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BULLETIN TWENTY SEVEN

Four Successive Common Errors that Achieve no Merit

COMPARE

The Mighty God and the Whimpers of Mini-Man
Trying to Wear Divine Pants and Shoes
and Tramping about Ridiculously

Beware of Human Racism, that breed of pretentious soul-sickness which would make

the made into the equal of the Maker,

man of God,

and likewise, the fallen into the high-flyer of all time

the cursed into the woeful waster of this time, and

 the ravishments of ruin the replacement

for the pathways to eternal life!

Let us look at the area with open eyes, for you see much better then (cf. Matthew 13:14-15).

(1) In the beginning, what ?

As with a company, you desire to see how it was formed, to examine what it has done as a clue to what it might do. With the universe there comes the human race, which has some power to interpret it, with faculties so misused that there is almost no limit to the fanciful  and rampant, rampaging and smooth paths invented by our race to deal with this.

However, the first thing is to see what is there. There is matter, with highly developed laws, methods, limitations, modelling facilities UPON IT, and great limitations in the whole area of what is there. There is mind, capable of understanding the sort of laws, containing powers, limits, resources lodged in matter, and finding by experiment, what is not there. Matter for its part,  is a great feature, like pre-made bricks, but it is not an architect. It just needs one to get there. Available energy is running down, and that is one of the main laws of science. The Second Law of Thermodynamics now is rife in this  field as time is prolonged. Matter cannot have been doing this forever or there would be NOTHING available, all available energy gone in this field.

That however is not so; it simply not the case. Moreover, this is a universe of causes and all science trades on  that. When someone wants to change the method of science, to make it silly, to subvert its dignity, then that is a whim. It does not alter the fact that science's increase,

that is the increase of knowledge (there are other spheres of knowledge, but this is one of those at work) as predicted in  12:4 in Daniel the prophet,

amidst his similar, and similarly verified prediction of Empires to come,
which have duly come (Daniel 2, 7-9) as has the predicted and fulfilled death date of Christ (Christ the Citadel Ch.2),

is of a sober type. Its job is not to account for ludicrous ideas but carefully wrought observations of what is happening. One such series of course, is the multitude of such predictions in the Bible. They cannot be repeated, but repeatedly they happen, so that it is a continuous phenomenon in life. Their fulfilments are happening now. It is a matter of live events (cf. SMR for example, Chs. 8    and 9  ).

These parallel predictions have also been verified and fulfilled, the work of the supernatural God.
Events challenge man to seek causes; theories can be imagined, but until they become happenings, they are not the proper subject of science. You do not need to account for what does not happen, in this  discipline.  It is limited but is contradistinct from  philosophy.

Science is for man to seek as or organ of discovery, in one phase of his mind's discipline. It is a field he has opened up for his kind by finding the universe of a logical case when in the grip of reason, it was made. He finds what is there, and the two logical steps, to be found and to find, blend as in one .

Thus, it is by no means a casual collation, but a reason-penetrable complex, and what is one of the reasonable realities about it, our universe ?  It is this, the more we can gather evidence, the more its logical character, cause and effect, logically formed, formulated and specified characteristics, appear. That is the first point. The second is like it. When it comes to the observation of its appointment (it cannot create itself ... try to make it do so in any major respect!), of its creation, how did this happen, there is for its special mode, a block. That it had to be done is sure; the manner of its making is as with any author, an entirely different question; and if with man, it is often hard to know the realms and reasons of a creation, how much more so with God. In this, we are limited to what has been told in the book which has been validated and verified.

Here it is past science as such. When I write a book, it is not there, and I am putting it there, and this is far from the case when, duly finished, its pages yellow with age by special processes. Things come, they go, both for a reason. The coming is one thing; the continuity thereafter is quite another.

As to  finding out by what methods the book was written, the nature of the author's mind as he wrote and all its powers, that is entirely different, and as C.S. Lewis pointed out, so often people imagine about what the authors did or why in making a book, and are quiet wrong. He is one of such authors, and knows.

What then ? The fact is that evidence may be pursued to its grounds, the laws found and the formulae which have been placed in our universe, verified, mind's work discovered by our created minds' work.  It may however be travestied by those who use it to explain  what did not happen, is not found, is not verifiable, is irrational, a point not left undisclosed by Stephen Jay Gould in  his Wonderful Life.  Says he, it was not the most advanced that routinely prevailed, much was otherwise; it was not gradual augmentation, for designs are growing less over time: why try to account for their increase when decrease is the fact, over time. Moreover says he, things as he finds the evidence, come in a series of varieties. This  is what comes first, THEN there is a reduction. It is not the other way around as in the Darwinesque mockery (perhaps a new, but certainly a useful phrase).

So the scientists squabble, and when someone points out certain clear features, he/she is likely to hit prejudice, preference and philosophy which has nothing whatever to do with the successful (in some parts) methods of science. The  same point was made by Lord Zuckerman in his Beyond the Ivory Tower, where nothing less than a flamboyant obstinacy is found quite as freely available amid scientists as elsewhere, as a current status quo is challenged, but its lovers are slow to quit.

The point remains: you have to start with what is there, for nothing will NEVER come to anything, when the nothing in view, is ALL THERE IS! Nothing as all, has like any nothing, no potential, no future, no hope, no laws, no power and is the negation of all that might be. Make it universal and there is no universe, ever.

Logically, when you get past this and what Professor Hartnett calls fancy names for it, as in the singularity and its explosion, which is just a mesh of a point of no magnitude and forces (from nowhere) producing pressure (in nothing) so that it might expand (into space already there from somewhere or to be made as a passing process produced by nothing) and become a disordered explosion to blast (what is not there) into form and shape and logic and cause and effect and precise laws and so on, as a sort of sinecure for creation: you have to come back to  something. Vacuity did not, after  all, make anything, and the more you imagine, the worse is your logic.

For logical validity, and without it you cannot even argue validly, you have to have something there to start with, for nothing serves but nothing. Indeed, it has to be potent enough to account for all that will be there, for if it lacks this, all that is now there cannot logically come at all; but it has come. That is the empirical fact. It has to be faced, not fantasied into picturesque fables, where the exact OPPOSITE of what is needed is specified as the ground for it all.

This is the IMPOSSIBILITY aspect of the non-God fable, the  atheistic fiasco. On this 'nothing' see Index.

Next,  we note that the ADEQUACY which, to be rational, must be the basis for what came in due course, into being, has also to be eternal. If at ANY time - and  remember this is the ALL envelope - it were not there, then there would be NOTHING for it to come from. There can never have been a time when it was not there, or nothing ever would be anywhere.

Moreover, time itself has to be put there by an adequate agency, as it is part of the space-time whole, not self-generating from nothing. It is part of what is made, and no more a control of the Maker than is a book of its author, a mere derivative.

We therefore contrast the fable of the NOTHING or ATHEIST idea with that of the RATIONALITY of the God-affirming approach. It has of course MANY confirmatory elements as shown in SMR and TMR, as in Secession from Presupposition Ch. 9 and What is the Chaff to the Wheat Chs. 3 and 4 .  This is the first absolute logical failure in the anti-God fable.

Here (cf. It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, *1A) what is logically necessary is posited, confirmed, validated and verified, with no residual irrationalities on ANY side. On this, in particular, see

LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST

WHO ANSWERS RIDDLES

AND WHERE HE IS, DARKNESS DEPARTS

Bible or Blight, Christ or Confusion:
The Comprehensive Resolution of Man's Intractable Problems
is Found Only in the Bible, the Word of God

A Pair  of Volumes: Opus 128 and 129, of some 2.3 million words
 

(2) PROGRESS FOR WHAT IS MADE ?

Existence to MODE OF EXISTENCE.

Secondly, we come to procedure from nothing or some name with similar meaning, to its results, ludicrous though this is in principle from the start. Having dipped into what is not there as a foundation, the no-God here method (NGH) proceeds to gain potentials or powers or both from the same ultimate source: nowhere inhabited by nothing. Thus laws trim into the system, time and space arrive post-paid from nowhere, process is accorded its place, and it all  'develops' as do those children's books which with water added to an apparently blank page, show colour and form and a lively beauty. THAT being reasonable, has a ground for it: preliminary preparation by a potentially adequate source which worked at it, so that it now works for us.

Thus there is a drawing on the non-rights to the non-source continually, to gain  all these ordering and orderly components. Then we need life, and cannot create it though mankind tried hard; he only fidgets with what is THERE, provided. He dips into his nothing bag, like a horse into his nose-bag (where someone actually put something for him so that he might eat, and it was not nothing or anything inadequate that did it), and what does he find ? It is this. That it is there. It arrives.

Theories about what is inferior to much, leaving what is superior to what was before, are rife, but ruinous and ridiculous. Remove your worst students and you  not for that reason have still better ones than you had. This is merely la suave way of ignoring the creation of the same, at a new level. This we do not find. Information is never found without the intervention of intelligence (cf. Department of Bible and Spiritual Affairs, Vol. 4, 12 ). That is both logically necessary and empirically true. You can have changes, but not additional information, unprovided for by what went before. It needs creation.

Not working does not work in such concoctions, correlations, symbol-reality combinations. It has to be understood and implemented, whether the sophisticated addition of  a program be used or not. Ideas and their activation are not the same. The latter is practically demanding.

There is no scrambling of the the jets of this amazingly brilliant mathematical masterpiece and beauty receptacle of life as a building spectacle. When it is ready, it arrives and this creation occurs.

With what does it come?  Here again is the time for avoidance of the riotous source of imagination, the opposite of scientific method AT THIS PHASE, made available for dreaming. It comes from the competent composer. In life, He has finished the types, present in enormous information peaks; and it is no more, as the Bible has said from the beginning. It is like that with creation: purpose yields to ideation yields to plan yields to  performance yields to setting and so on. It is not automatic, though many would love to make it so, it allowing such a nexus of irresponsibility; but its coming can be automated as a refinement, miniaturisation or standard for a time or season. It has to be good to  do that,  and it is good, and has lasted very nearly already the time appointed. Nothing is ever seen anything like what is imagined 'to occur', the question begging  anti-empirical and squalid dive of the anti-God hosts.

Life is NEVER found coming except from life, one of the chief laws of science. However, it is imagined to have come anyway, in order to get here by transitions of unknown kind, for unknown reason by unseen action, and that is supposed to be science.

In this sort of anomalous pursuit, we do not start with the evidence of what happened, but with the 'fact' of its natural provision, and ALL the rest is pure or impure imagination.

But that is not all. It is like a real estate billionaire who dreams it all up, looking at his ideas, but who forgets to DO it.

What now is in this fable of naturalism ? Select editions arrive, those of living vitalities, compounded in DNA in all but unenvisageable complexities, involving capacities to  vary on an original them in each case, with heavy limits imposed by the DNA text and its multiple control units and  facilities (such as editing proofs  for each copying of cells, lest there should come what is called a melt-down, when mistakes are so numerous that thing does not even work any more). In reality, we even have orientation methods, where not only the words but the way the space is used in the genetic structure has MEANING and makes a difference.

All this in naturalistic philosophy, constantly confused with science,  is given from the same nothing bag, this time endorsed with linguistic capabilities to present and have done orders for building the law-girt pieces of programmatic and linguistic brilliance which then appear. Nor do we find billions of example of foozled arrivals from nowhere of this mathematical-linguistic marvel, over periods of time, where nothing did not do its non-job properly. It is all working or decaying, complexity at work, not dysfunction in building. However, it does age, and loses its wonder to the point that the latest work from Professor J.C. Sanders (Genetic Entropy) is showing that so many are the copying defects of this rather unstable DNA (even without being outside its housing), copied from generation to generation, that it appears there are only thousands of years left, before it won't work because of accumulated errors. These include those not at once visible copying errors, defective variants ready to  aggregate to a large number with many interweaving duties (appointed by nothing ?) over time (invented by nothing ?).

DNA however is even found intact in many fossils of alleged deep  time! pouring more disrelish on the guesswork about rates of radioactive decay as a dating assumption, one which produces the illusion of long time span for our earth, one then sent to establishments of learning, to propagandise with its monopolistic and therefore unscientific folly (cf. Dr Jonathan Sarfati, The Greatest Hoax on Earth? Ch. 11).

But that is for the end, so let us revert to the beginnings and the modes there, as new life forms arrive. As we are seeing, there are rules and rational needs both for arrival and departure, and the overall plan is cohesive, co-operative and multi-communicative.

Gould like Nilsson sees these imports, exported from 'nowhere' coming in multiple, combined, sophisticated totals, not gradually because it does not work that way. A new mode of breathing, for example, involves not only millions of artifices, but correlatives and overall dispositions for endurance and their programs, and putting in useless bits is anti-advantageous. To help, they must work; to work they must be cohesive and enshrined in understanding of multiple needs, as well as aligned to the ultimate  unity of function(s) involved. An aeroplane alteration of engines would involve support, wing dynamics, stress vulnerabilities, aerodynamic alteration and so  on. And that is relatively simple! Magic is not allowable in science; only specifiable cause and consequence, in a verified setting, not in the splendour of unfazed imagination based on nothing.

There are, then,  not only whole series of associated genes, but directive genes, rescued as seen in actual science from the 'junk' left-over theories of the days of ignorance, providing knowledge about knowledge, and giving directive information about the preservation and direction of data, all in sublimely  intertwined miniaturisation (managed by no power or force or intelligence ? but produced by nothing, to speed things up ? like the case of protein folding MINI-MACHINES, also invented to make the copying POSSIBLE). Next time you are in  a factory, consider all the side-areas and oversight planning and performance, to MAKE things happen consecutively, consequentially and in unified combination, and ponder nothing making it, by stages of course.

Returning to fact, the evidence is, as Michael Denton points out, NOT of gradual movement at the micro-biological level, but of a directive base, with a particular site for each item, distinct, decisive, precise. He uses the term 'hierarchical' to describe this certain, distinct and distinctive placement, and organisation of genetic structure, in planning and precise mode, not at all in gradualistic mergers of any sort (cf. Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, cf. Bulletin 15). To attribute a Boeing factory production to chance would not occur to many, since chance is merely what happens in any system, order or organisation (without which there is no form or feature) when there is no intervention. First, if you want results, however, you have to POSSESS the system. Then, really, it does what it is good at, aligned with, and by no chance does it do it, but by the nature of the case. That is the way with non-personal things, and even in programmatic ones: the provisions are circumscribed.

So the systems are waived in,  like the cars of diplomats when their privileges are involved. However,  all this within any organisation, involves conditions, and that imposition of them, and the creation of all the authority, its basis, ways, and operational features so that it can not suffocate in a mere profusion of bits abroad; and that in turn requires appointment by what has the production of such things and their imposition as one of its features or foci. It is conceptual, and the apportionments are by choice and assignment, of what is to be, and the way it is expressed or impressed.

Let all this just HAPPEN, and magic could  do no better.

While the first point above  involved the IMPOSSIBILITY aspect of atheism, monism (cf. Repent or Perish 7  ), so the second one above, has led to the UNSCIENTIFIC SELECTION OF MEANS. This is the second of the absolute invalidities of the non-God monism.

Returning to reality once more, all these domains,  spheres, apportionments, multiple layers of power,  authority, expression, symbol-find-do areas require as did the beginning  NOT from nothing, what is adequate to work at those particular levels, to impart existence to all the features in their  multiple and overlapping conceptual apparatus and consequence.

The Author of all, eternal, non-nothing, adequate for all, is merely building a universe. This is what he has done.

There is no ground for fable or myth, as in naturalism, or for imagining what science eschews in its classic clothes with which it is dressed when reputable and effectual. It is a matter of finding what is nearest and available in terms of evidentially coherent data, and giving to this the  place for investigation, so checking to see if this covers the case. It does (cf. Deity and Design and Light Dwells with the Lord's Christ, above). The eternal sufficiency is far nearer than the nothing and its entourage escape route, mindless and mesmerised into what is not only far from adequate, but a devastatingly irrelevant substitute for what is.

Thirdly, in line of review we find

 (3) THE MYTHICAL NATURE OF MIND PRODUCTION.
People often try to  make it 'happen' in another fine fairy tale.

Where from ? you ask the foreman at the  factory, which is the causative feature for (say) the Boeing production ? We are studying the plans. Why, he declares, from those whose gifts are to conceive, consider, criticise, evaluate, compile, investigate, analyse and imagining, then conform imagination to reality and present the result turning thought into construction. Perhaps he raises his eyebrows slightly,  as if my apparent ignorance of such matters portrayed me as deficient in mind!

So the systems are co-ordinated in their control overviewing ultra-systems, and at last by those who have understanding, to ensure deviation does not through some unexpected advent, ruin it all  ?

Of course, he replies. What would you expect (he is getting exasperated) ?  that they just  do it by themselves and our jobs are not needed ?

No, I reply; you see it is not for my sake I am pursuing the obvious. I am recording this.

So appointment of symbols in any systems involves their conceptual meanings existing, so that they may be 'read' by appropriate receptors, either personal or programmed in the same symbol system, and this is all done where the materials needed come to hand, or to program,  at the right time, in the right sequence, in the right setting, without interfering with, but rather complementing in the right way, other supervised systems, conceptual in character, and  aligned in meaning.

Ponder it. There's a fearful lot of work there. When the systems and their overview programs are completely unworkable EXCEPT with the sub-machines (like protein-folding) and multiple routines in consecutive and mutually aligned systems and times, in place and operative cohesively with the r est, then of course we are facing the reality of creation. That is what you have to do if you want symbols and correlations and meanings and readability so that orders are DONE, and done correctly, the means being available as required, duly  prepared for insertion.

Minds ? then, I ask. These, or one vastly informed and powerful one, this is what is needed.

For one thing. Here, it is many minds, he replies.

And the  final review person or manager ?

He is out of sight, so  rarefied that I hardly ever see him. He HAS to  have such a comprehensive knowledge of the things that ALL the parts and programs and powers and materials are seen in one  hole that his mind comprehends and controls, according to his powers within the terrestrial systems,  and through his informed efforts, their arrangements are stopped from either confusion or duplication, clash or incoherence. It takes him hours and months to make his final work done,  ready for the approval ...

So he  speaks.

THIS, which we have just seen,  is not such a wonderful illustration of the domain of mind,  because when it comes to life it is FAR more complex than are the works of man. We cannot even IMITATE  pouring out the information to establish such a system as this. But as to mind, matter does not do what it does; you can try,  and people  DO try, but matter is what it is, a marvellous resource for energy with circumscribing laws of great sophistication and interplay, and mind is what it is, an  analytical instrument, able to conceive and conspire with others, to make imagination practical, and freedom  meaningful, amidst reason and  reality.

They are not the same, in their allocations, their relationship to space or to creative fantasy or realities, any more than is a scalpel and a broom the same, or a sedated drunk and an inspired genius at work, a piece of identity. Neither is the baby of the other, and it is by mind that mankind can apply our mistakes, and seek to make them happen often at will, and find the meaning of error... one of the most frequent things that man manages.

A machine cannot err; it can only vary from the ideas or hopes of its inventor. It is the mind of the inventor which can err. That is his prerogative, making life interesting, or difficult if you feel above all that...

Next we come to the fourth fantasy which wants to remove the spirit of man. Some  prefer to be determined by this and that, and to have no chance of doing anything being mere prodded cattle and worse, and so love to be independent of independence, doing what they MUST, like robots. It relieves the conscience, until  it revolts, when things can become agonising to those set on error in this domain. A rude awakening is always unpleasant, and truth cannot be removed for ever; it is only a temporary panacea, leading to huge personal dystrophy.
 

(4) THE HUMAN SPIRIT, USING WHAT YOU DENY IN ORDER TO  DENY IT.

Man in general  appears to be fabulously clever (not 'good') at deceiving himself. Self-deception is possibly as rife as any other kind on this anguished earth. The heart, we find in the prophet Jeremiah 9 by revelation, and in the newspapers by induction, is exceedingly  deceitful and desperately wicked. You just have to look at  dictators, and they are large and small in kind, and find that someone can ruin many lives for his own promotion, or  kill a few MILLION for his own cultural pleasure, psychological release, ideological penchant or paranoid push.

When you break this down to individual families, grieving or starving children, disease rampancy, rape and degenerate behaviour, loss of homes (imagine each family, one at the time, left, bereft), then crucial is the fact that there is an end not only to the  running down energy in the universe, the slowly degenerating genome of our physical construction, but to the massively corrupted spirit of man which devises such things, ignores the cost, pursues the dream, and imparts flurry to a world where the dictator judges, but imagines he is immune to the judgment of his judgments! How self-important can man become, who must breathe to continue his physical life on earth (cf. Isaiah 2:22).

Almost like an epidemic, many assert absurdities to excuse themselves- they are pushed by history and not to be blamed, for instance, or if Communist, pushed by history AND to be blamed if the dysfunctional gods who rule want it that way. It becomes a tour of irrationality: but we humans to not have to obey every inclination, fail behind every weak characteristic, mentally, morally or physically. We are limited, but have as diversities exhibit, enormous differences in spirit, sensitivity, thought, perspective, priorities, and can  dispose our wills this way or that. Our Maker, who has not left us without a Handbook, the Bible (cf. the  demonstration in SMR, TMR etc), and the Creator has not lost  His creative power. He is quite willing to use it. He is not indifferent to the human potential to abide by His laws and find His mercy and His grace. He even  predicted and did so much up to and including the Messiah's time on this earth, that it takes a miserable course, to get to that alienation made permanent, called hell. Cars and man are not readily thrown away in provisions; but when they impact with the power back of their construction, like a car smashing into its factory, there is payment, there is result.

God calls - He does not merely  turn programmatic as for a body, because people are made to be personal. He could well have scrapped man, but did not make him for futility. One of our racial  problems - HUMAN racial difficulties - is that being in God's image, though only in a created format, we have a degree of independence which has the prominent advantage of enabling love to have meaning, but drab evils  to rule also.

But what of those who insist on being aliens to their composer, like notes astray in a symphony of great depth and feeling ? who ignore design, divine designations, operative realities and logic in one vast ruinous impact ? Their spirits come crashing down like a Hang-Glider caught in a draft, and they spin in confused lack of control, they become bitter, or they repent, or they find a way up in time, and learn a lesson, or refuse to learn a lesson. Such is man. He has a spirit which is his own, and he often values and even treasures it, saying what he will NEVER tolerate, or on what terms he would rather die. He frequently does when his 'terms' are not met.

It is however not with mere analysis that men make such decision, assume such priorities, but with that imaginative and disposing element  which surveys the scene, considers the case, evaluates the position and sensing that  there is a huge responsibility involved in certain  cases, ponders how they, each one, came to exist, where help is to be found and what to do about it. It is with his surveying  spirit, his directive energy, and one of its directions may be, and often is, though frequently is not, to reject God (as illustrated in Proverbs 1). This is like throwing away a rocket when you are lost in the dark, because you are tired of the whole thing, and do not want to have to face what comes up. You CAN, indeed,  adopt a fatalistic pose and choose to perish through prejudice, and be injured by your own myth, irrationality, obstinacy.

It is quite possible. You can even analyse your position, and REJECT what you mind tells you because in the vision, or desire, or overview, or prioritisation of you spirit, you do not WANT that, it just is not you... or you may decide that for precisely this fact, you will do the opposite, for you are sick of yourself, and as the saying goes, have come to an end of yourself.

Such is the domain, positive or negative, logical or cynically insubstantial, where the spirit of man moves; and the Spirit of his Maker moves likewise, and it is such a base that gives man much of his depth, meaning and responsibility. He MAY indeed act freely to will as he will, and not only do as he will, because there IS an option FOR his will, and God has His own ways of achieving this (cf. The Marvellous Matter of Predestinative Perspectives, Appendix).

FACING FACTS WITH FAITH

But what of your spirit ? Denying the means you have of arguing, your spirit in association with your mind (not subject to it), is just one more 'NOTHING' PREOCCUPATION, but this time you're  reducing something to nothing, instead of trying to induce nothing to do things to create. Man can thus at both ends of his being, follow Paul in II Timothy 4 predicted for these days which fulfil the biblical criteria for near the end of this trial  period.  He predicted men would follow fables - accounts without rational basis, mere mental sprees - and having itching ears, set up teachers of folly. This then becomes the stage of RUIN BY DENYING YOURSELF, INSURRECTION  AGAINST YOUR OWN SPIRIT, AND ITS MAKER.  To deny yourself you use what you deny, your spirit. We, mortal by birth, have immense powers and using the very spirit which makes you human in order to deny it, is one of our seductive sequences, like a self-planted mine. In this, like the rich young ruler in Mark 10, you can run from life, or into it like Judas, or receive it as in John 1:12. The scope is vast, and man as lost, and listing to stay so, can readily imagine that although magnificently made (a fact), he is meaningless. It may SEEM that way when using no map, stumbling in the dark, having put out all light, you limp slackly or race madly along an unknown way. It is like that when on a desert road, you leave it.

You have to avoid tripping.

In fact, to  conclude this brief overview, denying yourself is a phrase which can have a very different meaning. It is one from Jesus the Christ. He exhorts us to deny ourselves,  take up our crosses and to follow Him (Luke 14). The KIND of denial here however is very different in kind. From context we find, both immediate and broader in the New Testament,  that HE means NOT to follow mere feeling, or inclination, of offence, or complacency, but to turn your back on such emotionalisms, controls and desires, and seeing what matters most, like a soldier pursue this, even if it involves hardship,  self-control and that lovely thrust of truth without tears, actuality without distortion and reality with relish.

WHEN thus a man, though as such far from being a friend of God, finds and receives the pardon and princely peace of His Maker through the only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, the biblically defined and historically famous step taken (cf. SMR Ch. 6), and does not listen to the ruts and shakings of the road, as if this drove him, and seeks to steer rationally and with spiritual address, to his eternal destination,  just as the Eternal God made him in the first place: then he is 'denying himself.'

The following choice challenges are then a joy, for there are vast adventures and enormous challenges involved,  and strength in this is far more meaningful than merely in the body (though this can help). Seek the Lord  and you will find  Him. Seek Him where He is, and He will  receive you, as you receive Him, as you see in John 5:24, 10:9,27-28, Proverbs  1 and in Jeremiah 29:13. The  opposite applies, as this shows. But you do not need to squander opportunity. The night is coming, as Christ declared, when no man can work (John 9:4). It has so far been  rather a long  day - some 2000 years, but it is not forever. God  will not  ALWAYS strive, for the spirit of man would wear out (Isaiah 57:15-20).