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EPILOGUE TO VOLUME TEN
WORDS OF WOE AND WARNING,
WISDOM AND CONFIDENCE
It is notable, indeed notorious how many people, indeed what a proportion of the peoples of this world, use Jesus Christ, His name for ulterior reasons. The prize it and yet despise it, find it irresistible to deploy in this or that way, while abusing it for their own works, ideas, religions.
Thus, quite apart from the Christian believers in the biblical Christ, in the Lord Jesus Christ, that infinite being who in intimacy became man to save him from his sins and make simple and sure the way to the Trinity for life everlasting, even far below this, many evidently cannot do without Him. His name is irresistible for their purposes, whether in one way or another. So they seize the name, and strip its owner who made it great by works incomparably arresting, of these or those empirical or biblical features. A tamed christ seems to become necessary for the authority or éclat or institution of their ideas or religion, and they use Jesus Christ as a passing ally, to give thrust. They might never have started without Him, claiming Him, each in their own bogus fashion. It is indeed a self-made fraud which they purvey, the name stripped of the reason for it, and the nature of Him whose it is.
As God sent Christ, so these charlatans (as in Jeremiah 23), creative artists, personality robbers, seize His name and instead of letting it speak of what He did, they remanufacture what it stands for, so that it stands for something more to their liking, so giving themselves desired semblance of authority on the one hand, along with the way of living they want, on the other. It is a kind of binary double dealing.
Thus they make another Christ than He for whom God prepared a body, as in Psalm 40, Hebrews 1-2, with which He bore sin, making a mere semblance of the Saviour Himself. It is in the end, even an ultimate form of name-dropping!
In essence, they make use of His name and yet make their christ, still called Christ, still Jesus, according to their desire. It is rather like making Hitler a Communist and Stalin a Nazi, but their false confidence knows no bounds.
This is in effect the very definition of a sect, being creative about the Creator in terms of self-made jesus christs, capitals here not used, except as expression of what is happening. In that sense, both Romanism (often called Roman Catholicism, but the 'Roman' is the opposite of the term catholic) with its additions, and Islam with its subtractions, are Christian sects. Both used Christ as a part of their basics (cf. SMR pp. 1032-1088H, 809, 822ff., 829ff., 977ff.,1075ff., 1078-1082, 1088B - E, Highway to Hell, Lord ... Ch. 3, More Marvels ... Ch. 4, Divine Agenda Ch. 6). Islam omits His work as basic, dismisses the centrality of sacrificial substitution and the crucial character of divine, free redemption through that work, and yet claims a kinship with the Jewish prophets, which include Moses and Isaiah, and David, as though one minus one is still a positive number, the alignment thus becoming zero.
As Romanism proliferates the singularity of the sacrifice of Christ, so Islam annuls its efficacy, the deity of its voluntary victim, and in this, the magnificence of the tender loving mercy of God, to provide for the people a free way home, in which it is He Himself who meets the standards for us (Romans 3:23ff., Psalm 32, 71, Ephesians 2), He who changes our hearts, and makes them in regeneration willing to work by grace, presenting eternal life to any, not for attainment but reception. God does not suffer man to return from his fallen condition by his own efforts, for He is far too holy to be imitated in His creation, as if fallen man could provide a way of entry to such standards as His, a heaven so inhabited being no haven, but rather a repository for unregenerated flesh.
What Islam here does in the plastic surgery on the name, fame and attainments of Jesus Christ, is therefore like a beheading with the blunt knife of imagination, or the case in a obstetrics department with no babe (cf. Isaiah 9, Luke 1-2), and a fortress with no security. Indeed, these two numerically major religions are not all who act in this type of manner towards surgery on Christ for their utterly contrary purposes or programs, for many are the other Christian sects which add to the billions of Romanism and Islam. Nominally perhaps more than 40% of this world uses Jesus Christ in significant measure for its religion. What a compliment, even from those who oppose Him! How it reminds us of Paul, declaring,
"For many walk, of whom I have told you and now tell you again,
who are the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction!"
(from Philippians 3:17-21).
How gracious therefore of the Lord to warn, and small wonder that false prophets were predicted by Himself when on earth (Matthew 24:24), this and false christs aplenty; a word reaching back to Jeremiah 23. Here, he proclaimed that such unsent persons would become especially profligate and plentiful as this Age progressed to its end (Jeremiah 23:16-20)! How well in this as in all, the Lord has performed His Shepherd's care, cautioning the Gospel Age concerning duplicitous duplicates (cf. II Peter 2:1)!
On this spiritual and scripturally defined basis, Islam has appointed a false prophet, one, and Romanism a type of false prophet (the papacy (cf. SMR 1032-1088H). Again, Communism for its part in its mainstream, has worshipped the god who is not there, and pays him in its sacrificial offerings, with the bodies and woes of millions, for whom its only ultimate is the ultimatum, as so often in Islam likewise, submit or die. With Communism*1, the death may be postponed, while they get useful labour out of the unloved body of their victims, as in Islam, even outside jihads and their notoriety, in milder cases, it taxes the finances and requires a spirit of submission, amidst a torrent of humiliation, death awaiting 'rebellion'.
Others with different omissions, commit man-manoeuvring thrusts as it pleases them with differing insights allied together by the misuse of force, abuse of man and in great measure, re-creation of Jesus Christ centuries or millenia after His work was done. We do indeed as Jeremiah foretold, consider now the matter perfectly, that is, in its final multitudinous manifestation.
So does our race find the meaning of misusing the name or works of Christ. In Communism, the Saviour becomes the proletariat, the god of mindless chatter of matter, itself begging the question of causal origins, carved from nothing by imaginary forces, themselves with the same nugatory and vacuous basis, while a secular version of hell is amply provided by their not so tender labour camps.
Alas for the human race, like a back with vertebrae out of place is this, when it departs from the mercy and truth of Christ, eternal, incarnate, breacher of death and predicted and wonder-working author of salvation: stripped indeed is IT! Such is its inheritance when it wanders from His ways of actual mercy, leaving truth for travesty, significance for slaughter, torture and ruin the wonders of its brave new world, replacing the place of peace, pardon, purification and regeneration.
Man does not need new teeth for grinding his race, but old truth, for its salvation. God has known man from the beginning, and provided solution from the outset (Genesis 3:15), first as a gleam, then a searchlight, then as the very light of the world (John 8:12, 9:4,John 3:16-18). Turning out the light, the current disposition of the nations, does leave the people in darkness, with ever new depths becoming dynamic as the pulsating century progresses on its ruinous path. It is as if it has put itself in reverse gear. Indeed, the night comes, as Christ declared, when no man can work.
Instead, always keep near the light, love Him for His salvation, and rejoice in His regal rays and close companionship. Here is both light and delight.
NOTE
Indeed, great is the supply as we come to the end before the night comes, of what is not needed.
Of what then is this ample supply in this present world ? It is one of people technicians, manipulators of flesh, invaders of minds, imaginative directors of morals, ogres of insights.
In one case, the Communist, they are instructed by matter, where nothing matters but the minds of the mentors, whose cruelty knows no bounds, whose abhorrence of morals is mirrored in the horror of their own, whose blame leads to torture or extermination, freely given to some, while with fearful irony, this often comes where blame on their secular model is not even possible. Here, all must go as it will; though in fact the idea is to import their own wills and to give them a moral significance differing from what preceded their assault, in this, that they are not merely unfounded, but confounded, inventing what is supposedly non-existent and judging by these evanescent means.
Others exalt their own ideas, as Paul exposes in II Corinthians 10-11, measuring themselves by themselves, paragons of perfidy, using the one who gave, often for profit (as in II Peter 2), whether of money or psyche (II Corinthians 11:20). In torment they torment, for without truth, what comes but force, aggression, efforts to force submission to some faith or focus, so that as lords they may decree, direct. Indeed, many secular governments are beginning to show the same teeth on a similar basis, and the two are to combine as in Revelation 13, with the second beast, the religious one (Revelation 13:11ff.), seeking to give more kudos to the first.
God has it all covered from the first, and it lasts to the end.