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Chapter One
YOU WANT IT SIMPLE ?
Why not ? We have dealt with the philosophic tantrums and devious devices at length in SMR and elsewhere, but if you want it simple for an apt mind and ready spirit, simply consider.
This world is filled with awesome magnificences of artifice, wisdom, understanding and fashionings innumerable. Atoms to neurons, they are all filled with conceptual call-outs and articulated premises, governed by a power beyond our own, and a mentality which, though far beyond ours, is so similar in the precise fashioning of products of thought, that the analogy even allows us ready mental and physical access to the natural order, to understand it. More, we can even work out laws, more or less accurately (the laws are not more or less accurate, but our variable and sometimes progressive understanding of them is so), and see them in some of their innermost workings, so that whether it be genome architecture, or commands for construction, permanently lodged in the DNA contributions, wound together both into physical and operational synthesis, or the genius of physical laws at a more elemental level, in their stunningly exquisite interactions and interrelations with form and format: we are cognate enough to be able to grab the thing.
We can grasp it. Input into it, and from us, and output for both, are of one logical kind or genus; so that it is not only the conceptual realities back of the semantic command structure, its correlation with receptors of the same genre, and the presentation in timely fashion of needful raw materials, but the conscious capacity of human beings to search meaningfully into each of these three features and some of their correlatives which is in mind. Mind uses concepts, concepts require mental manipulation and code for linguistic compositions of concepts requires mental effort to invest it with significance both to send and to receive. Mental objects and procedures without mind is a mere contradiction in terms. To be sure, something beyond mind (but in no way less competent) is possible; but then that is the point at issue: not something less!
Moreover, the correlation with man's mentality implies a full conceptual awareness in the construction of all, of the needs of total composition of investigating and effectuating components, both at the mental and the physical level: SOME mind, some manipulative skill, some measure of sustained purpose!
THE CONTROL BUG
Silly ideas are habitual, as in Communism, which offered the people land and then made a land grab from millions. People often want something easy, or to steal. They often love to steal the universe of God and the cosmos of considerations bound together in man, in order to get power-capital - not the financial kind (though it would have implications there too), but the control feature which so fascinates so many who aspire to govern mankind.
Unhappily, the disease of controlling everything, which might be fine if the persons or persons doing it knew everything, understood everything and could do everything and know what is good and hence what is best for it and what it is designed for (I have never met one, except the Lord, where the control desire is not a disease but a deity by-product - He made it and it is His). At that, He gives to man an extraordinary, indeed an amazing liberty to use his conceptual apparatus of mentality and physicality and spirit, either to attack Himself or His will or ways or wisdom; and it is this, love apart, which is surely the most impressive creation of all. Man has NO idea how to BEGIN to make such a thing, since the more he controls, the less he provides freedom. To be sure, freedom implies liberty to make mistakes, a function man displays liberally; but at that, it is a wonder and involves the entire spectrum of love and friendship, entrepreneurial activity - where a free imagination is essential as to type.
But among men, the liberty given has a way of becoming the liberty lusted for, coveted OVER OTHERS, such as shown in the case of African slavery (not the only case by any means), lordly arrogance and socialist dictation, and more so even at that, in communist non-charisma, as it seethes into the hearts of those afflicted by it, both with colossal damage to themselves, to do it, and to receive it. There are many more types of control pathology, but these suffice for our present purpose.
Once people get that bug, that infection, that pathological misconception of the point of mentality and the place of human personality, as subordinate to the Maker and Contriver, the Creator of it, and want to displace it for convenience, bombast, bally-hoo or a swelling cancer of the realm of government so that instead of governing FOR God they want to govern His products their way: then they move on very often to deadly dynamics. Directly or indirectly, they often reach the point where they would like to control God, the Creator, too.
Hence they seek, precisely as in Communism and Islam, where without evidence of logical constraint, they dispense with the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ and subordinating Him to the latest unverified bulletin from Muhammad, or Marx or his squad, strive and often cause many to cease to be alive. That is one of the things about the God-control squad, whether religiously or politically conformed. They usually get violent. There are in fact many varieties, and Romanism and Islam rose in some ways together in time (cf. More Marvels ... Ch. 4, Divine Agenda Ch. 6, Ancient Words ... Ch. 14).
Now, synthetic religions are becoming popular, as part of the new control-modes being invented, with the objectives: to survive, stay alive, kill as needed (Jonesville), providing the usual spiritual abortion program for man, to make spiritual decease the more total. When man does not fit the ideas of the betrayers of the divine mandate given to man, busy making a new one in his own name or that of some spiritual invention, then psychic, financial, terrorist or other control looms near. OBEY OR ELSE becomes the rule.
The development of such lack-lustre attacks on the biblically defined light of God is predicted (Matthew 24:24, II Peter 2, I Timothy 4, II Timothy 3-4), and this is now fulfilled vastly. Indeed, it is the clear biblical position (cf. Revelation 13, 16-19), that such deviant dynamics will achieve rule on this earth: a religious innovative exercise in delusion coupled with a financial and military might to carry it into mankind, while the corpses are carried out.
The word of God, however, does not make for any mutation (cf. Galatians 1, 3, Proverbs 1, Revelation 22, Matthew 5, Ephesians 1:10, II Corinthians 11). He has defined the developments, the reasons, the results and the time for their vast increments (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5), and it comes to pass in that routine way which is true of all the revelation of God in the Bible.
A BETTER WAY
The truth is there. Then, some are too well fed with their dreams to want it: the current position increasingly.
If man refuses the biblical food and drink, that simply becomes prelude and provocation for the universal decay the world inherits, so that the food is left on the table, either to be consumed elsewhere, or removed from availability as the secondary infections set into the globe (cf. SMR pp. 659-687, 714ff., 727ff., and The Holocaust of Morals). Yet in the Bible, the word of the living God, it remains for the eye, even when the spirit has shut down its ingestive operations.
The Bible not only foretells this pathology, but cites its dynamising source (cf. I Timothy 4, Revelation 12, II Peter 2). It is the devil.
Indeed, in the Bible, this is precisely what it is considered to be, and the effort to oust even from heaven, the God of the Bible, the Father of Jesus Christ, this is clearly and categorically ascribed to the devil (Revelation 12). He is not alone: there are henchmen. - indeed, there are false prophets and the like as in Matthew 24:24, John 16:2.
The Bible indicates, predicts that some invented religious-State fervour in operational synthesis, and some heady fever will seek and for a little while gain vast powers of control in this earth. The name 'beast' is used for this, a sort of decline from the post of mankind with his spirit and power to relish God and reason from Him, to the point of using force, and violence in military-political-social devices, to force others to conform.
Hitler did it for a while, Stalin likewise; and both went a long way. The next one is to go further, so that there is no English Channel - the Chunnel here becomes symbolic, does it not ? - or other impediment to stop the spread of the spiritual fungus or mould to the entire globe (cf. Daniel 7, 9, Revelation 13-19, Matthew 24, II Thessalonians 1-2). .
It will in fact get its opportunity and such a rule WILL HAPPEN ON THIS EARTH, not long before Christ the crucified and resurrected comes back as Christ, the Ruler of Righteousness (II Thessalonians 1-2, Psalm 2, 72, 45, Zechariah 14, Isaiah 61,65-66), before this earth is tossed off (Matthew 24:35). After all (cf. II Peter 2-3), its indecencies are innumerable, godless grabbers by often illegal means seizing what they want, while oppressing many (cf. Amos for a divine coverage of the disease of financial and social oppression, in its ancient development in Israel).
In this way, the thoughts of the hearts of many will become manifest. Often vast power allows the cunning connivers and devious contrivers to open up, and when God acts, this of course is their downfall.
Thus, the creation and the desecration are both
apparent,
in principle and in practice, in development and in the Bible.
Meanwhile, accordingly,
we have the wonders of
this world
and its intelligible construction and wonderful wisdom,
on the one
hand,
and on the other,
the ravages both of natural order and psychological
type,
with a rough religious recoil which bruises the shoulders of man
as
violence is deployed for delusive magnificence
for this or that religion or race or
political entity,
national or tribal or of whatever type or hype it may be.
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It is apparent |
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as you consider |
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the exquisite, intellectual, aesthetical, programmatic and
personal wonder and glory |
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and then the horrors as of an incipient hell that come |
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that there is a double entry system here. |
On the one hand, you have the utter glory of beauty and thought
in the creation; and on the other the horror and grossness of devastations.
The one is exquisite in precision, and the other is ruinous in impact.
Thus, the mind and Spirit which made the universe is evidently not too pleased
with the conduct of man, who alone has the power to to abstract and consider
and understand, that he may even seek to move in communication or thought,
towards the level of the Creator. This is NOT, be it clear, in the level of
being and power and place, but in the apprehension and relationship at an
inter-personal level, with Him who is the Creator and artificer of derivative
mind, matter and spirit. That includes ourselves.
What then is the purpose of such a duet, a combination of cat-calls and sopranos of delicacy and distinction ? It is apparent that there is rebuke, dissatisfaction and judgment; for just as the precision proceeds, so does the devastation; and if possible, it is getting much worse, especially at the human side. If then there is rebuke, where is the the criterion of knowing what SHOULD be done so that this will not happen ?
If there is, again, such a prodigy of work as creation attests, where is the purpose ? Oh, you can say that we should make the best of our equipment and hence be moral in that sense, and respect our neighbours, since they are the property of God equally with ourselves, at the outset; and that therefore we are not interfere in mere cramps of violence which becomes vileness. Therefore, we should tame a haughty or flagrant or high-minded spirit within ourselves: yes, but what more ?
HOW COULD IT BE FOUND ?
Since WE CAN move in the realm of understanding of the One who made it all, then we must look for what has the following criteria, knowing this, that if we find it, our little problem is solved.
What is the purpose, and why is this desecration!
Firstly, with the minds given us, the deployment in this field, of the logical and evidential and spiritual techniques inbuilt, has three features: we need to find something with three minimal features. Is there anything of such a kind to display to man the purpose ?
It needs to be clear and comprehensive enough to carry weight for those seeking the purpose of the Creator; it would similarly need to be profound enough to explain the purpose both of our coming to be and being what we are; and thirdly, it is sufficient to show us why the world is not destroyed, and how to continue, things BEING WHAT THEY ARE NOW! Since it is being ruined, we need a remedy and thus an explanation of its present continuance. Indeed, it has been needed since we began to ruin it by ruining ourselves.
Naturally, it will have to be unique in this, that nothing that man or any part or object or subject in nature can present, can compare in the self-declaring features it will have, attesting the authority of the self-identifying source, the Creator. If you have a class of students, it is not enough to roar to make them know what is wanted. Earthquakes can roar. A roar may satisfy emotions, but not the mind.
What is required is what will indefeasibly indicate, not to the wildly rejective but to the ear of those who will listen at least temporarily, what is the will of God. Otherwise, it is gamble and folly, not purpose and intelligence. It would then become mere inefficiency. Indeed, it would have to be such that it can penetrate in whatever way is the will of the Speaker, who knowing us better than we know ourselves, is not left wondering!
We therefore need something which in its qualities could come from no other source than the Creator, and it must be evidentially elevated, and preferably in other ways as well in a distinctive attestation, without competition.
What is created has a finite power; what is the Creator has no lack of power. The products are incomparable in the end, not only in creation (a mere empirical fact, we can do nothing like what we ARE as a work), but in speech, if it be identified.
As this site has shown in almost countless detailed expositions, many summarised in some of the sub-sets on it (cf. Search ), this is precisely the case. The Bible*1 is
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a) testable, |
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b) verifiable, |
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c) possessor of validity uniqueness, |
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d) exhibitive of empirical fidelity and precise conformity
to its topics |
The ballyhoo brigade may not be happy, but science has its ways, and when scientific method is employed here, there is but one practical, empirical result in such a search for communication from the Creator. Indeed, all aspects of logic will not be denied by other fare for this point and purpose*1.
WHAT DOES IT SAY
This being so, what does it say ? It declares pithily to the point, if one may essentialise here, that man has fallen, that he has been an idiot spiritually, has disjoined from God, does not now naturally so much as know Him, ought to do so, can do so, and that there is a way to secure this.
It further shows that the need is firstly for repentance for one's personal part in this unhallowed scenario (one did not start sin, but surely continued it! - Romans 5:1ff.,1-2, 6:23), secondly for returning to God (Isaiah 55), and thirdly for doing so by the way He chooses (Romans 3:23ff.). IF you want mercy, you do NOT prescribe the way, but receive the result, provided there are no evil additions (Micah 7:19ff.).
In this case, repentance is to be conjoined to faith in God's offer of mercy in JESUS CHRIST (John 6:47, 5:24), His Eternal Word (John 1:1ff., 14:6, 8:58, Isaiah 48:16, Hebrews 1, Psalm 45, Zechariah 12:10) made flesh so that man might receive and believe Him who IS the Lord of all, and not any who is NOT; and if ever anyone deserved trust, He does. Further, one needs to realise that it is free and unearned; and that any effort to make any work of oneself or one's fellow creatures even relevant to this mercy in its anointing as appointed to any sinful person (and there are, among men on this earth, none who are out of this situation) is worse than mere sin (Romans 10).
Such a thing is distortion of truth. If in seeking to know what the Creator wants of you, you even distort, or act as if to abort, by your own poor thought and contradiction of His word, what is to be, this is an assault of a secondary kind. This is at the level of attacking the doctor when he comes, and that relates to others as well as to yourself.
Avoid this, to stick to the point. Accept then the grace of God freely given and receive the pardon of His peace and wisdom in Jesus Christ, who died the just for the unjust to bring us to God (II Peter 3:18) and TRUST HIM.
It is not really difficult. We are avoiding the red herrings dealt with in detail on this site, to enable clear progress to truth, and sticking to the basic point for those who mean business without red herrings, which stink when left too long and are easily removed out of the way, we have given the simple way for those who simply seek, without stupefaction from philosophy, where He is and what He wants.
Is it so hard ? Life without God is hard, however, and SO IT OUGHT TO BE!
Meanwhile the table for the spirit of man remains, for a while, laden with spiritual food and spiritual drink.