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CHAPTER 7
DREAMS HAVE THEIR PLACE, BUT NOT IN REALITY
"Likewise also these dreamers defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of glorious ones ..." Jude 8 cf. Jeremiah 23.
Much Ado About Nothing !
A Conversation
It was a dream, one translated from naturalism, a comedy in other words, a grave one.
There they were: the things that are nothing. That was the dream.
You object ? IF, you argue persuasively, it is nothing of which you speak, holus-bolus nothing, then there are and indeed can be, no THING or things. Thing, you proceed merrily, to our mutual enjoyment, is the antithesis of no thing, or nothing.
True, but this was a dream.
Proceed if you must.
So there it was ...
But you say, again, 'there' and 'it' . There can be no 'it' for this must designate something, and in nothing there is nothing to designate.
You help greatly, I agreed.
What then ? you pursue the point, as if dreams, like any other naturalism, were rational.
There was nothing.
It cannot be 'there', you advise, for that would specify some place, and that would be something, a location thing.
We might take, I respond, the 'there' to be an introductory designation, rather than a place. In that case it would merely postulate or propose the existence of whatever it is or was, that is in mind.
How can nothing EXIST ? you pursue it. Existence is definitely something.
Nothing was then ?
How could it be, the same problem remains; for we are talking about genesis, are we not, where it all came from!
Precisely, I replied, and so there never can in this sense have been nothing. It cannot even be expressed.
We move on, in the realm of fantasy however, the more fully to appreciate this dream.
Go, you say ?
Into this unmentionable nonentity there comes a vast outpouring ...
From where precisely since we have already decided that nothing is, and hence there can be no potential or power or presence or force or any other thing ?
Agreed, however I remind you this is a dream
Very well, fantasy talks.
More accurately, naturalism talks where it is not normally vocal, for what are now obvious reasons.
Into the non est, the nothing, from nowhere then, comes a whole rain of particles.
What kind of particles ?
Atoms maybe.
No, if you are trying to get a scenario for gradual uplift from nowhere, ludicrous to start with, it becomes gross to end with - a miracle in continuity from nothing. A tall order, the science of the ridiculous.
True, so maybe we should not start with atoms, since these are formed things, with formulatable relationships of their parts to their wholes, and multiple rules and orders implicit in their action.
Perhaps you could try electrons ?
Yes, but then we need the laws of electricity in order to have them in a system where they are not isolated and meaningless, but capable of having the thing-in-system particularity which is assumed when we speak of any such thing, which is NOT in fact in abstraction, but immersed in forms and norms and formats and functions and laws.
Perhaps we could have fragments of atoms.
These by their very nomenclature are merely residues of atoms, leaving the same problem.
We could just go on having nothing.
That would be necessary and logical. That is why you cannot start with it, for you would end with it, and as to you, you could not even be there to start or end or to observe the same!
However, this is a dream, a naturalistic dream.
All right, then, this multiply irrational dream proceeds, what now ?
Well having flunked all so far, we move on to molecules ...
Many more rules for more kinds of atoms and rules about space in which they must inhere, and about forms and formats, laws of many kinds.
But we must have laws of motion, since the things are to move and be nameable, and laws of electrical kind since electricity is involved in the charges of the atoms.
It all comes from a dream, the only alternative to deity.
I said however that it was a dream.
True, a false dream.
Oh utterly fraudulent, but that is what naturalism is.
Let us proceed. We come to cells...
Why ? there is nowhere for them to come from.
Oh well, they grab some DNA, you know, orders, laws of communication, constraints of singularity of language in which to put the orders - for now they are actually expressed in semantic mode, capable of being read by intelligent beings, in the domain of intelligence and intellect, of concept and thus of conceptual read-out.
Where from ?
From where ? would be better.
It could not be worse: there is nowhere for the laws and semantics and sequences and rules and rulings and sophistication to come from - except mere irrationality.
Dreams can be like that ...
But not ones you call science and preach to students.
Why not ? It is done in hundreds of institutions in this world every day.
Continue the dream, it is less ghastly that way.
OK. The cell, in terms of evidence, comes fully fledged, there being neither evidence of anything else nor residue, just fully developed cells, which Denton compares one at a time, to New York city for complexity.
So a New York city, complete, to pursue the informed analogy, with garbage collection - that is, with the various reciprocities of materiél arrival, departure, timing of the same, production of energy, and fancy handling constraints for cell reproduction, so that what we have is what we are talking about, not some nothing of a mental apparition ...
Yes, yes, New York City number one, that is a cell, drops from heaven ...
Oh come, you cannot have heaven, since God is evacuated. Naturalism says so.
Evacuated ? It does not have Him there in the first place.
Of course not, He contradicts by His presence what naturalism loses by even trying to start itself: that is, rationality.
So it drops down ...
How could it, there being no site, place, energy or actuality from which it could come.
It is all an invention.
Oh, I see, it is a method of inventing God without saying so, while pretending to be a method of bypassing Him ?
Precisely. Without Him BEING THERE, in the first place, you are stuck. All else is mere arrival from nothing for no reason and with no method: stark irrationality.
With Him, there as not in the dream, you have a 'there', for from eternity to eternity it is Himself who is the ultimate presence for 'there', He being spiritual, with mental, moral, spiritual realities fit for what He creates.
That is why cells are the way they are, without evidence of preludes or failures ?
Of course.
That is why laws are present, some inscribed in the system by its internal construction methods, others in living products, inscribed in code as a linguistic device, giving commands and orders, in mutually dependent systems, conceptually contained, available to intellectual investigation by man therefore, with enormously complex series of systems and laws of many kinds, such as Einstein delighted in, the very speech of God.
The intra-systematics of the various living creatures, starting from enormously complex cells, living 'atoms' if you will, but far more complex, hence do not 'arise' from nowhere in ridiculous incapacity, but are as in a car, arranged in system and sub-system, with law of this order and that, potency to allow language to MEAN something TO something, so that it is no mere association of bits, but an order to bits, and these are not just 'bits' but organised, systematically arranged and deputed elements of the totality to which they appertain.
So it all makes sense.
Yes,. but the dream was not like that. Things had to continually come from nowhere, in flushes of mutuality and organisation, order and command.
Dreams can be like that.
At the risk of repetition ...
Must you ?
Decidedly.
Go on then.
But dreams are not what should be taught as science to school children.
It is not fitting.
No, you could do it in the nursery.
It is getting near to that, the indoctrination.
WHY ? why bother ? It is to rid man of God so that man can do what he wants with man
But what of those of mankind that the ones who, at the hand of those who want to do things with man, have those things done to them ?
Ask Hitler, Mao, Stalin, the French revolutionaries ...
I cannot, and there is a biblical law against speaking with the dead.
I mean ...
In a dream ?
It seems popular.
Dreams are not fit when you are dealing with reality.
I agree, and as men increasingly are making such dreams mandatory, even to children of tender years, in a diabolical dictatorship of ideas and lassoing of the herd: therefore of course people wake up at some time, and inured with dreams, act like it.
You mean war on each other in order to show what did not make itself, is better in them than in someone else ?
You mean racism ? partly. It can also occur in a given profession, where those who teach rationally are excluded for not patronising the dream.
Professional murder squads ?
You could call it that.
And so you have nations striving to have more, to show they are better, to dominate, all with the idea that they have it right, when in their own minds, they are usually BUILT on what is mere dream, at least more recently, though they had other dreams earlier - you have read Spiritual Refreshings... Ch. 13 ?
I seem to remember it.
You have various dreams challenging each other, about how what cannot happen, did so.
That is very understandable; since none conforms to reason, each MUST be vulnerable to it.
They never agree, except to unite dreams against God in the hope they will get cohesion.
You mean the way the various dominating societies do, like China and Russia and Iran and various Islamic bodies ?
Some of them make religious dreams, actually or implicitly, and there is then a conflict of dreams about that also.
So they might kill 40,000,000 souls in China to get one version of a dream in place, in order that it should then be scamped and much of the very opposite imported.
Dreams are like that.
But they should not be used to run countries.
Of course not, but they often are.
How many dreams are there ?
Oh they oscillate from atoms, to forces, to life forces (as if force, power to impart acceleration to a particle, accounted for mind), and thought worlds and other things arriving from nowhere in particular, all set up and organised with no one there to have done it, while they are all nicely delimited, derived, obedient to their particular ideas by the mere wave of a mental wand on the part of the conceiver.
You mean men make gods who are not there and then insist on others agreeing so that they might grab something by this means, or have a sense of power, or be irresponsible entirely and enjoy it, pretending to be good, or doing it to give to their guilty souls a sense of satisfaction and meaning ...
And on and on, for there is no end; or directionally, it is a pit without a bottom.
A bottomless pit ? I seem to have heard of that.
The end of the whole matter is to find God where He is, using reason
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to see the thing clearly, |
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read His
instruction book for our minds and lives, where it is, |
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to trust in Him who made all Himself to know all
things,
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What does He say ?
Repent of autonomy, that is of self-centred, self-propelled self-will ...
Where does the Bible say that: I mean that book to which reason forces one, following it, to look, as in your SMR ?
It shows it variously.
Thus you find
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elements of it (the command TO REPENT) in Luke 13:1-3,
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aspects of it in
Galatians 5:17-21, where amongst other things condemned are hatred, contentions,
jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions and so on... |
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You find
it implied in Romans 15, where it tells you that "we who are strong ought
to bear with the weaknesses" of those not strong, as an injunction, |
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Likewise, we are NOT to be tolerant of
untruth, as if to make it not matter at all, |
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In fact, we are told to crucify the old nature
(Galatians 5:24, Luke 14:27ff.), |
All right. What else is to be done ?
Repent and believe.
Believe what ?
Why God, who else, and His book, what else ?
And what does this entail ?
You realise that severed from personal knowledge of Him, you need to regain it, and repenting in the power of His truth, you receive Him who is a Spirit as your Lord and your God as Thomas is shown to have done in John 20: for He came to be an inhabitant of flesh, yet without sin, in order to clear the books IN FLESH, of all who come to Him, IN HIMSELF, as in II Corinthians 5:17-21.
What then ?
Then having received pardon because He died ...
Died ? I thought we were talking about life ?
When you have spiritual pathology, there is NO PLACE in heaven for you, NOWHERE, and your reserved spot is NOTHING; unless of course you repent and receive the cleansing ...
Cleansing ? How does a Spirit cleanse ?
What are talking with ?
My mind.
That is not all: it serves will and purpose and imagination.
Well my mind and that.
'That' is called spirit, giving us personality and power to investigate, conceptualise, gain perspective and understanding. These things are not simply floating about.
We have had enough of that from the first!
Precisely. So HIS Spirit cleanses your spirit.
How does it gain access to do it ?
IN receiving Him, you are
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not just going through a personal enaction of an idea, but
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coming into contact with One who is not only far more
powerful |
Moreover, He is operating on you at the same level of personal being, in person to person exchange. Indeed, as in John 16:5ff., it is His Spirit who drives, convicts, discloses to us our own sin and His glory, and the need of His righteousness, grant and gift, donation and act of divine deliverance, for any and all entry ever to His presence. Indeed, it is even disclosed as a work of His own enterprise in averting judgment on a selective basis, that of faith in Him. .
Where do you see this ?
Well personally it is the very matrix of my living, a constant thing, to be renewed daily, after having been brought back to life, regenerated by Him. That is one place.
Another ?
Matthew 20:28 tells us this ransom, and 26:28 concerning the remission of sins through His saving work, while Galatians 6:14 declares this:
"God forbid that I should glory except in the cross
of our Lord Jesus Christ,
by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world."
Then again, Galatians 3 tells us that Christ, in view of the curse God has placed on sin, has become a curse for us, so redeeming us. There is much more. Let me give some examples.
John 3 declares that it came out of the love of God, who GAVE His only begotten Son, not to judge the world but to save it,
Titus 2 that it came from the kindness of God toward man.
In Hosea 13:14 you see the divine compassion and determination to go to the point of personal crushing of the just curse on man, banishing death and providing deliverance from hell in, by and through His own self! Love leads. Mercy persists as in Micah 7:19ff.. Colossians 1:19ff. makes clear the illimitable scope of the love of God addressed towards man's salvation, and John 3:19 of the place of guilt not only to sin, but to escape deliverance in darkness, that is averse to light!
It is however John 16 which tells us in detailed presentation the work of the Spirit of God in the restoration of man, through bringing conviction of our evil, His good and His glory where it is to be found.
What is USED to clean us by His Spirit ?
It is the blood of Christ.
What does that mean?
It is symbolic of life, and life as given, and the gift of life as a ransom, a payment, a settlement, an admission of our vital bankruptcy before God, of a life given in sacrifice, to absorb the power, plight, pollution and punishment of sin, to bring reconciliation, atonement with God, clear the accounts.
And the Spirit applies what He has done in a dynamic, vital and regenerative fashion, renewing us ?
Even to the point of begetting us again, from the womb of death to the light of life.
Where is this to be found ?
It is found in John 3, and indeed in John 4:14 we learn that the Spirit wells up in the Christian's inner life after the manner of a Spring, exuberant, its flow coming from above, and is so vast in liberality that its dynamic grace moves out from us, being uncontained merely in one, to spread as in John 7:37-38.
I seem to remember that: of what Christ says of the one who believes in Him as He is and not as He is made out to be by man: out of his midst shall flow streams of water.
Such is the scope and sufficiency, the liberality and the love of God, cleansing by His Spirit, based on the blood of Christ, enabling by His own regenerative power.
Where is this to be found ?
It is found in Titus 3:3-7.
What does it say ?
This -
"For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient,
deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures,
living in malice and envy,
hateful, and hating one another.
"But after the kindness and love
of God our Saviour toward man appeared,
not by works of righteousness which we have done,
but according to his mercy He saved us,
by the washing of regeneration,
and renewing of the Holy Ghost:
which he shed on us abundantly
through Jesus Christ our Saviour;
That being justified by his grace,
we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life."
It is good to be back to the Beginner, I mean the One who began creation, and works in and through it, both to bless and to curse, to cure and to heal, to warn and to operate. In fact, this is the REAL home away from home.
Agreed. Dreams have their place; but not in reality!
Adieu! I must go, and it will be WITH GOD, with the Saviour, the One who washes.
The Lord be with you.