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DIVINE MANIFESTO, THE BIBLE:
DEITY MANIFEST, JESUS CHRIST THE LORD
Rev. Dr. Robert E. Donaldson
Published by World Wide Web Witness Inc.
May 2007
©
PREFACE AND CHAPTER ONE
ARCHITECTURE, ACUITY AND GROUND
Sometimes in science, vast amounts of data are covered, resolved into law, seen in their order and relationships. As such equations, concepts, perspectives mix and assembly into corridors of understanding (like Newton's Three Laws of Motion, of vast applicability and Einstein's E=MC2 of considerable value), the authority and mind behind the created universe becomes clearer.
This it does in many ways, of which three follow.
1) First, the directive organisation is conceptual.
2) Secondly, the concepts are allied to extreme originality and creativity, nothing being dull, like a poor student, but both effervescent in brilliance and deep in understanding with subtleties to challenge the imagination.
Thus has come the universe, nodding it head as in tune to the march of understanding and the band of functionalities. If your student produced something hundreds of times less brilliant, you could not but be amazed at his wisdom! The cerebrality of the cerebral, alone, in its conception so that it might be used for conception, in its billions of parts with myriads of connections, subject to modulation of message, which first must enter, involves both principles and procedures that astound in complexity, astonish in multiplicity and invite in comprehensibility, if only you take the time, have the power and the privilege of investigating.
3) Thirdly, principles, laws, expressive and commanding codes have an outcome, with originality of concept and magnificence of mentality, in integral realities.
It is no more a blitz of bits, than is a Boeing 737, and indeed, far less so; for there is far more to integrate, both in kind and in scope. That must simply travel; but this must think and excogitate, imagine perspectives, assess criteria, invent concepts, challenge attitudes, seek the truth and apply it to itself as to all else: for such is the mission of man. The unity of the thing called man, able to operate as if ONLY in this sphere at will, underlying and unsupervised codes and systems working on their own the while to support his high-level activity, is a staggering achievement*1: and it is one which he uses especially when he is denying it.
In other words, the situation is much like the old-fashioned Sunday School anniversary. There are boards for seats, there are pipes and trusts for structure, there is an order of ascent, each row set back from that preceding, there is floral originality, deployed, music is prepared, complete with instruments, in an assembly of different modes of order, all integrally conceived as an operational whole, though each phase and facet has its own laws and rules, architectural, physical, aesthetic or aerial.
It is then that the whole purpose and point of the exercise flits into being and fits into the multiple, organised array.
It is for the children. This purpose has an allied one, not contrary, but complementary. It is for the adults via the children, and both for the Church, and that for a testimony to the world.
Ascending in order, like the staggered, but organised seating, a part of one coherent plan, that whole human family action is for the glory of the Lord of creation, and the God of salvation.
So this, our present world has its architectural, structural, organisational, physico-chemical base, set in an astronomical deo-drome. It is vast, but ordered, multiple but integral in its totality. With this, not only is its working to a significant extent, penetrable by the mind of man, but capable of deployment for his purposes.
Man in this, in our figure, is like the Sunday School children.
Man however, though a multi-partite, eminently organised universe of his own, making the complexities of the rest of the visible structure, by comparison, almost simple, is not directed to bring glory to God; only expected to do so. The congregation of the Lord and the angels does not prompt with a cattle-prod.
One of the greatest of all miracles, man's freedom is supra-programmatic, so that he can freely estimate the significance of programs, as well as make them , for purposes, themselves the product of his own imagination. This too is in consultation with his conscience (capable of scarring and demise in all but form), understanding and capacity to co-operate with his Maker.
Often this, a first thing, becomes the last, so that man mars his meaning, moults his message and fouls his pond.
Thus while this, his thought, can be bogged by conventions, and choked by the clammy hand of culture, it does not have to be, and often isn't. It is because man is ultra-programmatic that he can estimate the nature of programs, and decide on his own relationship to such things: an impossibility for any being without objective power for truth, were he a mere manipulee. His errors show in variation the depth of his freedom.
Man accordingly is capable even of assisting the fluent harmonious, working of his own social and structural world, which he tends in measure to create, or of rending it, disturbing or to a remarkable extent, compromising or even spoiling the whole domain of his operations, in the process. This liberty amidst law, of which man is highly aware, and this potential for self-destructive idiocy, in that worlds' original sense, is not a design weakness, but a volitional power. Abuse never implicates a design; but to a rational being, it does implicate the will.
On the contrary, then, it is a necessary correlate of that major feature of his design, freedom, that he can deny, distort the name of or even seek to supplant his Conceiver, Instituter and Creator. He can deny truth as attainable beyond sequence, in principle, and almost at once affirm the truth of this statement, and affirm it in theories contrary to his own model, while thundering the implications as uselessly as a house built on a dream. In fact, he is free to err, even on purpose, and to be obstinate in failing to see the light.
Though logically constructed and rationally erected into being, man can by pathological pride of (human) race, act as if he had created himself, or nothing had used a manifesto of mental and material powers to construct him, a waiver of reason, direct or by implication which man, master of antilogy, loves to assert. It is as if mentality had deserted him; but his will, that engine for liberty, is disposable for ruin.
In this liberty, and this as a pre-condition, is licence to love, rather than merely programmatically*2 responding to stimuli, as the essence. It is for this reason, in marriage as in metaphysics, man can so demean himself that cynics can avoid the truth; thus if someone marries for money, pleasure or profit, while affirming love, then this appears as a gross intrusion into the inter-personal. Man does not so conceive himself, but rather is affronted by hypocrisy, whatever his theories.
Beyond the significance of man's power of thought, including the optional power to be thoughtless, there is his power to glorify God: that is, to apply the magnificence of his creation to the recognition of and co-operation with his Creator, and recognising the presence of his own errors, meaningless without liberty, to find Him as Redeemer (Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer).
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This is still, in principle, in the area of liberty - including liberty to love - or of course, its obverse, to hate. This allows for, but does not require, reason.
Since man is multiple in error in sins of deafness, defiance, blindness, obscuration and even obfuscation, it is necessary for him, a maintenance rather than the other and just option of obliteration - to receive stable, sure, verifiable, verified words of valid truth, to show him what ONLY the Creator, as the offended owner and Maker could determine and declare (cf. Isaiah 2, 5, 24).
Offence is not predictable as to its atonement: thus only the unlimited and original basis for all, as distinct from nothing, the Creator Himself, can show what to do in that otherwise hidden sphere, of reconciliation with God.
This, revelation and its divine nature in the case of the Bible, is the special thrust of this volume. Indeed, the Bible itself is the self-accrediting, multi-dimensional, multi-partite, mutually cohesive, staggeringly knowing, deep and discerning account of man as creature, sinner, rebel, and of God as Creator, love, Redeemer, who being free utterly Himself, has given to man a limited but coherent liberty.
That liberty ? it is not of course to be God, who is eternal (nothing having no power to produce Him), but to be expressive of love and hatred, truth and lie, courage and cowardice, moral integrity and dissolute dynamic, understanding or prematurely old exercises in inchoate, mutually self-contradictory and even invalid erraticism, almost as an exercise in passion and spiritual perversion jointly.
This biblical account, just described, of the self-accrediting account of man and God, by God, including the arena of redemption, is also on of invitation. That it is distinctively present is verification at once of its need (cf. SMR Ch. 1), if man is to continue at all, while voiding in wisdom the marks of his construction. Though in much, through misuse of his created capacities, man has that whole chunk of chewed up liberty, yet its operational facility is fatefully damaged. It is this which is the basis for cynicism through unconfined over-reaction. In principle, however, he remains just as accountable. While he is not what he was; he is not in another image: it is merely defaced.
Though it is God who needs to apply the invitation effectually, as liberty-Maker, to the sickened soul, it is still accountable reality, with which God deals: so that the pandemic of guilt, and its cover-up in indifference, which afflicts and mis-propels much in this world, is well understood. If man spoils in various dimensions the liberty scope given to him, yet God is not foiled by this, knowing past the diseases of the soul, the soil of reality (cf. parable of the sower and the seed, and compare Glory, Vainglory and Goodness Ch. 7).
The Bible is the Divine Manifesto, antidote to confusion and master for rebellion; the Lord, who as there and in history shown, is the anti-dote to blind servitude and Maker of liberty, even restoring it to its place, this time, in a renewed personal environment, one expressly constructed as a site for the exhibition of truth. Indeed, this same Bible, applicable to man, is verified in all major fields (cf. Light Dwells with the Lord's Christ).
Many delight to find the truth, after such a time, and its counterpart, peace, after so much tension and turmoil.
As David declares in Psalm 139, "I am fearfully and wonderfully made." This truth he dwells on.
The powers of corruption are correlative to those of construction; and meanwhile mini-midget man, a few feet in protoplasm at the visible level, at the invisible can comprehend and concur, mischievously run riot, defame, deflate, inflate ideas, people, soar in spectacular pride and stamp on greatness, or cast down, continue burrowing like a flea into truth, to infect it; or else, there he is, moving like an airship majestically, to survey the skies. This is not only wonderful in the scope and amplitude, the contrast and capacity which man has been given; it is fearful.
It evokes a sense of that presence required, so far beyond man in his operational powers, to make it felicitous so to operate in such realms, by providing the logic in the universe and in man, and making both answerable, each in its own way, to His summons or dismissal. All this, relating to the reason of God, has not only mutual coherence, human interpretability, but is penetrable to man until he comes to the utmost power required to create all this in its integrality and liberty combined.
When he comes to God, he must stop and listen.
It is then that the fearful part comes in. What fear is evoked when you realise the wonder of the Maker: for if the made can achieve for good or ill, so much, how far much more can He!
What responsibility lies in man, for where much is given, much is required. Plans pre-made, as in Psalm 139 (Bible Translations Ch. 2 No. 10) show their force as the embryo develops, its multitudes of phases inseparable, an awesome agenda of immediately successive phases with no meaning or pay-load until complete, a deliberate design, a designated portfolio of man's construction agenda, through myriad conceptual turning points and assessment works.
Past a multitude of events constitutive of coherence, it goes, till the child born, it grows, and the end is pursued, at length appearing at the level of maturity, as just one, one person: with inherent potentials correlative with those of the embryonic development, after 20 years or so.
Then is the full-orbed splendour to be found, either to doom itself into deserved oblivion, or to live in the favour of its Creator, not striving, but sent on mission, with commission!
So man may come to comprehend the layers of meaning in the universe, of law and limit, and the skies of imagination and conceptualisation, the load of verification and validation, to know even God; and then to find the facilitation of function and the meaning of all phases stretched out before him. A mind to reason, a Divinely Prescribed Book to reveal and a life to live, all come to man: fearful fabricator of a place in hell, as if craftily copying the ticket to reach there, in the form of a visa, or in realistic weakness, worshipping his divine Benefactor, who made minds to find the truth, and truth to confront the minds, even putting it into words, to inspire the soul, compel the heart and arrest the spirit.
Some however plunge over the cliffs of fantasy instead, with fearful rigour pursuing the rigor mortis, the paralysis of such fragile wonder, into its deserved stale-mate, in which overcome, it abides in the shadows of darkness, self-illumined with a light which is not there.
To all this the Bible speaks, clearly, with vast coverage, with principle, precept, promise and exhortation, with revelation, information concerning the mind and heart of God, for and with which man has been so made that he can READ IT! To read the mind of God as self-portrayed! what a vast panorama of spiritual spectacle is stretched out before him, and lies written.
Man writhes to dispossess it of its truth, and falls, a liar; or else he struggles to express his delight in this one word which never fails, and intimates it from a thousand pulpits. Man can be illuminated with a light sourced in the Divine One, exposing truth as the sun the grass below, as he studies the word that has smitten and blessed, arranged the fall of empires and attested things to come, millenia before their arrival*3. Otherwise, he can smirk, shirk, strive, chide, not abide, and like a car unserviced, put out his oily smoke of discontent, disfaith or other spiritual disease.
The Bible, then, in its own domain of revelation from God, is not only unique in verification and validity (Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer, Celestial Harmony for the Terrestrial Host), as often shown in detail in this site, but in itself, an ordered, organised, multi-dimensional, superbly structured, integrative and purposively presented whole which so speaks. In this, it reminds of the construction of man, of whom this Bible speaks.
Indeed, the Book of the Lord abounds in regulatory rules, order, rationality, inter-folding of principles and concepts, liberty, love and intensively in immensely personal manifestation of will and knowledge; and all of this is a supra-universe of its own. With man, however, it is an intra-universe, but one with allowance for attachment to that supra-universe, or detachment which has led, in the domain of dire rebellion and self-important strutting, to so much vapidity, invalidity and vacuity, that a perpetual cloud hangs over the sulphurous fumings of its exponents. So has it come, as many aspiring for glory, and missing the point, merely inhabit those clouds, which give solid support for nothing. Mistaking them for the earth, they merely fall.
As you examine this Bible with willing mind, however, it positively shouts the obvious, its internal structure giving multiple echoes, as of voices in a huge and majestic structure; then it whispers, intimate, now demonstrates, now appeals. Humbug is summarily axed; weakness is graciously strengthened; confusion is relentlessly unmasked.
What then is one to expect ? this is not a party. Truth in this Book of the Lord is fearlessly presented and at times provocatively, since absolute certainty is the nature of the word of God, and indeed He challenges on that very point, to make comparison between the word of God and the word of man (Isaiah 41, 43, 48, 44), and even takes pleasure in exposing the pretentiousness of those ill-equipped to compete with deity, in their pretty, petty little fiascos (cf. Isaiah 44:24-27, cf. Psalm 2).
It is in this domain of exposition of its majestic, intimate, multi-dimensional, utterly organised, dexterously challenging yet in substance, utterly clear words, that this volume is given. It is not a book about the Bible: it is a book in the theme and thrust of the Bible, exposing for its intrinsic magnificence, its deep values and tones, its summary strengths and marvellous finesse, of exposition and delight.
This is not conceived as a work to be quickly done, but rather to move as the light moves, like the reflection of the sun upon the sea, showing now this and now that, spectacle of beauty, surge of truth and wonder of understanding. Indeed, that Word is the expression of what gives to human understanding its very name, not etymologically, but in dynamic reality.
NOTES
See Bible Translations Ch. 2 No. 10, SMR Ch. 2. See also at a more schematic level, with application logically, Repent or Perish Ch. 7, esp. *1 and *2.
See:
Spiritual Refreshings Ch 9, incl. End-note 1 (esp. programmatic psychology and its ilk), Marvels of Predestination and Marvels of Predestination and the Ways of Will Ch. 7, including *1.
*3 See for example, SMR Chs. 8,9, The Pitter-Patter ... Ch. 4, The Open Door, the Closed Mind and the Call of Christ Appendix, and the subsidiary references therein also.
Chapter 1 - as above.
THE RISE AND FALL OF VINEYARDS,
AND THE FOLLOW-UP
THE JUDGE
SUMMING UP FOR JUDGMENT:
IT IS GOOD TO LISTEN,
LEAVING SHOVE FOR LOVE,
AND SHAN’T FOR WILL!
THE DELIGHTFUL DRAMA:
POIGNANCY,
HELL'S HARASSMENT,
AND HEAVEN'S HAVEN -
IN CHRIST'S CALL
ZECHARIAH 13, IN CONTEXT
The Word of God is fulfilled not only in detail,
but in drama and definitively
THE DELIGHTFUL DECLAMATION:
THE MAGNIFICENCE OF PURE MERCY
Light that Exposes ...
SOME SCRIPTURAL DIMENSIONS ON FORGIVENESS
THE DELIGHTFUL DECLAMATION:
THE MAGNIFICENCE OF PURE MERCY
Light that Exposes ...
HEBREWS 11:3 with Isaiah 44:9-22, Jeremiah 2:13,27
The Word of God is fulfilled not only in detail, but in spirit
THE PERSPICUOUS CLARITY
OF THE WORD OF GOD
CONCERNING GOD AND STATE
Folly at the University,
Truth as little regarded as
Butterflies in a Cavalry Charge
Shaking the Shakeables and Waking the Wakeables
Folly in the World
sees Its Flags Furled,
But Man sees
the Futility of Brutality and the Folly of disfaith -
while zealously disbelieving:
and he keeps inanely waving...
THE ISSUE and
its ISSUANCE
A message
from
Hebrews 12, Isaiah 24, Jeremiah 18-19
Comfort without Coddling
II Corinthians 1, 13
Studying the Words of
the Bible in Greek can Summon Understanding
where it is Ready to be Received
THE PLASTIC AND THE KEY
SOME RATIONAL PRELUDES TO REVELATION
and the RATIONALE OF REALITY: JESUS CHRIST
THE MANIFESTO
OF THE GLORIOUS GOD
IN THE DELIGHTFUL DRAMA WHERE
DESOLATION BECOMES DELIVERANCE
AND DAMNATION YIELDS ITS CLAMOUR
IN SALVATION SALUBRIOUS AND ETERNAL