W W W W  World Wide Web Witness Inc.  Home Page   Contents Page for Volume What is New

CHAPTER FOUR

ALL THE TIME FOR ALL TIME

IS THE NATURE OF SPIRITUAL LOVE AND TRUTH

Much of the reason for international strife, domestic violence and vexatious treachery lies in one quarter.

Man is made for justice and truth, reliability and faithfulness, loving consideration and concern,
humility before God and the ardent seeking of His glory,
with association in His kingdom both with Him and each other,
IN SPIRIT by His WORD.

Thus set,  the entirety of all races within the human race can cohere,
mutually contribute, be restrained, be fearless when the purity of the truth is concerned
and both nurture with empathetic zeal and leave to the Lord the things that concern the individual,
without administrative arrogance or personal pride,
ignoring mordant revenge and seeking justice continually.

DO ALL THAT ALL THE TIME, and the wars of self-seeking, vindictive self-fulfilment without for all that, yielding to malicious and arrogant invasion, while pursuing honesty in the fear of the Lord, would be changed like a murkily polluted sky cleansed and adorned with the rainbow signifying mercy after cleansing rain.

WHY are so many so vicious ? ONE major reason for it is this: that they appreciate love, but do not show it; they are interested in righteousness but dare not follow it; they fear being tricked, and sacrifice truth for it. Another is the concept, often misplaced at least in part, of revenge, and a third is national interest, which might be rather written, national self-interest. It is ALL a matter of ungodliness while still USING the equipment given by God. Naturally this is contradictory and so is the world, impassioned with contradictions of God and each other as He is forgotten!

It follows. It does so both logically and historically. 

National self-interest is unattractive because so limited, but the protection of what admires truth is a just desire. Internationalism is now increasingly being made the meaningless criterion, and a particular nation is greatly downplayed (in words and theory in the ethereal realms of pretence and airiness of mind). Indeed, for the increasingly popular internationalist, patriotism is almost a sin, so that appalling statistics showed that a large percentage of youngsters in our democracy did not have much preference about democracy or not. While democracy is not godliness, yet when slave-driving totalitarian philosophies based on nothing (literally, though you have to push to show that it is so, and not very hard at that... cf. Why Not Believe ? Ch.12), bash their odious way into power, what then!

Then it may be seen to have  appreciable value, as the stricken refugees readily acknowledge. The glory of being wealthy, like China in international funds for military and threatening purposes, for example, has come in great measure from the inglorious misuse of human beings in State-run enterprises of enormous repression, often reported to be of horrendous inhumanity, making national wealth the criterion, revenge on those who do not like a power-manipulative society a desirable objective, and tyranny a substitute for truth in propaganda. Such things pulse like a throbbing tooth.

To borrow from such peoples, when such things have been PART of the aggregation of wealth is as disastrously blind as insidiously dangerous.

WHEN NOT ONLY is such tyrannical setting up of State over the individual imposed as power-lust, false majesty, and pride spread like mould,   as if God were no longer important to the relativisitic minions of national majesty that assumes irrational beginnings and  hopes for imposing results, then what do you find ? There are results. These also follow: so that both internal unrest and external disquiet result, with armaments flourishing on all sides, as tyranny seeks its own export for a pseudo-majesty which merely exalts what is not exalted, but abased in cruelty and self-will.

While to be sure, God is mocked in this self-seeking, self-serving nationalistic atheism, man is also, as iron rules of unfounded convenience for the rulers of the nation become the new face for an oppressed segment of the human race. This is not to say that there is no kindness in some, or that kindness is never operational, or that only corruption is to be found, or even that none in the land are religious, for evidence is that there are MANY millions of Christians in the land. It is however to say that when the ULTIMATES are in view, the WAY it is run, the TARGETS internationally come to mind, when what is MORE important becomes pressing: then such is the general direction of godless Marxism allied with various relaxations which allow some things to work better than the philosophy allows, in some places, in some regions, at some times.

That is merely one example. It does not white-wash others, with imperial ambitions. Thus here was one called Hitler, another called Stalin, one named Idi Amin, another by name Saddam Hussein, and before that a fellow by the name of Napoleon, and a nation called France which sought to give the world its then godless affront with mere force as a backing, while multitudes within it suffered from the proud display of international power for a time ...

Squadrons of nationalistic, philosophic, economic, imperial, force-doting times in nations could be found. The world tends to be like that, with marvellous mellowings from time to time, and sometimes the name of Christ appears in the nation's agenda, as with Britain, though this does not mean it was carried out operationally, OR on the other hand, that it was merely a front. Truth is not flexible to foolish praise or rank condemnation without knowledge. Nevertheless, some times and peoples and movement, as in early USA in much, have sought a better and more equitable, a godly and more purified spirit and objective.

Go beyond all that, a vast improvement as it is. Seek first the kingdom of heaven as a nation, let all nations do the same and you have something more durable than periods of blessedness in this or that nation. You have a vast reduction in mutual fear, in open aggressiveness, in bluster and build-up, in masked self-seeking pretending to love justice, and in revenge seeking to look like equity. You have employes positively considered (as in the famous Le Tourneau industries), freedom of expression linked to a world-wide thrust to express the truth, honesty and integrity, delight in the mutual care ... You stop imposing nothing as the basis, or generating something from it, to start. You start with what ALL starts: what is sufficient for the final result. When it is all, then all is the minimum condition of what starts it; and eternity the minimum time for the provision, since shorter time obliterates the basis for arrival.

It would be a different world. The kingdom of heaven is that different kingdom. The Saviour from sin is the only way you are going to have it. In the millenium it will appear,  as God vindicates truth in the open display of righteousness (as in Isaiah 11, 32, 65, Revelation 20, Psalm 72). Mutual concern linked with kingdom delight then activates the otherwise roaming human heart; co-operation loses its egotistic tinge or triumphalistic parade. This works,  not by suppression but by the thrust of its mutually appreciative enterprise, based in a loving spirit, while individuals are not oppressed just because they work better in vast concentration of talent. Freedom and love function as one since the love has the same object, the God of creation, and the creatures of His rule. UNDERSTANDING becomes a dynamic, and the LORD is the centre, whose glory replaces the efforts to impress with power, hatred, violence, fearfulness or the other disasters of depraved human existence.

It WILL BE a different world; but it is not to be instituted by the power of any sector, including the Church in itself, as in the earlier imperialism of Romanism, or undue national impact of Anglicanism, good as were many of its intentions. THAT sort of power is excluded from the Church (John 18:36), and has to be filtered out in any expression of the Lord. As to the Lord of all, when protection by force arose on the part of Peter and his sword, divine rebuke also went out, even if it were directed for the protection from murder of its LORD! As God instituted the creation (Colossians 1:15ff.), and salvation (Ephesians 2), without our aid, SO without our aid He will institute judgment and the overthrow of the engines of evil in this world when the TIME COMES.

To be sure, the attestation of the Church, in preaching and teaching, in example and love, in kindness and concern is a crucial provision, an illustration over the last two millenia in the name of Christ (though wolves in sheep's clothing, outside biblical specifications, have preyed rather than prayed). Fox's Book of Martyrs shows something of how long and how viciously privilege was abused; but also have faithfully and how brilliantly so many attested truth, showing in continuity the reality of the power, peace and purity of the Lord, even to death.

What then do we find ? It is this.

There was a time to create our kind of time, when you wait for things, a time to create God's salvation, when you receive Him, His Spirit and His word, and His transformation in regeneration, His presence by His Spirit indwelling, and His peace; and just so, there is a time for judgment and the ending of this world's ways,  as in Isaiah 59, 66, Micah 7, Ezekiel 36-39. First the Church suffers grossly as in Revelation, and evil men and ways grow worse and worse, which Christ specified in looking from HIS time on earth, to HIS return at a time when obliteration of man would be the alternative! (Matthew 24:5-14, II Thessalonians 2, II Timothy 4, II Peter 3).

We are approaching that time in vast leaps and boundings, as radioactive matter, unbounded evil chatter, transmutation of gender in thought, altered sexuality prescriptions arrive like a bomb to the created design in man, and anti-God speech is implicitly if not explicitly used to wound the mind of growing children, already facing personal sin, and now groomed for a spiritual goon show as if it were serious, which it is IN INTENT, as naturalism is their effectual god, useless as it is to show ANY of its claims as viewable or defensible on the basis of observation^*1 . There are rulers in waiting for this world, and it is not only evil in nations which is to blame, but the cause of cursedness lies in hearts, in philosophies, which name and rely on power and distort and caricature Christianity, as did Nietzsche, who appealed to the brutal and led the blind to pay for their day!

The conditions of accursedness have their way and their day. What is their lair ? Evil is to be protected, grossness is to be respected, violence is on hand at large volume; recklessness lies in the thrust of the renegade with ever growing power to blight; diplomacy fails almost altogether to dare to mention Christ, for any nation, and if there are exceptions they are exceedingly few. Folly is exalted, pride is implemented, self-satisfaction is lauded, self-esteem is demanded, and the pre-occupation with ANY substitute for peace founded on truth, grace founded on divine mercy and wisdom founded on the Creator's stated ways as in the Bible (cf. *1 in the preceding Chapter ) becomes something for another world, while this one motivates, activates and fouls much of international discourse, turning it to discord, to gain safety, power,  respect, hegemony, pride or whatever other foolish mode of conflict may be in mind.

Imagine each seeking the good of the other, as in various coded ways the body tends to do under emergencies requiring sacrifice and concentration of this or that; imagine human life in practice NOT being for ultimate grasp of profit or pleasure, but for concern and interest, with a constructive appetite to HELP one another, overcome each other's weaknesses by example and refined support, concern and consideration, together with a mutual inspiration for the glory of the Maker of it all, to be in the Spirit of truth and guided and girded by Him who died, facing the worst, and rose, pointing to the best to come. That is the alternative which has no counterpart in demonstration, empirical exhibition or logical necessity.

There are glimmers. At a national level, there was some sense in a small short way given some illustration in parts of the British war effort in World War II, in such places as the Air Force and the ways of the First of the Few. When it is not only national, but international, not only in war but in peace, not only in seasons but in all seasons, then you have what works because it is the design specification, the way of the Lord, the specification FROM the love of God, IN the wisdom of God FOR the wisdom of man.

But as in Proverbs 1, man in general, in his major aggregates will have none of His counsel (cf. Mathew 7:15-21). He will even pretend to be Christian, as may a nation, when it seems to serve, or some ludicrous substitute tries to combine love of this world with love of the God who both made and cursed it, while providing the antidote to curse which, being rejected, increases the severity of the offence.

So you get this world, filled with delicate beauty (by creation), magnificent majesty (by creation), staggering awareness of wonderful things (on the part of some), and love (in a small minority) that is not bound to self-assertion or just self-expression, and yet all but immersed in a baptism by immersion indeed, one that is not theatrical but oppressively actual. It is one beneath EVILS unspeakable, cruelties all but unthinkable, graspings gutless and gross, and equipped for no small reason with a curse on its cute condition that from the first, or near it, set inane hopes and ambitions above the word of God.

It has come. It came with splendour. It goes. It goes in shame.

The other way is that of Jesus Christ, exhibited with power, shown with grace, implemented with majesty, poured out in pity, changing the heart, the spirit of man, till it becomes regenerated, rebuilt, its spirit changed, its enchantments with evil burnt up, its grace sufficient for all things, its soldiers experiencing sufferings and given joy in the Lord through the Gospel.

When that time comes, and it will come, just as it is now drawing near (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5), then the earth will be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. The realities of creation have for long been shown experimentally, just as the fruit of unfaith and disbelief for its part, has been for some few millenia, then the ways of this world will be excluded in this. Not only in the finale is the world purged, but it goes because that way and time of test is then over, and the real estate will be gone forever; a new heavens and a new earth, just as a magnate might construct a new mansion,  comes from the God who made without any help, the first one. It came; it lived; it lost; it goes.

It is by forgetting God and His grace, His word and its place, that this world is going to its justly deserved doom (II Peter 3), as do its squabblers exposed in their meeting with truth, where lying is finished and reality rules. Alas, this world has sentenced itself before truth; it is by ignoring mercy in extreme degree that it is coming near its end. It is by mercy that ANY (as in the case of Noah) are saved, and indeed it is well to consider Hebrews 2:3-4.

"How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation;
which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord,
and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him;
God also bearing them witness,
both with signs and wonders, and with different miracles,
and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?"

In connection with this topic, see also News 23.

NOTE

*1

See SMR pp. 140ff.. The gods of naturalism have no go! Creation even of information does not come without intelligence, a matter of significant challenge for long (as with Professor Gitt in his presentations and investigations), and indeed as in the Second Law of Thermodynamics, there is no known case where this decrease in available energy and increase in entropy instead does not apply, or is contradicted. The law works.

Not superman but super-deceptive man is the prognosis. As to the cause, matter is not found producing mind, mind spirit or nothing something. Eternity is the source of time, and God is the king of eternity, His eternity being what this world needs to be born: His is the competence for the job and the necessity of being there always, since otherwise there is nowhere to come from, so there is no coming, so no going into existence of what  depends on what it shows no capacity to make. We are here. He is there, and has demonstrated this to the ultimate point (cf. SMR, TMR).