ch. 6).

This has been asked for: just as man has now turned with increasing resolution to slight rather than sight the Gospel which in its splendour saw enormous effects in the three regional areas noted above, for long centuries. Many talk of it, but comparatively few follow it, just as Christ said (Matthew 7:15). Indeed, man has by a profusion of anomalous confusion has so denuded it of its power, just as his lusts have tamed the truth into a subverted anomaly, and the disabling passions of misled sects have done more of the same, while culture has loved more of its own feckless name than of Christ's in vaulting bodies once churches, but so no more (cf. Revelation 2), that confusion is common^*1.

The contemporary crisis coding resembles the case characterised in Isaiah 59, where "justice is turned back, and righteousness stand afar off, for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot ever. So truth fails, and he who departs from evil  makes himself a prey" - 59:14-15.

So after 2000 years, to a good approximation, not in 2001A.D. rather than 2000, did the second millenium since Christ come to pass. But for our purposes, we must ask: the second millenium FROM PRECISELY WHAT!  It is from the incarnation of the everlasting God in the person of His Word, Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son to provide passage for man from obloquy and obfuscation to light and truth, unburdened by guilt and covered by blood, the vicarious atonement of Jesus Christ for as many as received Him, as He is, and what He did, as the Bible presents this from God's own Spirit (cf. John 14:26, I Corinthians 2:9ff.)

A millenium or two  is indeed a significant period, but it was, then,  not in fact at the turn of the millenium, nominally or actually, but rather before either of those years that the second millenium since the birth of Jesus the Christ completed itself. That was the termination of the second millenium of direly spiritual significance.

Why ? This is so, if we take B.C. 4 as normally done, as Christ's birth-date (cf. SMR pp. 943ff.). Thus it could well be argued that on the analogy of 2000 the nominal and 2001 the actual completion of 2 millenia, on a schema starting without any 0 B.C., hence one covering the first year at the END of A.D. 1, we should move to 1996 for the 2000 year passage of time since the birth of Christ was completed. This is so. We have then been moving from the end of THAT second millenium for some few years.

The cup is full.

In fact, there was NO prediction concerning two millenia; but there were strong predictions concerning the actual, separated depicted signals WHENEVER they came, and that is now, for the next episode concerning Jesus Christ.

And that ? It is His return to rescue those who have fled for refuge to Him (as in Hebrews 6:18) and in due course to judge. It is naturally of profound interest if Abraham be placed, as appears, around 2000 B.C., that then we have around a parity for times, the one that of the Israel of the Old Testament, from the spiritual promise to the patriarch till the performance in Christ (as in Genesis 12:3), and the other,  that of the Gentile period (as in Romans 11, where they are placed side by side) when the testimony of Christ became their responsibility. Actually, and further, the great transition occurred at Christ's death as it appears in A.D. 30, and while that was as prophesied (cf. Highway of Holiness Ch. 4, Christ the Citadel ... Ch.   2), the time of termination whether from that or His birth is not prophetically significant. Nothing was declared on that point.

THIS timing, then,  of around 2000 years for the Jewish era in direct divine commission, and that of the Gentile, for theirs, be it construed this way or that,  is not a predicted one, though it is of a startling interest in view of the parallel in Romans 11. What however WAS predicted is the timing of the return of Israel, in its land promise (as in Genesis 17:7ff., Ezekiel 36 cf. SMR Appendix A), as part of the signals of the return of Christ (as in SMR Ch. 8).

It so happens then, that

	1) this RETURN of the nation of Israel to nationhood in its land on the one hand, and
	2)  this completion of a parallel period for Jew and Gentile assignment with the saving action of God through His written word, first prophesied and then accomplished, are both now facts, contemporary realities.

But how, one may ask,  is the time completed for the specific assignment of the Gospel to the  Gentiles as a specialty ?

It is so for the Gentiles in terms of its crucial commencement and its defined ending. The commencement ? The torch of divine revealed truth passed from Israel THE NATION, to the other nations, those who receive it, on the death of Christ. Thus on this decisive rejection from Israel the nation, their period started. Then a terminating event occurred around 2 millenia later. .

What was that, on what criterion is it deemed to have ended ?

It is defined by the restoration of Jerusalem to Israel. It happened as foretold in two stages, one as in Zechariah 14:1ff., in the capture of half of that city by Israel, and the other in its entire take-over, as in Zechariah 12:6, Luke 21:24. That fulfilled ‘the times of the Gentiles’.

What then is for us to see ? It is this. While the restoration of Israel has come by fulfilment of prophecy, and in the face of enormous opposition, the completion of the Gentile era for specialised transmission is shown by the restoration of Jerusalem to Israel (Luke 21:24). Thus one geographic event both fulfils prophecy concerning Israel, and a period concerning Gentile specialisation as covenant conveyors!^*2 It is an interesting period indeed; and we are in it.

Unless therefore you judge that Israel occupation of Jerusalem is NOT the case, somehow is not there, is a mirage or something of this sort, then by the word of Jesus Christ, the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. A new silence  if you will, has arrived. It comes like the hush before the storm. Israel WILL NOT go. Christ WILL come. The certainty that His arrival will be unexpected (Matthew 24) works in the midst of the quiet. There has yet to be an enormous awakening IN Israel (Zechariah 12:10-13:1), but the periods are complete in their specialist tasks.

If however, the time is hushed in preparation, in this, that it is a period awaiting an appalling end to complacency and self-esteem, a phase of history facing truth without compromise or mercy without strings, in Christ, yet the work of man is almost manic as he seeks to avoid the fearful day, striving to do this and that, deliberately outside the mercy offered. So does he sedulously act to cause the chaotic increments by his own ever increasing guilt. While angels might therefore look on with quiet eyes, as at a funeral, this self-same period of awaiting Christ's return, both for His own (Matthew 24) and in judgment (as in Revelation 1) has imparted to it by man, a hustle and a bustle. Indeed, it is all but frenetic. It moves in its own will.

Thus as the engines of preparation for Christ's return are humming, droning and in some cases, roaring, at the will of man, the period is a quietly solemn one. It comes like the hush before the storm to the wakeful, and in the silence as of a funeral, to the watchful heart, lamenting for man, as Jeremiah did for Israel in his own day (Jeremiah 9).

*3

See The Track of Truth ... Ch. 7,  as marked (2),  in the series, Chs. 6 and 7.

*4

In his Cairo speech, Obama had much to say. There are elements that here relate, and this is treated in Chapter 2, to follow. See also on Obama: in this volume, Chs.   3 and   4,  in Christ the Citadel ..., Ch. 9, in God's Gift of Grace in Christ Jesus,  Chs.   3 and   5.

*5

As noted in Regal Rays ... Ch. 1, things were not quite as they might have been!

Was it not that secret document from British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, which as reported in the Age Magazine, August 20,  1988 (pp. 16-21), in the post-World War II turmoil, showed the frank desire to placate Arabs, with oil, with Bevin evidently passionately pursuing the line that centres of oil production MUST be available. There was, it is reported, found to be grave risk in alienating Arabs "by appearing to ... endorse the Jewish aspiration for a separate State." How does oil spread softness on the paths of war, and incline the heart to greed rather than goodness, when there is no restraint! It is a world in which restraint in 'national interests' seems increasingly if not obsolete, then all but antique.
 
 

At least, they realised what they were doing. Arab plus oil is greater than Jew without it ? It seemed a shoddy spiritual grasp of things; and to say no more, grasping.

*6

The elements of the case are presented in various Chapters on this site. Among them are the following.

See:

It Bubbles ... Ch. 10,

His Time is Near Ch.   4, (the divine index, the book, the Man, the Method, including Ezekiel 36-37 as do the next seven items ),

Outrageous Outages Ch. 11,

SMR Appendix A.

SMR pp.  502ff..

*7

See:

Red Alert Ch.    13.

*8

On this topic, we have this from  Of the Earth, Earthy ... Ch. 5.

'Palestinian' ? Does not the very name spell shame ? Was not this the object, this Palestine, that figured in the Balfour Declaration, ratified in the League of Nations, a place for the Jewish people given as a result of an intense struggle against central European efforts at attaining hegemony among the nations, yes with the aid of Turkey, which THEREFORE lost control of Palestine in 1917! That, it occurred  when General Allenby's troops, yes and aeroplanes, took over even Jerusalem, and freed it from Moslem control (cf. Isaiah 31:5). That was a loss to the Ottoman Empire of the day, from ill-based arrogance and intimidation. The world reacted, in no small measure, to this endeavour to rule, rule and rule, with which the war started. Thus things changed, and Palestine for the Jews was one of the ratified changes made.

The Moslem menace to the Middle East was therefore retarded. It would not control Palestine, but it would be given to the Jews, who homeless among the nations, had deserved much praise from Britain in particular, for one of their scientists, Dr Chaim Weizmann, working in chemistry and armament, had given them a significant boost in the war by his discoveries, just as another Jew, by name Albert Einstein gave another boost in another war, the Second World War, with the atomic power to which his work helped to direct in no mean measure, since he provided a significant avenue in his theoretical work. This was so whatever his later concerns may have been.

So clear was the assignment to the Jews, that they were to have due respect for other cultures in this same Palestine; and it was here that home would be fulfilled, with such restrictions on giving things a fair go where they received the gift. Now a quarter is being placed by the rulers of this Age, under quarantine in part, with provision for how it may exist, down to municipal provisions.

*9

Thus from Red Alert Ch. 10, we have this:

• It is time for Israel to seek the Lord. They are in need. They are without strength just as was to be when the Lord predicted that HE HIMSELF would intervene (Deuteronomy 32:36ff., Zechariah 12, 14, Micah 7:15ff.), for them.
  
  

It is a beautiful drama, really, that of Israel,

• delivered from slavery after being promised a land, out of Egypt with panache,

 

• miraculously preserved in the desert while discipline mixed with faithfulness deals with a tragic lapse in faith at the very portals of the promised land,

 

• arising in lustre with David, the King, type of the Messiah,

 

• languishing in the foulest of misdeeds among Gentile nations, as if she were one of them,

 

• disciplined to the loss of her northern member entirely,

 

• delivered in Jerusalem in Hezekiah's day, by a miracle parallel to that in Egypt,

 

• lapsing so utterly that exile to Babylon ensues,

 

• delivered with purged and purified people, a remnant of passion, who rebuild,

 

• drifting into subtleties and misprogramming wiles after the days of the Maccabees' victories,

 

• murdering the Christ their peace,

 

• finding the loss of peace ever since,

 

• evacuating their homeland as they evacuated their Messiah,

 

• despised by those who suffer for it according to promise,
   
• acclaimed for their brilliance, hated by many,

 

• murdered to nearly one half by Hitler,

 

• but first acclaimed for a homeland by England who with the League of Nations provided Palestine for the purpose,

 

• while the 'international community' gave most of it away to other states, and now wants still more returned.
  
  

Despite all this, Israel has been amazingly victorious over decades after its historic return (cf. SMR pp. 775ff.), a return and a style of victory just as predicted from that ever validated Bible. That, it has been brought to pass for it by divine power,  though it was dumped by Britain, truly in this 'perfidious Albion' of Shakespeare's phrase, and assailed by the UN, wanting if not her blood, then her capital and most of the land, as since 1947.  Nor have been lacking intensely interested neighbours, lusting for her extinction from time to time, and some perhaps all the time:  such as Syria, Iraq,  Egypt (since at peace), or the international Islamic meetings, desiring her extinction, and yet prevailing not at all to secure this, not though they be tens of millions with tens of billions available, in oil funds.

Now the butt of what Bush for the USA calls 'thug' activities, she is to pay with land for the privilege of being so treated. Yet the Lord has in store, far more. When the final destruction crusade, multi-national and greedy (cf. SMR pp. 502ff), comes to light, or rather surges in darkness, God meets it. The result is a devastation so profound as to resemble indeed the Exodus (cf. Micah 7:15, Ezekiel 38-39, SMR Appendix A, and 502ff.).

Meanwhile they, this persecuted people, this proverbially afflicted people in the days since their divorce from their own Lord,  they have arisen to the vast export of flowers, of roses, to blossoming and fertility, to forests as predicted (cf. SMR pp. 790ff.), though the horrible grind of lusting desire for her capital, where Christ was crucified, devastates her people with domestic thuggery, until they come to Him whom they for their part, killed, and seek in Him their peace (cf. Isaiah 32:15-17). It is fascinating in  its depths and dimensions, that last passage, especially when read in the light of Isaiah 31:15-21, and  27:5-13.

It is a grand design for the Gentiles as well, in many grafted into the tree that was the place of the faith of Israel at the culmination in Christ, following His rejection by His own people (predicted in Isaiah 49:7 and 53); yet the Gentile is on notice not to boast lest his troupe be removed, as was Israel for a time (only! - Romans 11:25). A recrudescence is to come, as this new thing, spiritual awakening,  surges into Israel, in the midst of the peoples, many of whom will rejoice:

“Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people;
For He will avenge the blood of His servants,
And render vengeance to His adversaries;
He will make atonement for His land and His people.”

How ? As in Zechariah 13:1, where a fountain for sin and uncleanness is opened in Jerusalem, that very site to which the return is so categorically and pre-emptively assured (Zech. 12:6), even in its own place, the nation's capital. And how is it so freely available, this cleansing ? It is because of the Messiah who in ONE DAY bore the sin to be secured by Him, even of all who come in faith to Him as He is (Zech. 3:9).

And they, the now wandering Gentiles, peoples in some ways in disastrous parallel to Israel, for many have arisen to seek, and fallen in the slime of suppurating cynicism, knowledgeable ignorance and irrational delusions, what of them  ? It is not that nations have been or become Christian, though some have tried (cf. Joyful Jottings  5, 14, The Other News 13);  rather it is that in many much of Christ has been found. Yet the cultural impact is now in vogue for dismissal of Christ and all things truly Christian, through side-stepping, slickness, re-definition, cancerous additions to the Bible, outright rejection or even explicit contempt; and the wheel has turned, the nations in secular, nature-myth follies so like those of ancient Israel, now surging to disenable that nation in reality, and to debase themselves as earlier in the days of the prophets, she debased herself. They too do it as predicted for them! (cf. II Peter 3, II Timothy 3, Matthew 24:24).

Truly NO FLESH SHALL GLORY in the end (Isaiah 2:17-19), but God shall be glorious:

"The loftiness of man shall be bowed down,
And the haughtiness of men shall be brought low;
The LORD alone will be exalted in that day,
But the idols He shall utterly abolish.

"They shall go into the holes of the rocks,
And into the caves of the earth
From the terror of the LORD
And the glory of His majesty,
When He arises to shake the earth mightily."

 In the end it is a humble and purified people who will know Him as in Zephaniah 3:4-15, and who shall sing His praise, contrite, and not congratulated conquerors.

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

CHAPTER TWO

HISTORY THAT RECITES REVELATION

BY FOLLOWING IT

so that we can forget ?

or lest we forget!

News 422

AAP June 4, 2009

Part II

Religion Out of Wedlock

In his Cairo speech, Obama had much to say.

Obama (AAP) is recorded as saying this:

"America's strong bonds with Israel are well-known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.

"Around the world the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries. And anti-Semitism was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed, more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless. It is ignorant, and it is hateful.

"Threatening Israel with destruction or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews is deeply wrong and only serves to evoke in the minds of the israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve."

The dancing scenario of the speech therapy which Obama attempted, however, involves the stripping of yet more from the 'homeland' of Israel, the removal of yet more from the biblical pastures of the West Bank. That, it is no Islamic reserve, but was in fact obtained by an ADDED thrust of Islamic aspiration, beyond the Eastern Sector of three quarters of Palestine already nicely digested, now named Jordan. Indeed, it is this which was made unavailable to the belligerence of Palestinians, after some trial with giving them open citizenship! Such is deprivation inherent in the Road Map. But what of that ? it has been so vastly betrayed for so long as to become in the wild impetus of subsequent events, virtually an ancient history being restored to the contemporary world.

It has been violated to the uttermost, in word and in deed. The passionate concept that Israel is to be exterminated, not recognised as a nation, has continued its rampancy and extended its flames in repeated declamation and exercises in odium, backed by fire power; and such forces rule Gaza, seek West Bank and storm from Iran.

The man-devised Road Map, it has failed in practice as in principle. Its conditions have been flouted to the point it is almost sport, to see how much the spirit of the thing can be breached, while it is yet talked about as if it were still standing. It is like saying this: Let us land on the moon and make harvests there to send back to earth. It is but idea. You have a little problem in agriculture there, with atmosphere, with safety and with transport.

The mode and mood, the actions and the invasions by heartless explosions and ruinous rockets, this has failed entirely.

It has demonstrated the folly of trying to bring more guns nearer to the Israeli's truncated homeland, as ought to have been apparent from the first. Israel has tried to protect itself by this mockery of the Road Map. It has given up Gaza and Sinai as well. What is freely given up in return in the way of land ? How many wars must Israel win before it is allowed to have a buffer against belligerence, and a barrier against invasion by the turmoiled many!

Man may try this and that; but until the word and will of God in the Bible is fulfilled, let us be very sure, there neither will be nor can be peace. A small qualification ? Yes, in I Thessalonians 5, it is apparent that possibly some sort of temporary peace in the Middle East may occur, that something of this kind will occur in the world, so presumably it may have impact there. But says this same word: "For when they say, 'Peace and safety!', then sudden destruction comes upon them, a labour pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape." How that works ? it is seen rather dramatically in I Thessalonians 1!

You can't play with God and arrange His affairs for Him, even if you are the President of the USA, or the leaders of the EU, the USA, the UN and Russia, or even if you try to do it JOINTLY in such company! as in the Peace Plan of the Madrid Quartet. The nations do indeed exalt themselves as foretold (Psalm 2), and it is not at all limited to the day on which Christ was despatched with rejection notice, by complex of Rome (Pilate, the Governor) and Israel. This is not pessimism but realism. God is our constructor and it is HIS peace plan, as seen in Isaiah 9:1-7 and 49-55, that is the divinely ordered one.

Competition with the Almighty is frankly inane; and when He is shown so glorious in compassion, so involved in invitation, so realistic in enterprise, so loving in sacrifice in Christ Jesus, it becomes both vainglorious and debased as well.

Obviously the Road Map, and the approach to this areana of Obama is to defy this, to deny its heart, to establish a synthetic basis in which certain selected ethical matters are primary, and to declare that the one GOD is being worshipped in all these ways, by these three religions notable in the area, and that the HOLY BOOK of Islam is very presentable before this God. In so constructing, he is avidly pursuing a path which is that of destruction as in I Thessalonians 1, Revelation 19, one so vast in innovative rebellion, that mocking at this magisterial humanity, which sets itself up in its own terms, God calls for the birds to eat the flesh of the slain.

Will they never learn ? Must it to to the wire, man versus God ? Alas and alas, for man!

Small wonder in his day, when Jerusalem faced a different outcome,  Jeremiah wept for the slain to come, before it happened, and then lamented for them when it happened as he had foretold with such love, protestation, exhortation and invitation, and told in vain for so long to a people whose ear had been closed to this, their mercy (Jeremiah 9; Lamentations of Jeremiah).

But what of now, the contemporary case ? The homeland is to have its protection decreased, the usurpation extended, the indefensibility assured. Some friend is this! With friends like these, who needs enemies. But with those, Israel is abundantly equipped. The Friend who is faithful, it is the Lord whom they have as a nation, rejected. It is from Him that they have defected. Having shorn themselves of His continual care, as of old, they are vulnerable to the horrors of hell, imported as if this were possible, by devilries of the nations.

HE, their heavenly Friend, from whom they turned, and to whom they will return (Hosea pursues this at length as does Paul, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Micah)  is so faithful He has even, according to His written word, so in historical fact, now brought Israel back to its land. This, it is explicitly and prophetically despite their turning from the acme of their religion, the Messiah, in a manner from which so much ever since has tended to follow on their own heads, starting with the AD 70 vastly horrendous destruction of their city by the Romans, with reported multiple crucifixions of Jewish people around it.

It is to this verified and validated God^*1, their own God from whom they moved as He foretold, and never more monumentally than at the Cross of Calvary as predicted in no small measure of detail (Isaiah 49:7, 49-55, Psalm 22, 2), it is to Him that they will in large measure return. THEN the nations will learn something! as Ezekiel is careful to point out from the Lord (Ezekiel 39:21-29).

Obama is as wrong as anyone could be in this syncretic concept, this all-worship-God dream. It is NOT to some salvation by works religion, such as Islam and Judaism share (cf. Romans 10:1ff.), either through distortion of what God gave in the Old Testament and the New, through rejection of parts of it or through both. The "three great religions" of the Middle East are not there for synthesis or syncretism. God is not some boor who cannot quite manage intelligible speech, in this, that all kinds of total and absolute, utter contradictions of kind occur in the statements from the three 'faiths' concerning Him. The absoluteness of the insult by daring to proclaim all these as the acceptable worship of the one God, is profound!

God does not prolong human suffering by doing His best and making an intolerable mess of the utter discord which exists between these three statements, treated with respect and recommendation as if they were all  His word and will. If one party puts in a whole book to replace the word of God, and another bypasses in impact, what demonstrates the Messiah, His death date, His mode of death, the reason for His death, the scenario attaching to His death, the fact of His resurrection, the power of His life and the peace which He gives first within and then as is to come for a time, among the nations: then this much, to be sure,  is in common. Indeed it is common rebellion from the One God.

The departures are not the same, even if they have what is abhorrent to the Bible in both; and indeed, their particular motions and doctrines occur in ways so utterly divergent that to attempt even at that, Islam and Judaism, to wed them is like trying to mate a lion with a leopard. The lion has no spots, the leopard has no such head...

When you come to Christ, however, you come to the criterion of history, foretold for millenia, to the central station of pardon, essential for peace, to reconciliation with God by the blood of sacrificial atonement, wrought in Person.

Is He then esteemed as a lunatic, or to the Lord!^*2 ! and certainly no lunatic could make of reality such an account as His, which history constantly bears out; for this is the very criterion and capstone of sanity, to know what is and to declare it as none else did or even could. The prophets of the Old Testament, which Muhammad endorses, these foretold Him in detail, the centre and cynosure, and so these very sources of authority to which Muhammad implicitly appeals^*3, to make his religion look as if grounded, it is these which condemn His ways. The very Gospel of grace through sacrifice wrought by God in Christ, this is foretold in detail in these same prophets (cf. SMR Ch. 9).

In acting in this way, let us be very clear, Obama is betraying Christ. It is not necessary to have your religion immersed in praise of the "Holy Book" of a false prophet in order to be President. This is not to characterise the man, God is Judge; it is however to characterise the words of his speech. Naturally, we all hope he will recover from this vast, pernicious substitute for truth.

Thus he might be said to be attempting what the Bible predicts, but let us keep to his words: he is at least acting in precise accord with this, whether it be confusion or delusion, the Lord knows; for our attention is not with the man, but with what he is saying, for this, like all doctrine concerning God, must be faced by the faithful to the Lion of Judah, the Lord of glory, to Him who died and rose again, by and in whom alone is their rationality and reality, truth and not fiction, hope and not dream. As in the word of Jeremiah 23, it is the hammer of His word that breaks rock, and dreams are mere shallow superficialities of those not sent, who yet proclaim.

How they envisage what is not given,  in a parade of useless dreams, the prophet laments (Jeremiah 23:23ff.). It is such dreams which have led to bloodshed enormous and all but unthinkable as first Muhammad and armies in his name, and then popes, have distorted the realities of Christ, and waged interminable seeming wars, each as the time made it seem suitable.

What does the Bible say in the midst of those ancient dealings, but this, as it surveys the scene just as it does in Ezekiel 20 ? Let us look at Ezekiel  where 'harlotry'  basically refers to spiritual inclusivism, and the sexual metaphors are used for spiritual delinquency:

" 'This is your lot,

The portion of your measures from Me,' says the Lord,

'Because you have forgotten Me

And trusted in falsehood.

Therefore I will uncover your skirts over your face,

That your shame may appear.

I have seen your adulteries, and your neighings, the lewdness of your harlotry,

 and your abominations on the hills in the fields.

Woe to you, O Jerusalem! Will you not be made clean ? When shall it once be ?' "

What Obama presents is precisely this, in modern frame,  despite 2000 years in which to learn. It is past a slow learner syndrome, for it is rebellion now as it was then. Then the centre of attention was Jerusalem, its temple in symbolic form attesting the one God in His truth and wisdom. It was to this city, to Israel as a nation that God at last was giving short shrift. And why ? It was because of its spiritual synthesis and so involvement in idolatry, worshipping what is NOT GOD (as Moses had foretold, as seen in Deuteronomy 32:15-19). If they added God to the mixture, this made it worse, like a threesome in a house of sexual licence, to pursue the biblical metaphor.

In fact, the oft-repeated charge that Israel was from its neighbours gaining not new gods, increments, but polluting vanities, nothings, this is flaming yet as it did from the first. Playing with fire is never wise. Our God is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29).

Nothings, vanities: this is part of the biblical descriptions of man-made, or man-adjusted gods! You see the same in Deuteronomy 32. These prophets, Jeremiah and Moses, they spoke not only of their own time, but of times to come (Jeremiah 16, Deuteronomy 29-32 for example).

Israel was warned, did not listen, continued its 'harlotries' of additions and increments in the spiritual realm, of gods, and it has been turned even at Calvary - as a nation - to a disaster pitiable in intensity, remorseless in coming. It has suffered.  Now it is not just Israel, the deliverance of which is drawing near as in Micah 7, and spiritually as in Romans 11, by the method of the Cross of Christ as in Zechariah 12-13: the field is far broader. Now it is this world itself which is facing the ultimatum.

Having witnessed the Cairo speech which is tantamount to the construction of an idol, one can only lament for a world to be removed physically in the end, for as Peter puts it, "this world also, and the works that are in it, shall be burned up" as the vast energies being released, its end is realised (II Peter 3:10ff.).

You cannot patch up the plaster that is being put over the mouth of the living God, from whose name a new synthesis is being manufactured, though it merely fulfils His warnings and witness of what is to come; and even if you could so plaster the mouth of God and so usurp with authority to mix what He has not spoken, a mere conglomeration of acceptability, it would not alter that word which has gone out of it, for it will not return to Him void (Isaiah 55:8-12).

All however is not lost, even if nation after nation is calling on the living God not so much for salvation, as for judgment, and though the sadness of it all is deep and profound. After all, those who call on the name of the God who has the advantage not only of being there, but of demonstrably being Himself and not another^*1, will be saved. This has not altered. He has written, He has come, He has done, He has charged, He has challenged this world and the case is always the same (Galatians 1): you take it, Him, or leave Him. Mix Him up and you merely manhandle again, as far as may be, as was done more physically before ...

It is not some adjusted God, whether by the Islamic sect, or any other, called Christian or anything else, that is to the point in the salvation for man, and the peace of heart and finally of heaven which supervenes. It is the Lord of glory whose redemption is the reason why the earth is not gone already. It is still lab session, it is still time, He is still saving souls, and seeks with mercy and paid-up grace, from the Cross, those who escaping this world's judged domain. He is longsuffering as II Peter 3:9 declares, not willing that any should perish.

How does this work ? It is in this way. As time proceeds, the CURRENTLY AVAILABLE REDEMPTION enables history to have meaning, God's delay to have point and the horror of this world to be attributable to man only, and not to God at all. He has the remedy and has paid for it. He offers it without price.

It is man's refusal of redemption, the REMEDY for sin and ruin which is there to be taken, and that freely (Isaiah 55, Romans 3,  Galatians 1, 3) which is the reason for delay in judgment, final and absolute (Revelation 6:10-11, II Peter 3:9). He would like all to come (I Timothy 2, Colossians 1:19ff.), but no dictator, He takes only  His own. Whatever way the life of man miscarries, whether in the construction new illusory gods without career history to validate or verify their doings, or in frank denial of God as in Communism, it is all one in this: it is a case of WRONG WAY, GO BACK. If you don't, what then can there be expected ? The road is there, God's Road Map.

This current drawing is a monstrous subterfuge, wrought by Satan in direct confrontation with the word of God. Is there hope in this ?

Alas, there is none. It is the wrong way, illusory, and in vain. So many wars are like that. On the side of Israel, of course, error concerning Christ, at the national level continues^*4. One writer on the Web even had the all but incredible confusion of imagining that the comparative industry and wealth of Israel, its going-concern status shows that Christians who say it is off limits in religion are WRONG. They do not get what the Bible says at all. Such was his wisdom...

Alas again, this is mercy and proceeds precisely what the Bible says, of the renegade nation as a nation. In Zechariah 12 you see it as in Ezekiel 36ff., as in Romans 10-11. It is this concentration on works as if these were the way, the criterion, it is this which is precisely what God is using to CONFRONT Israel through the apostle Paul. Their works, accomplishments, attainments, misplaced as ground for salvation, appeal to this court, that was the fault from the first.

Hear Paul in Romans:

"But they, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one who believes."

The standards for salvation, the testimony for pardon, it is in HIM only, for He only has been able to meet these, and sinless, to cover what has failed, as have all.

Having prophetically revealed the salvation in Christ, in Isaiah 52-53, Isaiah similarly chastises those so misled and astray from the way,  in Isaiah 55. The nation was to be returned as a grace, within the faithfulness of God (Ezekiel 36:22).

They were to be cleansed as in the same Chapter and Zechariah; and they are not yet cleansed.

In the meantime, they were to have amazing afforestation and flower productivity; and they have it. Yet for all that, they were to delay in the very midst of a terrible, tempestuous earthly environment on their return, wars and wars being thrust upon them, which they would win: through the grace of the faithful God. So it has happened, and residual efforts to hide in pride are a mere portent of the need for more that will open the eyes, for them as a nation, as for any and all others in their own specialised sin and wanderings.

The return was not salvation, but of grace. In returning, they still were not saved (Zechariah 12 shows that the salvation comes in the midst of wars after return).  It was alas a part of their recalcitrance that having returned, being restored, they still did not believe. It was all foretold.

Even the failure to repent in view of such foretold mercies preceding their eventual return to God, the second phase of the plan exposed in Ezekiel 37, this was foretold: that was the gap before agape as seen in the parable as in Zechariah. That same prophet showed the world tension accompanying it. Such has been the prophetic presentation long available to man to read, for long past two millenia. It is the verified word of the One whose oversight controls history (Ephesians 1:11), not inventing evil, but like a policeman at times, directing it where its lusts must go, before such things pas away at the last.

What then ? Mistakes whether by Israel or Islam, this or that sect, in refusing the whole counsel of God (Acts 20), these do not cancel out. They add up. When you try to syncretise these religions, it is rather like taking two of the failures among the examination papers in a mathematics test, and putting their faults together, making a new masterpiece of ignorance and folly. Let us be clear. It is not that others do not fail, it is not that any man but Christ has ever been sinless; it is not that this or that is being focussed and others wrongly left alone: it is that the TOPIC is the conjoining of religions, and this is the focus for that reason.

The program of Obama, it has initiative, enterprise, delusion and confusion in one inglorious, anti-biblical anti-Christian mixture. Its attraction for some lies in this, that it provides a way other than the way this world does not desire: that of the biblical Christ, the Road Map of God. That map, seen on the very face of Christ, was so marred, as Isaiah 52 tells us in prediction, that it was scarcely  human any longer. A Professor, at Westminster seminary in Philadelphia,  once likened this scripture to the case which he saw when a man in a car near him was gunned by many bullets!

This is not the way to treat God! It is a matter for profound lament that the USA - and it is not alone, remember, in much of this for it has mighty alliances with others as it seeks to handle Israel - is now so acting that only a massive national repentance and outcry may allay the result. God, let one repeat, is not to be played with. He is not a play-mate, or a tunnel to be engineered in the Alps of man's thought. He is to be worshipped, and He alone, ACCORDING TO HIS DEMONSTRATED WORD.

An inane buffoon who cannot, will not or does not tell man what to do as millions lie in torture ? Be real. Our mercy is not our invention. He is a clear-speaking God whose word, both written and incarnate as Jesus Christ, has been smitten, and is smitten yet, and not least, in such culturally appealing and revealing speeches as the one presented so recently in Cairo.

Such things had to happen. The gathering storm of antichristian activity was foretold with its outcome in the false prophet, the beast and the control of this earth by the RELIGIOUS INVENTION of the second dragon, the one interested in that phase, as seen in Revelation 13. Communism could never be the ultimate vice, as the religious one is the finale! It is now well under way. Christians, though lamenting for the sorrows of this new rebellion, may rejoice in this, that the day of Christ's return is, by such blatancy, evidently coming nearer. It is like travelling on a long suburban line by train. As you see the last stations on the map, at length being reached, you rejoice. It may be a little painful to wait any longer, but at least, you are now NEARLY THERE!

Praise the Lord! and let us not cease to pray for those misled, in case any of them may yet be delivered.

If it is grievous to have to warn and witness in this way, yet it is the grace of God which is available, and none redeemed is there, who has not sinned, gained remorse, repented and found the salvation by grace alone, in the peace of pardon. It is however, useless to assume it done; it must be taken, received, believed and of course, as with all faith, then acted on. The latter is the result; but there is nothing without the cause: and that, it is Jesus Christ, the ONLY name given among men, under heaven, by which they MUST be saved (Acts 4:11-12).

NOTES

*1

See :

LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST

WHO ANSWERS RIDDLES

AND WHERE HE IS, DARKNESS DEPARTS

Bible or Blight, Christ or Confusion:
The Comprehensive Resolution of Man's Intractable Problems
is Found Only in the Bible, the Word of God;

 

DEITY AND DESIGN, DESIGNATION AND DESTINY

 

REASON, REVELATION and the REDEEMER

 

The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy,
 

The gods of naturalism have no go!

 

*2 See

SMR Ch. 6, Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 13, Swift Witness   6, Repent or Perish Ch. 7, It Bubbles ... Ch. 9.

*3

See SMR pp. 1080ff..

*4

The state of Israel is at least as fascinating and evocative as the State of Israel. It is good to prevent misconception by being very blunt about all the aspects. Zephaniah does this for us! Below is an excerpt from His Time Is Near Ch. 4. In passing, it exhibits the entire folly of the pseudo-spiritual program of Obama, a combination of presidential clout and verbal enunciation of what has long been in the hearts of many, and will be in those of many more, before the axe alas, falls as on all that makes vain gods, founded on nothing but hope and ministering with all the panache that this world, blind as it is, likes to affect.

It is because the idea has been of long standing, that its condemnation from afar is not hard to find!

 THE FURIOUS ROAR IN THE WOODS OF THIS WORLD

Zephaniah is no more a whitewash prophet of poignancy than is any other; and stark as had been Israel's rebuke (cf. Zephaniah 1:4ff.), and infamous the conduct of other nations some already famed for their duly predicted falls as we have seen, yet genuine change is the correlative of peace, just as pardon is its condition.

This has always been so, as you see in Isaiah 61, where pardon pours like concrete from some vast truck, the container constantly turning, so that it never sets until the foundation is laid; and that foundation is laid securely as in Isaiah 28:16, in the Messiah, in whom one must trust.  From Him comes an ordered life in secure peace (as in Isaiah 32:16-17) received by faith (Isaiah 53:1, 27:5, 11:10), whether by Jew or Gentile (cf. Isaiah 49:6, 42:6): for by HIS stripes are the 'we' who are believers in Isaiah 53, healed, for on HIM is laid the iniquity of all believers, for whom the transfer of guilt is thereby made.

The healing of heart helps holiness of life, for where the Lord is, there is purging, purification and realism, and as a result, liberty (II Corinthians 3:17, Romans 6).

It is just as always, by faith (cf. Leviticus 16:14-26, 17:11, 1:4, Isaiah 53:6, Zechariah 3:9, Psalm 32, 51, Deuteronomy 29:17ff., Psalm 71:16, Isaiah 54:7-10, 55:3), with eternal security where such faith actually has been present (Psalm 17:15,  16,  21:4, 145:2) so that mercy reigns (Psalm 103:1ff., Micah 7:19ff.), just as in Romans 3 and Genesis 15:6). Thus life eternal sits like a beacon on a lighthouse, resting in the heart of the believer (Job 19:23-27, Psalm 21:4, Romans 6:23, 10:9), resting on the resurrection of the Messiah (Psalm 16, 22 cf. Joyful Jottings 22-25).

	Wrought by the Holy Spirit (Isaiah 32:17ff.), and
	established on the Messianic atonement (Isaiah 2, 7, 11, 12, 22, 32, 35, 40, 42, 49-55, 61, 62, 65-66),
	with retrospective efficacy wrought in faith (Psalm 116:10 where the cup of salvation is believingly appropriated by ANY believer  (cf. Isaiah 57:15, 56:6, Jeremiah 3:16, 16:19ff.):
	it is nevertheless limited to faith in the specific Saviour,
	the actual deity in the flesh who comes for all men (Isaiah 55:4, 49:6, 42:6).

Therefore, it is as immiscible by ANY in any land, as it was for Jews in the Holy Land, being founded in fact, contained in truth and as indefeasible in substance as secure from syncretism in purity.

He was smitten (Isaiah 53); it is written. Truth and action are indivisible (Psalm85, Romans 6, Matthew 5:17ff.).

	If therefore Israel or any part of it is to be delivered, faith is the way, the Messiah is the base and mercy is the procurement, just as sacrifice is God's own price for purity (cf. Isaiah 52-53), paid by Himself (Matthew 20:28, Galatians 3:10-13), receipted on the Cross, transferred to His people, one by one (cf. Zechariah 12:10ff., Psalm 32, John 3).
	If any race ever had the necessity of sacrifice for an atonement, for a reconciliation, for a payment for sin, whether in trespass offering, sin offering, peace offering, offerings where sin is intentional, where it is unintentional, where it is to cover impurity which is not wrought by desire but without intent, it was Israel.
	If any race ever had the matrix and meaning of the sacrifice deliberately displayed with the intense power of a whole battery of searchlights concentrating on some aeroplane skimming light, bright and white through the skies, focussed and concentrated in that ONE, it was Israel.
	If any race ever had the identity of that ONE featured and exposed, made manifest and taught (Isaiah 42, 49, 50-56, Zechariah 2:8, 3:9, Psalm 45, Isaiah 43:10-11 with Isaiah 53:6), it was Israel (cf. Deuteronomy 4:43-36).
	If ever a people, however, had the whole construction without any constriction, exposed and delivered like a Christmas present tied with bows, fantastic wrapping design and accompanying music from a choir, it was ALL the people of THIS WORLD!
	If the NATION of Israel failed (as predicted - Isaiah 49:7) to take its Messiah, so be it; He was not in any case limited to them. They will in due course in large numbers make a massive return to the Lord (as in Zechariah 12:10ff., Ezekiel 36-37) which is both spiritual and messianic, and indistinguishable from the case of the other nations except in this, that the national home is part of the unvarying and unconditional promise to Abraham (Galloping Events Ch. 4, cf.  Micah 7:19ff., SMR Appendix A, Genesis 15, 17). This,  while it rested chiefly on the Messiah, nevertheless had its own components.

Unfortunately many seem to feel that since the Messiah is undoubtedly the marvel and wonder of it all, that therefore the wrapping does not matter, and the card with the present may be ignored. Not so, for the method was not in the abstract, as in some philosophy of man, but as real as the Creator who ALONE is the Saviour, who ALONE is God (Isaiah 45:18ff., 45:12, Proverbs 8, Colossians 1:15ff., Micah 5:1ff.), who ALONE can save (Isaiah 45:22ff., Philippians 2:1-12), so that it is to GOD ALONE that every knee will bow, and that, it is to CHRIST JESUS the Messiah who as we have seen in an earlier chapter, came on the date specified, and the world has taken a little two millenia or so to find it really does not love Him! (Highway of Holiness Ch. 4, Christ the Citadel ... Ch.   2).

So be it. It suffers, just as the Jew has suffered in his day, that is: the nation of Jews who with Pilate were responsible, not ALL Jews: for many believed, though they constituted a small minority.

The world, yes, it is having its trouble day, its time of turbulence as Israel did for so long, for it will need heed what He has said, who made it and all (cf. Amos 4); and just as Israel's plight came to a height and a depth of depravity and horror at the hands of that awful dictator of World War II, so the world itself is coming to climax of putridity, following a senseless show of intolerance of truth, despiteful use of Christians, dereliction from the greatness which earlier national trends to faith created for many.

Such was the case of the British Empire and some of the history of the United States which is now, this day, reported as encouraging Taiwan NOT to seek independence from the maw of the horrendous offal of the earth, Communism, as exemplified in mainland China cf. News 37). How much further is there to go - downwards!

The world shudders now like some giant aircraft which has engine trouble. High, aloft in safety in appearance, yet it is ready to fall  like some stone, left bewildered that it is not founded on the earth. It should be and could have been there founded;  but is not so founded, through lack of faith, and has only fall to come. So is the world faced,  except it find, person by person, the foundation which is in Christ, whose has broken the fall for faith.

Nevertheless, as for the flamboyant flight from faith, it does not deliver. This Stone, the Christ, the ONLY ROCK (Psalm 62:1-3, II Samuel 22:31-33), if HE falls on a person, it is an incorrigible ruin that results (Matthew 21:44); but if a person rather be built on Him, he will not hurry, scurry, flurry, but will not be ashamed (Isaiah 28:16, 11:10, Matthew 11:28-30).

One of the wonders of the forest fires of judgment is this, that the Lord has been so patient (II Peter 3:9), while every kind of ersatz, each form of artificial, meretricious, inauspicious, errant, contrary and contrary folly is wrought (cf. News 87, 121 - 122, with News 85, 88, 89). The world is only now coming - after so long a time since God revealed His hand only to have it crucified (Psalm 22, Matthew 26, Galatians 3), and that by plan for pardon, not to condemn (John 3:17), yes arriving at the end of its tether (as H.G. Wells book Mind at the End of its Tether, already portended some time ago! and fittingly from such an author as that one ...).

Its water is in trouble both for purity and distribution, its waters create trouble for Pacific Islands and Manhattan (cf. The Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet Ch. 6!),  droughts are being accentuated, and floods with earthquakes (cf. SMR Ch. 8) as predicted; wars erupt like acne on some poor youth's face (Matthew 24:6-7), while Israel back in place (Luke 21:24) itself is surrounded by evil desires and ambitions from its neighbours, allying themselves disreputably with the United Nations in persecuting that tiny land. This is quite often in explicit manner, as far as those surrounding nations are concerned, with the object of repudiating the God of the Bible and exalting a false prophet with nil ground for faith in him (More Marvels Ch. 4, SMR pp.1080ff., Highway to Hell esp. *1, Matthew 24:24), but rather explicit ground for rejection.

It is all as predicted, but the point is the pollution of spirit, of mind and body, of resources and social and international relations, the war on God increasingly obvious (to become SO obvious that it is explicit in the prediction of Revelation 19:19).

Nevertheless, ISRAEL ITSELF WAS NOT AT ALL WHITEWASHED BY ZEPHANIAH.

Despite the profundity and wonder of the eventual restoration to be fulfilled yet further (as in Ezekiel 37 cf. SMR Appendix A, Joy Comes in the Morning Chs. 4 and   7), Israel in Zephaniah 3 is further confronted.

Indeed, in Ch. 3, the prophet resumes the exposé and exposition of its sins:

"Her princes in her midst are roaring lions,

Her judges are evening wolves

That leave not a bone till morning.

 

Her prophets are insolent, treacherous people;

Her priests have polluted the sanctuary:

They have done violence to the law..."

What a condemnation is this! How like is this case to that of the Liberal professors who disadorned the suffering earth last century, whose tribe is now post-modernist, leering and peering now, as jeering and sneering then: fraught with uncertainties, without faith, confusing the word of God with the word of man, and soon to be confusing God and man, till their case is that of renegacy entirely, which increasing is to be seen whether at the moral level (as in the Uniting Church cf. Joy Comes in the Morning Ch. 9), or the doctrinal (as in the Anglican, op. cit. Ch. 2).

In such ways, many ecclesiastical  moorings are being actively transferred from the Rock to the roaring waves, which only move. Nor does each of these denominations fail in cardinal ways, whether through the World Council of Churches or in other roads, to draw near to Romanism, so making a nice synthesis of styles, the ancient and the modern false prophets jogging in increasing mutual conformity, like the prophets of Baal in the days of Elijah (cf. A Question of  Gifts VII, News 121).

Let us however turn from the "prophets" who are "insolent, treacherous people", as our present Age so closely parallels that of Israel in its degradations such as Zephaniah here traces, to the LORD!
 

HE REMAINS faithful, though man be faithless (cf. II Timothy 2:13), so that we astonishingly, yes astoundingly read in Zephaniah 3:5, these words:

"The LORD is righteous in her midst,

He will do no unrighteousness.

Every morning He brings His justice to light,:

He never fails;

But the unjust knows no shame."

 

Moving to expose His judgments outside Israel in the past (3:6), He reveals His thought of hope:

"I said, 'Surely you will fear Me,

You will receive instruction' -

So that her dwelling would not be cut off,

Despite everything for which I punished her:

But they rose early and corrupted all their deeds."

 

God has no favourites who despite tragic folly, remain high in His esteem. Even Israel, at the last, brought back (as it was), as shown in Ezekiel 36:22, is told most explicitly, NOT FOR YOUR SAKE AM I DOING THIS! and He advises them to be utterly ashamed. He does WHAT HE SAYS. With God truth and justice, mercy and peace, word and deed are in such alignment that it is an awesome sight, to evoke a sense of magnificence at His splendour, praise at His power, that it is so pure!

God's people, linked to Him by faith, grounded in His atonement, based on Him as Rock, built up in His body, loving His reliability, BEING HIS, are TURNED TO HIM in heart; for their hearts ARE His! If they slip, He upholds (Psalm 37:24, Proverbs 24:16); but they do not travel on a different road from one, namely the Highway of Holiness (cf. Isaiah 35). He who is the Lord's does NOT MAKE A PRACTICE of sin (I John 3:9).

Thus does God expose Israel, despite His desires for her, showing here in her drab dress, as it is spiritually at the national level to this day; for only the FIRST of the TWO stages is yet complete, as outlined in Ezekiel 37 in the two prophetic words. One of these recalled the dry bones to Israel, a geographic enterprise already performed, the other to LIFE! (with meaning as in 37:14). These were set in sequence, namely the physical restoration to their land and the spiritual to their Lord. The next then is come the spiritual.

Then, no more would they return to idols, in the season of repentance which culminates this return, and their Messiah would come as its consummation (37:24), securing those who are His, as always in the everlasting covenant (Jeremiah  31:31). The new SPIRIT is yet to come (as likewise in Isaiah 32:17 and Zechariah 12:10ff.), yet the return of the Messiah is certainly near (Answers to Questions Ch. 5): but in one thing as in all, God acts. It is well to realise that this will be so, as all else has been so.

Unwise is he who ignores the word of the Lord, for it NEVER FAILS to happen. Scientifically such an approach is simply void; but it is not void there only, but in heart and in spirit as well. What is the good of that, and what possible benefit is to be derived from disbelieving the warranted, ignoring the attested, and following myths! (cf. Earth Spasm ..., Secular Myths ...).

This is coming, and is nearing us like a hydrofoil skimming the surface of the sea, cresting the waves, untroubled by delay or difficulty, rushing with stateliness, acting with power, coming near without swerving, soon to dock.

What then is the Lord's  purpose ? He tells us. It is so comforting and altogether delightful of God to TELL US. Not for Him the raised eyebrows of resistance to all interrogation, the pseudo-depth of the undivulging: not at all! HE SAYS, and tells us all our need. He did this for Israel as He promised (Amos 3:7), and now to the world has He told it and so categorically through the Messiah, as the prophets beforehand ... like Joel, Micah, Habakkuk, Jeremiah, Isaiah and ... Zephaniah. Listen then to this prophet at 3:8:

" 'Therefore wait for Me,' says the Lord,

'Until the day I rise up for plunder;

My determination is to gather the nations

To My assembly of kingdoms,

To pour on them My indignation,

All my fierce anger;

All the earth shall be devoured

                           With the fire of My jealousy.' "

To gather the nations ? Yes, you see it in Revelation 19:19 in the ultimate major crash of cymbals and symbols, as they lust for their own lordship; you see it in Ezekiel 38-39, as the local version transpires, the assemblage of specially interested parties lusting for the blood of Israel; and you see it in Daniel 7, where the small sovereign, who yet aspires to be as God (II Thessalonians 2:4ff.), makes his ultimate thrust to control the earth in the name of man. That thrust to be treated ... as God, it is as high as the abyss and as low as the bottomless pit!

"Pompous words" (Daniel 7 cf. II Peter 2-3) are the prediction for this errant and erratic mouth, this vain person, this thrust of devilish dynamic, this devil's messiah, this man of sin, as Paul depicts him.

When the nations are gathered, then, what next ? This, having determined in this way to gather them, God does proceeds "to pour on them My indignation" - scarcely the depiction of the preaching of the Gospel!

	As in Micah 7:15ff., where the nations are to crawl in to their holes like worms,
	as in Isaiah 66:15-16 where He comes "to render His anger and fury" - again, not quite the peace from the acceptance of the Gospel, nor yet the environs of its proclamation of peace, for Christ did not come to judge but to save (John 3:17);
	as in Habakkuk 3 where "You marched through the land in indignation, You trampled the nations in anger" while at the same time going forth "for the salvation of Your people, For salvation with Your Anointed," the Messiah, the Lord as in Revelation 19:
	so here in Zephaniah, we see that He pours on the nations "all My fierce anger" - and haven't they asked for it, like a tiresome child screaming for ice-cream for solid hours at an Agricultural Show! But here, it is not mere indulgence of pathetic desire which is in point, but the awful atrocities to mind, body and spirit which have been the increasing flurry and furore of the nations, whether in China, Russia, Africa ...
	Things unspeakable have been done in this latest dementia of the nations, as if the World War II and the Cold War were not enough, and the passion to dismember Israel were inadequate!

God will, at His time, pour on them "His anger and fury".

In Psalm  50, God asks man, the wicked, the secular, if he thought that God was altogether like him! Is that why, the pith of the interrogation proceeded, he recklessly, heedlessly did evil ? Take care, He warns, lest I tear you in pieces.

There is an end to a cancer is there not ? Does not the doctor warn, if the case yet has hope, what must be done!

Is God to be mocked for ever ? Have not the millenia sufficed! You can presume into morbid maladies of spirit, but not into the distress of truth. In the end, reality rules; and it is merely the mercy of God that man has been left alive on this earth for so long; and indeed, as Christ put it so clearly, the things were to get - as now they have become - so horrendous in morals and spirit, in body and clime, that IF HE DID NOT INTERVENE, NO FLESH COULD LIVE ON THIS EARTH! (Matthew 24:24).

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CHAPTER THREE

CAIRO AND OBAMA

More to the Point

The Relish of Religion ...`

A Little Mayonnaise ?

News 423,

Emanations from Cairo, June 4, 2009

'FAITH' ... THE VOYAGE IN THE UNKNOWN THAT BRINGS TOGETHER

The full text of Obama's speech is readily available. Let us examine some of the more religious aspects.

Said Obama: "We can't disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretense of liberalism. In fact, faith should bring us together. And that's why we're forging service projects in America to bring together Christians, Muslims and Jews."

This is the longing of religious romancers who have the synthetic idea, the Esperanto for religion, and it has been so for generations, but more especially in the last one of these.  The idea has many variants, but tends to run, at least when it is most frank, rather like this.

What is the use of religion, if it does not serve man, do more for him in the direction he desires, than its absence ? Is it not a service industry ? Will we forget then that man is the centre, religion is the store where you get the stuff that makes it run better, and if it makes mankind run better, then the one that is best is the one that makes man run best. If we must invent it, this religion, or authorise variants, then let us have respect for each other's ridiculous substitutes for truth and combine them with some sort of solemnity which will save face for other people, and use the concept of God to make less hullabaloo, and more peace among mankind.

Man alive, what do you think it is all about ? Serving someone other than ourselves ? Are you mad!

Faith, you see "should bring us together." That is what we are told at Cairo. But faith in what ? You can have faith in the devil, in devilish gods - some worship the devil, some have him transformed first. Faith is an attitude and it institutes a relationship, it is a confidence, an assurance. Having this can be in the bosom of the early Hitler, Mussolini, al Qaeda ... Warped or not, horrid or ridiculous, it is still faith. Whether it works for a time, and works woe or weal, it is faith. If however by faith you mean something else, you should use another term, to show this. Faith is to be evaluated in two ways: what it is and in what it is placed.

As to the second, if it is in the God of creation and revelation, with a double right to us, in that He made us and has presented His will for us, along with liberty to disobey it, then that is one thing. If it is in man, that is another, utterly ridiculous, since he varies so, his modes, spirit of the Age and so on, are like the winds. At times this is ludicrous, at times, something better sweeps in for a time. You cannot logically trust in man, unless you trust in the winds that blow. If your faith is not placed in a good thing, how is it a good faith ? If your confidence is in what deceives, and murders millions with militant irrationalism - quite common - then how should this draw us together. Even in major religious bodies, there are episodes and excursions, at least in the name of such bodies, that are appalling in ferocity, foolish in conception and arrogant in carelessness.

It is like having faith in business. Which business ? in the name of some business ? then what if someone else grabs that name and operates under it. There is simply no substitute for fact, for understanding, and the choice of repository for your faith in life is more important by far, than your having faith in it. That said, however, once your faith is where God Himself - not some self-contradictory or irrational version of the same - then it should be a matter of trusting Him. If you trust you father to take your hand and lead you across a heavily trafficked road, well. You either do or you don't. It is good, given a good father, if you do.

Faith in itself, however, is meaningless as far as right is concerned: it is mere potential, capable of entire corruption or rotting. It is when it is linked to the power of God according to the word of God which gives clear and decisive access, that it becomes a channel for glory, a motif for peace and a wonder for what it transmits. Faith should bring us together, says Obama ? Not so. It does not determine its subject matter, it does not constitute its object, be this good or bad.

Fitting in with this sort of erroneous approach are these additional words of Obama, next cited:

This truth transcends nations and peoples, a belief that isn't new, that isn't black or white or brown, that isn't Christian or Muslim or Jew. It's a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization and that still beats in the hearts of billions around the world. It's a faith in other people. And it's what brought me here today.

This is the Mein Kampf of religion, with the stress not to undervaluing Israel, for once, but God!

It is no longer speech deploring or denying  the geographical, physical, national embodiment of the fact that God has spoken, articulately, precisely, testably, verifiably and in a way alone validated^*1, in the case of Israel,  both in its former blessings, contemporary return, current defence and long duration of durance vile, at the hands of many nations. This as all foretold, is not here the point. No, there is nothing just here, about some no new pogrom from the Iran instead of Russia as formerly,  or  from sacrosanct parts of Europe, as in the Inquisition. That is not to be found at this point.

In fact, Hilary Clinton is reported this very day as having made a sensational statement concerning Israel which, though it by no means suspends the recklessness of the rest of the Cairo speech, or the requirements concerning Israel, yet gives some slight breathing space before any more perilous proceedings against that nation, as described in the earlier Chapters, and in their references.

The USA will regard any atomic attack on Israel as an attack on itself. There will be retribution, should this be done. It will not go unpunished. That is the core of the address on Israel as reported from Clinton. It is good that the USA is not going only in one direction, however sadly it is moving from reality in other elements.

No, it is not Israel AS SUCH (though it does continue to suffer in the Human Road Map, at odds the Divine Map, which is being fulfilled, step by step in gallant, dramatic and measurable fashion since 1948^*2), that is the object of diminution, degradation or assault here.

What then is suffering in Obama's oratory from Cairo here ?

It is God Himself, in His biblical revelation. As with Israel, it is not a direct attack.

Thus in Israel's case, no one is asking the Jews - other than some Muslim voices - to vacate Jerusalem. The only request from the Madrid Quartet including the USA, is one that makes Israel indefensible, that's all: that is, apart from miracles such as have already occurred in earlier wars. Nothing direct is in view; only desecration of its integrity and defensibility. In order to desecrate in spiritual things, it is not necessary to execrate expressly, for it is the spirit that God sees, and the contempt or the exclusion, the mingling or the avoidance, it is all one in this, that what God has provided for blessing is not given divine authority; and what excludes Christ from His place, excludes what leaves the curse of God intact. This is diverting life from its own mercy.

To reject His claims is to reduce to nothing His divine commission, wisdom, understanding, testimony, prophetic fulfilment, and though it be not said, this is to be blind to light, to void virtue and dismiss deity. In effect, such a thing comes close, in those at least who have known of Him, to execration. He is set at nought, His name is used and His judgments are shrugged off, as if He were a nonentity and not the Maker of all!

So here in Obama's speech: there is no attack on the word 'God'. It merely makes all revelation, should such a position be taken, virtually indefensible. If all He could and would do for mankind in its most atrocious misuse of the equipment He created, man's manhandling by man,  where gall and abomination are vying for instant acceptance, were this, what then ? Why then, colliding words, contrary to one another in the very heart of the different religions would represent futility, not utility, failure, not triumph, bumbling, mumbling, not revelation, thrust and not truth. And then ? Then it would be the case that Being would be a failure, feeble, incompetent, foolish, witless or some combination.

FAITH - THE CONNECTIVE TISSUE BETWEEN MAN AND THE LIVING GOD
THAT SEPARATES TRUTH AND PRESUMPTION

It is of course not so. His power is shown in the precise conformity of history to the Bible, in Christ's complete conformity to the program enunciated for Him a millenium before, and centuries in the making as successive prophets were inspired to write, and in His earning a name by His life which multiplied sects, amounting to billions of people on this earth, insist on using in some way or another,  as a part of their distortions! That name grabs.

While It is however well to consider how far below the powers of man any such God is placed, the point is that this makes mute the majesty of God, and slack the sovereignty of the Creator, allowing follies to be unmet, problems with no solution, millions the payment for the lapse ... in clear diction. But it is not so. On this site^*1, the exclusive validity and entire verificatory success of the Bible, in all things testable and they are very many, has been shown repeatedly. Such an assumption then is as unwarranted as it is ignorant, and such an implication from Obama's speech, intended or not, makes nonsense of the idea behind it at this point . Rolled up religions are a denial of all, as gratuitous as it is contrary to his stated intention; but it is not at all contrary to the results of his innovations!

What! is such a 'god' is wisely to be worshipped ? one is to so regarded, who in that case  provides mutually contradictory, diversely oriented, utterly mutually militant ideas, vested in words which MUST be in the most intensely important places, UTTERLY WRONG in many respects. Koran, Bible, Talmud are representative of competing considerations in many vital and central regards. In what way in particular ? In this: regarding the status of Christ, His work, His Person, the approach to 'holy wars', redemption, atonement, the crucifixion of Christ, its meaning, the resurrection, the religious requirement of not fighting for your religion with mere force (John 18:36, Matthew 26:52ff..

The theocratic is past, in the Bible; in the New Testament those preludes are finished. The authorisation for war with religious background and intention is ZERO. The world is well aware that nothing of this kind is the concern of the religion of the Koran. Whatever it is, it is far from this, and it was founded in its major centres, in ways contrary to this.

 A rolled up revelation, or a revelation of diverse forms and formats concerning one GOD! What an accomplishment! This is what the Bible calls a "NOT GOD", a vanity, an idol, one who has no plan, no deliverance for millions who suffer, no remedy proclaimed, allowing continuing tragedy and savagery of soul, to smite from this and that corner.

Where the Old Testament is taken, but not the New, then you have a Messiah who died at the right time, but for the wrong reason, and who, incidentally is not the Messiah, whose words are not those from God, and on the other hand, one who did so die, whose words are all from God, who is the centre, cynosure and sufficiency for the coming to God! Whether it be Judaism or the Koran, it is all one: it is to the uttermost a contradiction of the entire centre and point of Christianity. Let it all be worship of God, and you make of God a simpleton, if you suppose this is what He wants, a self-contradictory pumper-out of silly prohibitions and insistences, now this, now that, now making central what is hideous, now making hideous what is central.

When you blaspheme, it is well to have some semblance of truth, if you want to be a good false prophet; but this! Yet it is received on many sides with no little favour. MAKING RELIGION PIE, SALAD, CUISINE, GOURMET GOD, this is most acceptable today. It comes in a milieu, a situation insistently developing, many wanting to leave the stringencies of godly spirituality, yet still have some relationship to the word "God". It proceeds as unbelief, in its ignorance, often conceives it, and to have whatever it is that is the democratic, or if need be, autocratic desideratum, the desired goal.  Then, to this end, if the people like it, this is the Chosen God. It is a made-up god, now the spin-off from centrifuge, now the superimposition of diverse points, sludged into similarity. If none of the gods available is quite ... the same as it might be, why the answer to innovative man, losing himself in his own glory, which is mere vainglory, it is simple. Just MAKE ONE!

Here we have a good supply of gods, and you may prefer this or that, or take several, or even superimpose... is not too far from the thrust of many such approaches.

Make one that everyone can worship, and make this 'god' so broad, that he can be worshipped in utterly clashing manners, actions, deeds; and then cut his claws, so that some things are OUT, and then let everyone participate. Later of course, the permitted becomes the prescribed, and the glorious liberties habitually become the incessant requirement. Ask the USSR about its much vaunted freedom of religion: though, after all, it is dead with it all, its pretence and hypocrisy, so you need to study the case!^*2A

Have something, preferably drawing on some common elements, or be practical, if they are not the same, then make them appear so, and using this as a magnet, attract together those iron filings called mankind, and calling the thing you make "GOD", see what can be done. Such, or anything at all like it, is a prescription for hubris for man, and pandemonium from God, not peace. There IS no peace for what does not follow His words (John 12:48ff.), nor can there be. The disquietudes which follow are mere symptoms of the misuse of symbols, words gathered and garnered here and there, and stuffed into the revelatory pockets of those who transfer such things. Stolen is the biblical term for these effronteries a found in Jeremiah 23.

In what way could that be meant then ? God says this (Jeremiah 23:30:

" 'Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets,' says the Lord,
'who steal My words every one from his neighbour.

" 'Behold I am against the prophets,' says the LORD,
' who use their tongues and say, "He says".
Behold I am against those who prophesy false dreams, and tell them,
and cause My people to err...' "

The 'theft' is this, that what God has to say is His, and what man has to say, is his own; but 'what God has to say,' when it is taken from this or that polluted and presumptuous source, not God at all, this constitutes theft. Firstly, it is theft of His name for illegitimate purposes, and secondly, it is a transfer of intellectual property from one to another, none authorised, in a way rather like being an accessory after the fact. The case is clear. The God of the Bible and Obama's rhetoric are in manifest collision, and the additive domain is detested by Him, whom the Koran so vehemently contradicts, to the very core; and not that book alone, but this is the one in view in the speech, relative to Islam.

FAITH IN MAN - USING THE TERM 'GOD'

Thus Obama has this to say:

This truth transcends nations and peoples, a belief that isn't new, that isn't black or white or brown, that isn't Christian or Muslim or Jew. It's a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization and that still beats in the hearts of billions around the world. It's a faith in other people. And it's what brought me here today.

We have the power to make the world we seek,

He is evidently trying, despite the highly unequal way in which the Koran indicates that the subject be treated, some kind of second commandment, to use Christ's term, above the FIRST and the GREATEST COMMANDMENT. If some regarded Obama, ridiculously to be sure, as a messiah, then here is his core religion. Use a revised issue of the Second Commandment, to oust the first in this, that without the first "we have the power to make the world we seek."

Thus the God who hates idols, forbids any other God from being worshipped, who is epitomised, definitively expressed in His Eternal Word, Jesus Christ, it is not HE who must be worshipped. Nothing of the sort. The way is open, the four-lane highway is ready. What is rightly worshipped, it is a construct of the State, of wish-seekers, of politicians and priests in some kind of alliance. For you cannot have it both ways. On SUCH a combination, or alternation, Obama pours his blessing. In such a Middle East, with pulsating "three great faiths" we are told, there is the "place of peace that God intended it to be."

Only a composite, or a truncated God of any is of this kind. He denounces what contradicts, imports, adds to or mutates His word; and there is no blessing on what departs from His word. It is not man sidling up to an altar to the unknown or variable god, which brings peace; it is man coming in repentance to the living God and His word and way of salvation, which brings it within, to be translated outside. God's opinion of departure from His word is to be seen in Proverbs 1, in John 3:36, 8:32...

Either THIS GOD is God, or He is not. He is UTTERLY INTOLERANT, in the name of truth, which He declares Himself to be, of any other God. The reason is not far to seek. There is no other one. It is vain to seek school-boys claiming to be doctors, when you are sick, by calling them Dr Smith or Jones. You need what is the truth.

We must be intolerant of what is not true, or we are merely seduced. We do not need to dong to do it; merely to show it to be wrong. Force is not an option. It is irrelevant here. The cessation of the misuse of force for such things, when the actual options lie open, this is what is needed, while truth is made available marvellously. It is not denying the absoluteness and singularity of truth which is the solution, but the failure to try to force what does not need force, onto people. If it is true, let it show it. If it be true, let the people know it. WHY use terror and force in this course ? It is the demonstrable, verified, validated word of God, over the millenia^*3, it is this that matters; and it matters altogether.

That is why Jesus declared to MEN that their TRADITIONS, their own thoughts were being added to His word, and that this was intolerable, making into NOTHING the very word of God (Mark 7:7ff.). Indeed, you only need to ADD one word here and there, amid the commands of any one 'god' to make ALL the difference, when that word is 'NOT'! It is very easy to do, and takes a very short time; and indeed it can all be made over in this way or that, mutated to be made to appear similar where it is obviously diverse (as is the concept of waging many types of wars in many situations for the glory of Allah from NOT WAGING EVEN ONE! in following the Crucified One^*3A).

A couple of words here or there, and you have a transformation. Act like that in long-headed resourcefulness in 'handling' a religion, and soon you have it: just what you may want, and you need nothing but a pen, don't really have to do much at all. Like mistletoe, you depend on what the tree is, and you just attach yourself, or your words, to it. Yes there you have it.

Have what ? Why the Synthetic Religion (a little more Mystic Mayonnaise, my dear sir ? of course, coming over)!

The faith that brings him to the point of Cairo and utterance, Obama indicates is not hard to spell out. It is this:

"It's faith in other people. And it's what brought me here today."

It is a this world, synthetic spirituality, convenient, pragmatic, impossible, irrational, defiant of deity, insulting to the Saviour, but it has practical advantages. It might stop wars. As was found to be the case in Communism, with its formal freedoms which had to become formalities,  there may need to be some mopping up to get there, but we are learning to be more tolerant as we go: or such is the idea. Toleration of truth when ceded as a right by authority is already intolerance, for it assesses itself competent to declare it.

Untruth is intolerable by nature, and the only One who has the power to know it, is God Himself; or to say it. In fact, to know the truth rather than response, reaction and relationship among things as they act, you need BOTH that God be there AND that He declare Himself clearly so that the truth is what actually reaches you. It is magnificent and glorious that God has seen to it that the only place where testable, uniquely valid truth is to be found, duly verified and validated, is the Bible, as to writing; and in Jesus Christ, as to living as a man. This is an empirical statement (see *1 and *3A).

People who speak untruth, be they confused or liars, these are objects of pity, and when their errors are religious in nature it is imperative that force be not used relative to their faith. THAT, it is like using a butcher's knife on the eye that does not see. It is not only irrelevant, but at the faith level, an odious failure to know what you are doing. Indeed, when Christ cried for forgiveness for those killing Him, it was this that He said: Father, forgive them. They do not know what they are doing. (Luke 23:34). Stephen showed himself a follower, through his faith in this same Jesus (Acts 7:60).

Does this remove judgment from God when the time comes ? Scarcely, for truth is in union with mercy with God, but not to the detriment of either. Where mercy in its long publicly proclaimed platform is derided, hated, disregarded, dismissed, then judgment comes like night, after the day is spent ...

So people are to learn to become tolerant ...

'FAITH' TOLERANCE - BUT NOT OF GOD

Tolerant ? But not of God. Tolerant ? but not of the claims of Jesus Christ.

But let us look further in this speech, this Cairo Cooking, this Spiritual Synthetic, the Gourmand God.

 We find in this speech, to which in the chapters above and here so far, we have found some interesting things, various notable features. Consider some of its elements.

Thus it is a combination of celestial whitewash, re-cycled Moslem claims, Christian derogation, selective quips for irrational generalisations and short-term solutions for historic problems, foundering on immutable facts^*4, dispersing these at the oratorical will.

It is distinguished by brokerage to assuage and the construction of new religion, founded on a common theme, for man and his gods, the name of some hybrid and unhistorical 'god'. This one, he was hidden till revealed by the name "God" in this Cairo speech.

Here is a 'god' who does not know his own mind, but has sent a lot of religious players in his augmented team, with diverse and dramatically divergent and mutually exclusive messages. The table manners may have some similarities at times, but the meat is utterly different.

	It is force in the field of religion as such, or not*4A.
	It is works into heaven, or it is entirely rendered by grace.
	It is contradiction of the Old Testament prophets in doctrine *5, and of the Koran's claim that they are from God, in a whirl-pool of confusion, now made greater, in this, that this contradiction is itself part of the total revelation of this incumbent to the name 'God', invented in Cairo, or there given dissemination, a 'God' of the imagination, who would be instantly failed for year 12 English and logic.

This construed deity, this essentialised god, he is supposed to want all men to worship 'Him' with a toleration for untruth in various manifestations, so vast as to make 'Him' irrelevant and man the king-maker in politics. Through such ministrations as these, it now becomes man - the God maker in theology, by political power, either directly, or implicitly.

Put it for assessment, indeed, while we are concerned, with the words of Jeremiah himself, as to such movements on the part of one nation, in earlier times. Here was no small parallel to what is now being theologically exported for all nations! If one nation got its come-uppance for such a disaster directed to deity, what is this world hoping for ? Obama on this topic, declares this:
"We have the power to make the world we want."

Now ponder the denunciation of Jeremiah as found in Jeremiah 5:30-31. 

It is this.

"An astonishing and horrible thing
Has been committed in the land:

The prophets prophesy falsely,
And the priests rule by their own power;
And My people love to have it so,

But what will you do in the end ?"

In that case, the book of Lamentations of Jeremiah, recording the devastation, disaster, horror and approach to holocaust in Israel, in Jerusalem itself chiefly: that is what was done in the end.  Lamentations ? You can find it easily in the Bible: it comes right after the prophecy of Jeremiah, with its warnings, entreaties, appeals for them to return to the God of living waters, far from the broken cisterns which can hold no water (cf. Jeremiah 2:13). Indeed, no god who is invented for convenience, constructed for accord, can hold any water. When it comes to God, there is needed all that God is to do what only God can do.

As David puts it: IT IS HE ONLY WHO IS THE GOD WHO DOES  WONDERS (Psalm 72:18). Such is the record.  Imitation is impossible, though often tried by deluders. The cost is enormous, as shown by nations

	directly or indirectly dabbling with Darwinism,
	in glory-seeking, inglorious survivalism,
	in thrusting self-elevation for future grandeur from upward-moving man:

 this taking over the pathological imaginations of grasping nations.

Intoxicated with pride, unbalanced and intemperate, many of these have been

putting philosophical speculation in the place of hard, empirical, verified, precise, infinitely important fact,

turning their backs on God, directly or indirectly,
with passionate utterance as in the USSR, or dispassionate departure from His word,
as in many another, and

making practical godlets of their own.

The birth-place of such godlets ? It is to be found in the realm of the racial, the hoped-for, the social, the military, the class-based, the two-faced, the allegedly innate, the spirit of the Age, the human psyche or the inhuman -  indeed in anything at all, so long as it is sufficiently popular to mislead man, if not to deify him, and to defy God, the God of creation, truth and verified revelation, whose word sits astride all civilisations like a Colossus, not of Rhodes, but of over all roads, below which, and whom,  the tracks of man are as dusty footprints, trodden barrenly in the sands of time. .

THE COLOSSAL COST OF MAN MAKING THE WORLD HIS OWN

Look back to the divine indictment of Jeremiah 5 printed above. The false prophets, intent on departing from the revelation of the ONLY GOD, are able to get away with such nonsense ONLY because the people love it so. As Obama repeatedly indicates:  WE ARE IN THIS TOGETHER. WE CAN MAKE THE WORLD WE WANT.

There is of course the little question of ownership, you know.

The one who made the thing, unless you steal it, is really the owner, especially if he did it out of his own products, as matériel ...

So what do we find in this not historically uncommon but devastating concept of Obama ? We find a 'god' made by irenic coercion of actual testimonies historically made, one whose differential speeches, drawn up in different places and for different reasons, or whose traditions,  reveal an internally diverse and divergent moral system, concerning the use of force, love, mercy, redemption and the entire scope of celestially defined objectives.

One of the components of this joint declaration, allegedly of, for, from deity is to be found in the arena of force and faith. One repeatedly directs man in war to prevail till Allah alone is to be worshipped; the other forbids the slightest slip in that direction, even cautioning Peter for so much as one stroke of the sword. The Author and Founder of this faith, Jesus Christ, God incarnate, the God whose Spirit provided prophecy (I Peter 1:10-11) made some things clear here. Thus, consider His word to sword-wielding Peter (Matthew 26). So far from finding felicity in some paradisiac notion, by such action, a divine appreciation, Peter in fact was in this being used by Satan, and  imperilling by such conduct, the fulfilment of prophecy, and the divine appointment for sacrificial redemption, to be made by Christ. He, it was stated, did not come to destroy men's lives but to save them! Of this, He would have ... NOTHING, no, not one stroke!

Such is the variability, on the synthetic line, where all men, Christian or Moslem,  are called 'children of God' and are envisaged from Cairo as acceptably worshipping Him, despite the dynamics being decisively different, and the salvation so wholly diverse that Islam is indeed a religion contrary to Christ, stripping Him of deity and redemption some 600 years after He presented Himself for test. Diverse ? in this it is definably an antichristian; and it is this that is in mind, for joint worshipping programmatics, all being one ... As to Judaism, it omits what Muhammad seeks to create anew: the Christ of God, sent at the time of His prophetic appointment^*6: 

Take now Islam^*7 and Christianity. Thus in the one case, the words are making Christ's claim to be deity wholly and utterly wrong, while the other makes it utterly basic so that without it you have NOTHING but delusion (John 3:16,19,36, 8:24), even to the point that by so disbelieving, "you will die in your sins."

FAITH is in focus in the Obama speech, but in what ? In this, that Christ alone is the necessary atonement for your sins, being deity ? or in that, where works of various kinds, including needful wars from time to time, are the way, and wars can be a very short way to glory.

What does he say ? this (colour added).

All of us have a responsibility to work for the day when the mothers of Israelis and Palestinians could, can see their children grow up without fear, when the holy land of the three great faiths is the place of peace that God intended it to be, when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra — as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed — peace be upon them — joined in prayer.

So Obama puts his peace on Moses, Jesus and Mohammed, in his presentation of this new religion of many faces, contrary places, one that aborts the Bible. Here we have the gist. In this new deity, Mohammed has peace put upon him.

In the testimony of Jesus the Christ, however, HE IS THE TRUTH, and His words will not pass away, even though heaven and earth will do so! and He is the same today, yesterday and forever, Lord of Lords (John 14:6, Matthew 24:35, Hebrews 13:8). After Him, there were to be - as indeed there have been - MANY false christs and false prophets. Muhammad, seeking to disestablish this claim, makes what Paul calls "another Jesus" and "another Gospel" and has with this, a "different spirit" and is thus in type what Paul deems "a deceitful worker" and "false apostle" (II Corinthians 11).

That is Jesus Christ in speech.

Here at Cairo is Obama in speech. Peace to Mohammed, says he, in the field of religion and faith.

 According to Jesus, the alternate faiths are false, fraudulent, the work of false christs or apostles, while He is and remains, and indeed always has been, the TRUTH.

Obama ? What follows from his speech ? It is this. The acceptance and non-acceptance of Jesus Christ (Islam and Judaism alike reject the Lord Jesus Christ as the Messiah, the Redeemer through His own death and resurrection, as executing the very salvation of God by His own payment in His own body - I Peter 2:23ff.): this there is not the issue. Accept Him as in Biblical Christianity, or reject Him as in Islam and Judaism, yet by the Obama of Cairo, your FAITH is still a great one, and those who deny and those who live in and for Him alike, are still to have in the Middle East the peace God intended for them, and both the Messiah and His stripper^*7, are to be blessed. The contradiction is superb. The antithesis is genuine. The genuflection is multiple. The confusion is absolute.

Now the only "God" who intended this is NOT the one in the Bible. He, for Himself,  has announced the folly of such idolatry as rejects His monolithic presence as deity, detailed, declared, to the uttermost point, and He has denounced it so often, and with such wrath in the midst of seeking to provide mercy by bringing man back to the FACT of precisely WHO the actual God is, that it is almost a work for mathematics to find that number. Deuteronomy 32, Jeremiah 23, Ezekiel 13-14, 20, Matthew 23, Galatians 1, Revelation 5-6, I John 2, and of course the First Commandment of the Ten: all these are very clear.

Thus the multi-partite "God" of Cairo, the 'One' who wanted peace on the basis that all this is very silly, does not matter at all, concerning truth, has been fashioned in fundamental error, is another one. He has been crafted in the mind as the ancient idolaters crafted their wares with their hands, to satisfy the dynamic which drove their minds (cf. Isaiah 44:9). Making an image, mental or material, of God, to represent and indicate His very being, this is in itself to expel Jesus the Christ as the definitive image of His likeness, unique, eternal, uncreated, incarnate once only to atone for sin once only, to give to faith one path only, in one salvation alone, for ever (Hebrews 1, Ephesians 1:10).

Thus since this is biblically what is called NOT GOD, a subject for idolatry, the case is clear. Biblically, the Obama representation is of an idolatrous religion. The concept is this. ALL the three faiths are great, the God back of all of them is aptly to be worshipped.

This is not the biblical one however, as

	history is not removed by a word,
	revelation by an idea, or
	verification by a desire.

Thus the God presented to provide the peace presented in the way presented by Obama, is not only NOT GOD, but he dares to speak as if he were. This is the very crux of the prophecy of II Thessalonians where the MAN OF SIN is to show himself that he is god  - an interesting and natural development in the pathology of the case. In this vein, he parades himself before himself (II Thessalonians 2:4ff.), like a damsel in a beauty parlour;  and  he is stricken in the noxious fumes of his fancies, shortly thereafter in a way not lacking in drama or judgment.

Pretending to be a doctor, a medical specialist when you have no training, it is not good. It is dangerous. Such masquerading needs to be exposed.

Such is the case with this synthetic, syncretistic, synergistic "God".

The use of that name for this purpose, and the hope for peace on that basis, is just like trying to build a housing estate on Chernobyl, the day after the explosion. It could not be worse. It is as bad as it gets.

The breach of the second commandment is indeed serious; but the breach and recasting of the FIRST and GREATEST COMMANDMENT, as Jesus called it, is not only horrendous. It is omitting the basis, confounding the foundation and removing the actual Lord of glory from His place. How ? it is by having a replacement deity who blesses a false prophet, as by His own word God utterly condemns all such, and who desires peace to be visited,  where war on Him is declared.

That ? it is indeed to come explicitly,  as in Revelation 19:19, where such war on God is indeed a definitive action! It has long been implicit, explicit on the part of some; but then, in the togetherness of Cairo, suitably developed of course, there is to an explicit international effort.

Well, this puts the coming closer. The foot-hills are becoming nearer to the last ascent to come.

 This, it is very close to that, and an excellent practice session, for that ultimate event. Excellent ? yes, technically so^*8.

The sort of event the Bible describes for this is to be found in II Thessalonians 2, its result more generally in I Thessalonians 1, in Revelation 19, in Daniel 7, in Matthew 24, in Revelation 13 and of course, Revelation 1, where at the coming of Christ all the tribes of the earth mourn.

Mourn ? Why of course, for the judgments handed out are in terms of everlasting destruction (I Thessalonians 1) are according to truth, and truth is in the end, always irresistible. Rebellion may resist it, but in the end, lies die.

Why do we warn ? If there is any brotherly feeling, based on creation of mankind, any pity, any concern, any hope, any love, then how would any one NOT warn! To be silent would be like watching someone about to kill a child (here the child of peace and faith in truth) and not to intervene. The child suffers otherwise; but the assailant does also. One seeks to intervene to the uttermost. How would one not do so! It is not only into error that one moves, to expose it, but into predicted error, leading to the ultimate error. Who would annul a warning there! It is not one who loves life who would do so...

HEART BYPASS

Here then, to be found in this Cairo speech, there is a bypassing of the Christian God, and that is war in the name of peace. As the First and Greatest Commandment is bypassed, so is the Speaker of it, who has identified Himself in the Bible so devastatingly precisely that not a jot or tittle of all that He has said will fail (Matthew 24:35, cf. Isaiah 34:16-17, Jeremiah 23:24ff., Isaiah 55, 44-46). ALL will be fulfilled.

Whoever said that about not a jot or tittle failing ?  one asks. It is Jesus the Christ whose word is this (Matthew 5:17-20). Have a care when your words are contrary to the word of God incarnate. Be assured; regard your wit as superior to His, your knowledge as better, your learning as superior, your insight as more special, your works as giving you a better claim to knowledge than His did to it: do all of this, but know for all that, that the evidence is not thus, and this is mere illusion. HIS word in practical, empirical, historical fact, IT STANDS, and the criterion of standing has always been this since Moses (Deuteronomy 13); and in that day, a failure here meant death. God, He is not kidding. Man has a pandemic called sin, and taking any spiritual antibiotic is madness in the end. There is one specific to the disease, what has been called the medicine of immortality, the blood of Christ (Ephesians 1:7,2:14ff. ).

It is necessary to have discipline and to do as directed (John 5:24, 8:24), both for the negativity of the consequences not to be desired, a breach of life, and for the outcome in eternal life, in the positive beauty of godly piety.

	Make then a substitute for the Christian God, by a few selected parallels, distorted in themselves form the nature of the biblical originals and in the parallels for any real identity;
	do this, and proceed to ignore the centre and substance of the biblical faith in the Lord's Christ (Luke 2:26), Jesus Christ.
	Make a new one of these, or congratulate those who do, and call both approaches equal or glorious if you will.
	Do all this, but know that you and God are then in collision.
	By all means exalt a medley of different gods and call the synthesis, or the supposition, or the resultant image GOD if you will, and exalt them in a pantheon created by politics, one thereby desecratory of the status, stature, works, attainment and atonement, the ground of truth in the Lord Jesus Christ.
	Do this if you must and will. But then the word of God tells you in the Bible precisely what you are doing: that ? it is the exact opposite of what it says you are to do, the way it directs you to Him and the wisdom and the basis, alike, which He supplies for your action.

That ? It is this, that

"there is no other name
under heaven
given among men
by which they must
be saved" -

Acts 4:11-12.

That changed ? No, for Christ said HIS WORDS WILL NOT PASS AWAY though this world will do so, and His words will judge (Matthew 24:35). If someone rejects Him and does not receive His words, that He should be honoured just as the Father is honoured, and that He is the only begotten Son of God, without whom there is only judgment for one's sins, and in whom there is perpetual cover (John 5:19ff., John 3, 8, Matthew 11:27ff.): then what is the case ?

If someone says, NO! but there are great faiths which do not accept You in this role, and the intention of God is for peace among those who have these other great faiths who so contradict You; and furthermore, a world like that is going to work in peace, and we can make this happen, then what ?

What follows ? It is this. Then

"the word that I have spoken will judge him in that last day"  (John 12:48).

What sort of judgment is that ? It is this condemnation, namely that light has come into the world, and men have preferred darkness (John 3:19). That, it is tantamount to an execratory omission. Accordingly, this is elemental judgment, according to truth. This is what comes for what is desecratory  of the status and stature of Jesus Christ, dismissive of His deity, giving to those who make His call incommunicado, nevertheless a political insulation and a personal blessing. Imagine now if someone came to the Oval Office and asked for Ahmadinejad ?

 Would they not be tempted to deem him mad ? (cf. Hosea 9:7), a prankster ? a trickster ? an insult machine ?

Imagine coming to God and asking for a false prophet, one of the names you have invented for Him, even though HE has stated in the Bible that the number of variants from this, His word, coming from God, is ZERO (cf. Matthew 5:17ff., Isaiah 34:16-17, 44:24 - 45:19, John 12:48-50).

What an effrontery ? What a tragedy unless there be repentance, as we must hope; for love DOES hope, and therefore speaks. If the ground of truth is dismissed (I Corinthians 3:10ff.), then the ground of truth dismisses what dismisses it (cf. Matthew 7:21ff.). It evacuates from the truth, what evacuates the truth from itself, its words, its own wisdom and vision. Eternal life CONSISTS IN THIS, that you know GOD (not some other being made up from man's thoughts) and Jesus Christ whom He has sent (John 17:1ff.). That, it is not the same as someone else. When it comes to the infinite God, this is an infinite mistake, as far as this is possible to finite beings. If you gamble with greatness, great is the loss!

HEART RESTORATIVE

What then ? Such other gods, synthetic, mutually approbative, all apt for referring to God, as the Cairo speech shows, they relate to the God of Christianity, not as the moon relates to the sun, but as prison to liberty, as delusion to deity, and that, it is the word of God as found in Isaiah 61, 55, 66.

Listen to this last word:

"Thus says the LORD, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool:
where is the house that you build to Me? and where is the place of My rest?
For all those things has My hand made, and all those things have been, says the LORD: but to this man will I look,
even to him who is poor and of a contrite spirit,
and trembles at My word.

"He who kills an ox is as if he slew a man;
he who sacrifices a lamb, as if he cut off a dog’s neck; he who offers an oblation,
as if he offered swine’s blood;
he who burns incense, as if he blessed an idol.
Yea, they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delights in their abominations.

"I also will choose their delusions,
and will bring their fears upon them;
because when I called, none did answer;
when I spoke, they did not hear: but they did evil before mine eyes,
and chose that in which I delighted not."

Here the choice of another God, one not in entire conformity to the revealed and revealing word of the God of the Bible: this is called a delusion, result of not listening to the speech of the actual God of truth and reality. It is speech made in heaven, not in Cairo, and demitted to earth not for a game, but for the glory of God and the salvation of man.

What is needed is to TREMBLE at His word, because it IS HIS! To follow it is the minimum. To subvert, have something supersede or substitute for it is not only an impertinent imposition, related like the wing of a butterfly to the rump of an elephant, a gross substitution. it is a vagrancy so great that God will give them the very deluded state of mind which they begin to exhibit as a horrendous gift. It is like letting them eat the fruit of their own dealings (as in Proverbs 1). To act in this way is deemed EVIL.

Consider Proverbs 1 in this.

"Wisdom calls aloud outside;

She raises her voice in the open squares.

She cries out in the chief concourses,

At the openings of the gates in the city

 

"She speaks her words:
 

'How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity?

For scorners delight in their scorning,

And fools hate knowledge.

Turn at my rebuke;

Surely I will pour out my spirit on you;

I will make my words known to you.
 

'Because I have called and you refused,

I have stretched out my hand and no one regarded,

Because you disdained all my counsel,

And would have none of my rebuke,

I also will laugh at your calamity;

I will mock when your terror comes,

When your terror comes like a storm,

And your destruction comes like a whirlwind,

When distress and anguish come upon you.
 

'Then they will call on me, but I will not answer;

They will seek me diligently, but they will not find me.

Because they hated knowledge

And did not choose the fear of the Lord,

They would have none of my counsel

And despised my every rebuke.

 

'Therefore they shall eat the fruit of their own way,

And be filled to the full with their own fancies.

For the turning away of the simple will slay them,

And the complacency of fools will destroy them;

But whoever listens to me will dwell safely,

              And will be secure, without fear of evil.' "

 

To imagine synthetic 'god', and gratuitously to give this thing a capital to make it "God" whom people happily and fruitfully worship in peace, as in effect wrought in the Obama speech, this becomes a blasphemous insertion into the ring of fire. It cannot douse it. It receives what it enters and being truth, it burns what degrades.

In fact, such dealings merely put petrol on the Islamic ambition by mischaracterising methods of expansion, both present and historic, both repetitively observable in the Koran, and in this,  in absolute contrast to the words of Christ (John 18:36) and His practice (Matthew 26:53ff.). This willingness to suffer in the truth without any recourse to force,  even when His own Person was at stake! it is quintessential in Christ (cf. More Marvels ... Ch. 4, Divine Agenda ... Ch. 6).

HE came to save; not to judge (John 3:17). His expression is humble and meek, not grandiose and self-glorying. He can be jostled, spat on. Truth does not change because of an exchange of the position of saliva. He went to the entirety of peace in the wonder of love to exhibit the entirety of truth. If this be rejected, conjoined, mimicked, enclosed in a pantheon, made co-ordinate with other things, then mercy being expelled, judgment does come. NOW, however, the exhibition of what God is and desires, it is on record, in the record, and what is not accepting it for what it is, this too is on record. Proverbs 1 tells us more; and here to have more than Christ, it is to have incomparably less.

To echo Islamic clichés as in Cairo, reminds  one of Chamberlain's 'peace' accord with Hitler, in a parallel act of blindness, to that of Obama. It led only to war; it ignored the inflammatory character basic to Hitler's creed, just as this President bypasses so much in the Koran and in history in his generatlisations^*7. The actual nature of the dictator's rhetoric, beliefs and claims, as so clearly written on the one hand, in his Germanic tongue, as are some of the injunctions in the Koran in another script, their internal deletion does nothing to dispel their objective presence. They are THERE!

As to Hitler, the martial marches of his arms and armies, proceeding in the throes of his misconceptions, these were tediously 'interpreted' in other phrases and ways, with a hope born of ignorance or blindness or both.

Did he REALLY mean such things ? Was it mere exuberance or talk ?

These were then to be regarded as a 'strange thing' as Chamberlain proceeded to tell us, with paper in his hand, that he was able to give hope, to assure us of the victory gained at the meeting ... What was that victory ?

It was to give us, of course, peace in our time! that was the British contribution at that time. In months, however, the feature of peace became the reality of wrath. It was a gobbling war, a gross and heinous war, a war to the death of millions, marred by atrocities unspeakable, shame paralysed, guilt anaesthetised, in the interests of   ... a vision, a concept, a dream.

There is a surprising similarity in the mode of treatment, in that, as is the direction of flow of Obama's prescription, which comes perilously close to providing parallel grounds and methods of speech, in tenor at least, to those of 1938, as the British PM returned from Munich.

It was in Chamberlain's day, as if a snake were a lizard, and a lizard a bird, somehow coupled with the beating of wings, a thing of beauty and peace; and it is so today. Word say one thing. Works say quite another. However many Germans did not agree with Hitler, there were his words and works, and he was leader, and his Party ruled. However many Islamic people do not agree with all that is in the Koran, the religious war aspects and the grounds and desired result of it, or choose in some way to remove this from active ingredient status, this is nevertheless a genre often to be found there. With this, there is a whole history of what has been militantly wrought over many centuries, when power was adequate, in numerous cases, to the point that Europe nearly became an Islamic whole. Indeed, this came rather close,  till the Battle Tours of 732 A.D., gave it another touring guide.

The forcible imprint of another Jesus, another gospel, another spirit (Galatians 1), did not achieve the dominance of any Almighty deity, since there was none to support it in that domain.

This is not to judge the present by the past, but the whole by the Koran, in conjunction with the past.

As with Jeremiah, there is only tragedy in listening to prophets whom the Lord did not send, whose words lack verification and authentication in history and reality, untested, mere dreams (Jeremiah 23). These prophets in ancient Israel, like Muhammad in our era, contradicted categorically what the Lord said. For example, in that day,  some were claiming Babylon would not overthrow the city of Jerusalem, while Jeremiah had a word which was ALWAYS fulfilled, and to the contrary, with grounds in truth and covenant!

So now there are grounds in truth and covenant (Matthew 26:28), and they do not move.

As Christ declared: "

"All things have been delivered to Me by My Father,
and no one knows the Son except the Father.
Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son,
and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.

"Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me,
for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."

What then of this synthesis, this Religion Salad ... Have some more mystic mayonnaise ?

It is an old practice from a modern mouth. It leaves a 'God' who has spoken with the clarity and comprehension of a 14 year old, for the gush of nebulous gabble which results when all these messages gain 'great faith' status, together, issuances of downgraded deities who must comport with flat and central contradictions of each other in the name of someone called 'God'. Such variations in the acceptable words of the God to be acceptably worshipped, these become an exercise in confusion so manifest as to create massive derogation of any 'God' involved in anything of this kind.

Having the NO GOD to accredit with Him who is God,  a personally  adjusted selection of phrases, Obama declares  worship here is a just basis for all, and so silences at a stroke of creative presidential politics, any God who has half the intellect of man; and this without ground or reason, but that of desire.

What follows ?

This leaves God, logically at the hands of this moulder of clay, the status of a bumbling nincompoop who has left man with no definitive ground, authorised basically contrary approaches issuing from a broken spout of a mouth, with works and grace, a bob each way, optionally  the way to heaven, each negating the other. It leaves a 'God with redemption in meekness,  and forceful expansionism, as alternates. Thus for man, what is left in such a double or treble-minded muddle ? Indeed, in such an imaginary and imaginative domain, mankind is becoming a wonder species of innovation and provocation simultaneously,  director of a new commerce.

What is this ? It is then time for him of Cairo utterance to arise and so embracively accept in the name of God, all of these, thus discounting all messages, reputedly divine, till opposites are acceptable, contradictions are comparable, and a construct of re-fashioned phases becomes the new additive to the Middle-Eastern ideas of yore, giving new spiritual options. Which ones ? why those from which Israel was so often told to detach, on pain of peril, as children are told to avoid bad companions, in the same perspective.

With children, it is often simply for conduct, that an exclusion zone exists. This with which deal today, however was, as it still is,  for life, and that at the hand of the Creator of Life, whose word is clear, whose responsibility and love are glorious. It is He who is no nincompoop with failed speech, no ditherer allowing follies innumerable without remedy, but one who having given IN HIMSELF the remedy, is disowned, or conjoined, for the case is similar, as if the President's enemies could equally write his cheques at their own will. As with many diseases, the remedy however perfect has an important time relationship with the life of the sufferer. Dithering does nothing. It must be taken.

Oh, and by the way, which sort of Mystic Mayonnaise do you prefer ? They are all nice, don't you think ?

No, not actually.

 

 

 

NOTES

*1

 

See :

LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST

WHO ANSWERS RIDDLES

AND WHERE HE IS, DARKNESS DEPARTS

Bible or Blight, Christ or Confusion:
The Comprehensive Resolution of Man's Intractable Problems
is Found Only in the Bible, the Word of God;

 

DEITY AND DESIGN, DESIGNATION AND DESTINY

 

REASON, REVELATION and the REDEEMER

 

The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy,
 

The gods of naturalism have no go!

SMR, TMR.

 

*2

See SMR Chs.   8 and    9.

 

*2A

The USSR in its verbal work, like that of the preceding French Revolution of 1789, painted a pretty picture on liberty in some ways. The French alternating between the praise of liberty, equality and fraternity, and showing an ironic twist in the liberty, part, by the use of the guillotine which, in this earth, has to the point a rather equalising force. For itself, at least, it possessed a kind of liberty, letting its head go. In the USSR protestations about religious liberty merely made the task of the irony of its Nobel Laureate, Solzhenitsyn, the easier.

From Bewilderment, Bedazzlement ... Ch. 3, slightly adjusted for our present purpose, we have this.

Take Solzhenitsyn who died this week at age 89, was he in an integral slave camp ? Or was he in a kingdom of another kind that nothing could capture ? Did his spirit find itself subdued ? or were his words those of fear of retribution when he publicly admonished Russian Orthodox leaders for their too servile yielding to the anomalous atheism of their predatory government! or when he exposed the Gulag. Someone might reply: That does not reduce the impact of the slavery!

But it does. This is precisely what it limits. It does not limit the INTENTIONS of the slavery, or its endeavours to be systematic; but it does reduce its impact, and the source of that slavery did not reduce Solzhenitsyn to conformity, because not being God, it cannot control its people. This,  the 1991 developments displayed to the point that this wicked and corrupt, this irrational and unempirical, this self-contradictory modern Nineveh, this Communist Moscow decayed at last, relaxed its clutching and spasmodic grip.

So far from free, the religion that Solzhenitsyn attacked for its hypocrisy in his notable open letter to the Russian Orthodox leadership, is shown as something contained, directed, weak and speaking - as with Pius XII in another domain - far too little in the face of grinding horror, and blasting blazes of suppressive fervour. HOW could it be so silent! asked Solzhenitsyn.

Give to MAN power over religion, in his political aspirations and dreams, and HIS OWN assertions are all too apt to use the authority so given, to impose his own; and the caretaker of liberty, on which man often so foolishly relies, becomes its funeral director. It was so in Tiananmen Square where one mused like this, that the forces supposed to protect them, attacked them! This, it was symbolic as well as servile power.

It is not surprising. The only One whom you can trust when it comes to the things of God, is God Himself, the living and articulate God, not some dithering dummy or dithyrambic mouth-spout whose words are mere symptoms of confusion on the part of man, who wrongly uses the reality of the word of God, to make of it a matter of his own domain. He tweaks it, speaks it, embroiders, excludes, includes this or that, embraces it in lordly manner, defaces, enhances, using the name of God for its excursions, embarcations and innovations.

Speaking into the very face of God with his own little words, and multiplying these, man is sometimes found at work, even daring to add them to His! and worshipping the result.

(cf. Mark 7:7, and Christ's horror at this process).

 

*3

See *1 above, and especially

LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST

WHO ANSWERS RIDDLES

AND WHERE HE IS, DARKNESS DEPARTS

and

DEITY AND DESIGN, DESIGNATION AND DESTINY

 

*3A

The action of Romanism via popes is wholly irrelevant to biblical Christianity: as if Ford Motor Co were to be accused of something General Motors or some other group did, when in fact this was an act of piracy with its name, and in fact  it  had taken no such action! Christ not only did not use force to take any city, on which his religion would be entailed, unlike Muhammad, who acted to pursue and propagate what he had in mind. As to Christ, He even forbad force, though it was personally directed to His own defence!

Popes, on the contrary, have used force in the vast vial of sophisticated assault on Christians among others, just as Islam has done. There are similarities, but it is not with Jesus Christ, the sacrificial Saviour, who bore the brunt, rose from the dead, and instilled His Spirit, sent to enable what with man is impossible, harassed as he is by the domination of sin. With God, the living and self-revealed God, however, with Jesus the Christ, the Eternal Word of God, ALL things are possible, whatever He desires. THAT is how He both can and does answer prayer and fulfill His word of millenia, from long before Muhammad saw in his infancy the light of day; and so He continues to do, to this very hour,

On the appalling misuse of force by Romanism (in parallel in fact with the Moslem invasions of such vigour, violence and subjugation in so many nations for so long, and this with appeal to Allah and multiple verses in the Koran): see Ancient Words ...Ch. 14.  On the essentially contrary religion which is Romanism, see SMR pp.1032-1088H. Included in this at the outset is testimony to the appalling gall of papal pride and self-elevation to the point of nausea, because of its unfounded non-meekness, non-lowliness of mind, non-placement of Christ alone as leader and teacher (Matthew 23:8-10), with an arrogance of vaunting thrust and focus on itself.

Such religions need force in one sense, though this is no justification for it; for the truth is not with them. It remains where it always has been, in the Word of God, who became flesh, and in the words of God as given through the prophets over the millenia, compiled in Israel, applied in Christ, who fulfilling all, still makes a call, not less earnest because it is ancient. The arrival of the elements which bespeak His return makes the call as it were, to be relayed by transmitters, not only who preach, but those embedded in history itself (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5).

 

 

*4

See Galloping Events Ch. 4, Israel ... Ch. 1, SMR Ch. 9, Red Alert Ch. 10,
The Divine Drama Ch. 10.

 

*4A

See SMR pp. 1075ff., and 50ff..

*5

See SMR pp. 1080ff..

 

*6

See Christ the Citadel Ch. 2, Highway of Holiness Ch. 4. 

 

*7

See the following, for example, on this religion.

More Marvels ... Ch.     4, esp.  *4, 

SMR   pp. 829ff. , 1080

Dancers, Prancers, Lancers and Answers Ch. 3, *1A misconceptions about the Cross, variable and mutually conflicting, on the part of the Koran

Lord of Life Ch.  3 (and force), 1081ff. (and faith), Outrageous Outages  ... Ch.   5; 

His Wounds Opened Eternity Ch.    4;     3

Stepping Out for Christ Ch.    9,  

Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch.    8 (in perspective), see also *1,

Divine Agenda Chs.    6,  3 (an overview of religious truancies, including Marx, Darwin and Koran);

Highway to Hell (Koran citations in both, with ideational parallels in perspective,  in the former;  and in the latter,  futile depravities in endless ideologies such as Sudan has shown so significantly, Islam ablaze without glory),
cf. Overflight in Christ Ch.   1 (and the Koran's musings);

1493 (esp. Britain and sharia);
News 138,  Beauty for Ashes Chs.    4,   7

BARBLISS   5, Acme ... Ch.  9 , Great Execrations ... Ch.    3, 
SMR p. 1O88D - three major religions in some ways in concert, astray.
 

News 138,  Beauty for Ashes Chs.    4,   7,   SMR pp. 1074ff., esp. 1079, 1081ff.
(These latter show this religion, with the other three major conspiracies  towards the ultimate - why conspiracies ? It is because men conspire, or breathe plans together for a control, rule or oversight not ordained by God: these are breaths of man, and the breath that matters is that of God, in and by which all scripture is inspired by Him (II Timothy 3:16, Isaiah 8:20), in the Book of the Lord (Isaiah 34:16), the Bible, and sustained and implemented by Him (Matthew 26:54ff.). Other ideas for rule are always unruly, since they always tend to use power for what neither reason nor truth compels.).

See also SMR pp. 822ff., 986ff., 1O88D.

 

*8

For a drama based on this, in its place, see The Moon Soon, particularly
Ch. 20.

 

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 Chapter Four

 

OBAMA SPEECH,

JEREMIAH DECLARATION

 and need for
USA to Signal to Better Things Amid its People

than the Annunciation of Cairo

THE SETTING IN THE WORD OF GOD

 

NOW it Is a good time to consider ...

Jeremiah 11:13-16

"For according to the number of your cities were your gods, O Judah; and according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem you have set up altars to that shameful thing, altars to burn incense to Baal.

"So do not pray for this people, or lift up a cry or prayer for them;
for I will not hear them in the time that they cry out to Me because of their trouble.

"What has My beloved to do in My house,

Having done lewd deeds with many?

And the holy flesh has passed from you.

When you do evil, then you rejoice.

 

"The Lord called your name,

Green Olive Tree, Lovely and of Good Fruit.

With the noise of a great tumult

He has kindled fire on it,

                            And its branches are broken."

God was not impressed with the multiplicity of religious recognition in the nation, and the vast array of pseudo-deities, idols and the like was an appalling exhibit of religious fibrillation in a nation with a diseased heart.  Had they become spiritually insane, as well as inane ? Could they not tell the power of God from the performance of God in their past ? Must they again suck the insipid sweets of make-believe religions, founded in desire, expressive of human pride and lust of one kind or another, and not worship their Creator and Redeemer ?

Such is the danger in many another country, once more firmly embedded in Christian life and teaching, and at this time delinquent, often with relish, or dithering like a Zedekiah, in illicit combinations and aspirations.

 

THE SETTING IN THE USA

Now before we apply this to the Cairo speech of Obama (which simply sums up and essentialises much of what had gone before, and goes further), we must realise that USA is NOT a theocracy. It has NOT dedicated itself unilaterally to one God expressed in the Lord Jesus Christ. It HAS declared itself one nation under God, but not under Christ. The parallel with Israel of old, therefore, is not perfect. However, the matrix of the nation has moved from a substantially Christian one to one now becoming so odd in sect and sexual confusion, in morals and aspirations, in government and in principles of guidance as seen sometimes in agencies of one kind or another, and in international pronouncements, that the parallel is there in substance, if not in form. It is declining sharply in Christian witness and conscience.

Formally, it is not, through the Obama plan, actually reneging. It is however going no small distance towards this. In what way ? In that any President should hallow Islam as if its works were so far different than the maelstroms of history, that a hawk becomes a nightingale. To be sure, there have been times of prosperous thought and action in many nations and regimes; but this, it is famous for war, and for nearly conquering Europe, as a religious force, to provide pre-emptive allegiance for any in the field of religion, or else, startling peril of death or abasement.

That however is merely a side point. The daring of Obama is more important, as it signifies the extent of the degradation that it could even be contemplated.

In fact,  it is not necessary for any President to make religious pronouncements about the joint outcome of the religions in the USA. He can declare, both before and after the election, that he is a Christian. He can even say, that while he will earnestly seek the good of all parties, religious or other, according to law and due care of the people, he will not become a hypocrite in order to be a President. THEREFORE ALL his power to vote, to decide, to use vetos and anything else which in the providence of God, the God to whom the USA is committed (verbally, though the definition varies profoundly), will be used - as he hopes that of every other Christian will be - to implement in a free society those morals and ethics and sensitivities, that grace and that love which is born of Christ. That would be his concern, faith, constraint, while seeking the good of the entire nation with justice.

Here would be a standard of moral reference for his government^*1, while it governed, as far as he could induce it so to act, and this would be the commitment, openly made and clearly provided if election put the Party in power.

 

THE SETTING IN CAIRO, CHRISTIANITY AND CONSCIENCE

In no way, however is this now being done. In making Islam a good and peaceable religion, Obama is not merely making a value judgment, contrary to Christ (Matthew 7:15ff.), who makes of false prophets what the Bible always makes of those who oppose and delete or defile the word of God, deceitful workers, wolves in sheep's clothing and the like, but a submission contrary to the religious liberty and non-commitment under God, of the USA. He is stating concerning another RELIGION that it is good. Its book is holy. It is a thing to be admired.

Firstly, that is not possible for the faith of a biblical Christian, and to be sure, Obama may not have declared himself to be such, but some other type of religious worker, going to some other kind of church with some other kind of program (and there were questions);  yet the image that appeared projected was not that of someone in a sect, but in a strange but definitely Christian Church.

What he has said proves that his allegiance is not biblical at all; it is far from it. He has made Islam a partner in the religious setting. Let us be clear. In the USA, the Islamic and Christian religions both have a free place. Each may pursue its aims, provided neither breaks the law of order and peaceableness toward the well-being of his neighbour. That is  no mask for not speaking the truth in conscience and with reason, but for the spirit in which it is spoken and intended. Free place, however, though both religions have for expression, that is here beside the point. If an Islamic president arose and declared that Christianity was a good religion and that the New Testament was a holy book, or even that the entire Bible was a holy book, and that Christians were part of a good religion which had done much good on the earth, I do not care to surmise the consequence.

It is obvious that ANYONE is expected AT ANY TIME to be true to what is believed to be true and right, on pain of being a liar if the contrary is said as a conviction, and a traitor if it is done, except in the case where there is a slip, a momentary lapse. A slip however is one thing; a sustained commitment and policy document is another!

In England, in the case of Archbishop Cranmer, his error was most temporary and shown to be very painful to his conscience. Thus, he burnt off his right hand that had held the pen with which he had written the false submission, as Rome's power burnt the rest of his body for him, anyway. With him, in any case, he had hoped for a church of and in peace, and his temptation does not appear to have been for himself, but for his nation. THIS did not excuse it, as he himself was so heroically aware, his amazing action showing the depth of his repentance for a lapse of a very short time. He had indeed shown even more courage when, before the burning, when a cowering quietus was expected from his episcopal lips, he denounced from the pulpit the Romanism to which he had for so long been so eloquently opposed; and it was Rome which effectually held the faggots for the burning.

If therefore Obama were a biblical Christian (and not a part of some innovatory substitute, founded on imagination, some new Jesus with a new Gospel and another spirit as in II Corinthians 11), this speech would be an abomination, appalling in its horror, gross in its lapse, making Cranmer's most temporary flop seem almost virtuous by comparison, in its boldness and its panache, some days ago.

Yet in acting in the name of the USA which has many religions, and making this declaration about one of them, and the more so, in doing so as a 'Christian', Obama is defiling the nation, leading it where millions presumably do not wish to go, and doing all those things which have been considered at length in the last Chapter.

There is nothing else for it, but this:

Should he not repent, then those who believe otherwise, and do not consider the work of a false, anti-Christian prophet to be a good one, whatever the religion emanating from such a source, or his book to be holy, are well advised to make a joint declaration of horror at his using the name of the USA in such a way. Since much of its historic foundation of the nation is of a wholly different kind, the use of the label 'Christian' for one making such a speech is deplorable. Its use moreover in expressing the approach of the nation is to be wholly refuted, and that with nothing short of horror.

Those making such a declaration might add this: These people, these organisations, would announce that for their part, they have neither place nor calling in any such policy, declaration or conviction, and protest most vigorously at the name of the USA being used in a presidential capacity to make such characterisations, and to take such actions based on them, as Obama has outlined.

In this way, at last there would be a vocal residue, not a silent rump. We would hear from those who do not want their whole nation to be judged by God on the basis of such fall into a relativistic syncretism and be held responsible for such a betrayal. Betrayal of what ? Why, betrayal of biblical truth and allegiance to Jesus Christ, in treachery to the grandeur of the God in whom they trust: in terms of Jesus Christ as GOD, and not as mere man, as REDEEMER and not prelude to Muhammad, as the ONLY way to God, through incarnation and atonement freely received, and not as some partisan of a pantheon, or a prelude to another.

Should this be done, the wrath of God might be avoided at least in the utmost level, and the testimony of Jesus would be explicitly opposed by those who refused to have themselves via any President - let alone one calling himself a Christian - committed in any such style as this.

	What then is in view of those so committed ? It is this.
	They do not want their nation to be guilty of any such thing as this: what in the days of  ancient Israel was treachery towards God, or such relativistic honouring of such a prophet as Muhammad, and accordingly so vast a dishonouring of Jesus Christ,  even outside a theocratic venue.
	Theirs is no part in this ideology, barren and bleak, the express presidential arousal of a plethora of religions in his own role as leader, a presiding pantheon.
	From any and all such leading, they are detached, a nd in its entwinings, they find no lure.

The Bible, as seen in the quotation from Jeremiah above, uses the metaphorical concept of lewdness for the multipartite religious behaviour of the nation, meaning that it resembles a wanton woman, married but sending her morals to the foul cleaners, to shrink. Here the Christian residue would indicate that the personal convictions of the President are not at all those of many in the nation, and they refuse to be characterised as accepting for one moment any part of his relativistic speech, in which national aims are allowed to include what is entirely abhorrent to them, merely acceptable to some, rather than to what the whole nation might reasonably be expected to be stated as true of them!

If Obama had said this: I am a Bible believing Christian, and as such must as President condemn utterly the Moslem view ... this too would be offensive to Islam. As President, he is not commissioned to commit the nation to this or that in terms of one religion. It is of course true that he IS committed and commissioned - that is, a Christian would be - in all his private views, ethical concepts, evaluations in all things, to see them from a Christian viewpoint because he CANNOT get rid of the Christian seed within him (I John 3:9). When he speaks, one ought to be able to detect the savour of his spiritual position, as one might expect of any leader, who must first be true to what he believes, or be hypocrite. His conviction concerning Christ ought not to be hard to find. Yet this is entirely diverse from committing a nation to action in terms of any one religion or perspective for religion.

In speaking for the nation, you may of course say that you personally believe such and such, and conceive it good to apply such and such principles here, making it clear that though the matter comes from you, it does so from you as a person,  AS SUCH, and not in ANY way as representative of the nation. You need not cease to be a person, to be a president; but there are some annunciations which when in an international speech concerning your nation, are not to be presented on the part of the nation. It would simply be untrue; and short of a religious commission, explicitly made, it would also be gratuitous and distortive.

It may be something about to happen, but the nation is not being led to it on the basis of a formal evaluation of religion on the part of the leader, on its behalf. The code, the ethics, the commands of God he would seek to keep; but the presentation of his religion as a national basis, this is not true to those who do not have it. He may even wish to say this, that though many will not agree with him, and see things entirely differently, and may even abhor what he is going to do, yet he will do it on his own personal basis, being convinced it is best for the nation. In that way, they pay for the election, but are not compromised as well.

The results of conviction, he would of course always seek to apply, and with Christ, this NEVER means force. NEVER means no discrimination against the equity of any case on the basis of religion. It DOES mean that MORALS of the kind announced before the election will of course be pursued by the President with all the vigour one would hope to characterise ANYONE with ANY power in Government. If you believe it, you WILL do it. That is the nature of faith that is not fiction, as James is so careful to make clear. But you will NOT make it appear in ANY way that ALL the people are of your own conviction or that in so acting you represent all or that your nation presents such a face to the world. It does not. Truth is insuppressible by President as well as by any other.

Using your powers to move things in the directions you BELIEVE right is to be understood. Putting someone with various convictions into a high place MEANS that you approve of him or of her, doing whatever is justly within the reach, towards the morals and ways of that religion; but NEVER, never, never may this religion be put forward AS IF it were the criterion of the nation in its approach or its perspective. The reason: this is not so, such an implication would be riotous.

That of course includes ANY religious approach which makes various religions ALL GOOD, for that in itself IS an evaluation of God, of His ways and constitutes a way of regarding things, an overview and a religious perspective called good, in itself. What else it does, we have already seen in the last Chapter. If therefore the NATION, the USA, is to move in terms of this religion, to its appointed end, then this is insult insufferable to those who do not share this religion, this syncretism, this perspective which the Bible characterises in lewd terms for any Christian, this spiritually adulterous perspective.

Leaving the national commitment open is weak; closing it in this way is hard to differentiate from woeful. You CAN have a Christian nation (USA is not one, formally), and this will MEAN equity and grace, kindness and principles, as if the constant leader had been elected on the basis of his or her being a Christian, and thus seeking to implement what may be, on the basis of freedom in a democracy, for thought and speech, on the one hand, and direction of flow of institutional assumed morals on the other. Unless it were made a condition of adult residence that one be a Christian, then of course liberty of expression and formulation, argumentation and application is available to all; but when it is morally contrary to the Bible, then it would be excluded, like a football on a cricket pitch. In totalitarianism, force makes it happen, and thought is policed.

In an open Christian and democratic nation, thought is freely expressible if it is rational and honest, but the direction is not dictatorial, and the mode of dictation is replaced by standards of rectitude on the one hand, and liberty which does not violate moral principles on the other. In practice, such a nation could not allow sexual perversion as legal, but would seek something other than force and fine, to deal with it, while providing for its classification as crime. Love seeks wisely; dictation is bleak. Nevertheless, the USA is NOT formally a Christian nation, and this is presented simply for comparison of various outcomes.

You may in any position in a country which is under God but not specific in definition of the same,  wish to declare that this and that in your religion is apt and fit for a particular purpose, and how would you not ? People KNOW you hold it, and would scarcely be surprised if you applied it for your own small part in any dialogue or discussion.

 

THE SETTING IN A DEMOCRACY

At that moment, however, at which you speak FOR the whole group or Senate or whatever other body, the nation for example, and evaluate other religions on behalf of all, as if this would conceivably satisfy any but a majority at best, and represents a national view, position or criterion, wish list or basis, in general or in any particular regard, then you are not merely deceived. You tempt, provoke, mistake your mission and distort the demographics.  On the other hand, if you did NOT at this or that time, make it clear that your own thoughts and ideas, ideals and desires, would always flow in terms of the river of your convictions, this too would seem almost to unman you, to make you mere depersonalised operator or executive.

In short, in an open democracy under God, undefined, by all means seek what you value most, to fulfil it, and if this excludes establishment of a religion, then pursue the results and avoid the institution or characterisation of the whole as if your presidential part made such appropriate, because you lead. You could of course speak FOR MY PART, and make it clear in this way what you held and how you felt about this or that religion, if you felt this apt and good for the nation. It would have to be disjoined however from what you were saying on behalf of the Senate or the nation. Of necessity, all CANNOT follow what you do, or the reasons for which you do it. To give them what they do not want is one thing; democracy ensures that will be so. To characterise things as you see them, and apply this on behalf of the nation, using a religious perspective and evaluation of religions as a basis, this becomes a combination of hats which will fit on no head.

Obama, therefore, having presented himself as a Christian, and said this of Islam in a world-heard speech on behalf of the USA, makes two massive errors. Firstly, he becomes an avowed 'Christian' whose fealty to Christ is compromised to the point of contradiction: since the Christ has no more truck with false prophets, or new christs (Matthew 7:15ff., 24:12,24), than did the Old Testament with its contemporary ones (Jeremiah 23, Ezekiel 13-14), or with those predicted. Secondly, he becomes a national leader whose standing on behalf of his nation is categorically  demoted to that for a section. For many, it is not that they cannot agree merely; rather they are committed to the exclusion of any such evaluation, overview, perspective on religious grounds, at the source and heart of the matter. They so exclude in heart and by faith; and with reason.

Not merely do they disagree with the approach, the strategy, the appeal or whatever else a national leader might choose to make to other people and nations, they do so on the ground that the stated and explicit basis expressly rests on convictions they neither do nor could share,  and that this excursion into religious evaluation as a perspective for national action, is repugnant not only to freedom, and to conscience, but to life.

If therefore, a biblical Christian leader were to declare this: Because biblical morals are the only good ones, and all else is rubbish, I am going to appoint these laws to deal with immoral people, he might not be accepted. WHO, they might ask, appointed you to judge all when constitutionally we have a freedom of religion, on the basis of your own religious book! If however he had said this: Being convinced in terms of my own heart, religion and survey, that these laws are necessary for public health and safety, therefore I will use all my powers as leader to do this: that involves only himself and his appointed power.

The distinction is not hard to find. It is this. IF you talk religion, like anyone else, you choose the time and the place and the involvement and implications. If you talk personally, there is no problem. If you make your appointment to some office, a place where your own values will be applied, there is STILL no problem. Once however you speak as if your perspective is shared by all, commits all, expresses the Senate or national approach, then you presume. You can fight as hard as you like to establish your convictions in discussion, but you cannot simply legislate or orate on the basis that this is acceptable to all.

You must acknowledge that in so speaking you do not implicitly or explicitly involve ANYONE but yourself. You may apply what you believe, but never let it appear that it is shared by all. You could even make it clear that you think it OUGHT to be shared by all, but not that it is. You may argue that this alone is the truth, but not act as if others had agreed. If there is no answer that can stand, then you stand alone; but still you cannot ever characterise the others as being represented by you in such a case. You might even, in that case, declare that this is the only thing found to stand logically, and they might challenge. If they do not prevail, that simply then remains the position. But even that does not commit them as a group, to being treated as if they agreed with you, or as if any leadership you had was of them all in any such basis as you might annunciate!

You may even argue that no other truth exists finally, but you may not so act as leader as to imply in ANY way that others are bound by, or to your conceptions.

Obama as President could have made it clear that he has personal views about Islam and Christianity, and that he plans to implement things in accord with these evaluations, but he cannot rightly as a leader of a multi-partite nation, act as if what he says in any way might be assumed to be acceptable to many, or representative of the nation Moreover,  when his words go beyond his election presentation, or even contrary to it, then he might well expect a sense of betrayal. Many leaders do that, and Hitler was perhaps the chief. As the actual meaning of his ideology became clear, it was appalling.

It is necessary at all times to be clear on convenient machinations and declarations, that they are only that, and that any attempt to institute them as principial grounds for the national approach, just as surely as they touch religion, generic in some synthetic style, or individual is mere wantonry with wisdom,

In characterising what the USA would or would not do, therefore, as if he spoke for it, rather than merely expressing a personal opinion, he erred. To lead, you need to persuade, and it was obvious that as far as any residue of Bible-believing Christians in the USA still exists, there was no persuasion, but rather the mere announcement of religious evaluation. This is no leadership, but direction.

Had he said this:

My nation is religiously multi-partite, and while we are as a people committed to trust in God, we do not determine things beyond the law, in any national pronouncement. Each of us has convictions which, we hope, none of us is afraid to acknowledge and even urge; but as political leader in this nation, it is no part of mine to define the religious evaluations of this people. I define my own, and I hope that many will see the point and advantages of it; but I CANNOT speak at this level for all, since it is a known fact that many do NOT agree, and would in fact regard it as an inglorious and evil imposition, to dare to characterise the entire nation in this way.

You see, it is not so easy to do this; and that, no doubt,  is why many would not have attempted to do it anyway, not caring to bring up explicit religious commitment and evaluation between religions, as part of a national policy presentation. This CANNOT lead the nation. It is therefore not a POSSIBLE proper, political ploy for a free, democratic people, that its leader do this.

 

THE SET-TO AND THE CHALLENGE TO ACT

Was Cairo then a sort of soliloquy by Obama about his personal religious life and approaches ? if so, it is possible. People can talk about their religion if they want to do so. It is free. Some might find the emphasis on it, in that case, extraordinary in a speech on behalf of the nation, to an international group in a sensitive setting. It might seem amazingly overdone, and rampantly and even riotously presumptuous. A personal testimony in this depth is NOT going to represent anything like all the USA, and its extensiveness in view of the call of the day would seem overdone.

Or on  the other hand, was it an act of COMMITMENT of the USA to certain approaches as the basis of its actions ? If so, then it was illicit. You can commit to action, but not to evaluation of religions as its basis, since you were not elected on that basis. Your personal groundwork in thought is one thing; your presentation of the estimate of religions as a basis for your policy is another.  We are all moved by what we believe; and some believe foolishly and some wisely, so that nothing CAN and there DOES overthrow that faith. To say this is not offensive in a free nation. To speak however FOR that nation in terms of the OUTCOME of such faith on the BASIS of such evaluations, is to divide and lead only a part at the cost of the rest at the outset. Do you speak as Obama insisted he did, for ALL the people ? then as President, for all he must speak, and not for a section, including himself.

To say, As a Christian, I am moved to this outcome is one thing. To say, As leader of this nation, I say this is the sound evaluated approach, for it brings this and that religion into accord, and draws from the wisdom of each: this MUST mean you prresidentially are dismissing all who hold only to the one, or only to the other, or against any combination, as if they did not exist.

Here you act as a synthetic religion expert, hireable perhaps by those who want your facility for such outcomes, but not electable by those who want a President to lead the nation AS a nation. The "for"  eliminates all propriety. IF you bring in a religious evaluation as the ground of action, and not a personal basis for your consideration of all the aspects of the case, you move from the personal - where it is legitimate and proper at all times - to the public, where it is in this case not so, for IN public you represent ALL! You could even say, I am persuaded that only the Christian faith is logically sustainable, or even that it is demonstrable, provided you were willing to show this, for it commits no one else, and draws on no group but only on yourself, for its statement and defence. You could add this: With this in mind, I survey all the aspects of the national case and conclude that all will be best served by this and that!

Again, it is your survey. There is nothing a priori against it.

A nation might elect a Christian President and be not in the least concerned if he were to indicate that the morals and ethics he holds will move him, in application, where observation and empirical evidence joins, to move against all legality for sexual perversion. He might equally declare that within the law, he will use whatever power has been accorded him, to seek to fulfil this for the nation. He deems it best for all, whatever may be their own personal views on the topic. They are not implicated in his speech, but as always, are met by his action. For example, this would equally be the case if war were declared!

You pay the price of your election when he takes an ethical or military step (biblically, you keep the moral perspective intact), but nothing untrue is in view, unless his statements are directed to presuming the approach of all. He is elected, and he chooses. Here the case is relatively simple. Next time, you can choose something else, if you want it.

What then of a Christian President, so elected ? You have to make it clear that these are your convictions, that you plan to apply them as best for all, that it is your considered opinion that this IS best for all, and do so NOT on the basis that the nation is a Christian one, or has such an approach to this and that religion or view, but on the basis that you conceive, as a Christian, that this is now the best thing for all. ALL will not agree; all CANNOT agree in this case; many would be horrified were it suggested they even COULD agree to it; but it is simply what  this President in his whole personality, committed as he is and has been known to be, believes is best for all.

If you elected an Islamic President on the same basis, he too could say that he had resolved that the best approach to such an issue, for all the nation, in view of its specific features and complexities, position and vulnerabilities, within its law, and with his well-known convictions, was that this or that must be done.

If this were so, it would be no breach, since his position had been known, and provided no law was made which conflicted with the Constitution, it could happen, not riotously but in the merely political domain, rightly. However if such were done, then the whole nation would need to consider something.

It is this.

It does not politically matter what you believe: in a democracy, you are free to do so if violence is not your short-circuit for others; and God is free to act accordingly. That is what is part of the very core of history, of Christian historiography if you will. Do it, and gain the response. Know what you are doing, for it will come. If IN freedom, BY election of a known person with a known religion with a known character, you gain a President WHOSE RELIGION pours contempt on Christ's claim to be a) deity b) redemption for all who come to Him c) the last revelation and the finale, the definitive criterion for all revelation from God: then you are asking for the wrath of that God who has the advantage of existence ^*2.

You are free to choose as an individual, a nation, and to gain results accordingly.

If you elect   a person of a given conviction, belief-set and warp, and put him where his principles, morals and religious life are defined before election, and he then within the law, without misrepresenting the nation or anyone in it, acts in the scope of the field of his faith, then it is not illegal that he does so. Nor is it unspiritual if God THEN AND THEREFORE ELECTS to give you what you are asking for: exposure for breach of truth and contempt of primary things, in the interests of secondary ones. If however you say, But I have not changed my faith, this simply seemed the best man: what then ?

Then 'best' being the superlative of good, you are deeming his total presentation more like God than that of another. You protest: God did not come into it. THAT then is your judgment. You are in contempt of God. If you go fishing, and all is well except the sea-worthiness of your vessel, it is quite useless to explain that everything else was better than was the case in any other boat. The boat sinks and removes those benefits. If God is not your chief love, so that you would not under any circumstances give vital powers for your nation to anyone who does not love Him, that is understandable. It may limit you and your comfort; but it would not deny either your faith or your sanity.

But now the USA has in the presidency,  a 'Christian' whose church was made the subject of enormous question; but they took him anyway. He had various views about religions expressed earlier, but this did not move them. He has taken things much further, but this is now the result. It must be faced.

You need care, not for the party but for the results of political partying, parleying, when the morning comes, and the night before is over. Thus Obama was wrong to leave his evaluation of religions as a base for his nationally significant action in the international arena. It COULD not be acceptable conduct for a leader of the nation, for it COULD not lead many, not because of developments, but because of their continuing faith and values to the contrary. ANY expression of such things, as at Cairo, as the position of the USA would harrow the faithful and harass their conscience. It is the position of some in the USA, and not of others.

The USA IS NOT of this kind, they might say, abd so cannot faithfully be so presented; and it is the very essence of presumption to act as if this did represent that nation. Unelected for religious evaluation, Obama is not to present it as the basis of his actions in the name of the nation. Such views may enter into his personal conclusions leading to his decision, but they cannot be made the stated grounds for an action in the nation's name.

The nation CANNOT think or hold this, and it is presumption even to imagine that most of it does. HE thinks it ? fine, that is his affair, it is his life, and he acts thus. He thinks it is right: then to that extent he has a clear conscience, but it does not clear the decks for so acting IN THE NATION'S NAME. He acts as President with power, to import ideas and apply them to the people. If it is legal, then only the Congress can overthrow the thing. That is understood. It may (but probably will not) try. If it did, then that body, this too, would free itself from all the implications of what biblically, is his Christ-betraying speech. If it does not do this, then it does not have this result. Morals have meaning, results and effects, both with man and with God.

But all this does not alter the case for himself. If, however,  in the nation's name, he does so act, then he is giving out what is not so. That is the problem. It falls at the feet of fact, as an oral feat, misfeaturing the faces of many, who shudder to have their land presented in the light of such darkness as this.

You pay for your choices. When they go beyond their mission, then you need pay at least in heart, and in testimony to God and to man,  no longer, by making your formal contradiction of such innovative prongs for the nation, and in this case,  your detestation for the treatment of Jesus the Christ, which has occurred in this way, on the part of one who represents a nation of which this is not at all representative. In so declaring rejection, you become one of those fearing and loving God, whose contempt for such treatment of the nation is on record. If it is an organisation or church which considers it, then AS that Church it may so act, and should make clear declaration against this thing.

You don't have to be theocratic to have faith, to apply it, to protest at its distortion or default, or to separate yourself in strong speech from what is being done, or even the propriety of the way in which it is being done. HE spoke of the "this truth which transcends all nations and all people, a belief that isn't Christian or Muslim or Jew. It's a belief that has pulsed in the cradle of civilisation ... It's a faith in other people. And it's what brought me here today."

That is a declaration, a moral writ, a mini-Mosaic assertion, a distortion of Christianity, where the CONTEXT of loving your neighbour as yourself is the second commandment, where loving the God whose word is given in the Bible, with all your heart and soul and mind and strength is the FIRST. To act in terms of the SECOND, without this, you are  fundamentally astray, inadequate, mere talkathon exponent. You give the street but not the city.

True that is all that is needed, ASSUMING that the word of the God who says so is implicitly AND explicitly taken as its ground, is first in place, that the THIS authority is the REASON why you accept the second commandment. Do this, have this perspective, listen to this authority, then all is well to apply the second commandment. Thus, defining context and spiritual basis by which you refer to the second commandment, you have it in its perspective and place. However, avoiding the first commandment of Moses, in the ten commandments, and of Christ, in this twofold aggregation, has a result. It becomes like wool without a sheep, without life, just a lift-out or in this case, cut-off.

Such assumptions of common interest with other religions, as Obama gave concerning the second commandment,  presume on the varied contexts and illustrations of each religion. He characterises the situation for a new truncated religion, where God is undefined, while certain wisps and ideas, taken brutally from context and in themselves by no means characteristic of both religions, are waved about like incense. This new religion, which he takes as granted and in which he calls for all to act ,is not something any leader of a free nation can do, unless appointed for the purpose, which in itself, would make that nation no more a free one.

The idea, accordingly, which Obama takes, that doing to others what you would like them to do to you, is extended from no base. It is not a fact that joins the various religions, since many of them have ideas which make the love of their neighbour simply to kill him, for they might esteem it better for him to die, than live the life he does; they might even deem it better for themselves, were they to be in the position now occupied by their neighbour! and similarly deluded. People can think almost  ANYTHING, in the obfuscatory oblivion of mindless rovings. It is like saying, Now this, E=MC² is not realised by all, but we all agree on the E=M part, so let us enjoy this in common.

Words are not to be waved around like wands, but realised in their meaning. Thus, Christ ALSO said this, not only that what we would like others to do to us, do to them, but LOVE your neighbour as yourself, and LOVE GOD FIRST OF ALL. His FIRST commandment is not to be assumed deleted in the interests of the second, but to be operative in its composition of its understanding.

Hence Obama has indeed presented a world view, a world religious orientation which defiles biblical faith, denies its assertions and even misuses them; and he has appealed to all to follow it, as if this were some RELIGIOUS FACT to which all must be subject, in any kind of conscience or commitment.

In such things, he has greatly defiled the USA.

Therefore a form of condemnation of this posture is needed, for those who in the USA wish to declare their faith and their opposition to any kind of religious re-orientation course made basic to national and international dealings.

In this way, like King Josiah of old, you separate yourself from this seduction, and apply yourself to the testimony of Jesus Christ, despite what the nation is doing, which it ought not, and the way in which it is doing it, which it ought not. Unable to change it, you are nevertheless by no means unable to state your case, and exclude all involvement, while praying for the nation, if by any means God might delay judgment while repentance manifests itself for a while.

It was one's sad but pitiful task, as a friend,  to warn America some little while before the horrid attack on the Twin Towers; for it was clear that the way it was treating Israel was by no means the way it would like to be treated itself ^*3. It hit home like the missile airplanes, when it happened. It was eminently sad.

It was grievous, but the erratic religious movements of decades before were even more so.  Again, one makes no prophecy here, and would lament if one had to; but this sort of thing, this Cairo approach,  NEEDS declamation against it by many in the USA, by churches and those who love Christ. Without it, the pollution would be greater; but this way, it is like at least trying to remove the pollution of thousands of tons of oil in the ocean, showing good faith for good things, and standards that are not variable.

Jeremiah besought, pled with King Zedekiah to surrender to what God required of him, so that all might be well; but he would not. Far worse came to him than any surrender could have called for; but he would not. Is it not the throbbing theme in so much of the tragedies of history, that people are called in vain to follow the Lord, when fortune or misfortune either inflates or depresses them, and THEY WILL NOT. If then some cannot direct the nation, they can direct their tongues, and pens! Do what one can is a good message for conscience.

It is one's hope, that the USA will take eloquent and clear action in those who believe in the Lord, to denounce the Obama Cairo declamation on religion as beyond his role, short of the truth and a synthetic substitute for truth. What dishonours Christ is a shame to any people, and this goes out of its way in what appears all but a sell-out, or a distortive propaganda haul, filled with worldly wisdom, but contrary to Christ. This is no private confessional; it is a national declaration! There should be contrary declarations: it is a free country, and freedom is precious while it lasts.

What defies and defiles, distorts and departs from the biblical faith in Jesus Christ, reconstructing and aborting truths in the name of shallow synthetic substitutes, this is not for the Christians of the USA. While violence in such matters is to be detested, when the Christian faith has violence done to it in this way, SPEECH must be clear and NOT delayed, to denounce the action, to dispel any concept that it has ANY relationship with the nation which is being subjected to such synthesis and aspiration in an international setting. Those who wish to be separate from such things, in a country still free, need to make it clear that this is the case. It is just this that was done as you see in  Malachi 3:16, so that a "Book of Remembrance" was written in their names, setting them apart and their testimony publicly in view.

God was greatly pleased and blessed this action (Malachi 3:17). Faith needs to declare itself, and connivance needs to be removed even as a possibility, when a great nation is so treated to such things as these.

Faithfulness leads to faithfulness; as does slackness to sedition all too readily, first of the pronouncements in the podium, then of the heart.

 

 

NOTES

 

*1

 

In Ch. 7 of Journey to God or Fantasy's Flight to the Infernal, these matters are dealt with in some detail.

 

*2

See Swift Witness  6, Barbs  ... 6  -7, Repent or Perish Ch. 7, It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, SMR,
TMR , for example. See also Design and Deity ... and Light Dwells with the Lord's Christ

Who Answers Riddles,
And Where He is, Darkness Departs

 

*3

See: Lord of Life Ch. 3, for an earlier presentation, including biblical grounds for concern for the USA, citing what was said about one month before the Twin Towers tragedy. This with More Marvels ... Ch. 4, and Divine Agenda  Ch. 6 speaks of actuality as distinct from fantasy, apparently at least in part induced by diplomatic hopes. It is best to face the facts, not only in science, but in politics and religion. The end of THAT matter (as in SMR, TMR) is glorious. The word of God, the Bible written, Christ eternal, IS glorious. Defilement is worse than error; it is occlusive of vision when vision is most needed!
 

 

 

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

 

 CHAPTER  FIVE

 

"IS THERE ANY WORD FROM THE LORD ?" –

PART I

 The Negative Side To Open

Jeremiah 37:17 with Jeremiah 23:33ff.,  34:8ff.
Isaiah 37:1ff., 38:14ff., II Kings 22:12ff., James 2 

In this Chapter, we open with an issue: IS there any word from the Lord! It comes in an historical setting, it shows itself to be far from an hysterical setting, to which some modern false prophets draw near, as they adumbrate their own ideas, infiltrating Christianity, or seeking to subvert it, make it a carrier for some other program, like African slaves in the USA cotton fields, or Chinese virtual slaves in many a factory, or Russian ones in Siberia, as if doctrine had made them so, and not lust as a father for the disease of the soul called Communism, that blatant abuser of man by man, as wild as the worst excesses of any other irrational frivolity of mind, and tragedy of heart in the blighted history of this race, humankind, in its massive unkindness, as it has populated this earth.

It is not as if God has not provided: His gifts in brain, brawn, integral communications systems both inside the body and in the inter-personal field, in environmental wonder - these have been munificent to the point of awe.

It is not as if He has let man go:

	He has carefully and sometimes progressively as well as processively (and both together in the plagues on Egypt in the day of Moses*1) rebuked.
	He has appealed. He has used one nation as an example, both in blessing and in cursing, as shown so explicitly in Deuteronomy 28-29,
	He has traced the results for that nation, in both domains (as promised in Amos 3:7, and shown in Deuteronomy 30-33, Leviticus 26, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah) in a prodigious fashion.
	He has drawn attention to this fact overall, in Isaiah 44-45, and
	He has rebuked unbelief, and foolish autonomy in man, in Isaiah 41, 43, 48.
	He has shown the evidence that cannot be overcome, but only overlooked by those hypnotised by themselves, their plans and their blind folly in failing to realise who and what they are - and are not.
	He has pinpointed it again and again.
	He has come to this earth as a Man. He has shown man what he is like by what he did to Him who came.
	He has foretold the coming, its date, the reaction of the Jewish State, of the world, and the times in detail which come near to the time for His return to complete the manifest Messianic mission, foretold for generations and millenia.
	He has provided exceedingly well.

Today we are looking at some of the exemplifications and indications of the Almighty, from His word. We peer into history, mainly ancient, but then with sudden emphasis on modern parallels and indeed, fulfilments as we approach, like a raft on Niagara River, near the famed Falls, leading to the sudden descent which this world faces because of its constant friction, failure, lack of faith in the Almighty, refusal of His written word, verified and validated past all measure^*2, of His living word, the Lord of glory, viciously treated, gloriously vindicated and soon to be back with mankind. This ? it is after the fulfilment of the final rigors of man's pathological spirit and inane wanderings ANYWHERE except where the Lord points.

We proceed to see the opposite, the apposite, exemplification of abiding, obeying and not straying, of the glory of the Lord, in triumphs immeasurable, kindness unfathomable.

It is not so very hard when you think of it. Many refuse His discipline, like weaklings trying to enter in the football team, preferring to stay weak. They refuse His oversight, like those who WILL not have anyone to coach them. They refuse His morals, like those whose ethics NO ONE can determine, while they USE His gifts, which no man can begin to equal, in body, in spirit, in mind, to defy His name, or defile His word and mislead many.

It has an end. Before it comes, it is well to consider it, and something of the beginnings as well. 

We start at this point, with the King of Judah, ancient Zedekiah. For any who desire to see earlier accounts of this situation, of the words of Jeremiah, please look at The Track of Truth, Meadows of Mercy and Peace of Pardon Chs. 8, 9, and the Epilogue.

 

THE UNSPIRITUAL MAW THAT IS KEEN TO KEEP SLAVERY 

Jeremiah 34:8ff.

Surrounded by enemies, shrinking into famine, a very sieve for sin, as if collecting acid rain, King Zedekiah was not lacking in boldness. He followed the practices of his brother, King Jehoiakim despite his dire end, and added his own reckless renegacy. Thus he both failed to hear Jeremiah after his 21 year old institution as King, and feared nothing about Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, who had already taken King Jehoiakin to Babylon, where he would have a 37 year captivity before things ameliorated a little.

One might have thought that he would think twice before breaking the law of God, the lore of wisdom in rebelling as a weak kingdom while holding the Lord well apart, against a powerful one. After all, it was in terms of that invasive king, Nebuchadnezzar that he had been placed on the throne, and by the word of the prophet, Jeremiah he might have kept it and glorified God, being guided to be more like his princely father, Josiah, who needed no title to show regality, and having all power to do the will of God, had effectively USED it.

However King Zedekiah did nothing of the sort, rebelling against 1) God's law, 2) Jeremiah's counsel and 3) the King of the captivity. You might have thought, then, that these things being so, with three rebellions, one against the source of power and victory, one against the counsel of kindness and a third against the earthly tyrant, that the clashing roar of these stormy waves might have awakened him, if not sharply, then perhaps just a little.

It is so with many. They ask why they have neurosis, incapacity, no sense of power, of peace, of program, of progress, or even of meaning; they attack others being jealous, the State being exasperated with life and unwilling to recognise the good things provided or even themselves, their duties, as if maddened by their displacement. Here they become spiritually displaced persons, in whom the fire of fury and frustration works; and what they will do next, who can tell, but the Lord! They leave the wife, ignore the beauty of the co-operation that was, for the interests of the lust or temper of the moment, and sail off after decades of wifely service, in a selfishness so profound, that it is like a lobotomy, a cutting of part of the brain, in brainless ingratitude and ceaseless preoccupation with self-centred desires.

Zedekiah was an ancient example of a modern disease.

It is therefore both amazing, in terms of principle, and yet not at all surprising in terms of statistics, that when the Lord gave an MORAL order, through the prophet Jeremiah in the very midst of the wars coming more and more freely to engulf little Judah, once a great nation but now increasingly depraved, especially since King Manasseh, that masterpiece of corruptive wickedness – though he DID repent, that Zedekiah took one more step. Which was this ?

The prophet Jeremiah, in the name of the Lord, indicated that the people were misusing slaves. They were treating them inhumanly and not according to the law. 

A massive slave release was accordingly mandated. Having violated the conditions given, they were now to dismiss from slavery all the male and female slaves. Since they had not honoured the code for liberation in its time, therefore now they were to free all AT ONCE. In the fear of their unprepossessing situation, they acted speedily, setting them free.

A wave of realism, if not repentance, surged across the land. Was it possible that now, as in the day of righteous Reformer, King Josiah, they would return to the Lord and find both strength and solace, meaning and might ? It was. Yet it did not happen. Seeing their unjust profits diminish, their power reduced, their pride and importance deleted, their ease eroded, why they turned back and put the released slaves back into servitude again!

Such is the topsy-turvy recklessness of those borne along in the winds of fury, both lifted up and cast down, simultaneously, or if you prefer, in movements so near to each other that they were almost like a super-quick dance. Ambiguity, changeableness, self-centred skating was IN!

To be weak is bad; to be of impure heart is worse; to vacillate and respond now to self-interest and now to decency, obeying God and winking at it anon, this is like crossing a road of violent traffic while reading a book, and giving sensitive attention to the mobile phone, while at the same time, regarding with pleasure the flight of birds to distant trees.

The penalty did not delay, for this vacillatory demise of virtue. The Lord said this (34:17):

     "Therefore thus says the LORD:

'You have not obeyed Me in proclaiming liberty,
every one to his brother and every one to his neighbour.

'Behold, I proclaim liberty to you,' says the LORD -
'to the sword, to pestilence , and to famine!
And I will deliver you to trouble among all the kingdoms of the earth.' "

A further 'deliverance' was into the hands of their enemies!

Thus the concept of deliverance the people had treated meanly, calculatingly, half-heartedly, and then revoking it, they forced slaves back once more to their illicit and heartless treatment of them. Deliverance ? Why for them, it was to restore a means of wealth, irrespective of human suffering, and against the law of God.

Deliverance ? since they thought so much of it, then, as to deliver the slaves, if only temporarily, and so little as to bring them back into anti-social suppression, twisting the terms and mocking their meaning, then they could systematically endure what they gave, and acquire for themselves what they had bestowed on the slaves. If that was their mercy, they could experience it!

THEY, yes they too could have 'deliverance' a dancing, glancing term, and themselves enjoy the wonder of a short deliverance (until the enemy destroyed their nation, at least temporarily – exiling them for 70 years, as foretold in Jeremiah 25). Then many could experience even more deliverance, the kind that does not count, and find the meaning of a new subjection as the enemy forces swept them aside, as if they were scarcely human, and used them for their own profit and power, pride and love of subjugating other people.

Both Moslem armies and Romanist-directed ones have performed such SUBMISSION-and- control scenarios over hundreds of years, in seized lands and nations; but then they have found something of the other side of submission. Such was the case :

	a) when Hitler carried off much of Europe like a despised bride, to misuse her, and then Stalin extended the time for many, as also
	b) when Islamic power was broken in World War II, after threatening Europe with its force, or as
	c) when the Vatican, after centuries of allowing the depraved horror of the Romanist Inquisition, was a little rump left to the power of the papacy, after a national movement in Italy.

These are but illustrations, from far and nearer. God simply does not like oppression, is not favourable towards man strangling man heartlessly; and while He reserves the right of judgment of sustained and chronic evil (to let its corruption go on, can be more unkind that to abort the whole thing), yet He may choose to teach slave-loving oppression, what the American Civil War so poignantly taught about the dynamite of sensitive sorrow and suffering hidden in oppression. Whatever started it, this was a dynamic within it!

Back to Israel: In the very midst of the slavery episode, indeed a little later, you find this same King, who reigned at that time, asking the prophet this little question, to which we now come.  

 

THE PREVARICATOR WHO ASKS FOR PRAYER

Jeremiah 37:3

In Jeremiah 37:3, the King requests prayer. Many request prayer. Do they consider changing their ways, or do they ask for woe while continuing as if obsession had removed the eye of the soul, and their codes and conduct were invisible even to themselves, blinded not only to what happened outside, but to what is occurring within, in their own hearts, as well! If you want prayer, it is time to want holiness, the pardon of repentance, to seek godliness and His glory, the payment to your account of the righteousness the Lord who to faith gives freely, having paid the ransom price in Christ Jesus. What is the use of putting on mosquito protection fluids, if you insist on sitting in the middle of a jungle swarming with the things!

Still, Zedekiah approached the prophet. The reply ? At about that time, the Egyptian army came to assault Jerusalem, but having other problems, suddenly left. Don't think this is deliverance, said Jeremiah, for the Chaldeans, the Babylonians "shall come back and fight against this city, and take it and burn it with fire. We saw last time that even if the whole Babylonian army, each one, lay wounded, so vile was the flavour of the dis-faith of Jerusalem, that this sick army would even at that, rise up and conquer it! (Jeremiah 37:10). The King had his answer.

This IS the answer when without faith in the self-revealed God of creation, history and redemption, shorn of the self-accrediting^*2 Bible, man vacillates between religions, entwining now this and now that phase, mode or model, exploiting and expressing now this and now that, whether in Europe, America, Australia or any other part of this globe, whose God does not weary, not does He change. His ways are eternal, expressed and immutable (Malachi 3:6, Habakkuk 3:6, Acts 2:23, 1:7ff., Revelation 22:18-19, Matthew 5:17-20, Ephesians 1:10,Galatians 1 and 3, Isaiah 59:21).

But let us return to Zedekiah.

 

THE UNSPIRITUAL EAR THAT QUESTIONS GOD
WHILE DEFYING HIS TRUTH 

Jeremiah 37:17, 38:14ff.

Things developed. We also noted recently that Jeremiah went to claim land outside the city, was deemed to be about to side with the enemy, or defect to it, was put in prison, and there languished. The King, who had not been sparing the prophet thus far, though not in entire control (even when one is NOT in entire control of events, one can use what measure of control ONE DOES HAVE, and so show sincerity; and indeed, often people seeing  courage in someone, will take heart and arise en masse to seek the good thing hitherto avoided!) now sought a favour. Now he secretly called and interviewed Jeremiah, in his own house!

"Is there any word from the LORD ?" asked he.

The effrontery of sitting in the vomit of vice and asking if there was any hygiene!

Jeremiah gave the word at once:  

"There is. You shall be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon."

He asked for the reason of his own imprisonment. But he did not ignore the plight of the King. How often does God PLEAD with people to abandon evil, seek mercy, show kindness, be merciful to the poor, to act in faith and follow Him!

Yet the words in the midst of the trouble often seem like distant cannon fire to the tormented souls that equivocate and seek to make of God an accomplice, a participant after the fact, in their evils and sins. They do not heed: they want only what they prescribe, and act as if God were a petrol station, to be blamed if not providing the energy of cars, to the waiting vehicles, at a minimum price. As to driving ? of course, THAT is their affair. For them, God is merely a serviceable supply source.

Later, having been treated a little better, though still kept in imprisonment, and having given further warning to those who insisted on not surrendering but staying in the doomed city, Jeremiah was brought into a horrible pit, without prospect of food or drink. See him now: From this, taken by the mercy of the eunuch, Ebed-Melek, he is once more brought to the King. Mercifully, he tells the King of the deliverance if they would surrender to the invading forces. The King would not do so; but notice the language of the prophet.

"Please," he cries, "obey the voice of the LORD which I speak to you. So it shall l be well  with you, and your soul shall live."

Yet the King would not. IMPLORED in the torrent of mercy, sought in the spirit of love and lovingkindness, YET THE KING WOULD NOT LISTEN.  Again, despite this condition of his heart, he still once more took the step of ASKING Jeremiah, seeking some spiritual good. Thus the prophet PLED with the King: PLEASE, he said, in tender concern which vice did not eliminate, from the heart, please do as I tell you from God. 

In Isaiah 48:18ff., you likewise see the exclamations of mercy sent away, the tenderness of the pleas of God.

" 'Come near to Me, hear this:

I have not spoken in secret from the beginning;

From the time that it was, I was there.

And now the Lord God and His Spirit

Have sent Me.'
 

"Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer,

The Holy One of Israel:

'I am the Lord your God,

Who teaches you to profit,

Who leads you by the way you should go.

 

'Oh, that you had heeded My commandments!

Then your peace would have been like a river,

And your righteousness like the waves of the sea.

Your descendants also would have been like the sand,

And the offspring of your body like the grains of sand;

His name would not have been cut off

Nor destroyed from before Me.

 

'Go forth from Babylon!

                    Flee from the Chaldeans!' "

These were no mere words, but each one of His supplications to errant and erratic man is like a nail in His own flesh, which He certainly felt. What He suffered there, is the physical and inwardly personal in its outward expression; on the Cross its pain was visible. Here it is the laboratory exhibit of the pleas of His heart.

What then ? SEPARATE from the sovereignty of sin, and do not remain in that city. HEED the word of God and do not remain where it is not heeded, in any Church, and does not rule. HALLOW the name of God and be in the fear of His name, for the fear of the Lord is clean. Be innovative in many things, but never with the word of God, to exchange it for asininity, to befoul it with unbelief, to be inoperative while it operates, like a paralysed army. Consider the merciful pity and the wonder of wisdom in the Lord, and follow Him. 

You can say as much about divine sovereignty as you please, but nothing takes the emotional force from the love which wishes that all might repent and come to the knowledge of the truth. His effecting of salvation is no testimony to His rejection of others unsaved, but of His refusal to force on any whose heart is not moved,  the implementation of salvation where it IS found. Then His relief and rest, it is not taken and so the tension with truth is not resolved: grace is wasted.

If anyone reading these words is not yet taken into the heart of the Lord, is mistaken in shiftless unspirituality, then repent now, receive the love of the Saviour, and being His, soar into His kingdom, sitting in heavenly places with Him whose presence is then the ULTIMATE ENVIRONMENT (Ephesians 2:6-8) for the human heart.

╬

 

Thus we have considered the largely negative side of the WORD from the Lord. Now we come with joy to the positive side, exemplified in King Hezekiah and King Josiah, but in so many more nearer by far, to our own time.

 

 

PART II

 

   "IS THERE ANY WORD FROM THE LORD ?"

       Jeremiah 37:17 with Jeremiah 23:33ff., 

34:8ff. Isaiah 37:1ff., 38:14ff., II Kings 22:12ff., James 2

 

THE FAITH THAT ACTS AND PREVAILS
        ON THE PROMISES OF GOD  …

WHERE WORDS ARE GIVEN A HEARING

IN THE HEART DOMAIN

I  Hezekiah’s Trip to the Temple, His Heart’s March to the Lord

Take the case of King Hezekiah however as seen in Isaiah 37ff.. HE is told of the coming onslaught of an arrogant, cruel and haughty King, Sennacherib, and what does he do ? Yes, the King of Israel, he too goes to seek the Lord, a wise counsel. He does it in person: that is wiser still! He presents the letter sent to him, and to the Lord goes the evidence, carefully arranged;  and he seeks Him (Psalm 27:8-14)^*3.

To the prophet Isaiah the situation is made known, and Hezekiah without self-confidence, with no semblance of self-esteem, but deeming God most able to answer prayer, seeks Him where He may be found, in poverty of spirit, expectation of power and supplication on the basis of what he as King sought for his mission and his people, but for the name, honour and glory of the Lord.

The Lord gave an answer to the challenge of Assyria, to the swagger from their King Sennarcherib, a point by point mocking and devastating word of irony and dismissal. That was the first part, through the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 37-38).

The second part of the divine answer came a little later.

The army of the Assyrians soon was smashed in an amazing divine intervention. It matters little what means, directly miraculous or prepared long before for outcome at this moment in the foreknowledge of God: the thing happened to the army in view at the time when it mattered, causing a massive loss both of personnel and prestige. It came in the face of direct challenge to the God of gods and Lord of lords, which implied He was one of the mob, and His people could be cleaned up precisely as any other.

Really ? Precisely as it had done at the Exodus from Egypt, so in timing, guidance to His people and overcoming power, He responded.

Pride is contemptible: it merely exalts what has been given, and how far all of us fall below what might have been achieved for God, if we had known Him from the first, and followed Him with relish at the outset. Those poor in spirit are the blessed (Matthew 5), the OPPOSITE to those seeking by all means to survive, to have self-belief and to overcome for the sake of their persona's accomplishment. TO THIS MAN, the Lord declares in Isaiah 66, will I look, to him who is "poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word."

Notice that it is not all emotion, spiritual hijinks of an athletic kind, dramatic announcements of a 'word' and so forth. It is God who will ACT (cf. Isaiah 64:4-5), and actually MEET with the person who "rejoices and does righteousness." Stay and obey, repent and receive pardon, seek vision and vigour and do the will of God: there is no problem.

Cease prevarication, equivocation, procrastination, the trilogy of feeble folly.

v       "Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
do not lean to your own understanding,
acknowledge Him in ALL  your ways,
and HE WILL DIRECT YOUR STEPS!"

That is the word of the Lord from Proverbs 3 (capitals added).  It is a capital word, from the capital of the Kingdom of Heaven, in its Eternal Word, its coming Temple in Himself and His Father, the light of the World, Jesus Christ.  The curse that has captured the 'nature' that is man's terrestrial environment at the created level, Christ captured and has done so selectively, for all who come to His liberation, where on the Cross He cancelled sin for those who receive. Some may wish, like inmates of concentration camps in Germany as the US Army rushed into them at the close of WW II, to remain in those unholy hospices. Those who receive the liberation of Christ, get it: no one else.

We come now to a later King of Judah, in fact near the end of the line before the Babylonian captivity. Judah had escaped the Assyrian onrush (though Samaria with its idolatry did not), but warned and not heeding, Judah of the South was kept till a later Empire brought up the day of judgment. Mercifully, it was in that instance, only for 70 years exile, together with the devastations that lay between! But let us consider Josiah and how in his case, his also, deliverance was wrought by the word of the Lord. It can come, issued into history like a CO's orders to his officers, in ways  past finding out; like mist it comes, like growth it comes. It must be sought, the Lord's action on His own promises; and they stand, and so do those who rely on Him, and on His word so expressed (cf. II Peter 1).

 

II   Josiah’s Kindly Death,  Once the Mission is Manifestly Complete
A Timely Transference to Glory

Josiah, unlike this case of Hezekiah, where tragedy threatened first his nation and then his life (Isaiah 37-38),  where the potential tragedy was turned into epochal triumph, where his life long continued after this, indeed for a directly assigned 15 more years, lived most of his life before the enemy was at hand and providing immediate threat. He was not early met with a threat of this kind. Rather it was complacency amid sounder seeming circumstances, that was the challenge, magnificently met by the young King. Yet he did not fall for this. One is fine tuned by confrontation when young, and rises to stability and holiness; one is given much liberty when young, and spoiling his life, wastes it. Another, seeing the need of self-control, overcomes potential evils. Josiah was of this latter kind.

In fact, his glorious reign was to include vital elements, a sort of Reformation, such as this world received especially in the 15^th and 16^th centuries, when a millenium of developing superstitions and traditions had made the ‘temple’ of testimony to be corrupt and cornered for many, in a money-seeking Romanistic body, loaded with unloveliness and corrupt papacy. Josiah met the case as did Luther and Calvin, John Knox and Huss, Wickcliffe, that morning star of the Reformation in the 14^th century, and Tyndale in the next, living on into the 16^th.. He was part of a glorious and triumphant, much suffering and singularly faithful crew. These did not relax at opportunity, or relapse when confronted, but surged forward like ocean waves, oblivious of obstruction, to the shore of attainment, in and for the Lord. Surrounded by corruption, they did not yield to it; in the midst of blindness, they did not learnt he national cultures, of shutting the eyes.

In the case of Josiah, there was a spritely reformer with a dynamic sense of divine commission coupled with a careful fidelity to the word of God as written.

A vast change came upon the land. He purged evil, removed idols, cleansed and repaired the Temple, purged blatant sexual immorality associated with religion, ensured honesty in accounting, sought the people’s hearts to return to the Lord, showing a zeal rarely found (cf. II Kings 23). From a young age, he had been a king in waiting, waiting on the Lord, ready to be tested.

Just as Hezekiah before him had thrust out rubbish from the horribly abused temple, which amazingly, was polluted from the syncretistic evil of his own earthly father – the appalling Ahaz, a spur to anti-ecumania* now: so Josiah brought back a keen sense of the presence and mercy of the Lord, in sober, spiritual, godly approach to Him, holiness of life evidently in keeping with zeal His word. This reached national impact when all was ready, in a testimony of God's pardoning mercies in a vast worship occasion.

This however, FOLLOWED in the case of Josiah, what was a test supreme. Indolent connivance with corrupt culture: that was a possibility for the young king. It is in this sense, that there was a challenge in the beginning of his reign. The fruits came after this test, like a personal examination while still young, leading on to a career in this case, of zealous godliness, national purification and intensive seeking for the Lord.

A new test came, while he was still relatively young. How did this early test come ? It followed from his cleansing of the temple, for while it was being set to order, there came to light nothing less than a covered up copy of the Law. It was this,  which when read brought to mind things long disregarded to the point that the master copy was evidently not even known as to its precise location in the temple. Indeed, like many a Bible in many a home now, it was a ceremonial object; and worse, a forgotten one; and in this case, it was like a Bible left in the garage and obscured by rubbish set upon it!

Josiah did not institute a committee, instal the equivalent of a Senate Enquiry, appointment, or make a Royal Commission to sum up the whole position in 400 pages. Instead he tore his clothes, symbol of a vast and inner distress and horror at tragedy, horror or woe before the Lord, and wept. A young man of 18 on his accession, he was tender-hearted enough not to be anaesthetised by the dignity of his position, or stirred by the dreamy scent of royal succession.

He asked someone to enquire from the prophetess, Huldah. After all, not reading the law as should have been done, the household of the King suddenly found itself deep in the red, oblivious of the ceremonial and knowledge in no small measure, which should have been implemented and found.

Back came the word from the prophetess:

“Because your heat was tender, and you humbled yourself before the LORD when you heard what I spoke against this place and against it inhabitants, that they would become a desolation and a cure, and you tore your clothes, and wept before Me, I also have heard you, says the LORD. Surely, therefore, I will gather you to your fathers, and you shall be fathered to your grave in pace; and your eyes shall not see all the calamity which I will bring on this place.”

It may seem strange, to die before old age, as a BLESSING. Yet it is better to glory in the sheer wonder of the Lord and to COMPLETE HIS WORK with purity and heart, bringing blessing to very many, than to live long enough to see the devastations coming when a parade of fickle hearts seized the culture and an abhorrent situation gripped the nation.

THAT, it was to come; but God did not see fit to let His friend Josiah inhabit the land when that sort of hideous revolt came to do so. He was therefore taken before that came!

Soon to come upon the thrust of the land, its ways, there would be a swerving off the straight road once more. They would be driven by  a sort of engine of injury to the soul, just as Tiananmen in China, at the time appointed, corruption served this purpose, not only to the bodies of the young slain, but to the heart of the nation. Such climaxes arrive unbidden by actual voices, but called for by moral accountability and evil desire, when secondary things take precedence, and the presidency of God becomes dimmed and diverted by the pressure of man and his events. Since this is mere delusion, judgment calls. It does not always leave first its calling card, especially when those are deaf to its initial calls.

Indeed, the evil in Israel at that time, was soon to grow, till there was no remedy. It is reviewed with this conclusion in II Chronicles 36, reaching the fateful point as seen in verse 16. By then, Josiah have fulfilled a magnificent mission, was long gone where his heart rested and his soul continued a life endless in scope, with the eternal God of creation and of redemption. It is not only a question of the quality of life while one lives, but of the eternity of consummated life, when one leaves this world, eternal life in time untamed by termination, even to everlasting! (John 3, 4, 5, 6, Titus 2-3, Ephesians 1:11, II Timothy 1:9ff., Job 19, Psalm 21, 145).

It is not how long you live, but whether YOU KNOW GOD AS YOU LIVE, and doing His will, adorn for ever the commission of Christ, like clothes that respond to His own movements, and follow Him with joy (cf. Isaiah 61:10, Jeremiah 13).

By now we are ready for a highly pertinent principle that comes like hail on glass, to remind us in the midst of these historical events. It is to James we now turn for this.

 

III THE REALISM THAT RESISTS EMPTY FAITH
AND FAITHLESS EMPTINESS ALIKE

James has some words on this region of life.  Having told us that all good things are gifts from God, who of His own will has caused Christians to be born again, he then traces this whole area of unseemly pretence, pretension and insincerity, obvious nonsense which many dare to practice in the very face of the Lord. Hypocrisy is here under scrutiny, as is sincerity with its prize.

Abraham, he tells us, was indeed justified for BELIEVING GOD, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Faith enabled the relationship to become active, dynamic, directive, protective.

In fact, Abraham was maundering about sacrificing his son, and would have been willing, but God having tested his heart, stopped his arm. NO! do not kill. Abraham was willing to believe that God would raise the appointed heir of promise, this same Isaac, from the dead if necessary. He did not limit God, and in this was a good part of his rare character. Thus at the moment when his hand was raised, the sequence was interrupted by divinely sent word, and by the presence of a ram caught nearby in a thicket. That signified GOD'S OWN SACRIFICE, what was needed for man.

It was this which was thus provided as cover for his son and indeed for his own life, as a gift. Making the gift dramatic,  its nature as donation from deity apparent, God had even caused it to be caught in a thicket to make it easy to get, just as Christ was willingly caught in a thicket of ecclesiastical apparatchiks, a mafia of murderers, daring to use the name of the Lord as if it had something to do with their lives. That 'catching' too was planned (cf. Psalm 22, Isaiah 49-55, Psalm 16, 69, Daniel 9:24-26).

	It is all GIFT (Romans 6:23).
	It is gift OF DIVINE RIGHTEOUSNESS through abundance of grace (Romans 5:17).
	It is a gift of salvation BY GRACE THROUGH FAITH (Ephesians 2:1-12).

Not merely is the thing a gift; the mode is grace, undeserved favour in method;

and the cost is zero to the purse, and all to the heart,

which must first surrender and render fealty to the Lord through faith (Luke 14:27ff.),

that it might be freely received, just as it is freely paid for: as many as do receive Him
(John 1:12, Ephesians 1).

However, when faith instead of being employed as a reception committee,  is used as a smoke-screen, and a verbal prod to God, then the case is far different. If you really do BELIEVE, if your faith is not a DEAD corpse rather than a spiritual dynamic, if you avoid trusting in your own way and playing about with something you dare to call 'faith', but receive objectively the Lord's Christ, the Christ of the Bible's testimony, then with Abraham rejoice. Indeed, if you are not showing its faith's reality by the team of your spiritual horses moving determinedly to the desired end, what in the world do you think you are doing!

To be sure it is not YOUR WORKS which make the difference, but the attitude of heart which shows that faith is a genuine condition, and not a verbal substitute for realism. ONLY God does wondrous works (Psalm 72:18), and you need not try to imitate Him; but if you DO have faith in Him, then look once more at Abraham, and what do you find ? It is this.

When the time of test came, he was willing to OFFER UP THE VERY MEANS OF DELIVERANCE; for it was through Isaac that the whole testimonial train was to run, to the Messiah, to blessing for all nations. He did not insist on what HE considered had to happen, but on the word of God. Yes, there was a word of the Lord for him, which would test his trust in the power of God and His faithfulness; and he passed that test. The very merits of the Messiah were thus able to come to Him in advance of the entire payment at Calvary and through al that led up to this to make it operative in the sinless Christ (cf. Romans 4, esp. 21-25). 

Thus was it shown that his was not circumstantial faith, surrounded by possibilities and sundered by probabilities. It was instead a faith in God transcending all such things, and one which did not refuse translation into what SHOWED IT! He believed, he acted. He trusted, he travailed and he triumphed by grace, and Isaac, ready to be lost, was found; and being found, fulfilled that part of the way to the consummation in Christ, the sacrificial lamb in Person, the sacrifice to end all atonement, the Redeemer to end all redemption, the Lord over all lords, and king over all kings.

Thus as James points out in James 2, the faith which, if it does not operate, is a dead kind of a thing, showed itself living; and although of course the righteousness was given WHEN the faith first operated as James indicates so clearly in this Chapter, yet the reality of the faith was attested later, when the test came.

Faith without works is always dead. You are saved without works (Romans 3:23ff., Galatians 3, 5, Ephesians 2), but not without faith and faith works! It does not trust in its works; it does not trust in the ammunition and praise God as an formal after-thought. It TRUSTS (after all, it IS faith), God to DO what is needed, but praises God in anticipation, in unmitigated joy of heart and meets the test of purity of motive because IT IS THERE!

He is not using God to get an easy advantage (Christ did not turn the stones to bread, taking no 'special case' arm-chair position, since He was a real man, in humility tested in His incarnation). The man of faith is believing in God to move through him and throughout his life, and that of whomever else He may select, to ACHIEVE the needed result.

IS THERE ANY WORD FROM THE LORD ? Remember the cry of King Zedekiah (Jeremiah 37:17), alas found fidgetting because his life was alive with unrepented sin. It is not always that such a case arises; but what does arise is tested.

Therefore as Peter instructs us, let us not be dismayed by the trials and tests like fire that come, for God can purify what is mixed and secure what is clean (I Peter 1:7, 4:12-19).

But again, let us answer the question. Is there a word from the Lord ?

Of course there is: it is ALL written, the beginning, the core, the Christ Saviour, the suffering, the false sentence, the crucifixion, the bodily resurrection^*4, the progress of this world in hideous regress^*5, the signals that His coming is near^*6. It is all there: so set about obeying it, following Him not in word only but in deed, not subverted or subverting others by making up new morals, a new christ, like the sects, new easy ways and alluring arm-chairs for watching some kind of 'spiritual' TV!  Work then, not to gain eternal life, but because you have gained it IF YOU HAVE SAVING FAITH in the Lord Jesus Christ, God as man and alive from the dead and to be KNOWN (John 17:1-3, Romans 10:9, I Corinthians 15:1-4ff.).

No amount of words can turn a photograph into a person, so it is useless just to have doctrinal jabber ALONE, and imagine this saves you. It is no less useless to have a vague feeling, void of content, and with no authority from the word of God. These must be conjoined, not disjoined. They are environmental elements in the operation of biblical faith. The words refer to FACTS, to ACTUALITIES, to GOD HIMSELF. Being referred to the realities of the Lord, you find Him ... by faith (cf. John 5:39-40). You do not sit under  the sign-post, like a prisoner regarding the shape of the hole in the wall. You act on it. You then make the friendship of the most glorious Being through the Person of Christ and the operation of His Holy Spirit (cf. John 16).

Cultivate His acquaintance, therefore, follow His word and behold ... you will know. Does He not say it ?

v       "He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me.
And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father
and I will love him and manifest Myself to him …

v       “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word and My Father will love him,
and We will come to him and make Our home with him."

Such is the way of God, true from the first, available to the last, when judgment sits.

It is well that with Him is pardon (Isaiah 55:6-7, Micah 7:19-20); and it is well that pardon produce its fruits, as roots are formed, the plant of life is set in the ground of faith and the water of the Spirit makes it grow (not the faith, the plant). Faith ? a minute seed of this is sufficient. It is the One in whom you place it, that matters, the right One, the God of glory, creation, atonement, pardon, reconciliation for man through redemption, of love and mercy, who sent His only begotten Son not as an image for spectacle, but as the Life that gives itself in sacrifice, as an offering for sin, that those who plead grace from this, might be made anew, into new people, with hearts that receive, know and find love, and transmit it because it is simply too much to hold within.

 

NOTES

 

*1 See The Plagues of Egypt.

 

*2

See :

LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST

WHO ANSWERS RIDDLES

AND WHERE HE IS, DARKNESS DEPARTS

Bible or Blight, Christ or Confusion:
The Comprehensive Resolution of Man's Intractable Problems
is Found Only in the Bible, the Word of God;

 

DEITY AND DESIGN, DESIGNATION AND DESTINY

 

REASON, REVELATION and the REDEEMER

 

The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy,
 

The gods of naturalism have no go!

SMR, TMR.

 

 

*3

These glorious verses of reciprocity with the Redeemer, response to His call to His gracious presence, encouragement and faith, continue like a million arrows, to reach with joy the targets of many hearts. This part of Psalm 27 is as follows.

"When You said, 'Seek My face,'

My heart said to You, 'Your face, Lord, I will seek.'

 

"Do not hide Your face from me;

Do not turn Your servant away in anger;

You have been my help;

Do not leave me nor forsake me,

O God of my salvation.

When my father and my mother forsake me,

Then the Lord will take care of me.

 

^"Teach me Your way, O Lord,

And lead me in a smooth path, because of my enemies.

Do not deliver me to the will of my adversaries;

For false witnesses have risen against me,

And such as breathe out violence.

 

^"I would have lost heart, unless I had believed

That I would see the goodness of the Lord

In the land of the living.

 

^"Wait on the Lord;

Be of good courage,

And He shall strengthen your heart;

             Wait, I say, on the Lord!"

 

*3A

How beautiful it is for brethren to dwell together in unity, or how good and pleasant it is (Psalm 133)! Yet how difficult it is, as this 21st century develops, to discover those pearls of unity in Christ, without departure from scripture either in the interests of ungodly and presumptuous addition, subtract or mutation of the biblical text! How beautiful are endeavours to heal the breaches, and how ugly those to ignore them, and let them rend the ship, if it were possible!

Hence in The Bay of Retractable Islands, much effort has been expended to seek more unity on issues which never should have been grounds for division, for they are arenas of wild bullishness in some cases, roaring extremes needlessly adopted, as some aspect of the holy word of God is insensitively or even grossly and damagingly rammed into the setting of that word, without regard for the rest of it, and raucous noises tend to be made, as at a boxing ring, for this or that.

Ecumenical aspiration is good; ecumenical desperation is bad. Ecumenical zeal is good; but the ecumenically surreal is not. It is well called 'ecumania'. The spirit of this Age rages and is confident, corruptive, corrosive, invasive, bold, arrogant and self-fancying, putting aside the restrictions of yore, and indulging, even in the case of many 'churches' in such rank and hideous moral crimes IN THE NAME OF THE LORD that it is hard to believe them not intoxicated. The Bible in such cases tends to become a old cricket prize, set there for old times sake, invidiously disregarded.

Yes it goes, this corruption that dares in vain to use the name of Jesus Christ, or His word. It was foretold (II Peter 2-3, I Timothy 4, II Timothy 3-4, Acts 20, Matthew 24:24). By no means does this require one to separate from ANYTHING; nor does it allow one to endure what is rank rebellion from the word of God. Where the clear text is countermanded, or addition or alteration of what it teaches is authorised, however, there is no option but separation, if there is no yielding. See Separation 1997.  and this. See also 'separation' in the index.

Every age has its challenges: this, it is one of our own. The joy is this: that it is one of the signals of His coming, this plenitude of sects, from Islam (combined from Jewish and Christian sources), to the more recent, from Romanism to the fancies of New Age. When the wildness of dissidence from the authority of the word of God in the bible is rank, then it is time to avoid the ranks of what is of this kind, and in peace to proceed in the Lord, as His coming draws near (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5). It is ALWAYS good to abide in Him and in His words! See also SMR pp. 743ff. and 750Bff. (at '731').

 

*4

See: The Ultimate Irony

 GREGRACE   7;

Barbs, Arrows and Blessings Appendix 3, 
Biblical Blessings Ch. 15, Extended Endnote 2,  

BIBLE TRANSLATIONS 33

Acme ...  11,

With Heart and Soul, Mind and Strength Ch.   3,     

Spiritual Refreshings Ch.    5

The Magnificence of the Messiah, Endnote 1, 

Dastardly Dynamics ... Ch.  11,

SMR Ch. 6 and  Index,

The Kingdom of Heaven Ch.  9, Section 14, JJ 25, ASP 15, 16,

Stepping Out for Christ Ch.  5,

Things Old and New Ch. 2, Excursion 2A;

Light of Dawn Ch.   3,

Beyond the Crypt ... Ch.   2;

Dizzy Dashes and the Brilliant Harmony of Inevitable Truth Ch.   2; REF 5, 6,

Ancient Words and Modern Events Ch.   8 (on resurrection and Lazarus, yes and both with Jerusalem); contrasting Greek bodily terms - GBG 2 ;

and New Zealand Dizzy Dashes and the Brilliant Harmony of Inevitable Truth   6,

The Frantic Millenium Ch.   4;

Bewilderment ... and the Beauty of Christ Ch.  l 1

 

*5

See for example, earlier Chapters of this volume. See also SMR pp. 639ff., 670ff..

 

*6

See Answers to Questions Ch. 5,

SMR Ch. 8,

with His Time is Near.