MOCKERS IN WORD AND SPIRIT

WITH A MESSAGE FROM MATTHEW, PETER AND MICAH

As His Majesty Masters Mockery, so in Him must we overcome
 

PART  I

1) As in Genesis 3, the perverse question: Has God said ...

2) As in Genesis 6, popular sin from youth up, mocked Noah by total rejection and was itself re-mocked  by flood. "Every thought of the intent of his heart was only evil continually," it declares in Genesis 6:3, speaking of generally of the creation called man.

3) As in Numbers 14, and 16:13, Moses was mocked repeatedly, after being used in deliverances that re-shaped history.

4) As in Matthew 27, the authorities of Israel murdered their salvation, and some mocked as they murdered (27:40). See Mark 15:29-30, Matthew 27:40-42, Luke 23:35.

5) As in Acts 14:19, fickle religionists stoned Paul and left the presumed corpse to decay openly, having made a more thorough job on Stephen (Acts 7), in  reply to his challenge which, if heeded might have saved many millions of deaths over thousands of years.

6) As reportedly, from 1231 to 1826, the Roman Catholic (Romanist) Inquisition, mocked the peace of many believers. Thus they were murdering according to many, millions, torturing in word and deed and grabbing assets, while ordering even kings as to many of their actions including  various forms of war. They mocked the people of the Lord, reducing bodies to ashes, tortured remnants and could turn families into destitute orphans while harassing many to believe in a simple idol, turning a remembrance command of Christ (I Cor. 11:24, Luke 22:19), into a sacrifice without blood but with body (cf. SMR pp. 1032-1088H).

7) As from shortly after their leader's death, the Islamic movement has invaded whole nations, nearly taken over Europe by force (stopped at the Battle of Tours, 732), slaughtered many Christians  and in recent years, in various forms, decapitated, tortured, giving option of pretending (affirming) faith or else death, sent many of the young to death on false assurances and destabilised nations. Many at various times have been  allowed to live if they become dhimmis, subservient second  class citizens, humiliated and often subject to death if they try to escape.

This mocked the majesty of Christ and showed their degrading attitude to Him, whom they recreated shamelessly in the Koran, in a kind of caricature of distortion (cf. Koran, Women, 4:171), created centuries after His death and resurrection.

8)  As especially in the period 1800 and on, many Protestant pastors mocked the Bible, rejecting parts at will, inventing new ways of evacuating parts of it, disbelieving other parts, till they also invented a new Jesus (cf. II Cor. 11:4 ), on a basis lacking the power of God, some using atheistic ideas to interpret it, as they called it, in a vast  confusion of models, a sickening surrender of faith to  fiasco or folly. 

Even recently, an astronomer of supposed Christian zeal, has evacuated several clear scriptures supplanting them by ideas, and then applied the result to have this world stay around after all. This is in spite of II Peter's moving FROM unbelief  TO the coming removal of heaven and earth (II Peter 2-3), their displacement and replacement (II Peter 2-3), Christ's assurance contrasting heaven and earth going, with His word staying,  in three Gospels, as also of Isaiah 51:6.,  paralleled in Psalm 102:25-28. Indeed, Peter uses his prediction in an exhortation to godliness.
 

2. THE IGNORED REMINDERS OF RUIN

1) The Fall (Genesis 3)

2) Outage from Eden, with provision of curse, pain and labour.

3) The Flood (Gen 6), where this led on from perpetual evil thoughts from youth up - recall "every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually", leaving very few.

4) The Scourges and their outcomes - Romanism, Islam and Communism outstanding in brutality.

5) The Great Wars, the Cold War, the Radioactive Slanging Matches, the current anti-spiritual and superficial spree as if humans were gods, able to reconstruct anything from bodies to  universes, without any display of power to back these scenarios, but only episodes of weakness and words. Many nations now seek for virtual thought control, word menacing, torture and imprisonment for those not virtually worshipping their dictatorial heads. Without the wisdom of God, they crawl before man, seeking delusively a substitute.
 

6) Christ's own prediction of just such inflation, false christs and false prophets in a world which would not be able to live without His return (Matthew 24), shows that the end of the Age now is near (Luke 21:24,28 - indeed "near". There is a limit to folly, but in Christ, never to love (I Cor. 13, Ephesians 3)).

Part Two

3. THE SPECIAL CASE

THE FIRST PART FIRST ENDED AS BELOW.

Christ's own prediction of just such inflation, false christs and false prophets in a world which would not be able to live without His return (Matthew 24), shows that the end of the Age now is near (Luke 21:24,28). There is a limit to  folly, but in Christ, never to love (I Cor.13).

1) Now we come to the special  case of ISRAEL. Here is mockery à la carte, carte blanche, thundering into a black reservoir of unthinkable iniquity. In different forms it has gone on  for centuries. Small wonder the Lord says that He will make the bitter horror they show to Israel to turn into a penalty to themselves, so that those who gave it, will now get it. From Israel, it will be taken, given instead to those who wanted to make her a people to walk on, like a street, prostate before them. Taking it away from the Israel they ruthlessly assaulted (Isaiah 51:21-23), He will transfer this treatment to the attackers.

Certainly Israel at Calvary asked for it (the alienated attitude predicted in Isaiah 49:7); but this does nothing to remove the guilt of the Gentile oppressors of that erring country. What of  the religions of those who now try to bury her, blast and blight, commercially crush and with rockets ruin, murder her children and attack her schools, aspire glibly to genocide of Israel, shouting out their intention, their ire rising now to the declaration that words are past, the only alternative left, this: REMOVE them, sack Israel so that they are not there. Are these not murderous on  a vast scale,  both in method and in result ?

2) Do they not often include those who also act as if to mutilate Christ, as in the Koran, into a NON-Saviour, NON-Sin bearer, NON Son of God, in some sort of 6 centuries too late caricature ? or in other ways, resist and reject the God of grace whose sacrifice has given our race a way out from their raging follies and a freedom from guilt by paying Himself for those who receive His salvation!

3) Many have been kind to Israel, but those who ask for their own judgment, look to have their wish granted as you find in: Isaiah 66, Micah 7, Deuteronomy 32, Isaiah 11, 14, Ezekiel 36-39. Christ as in Luke 21:24,28 likewise has indicated that the return of Israel to Jerusalem will not only happen (His prediction), but will  be a signal. Of what ? of this, that His own return is near, to this world: to a disordered, vagrant, endlessly warring world; and that without this, the human race would not be able to continue (Matthew 24:22).

Almost every day, we find the assemblage predicted coming nearer, including a great power to the North of Israel, and what we now call Iran (Ezekiel 37-39). How they now gather, more Iranian troops said to be placed near the Israeli borders, Russia moving violently in lands next door!  Meanwhile, Micah 7 7-20 in prediction shows that delicious empathy and divine awareness of God towards His people. The scene moves, via a national repentance, to their deliverance by the Lord in spectacular and glorious vigour, to match the  misdeeds of many nations arrayed against Israel. Great is the coming ignominious desolation for them for their blighting pains against the land of promise, which  God fulfils. Mockery (of Israel) moves to mastery (by God) and history turns.

4) Romans 11 tells us how Israel as a nation had been cut out of the tree of faith (crucifixion of Christ was not a form of acceptance), and Gentiles would be grafted into it instead; but that Israel would  come back to it, be re-grafted into this tree, and that in the name of this same Jesus Christ (Zechariah 12-13:1), with a great repentance, so bringing in a divine peace, where wars would be no more on the agenda (Romans 11:5-12,24, Micah 4; 5:10ff., Psalm 73).

Despite the noted errors of a recent astronomer who in writing acted to alter relevant texts, as if to prolong the world, the time comes when this world, earth and heaven indeed depart. In this, and in this context, they are as before, utterly unlike the indestructible word of God, as Christ is clearly reported to have declared in three Gospels, Peter confirming the dynamic departure and uttermost ruin in excruciating detail, site and substance. All are to go,  as also revealed in II Peter 3, while Isaiah pointed dramatically to it in 51:6 and Psalm 102 in its own contrast, expounded it, in verses 23-28.

They cry and they declaim the fact. Christ even makes the departure of this world, heaven and earth both named, a pointed contrast, one between HIS words which do NOT depart, and the world and its heavens, which DO.

The world, including heaven and earth, it goes. Neither stage nor structure remain. There is to be no longer place for it (Rev. 20:11).The word of God is staying and the contrary will of rebellious man is going. Indeed, His righteousness and salvation, these do NOT depart emphatically declares Isaiah 51:6, in making the acute contrast of word and world, what departs and what endures! One stays, one goes. The implication  ? Listen, heed, for ignoring does not delete actuality, when  God speaks. Again, rejoice, for God's salvation and righteousness are forever, outlasting the very earth and the heavens which He first made.

5) Consider the scale. THIS polluted, abused, defiled, camp of endless seeming follies, grasps, grabbings, like a concentration  camp site: it will go. We make cars, and destroy them; God makes the universe, and tosses it away as Isaiah 51 makes exquisitely clear, when it is done, at His will. As Revelation 19-20 puts it, there will be found no more place of it, an evacuee. There will however be a new heavens and a new earth after the physical destruction of the old one, as Peter vigorously declares.

The apostles were Jewish! many great Christians were Jewish; but it is the nation as such which is in view, and its glorious time of realisation is fast approaching (as in Zechariah 12:10).

But Jew or Gentile, in this phase or that, the time comes when those who INSIST on loving this world, will face doing without it for their wares and ruthless acts, such that peace with wonder will rule. But this world, in its time, after Christ has finished the rescue of His people, of whatever nation, will  go.

4.    THE ULTIMATE CASE

THE END OF MOCKERY AND OF THIS EARTH

1) This then  is the final mockery of mockers, who endlessly hunt, ruthlessly grab for this or that special  feature of this earth, as well as of others whose ruthless triumphalisms and seedy assaults miscarried for other reasons. YOU need a place to stand, and when the universe is gone, the empty folly of many who refuse the Rock, will find life perishing without God. If others have erred, the Lord knows the case, for it is all in the hands of Him who insists that loving Him means loving His word (John 14:21). It is for God to judge, but for us to read and to act.

In the end, it is the mockery of Christ which is always costly, fatal, fearful. There is a mini-parallel predicted which II Peter 3 shows up in the technical  format which was to  come, and  now HAS come. Such pseudo-scientific scoffing, scientism does not alter the fulfilment of facts! or the finding of the writings that cover the creation of the body of man, in DNA, for example. There sits the answer, written and now constantly degrading with each generation.

2) History is following the forecast precisely. Just as at the end of the Age, Israel, abandoning mockery at the national level which was so fateful at Calvary (Micah 5:1-4), returns to its land and then  to its Lord (Zechariah 12:10), so comes the return of Christ, to all His people at last in this way all one (Galatians 3), through the only Gospel in invariable truth (Galatians 1).

Their exodus to heaven with Him and His coming back with them as in Revelation 19 with I Thessalonians 3-4, Matthew 24, in a celestial insurgency into an overcome and then quietened earth, proceeds till that vindication over, and that peace past, He brings to pass with that ending, the beginning of a select, suitable, wonder, a new heaven and earth no more marred. In this, our resurrection, that grand marvel that replaces our first birth and completes our second one (I Corinthians 15), is now operative for eternal life, assigned as in I Corinthians, focussed as in II Corinthians 5 and wrought by the forerunner and Saviour at the last day (John 6:54,58), His own people thus endowed, with Him at His return in triumph (I Thessalonians 3:13, 4:13-17).

As Habakkuk 2:13-14 puts it: It is not of the Lord that the peoples labour to feed the fire and the nations weary themselves in vain. Far from it! In fact, as the text goes on to  indicate, the very opposite desire is found in  the Lord, so that it is this vast blessing which then comes to pass:  that "the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."

Sin will be  muted, the body transformed, and then at last, there is the celestial peace where purity is no more mocked, deceit is no more rampant and evil grasping is no more even relevant! (as in Isaiah 32:1-6).

Indeed, Revelation 21:4  reports on the end for those who love mercy where it is to be found, in Christ (Isaiah 55):

"And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes;
there will be no more death nor sorrow, nor crying.
There will be no more pain, for the former things have passed away."