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CHAPTER FIVE
CHRIST SAYS IT AND DOES IT
SHOCKS, SHUDDERS:
REASON FOR RUDDERS
DIMENSIONS AND DYNAMICS
The universe was founded. By sin it is confounded, sin of creation whether proud and haughty spirit like Satan, who even attempted the invasion of heaven (Revelation 12), the destruction of the Messiah and the subversion of all good government. Nothing will stand till He comes to whom world government is due (Ezekiel 21:26-27), but on the way, satanic forces will attempt even this, a self-sufficient mastery on behalf of the creation through man, in masses a soft touch for seduction (Revelation 16-17, II Thessalonians 2).
Satan even attempted it THROUGH Christ, in person to person slither in His temptation such is the defiant audacity of one who stops at nothing; but he is stopped in the end by his own folly as he meets the Lord who made him free, before he became a fantastic failure (Ezekiel 29), behind many a prince. We regarded this in SMR in the midst of the presentation on missions, entitled The Mastery of the Mystery of Man.
A real and present evil sends its savage static down into the divine harmonies, impels millions to misery. Is there growth in greatness ? Watch for it. How often - down go the dikes of decency, selflessness, virtue, nobility, sacrifice. In rushes the sea with all its dark creatures
of sin. Murder, malice, slander, sickness, agony,
follow as the flood seems to find no check.
Thus an active evil, subject only to Christ, looms in the land of humanity, in the soul, in the mind, the spirit, the psychic depths.It is intelligent. It can plead with the subtlest strokes. It matches all the more, the mightiest human personalities; and they are powerless. It is not primitive. It is polished. It is not a principle. It can propagandize better than a politician. Small wonder Luther threw his famous ink bottle. It may strike at the physical, the mental, the moral, the spiritual level. It maddens. It masters even common sense. It warps. It inflates. It flatters. It mars. When its ruin is done, it departs until it finds a more convenient season, some other virtue, height, creation to conquer. It is like a parasite, a pest. It creates nothing. It kills. It corrodes. It corrupts. It is not original. It copies. We have a name - the devil, the Satan.
It lusted after Christ. It wanted His worship. It wooed Him better than a lover, but Christ withered Satan with a word; and abiding in Christ, you with Christ and from Christ must use God's word. That is a crucial reason why we need a Saviour, to demit sin and deliver from the impact of the devil. Yet those to whom our missionaries go, to whom we as ambassadors for Christ must go, at home or abroad, they do not have a Saviour. Are we to let them drift, subject to the forces and dreadnoughts, these missiles and poisonous gases of the devil and his characteristic deceit, deviousness and death ? But lf we will act, will move, if we will go ... ah, how beautiful! what beauty the need of the task lends to its least instruments, provided only they be found faithful. (cf. I John 3:8, 5:18-19, Hebrews 2:14-15, Luke 22:31, Job:4-7, Ephesians 6:12-17, John 8:44, I Peter 5:8-9, II Corinthians 11:13-15, Revelation 12:9-12).
A segment of this is attached below at
*1, and the whole is obtainable at the above hyperlink.
It is not for nothing that seemingly upright people are often found dabbling in deviousness so horrid that it is hard to imagine how it is even possible; but with the vulnerability of sin and the aid of the hot wind of evil spirits, which like influenza can change the status quo of the spirit in those still vulnerable and outside of the salvation of the blessed Lord, great houses fall, great nations become relics, sometimes despicable; and great hopes frequently fail. Indeed, this world is becoming such that it will be a thing of delight and wonder, which you feel in the text at Revelation 11:13-19, where praise issues like fireworks around Sydney harbour bridge.It comes when the kingdoms of this world are sighted on their way out, and already they see the coming into its place of the kingdom of the Lord and of His Christ.
"Then the seventh angel sounded.
And there were loud voices saying,
"The kingdoms of this world have become
the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ,
and He shall reign forever and ever."
In these circumstances, man inveigled near the first into the spiritual shambles from which he could have no hope finds delight in divine rescue as planned and stated at the very time of his fall, a gift from God in the midst of his tampering with untruth (Genesis 3:15). Here in Revelation it is echoing through the ages, till it comes. The glorious expectation seizes the Christian heart with an affinity already found within (Christ in you, the hope of glory).
In this denuded state, for man there have been a number of inundations.
First, as the lowly origin of man led on rapidly to the very heights of constant and continual corruption, so that ongoing generations were inextricably swarming into the nets of misused imagination, bondage by means of their own wilful trespass and a culture of deliberate co-operation with sin, there came the woes of water. It was as if purging were required before the very earth subsided in the brackish mires of infection.
Man the dud, meet the flood, might seem the theme (Genesis 6), but it was far worse than that. Man was no mere rocket that fizzled, a kind of Challenger. His surge from God near the outset was inane, gratuitous, adventitious, founded on lust, an escape from wonder, an imbroglio with disaster, a fascination with quite obvious deceit, an arrogation of powers not his in order to seem like a playful kitten suddenly turning into a mouse sitting on a lion's nose, seeking to stare him out. Yet it was not so playful; for playing with God is like setting a child to the keys of a computer controlling guided missiles, pre-set.
Without reverence, reality is a disaster.
Into this rescue operation with Noah, resulting in relatively rapid restoration since much had already been discovered, there came help. The main need was truth and wisdom, amid love and trust, and an awakening from spin, seduction and their rationale. The truth had to penetrate.
Accordingly, after the initial inundation, that by water*2, God secured prophets through whom, before the promised deliverer came, hope poured, allied with demonstrable truth as the occasions multiplied.
in increasing number divine speech became consolidated revelation, mixed with supernaturally enabled works like that of the Exodus. In current events, God spoke, and it was done, in delight, in discipline, in forecast, in forgiveness. His word came with just that awesome and sovereign assurance which He also put into the physical make-up of man in what is increasingly revealed by investigation, as the greatest coded engrossment with commands and co-operative features on all sides, visible to man. It is in his own bodily constitutive code, DNA. It is present in each nucleated cell in sophisticated systems, mutually co-ordinate and in brilliance inordinate*3, which even make new copies of the multi-functional human body, on the old model, through the mode of pro-creation. No less it provides for no small about of defence and of healing in much, and more for those who find the Deliverer, who has now come.
That was the second inundation.
The greatest was that of grace: for this world was inundated with such a torrent of grace in the first and final revelation through incarnation, that once and for all by one action in Christ Jesus the Lord, He consummated eternal preparations in a wonder with eternal results. This He achieved, not this time in commands and ordinary issuances such as characterised the creation, but in the death and resurrection of the mighty minister of mercy, the Lord Jesus Christ, whose purity was not touched, whose adequacy was infinite and whose compassion illimitable. .
As Christ Himself declared (Luke 24), there were two comings for Him, the first as already recorded, in suffering and to secure salvation, the second in glory, to inhabit majesty in inundation of the earth with His principles, provisions and to fill it with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.
These then are the second and third inundations, as set out below.
INUNDATIONS OF DIFFERENT ORDERS
Thus far, then, we have four types of inundation coming to a not so sleepy earth, not so lonely world.
1) INUNDATION WITH WATER - Genesis 6.
2) INUNDATION WITH REVELATION - I Peter 1:9-12.
3) INUNDATION WITH MERCY - Romans 5:6-11.
4) INUNDATION WITH MILLENIAL MAJESTY -
Matthew 25:31-45, Isaiah 11, Psalm 72, Rev.
20:4-6.
Some signal parts of the word of God may be chosen for brief impact for each, from the above references.
Take this from Genesis 6:5:
And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth,
and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart
was only evil continually.
As to 2) above, through Peter comes this word:
"Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully,
who prophesied of the grace that would come to you,
searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ
who was in them was indicating when He testified beforehand
the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.
To them it was revealed that, not to themselves,
but to us they were ministering the things
which now have been reported to you
through those who have preached the gospel to you
by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven -
things which angels desire to look into."
The celestial divulgement, the power of God to provide His own intimations and expression, the movement from heaven to earth by the Holy Spirit in this testimony, and the fact that it is none other than God Himself who is speaking: these are all most clear. This is as II Peter 1 tells us, not some interpretation of something by some human individual, but its soundness rests on the fact that God thrust out His word, like a mighty wind indeed, and its objective truth relies on this fact.
Humanity is not its source, not of THIS word. It was not this in any individual mind or method; THIS did not unloose it.It must be heeded for another and very good reason, we are told. That ? it is BECAUSE holy men of old were MOVED by the Spirit of God. There is an exclusion zone therefore in all that hopes to be called truth: START with this! do not add or blend or bend it!
It was God HIMSELF who ministered His own word and it is not comparable with any production of any human culture or individual, like genius; for GOD MOVED them to give what HE WISHED. HENCE to the jot and to the tittle it is going to be fulfilled, to the end, as for the impact of its striking singularity of power and precision, from the first (Matthew 5:17-20).
THIS inundation of consecutive, cumulative, controlled revelation was a very happy one, and for still greater joy and relief to mankind, it held a prize in its midst.
That, it is the INUNDATION WITH MERCY - Romans 5:6-11. The very One to crush the head of evil, He, the Christ would come at a time, the 'fulness of time' of Galatians 4:4 and at the date for His own atoning death as in Daniel 9:24-27 (cf. Highway of Holiness Ch. 4).This, it was to be, and came to be in fulfilment, for the purposes specified by Isaiah 7, 9, 11, 22, 32, 49-55, 61 and so on, and repeatedly with verifiable results. A short citation from Romans 5 sets the tone of the task, the love of the lost and the power of redemption.
For when we were still without strength,
in due time Christ died for the ungodly.
For scarcely for a righteous man will one die;
yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die.
But God demonstrates His own love toward us,
in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Much more then, having now been justified by His blood,
we shall be saved from wrath through Him.
For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God
through the death of His Son, much more,
having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.
And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation."
We come then to 4) above, INUNDATION WITH THE MILLENIAL MAJESTY.
When He comes to reign (cf. Luke 24:25-26), there is a sustained episode, a magnificent majesty, a blend of the beauty of holiness and compassion for the troubled, help to the oppressed, joy for the righteous so that "the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea," (Habakkuk 2:14, cf. Isaiah 11).
It is vain to grow so used to ONE phase of the inundations, that you imagine the earth sits still in stark singularity. It is in fact a platform for the works of God, and that is precisely why another is not to be found, nor another race, nor another Gospel nor another way; and why the continued endeavour to outwit God, such as Satan tried in efforts to seduce the first pair, is so appalling, and wreaks such havoc as now, on this earth.
He both has come and will come, with different agendas in one plan, composite, like an operation and after-care, but complete.
This then, the inundation with Christ in His majesty, is the fourth one. Its nature is shown for example in Psalm 72, the counterpart to Psalm 23 in its irenic beauty. It is majestic, but it is filled with mercy too. It consummates in this fallen globe, the works of righteousness, wisdom and atonement, as if under a high-power microscope, apparent to the eye, satisfying to the heart, glorifying to God.
Yes HE WILL LIVE! As in Psalm 22, where His atoning death is shown amid the crooked odium of massive hatred on the part of the counter-insurgents, who wish to inundate this earth with the ruinous rigours and rigors of their rebellion.
YET HE WILL LIVE! as in Psalm 22:22-24, John 14:19.
In this field, then, notice that in Revelation 20:4 concerning the majesty of the millenium, the Greek for those who are to be resurrected refers to those who had been beheaded in the service of Jesus Christ and to those who had not bowed to, or worshipped the beast - 2 categories, even put in different grammatical constructions in that verse. From first to last, there have been but two to worship: the Lord as Creator-Redeemer or that other spirit, let it lurk where and how it will, that of rebellion, autonomous lust, specious spirituality, distorting ungodliness: be the form what it will. Those without such malformed fealty (Romans 1:17ff.), because they belong to Christ, then are here resurrected in what is called "the first resurrection" (Revelation 20:5).
As in Psalm 72, Isaiah 11 and 65, this residual, millenial period is for all those left on the earth, with some resurrected, those whom the Lord has secured (Revelation 19), His own. The fact that some continue on the earth is seen all too clearly at the end of the millenium when Satan is released from being a shut-in (Revelation 20:7-9), they are SO differently placed in heart, that they make a final stand, oblivious of the blessings of the millenium. Though of course defeated, something remains for them: their guilt in judgment is a torment resembling smoke (cf. Revelation 14:11). What more could have been done for them! whose is everlasting shame (Daniel12).
For more on the millenium, see Rays of Revelation Ch. 8.
We come now, in swift review, to
THE FIFTH DIMENSION
5) THE COUNTER-FLOOD CORRECTION (Rev. 12:16, 20:7-12)
Satan, having failed to murder the infant Messiah (though he tried very hard in Herod to do so, slaughtering many children in vain, for when God has a plan, counter-planning does not in the end achieve anything but woe), was ponderously provocative. His thrust to kill for will, was appallingly illustrated. Not satisfied with such a vast desire to kill at the outset, this then infant Messiah, he lusted after His followers, first in the Church as founded in Israel with the apostles (cf. Acts 12), and then in multiplied later events.
Like a vast flood to engulf, this evil energy and degraded thrust, that of one ruined by his own brightness (Ezekiel 28:17), proceeded malignantly to the address of all those who obey the Lord Jesus Christ. Starting with Jewish believers, he set out to delude or destroy, intimidate or execrate the Gentile believers as well. Hence he send forth a torrent of water intended to destroy them (Rev. 12:17). His detestation was focussed on the FOLLOWING of Christ, not those who say, but those who in spirit and reality, obey Him!
Hence came his mini-version with maxi-hostility, of the flood. Here was as it still is, his version of inundation, with madness, wildness, inveterate hostility, butchers seeking to eliminate Christians over the ages, the same axe, different shoulders, the same spirit, different delusions.
However, in Revelation 12, we find that the earth swallowed up this appalling flood, to deliver the spiritual offspring found whether in those converted to Jesus Christ in Israel or others successively beyond. Thus Satan addressed himself to enraged hostility to these, and to ALL whose obedience makes of them a singularity on this earth! It is well fulfilled, both his tireless endeavours on the one hand, and the continuance of Christ's own body, on this earth, His elect, despite all this, on the other.
It proceeds, this phase of history, till the roast is finished, and the cooking complete, till the odour of sanctity well fills a doomed world, despite its most unsavoury complications, till the brethren find their summation (Revelation 6:9-11). Called for by Christ (I Corinthians 15:57ff., Matthew 24:30-31,,36-37), they are all first united in heaven, before the crucified Christ with His saints comes to reign, and He comes personally as in the atonement, the suffering and the glory both His (Revelation 19-20). When this is past, Satan bound and released for his own last indefatigable, irrational hatred to be demonstrated, the scaffolding is removed.
When this is past, Satan bound and released for his own last indefatigable, irrational hatred to be demonstrated, the scaffolding is removed.
Remarkable IS the removal of the heavens and the earth (Rev. 21:1, 20:11,as in II Peter 3 and Isaiah 51:6 with Matthew 24:35); and their replacement. No place was left or found for the first celestial set, but place was accorded to the second set (cf. II Peter 3:10-13). This is the counter-flood correction, rage displaced by riches, when the entire assemblage of evil having been examined in history, its stories , philosophies, psychologies, bogus misapplication of human knowledge and doomed enterprises complete, judgment sits and destinies settle, like the dust after a storm.
THEREFORE
avoid the rebellion and renegacy of 1) above, buy up 2),
receive 3), delight in 4), and be planted where glory dwells
(Isaiah 61:3, Matthew 15:13, Revelation 22:3-5).
By
faith in the sent Saviour, be a tree, planted by the Father,
in the effectual and prevailing name of Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory,
a tree of righteousness grounded in Him, His word the seed,
His
works of salvation, the soil, the sunshine of His Spirit,
the air and ambience.
In all these things, whether by His Spirit as in I Peter 1:10ff., and II Peter 1:19ff., or in His own Person, incarnate on this earth, the Messiah, incarnate as Jesus Christ, SAYS and He DOES, and the one is mirror to the other, from creation to salvation, from prediction to fulfilment, from promise to performance. Man like inhabitants of a ship awash at sea, continues and needs a rudder to avoid the constant shudder.
It is great that ANY ONE may call on the name of the Lord. This a man, woman or child may do in ardent repentance or even horror at the plight of the unredeemed, who remain inert in a rebellion that sprays the whole deck with oceanic force, or alive to it, but yet caught with it. Agitated, some cogitate, thinking they may even come so far as to aspire. Troubled in heart, they may deflate with dither or pride, unwilling to act.
Again, they may repent, and calling on the Lord (as so often seen in the cases shown in Psalm 107), they may then in faith trans-ship. Their guidance is within, the grace is outside, and nothing is outside it, that cries in faith to Him whose it is, who showed it in alone dying for sin and being raised for our justification that the very righteousness of God might be accounted to us, by grace, and our sin to Him, by mercy (II Corinthians 5:17ff., Romans 5:17-19).
Transhipped ?
There is another site, another place, another way as in Ephesians 2:6, where the entire life is brought to a heavenly peace and place in grace, so that the pangs, for a little while, are first in heart and later in scene, replaced. With what are they replaced ? It is with a spirit of joy in another vessel, one indeed that is already disembarked, its crew on a rock (Isaiah 44:6-8, 41:4, II Samuel 23:32-33).
It is on this Rock, and God KNOWS NO OTHER as in Isaiah 44:8, that one may and should rest. If you know more than God and want some other Rock, then you are merely deluded, for to know more than He, who made the fountains of knowledge available to His creation, that they might be, in order to know and to live, is a fiction amid flagrancy and a horror without hope. Know this, that HE is God and there is no other Rock, in HIM is rest and there is no other. How poignant is the folly of trying yet again, to escape into a liberty that is chains only and a cage for the flighty bird (Isaiah 30).
NOTE
From SMR, a segment of the presentation on missions is provided below, since it helps the reader to find further biblical perspective reasonably quickly.
Fifthly, Jesus is the most delicate doctor.
But if Jesus is the most dynamic way into that heart of God, who made space, the freest, the fastest and the only way, in fact the way, in person; He is also the most delicate doctor. Indeed, He is the only physician who knows the heart of man, and can cure it. Nothing starting from man can reach God; but God became man that He might bring men to God; and now, the Scripture says - Jesus is always alive: "He ever lives to make intercession for those who come to God by Him." For this reason, it says, "He is able to save to the uttermost all who come to God by Him" - (Hebrews 7:25). He doesn't give you a push and say: From now on, freewheel! He saves you from beginning to end, and to the end from the beginning, for He knows the end from the beginning and saves for the end from the first.
Meanwhile, He speaks peace and drains your wounds, crisps your souls - when they are wayward, refreshes your spirits when they are inert, channels His fire when you are indifferent; cuts when you have cancers of subtle sins for a little, while escaping detection. Very well. Rejoice! He deals with you as sons and daughters; and is the best physician, the only adequate physician for the wretchedness and the unspeakable lowness of that fallen thing, the human soul. While even the sinful hands of the psychiatrist, except God intervene, can rather bring spot and pester through probing: Jesus directly and delicately diagnoses us, knows our condition. At conversion, salvation time, He is a drastic surgeon - thank God - but ever afterwards, though He may cut, He restores form and abounds in graces which, like a flock of birds passing, are too numerous to be counted.
In all these ways, Jesus Christ's marvellous gifts lie back of the beauty of those feet which bring glad tidings. But in addition, there is a beauty about those gospel-bringing feet upon the mountains, on account of the horrible state of the field to which they bring this gospel.
We have just seen a number of reasons why the feet are so beautiful for what they bring. Now secondly, we look at another aspect of their beauty.
II. THESE FEET ARE BEAUTIFUL
FOR THE NEED
OF THOSE TO WHOM THEY BRING
THE MESSAGE OF THE GLORIOUS CHRIST.
The pollution and prince of the evil of this world
While we have adumbrated this, we must focus briefly upon it, and its corollary.
This, which the feet bring, you might say is enough to send armies, legions of men to mouth the message of Christ. But it is not only a question of what the missionary of Christ brings, but also of the need of those to whom he brings it. What does Romans 10 say, in developing this: "How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed, and how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard ?" Their need is dire; and this lends new beauty to those journeying feet.
This is rendered acute by the presence of evil. Doubt, wanton thought, complacency, or reliance on the ready stream of bubbling pleasures ... beggar the soul. Your soul is a battle-field and if it is not ... it is because it is lost. In politics - war; in the world of ideas, strife, pride; in morality, conflict between the right and virtuous thing and the evil and desired thing. Between nations - war. Corruption, contest. Why ?
A real and present evil sends its savage static down into the divine harmonies, impels millions to misery. Is there growth in greatness ? Watch for it. How often - down go the dikes of decency, selflessness, virtue, nobility, sacrifice. In rushes the sea with all its dark creatures of sin. Murder, malice, slander, sickness, agony, follow as the flood seems to find no check. Thus an active evil, subject only to Christ, looms in the land of humanity, in the soul, in the mind, the spirit, the psychic depths.
It is intelligent. It can plead with the subtlest strokes.
It matches all the more, the mightiest human personalities;
and they are powerless. It is not primitive. It is polished.
It is not a principle. It can propagandize better than a politician.
Small wonder Luther threw his famous ink bottle.
It may strike at the physical, the mental, the moral, the spiritual level. It maddens. It masters even common sense.
It warps. It inflates. It flatters. It mars.
When its ruin is done, it departs until it finds
a more convenient season, some other virtue, height,
creation to conquer. It is like a parasite, a pest.
It creates nothing. It kills. It corrodes. It corrupts.
It is not original. It copies.
We have a name - the devil, the Satan.It lusted after Christ. It wanted His worship.
It wooed Him better than a lover,
but Christ withered Satan with a word;
and abiding in Christ, you with Christ and from Christ
must use God's word. That is a crucial reason
why we need a Saviour, to demit sin and deliver
from the impact of the devil. Yet those to whom our missionaries go, to whom we as ambassadors for Christ must go,
at home or abroad, they do not have a Saviour.
Are we to let them drift, subject to the forces and dreadnoughts, these missiles and poisonous gases of the devil
and his characteristic deceit, deviousness and death ?
But lf we will act, will move, if we will go ...
ah, how beautiful! what beauty the need of the task lends
to its least instruments, provided only they be found faithful
(cf. I John 3:8, 5:18-19, Hebrews 2:14-15, Luke 22:31, Job:4-7, Ephesians 6:12-17, John 8:44, I Peter 5:8-9, II Corinthians 11:13-15, Revelation 12:9-12).
The judgment of the evil of this world
The need ? This is not only to find life, but to escape judgment, in which the world reels.
It was General Booth who said, I believe - If you ever doubt the horror of hell, look on the heart of sin. We have looked on the horrors of the heart: its torment, its plain expensive ruination; and we know that those who consent to be mastered by the Devil are not delivered thereby from guilt. Yet there is more. The very world where we walk, the stage where this play is acted, the ground under our feet, has been injured, "subjected to vanity", as the Scripture says (Romans 8:20). The very house of humanity is spoilt and will pass away. Stylized, strange, rich, deep, inspired by something beyond genius is this universe. Yet that insidious evil is at work: the world is harassed and vexed at every turn. The world is a prodigy, abundant past measure in fineness and delicacy, in wonder and excellence...
Consider - the dainty purity of the flower
The strange perfection of a child's flesh
The eager newness of an adolescent mind
The raptured freshness of a new-born Christian soul
The grandeur of the ocean
The poetic symphony of colour
The crisp neatness of the wood in its dew
These things ... not to mention that passion for order which even
diseases follow, and the constant supervision of all these laws
and levels.
These things show the ample liberality of the great God.
But disaster intercepts, ruin...
Is He a spastic idiot who has lost control of His creation ?
If strife were the nature of His life, then He would not be supreme,
but in conflict with the enduements with which He was ... made!!!
and in that case, no Creator but a mere creature.
Far from this lies the truth. Necessarily so. For the delicate and liberal God creates. And God has judged (Revelation 12:7-9, Luke 10:18, John 12:30-31, 16:11).
It is not His judgment but His patience which ought to stagger us. But judge He will. The creation "groans and travails" (Romans 8:22). "All these things will be dissolved" - says the apostle Peter (II Peter 3:11). "The heavens and the earth are kept in store, reserved to fire against the day of judgment" (II Peter 3:7).
Nor has God left Himself without a witness as He says (Acts 14:17, Amos 4:13, Psalm 50:20-23, Habakkuk 1:13, 2:3, 3:16, Jeremiah 7:25, Hosea 12:10-13, II Ch. 36:15-16). Nor has He left this judged world without a word of witness directing to its remedy for the sin that blasts and the judgment it has already inherited, pending the final account. God has not suffered an inane mockery and contradiction, but has long spoken and sincerely, offering salvation to a world otherwise merely unreasonably - dangling in disorderly disarray. Not at all has God been slack, as Peter strenuously affirms in the Spirit; rather is He willing for man to repent and be saved before judgment is fully expressed. The Saviour was long predicted, announced, and has now long come. Abusing man, libellously labelling God and desecrating His very word of remedy, the world has been sent the Living Word Himself.
No other Saviour has authoritatively been offered to man, but Jesus Christ, a fact to which Peter bears eloquent testimony (Acts 4:12). The facts are stark; the judgments yet starker; and the sole remedy remains unutterably clear.
But if the world itself is judged, "What manner of persons ought you to be in all holy living and godliness" (II Peter 3:11) ... and how beautiful are your feet, if in the sight of judgment aligned against the earth, and its day determined, you too, ordained or unordained, young or old will be found as one "who brings good tidings of good, who publishes salvation, who saith unto Zion, Thy God reigns!"
In and through the Lord's Christ, you will thus be showing the effectual mastery of the mystery of men.
A voice from the field - a word from missionary Jim Elliot : he being dead, yet speaks ...
In the work, Shadow of the Almighty, by Elisabeth Elliot, on p. 113 we find a perspective that not only has some apologetic force, but personal passion. It gives full scope to the fact of announcement and denunciation that resides in scripture with a total finality of force in the coming of Christ (John 15:22-24), and to the derivative fact that as far as declaration of doctrine is concerned, as far as performance of salvation is affected, it is all over.
It is finished and there is nothing more to say or be done. God has spoken, sent and the world is confronted. In one sense, God may seem 'silent' in the face of twisted theories, twisted hearts, twisted statements in a crooked world speeding towards the just and due day of judgment.
This element is well brought out in the following quotation. There is of course has the further aspect that when God saves a soul He has, by His Holy Spirit wrought on the basis of His word an applied work from the furnished base; there is no sound, but the voice of God does not need any. Moreover, the predicted paths of history echo the sovereign voice of prophecy, while God's judgments flicker like lightning into the clouded skies of history. However, having said this, one must solemnly note that there is not yet in history the full articulation of that great and dire, final, pronounced judgment.
Within these parameters, let us hear Jim Elliot...
I think there is nothing so startling in all the graces of God as His quietness. When men have raged untruths in His name, when they have used the assumed authority of the Son of God to put to death His real children, when they have with calloused art twisted the Scriptures into fables and lies, when they have explained the order of His creation in unfounded theories while boasting the support of rational science, when they have virtually talked Him right out of His universe, when they, using powers He grants them, claim universal autonomy and independence, He, this great Silent God, says nothing. His tolerance and love for His creature is such that, having spoken in Christ, in conscience, in code of law, He waits for men to leave off their bawling and turn for a moment to listen to His still, small voice of Spirit. Now, after so long a time of restrained voice, bearing in Almighty meekness the blasphemies of His self-destroying creatures, now how shall break upon the ears, consciousnesses, hearts, and minds of reprobate man the Voice of one so long silent? It shall thunder with the force of offended righteousness, strike with lightning bolts upon the seared consciences; roar as the long-crouched lion upon dallying prey; leap upon, batter, destroy, and utterly consume the vain reasonings of proud human kind; ring as the battle-shout of a strong, triumphant, victory-tasting warrior; strike terror and gravity to souls more forceful than tortured screams in the dead of night. O God, what shall be the first tones of that voice again on earth ? And what their effect? Wonder and fear, denizens of dust, for the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a battle-cry, with the voice of the archangel and the trumpet blast of God Himself, made more terrible, if that could be, by the long suffering of His silence.
The scripture in Hosea 5:15 gives voice to this aspect authoritatively:
I will return again to My place, till they acknowledge their offence. Then they will seek My face; in their affliction they will diligently seek Me.
Two things are devastating: sin in general and rebellion against the very mercies of God. One thing is a passionate accessory, oil on the fire, intemperate amidst tumult, a seduction for the straying, Satan. Whatever sin suggests, in this he is ready to invest, amplify. But he is utterly powerless when confronted with the power of Christ (I John 4:4), and as seen in the temptation of Christ, the word of God over-rules Him, since it is that of the One who created him pure, from which as an eminence he fell (Matthew 4:4). How abrupt there is the departure, after several probes, of this desecratory spirit, certainly to seek another 'season', but yet dismissed as from an audience!
Paradise Lost of John Milton gives an excellent appreciation of what he is about, not least in the lusty thrust of the fallen angel, Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.
See News 1 for example, and Diamonds of Divine Divulgement ... Ch. 8.
See for example, Waiting for Wonder Appendix and Ch. 5 of the volume, Not Only is God Great, but Glorious.