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

CHAPTER THREE

PRACTICAL OUTCOME

FOR PRUDENCE AND WISDOM IN THIS WORLD

The setting for the words, 'Don't be overly righteous' is just here. Do not sin, but do not imagine you can transform the world, even though you may contribute something of Christ's beauty in duty to HIM, within it.

Don't try to MAKE this world into heaven, since it is on an undivine divorce course. Don't try, in other words, for the perfect divorce from God for that laboratory of liberty, this world,  since there is no such divorce that is even good. Divorce from God is a driven foam and a tornado tempest. Blessing it is merely making mayhem more confused.

There in the alienated bosom of this world is only delusion, confusion, contusion, like great welts, effusion of oddities and diffusion of nauseous products. It resembles rotting. In separation from God of creation and redemption, there is neither peace nor justice nor truth; and it is from the absence in marked degree of all three of these, that this world suffers as from a perpetual jaundice, leprosy and cancer.

To be sure, the kingdom of heaven is still ministering in the hearts of those who love the Lord, and in their midst; but in the political midst, it is not. Nations like England have tried to CONSTITUTE their members as 'a Christian people', and much was accomplished when on all sides the effronteries and atrocities of Romanism were as evident as the burnt remains of those with whom they disagreed. Stimulus in revolt from such horror has stirred many to realisation and seeking refuge where it is provided by God; and from such evil, by divine and merciful intervention many were not only delivered, but found by God Himself.

Mockery can sometimes stimulate awareness of the truth it mocks; and so even evil can be turned to good. While this does nothing to make the fires of the Inquisition the less horrific, it does much to make the mercy of God the more obvious.

However as we have seen, when new ideas and fringe notions became pregnant and gave birth to much in modern Britain, its national Church in the precincts of the power of the State went with it. Hence it is now divided, some wanting to keep to what it ostensibly is for, the God of truth and the Bible, the Lord Jesus Christ and the changeless Gospel of grace, and some wanting it to become a religious minder for a wayward people.

All of these things have had their place, but alliance of religion and State, so rightly rejected by Presbyterians for example, is no way to go. The State is one category (a mix) and the Church is another (even if a mix, only through hypocrisy and folly can it be so); and to wed them is instant folly and enduring shame. The people of the Lord like salt should influence the meat, but never seek to BE it!

Accordingly, in the world, with such remnants of some measure of grace for the race fallen, and large measures for those who flee for refuge to their Maker and His Gospel (Hebrews 6:19), there is a retrograde rescension of its nature more and more, a ruin without remedy; and yet,  as there are more yet to be called from it (Revelation 6:9ff.), these come, day by day, while this world lapses into vaster and vaster unconsciousness of truth, some even calling it true that there is no truth, and frothing at the logical mouth in so doing.

	As a procession of retrogression has dynamised recent history (cf. SMR pp. 650-708, News 121, 122), just as predicted( II Peter 2), and there is more to come (Revelation 16),
	as the false prophet gets on with it, fostering his ludicrous task of deception with his mountebank nostrums,
	as Romanism links more and more with a kinship with other religions and Europe esteems her less and less for the new look European Constitution as foretold in direction of flow (Revelation 17:16ff. cf.  Beauty of Holiness Ch.   4, News 121 ), and
	as communalism, the great society in the great hands of the great becomes more common, that fever of fashion that founds itself on nothing, ignoring the diagnosis and prognosis of God:

so there is a non-stop flight to devastation.

To seek perfection for it, is folly; to try to mould the people to provide wisdom is self-contradiction, for without the Lord who made us, there is merely a tailoring class, to measure each other with the rulers of no units, no meaning and nil results to the point (II Corinthians 10:12 cf. 11:1-15).

The tailors are active, but the suit does not fit. To seek to guide its people in people power, in communal wisdom, or popular leaders, only  to bring it to its knees rather than have it sink to them in despair, and prayer that is governed by the glory of the self-revealing God who never changes, whose word is always fulfilled and has been these millenia: this is mere misused energy. It is froth in the glass when there is no liquid beneath.

This system is not for sale to do-gooders, though its people profit much by divinely imbued kindness and concern; and it will not yield except to delusion. Peaks of goodness sometimes soar in its midst and the sublime head, Christ is not discerned by the blind; and wonders of sacrifice are routinely wrought, and the courage is often scarcely noted. Yet the system and stricture of sin continues, wiping its eyes and its glasses, sniffing at times, but preoccupied.

As Christ declared of this cosmos so long ago, it is, this realm of the prince of this world, one which has NOTHING IN HIM (John 14:30). Why pretend ?

Does this mean that ideals of service, grace of bearing and wisdom of words are not to the point ? Of course not: for did not Christ do all of this and far more (Matthew 20:28), when He was here. It DOES mean that to trust these things to redeem or restore the world is erratic, a baseless bounding from pollution to distribution. Frustration is its destiny and futility its name. It constructs what is broken, with ill-fitting gestures and loses itself in ignominy, even amidst the praises of the conditioned and the moans of the dispossessed.

To hope that it will change before the return, the restoration, the day of the Lord,  is mere vainglorious humanism, disguised in whatever theology. It will not, until His day, change; and if it has given some change from the notes given to various better governments in their day, all in the end fail, while the people being processed, or the power-brokers, or the hideous ideologies of naturalism swallow up victory in defeat, and cast out both beauty and truth in their evil train. This parade of history's failures, then, it has been a fascinating exhibit of the power of God. They do not last because there is no such answer. It is as God decreed in Ezekiel, amid the predictions of the demise, discipline and dealings with the nations and empires, yes as He spoke to Israel in particular:

"Overthrown, overthrown,
I will make it overthrown!
It shall be no longer,
Until He comes whose right it is,
And I will give it to Him."

He whose right it is, is the Son of David (Ezekiel 37:23-24, Jeremiah 23:5-6, Zechariah 11:13, 12:10, 13:1, Isaiah 9:6-7, 11), whom men rejected (Isaiah 49:7), in whom the Lord delighted (Isaiah 42:1ff.), who is the Covenant to the people (Isaiah 42:6) and light to the Gentile nations (Isaiah 49:6), who brings joy for mourning and beauty for ashes (Isaiah 61:1-3, Luke 4:1ff.). What is overthrown is all presumption which seeks, directly or indirectly, to replace, efface, displace Him, and overthrown it was to be, as it has been.

Many good things have been sought IN His name without presumption, but nothing which is FOR His rule CAN replace Him, nor any who would act as enlightened in their own name or right; and as to this world, HIS kingdom being NOT OF IT, it awaits Him whose right it is. Panaceas multiply, like the debts of the United States, and the depths of the Chinese persecutions of people who emphasise spiritual things and the devastations of war in the Middle East, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Iraq, and virtually Iran as a feeder and many Moslem aspirations as a source for war.

Peace does not multiply. It is when HE comes that it will do so (Isaiah 9:7), and though a short period of swift passage will arise when this world smiles at itself (I Thessalonians 5:1ff.), yet this is but the withdrawal of seas, before the tsunami of truth comes to overcome, and the kingdom is given to the Lord Jesus Christ, who paid for its membership.

The Christian inhabits this world as salt, not meat. His is a scent of spirituality, not the atmosphere that is relentlessly breathed. The world always tends to hate the Lord's people, since it has hated the Lord (John 16:1-3) and indeed in John 15:20-22 we find this from Christ Jesus:

"Remember the word that I said to you, The servant is not greater than his lord.

"If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you;
if they have kept My saying, they will keep yours also.
But all these things will they do to you for My name’s sake,
because they do not know Him who sent me."

Indeed, even when as in some former days, various rulers have sought to follow Him in phrase at least, the incredibly vast and tormenting abuses of force have been  so far from Christ (John 18:36) as to make this a mockery of His mastery and not a design from His deity; and they have shown in the main, little of glory but much of vanity, viciousness and virtueless self-exaltation (cf. SMR pp. 911ff.). If some for a time have sincerely sought to deal righteously, then their kingdoms have differed from them, or declined in vision, or sought power with compromise, as in the ludicrous opium wars in China!

This world is not Christ's in its intention, and therefore no governmental concoction can securely make it seem so; except to the deluded. Prudence and circumspection, humility and serviceability, acute sensitivity to direction, goodwill and good help, these are things to esteem; but more safety and humility is found in balances of power and care that does not become fanatical in this world's terms, as if to take the spots from the leopard or the teeth from the lion. Until further notice, each has its share!

The cursed creation is what it is, and until He comes whose right it is, pretentious perfectionism for what is polluted at the source, is mere refractory rebelliousness. Towering Babels of human delectation and devisings have had their day (Genesis 11). The night is near (John 9:4 cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5). This world, destined to determinate end, except in the remnants of its created beauty, is not the place for towering perfection, glorious wonder and astounding godliness, though some in it have moved mountains, glorified God in magnificent endeavours blessed by His presence and stamped by His Spirit: for it is endemically injured, astoundingly impeded and woefully awry.

Some diseases have their answer; and sin in man has its divine response leading to repose of spirit and blessedness of life (John 10:10, 3:1-13); but for this world itself, scene, source and system,  in its calamitous combination of opportunity and lost causes, rottenness of heart and twisted tortuousness of spirit, there is only an end which in its day and way, is blessed, but not in appearance. Its judgment is a mercy, but not for the judged, who having forsaken mercy, and sown the wind, inherit the whirlwind (cf. Hosea 8:7).

Rather is it in disappearance of such a globe as this,  so misused, families and functionaries so abused, precious inventions so snatched from their makers, goodness so tortured in contempt of life, inanities so praised, vanities so vaunted, fortunes so made in such opprobrium and sported with such grandeur, that the blessing comes to those who did not trust in it. There comes where this world was,  a vacancy at last (II Peter 3, Matthew 24:35, Isaiah 51:6), when its work is done. Then its lapse becomes a glorious omission; and the dispersion of its enormous and created energies, stored up with such prodigies of power, becomes as beautiful a loss as any other stain which bedevils beauty, or marring which scars a face.

It will go; He first will come (Zechariah 14:5, I Thessalonains 3:13, Matthew 24); but in its time, it goes. There is no place found for it (Revelation 21).

What has it done ?

Its schemas are routinely hijacked, whether politically, nationalistically, economically, socially, personally or spiritually; and indeed, the liberty of the Spirit is so relatively seldom found, though it is the very gift of God to man (II Corinthians 3:17), that not often does one find the choice soul in whom the soul is transformed from glory to glory according to the likeness of Jesus the Christ (II Corinthians 3:18). Yet, though in sum, and over time, there has been in aggregation, a vast multitude whose Father is God and whose Saviour is the sent Christ, the stage itself is fast growing to be both wobbly at the base and reeking in its air, squawking as its timbers are wrenched, its curtains scarcely able to stay up any longer.

The curse on the misuse of such glories as God here provided (Genesis 3, Romans 5, 8),  has both sourced the mosquito and the fly^*1, ingenuities of reminder of man's plight before his Maker, the adder and the taipan, the scorpion and the militancy of many an animal creation. As man goes, so is he surrounded; and as his curses disadorn his world, so his world ricochets his abandon, and mimics it with a relish which counters the pride of flesh.

"Subjected to vanity" is how Paul described the situation in Romans 8. That is what the Lord has done in answer to sin on the grave side; just as Calvary is where He went, to void the grave for those who seek Him and find Him where He is to be found. There is balance, provision for each and for all ...

If the leopard is a pageant of muscular and mobile aeronautics, its repose a scene in itself, the lion a propulsion of majesty, set in tawny beauty, and the eagle a flight of regality, assigned in a feathery aerodynamics of loftiness, the whale a monster of meaning, deep in its sounds and fathoms, social in its antics and grandly soft in its risings, where power plays: yet is there the octopus waiting with tentacles which may be measured in hundreds of yards, ready for its day, seeing where to suck.

While parenthood in the most ferocious is still tender, and even magpies bring up their young with discipline and sometimes a measure of directed acerbity, so that they may lose their immature and foolish ways and become the darting rockets of aerial determination that they are soon to be, yet is there the squalor of drugs to mar man, juvenile divorce to mock God and drunkenness to laugh at godliness. SO does man devalue, to tragi-comedy, the stature to which humankind may come, each is linked to the God who made to have access to truth, and be participant - though never by force - in a love beyond mere computation, that of the living God.

This fallen world has seen its millenia, by all records not more than ten (cf. TMR Ch. 7), its milestones of the inglorious, its throbs of hope, its fashions of passion for good and for evil; but it is both harnessed to the galloping clatter of horror which it has fashioned, and in which it has learned its way and achieved its fate and harassed in its intemperance. So it goes until its lurid dreams of power, through ever so many false hopes and exquisitely ludicrous arrogancy, meets its end. Then comes its day of judgment, the day of the Lord, as this world is found arriving like an airplane seeking its tarmac in haste, seemingly not aware that when it lands at last, its flights will be assessed, its robust and riotous pilots covered in chagrin and its mangling mentors with shame.

The word of God is clear: THE RULER OF THIS WORLD HAS NO PART IN CHRIST (John 14:30). He is to go in the end, as is this world (Matthew 24:35, Revelation 19:19ff.); but it has been a truly wonderful site, however corrupted by man, a testimony of beauty and duty, of love and life, amid the glowering pollutions of sin, these notwithstanding. When it goes, of course, it will be sad in one sense, since it was a glorious exhibit of the wisdom of God; but such a liberty as love provided has been so misused, that its going, with all its hypocrisy and thefts, will in the end, be a relief.

Does this mean, then, that high aspirations, zeal for service through love is astray, while this world is proceeding to its judgment ? Is love wrong to love ? Assuredly not; but love does not seek its own (I Corinthians 13), and to seek to RULE and RUN this world, to make pieces of heaven drop into its governmental system by canniness or force, indeed to make the kingdom of heaven apparent in it, except as flowers amid the waste, this is a dream that ends in nightmare, disillusion and confusion. Its attempts are without number, great and small, and their outcomes accrue like many wakings from old-time anaesthetics, with vomitings and harassment. This world is not for curing, like bacon left in the rafters. It is not ready to flower, as if a pure field of tulips.

This world is not like that. MY KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD (John 18:36) would seem clear enough for any; but some seem to forget how to read when they feed and look for the food they want. If it WERE of this world, then His servants would have fought to deliver Him, said the Lord Himself to Pilate, but He delivered Himself up, so that those who by Him and Him alone are delivered, might become friends of the Lord God, the Maker of heaven and earth. Thus they are enabled to become through His passion and grace, like diamonds (Isaiah 61:10), and not like coal, like jewels for His crown, and not kings in ascent,  to dynamise this earth.

The day of the Lord will come, and His people will be with Him (I Thessalonians 3:13); but it is not as a cloud that rules, but as attendants of His beauty arrayed in His clothing (Isaiah 61:10, Revelation 19:14 cf. Matthew 21:1-4, Romans 5:17, II Corinthians 5:17-21), as courtiers of His grace, that they come. Splendid in service, messengers of the Monarch, beholders of His grace and not directors of dynamics, they come; for His and His alone is glory, though His people find in Him the beauty of holiness, and revel in His will and ways.

Love not the world, or its ways, works and witness, John and James alike declare in their different ways (James 4, I John 2). Love its Maker and His word,  love its people and seek for the lost to be found, and for life to become available on the right and the left by reconciliation with God (Colossians 1:19ff.); but do not love this lost world, ruled by the one who has NOTHING in Christ.

If His name you wear, but your heart is otherwise, what and which DO you love! Keep yourself pure and unspotted from this world, and in gracious deeds act like it.

What, like the world ? not at all, but let this be done as by one who has been delivered from the ugly ministries of this world for the blessedness of being the friend of the living God, entrenched in truth, enabled in service, embraced in grace.

Such in general remains in the advice of James and the message of truth of the epistle I John, as they, inspired by God, propound wisdom in grace, and in direction. .

If then you have found God where He MAY be found, where He has declared He is, ready for the humble and the contrite heart (Isaiah 66:2, 55:1-12), apt to receive repentance and to restore by redemption (Luke 13:1ff., Colossians 1:19ff., Matthew 20:28, Romans 5:1-12): then act  as you are enabled in the beauty of His holiness, set in His body by His own power; and  set your heart on this,  to grow in grace and in knowledge of Him who has called you (II Peter 3:18). While so occupied, never be forgetting the sublimity of that One who on reception of one more sinner, soon in peace procures for that one, a mission and a place, just as to purchase such a place, He became sin for us, sinless as He was and is, to open a world pure in the flame of truth, blessed in the heart of peace and triumphant in the consummation of creation.

A new heavens and a new earth (Isaiah 65:17, Revelation 21:1) is not too much for the One who created man the maker of his own little worlds, and in this magnificence of creativity, let us rejoice, knowing the Creator and delighting in His demonstrations.

NOTE

*1 See  Plagues of Egypt.