Spiritual Orienteering

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SPIRITUAL ORIENTEERING

2022

Orientation for Youth

…and its sight, sites and scenarios, of the only God who is Saviour and has paid the penalty of the sin, of all believers with His blood - Acts 20:28, as Incarnate.

He has Ruptured Death in our stead (Hosea 7:14), making the Grave a Place of Elevation for His own people, and grace for His own most Intimate Flock:

Shepherd: Jesus Christ (John 10:9, 27-8)

M.A. (Honours), B.A., BD., Dip. Ed.

The sacrificial essence of Christianity is this: One died for all, that many might be redeemed (Matthew 26:28, Isaiah 53, 55, John 6:58, 63). That One was God Incarnate (Colossians 1:13-18, John 1:13-14). Crucified and resurrected, He freely (Romans

3:21-26) offered eternal life (Isaiah 49, 53, John 8:24) on an individual basis (Isaiah 55)

An Orientation Sheet

How does it all fit together? Why does it fit together? Why is it all fitting that it should fit? You have just two choices in this field. It's terribly simple. Either nothing made everything or else there was that which was there already. And it made it. Nothing - as one of my specialists once said – Nothing’s nothing. What she meant was this. Nothing means there's nothing there. It indicates the absence of everything. Potential, power, brains, understanding. Nothing’s nothing, so if you want the universe made by nothing, you can choose to believe that - but it's what you call a contradiction in terms. This means two things that you are saying collide like a motor-crash and they don’t work together. One thing collides with another. You are speaking out of two sides of your mouth simultaneously. If you contradict yourself, who needs to contradict you? You’ve done it already.

Something must indeed have been there. There is no other logical option. And what's more, He must have been adequate to do all these things that are seen around you. To make the sun set, the glories appear. Now create shame, morals, strength, challenges, all of it. And that is the work of God. Naturally He communicated with those whom He made able to speak (Psalm 94:1 - 11) – humans, with their body, billions of cells in the brain, trillions of connections between them. In fact, God deals in fantastic magnitudes - that is, huge numbers. Particles of sand – vast numbers, the number of galaxies – vast numbers – and each galaxy itself containing vast numbers of stars, you the multiple multiplier. The amount of energy in some radioactive materials is indescribable. Well think of the amount of energy in a small box, that would be enough to blow up a city, such as Nagasaki. If a few ounces of some evil splaying substance could do that, what could thousands of Tonnes of an equally beneficial source or method accomplish? For good and not for evil! And how much beauty lies latent: have you ever looked at some of the birds, their colours, feathers and designs. They are staggering, stunning, beautiful, artistic and extreme. In my estimation, some of the birds you can see in South America, on the web, are brilliant. They are sensitive models, and triumphs. Beyond all this, when you walk with God, nothing will be impossible (Luke 1:31).

And the same must be said about the design of the human body, a masterpiece of mutually masterful co-ordinated function, intricate as a geometry proof. Even if you got all the component parts of a cell, and a cell – just one cell – has been compared to New York City in complexity; you still would not have a living cell. Even if you made all that, then, there still wouldn't be time to spread on it a covering to make it into a unit rather than a mere collection of bits; for that, many seconds are needed, but not available before, the bits separate again. The same applies elsewhere. For example: when a baby in the womb is being fed oxygen, that is an oxygen system. And it’s here to live. Seconds after the baby is born, this

feeding system changes to a breathing system. The oxygen is now obtained from the air. How is it time that created the breathing equipment in time? Impossible. That is what we're faced with in all attempts to turn a combination of unusual disparate objects into one of design harmony. There has to be a coalescing. In a racing car, it's not just to be good, it has to be brilliant. It has to have all its bits, moulded magnificently. With the body, there are trillions of options. It's like friendship. It's not enough to have the mathematics right. You have to have the form right. If the relationship’s right, the speed’s right, it will all ease rightly. It's like a friendship in ever so many places. It needs to sing. With a car, someone has to do it. Someone has to work. You don't get things that do not naturally aggregate. Cars don't naturally make themselves. You don't get such things. Just by hoping, wishing, or uttering a theory; nothing did it, even though it isn't there! There's a limit to silliness. And you pay.

And that brings us to another point. If you deliberately turn your back on God. If you laugh or smirk, or snicker. Consider this: I had a brother once. To him, I said “Why did you leave Christianity?” And he said, “Because it wasn't convenient”. He also said, “I want what I want, how I want it, as much as I want”. That's a choice. The Bible tells us in Ephesians 1:4 that God chose us in Christ. We didn't choose ourselves. God chose us, it says. It tells us when He chose us to be His; it was before the foundation of the world. So, way before time or space or particles were formed, God chose us, who are His, for He knew us (Jeremiah 1:5). It wasn't that He knew what we would do. No, just as you know a friend, He knew us: who would follow Him and who wouldn’t. Who would want Him and who would reject Him, in the free disposition of the heart.

He also made it clear in Colossians 1:19. He would like to reconcile everyone to Himself. It actually says, “having made peace through the blood of the cross, it pleased the Father to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things in earth or things in heaven”. In other words, you can't get to hell except walking over the blood of Christ (Hebrews 10:28-39), in whom the Father made the fulness of the deity dwell. Despising His divinely set sacrifice.

In Isaiah 48:18, God, in pain says, “If only you had listened to my commandments, then your peace would have been like a river”. In Luke 19, he says, “If only you had realised the day of your opportunity”. It was as if to say: Well, I've been here and I have given you the opportunity just to come to me simply. If only you had realised this is your day of opportunity. But no. They resisted. They've been proud. They've been steadfast in their own desires, thoughts, ways, and idols. It is hidden from your eyes after you harden your heart. You can't operate with a hardened heart. I mean your feelings, your understanding, your willingness. It's like getting calloused hands. You lose all opportunity to reply with the impulse of love. It's as if the carriage that is carrying Christ's people is departing from the station, and you're running to get in, but you can’t catch it! Or, if you do, it is because God knows that you're His. But in the depths of your heart, He can read where you are. So, you catch it or you don't. If you don't, it is this great God you have failed to find (I John 3:18-20, Luke 19:42, Hosea 1:6, John 15:22, John 9:39)!

Well, look at John 3:19. “Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” They preferred darkness. That's a pretty fair statement. They preferred the darkness, but Christ is delicate in choice, the Bible says. I would have gathered you under my wings, as a

hen gathers her chicks, but you weren't willing. He declared it openly. It goes on to tell us, in Romans 10:16-21, even if you don't listen to what He says now, He still knows His own. This He unswervingly declares, and He will keep them through time. Therefore, don’t wait, and don’t harden your heart. Don’t get calloused hands or a calloused heart: an unresponsive heart. So, you have all these various things and in Hosea 7:1 it tells us: “I would have healed Israel; but it is not healed”. That means the communication cord is now cut. And they have become permanently estranged. Never play with God.

So, we turn to other elements. Thus, here you are, equipped with a spirit. The spirit is the most important part of you. With a spirit you hope, you comprehend, you refuse, you fall in love. With a spirit you can do all these things, but only to the extent that you haven't messed it all up. The Father, however, is very forgiving. It “pleased the Father”, remember Colossians 1:19, and John 15. God wants to reconcile all things to Himself, and you can see for example, in the relevant scriptures these amazing words: The things that I have said that no other man ever said, and the things that I have done, that no other man ever did are there, He intimates. If you had not seen, witnessed these, you would have had no sin. Notice that in raising that statement, the topic of course is your destiny, who you are. But now? You heard, saw, and did not act. You have no excuse, so you see, there's equity. If you have never heard of Him, of your Salvation, then He will make sure that it – the offer of salvation - comes with just as much opportunity to you, as to others. So, you will hear, and it will make sense. If you didn't, you would have had no opportunity. The matter would still be open for resolution. For determination. The case would yet await final judgement. But this is not so, now that you audited His words and witnessed them.

Till your day comes, He's still seeking you. Really is a topic there. Consider: He's seeking you and has shown you His love through dying in order justly to be able to receive you (I John 11:7-8). The death penalty was taken upon His Incarnate body - in the flesh, in His Son, Jesus Christ. God gave Himself in a body. How do you feel about that? Does it penetrate? Don’t play games with God. I don't think it's appropriate to the dignity of His love, tenderness, the sacrifice of Christ - God in a body. He came in the flesh so that He could absorb our sins and their penalties. This for you. Happy are you who are in such a position. So, you know there's this time now! There is a due, true need for action! He declares: “unless you repent, you will all likewise perish,” as shown in Luke 13:1ff.. He has acted (Isaiah 64:5, John 3:15-19), if you have not already done so - it awaits!

The Visible, Not Having Power to Make Itself, God Acted

God acted to create with an approach to infinity in precision; and that is observable, once you stop playing with the ingredients of causality - that is, what causes what - but even Kant failed to account for that by using it, which scarcely proves it isn’t there. There is not only economic man, (even from that aspect) once you penetrate beyond materialism, with its self-contradictory contractions and reductionstic blindness. Then you come to the empirical: functional, and self-exhibiting, forces that are at work in and after humanity is on display. What would your rating be, in terms of righteousness (Psalm 89:7), yes, as a man of grace, aesthetic person, functional person. Yes, ‘functional person’!...all the rest too.

Christ covers this gap for those who receive Him and His Salvation (Isaiah 53, I Peter 4, Romans

3:21-25). His Spirit for such persons is supplied by grace only. Supplies of that spiritual life require and secure man from evanescence - emptiness, that is, evaporating into meaninglessness. On the contrary, he then becomes settled (Isaiah 28:16) on the Rock, and the Rock is the Redeemer found on repentance and faith. Repentance is an indispensable ingredient of salvation (Luke 13:1-3) and faith is a grappling iron (II Corinthians 2:12). Christ Himself is its measure and treasure (Romans 8:38-39, John 10:27-28).

Programs and Participation

Now we come to the second major part, Spiritual Orientation Part 2. For this spot, the idea is to give you a number of books. Mainly it will be on your part something you can grow into. Some of you may find them easier than others. Others may find them too hard altogether. Some may find that they're just adaptable to them and that they are adaptable to themselves. Here we go then, with a suggested spiritual orientation book list. Complete no, just a few hopes. Taking them in alphabetical order:

For example: Re leading biological researchers Emeritus Professor J. C. Sanford and Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson from top ten universities, these in their respective fields have shown conclusively, inter alia, two things. First the very direction of change through genetic mutation in living things on earth is not only NOT UPWARD. Reverse.

A downward dynamic is in fact working towards eventual default in biological life on earth, as the second law of thermodynamics required. Genetic life on earth would cease (cf. Christ’s forecast) unless He returned (Matthew 24:22). A reckless guess had replaced evidence in the evolutionary miasma, and for many still does.

Evolution is dead. During its lifetime it has both been a genetic killer and a cultural cover.

Then transformatively back to all the earth comes the long predicted, brilliant Return and Reign of the Messiah.

So, there's a little list of books that you might find stimulating. Stimulating companions over the years 12-17 and perhaps even 18 for some.

Now we will turn to nature, and its programs. Bees and their dance – instituted programs, involving analysis of storage places, the logistics of apiary. Storage areas where they can get their beautiful materials for honey! Honey, I think, is an extraordinary substance, which can last unspoiled for thousands of years.

The power to preserve things for millennia is exhibited in diamonds. These, created under high pressure – show a maximum time for their commencement of just a few thousand years ago, not billions! The amount of radioactive carbon remaining in the diamonds is a clue for Age. Which Age? Billions of years or just a few thousand years? The latter emphatically and dramatically.

For these long ages that so many deluded evolutionists talk about, they don't exist. The evidence is to the contrary. Bees, then produce this wonderful substance that can endure and certain rocks can contain diamonds, after all, a form of carbon and preserve these. In turn, a diamond can produce evidence, and the evidence is for a young earth with no holds barred. The atoms do not lie, but respond.

We can think of all the muddled-up ideas without any evidence; but that doesn't really count. We're interested in E-V-I-D-E-N-C-E, and we're not interested in glowing words without an evidential basis.

Now, getting back to the partial parallel of bees and ants... they receive marching orders, for example, much as Putin gives marching orders to Ukraine enemies, through their planning to take over all their resources and all their work. When you have that, it resembles fighting soldiers going out from among the ants. They arise. They are programmed to respond to certain situations in this way with marvellous purpose. They go out and fight and if necessary, sacrifice themselves in the defence of the anthill or whatever their home may be. This is conferred purpose. With man, it is a matter rather of a considered decision; but all these things have been given their place by God with different degrees of consciousness, concept and control. God is a great individualist.

Similarly, the bees, through their dancing and communicating information, tell their fellow bees where to go to get the food. Interesting point about the transfer of information from Scout bees, which find food and reveal the location to other bees which will go and collect it. Interesting thing is, not only is there a program, whereby certain symbols in the dance communicate where food is to be found, but there is also this surging of worker bees to collect it. There is a sequential alignment of actions - and equipment. As noted, these bees have little pockets behind the knees in which they can collect pollen. And then these are able to come back, having been programmatically directed, just as in the case of the other assigned bees, each with its occupation and preoccupation in parallel with the soldier ants, which have been programmatically directed to fight for the cause. Again, these bees are programmatically directed, so are the male bees, or drones, which go up to meet the future queen.

We come to the parallel sovereign creation of God - diamonds, which are characterisable through chemical ways. These have their own methods of preserving things. Let us resort to the enthralling topic

of what preserved the diamonds - they have their own ways of preserving things, exhibited in the 14C/

12C ratio, the amount of radioactive carbon left, compared to the normal 12C variety if any; in other words, we compare what is still there and radioactive, with what is not radioactive at all. This dates the diamonds. If there is any radioactive carbon left, this indicates that the diamond was formed within thousands of years and not billions - otherwise it would all have gone, decayed. This use of other forms of

carbon, not a black substance, but a glowing gleaming, hard jewel, is one of the greatest transformations on earth.

After all, diamonds are a form of carbon, a specialist examined some of these discovered diamonds to see how much radioactivity they had left and came to the conclusion that the current method of dating, based

on many assumptions, was many 100’s percent wrong. The 14C radioactive carbon component in the diamond was not in the least case testifying to billions of years, but thousands only. The vast ages assigned to the finds (only, to the contrary, a fictional fantasy) in fact, long ago, should have had NO 14C there AT ALL! None yet to be degraded! Is that so? Quite so! snapped the evidence.

Well, this is programmatic, and similarly of course is the case of the migration of birds, which to my mind are amongst the cleverest of little things. They have been programmed. It's been determined that things like the magnetic field and other variables are used as prods to memory for the birds, to aid in terrestrial navigation. The very fascinating thing there is this: all these various gauges, just like gauges on a car, in a way, tell these birds exact, direction information. And these things keep on impinging, as it were, on various location receptors in the birds, telling them which direction to go. So then, they are able to migrate for thousands of miles to one location, almost a vacation! They specialise in coming back to this, their original migratory position. Quite a thing, isn't it, right? Quite! A marvel of industry information and intelligence. Oh yes, on the part of the One who made all the gauges, that is, the One who made them susceptible to a whole lot of physical events to help their memories get them right back where they were on a previous migratory occasion.

It brings up a fairly interesting point. When the programs have finished using things like various receptors and the magnetic field of the Earth to direct the birds back to nearly the same place, the same area, the same district - what then? What operates to allow them to choose one house from another to get right down to the minutiae? It appears that God has found a way of using limited freedom, and then, to get beyond mere information of a general nature to information of a particular character, local information. So, the birds are able to go back to the very same place. How does that operate if it's not programmatic? What is it? It appears that there are different levels of programmatic direction in birds, some on the macro scale, some on the mini scale, and God gives them enough freedom to operate with a little adjustment here or there, when you come to the small things. These are the requirements of mutuality. Reminiscent of individuality, though, of course it isn't fully free. There are limits and there are prods as well. It's all worked out. All the parts have to work together in a magnificent harmony, harmony of mutuality. And interpenetration, in which may be invested a fragment of extraterrestrial work!

And so, we looked a little further. We look at where we are. We have instincts, magnificent, but only up to a point. We have freedom, analysis and discrimination. And they blend in a magnificent complex functionality. That's a rational fact. It leads to reflection on other living things, partly programmed. Take the case of apes. I think this is an intended joke. This is what you and I would be like if we didn’t have the human spirit from God operating vigorously within alerted minds. If the spirit from God had not been created within our hearts, minds and lives, that is what we would have been like: gabbling chatterboxes. That’s a warning, if you want to be degenerate. Look at what would be left, if these additions and changes and transformations hadn’t been made - a sort of goon show. From God we have instincts, yet only up to a point - that too, is rational fact. Without your spirit’s additives and transformational presence, yes you would have been a gabbling fool, relatively senseless. Relatively, that is, compared with the capacity of God, and even to the rational capacities of men. God is laughing (Psalm 2).

You think you are so great – you Putins, Gorbachevs, and all the rest of you who strive to show how great man is, how great this man is, how great this nation is. Great? Great at what? Grating other skins, grating people down, as it were, for breakfast to make it more tasty. This makes for great robberies of great resources with no great effort put into it. Theft! Certain to produce upset, difficulty, agony wounds, death, disease, destruction of marvellous things that man has made. It assists making the whole thing a sort of very tragic joke.

Take Number 7 above in our book list. And then the flood was actually, and it makes it terribly clear in Genesis 6, in reality, a fateful judgement. In Genesis 6, you find how the thought of man was only evil all the time, from his youth up. He got a ‘Z-’ grade. God resolved to remove him from the earth and did so. And the book, How Noah’s Flood Shaped Our Earth, to which I have referred, is one of the best technical books on the flood I've ever read. It oozes information, it’s filled with knowledge. Its account of how the flood has left the present earth the way it is, with all its valleys and heights, and the rest of it, is carried out with tremendous knowledge. All sorts of sites all over the Earth have been investigated, by the authors of this book (7) and it's shown how their configuration resulted massively from the flood. See also the outstandingly diversified and pictographic, vigorous work, Biblical Geology 101 (11), forms, diagrams, photographs and dynamics.

Open the eyes, and you find then what is left from the flood; and you can trace the stages which have their visible results. In this field, the gargoyles, the massive valleys, evacuated grandly of earth, but with only trickles of water now in them, remain aggressively testifying of the rolling and withdrawing flood, which acted like a dentist’s drill, with dental cement, moulded by the dental drill. Not with little puddles and pools but with raging torrents have these transformations been accomplished and excavations been scooped from the earth. There are the continental shelves, or many of the oceanic appearances, on the one hand, thousands of miles of various types of plains, on the other. It's shown how their configuration

resulted massively, extensively, expansively, ferociously from the flood. It's one of the most appealing books, because the local knowledge and rational accounting for landforms appears vast. Such was the flood. And it has left us with a very strange terrestrial surface, which looks at us most curiously, when it is not glaring at us. “Judgement!” it roars. Judgement it declares, after a near wipe out. Judgments, look at them and look at the remains - this is your environment, OH man; the residue of your aqueous judgement; and contest with who you are, and who made you, an ultimate disaster.

That was the flood and it nearly destroyed all men. After that, more prophets were sent, on more and more types of coming events; and I'd like to refer to that in another area. The prophet's focus was more and more on God deciding that this Biblical writer should handle this or that topic, at this or that, or for it, evidencing his decision in that area. Indeed, the topics tend to focus more and more on the devastating destruction in various judgements, already past, such as the flood, which Jesus emphasises in Matthew 24. He spoke about the flood that nearly destroyed all man, and indeed “all flesh.”. Indeed, we’re now in our second warning section, where the prophets of many ages focus more and more on salvation (Isaiah 48-55, Jeremiah 16, Micah 5-7). The rope is nearly frayed into parts, and the bottomless pit has a very deep and unsavoury meaning. As II Peter 3 tells us (cf. Romans 1:17 ff.), there are men who will mock, reject, ridicule. And that is precisely what man is doing more and more (in tertiary institutions, as one largely coordinated, specialised institution of corruption).

Jesus came as a man from Heaven, the heavenly man, equipped with the fullness of deity, says I Corinthians 15, Colossians 1 - 2. He helped us to gaze at judgments, reaching up steadfastly to examine our position, our souls, our sins. He came as a man, and died for the sins of men; there is no other way to purge mankind. He died for the sins of the whole world (I John 2:1-2), but not all accepted the wonders of His gift and realised what He paid for. And they missed great opportunities. “Oh, that you had known, realised, in this your day of opportunity” (John 8:24), was His grievous lament over Jerusalem, “but now they are hidden from your eyes”. They wandered with relish when wisdom was available. They worked their way to woe, and paid for it. There is no other way to purge mankind of his sin, like indelible ink!

There was one vast, worldwide flood with many flows and extinctions. There was one great, worldwide sacrifice of the only Saviour (Isaiah 43:8-10, Hebrew 9:13-22) on the only cross for some 6 hours, at only one place, time, mortal episode. The one redeemed much; but the former killed much. One dealt death to many degenerates. The other dealt life to many regenerates (John 8:24, 31-32).

Christ died for all the sins of the world, but far from all have accepted His gift, and so missed stupendous blessing and inherited horrendous destiny. His blood is the receipt. He poured it out unconditionally in conditions of violence. Vileness. As I Peter 1:19 tells us you don't need money. The ransom of our souls by the death of Christ in our place – the receipt is lying on the counter to take care of itself as the Spirit moves. It is applicable on an individual basis. You receive it, as offered, or die for your own sins. As the

world is increasingly beginning to realise, someone has to pay for your sins: you will or another. Salvation is not a self-funding operation. But Christ paid (Matthew 20:28).

So then. Here we are. In the middle of a universe. What a strange, vast thing! On the one hand, billions of cells, trillions of connections in the human brain between them; billions of particles in space, found in stars and galaxies, and yet there lies man. His image is often very like a garbled speech, filled with contradictions, courtesy of sin.

We stress that there is a marvellous protection which relates - in our universe and earth, over all this almost chaotic rebelliousness and ruination - to solar wind. Solar wind comes from the atomic action of the sun, it is very dangerous to people living on earth. This solar wind would blast, ruin mankind; but we are protected. The Earth is encased in a magnetic sheath. This one must emphasise. It is a safety structure of forces. It's around the Earth and rebuts the deadly particles of the solar wind. Not only do we have the magnetosphere to protect us, but we have another protective layer – the ozone layer. It is this ozone layer which absorbs particles and protects from destructive forces of the sun. Another solar phenomenon is the heliosphere, which is a protection from the sun - a cover for the Earth and beyond it, tending to insulate it from further and worse ruin.

‘Supernovas’ is the name given to stars which failed, which collapsed. They started emitting all sorts of super-fast, large destructive particles, more damaging than the hydrogen and helium of solar winds. Further, these stars emitted this terrible ravaging rush of bigger particles with more momentum. This would come upon us on earth and destroy everything, if it weren't for the protection of the heliosphere. It is a gift. The ozone layer is a gift. All these things operate because the protection and the destructive developments are simultaneous. There's no way you could have had the latter without the former. That is to say, from the negative point of view, there is no way.

So, we are delivered and protected. When the ozone layer is shredded or upset or moves or disappears from an area we are in great danger. We are reminded of what a unique place this earth is, surrounded with destructive elements. How could life form elsewhere? We alone are shown to be surrounded by protective agencies, which allow us to continue our life. We do not find such protective devices dotted about the universe; they are not focused there. That is the evidence. Arguing that there might be something there, when there isn't anything detectable, is supposition not science. Indeed, if everything were material, it would be immaterial to determine what matters; for this is not matter!

Alright then, I'll go back to the flood. There was this time when the earth was ravaged and savaged, as it were. By the flood, we were nearly wiped out. These things have been examined so much by so many in such detail, such as the carrying capacity of the Ark, that they've become like some analysis of the human body transformed into wood. Most impressive has been the carrying capacity of the Ark, shown when controlling data from many spheres are put together synthetically. Such are the provisions God has made for men. Specialists have done this work systematically, with much zest and esprit. Their work will be rewarded. One by one each feature of the Ark recount has been under major investigation, and the

harmony with facts, evidence, is profound. It carries the observer forward like a violent stream; “Evidence, evidence!”, it clamours.

All these things have to be in place together, in an intimate harmony, harmonious unity, which reminds us of what a marriage should be. It's no use having the destruction and then later on saying, “What then, we’ll pop in a few magnetospheres to protect us”, the erratic might say. That would be too late. If you're going to have the destructive developments, you've got to have the protective developments first, and they've got to be in place and in harmony. Incredibly mutually interactive is it, in such a way as to remove what would have prevented man from forming at all, just as the Ark prevented man from being deleted.

And then, of course, you come to a stunning thing – the Einstein element. That's a great, fascinating thing. Einstein wasn't one of your revolutionists. He said famously: “God does not play dice”. He believed in an ordering, regulatory God. Why? Because that's what he found when exploring the universe. All of the things he discovered tended to relate to law and many to the laws in space. Obviously, you don't interpret law as if it were the opposite. And Einstein showed one thing very, very fascinatingly. And that was, although the earth as it moves within sensitive bounds and has its protections, parameters, it is a complex and remarkable thing, and its surrounds are quite amazing, yet Psalm 115 tells us the surrounds are the heavens, and are, statedly, the Lord’s.

The earth is ours. We are forbidden to try and familiarise with and try and live with, and in, the heavens. This is our bedroom. For each of us, Earth is our bedroom; or it is increasingly abandoned as erratic junk, by special ‘junkies’, often impassioned academics. We are forbidden to try and familiarise ourselves with space as a home. It is another heaven to which we are directed. Space then, is our temporary bedroom, not our continuing city. And this temporary, terrestrial bedroom is moving at colossal speeds. And light travelling at 186,000 miles/second is a grand exhibit of the heavens; we must not try to make our own rest. The fact that it's all moving at colossal speeds introduces a whole new set of laws. It amounts to this: the size, speed and laws of space are meant for the Lord’s selection and not our presumption.

Abandon their commandments, and you run into many others, ignorant, distracted, uninformed. Psalm 115 tells us, Leave it (space) alone! But as this world's mankind will not repent, so it will not obey. Billions are spent searching for intelligent life in space; intelligence says leave it alone. Wouldn't those billions of space-supporting explorations, with dollars to match, have better uses? Wouldn't it be better to look for a holy race, rather than a race into a hole? While contending with God, rejecting His restrictions. “You would almost think we are subordinate,” they seem moved to chant. However, we should abandon our inquisitive flutter into space and learn the meaning of obedience to acknowledge and rejoice in our Maker and His Word, both living as Jesus Christ, and bidden, as the Bible. Will the moon turn red (Matthew 24)? A new flood? of blood?

Here is speed such that if you keep down to ordinary speeds, appointed places to live - domains, you are protected. A whole provision of newness is put aside, and so we are very fittingly put in place. That's something like a magnetosphere, and it depends on obedience. You don't go into areas which are unprotected, you work in a divinely chosen area where the interrelations of things are stupendous and subtle, so that when you transgress into unprotected areas, you move into new interrelationships of mutual kind, one affecting the other. It is just as in a sports car: the cylinders affect the water, the coolant and so forth. It all has to work together. Indeed, divine orders have gone forth for all these things, each in his place, each harmonious; but man would not (Matthew 23:37, Luke 19:42).

But what is it? It is – design. It is a combination of correlative considerations whereby various elements essential each one for its place and mutuality and operability with the other, is carried out. It's terribly simple. We know what we mean, and that's the sort of thing we need. In fact, I have written a book in which one whole extended chapter is devoted to defining the word ‘design’, then showing the slots we have for that, allowing us to compare definition and slot. What is design? It is precisely what it is defined to be, and seen to be, in the universe, and they match perfectly (see index, library).

So, in this matter of design. What is it? One of the designs is morality. Another design is Earth, another design is personality. Another of the designs is that we can understand one another, what God is saying, what we ought to do. Another of the design components is communication capacity. Another is...freedom. God designed it and made it. And I have solved that complex and wonderful thing at the philosophical level, in Predestination and Freewill in writing (see glossary and bulletins, linked in Home Page), using Biblical assumptions. In the Bible, was the answer all along. God be praised as always. Freedom in one glorious grant of grace is God’s saving grace, and it does not descend to mere autonomy (Ephesians 1:4). But He knows it. The heart has intimacies of its own, and God knows them (Jeremiah 17:7-14)!

Well, suppose somebody told you to go and love a dog. You think they're crazy? He might not be far off. ‘Midsummer Night's Dream’ plays on that theme (Shakespeare), but you can't love unless you're free enough to do it or withhold it. If someone says “Come and love that mongrel”. You just say “I can't” , “Love is a personal thing. I don't love that mongrel.” Why don't you? “Of course, it is not fitting for me to do such a thing.” It is not biologically appropriate. It's not morally appropriate. It is laughing at God. And if you want to laugh at God, remember He's far better at it than you are. I would look at Psalm 2 and consider the power of God compared with false piety and the power of princes. See what God's laughter is like.

So, there is this. This is life. There is freedom, which is a prerequisite. You’ve got to have it or you can't love. That's one of the reasons why totalitarian governments like Russia and Germany over the past, Italy, Japan, North Korea, have failed to meet human needs of the most crucial character. Freedom requires expression and love, amongst other things in a form of expression. But many mighty states refuse it.

And all these mighty emptinesses have left a chilling record in history. It’s as if they have perpetrated a sort of horrid joke. You can't love by decree. The North Korean dictator says you’ve got to love your State. Or the people that want to have billions do, as Putin seemingly has obtained through careful work, when Russia was changing from communism, which failed as one more form of dictatorship. Yet, you've got to have freedom or you can't love. You’ve got to be able to choose. Otherwise, the form has no meaning, is not fulfilled, and this right down to atoms and justice (Psalm 89:14). It's the opposite of design. Without design, you don't really have anything, without freedom, you don't have love. Oh, you can sell your soul, cheaply if you want to.

You can say - “Yes, I'll do whatever you say”. I'll be a slave of the dictatorship and I hope you get more billions. Yes, if you were slightly off centre, you might say something like that. You might do it because you don't like being tortured, which might be one of your options. And so, you have this situation. Man without God, is without hope. Without hope you operate way below your capacity. Moreover, you're operating without the only One who can give meaning, who can give life, who can give freedom, who can give love ultimately. Without Him, the rocks are cold.

So, you have this political situation. Currently, Russia is threatening Ukraine, which is fighting desperately. Thousands, and maybe more, will suffer agony, anguish, dislocation, homelessness. That doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Because power matters. Having a hold on other nations matters. Grabbing other people’s assets matters, making others afraid of you matters. Intimidation matters. My glory matters. Otherwise, there's no meaning in it except more for me, my nation, my history, my future. Oh, my country's future. And what is your country's future if you become some kind of gorilla yapping away with mindlessness, not even aware that you're forbidden to go into space and look for other intelligences. A matter of asking for billions or trillions of what doesn't belong to you and is not intended for you. Mankind alas, excels at creating more problems than solving them.

So, we reach a position in the universe. What is needed, of course, is to get out of the Einstein elemental* areas. Get out of this high velocity, material space, burn our eminently rebellious educational inculcating materials. Consider Isaiah, Hezekiah. Get out of this grabbing for it. You get into repentance, turn to the One who nearly wiped us all out in the flood. Turn! Without turning, you are like someone running after that railway carriage departing from the platform, and not grabbing it, and you get left behind. You're running after your own tail. You’re like a dog whirling round chasing its tail, and it's a sad tale. It’s a tale of repeated duplicity with God, who publicly offered Himself, to the contrary, for you. Well, after that, repent and believe, receive Christ, Master of Creation, Star of Salvation, the place of entry into His Kingdom (John 10:9) and assurance, within it (Isaiah 43:8-10, Acts 4:11-12, John 10), and it's all harmony and wonder. And it’s obedience, because you've got to be obedient. Even the car has to be obedient or it won't operate. A great racing car will only operate as a whole diversified thing. Is that what you want to be? That’s what you want the human race to be? Just a bundle of dis-ordered bits crushed into dysfunctional meaningless. I would hope not.

*To revert: to get rid of space as a pre-occupation and this spur of vast speeds and whole array of new variables and inter-relationships with appropriate complex interacting magnitudes, away from the break up of normal terrestrial parameters, we should abandon our inquisitive and clueless flutter into space, and learn the meaning of obedience to our Master and His Word, both living as Jesus Christ and written in His Words (John 15:7).

And that's what it is so rapidly becoming that it can hardly control the plagues which Christ prophesied (Mathew 24); and the return of Israel which Christ prophesied (Luke 21:24). It proceeds buoyantly as predicted (Zechariah 12:10) where the prophet announced their coming conversion to Christ and Him crucified, in due course, and all these other things which are prophesied throughout Scripture - that's another story. That we must keep, God willing, till next time.

Meanwhile, even the mode of divine communication in life dispositions - that is, the labours that eventually inform living objects to make them work, continue as since the Creation. Human made computers in forms of their configuration, in comparison, are like the work of a child. In its vast understanding and technical skill, it works so well that it has been estimated that the whole of data in that divinely made DNA and paralleled forms, could fit in a teaspoon. Man is beginning, as the race starts to die out (as also predicted in Matthew 24:22) to awaken, after a long sleep in the visible world, if only in part. The only thing ostensibly pure in it is its fluttering folly. Some, meanwhile, take the resurrected Christ for their King; and all will (Psalm 2, 72, Isaiah 42-6, 49:6, Isaiah 60).

In all this, praise God for His profound mercy and impassioned grace. It penetrates. Man both in Gentile and Jewish realms largely resists en bloc, at war with God. But Israel is coming near to its prophetic maturity. This is a superficial Autumn and many friends are accumulating. Be sure you make no mistake about the roots, because Matthew 15:13 tells us this: what is not planted by His Father will be destroyed. John 10 (9, 27-29) tells that entry by Jesus Christ is permanent only and His infinite provisions last forever. There is indeed no divine drawl (II Timothy 1:12!).

Multiplied Miracles and Continual Wonders, Getting Back to Reality, The Invisible Spectrum, the Visible Results

The visible spectrum of light is not all. It is necessary for man for sight, but there is more to life, even its sustainability, than seeing. For a trashed wonder to glory in blindness on the one hand, or blindness to the One who is there, is scarcely a topic for congratulations. Blindness to the moral, judicial, purely intellectual, creational, aesthetic, design, inspirational, understanding and personal spectra - this is merely a subject for grief or desolating cries.

When philosopher Berkely pointed out, in effect, that for all topics for thought, mind is necessary, he was in this, right. You can’t have thought without a mind, and for it, a mind is a necessary preliminary. Indeed, it is more important than matter, for matter is merely one thing to think about and mind it is with which you think! All these other categories, part of the invisible spectrum appointed for man, are integral to his existence and without them, he is demolished. Impersonally (Hosea 9:7) he becomes spiritually demented He suffers a forlorn loss and a present and predicted evacuation of poise, power, understanding and stature

- lost and unlovely, often with a compensatory push power play! Yet the fact is that if everything were material, it would be immaterial to determine whether everything is material. THAT isn't material! It is similar or parallel in all reductionism.

As in Hosea 9:7, he readily takes on a form of spiritual disease, and comes individually, and so personally, to be dehumanised. He makes remarkable flutters of thought, that to even the race, abandoning all pretence of knowledge become observably awry, or discernibly so. Thus we get Putin now (“whatever it takes” - recapture of Ukraine). Spectrum (the characteristic setting of his systems) is obscured.

With such dreams, man merely makes himself foolish, debased (Ephesisans 4:17-19; 2:5-8). The race becomes new and more blind and superficial to most of our spectrum, our divinely dowered human system, and spirit. It is less inclined in its own characteristic setting of the human system, which essentially, increasingly, becomes past pathological paradox.

If then, matter were all that matters, what is the chatter that gabbles as if to replace truth! And if there is NO TRUTH, then you cannot say this without falsifying your own statement - for even then, is it so? It isn't true - for in that case, there isn't truth to be had. You therefore speak amiss of your own claims of what, further, lacks even evidence: and thus it cannot do anything. Self-contradiction ends all argument!

In a choice, between “nothing” and the everlasting God, there is neither more than one party possible logically, nor is this so rationally. If you abandon logic, you cannot so much as argue for a cause. You then simply have a collapse, which is what atheism is, has to be, and always will be.

Man then becomes a chatterbox, and as not an instrument for choice; he has resigned at one stroke, and denatured himself, like a lady who goes to have her hair permed, and has it shorn by mistake; what of the hair? Is it good? But is that how the hair client made her request? And, can the barber not then on good grounds, proceed to charge! She has implemented the commission; so sin charges and the clients pay.

Man indeed gives such orders to matter, as he abuses powers of choice and progressively drives to conquer the earth with earthly means, progressively ruining his own land, heart, hopes. Instead of dominant and productive drives, the domineering seek power and do not placate truth by foolish striving. Instead, freedom groans and wisdom blushes.

Amos 4:13-5:27 tells the result before it came - and it did come in the devastation of the immensely magnificent temple and the shamed export of the people to other lands. If they do not feel comfortable with God, in their reeking unruliness, then they could be, would be, made subject to an entirely superficial, arrogant and bombastic nation. It is another one which would come, a “foolish” one which would come, to recompense with their own behaviour, that would have lead to this direct consequence (Deutoronomy 32:5-12). So “prepare to meet your God”, says Amos, also in his day, at the lips of God. Once again it is the verified prophet who speaks. First, Moses predicts much from further off. He spoke in an appalled spirit, inspired by the mouth of God:

They provoked me to anger by desiring that what is “Not God” - that muddle of thought, “They have moved Me to anger by their foolish idols” - present variously in all Ages - but I will move them “to angry desire” by those who are “not a nation”. I will move them to anger “by a foolish nation, for a fire is kindled in My anger, and shall burn to the lowest hell”

Much the same situation lay before the predicted invasion in our “latter days” ( Ezekiel 38: 39), the time when Israel has nearly returned from being scattered abroad (“the dispersion”) as predicted and has valuables as a nation that the oppressive North of Ezekiel wants to possess - as well as wanting to quell the adventurous and independent spirit of the life of Israel, on which much of the inventive world seems to focus.

To review an exposed list on Israel’s now fulfilled return, after some 2000 years, you might like to look up: The Shadow a Mighty Rock, Chapters 8-9, in 3 volumes. We tremble, alert to more trouble also on the later phases of their return to their own land and brink of the restoration of the Messiah.

Messiah, as in Zechariah 12, Ezekiel 37’s marvellous presentation about the “dry bones” concerning the dispersion, completes their return to rule under the Messiah, who is confirmed immortal. Ruler and King (Ezekiel 27:24-28, 38:6-39:17-29, 37:16-26, Jeremiah 31:28, 31:10-14;16-22, 32:19-26;40-42, Jeremiah

30:11-17, 23:1-8, Isaiah 32, 34, 1-6, 45, 22-25;60, Micah 5, Zeph 3:7-17, Psalm 2, Romans 3:23-27, Zech

Thus, in his prophecies, Isaiah has been the short track of their contemporary deliverance before destruction (vis-à-vis Sennacherib), and after it (Isaiah 40). How grievously they fell in 586 BC and 70 AD (predicted in Luke 21:24)! And how impactfully glorious their much described return to their promised land and city after purgation and extensive dispersion; it is no small key in the promises of God, that they have come to their Jerusalem and Jerusalem has come to them. The prophets have predicted, the nation has experienced, Jerusalem has been used like a megaphone, distributing the truth by its transformations and restorations of people, and its vivid and amazing continuity even now, under Jewish rule. What then? God has spoken, the prophets have spoken; history has agreed; God does not change (Malachi 3:6). Salvation is unshreddable, law functions and human idols are cut off in sequence.

Now there is an impending invasion after an eventual return to their own land. As Jeremiah (31, 33) predicts, however, Israel may fail, but only if the whole astronomical system fails first - a masterpiece of irony! The Lord will be King of all peoples; and Israel with their purchased peace in line (Zechariah 12:10) may now come to comprehend and soon rejoice in their coming vast security; for their part, soon

awake. They can now begin to realise the meaning of the deluged earth better with their own reabsorption (Psalm 29:10-11). History which often is not seen as a subject to ever-new human imagination, but as the Lord moves to discharge with many nations, unfolds in the total face of doom (Matthew 24:35, Revelations 21-22); and to bless others. Meanwhile, some try to impose their own religious faith forcibly, with a deadly unrealism as if they had not enough. So they forget violence where simple power dissipates into folly and floods rage in reply? This world appears dizzy.

Again, Israel by contrast, having long suffered, is thrust into prominence and before long its suffering is like that of “The First of the Few” in World War II, in the massive Air Battles over Britain. Long were the Jews mocked; longer still will they be monarched with the ‘Son of David’, precisely as programmed; and at last the whole created universe will join them - “all peoples” (of Isaiah 60:3).

Quickly, the world is assembling for eschatological terminals; the latter day developments and dynamics; the position is clearing like a misty morning by the sea, letting the refrain roar.

We must NOT moreover assume that the temporary ignorance (Romans 3:25) of the divine offer of mercy is per se permanent loss of the soul for that phase of the human race, known even before time was. While all the provisions of the Gospel apply to the uttermost in vast breadth and staying power, this does not mean that God is bound (Psalm 78:41) by any one method of presenting it, it is written, that He “passed over” the sins committed in the day of the race’s ignorance (Romans 3:25), and that the unspecial Moab’s fall caused Him utter grief (Jeremiah 48:30-33, John 15:21-23, Isaiah 23:18)!

Into this world of doom and salvation into which we come, there are to be seen myriads of spiritual and divinely wrought wonders because, in crisis of heart, all is recognised, not by Nelson’s famous blind eye turned towards the naval telescope, but by logical thinking (Isaiah 1:18) and by spiritual searchlights divinely turned to make visible the invisible parts of the spectrum of life. For man - our race - there comes complete with stunning impact of renewal (cf. II Corinthians 5:17 ff.), a transformational, Godly triumph, divine in multiple manners. Then, in irrevocable power it is engulfing this world for good and evil (Isaiah 45), for rebuke and ransom.

This is not merely some worldly lust for convenient, ignorant insurgencies, and by observing how the universe actually works in all its Departments; and it has an unprovoked thrust also. One thing, a MASSIF. It is furnished with an alarm clock, although many find it more comfortable to sleep through it. It gives much detail to this and though unknown to them, is currently making many prophecy-fulfilling declarations. The days of eternity do not delay.

Present is the convicting power of the Holy Spirit (John 16:1-19). Mountains are something you can't shave even with nuclear rigour. Human life is reduced more to shutting the eyes - even tightly. Nor is the rule of Christ to be missed because He accomplished the suffering already. So may His rule be soon, while those saved, as fortified and engaged, continue to declare by word and deed the wonders of that permanent world, the Lord Jesus Christ, through the Spirit of Truth, the Word of God and the awakening Saviour who calls.

Prophecies Fulfilled and Looming by 2022

In Isaiah 48, we see the world-wide spread of salvation, in verses 6-8, God protesting heartily that they have hidden from him, pretending that He had not told them in advance. “I have refined you”, He says, but not as silver. “I have tested you in the furnace of affliction. Listen to me, Oh Jacob...my hand has laid the foundation of the earth...assemble yourselves and hear!”.

Then comes the most prodigious utterance of all, “the Lord loves him…”, yes you! “I have called him, I have brought him, and his way will prosper. I haven't 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.” This is a Trinitarian statement, the prophecies have been public, sent by the Spirit and presented by the Lord. “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.” This is so like Christ's lamentations, recorded in Luke 19:41 ff., where He said “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”

“For days will come upon you when your enemies will...close you in on every side and level you and your children within you...” He answered. It is so like Matthew 23:37, “How often I would have gathered you!”, He declares, challenging them: “Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See your house is left to you desolate, for I tell you, you shall see Me no more till you say ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!’”

Let us resume with Isaiah, what pathos in these prophecies! Let us now turn to Isaiah 49:14: “But Zion said, ‘the LORD has forsaken me and my Lord has forgotten me’. “A woman might as well forget her nursing child, and not have compassion on the son of her womb…” - “They might forget”, says the Lord, “but I will not forget you; see, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me...” The Lord says of Israel that “you will surely clothe yourselves with them all as an ornament, and bind them on you as a bride does.” Further, “for your wasted desolate places, in a land of your

destruction, will even now be too small for the inhabitants; and those who swallowed you up will be far away. The children you will have, after you have lost the others will say again in your ears, ‘The place is too small for me; Give me a place where I may dwell.’”

“Then you will say in your heart, ‘Who has begotten these for me, since I have lost my children, and am desolate, a captive, and wandering to and fro? And who has brought these up? There I was, left alone; but these, where were they?’ ” The Lord goes further in deliverance of His beloved Israel, in Isaiah 51:22-23; for He is going to make Israel's enemies lie down for Israel to walk on. The position will be reversed, and Israel, dominant.

Positions on all sides will be reversed, those who have been domineering will now be subdued, and Israel will be triumphant through divine power. The Gentiles will be made the same spiritual Gospel giant and delivered in one large family with the substance of Israel (Isaiah 66, 42:6, 49:6). The grant of grace is glorious, but some still miss out.

“How beautiful upon the mountains”, He marvels with His people, “are the feet of him who brings good news, who proclaims peace, who brings good tidings of good things, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion ‘Your God reigns!’ ” - He continues in verse 4, “The Lord has made bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.”

‘Who has believed what I am telling you’, says the LORD? despised, poor, disesteemed, a friend of grief. This Messiah is to receive chastisement, stripes – and these will be our healing means. Various are the sins of those who come before Him, but one is the salvation. He will have a sort of children, spiritual babes, and these, become His, through faith.

Only in this way, will He see His children, as He is crucified (as predicted in Psalm 22), “He shall see the labour of His soul, and be satisfied.” He will even with “His knowledge… justify many...” How? “For He shall bear their iniquities...” - “He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”

“For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from you, nor shall my covenant of peace be removed. ‘Oh you afflicted one, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold I will lay your stones with colourful gems, and lay your foundations with sapphires...”

Such is the wondrous tenderness and acute pity of the Lord, who does not turn righteousness upside down, because of rebels but pities them intensively. We turn to Israel itself, as a centre of prediction by the Lord, in Jeremiah 23:1-8, 30:11, 31:28, Isaiah 51:21-25; Isaiah 60; Isaiah 48-49.

Israel was to return, and has returned to her own land, precisely as God has said; the restoration of its capital city - Jerusalem - was made permanent in 1980, and there was a loud barking from the neighbours, who wanted, and want, to grab their land. But human ideas do not make up God’s mentality. He has given them Jerusalem out of the earth He made, and He, for His part, cannot be bullied.

In Ezekiel, we have the fascinating account of the dry bones. In chapter 37, Israel is represented as a lot of dry bones scattered across the world. And the account proceeds: all these dry bones will come back to Israel by divine power, and be re-assembled in their lands, covered in flesh, and once again, Israel will be the land, and Israel will be the nation in residence. This has all happened. The startling purity and precision of God’s predictions is as a warm wind on a winter’s day.

The book of Haggai 2:7-9 indicates what God is going to do, to the unruly, rebellious, recalcitrant. He is going to shake this world, as one would a dull student, or an unseemly hulk of some rebellious person.

In this Psalm, we see a new aspect, and it is this: Righteousness and Truth are inseparable and insuperable to the Lord; He loves them, they are non-negotiable and characteristic of deity. Nothing will turn Him to

Here came a change for Peter – a change at sea, indeed, he wanted to walk on it like Christ; but began to sink, through a whittling down of his faith. ‘Save me!’, he cried. Christ did so, showing the supernatural power which dominated the waves. Quite as remarkable as this meteorological mastery, was Christ’s power to walk on the water; these were natural objects under supernatural control.

Another natural object under supernatural control, was the axe head, which needed to be raised when lost in a pond. This was done by the prophet Elisha, whilst the feeding of the five thousand (Mark 6:30 ff.), was done by the creation of flesh - fish, bread; a banquet for those who had zealously followed Him for His teaching. On another action, He fed four thousand. The vast number of people healed, often from many nations, who came like autumn leaves to where Jesus was, was a fulfillment of a prophecy from Isaiah 35:27-30, and often we read: He healed blind people, or deaf people, or demented people, or fed people, and could become quite unpopular when His healing ministry cost money, as in the case of the pigs stampeding into the sea. Very often, the human race has its own priorities, and gets them, but that Christ should use His power to heal thousands is not just an exercise in prodigious power, but in phenomenal pity.

In Matthew 24, and Luke 18 and 21, there are a vast number of predictions about the state of the race; and that time is now. It involves famines, earthquakes, many false christs, many false prophets (Jeremiah 23); it involves ugly sights and increased ungodliness (II Timothy 1-5). The surging Bomb Cloud that destroyed Nagasaki is precisely predicted in Haggai 2:6-9, and further described in Joel 2:30. It is the same vaporous cloud, or column, that is described by Peter in Acts 2:17 ff.

As far as the Messiah is concerned, we have a whole swathe of predictions. From Micah 5 we learn, He is to be born (as He was) in Bethlehem, of poor social standing, and at first, even His brothers did not believe in Him. But after His resurrection, there was fraternal favour, as well as from hundreds and hundreds of priests. His resurrection was inescapable, but there was deceit and delinquency against Him, just as in the crucifixion. There was also the statement, about 1000 B.C., that He was going to be incarnated, and that He was delighted to do it. The position towards the end of our Age - which is now, by all signals - would be that man had become so passionate and incompetent, that he now longer is able to

shepherd the world, and it is becoming unmanageable, to the presently constituted race (fulfilling Matthew 24:22).

The state of the heart and mind of the philosophers and militarists, is ugly. Repetitively. But one thing remains very clearly, Christ’s sacrificial death (Psalm 22 predicts), His resurrection is equally so (Psalm 16), His Coming Return, the same (Matthew 24:26-44). His rule on earth is still the same - coming (Psalm 72). The New Heavens and the New Earth have similar clarity as does the End of this one (Matthew 24:34).

All Problems are spread out ready for resolution, or are rushing towards us as a planet (Luke 18, 21, Matthew 24). As in the end of Mark, as a prediction, there were remarkable gifts which were to appear, amongst which was healing, among the Christian body. This has occurred privately, thousands and thousands of times; but the most spectacular set of healings of disease impossible to heal, came through the ministry of a Methodist Missionary in South Africa. She not only healed thousands of people, with many professional testimonies, but healed a baby's arm, which was missing, that is, restored the section that was gone; and another healing was a twisted arm going round and round which she caused to be unwound through simple prayer to Christ. Her name? Elsie Salmon.

The book which contained this was called ‘He Heals Today’, which was given a recommendation by the president of the Methodist conference in England. Although of course, there have been frauds, as Christ indicated, “...where the carcasses are the eagles gather”; yet through means like this, unsearchable numbers of answers flash onto our earthly screen. As in John 16, marvellous powers are presented and like the problems, they are very searching and appear innumerable.

In Matthew 17:24 ff., we learn of another mastery – a fish-flesh mastery. Christ had to pay His temple taxes but because it was unsuitable for the Son of the house to have to pay, so He sent Peter to fish, and predicted that the first fish would contain the tax for both; and it did. This time, it was a case of monetary mastery, at the supernatural level. Christ was unquivering, unquestionable, handling with impenetrable assurance and uncompromisable results.

“Yet, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us: For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”