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CHAPTER SIX
CONCLUSION
CONCLUSION can be simply an end,
a result of rEasoning or a due end,
good or bad.
Matthew 24:14 - "And this Gospel of the kingdom
will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations,
and then
the end will come."
Matthew 28:19-20 - "Go therefore
and make disciples of all the nations,
baptising them in the name
of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
teaching them too observe all things that I have commanded you,
and lo, I
am with you always, even to the end of the age."
I Timothy 1:5 - "Now the end of the commandment is love
from a pure heart,
a clear conscience
and unfeigned faith."
In the last case, Timothy, the Greek term translated 'end' used means
firstly, the end, in the sense of conclusion or termination;
then it may mean 'the last part';
and finally, the result, goal, outcome or even purpose.
The FIRST emphasis is 'end'.
So the commandments has an end or conclusion there,
an outcome in this type, even a purpose;
and this is how the matter is envisaged:
how it all ends up,
without pretence, in reality,
in a pure heart, a clear conscience
and unfeigned, non-artificial, non-merely-verbal but actual faith,
sincere faith, and hence functional faith (James 2:20).
You trust Him or you do not: the result is that you do.
The end of the matter, its purpose, result and reality, is this:
that you DO trust Him, His word and His ways.
You are reconciled to God and rely on Him in Christ.
Here is the mode and model.
It is SUCH love, SUCH faith and SUCH a conscience.
Conclusion - Terminus
There is nearly always an end. The babe becomes a child, young and mobile, growing into adolescence, for good or evil, to manhood, womanhood, noble or debased, strong or weak, in maturity lives out lust or love, courage or cowardice, indifferentism or dogmatism, conviction or drift, comes to an age of growing weakness, reaches disillusion or heart's desire, finds life or simply some version of the self, immersed in or immured by this or that, and reaches destiny upon demitting this earth, in judgment or deliverance.
Civilisations likewise, like those of the Aztecs or Incas, Indians, Tyrians, Assyrians, yes empires, reign or lapse, relapse or restore their strength, but come to an end. Where, asked one British commentator, is the glue to hold this nation together, where is it now! Where indeed! For long Britain was noteworthy as a bastion for liberty, itself built on Christian principles, with moral influences and principles most distinctive, for all the garbled and gutted good things which also ran: still the good was far from undiscernible. Now it moves towards a form of Christianity in so much so undecided, so inclusively vague as to become sick and seedy, and various alien things seek to manifest themselves and harass the nation.
As with the individual, so with the nation, sickness and slackness, often related, can come as unwelcome visitors, making one realise the drift, and either seek vigorous remedy, or move albeit with some concern, towards whatever rocks may be looming ... soon.
Normally, there is an end. WRONG WAY GO BACK signals may be ignored for just so long. Events in the end may seem unwarranted, deceptions by others (Pearl Harbour was such an instance), unthinkable, but these may set a people on a path from which new elements must be removed, or conclusions found.
There is no beginning nor is there end to God. Without the Eternal, all-sufficient God, nothing would simply and forever remain barren. But that is not the case. Time being His creation, like this Chapter for this author, it is under His control, and it ends.
Eternity is His own, and He is the King of it. To avoid an end, either of pre-judgment concluding in judgment, like clouds that do not lift, or of active life in shame, a mere terminus in untruth, everlasting shame as in Daniel 12, it is necessary to repent, and to be saved.
Peter tells us this in Acts 4:11-12. There is ONE name under heaven given among men. There is NO OTHER. There is one God and one Saviour and He is effectual as Jesus Christ, sent from eternity and bringing back with Him such as are His own. It is NECESSARY, states Peter, to be saved. All MUST be saved. You can indeed avoid the necessity and the MUST, by becoming musty in self-willed exclusion from what the one God has given on one way through one man, God incarnate, for remedy for sin, and entry to everlasting life. God does not wander in prepared circuits, but is Himself. He ONLY is source, centre, sovereign, Saviour, Creator and Redeemer. He made and He makes a way, even for this fallen race of mankind. It is His. He knows without consultation, just what is necessary and provides it freely.
Amid this, man lives.
You can in this way consign yourself to an end of vitality and reality, amid the shadows of the outcast, not by some horrible destiny forcing you, but by some renegade and misused liberty, that despite the power and pardon available in God, is not forced to capitulate. God does not work like that. The death of Christ on the cross was manifest to all, and most public, not hidden in some erudite mansion for the sophisticated or the celebrated. To this, He beckons one and all (as in Matthew 22:1-14). When those who might seem the ones to be called did NOT come to the feast signifying salvation, others were sought even in the most unlikely places.
It is not God who excludes, though the RESULT of His seeking is indeed foreknown (Ephesians 1:4). Christ declares that He did not come to judge the world. That was not the end in view, nor was this to be the result for all of it.
In this active enterprise in the incarnation, the objective was life and salvation, restoration and pardon. Such is John 1 and 3.
Refusing it is the way to ruin, and the entire resources of God are available. Knowing and rejecting this is a sure way to a conclusion not to be desired, as you see in John 15:21ff.. It was hearing and seeing what He had done and STILL not believing which marked them out for exclusion. If it then be applied, an end in turmoil because without truth, then it is not because of a lack of love, but because the truth known to God, is that there was a preference, underlying and undying, for darkness. Thus are the exclusivists excluded.
But if this light of the world be taken, if He be received, if His ransom be taken, if His peace be received, if His truth be bound to the heart, and His entry be taken with joy, then there is NO END. The conclusion in that case, is that there is no terminus. Truth lives forever; and those who receive Him, for truth is personal since God is and constitutes it, these too live for ever.
To have no conclusion; for the conclusion to be, in fact, that the end disappears, or revelation to shake hands with reason and to receive the endlessness of a peaceable eternity in the grace of God, as children of God: this is the best of conclusion. That is, the best result is no end; and the due and desired conclusion from what went before, indicated by it and to which it inexorably leads,is conclusively this: NO END, but continuance unconfounded, relished, normal and natural before the God who made nature, gave freedom and freely offered grace for redemption.
In this way, by faith, you conclude there is no conclusion, that is, no end! When it is the liberal and diligent love of God which is concerned, this is the height of delight.
However, there is another way.
Conclusion - the Negative and the Reasons
Crankiness, Quirkiness,
Controversy with the Lord
What is crankiness ? It is a condition in which reason, reality and care are hard to find, where fits of this and that, desires without ground or of a withering character thrust themselves up, like berserk whales leaping sick and ready to beach: all is amiss, and unlikely to get better. It suggests hidden indignation, dissatisfaction and dither, like one throwing himself about in stress and a measure of distress, so loosing normal bonds on behaviour, without actual insanity or inanity entirely.
How does it relate to the growing storm in humanity ? Look back a little to the end of World War II and development between the victorious powers in Germany, at that time. It led on to THE BERLIN BLOCKADE, title of a book by Cambridge historians Ann and John Tusa. What a revelation, what detail is here! Before that prodigious air-lift and those desperate deeds of derring-do which helped save Berlin from the shiftiness of Communism, grasping, hideously impersonal, rapacious, unreliable, patently dishonest, as illustrated in their practical policies and methods at that period, what deceits, what pretences, what pretensions were uncovered. Indeed, what ugly toying with truth, cunning schemes and propaganda twistings were pursued while Allies at times just gullible, at others still inflated with victory and a sense of community with a USSR helmed by one of the cruelest minds one could even conceive, Joe Stalin, gradually realised what was happening.
Some saw it sooner, but in the end, it became quite patent and even blatant.
The USSR wanted Berlin, a vast metropolis and cultural seat of power, which was in the Eastern Zone allotted to one of the victors, USSR, while other nations had their portions to administer, for example, to the British went the Ruhr in post-war administration. Berlin had been in itself a strange saga when the power of the Allies to occupy at the ending of the war, was not used, as Montgomery desired and it appears the West could readily have done.
Indeed, Churchill for his part wanted the line of meeting between USSR and the ALLIES to be as far East as possible. Instead Berlin continued to be bombed by the Allies, and their armies were HELD back! This enabled Soviet Russia to gain a sense of glory, and in the victorious entry to that fated city, in its Army, there was an exhibition of a certain descent to bestiality, which not being normal for mankind, appeared devilish: raping vying with rapacity, while Berliners and others were in danger of death by slow starvation, prisoners of war used, everything treated as refuse or means of gain. Such was the appearance repeatedly. If it had not been for Allied contests little but slow death might have awaited millions, unless perhaps they capitulated in heart and spirit to the impersonal materialism of the gaunt and forbidding dash to get, displayed without shame.
Amazing was the finding of one authority visiting Stalin (op. cit. p. 113), concerned at the cruelty and ruin that seemed to be only extended in the USSR realm, by endless seizures of machinery and goods, as if Potsdam and its dignified sounding aims, were merely a cynical substitute for political penetration on vastly different terms, amid an era of riotous gain. General Marshall, later associated with Marshall Aid, saw Stalin in an urgency borne of desire to prevent European collapse amid appalling conditions.
Stalin replied: "It is wrong to give so tragic an interpretation to our present disagreements." He evidently add this: "When people have exhausted themselves in dispute, they recognise the need for compromise." After all, if tens of millions had already perished in Russia while coming to the point of accepting compromise, perhaps dying in labour without mercy, life exacted like dollars by a gambler, unhallowed passion striking like a demented cobra, why worry about Berlin. How different was an approach by an American General, and how much came from him and those likeminded who saw persons as such, and not as subjects to be slammed, starved or slaughtered, as the methodology might seem to dictate.
Near to corpses, many in the nation of Germany began to remind of those mistreated by Hitler in the camps! Marshall was stirred. He saw that Stalin seemed to want economic collapse and social misery. "Action," he told the American people in a broadcast, "cannot await compromise through exhaustion." He was against, in one or in many, the deletion even of former enemies, their slow seduction or wanton assault. The assaults of war were past. Life is not about war, but bears with it when necessary.
The US, he later told a Harvard meeting, was against "hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos." Its liberality in the rebuilding of Europe was astonishing in the history of nations. Communism SPEAKS of meeting needs, but needless horrors emanated from the blood-glutted tyrant of the USSR, while the US did many works more fitting to conviction.
There had once been in Great Britain, a commendable but too superficial effort to export morals to the world, in such movements as the Boy Scouts with Baden Powell. Christ was not in the centre of it, however many in it may have been personally inspired by Him. Similarly in the mid to late forties, now the great day of the USA had come, and its concerns and compassions were so markedly contrary to the rigorous ruthlessness shown by Stalin and implemented by many, with cunning contrivances and deceits, both then and before, that there was indeed a clear choice. Other nations might be harassed and manipulated, but there was a steadfast hope to avoid more war, and to achieve the best constructively without mere debasement, that there seemed a gulf between this and that other way.
In fact, in those years, it became apparent over time to some among the Allied leadership, that slownesses, official harassments, especially the failure to give the Allies anything like adequate access through the USSR zone to Berlin, were all part of a plan. It was to dissociate Berlin so much from the West, give them such trouble in feeding and coaling the populace through such restrictive corridors and such frustrating paths, that they would begin to consider withdrawal, so leaving Berlin, cultural capital, as a hub for a new reunification of Germany under Russian rule.
It was all for some years, like a slow-motion picture of goodwill and cunning. What stopped even these things, some good in themselves, from being exemplary was the very same thing that had made the British goodwill as through institutions like scouting, to be too superficial and spiritually subdued: it lacked Christ in the centre, for strength, vision and purpose. Thus the Peace Corps later became much the same. Great goodwill and compassion, constructive action, but all in the name of a neuter or nation. Thus idealism without transcendental vision tended to get lost, and cunning to cover up its purpose in grace, the enemy of all goodness, sought to use this decline to leave a revelatory and rational gap, until a multitude of other things began to vie for the controlling influence or philosophy.
With Christ, ALL things must be done in His name, and without this, the necessity for man can be covered up, even by good deeds, the purposes of which may be based on many items, some self-elevating, some compassion in its drawing zest, some in seeking to reduce agonies abroad, only to increase them by giving more power to more peoples who with less example and testimony, use new strength for new woes.
As such things as these, then, moved into the scene, the plus and the minus, the superficial and the inordinate, so the tangle that led to the Berlin air-lift with its heroism, sense of duty, concern and determination (from various spiritual sources), came as a great test.
Materially, it was won. In terms of spirit and the movements in the USA itself, perhaps it was one more amorphous move, ideals with their historic base which had transformed the USA in many ways from the first, now moving to deficit mode, in fact even to President Obama's proclamation that the nation, the USA, was not a Christian one, while at the same time, Islam was given a tick for a holy book, and deemed never to be what the USA would fight. Why this was certain, if such a people would attack it, is not known, unless by some kind of religious attachment, impossible for a Christian (John 14:6). This seemed to be part of the colossal confusion growing in the USA, when a religion which attacks Christ and dares to ravage His deity and remission for sins, is explicitly exalted by a President who became elected on the understanding he had Christ as his base.
The question must arise, Which Christ ? Is it the biblical one (a point made in II Corinthians 10-11); and if so how can a religion which degrades, debases and defaces Him, directly or indirectly, be holy or good!
Presidencies do not automatically strip a man of his religion; and if ANY post does this to anyone, what kind of religion is it which is denudable, or mouth which does not stand with it through all things, at all times, without limping! (Luke 9:26k) ? There are questions which must be asked for the soul's own good.
So has this world moved in quirkiness, strange alliances, developments, commitments, commissions, talk, as if confusion confounded were its very aim. As with Stalin, one thing is quite clear: delays and uncertainties, frustrations and flurries of problems, arising through lack of adequate conviction on the one hand and the deviousness of evil on the other, make for a confusion not just as then, in 1947-48 in Germany, and its plight, but in the entire globe now. Then there comes a universal distress and desperation, just as Stalin had apparently sought, to bring the whole bundle of peoples ready to compromise!
It comes to resemble football teams in which prominent members seem to kick at times at the opposition's goal, and not even to acknowledge this.
The UN, to which some Americans looked almost with reverence, as the war ended, in terms of elevated concepts of peace, justice and concern for all by all, has no Christ in it, but many Islamic powers, in this world now most eminently set against one Israel, outvoted to an enormous degree, a tiny relic. In this one feature, it is not unlike Berlin amid the vast forces arrayed in Germany after its fall, ready to be despatched or gobbled up, almost as if it did not matter. So the controversy among men, to do what they deem good without definition, or evil without acknowledgement, in drifting morals and unsure ideals, moves on to controversy with the Lord.
As shown in Romans 1, the failure to give the Lord absolute pre-eminence as Creator and God, leads on to foolishness, to absurd worship or virtual worship of things merely numbered among the creation, whether actual objects, mental idols, or the testimony of false prophets, of which there are now many, as foretold for our Age*1, These things both come from and lead to a abasing oblivion for a people made by God, for God, and given great grace through this relationship; but they breed only confusion and turmoil in its denial, a virtual lie (Romans 1:23-25). Sexual perversion is there predicted also as that Chapter moves on, and social and inter-personal viciousness.
Why, then, is this so, which both was predicted and has happened precisely as stated, yes even to the point that these physical and moral realities are not only practised, but commended! THAT (Romans 1:32), goes or threatens to go amid the nations, to the point that to apply biblical morals to these departures from design and the means of human reproduction and continuance, except by complex devices, can itself become a crime! Did Sodom go further ? As Romans 1 also shows towards its end, spiritual seduction leads no less to things abhorrent in themselves, unnatural to man, ruining the peace and blessedness within, as the body without, causing internecine furies, frenzies, intemperate, with unmasked odium.
While the question arises whether the current position, even in some Western democracies - leave aside the treatment of women in many other nations, and of liberty, with false prophecy bound on pain of death to those by other faith arousing obloquy - approaches that of the pre-flood era (Genesis 6:5), it assuredly seems near to it. The intense vulnerability amid this confusion, so reminiscent of that in Germany after the loss of World War II, to exploitation becomes paramount. The turning from the Lord - not now merely omitting Him! - is moving towards an international culmination, whether by express and unvalidated idols, or directly in spirit, a new object of worship being striven for, sought. Whatever it is, it is not the Lord for worship in the aggregating masses, like black diamonds, hardened where light does not shine. Whether it starts in indifference or at last willingness to compromise to the very heart, the end has a tang to it which Romans 1 exhibits then, and mankind increasingly now.
As Hiterlism, or Stalinism, ideologies heightened by ruthless ambassadors of hate, masked as goodwill, shown as contemptuous of mankind in their misuse of them, seized whole nations as if they were but mice in the hands of a maestro, so a broader movement is apparent, with the world as its empire in view. The time is bending its muscles to impassion the human race, or a controlling segment of it, to turn from the Lord of glory, the Gospel of the grace of God, and even to penalise it as in China (so well shown in the book, The Heavenly Man, written with Paul Hattaway and Brother Yun), and then in other nations including India at times, the Middle East notoriously, the same intemperance and increasing aversion shows, for various reasons, leading to but one result, persecution or death or both.
So the controversy with the Lord mounts ready for the direct confrontation of Revelation 19:19 as foretold. Small wonder that after this world magnificently has been shown the reality of the wonder of its Maker, Creator and Redeemer, this message is to be dismissed like an old garment (Isaiah 51:6, Matthew 24:35, II Peter 3). It is to the Lord, the God of creation, information, prediction, performance, that one must look, or else come to resemble the sightless in this, that what is turned to, not being there, nothing is seen!
Such things then move like a mould in bread, spoiling and sending forth new threads to possess and to spoil. OF COURSE, and therefore, agreements are hard to reach, deceit flourishes, schemes for control abound, dishonesty becomes social dynamics, power out of trouble is in mind for some, rampant seizures await, and a world in turmoil becomes like a sick man. Once the Ottoman Empire was regarded as the sick man in Europe or its near environs, it appears; now the sick member in the creation seems to be more and more apparent, as what ? It is now as this entire world! As Paul declared much earlier in this, the Age of Grace, of the Gospel, the form of this world is passing away (I Corinthians 7:31).
MY WORDS, said the Lord Jesus Christ, will not pass away. This world ? yes. But His words, no. Indeed, not till ALL to the smallest point is fulfilled, will their binding be accomplished (Matthew 24:35). It is sad to see vaunting follies and plain nature myths made mandatory even in schools, even in many religious ones, while other myths of humanism and human isolationism from the God of all comfort, flourish like the bacteria in a rampant infection. To be sure, this was predicted (II Timothy 4), but this makes it no less perilous, precipitating a deluded people to the disasters which at the level of Berlin, were avoided by vast, moral action at its time.
Many have been the deliverances for many a nation, as in the case of Britain, at Dunkirk, in the prelude to which a national day of prayer was officially called for, and in Australia as in such cases as the battle of Midway, when a code break-through apparently helped by giving vital information. There comes alas a time when unmet evils can so accumulate, like rotten and untreated teeth, that a culture becoming king, certain ways chosen and becoming ingrained, there is a certain finding. Such effort, increasingly obviously, merely secures a loss of direction, as for a maddened and charging bull, bent on smashing up someone near a barbed-wire fence, ready to tear it to pieces amid the rampancy.
When confusion has its masterpiece, through lack of vision through drifting will, then peril bellows in increasing bulk, like a maddened elephant. Some animals have bulk, but man has spirit, and when this is incited, surrendering to its own aims and desires, the result can be far worse, affecting far more in ways far worse.
Conclusion - To Be Desired
Quest, Quiescence, Quietus
But all of this is can be as a bad dream when it is past. If you know the Lord, that is the lurid, the confused, the needlessly abased waste which you do not join.
Consider instead however, the conclusion to be desired, that is the reality, what comes on a due basis, the conviction and the joy. Paul declares that he for his part knows whom he has believed and is persuaded that He is able to keep what is committed to Him against the day of judgment, making him secure in spirituality, and governed by God through all ages. That declaration is to be found in II Timothy 1:12.
This is the conclusion, the resultant for the mind, the heart, to be desired. It involves quest, seeking the Lord that He MAY be found (as so beautifully rendered in Isaiah 55); and likewise, quiescence, a sense of rest because what one now finds is not to be tampered with or ever altered, precious above comparison, and what is beyond one's own responsibility, any more, for it is the changeless God with His changeless Gospel who is found, and to whom one is freely bound. His is that changeless reliability to keep what is committed to him, judgment or not, tempest or not, trouble or not (cf. Romans 8:29ff.).
It is also a quietus ( Isaiah 63:13), since here is the case where one not only acquiesces with something, not only finds the vision to the end of the road in one's quest, but is saturated with delight to find it both real and the in reality, surpassingly fine (I Peter 1: 5ff.). Here is rest for the restless, the quietus of quest.
NOTE
See Matthew 24:24, and in more general coverage of the heated turmoils of the end of the Age, Answers to Questions Ch. 5 and SMR Ch. 8.