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Chapter 1

The Spectacle and the Magnificence

of the Celestial Alps of Christ Jesus

LOOKING AROUND IN THE CELESTIAL ALPS

In the sheer profusion which ordinary mountains of vast scope, such as the Canadian Rockies exhibit, there is a message.

Just as the Lord of life has made life in forms of the uttermost profusion, in method, in meaning, in means of living, though of course with one language, which He has chosen for its felicities, as from One in source for many in substance: so in all materially visible living forms, there is an exuberance. This  is not limited to originality of design, variety of composition, co-ordination of concepts, brilliance of language and utter mastery of thought underlying the conceptions implicit in the DNA orders, the complexity of which and their material environs is gaining constantly new additives. 

The reason is not far to find. His is a vitality that simply has no limits, a majesty which does not obtrude but speaks for itself, and by this, He has acted throughout history, in the spirits of mankind and in the declarations of His meaning, desires, hopes, determinations and apportionment of destiny.

The celestial massifs are those found in the Bible, which exult in beauty and dower like the dew, those who find them, and see their portent, presaging what is to be and appointing what must come.  For manifold generations, it has come; and it has gone as directed by deity. To disbelieve this is to reject the evidence of the eyes, ears, mind and heart, just as one cannot believe there is an oasis, being long subjected to irritating sand in the eyes and drought in the stomach. It in no ways alters the fact (John 9:39-41).

Some of these outstanding peaks are set forth in this volume.

From such massifs, giants of wonder, lofty crests of perspective,  the view is spectacular, showing the form and figure of many lesser but glorious mountains, their very loftiness a sublimity in itself, a close up of surrounds marvellous for their own inspiration, the supreme view bringing near to the discernment of the very face of God.

These massifs take the form of various declarations from God, set in such an altitudinous glory that in their context, they present marvels and wonders, which those who know the Lord can attest. Of this witness, much is from their personal experience of His actions, attitudes and atmosphere, for He is a God of power and His righteousness is like the depths, His mercies like the heights and His wonder like the streams which leap from the snow, to convey health to the soul. More is from history which is so compliant to His word, eager to fulfil it in every point: just as is the DNA to His thought, and despite the enormities of sin in this world, contravention of His commands and purposes, life continues in its profusion and depth, its dimensions and wonder.

In history as in heart, there is to be found a sacred treasure of fulfulments constant, continual and fluent in grace and severity as the case may require; and man's history is as evident in the fruits of nations, their pivots, their power, puniness and retrogression, fire and follies, leaps and lassitudes, growth in girth and loss of worth^*1 as in the development of thought, like a naughty boy eternally rebuked, always rebellious, always bordering on insanity, rambunctious and stricken by his own devices (cf. History, Review and Overview, Incomparable, Lord Indomitable, Dizzy Dashes ... Ch. 6).

Our first peak is to be found in Ezekiel. To this we turn in Chapter 2, but first it is needful to trace the portent, significance and thrust of these facts for Biblical Christian Apologetics.

In this Celestial Range, there is a vastness of perspective which assails the spirit and assaults the mind on every side. Each peak and the whole is seen without blemish, displaying an entirely different life from that of this world.

It differs, yes diverges in nobility sublime, in sacrifice quintessential, with no grievous scars, nor is it scarified by brutality, and though it suffers many storms, seduced by the arrogance of autonomy, yet does its magnificence leap to the eye. It has the hue of what is perfect, its very sight being bliss; and while the rills that run down may experience the dust of the journey, the territory itself is sublime before God. Not only is it His will to share its sublimity with those who will receive it, while it stands supreme, inviolate and secure, but it does so with heart. In this Range and Kingdom, He is lavish in love, cascading in mercy, giving meaning to muscle in those who receive its healing streams, purpose to feet, understanding to arms, ground to the heating of the heart, lustre to the eyes, inspiration to the mind, resolution to riddles, light to darkness, comprehensibility to what cannot be chaos, but merely lurks in dismal dichotomies^*2 and the chains of antilogies without Him.

He gives countenance, whose is the Kingdom, who owns and operates it, to character; He grants purpose to purvey, site for life and a light for the explaining of all things, just as He gives thrust for thought with the ideas of man, to bring them to their safe haven. Great is His power, non-existent are His lapses, immediate is His response as the need arises, and long is His patience, when this is the case for review.

His is no signal from space, vainly sought, but His testimony is truth, never intermittent, constantly available, always strong, comprehensive and comprehending. Just as this is found in His presence, so is His discipline without stint, where it is needed, and His rebuke wise as it is required. To know Him, and Christ the Redeemer whose face shows Him, and whose life is His own, this is eternal life. It does not finish (John 17:1-3).

His is the voice of command (Isaiah 55:4, Genesis 1, Colossians 1:15) that called into being the strata of orders material, biological, ideational, moral and spiritual for man^*3. Through Him, the filth and films of vain philosophy, always seeking, never finding, like a cat trying to balance a mouse on its nose,  are stripped like rough old paint (cf. SMR Chs.  3,  1 0).

From the massifs, where the eye of reason and the head of thought is open, where will is not a necrotic membrane but a lively steed, there comes a view of the face of God, made manifest by His Spirit, impossible to face without repentance, and though it forms in loveliness as oak trees in the light mist (I Corinthians 13:12), yet it is found with the sublimity of spiritual relish and delight (I Peter 1:5ff.), since its purity kills pretence and leaves the gods of man's imagination, like those long dead.

It is the noble elevation, distance above all, possible place for sighting of every valley, revealed as by aerial photography, that has no comparison from the mind, hand, heart or power of man (Scientific Method..., Secular Myths and Sacred Truth).

Here is the light of sublime artistry, and enterprise, the life of the Creator, that eternal life that is available nowhere else, that is Christ's (I John 1:1-4) to give; for there is no other ground to all the foci and features of man.

As we have seen in Dizzy Dashes, Heady Clashes and the Brilliant Harmony of Inevitable Truth Ch. 6, adapted slightly for this purpose, here all is as securely explained just as  without it, nothing is intelligible. That is why godless or even secular philosophy is a millstone of muddle, its history a vale of sorrow, its wars a blight and its wanderings a proverb. If you insist on the wrong way, history may be long, but rightness will not arrive. The further you go, the less you know. Let us look at a part of that chapter ...

 

What on any naturalistic or monistic ground in metaphysics

	is mere discord (cf. SMR Chs.   3,   10),
	in aesthetics mere mumble (cf. SMR Ch. 5),
	in ethics platitude without meaning (News 19),
	in epistemology mere vacuity (cf. TMR Ch. 5),
	in politics defeatism (cf. Questions and Answers Ch. 7), or else towers built on invisible clouds,
	all reductionist, irrational or both (cf. What is the Chaff to the Wheat Chs.   3 and 4  ),

 

now on the supernatural origin of the regimented and volitionally active natural realm,  becomes

	meaningful,
	in essence predictable,
	and assuredly verifiable on the ground of the creator, whose verified word is without inhibition
	exhibiting the fitting conclusion, like a thunder-clap to a murder.

In all things on such a basis, it leaves nothing in the least difficult, whereas on the other model, there is nothing but failure, for there is never explanation for knowledge, existence, division, beauty or morals, but only tired reductionisms, without power, without ground and without the necessary result. It is simple fact that creationism in general, but more specifically biblical creationism with the creator who has acted and declared Himself verifiably in the Bible (cf. SMR Chs. 1-3, 10, 8-9, 5), accounts for everything as nothing else either does or can (cf. Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer).

Thus created man, in one mould but with spirit in an actual universe of knowable kind with a Creator who made him, rather than some glorified incapacity, can believe in culturally sanctified myths (cf. Secular Myths and Sacred Truth, Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic    7,   3, SMR p. 252I)) without too much trouble. This phenomenon can come from the consequences of will in his mind and in his spirit, so that he can readily believe the deluded and childish concept of organic evolution, by which he affirms whatever it is that he thinks he is in order to become more of it, whatever that is, though he never finds it making the substance of what-is, that great experimental absentee in any naturalistic viewing, nor does he discover the grounds of it, nor the way of it, but rather explores delusion in battling camps^*1B. He may even talk of principles^*1 as if they were powers to do, not mental conceptions to cover with words what actually happens - which, sadly for naturalistic man, this does not manage to do^*1.

The Bible however speaks of diversification within kinds only, from the Creator in His initial impact, formation and formulation; and as to creation, it is over, as the evidence continually attests while man tries to prod, curse, bless or induce it to do some more, to which it responds rather like a dog having its toe-nails cut by someone with aspirations to be a surgeon. (Cf. The Defining Drama Ch. 10, TMR Appendix I, Ch. 1.)

Thus it is mere routine exemplification of the supernatural schema when we find that naturalistic man wills to be what his position voids in operation, both in its very statement and in its performance criteria, as well as performance exhibits; and this, by sheer exuberance of imagination, in one of the choicest pieces of ludicrous cant this world has ever produced; this while he is born and dies and is given his genes and is faced by his God, whom he ignores as if his very life depended on it. That is what will is about in a creation which has it, and is placed in a natural climate with supernatural access.

It is moreover, precisely what Romans 1:17ff., tells us about, a further verification in the specific milieu of the Bible. Further, it is precisely there that the remedy for this consequence of such a creation is presented, with its own verificatory testimonials

(cf. The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy, It Bubbles ...
Ch. 9, Repent or Perish Chs.   2,   7, LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST - 2 vols.).

 

THE SPLENDOUR OF THE SIGHT

Here is found both explanation of, and vitality for the aspirations of man, who does not merely mock his own heart as a slum of folly, while vaunting his own powers, in his diverse moods, but would need to do so just as if he were merely an acrobat without a body, agent of imagination, dim wit to wisdom.

How vast is the gulf between this Celestial Range, this biblical blessing, and the regions beyond!

Alas, for the folly of the dynamic and lingering decease, in such alienation.

In such antics,  dimly hoping for what motivates many of the mighty, for what draws man in billions and inspires acts of acknowledged greatness, the self-made outcast has no slightest idea, and merely mouths reductionist follies which ignore the fact, precisely as in the evolutionary muddle, where endless assaults on each other are the very matrix of the method of the warring camps outside the place of peaks, beyond the regions of light. How could it be otherwise ? If each is wrong, where is the song; and if this be so, what can belong. It is Dismemberment Drive. They teem with contradiction of each other as of fact (cf. SMR Ch. 2, The gods of naturalism have no go!). Such is the necessary nature of naturalism, though there be many pains to minimise the fact, for appearance' sake.

The biblical ranges however, deny nothing, neither the squalor of sin, the curse on it or the relish of redemption, neither the pain of discipline nor the motif of majesty.

Here is seen in startling splendour, as the very power of God anoints the mind and explains to the heart the things that reason can savour, but God alone can create. In this lofty marvel of mounts, there is to be found a collection inviolate, an integrity of space and height mixed with sublimity, crowned with majesty, that covers the case to the eye of the mind in all things, in profound principle and particular wonder leaving nothing obscured, rescuing the heart from the dismal, and restoring the life to its meaning. No more is man a chaotic combination of acute reasoning, fantastic design and intelligence superb in potential, an acrid motley and amusing blemish in existence' realm; but now he is sinner in the sublimities of his creation^*3A in a cursed world where redemption beckons and the extraordinary sensibilities within man find their target, in truth.

Here is inspiration for the mighty, exultation for the lowly, objective ground for praise to the cynic, the ultimate degradation to the sceptic (cf. SMR Ch. 3), and the bruising forever, as mere trash, of those who transmigrate to violence, force and forging of lies that cannot rationally stand, spiritually satisfy or even begin to meet the deep and multi-form case of man.

Here is the hand of God, the place of rest, the ground of dynamic, not as a partnership, but from the one God whose hand has made, whose heart contrived, whose imagination has created man and all the grandeurs and challenges, tests and opportunities, rebuffs and rebukes, into which pour both the judgments, the severities and the mercies. Here is the place of pardon and profundity of peace, which makes of life so manifest a glory, so ready a shame to its abusers, so much a site for seeking the lost.

Here is the Redeemer, whose Cross is still and will always be, the summit of glory: for here for man is the blood of the incarnate God (Acts 20:28), for the remission of sin, the resurrection of the ruined body for the impact of strength and the hallowing of hope with reality, and the sovereignty which knowing all, is beyond trickery, despises treachery, and brings His own into glory without failing any one of them, while this world in its witlessness rages, and aborts, cavorts and distorts, till its ruined face is turned to the pit (II Peter 3:10ff.), with more noise in its ruin than it ever made for its own part.

Here is peace that is not only past all understanding, the integumental peace of what abides in what has been made, misused and restored, that of the Creator, but is vital and gripping, as partner of strength and colleague of holiness (Isaiah 35, 26).

NOTES

*1

See:

News 87, Dastardly Dynamics ... Ch. 6,

The Pitter-Patter ... Ch. 4,

Journey to God ...Ch.    2 with I Timothy 4, II Timothy 3-4, II Peter 2, pointing to vast fulfilments,

 The Glow of Predestinative Power Ch. 8,

SMR Ch. 9, Ch. 8,

Calibrating Myths ... Ch. 5,

Beyond the Crypt ... Ch. 1, Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed .. Ch. 3 ,  

Red Alert ... Ch. 10,  Bon Voyage Ch. 1.

See also, Grand Biblical Perspectives Ch. 8, esp. *2.

*2              

On this topic, see the following:

Christ Incomparable, Lord Indomitable Chs.   2,   5

The gods of naturalism have no go!  38

Glory,  Vainglory and Goodness Chs. 1, 3

Deliverance from Disorientation Ch. 1

Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed: Barrister of Bliss Chs. 3,  4,  9

Dastardly Dynamics ... Ch. 1

The Open Door, the Closed Mind... Ch. 3

Downfall from  Defamation ... Ch.  1

*3

LIFE AND DEATH - realistically speaking.

What continually rankles with naturalism's dead effort to cut off the author from the works of His book -

in the DNA, in the atoms, in the laws of physics and chemistry,
in the rationality of man's mind, in its correlativity with the world it investigates -

as it explodes into vacuity, uses reason for irrational claims which negate it and bruises itself in continual negatives to valiant hopes, as dead as any squashed wasp, is just this.

Order and organisation, structure and conceptual integration beyond that of any architect are simple facts.

Explaining them as self-productive from what is not there, in whole or in part, or assuming them without ground is mere magical nescience.

Of interest is one more attestation of the all but incredibly complex character of living substance in the case of man, just as it is similarly staggeringly integrated, folios of machinations of the Almighty in the creation. This relatively new aspect comes in the Journal of Creation, Vol. 2, 2007. In this fascinating exploration of some of the procedures for carcinogenic activity in the human body, we find an ever increasing array of orderly activists among the genes. Thus there is an increasing understanding of such activity, we find, from Dr Luke Kim's article on Accumulation of mutations ... (pp. 77ff.).

This, he states, is derived from a multidisciplinary approach from numerous fields such as virology, genetics and bioinformatics. This facilitates understanding of the molecular mechanisms of carcinogenesis. Now there has been a discovery in this field: it is that of proto-oncogenes and tumour suppressor genes. The former is a normal cellular gene. If mutated, however, it can become an oncogene, a cancer-producing gene. In that sense, it is a prior action, a proto-gene which though in itself innocuous, yet when altered, is potentially deadly. It is, in fact, an agency of death, an availability for this end, even though in the normalities of the construction, there is crucial function for good.

In particular, these genes can be invaded by retroviruses, and triggered into carcinogen status. Does it not remind of that potentially blessed state of Germany, in its vigour, alas invaded by Nazism in the last war, as if a new template tore into its midst, and directed it to a place near doom. Nature and nurture necessarily have much in common, since God made both. Let us return then from our illustration to the technicalities. We meet a further agency, the retrovirus.

A retrovirus is simply one which has RNA in its being, and with the aid of an enzyme it possesses, it can transfer this command material into the DNA of the host which it inflicts. Thus this is an additive agency which, giving its works to the oncogene, can mutate it by addition, into a deadly agency. In effect, it is rather like a fuse to a bomb, which when lit, makes it explode; except that this seems rather to over-state the case. In fact, it is more like a powerful unit which, when invaded by what changes its power outlet, makes it lethal instead of functional for the due activity of its host.

In fact, these proto-oncogenes have important, normal tasks to perform. They help in the regulation of normal cellular physiology, including the simple and basic act of cell division, work in the field of growth factors, in DNA maintenance,  and much more. Their work is in fact a subject of ongoing research, constantly adding to their roles.

Since, says Kim, normal activities of the cell are "elegantly regulated" through many phases and factors, any interference can cause harm. Imagine a jack-hammer which was reprogrammed to bend up and hit the hand of the agent using it! Power with changed controls is always able to cause havoc, and the more delicate the field of its rampage, the worse the result can readily become.

One of the other genes of interest in this field is the tumour suppressor gene: and as the name of this class of gene suggests, they function in suppressing tumour production, rather like brakes. The acceleration of the proto-oncogenes and the failing brakes of the tumor suppressor genes can act in tandem to aid lethal results. Rather startlingly, Kim states that 12,493 gene sequences of 'candidate oncogenes' and 4,484 gene sequences of 'candidate tumour suppressor genes' have been submitted to GenBank. So vast is this assemblage, that the importance of the staggeringly complex phenomena of cellular action of these genes, for normal functioning,  alone, is obvious. They are critical for NORMALITY, though liable by mutation, say through retroviral action, for death.

Where did they in their highly correlative, eminently complex and organised, their time-space, background (for arrival) and foreground (for action) and overall inter-relationships in an all but astronomical scale of proficiencies and interactions: how did they manage to secure their integrality, normality, functionality in the first place ? Thus in the field of carcinogenics, we come to the fact that there is a vastly more complex, an increasingly clear integrality revealed, a decreasingly self-sufficient, a more and more readily disturbed, disrupted and destroyed wonder of existence in life, than the simplistic might ever, in their devious dilemmas, have imagined.

It is precisely like trying to write a play of Shakespeare with notes for actors and notations on emphasis, to enable actual physical production with finesse of effect, and expecting all the many footnotes for display and commands to be 'interpreted' by something or other and for the play actually to happen. The thought is madness, since you need people who can UNDERSTAND the nuances, the flavour, savour the sense, and interpret the code, and so fulfil its machinations. Code as command is not a biological production from simple sources. Expressors and receptors have to have a mutual facility in the realm of communication as a mutual power in that of conveyance.

What of the agencies ? These are in their own way coded, down to electrons, their code being intrinsic in their very composition. When language (cf. Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed Ch. 4) is found to embody the command, then the only thing which prevents disaster, such as the case of the oncogenes, marvels of vitality, but apt for horrors of devastating misuse most readily available, then any endeavour to imagine the book (of DNA and its associates) wrote itself without pen or thought is as far from science as it is possible to go. In sober practice, you look for correlatives amongst what is known for what is found, as a relevant dynamic; and not for oddities which, if they worked as they do not, and arrived as they are never found to do, from nowhere courtesy of nothing, would be as different as in hope and imagination you may care to make them.

In particular, you do not look into dimly deficient reductionist abstractions, for what by contrast is found in superb, munificent integrality of myriads of machinations wrought into action by command, vulnerable to the uttermost, but catered for by numerous procedures inbuilt lest disorder happen, a self-maintaining marvel of ultra-human intricacy, one to which man with a staggering gift of freedom, seeks to direct his own mind, in the realms not only of obliquity of reason, but its very absence.

You do not look for grounds and causes of such astute, acute and soaring wonders of operational method,  in terms of what is to be conceived in forgetfulness, ex-mind, ex-concept, ex-procedural provision, by means of laws of nullity which never act in this way, never produce information at all, but absently as in a trance of grandeur in their nothingness,  order what is to be in each kind, physical, biological, mental, and impose order where option is granted in terms of fruitfulness and result. This would be rather like the Punch cartoon of the Spring Balancing of the Books in the Bank, in which men with scales sitting on their noses, throw coins this way and that in the hope of achieving the desired, disciplined result!

(For the area of the paragraph above. see THE LIST BELOW. Its field  is the concepts of  Design, Nothingness, Anythingness, Devious Irrational Devices, Critical Differentiae, List of Criteria relevant to thought, including criteria and ontology of design and the requisites of logic, amid the realm of antilogy, antinomy and antilogism embroiled in the abyss of ultimate irrationality.

Dizzy Dashes, Heady Clashes and the Brilliant Harmony of Inevitable Truth  6 (listing of critical failures in reductionist methodology and result, and includes rank and file failure of naturalism, at every chief philosophic turn, a mere outcast that casts out data to live it vagabond death),

Glory, Vainglory and Goodness Ch. 1 - the last tracing elements of creation that are benchmarks in unison, and in this being parallel to TMR Ch. 1 ;

The Desire of the Nations  2,

Epilogue,
Beauty of Holiness Ch. 4,
Dancers, Prancers ...   3,      5  (includes the devastating spread of coverage, required for any workable theory - criteria of creativity),
Little Things  3, esp. *3,
Barbs, Arrows and Balms 29, History, Review and Overview,
Christ Incomparable, Lord Indomitable,
The Wit and Wisdom of the Word of God   2,
Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Chs.   9,   13,
Scaling the Heights  .... 5,
Dig Deeper     I (the result when you disestablish nothing),
2  (unity of creation, history, past, present and future before God, and survey of design as scientifically required, with reference to the definition of design)).  3,

Downfall from Defamation  2 (the sad fad of the motherless child),
Glory, Vainglory and Goodness  1 (consciousness, phrases for phases of creation's aspects!)

Gratitude for His Glorious Grace   4, (includes  'mother nature')
Defining Drama 2 (this last including the modes of learning and gaining knowledge, detailing modes of gaining knowledge, scientific method being one, when rightly applied)

 History, Review and Overview,

Christ Incomparable, Lord Indomitable

See also: Organ of Sight (A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 7) with ASP Ch. 8 (Going Over the Top. at the Bottom) and Ch. 9 (Engineering Nature and Engendering Man).

The following sub-group is helpful in perspective:

The Wit and Wisdom of the Word of God, the Bible True to Test  7 (desire, design, purpose, potential and programmatic aid), and 4 (the helpless hiatus of the hypothetical); 
Dig Deeper     I (the result when you disestablish nothing),
2  (unity of creation, history, past, present and future before God, and survey of design as scientifically required).

Nor for that matter, do you look for each 'subsidiary' set of laws, as having their own origin from what is the exact opposite, lawlessness, nor for substance to come from nothing, in form or in function.

What you DO look for is this: what is adequate to the functional outcomes, what is known by exemplification on the one hand and by logically adequacy on the other, without using causality in language while imagining it is absent in fact, antilogy supreme: you look for what is germane, grounded and functionally relevant. In neither matter nor the human mind do you find it, though in the latter you see an image which relates. You DO however find it in the mentor of mind, which is adequate for mind-genesis, and having always been, needs no simplistic, reductionistic, reconstruction into matter, and this into nothing. Theories of this kind are myths without any relationship to scientific method (Scientific Method, Satanic Method and the Model of Salvation). Causative necessities on the other hand are equal empirical realities (cf. SMR, Causes, Repent or Perish Ch. 7).

To think otherwise is to deface, defile and mock science, which has all its prestige from the fact - when it is a fact, for a given aspirant to the name - that it looks where explanation is found, not where it is not, takes what observation displays, not what it does not, and finds what causal grounds require, not what they forbid.

This is refused ? It is then, not life but death which is verified naturalistically - that is, in the workings of 'nature' or what has been brought into being already, and then works amidst rebukes; and if any imagine things concerning it, per se, this is its se! This is indeed its say. It says nothing creative at all, any more than one of my books. It is filled with creation, but void of the event. That, it is past! What is found is the result, and the way it is taken, is but an expression of other life, the making of which is similarly past. But what of the endless mimicries and endeavours, including that to find a site for solace, now this earth is virtually ruined, amid the stars ? This is the dream of the schoolboy when in the Headmaster's study, who dreams of football, but finds another rod in reality.

It is not really a case of hope springing eternal in the human breast in this case, but dope surging in surrogate splendour, sickly in fact, glittering with star-dust, into the human heart. This is as the Bible, in one phase and the next, one realm and the other, in creation and in curse, has pronounced it.

As it is declared, so it is tested; as it is divinely pronounced, so it is in man, in nature, in law and in death, to be found.