The love of God

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CHAPTER FIVE

WHAT GOD WOULD HAVE

HEAD AND HEART HUNTING

The love of God, the sovereignty of God, the choice of God, the election of God, the selection of God, all these aspects of the divine being are of profound importance to man, His creation.

It is patent that God repeatedly proposes a plan for man, only to be rejected in this, leading as at Eden, to results so negative that one would hope man would learn. But he does not, on the whole, choose to do so, so that rather like an advanced jet fighter, given some choice as to the pilot, he crashes often, and as history advances, with an increasing propensity for the loss of millions of lives at war alone, more recently, with a good sprinkling of blood in sacrifices. These are the specialty of a group of Islamic warriors, who seem beyond mere subjugation of others to such religious values as they may embrace, to desire de-cerebration as a means of death, a simple decapitation, a horrid sacrifice allowing sprinkling of blood, after the first torrents, to complete their sacrificial acts of disposal and display of their fellow human beings.

It rather reminds of head hunters to Australia's North, as in Borneo. Nor are those who make a death business of their religion confined to this mode, amidst the jihadists, nor is the bloodshed confined to Islam alone, in religious or ideological bent, Communism having made rather a specialty of death in its short career in Russia.

Let us however revert to the ever news-focussed Islam^*1. Whether such sacrifices are made so often, for so long, in so many groups with so many acronyms, in the name of their religion, which as zealots they affirm, or against it, as some others affirm, the policy of subjugation of others to the ruler they desire, is common and nearly resulted in the take-over of Europe, stopped in 732 at the battle of Tours, but continued at the extremities in the Middle East.

It had of course a total set-back in the end of World War I when even Israel (as to territory historically famous for the Jew, but not then in its power) was delivered through the work of General Allenby, on behalf of the Allies, and the Empire of the Ottoman Turks lay stricken.

Just such things escalate, excited in mode, triumphalist in show, attracting many like flies to the sacrifice, so other wars for other causes break out, and diseases from time to time threaten the world; but it does not listen.

Continually, through all these wars, as predicted with the escalation of evil works and immoral ragings, as Jesus Christ predicted would come before He did (Matthew 24), in His return to the race for which He died, there has been a mercy as if transmitted through personal towers from the start. The message does not cease, so that if anyone should receive Him as divine Saviour and eternal Lord, not in violent submission but in loving delight, in faith by grace, then there is rescue from the sins so bound in and by this world. It is this which so becomes available, with the power of God to back it.

The good news has been viewed, on multiplied occasions accepted, even from time to time given national acclamation, for millenia; but now it is being increasingly thrown away, either for vicious and unviable mutations, or for plain negations, affirming man not in need of repentance but of more power, more liberty, to break up nations, hearts, heads and bodies and the paths of peace in knowledgeable wars so that you even have different kinds of wars at the same time, like someone playing fiddle-sticks with multiple balancing acts half completed, but never working, as things crash.

This is simply the outworking in detail of the principle of rebellion against the government of God, one of the more pathetic features of which development is the use of force to resolve unresolved philosophic and hence political problems, indulge psychic variability and impress the addled aspirations without inspiration, of man. One of philosophy's main grounds for multiplication is the simple fact that without Jesus Christ, there are in multiplied arenas, no solutions; whereas in the texture and context of the divinely donated word, the Bible, no harassment lasts, but peace is to be found in the contented coverage and explication in principle available (II Corinthians 10:5, Proverbs 8:8, John 8:12, Philippians 1:7, Romans 11:32-36, Psalm 36:9, 89:15, 119:29-32).

The basic biblical fact remains: rebel against the Lord and there is no stable ground, no rock, no support, no agreement, except in chunks here or there as some mighty regime inflicts its hideous damage before being displaced, usually by one no better, and often if possible, worse (cf. Daniel 4:17,27).

As modern man, even in Europe and Australia, Canada, USA, once notable for some degree of interest in the things of Christ Jesus, even in sites such as the British Empire, moves ponderously, or in excited jags, further from even the morals of God, and its exhibit in the sacrifice of the Messiah - he leans like one bent to violent wind. He tends towards the earth, becoming earthy while airy fantasies spin about in iridescent multiplicity. Yet in leaving it, they leave what has at base made many nations like Australia, attractive. Thus instead of sacrificing millions of mankind by ritual acts, naked hate, ludicrous religious thrusts and people praising destruction as the way of glory (farewelling all but themselves), and so fulfilling the prediction of such morbidity found in Revelation 6, there is scope for transformation amid mercy, regeneration amidst truth, where spiritual pathology no more rules the heart, or makes the bluster.

TRAFFIC WITHOUT TRUTH IS HEAVY AND HEADY

AND THE ROAD TOLL IS DEPLORABLE

Yet on this world goes, and as it flits by the road signs and the traffic lights as if demented, life is made less and less in importance by those who make themselves more and more important in disposing of it; and what then ? Contempt for the life of man by man makes increasingly of man a contemptible race, though not all directly join in this abandon.

It brings out the declaration in the name of the Lord by the prophet Jeremiah, made in 17:9, that "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it ?" Philosophers and psychiatrists disagree with each other, often vociferously, or now frequently in dead disillusion and empty words, have varnished dreams or famished ideas (cf. SMR Chs. 3 - 4, with Extension to Ch. 4), starting often with the idea of forces beyond man controlling him, even disengaging truth from his mind, and in some cases from existence, while they mysteriously for all that, manage to tell us what it is. Truth deniers, they affirm the truth, system products, they tell the systems, like cognitive cogs or flies on horseflesh, not knowing what they do. What they find out is that they do not know, and that is like saying that it is particularly hard to see atoms without a microscope, or sub-atomic particles without an electron microscope. Deny the means and you forego the ends; deny the truth and you cannot pronounce it, except as a child's magician.

Without their Maker, their relativistic theories are left without the plan, purpose and purport of the Maker, and leaving, in proud neglect, His attested, verified and validated declaration, the Bible^*2, parallel in writing to the commands in the DNA, they cannot see.

To this so advanced and muddled generation, Christ's call is the same. As with Israel before the destruction of Jerusalem, Christ mourned over the city, so now is this increasing Gentile ground for grief enlarged. Then it was this that He declared to Jerusalem (Luke 19:42): "If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes." Within a generation, Jerusalem became almost a symbol of utter destruction, horrid suffering, extreme degradation.

WHAT GOD WOULD HAVE

Today we are especially interested in this field, in the word "if". There was the way, and what was not the way (Proverbs 4:19, Psalm 119:160) - with the divine words indicating it was the WRONG WAY, GO BACK! But this was unheeded as they went on their own way, whether hypocritically with God, confusedly trying to make changes to God, rebelliously dismissing Him, or even poking fun at Him as you see, in various ways in Malachi, classing Him with the ineffectual, precisely when on their very way to showing just how effective His word is, in that as in all, it happens.

In the end it all rests on what God would have, for He is no tyrant, though omnipotent. Consider now what He says. All souls He knows in His own inimitable but profusely adequate and clear way, for nothing is hid before Him with whom we have to do (Hebrews 4:13); and He foreknows it, nothing being beyond His divine capacities on whom all rests, and because of whom anything else is (John 1:1-3). We know, because He has told us whose mind it is and whose heart, that HE would have all reconciled to Himself, would not condemn but rather save the world, and would have all come to a knowledge of the truth, that He has SO loved as to give ultimate preciousness to the rough-hided horrors of sinners for their redemption, and then confirms that the only way you can therefore be lost is this: if you prefer the darkness to the given light and salvation. That in the light of His attitude of heart, is what it takes to be condemned (cf. John 15:21ff.,3:19).

This principle He applies, in His own way, and this result for each He knows in His own way; but WHAT IT IS, HE KNOWS, and not some mystery. To man before the event of salvation comes to pass, it may be hidden; from God NOTHING is hidden. We may analyse the elements in the defence of the truth, but this is what it is biblically, unless you like to make selective omissions and mutations, which of course is no truth at all, but alas, wilfulness. In God what HE would have is sharply clear, and when it comes to man made in His own image, what he would have when past the enslavements of sin, before all time, this is clear; and NOTHING will be forced, for the image of God is not like that. YOU would have darkness rather than light and so confrontation or rejection rather than acceptance of the Lord and His love, very well. It will be fulfilled. These are inevacuable biblical elements.

It is not in the heart of God in His love toward man (Titus 2-3) that the problem lies, with evil and judgment; for He has done His uttermost within the confines of that wonder which He created for man with His freedom in the divine image, in the ways of the Lord, to love or shun. It lies in the heart of man, where judgment also comes, when time runs out.

But proceeding with this WOULD HAVE ultimacy, which does not deny or defy the truth of what is in His own creation of man, and the image given, we turn first to Isaiah.

Consider now more at large, what He says. It is necessary to listen to the Lord, not tell Him.

In Isaiah there is a similar warning to that found in Luke 19 and Matthew 23, with the use, this time of the phrasing, "Oh that you had heeded My commandments," with the rolling beauty, as of a mighty river, that WOULD HAVE followed if only they had been responsive. In Jeremiah 17 we find that despite the utter horror to come to Jerusalem of that day, the due result of centuries of often systematic rebellion, with some revivals, there is a way which, should they follow it, a testimony of sincerity, an act of piety, a discipline of reality, they would yet live. It was there, the appeal was again made, even at that late hour, next to tragedy. Look at Jeremiah 17 and see the offer.

How easy it was! But they did not follow it. Having itemised the offer, God then declared this: "And it will be, if you heed Me carefully ... then shall enter the gates of this city kings and princes sitting on the throne of David ... and they will come from the cities of Judah and from the places around Jerusalem, from the land of Benjamin and from the lowland, from the mountains and from the South, bringing burnt offerings and sacrifices... But if you will not heed Me," then an unquenched fire would be kindled on the city.

In this late day, fresh entreaty, categorical, merciful, it was as if the mercy of God leapt from its moorings to make yet one more thrust to awaken, deliver and bring blessing to a city filled with injustice, misuse of authority both in religion and in law (cf. Zephaniah 3:3). There can come a time when it is more cruel to allow an evil thing to continue -

as when children are mistaught and misled and misused
and justice is a mockery of distorted laws,
often applied with cultural proclivities at heart instead of truth,
which lies as in Isaiah 59, stricken in the street -

than to let it produce its own due havoc and face ruin.

It is much the same with cars and the leaden foot and power-possessed head inventing ways of delicious mayhem for the mind, as if this world were not really there and ruin was only for another world altogether.

See how the Lord puts it again. Your peace, as in Isaiah 48, WOULD HAVE BEEN LIKE A RIVER. What WOULD HAVE BEEN is focussed as well as what WILL BE IF a humble and receptive course be taken, relative to the Creator of man (cf. Isaiah 66:1-2). There are qualifications for the practice of medicine or law or dentistry, and for the practice of life. With man, these may be foolish or wise; but with God they are only wise, for He is the only wise God (Jude 25), and in fact the only One (Isaiah 45:12,18). Nothing did not make nature before nature was there to do it, and having nature JUST THERE ANYWAY says nothing of its cause, so that you have all the language of DNA, and the laws of physics and chemistry, not to say of mathematics and of logic, sitting there without base, reason or account, simply suspending thought and ignoring scientific method, which indicates the causal inter-relationships which do not cease to apply, in logic or the empirical, simply because the scope increases.

God is just there anyway, and eternally, any absence ever, leaving no place for appearance to come, and without Him nothing would be, since nothing would be all there is, except for question- begging bravura on the part of what ceases to think. Nothing, indeed, is not productive and CANNOT be.

It thus becomes a matter magic: it is THERE, no reason, no cause, no background. Then do anything you like with it, according to the tidings and the tempo of the times. Imagine it shimmering into existence and shambling out, since causation is dismissed (cf. Causes) and the spontaneity of what is not there comes into play. But alas, it is WORK which needs to be done, to create.

Since the nature of nature and the nature of its origin then is severed from thought in a display of irrationalism, then the misuse of the same, often even coming to the spiritual insanity of worshipping it, or making it cause itself before there to do it, or making part of it make the rest without either means or example, sets in like fog in the streets of London.

"IF" is again the focus in Mark 9:22-23. IF YOU CAN DO ANYTHING ... says the father of the tormented child. IF YOU CAN BELIEVE, ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE TO HIM WHO BELIEVES, is the retort.

It is first necessary to realise with whom you are dealing when you consider the question of options, and results, between God as sovereign and king, only Saviour and Creator, and mankind. Then noticing the IF, you realise that the option if real, to follow or lie fallow, or to deceive, or to distort, or to behave as if you know the truth without God, despite a relativistic system assumed, which has no truth, or a religious one which has no verification or validity. IF you do this, you will become ready for judgment, because your way is not true; your are ignorant of design, though overflowing with it within your own person, mind and logical thought, when it is such (cf. Deity and Design, Designation and Destiny esp. Section 2).

You may elect to follow the way to and in and for God, or not. IF you do not, then you are left in the realm of an atrocity against God which is equally another against yourself. If you do not know (John 15:21ff.), then you would be not finally under judgment; but when you both know and reject your Maker and His verified word to you, then the case is precise, like a sharp axe splitting wood.

You may ELECT to come to your Creator-Redeemer, or you may SELECT something or someone else (including yourself or your appointee) and in all this, this is the appearance of power, but should the option be removed, then this leaves small power and none to redeem. It has point, there is need, but beyond it is the provision for its dismissal. In RETROSPECT, THERE IS THE CASE COVERED, and then you may look back of what is received, whether deceit for deception or admission of the Lord, for acknowledgement.

THE BRILLIANT WILL AND PLEASANT PATHS OF GOD

The Bible tells us that God has FOREKNOWN everyone, and chosen His own from before the first tick of time, movement of objects, or the space for it, before creation whether of souls or of matter, of mind or of space. Man struggles for long to prepare architectural drawings, concepts, to make environmental studies, to consider cultural and other aspects before creating; and God who made man does this and more, in that He considers the entirety of creation, before it is made.

In doing so, we learn in Romans 8:29ff., there are some whom as His own, He foreknows. It is (Romans 9), nothing to do with their foreseen works, and indeed (Romans 3:23ff.), that would achieve only a hideous distortion, as if to compliment some on attainments, when their situation and selves are given. It does not depend on the quality or calibre of your will (John 1:12). However God knows the facts.

He DOES foreknow them, each one, and there is a circuit involved, for when He foreknows anyone as His, then He predestines, so that the thing as known to be true, assuredly comes to pass, and He justifies the ones concerned, paying the ransom to cover their sin out to them, and eventually glorifies them, as in the circuit of Romans 8.

You see something of this overall lustre in Jeremiah 1, concerning the prophet.

Selection is BASED on God before time was, that is not our kind of time when you have to wait for things to happen, before you can have them, a statuesquely sequential and consequential kind of time. What is done thus depends on who He is, His nature. We learn further than He is NOT WILLING that any should perish amidst a perishable world (II Peter 3), itself in due course to be physically removed, and further, that He would have all to come to repentance and the knowledge of the truth (I Timothy 2), that He by no means takes pleasure in the death of the wicked, but yearns and seeks and appeals that He TURN, TURN TURN from His wicked way, lamenting - Why die! turn and live (Ezekiel 18 and 33).

Again, in Colossians 1:19ff., we discover that in the very arena of understanding which comes when the cross of Christ is concerned, the means of paying the price for man, so that it might be set to the account of believers (as in Isaiah 53:1-6, II Corinthians 5:17ff.), there is something that pleases God. And what is it ? It is this: to bring all things, whether in heaven or on earth into reconciliation with Himself. IN TERMS of the redemptive sacrifice of the cross (Hebrews 7-10): this is what God is pleased with doing.

In fact, it does not happen, only some, pre-elect, being found, because that is what the foreknowledge SHOWED. God would have all, but love though lavish is not crazy, and it cannot pretend to be so when it is not a question of a land grab, but a soul grab, where the image of God in man is disregarded, or discarded, and mere potency subduing, forces change the subject which make submission result. Some religions may want this, and seem to covet SUBMISSION more or less as a trade-mark, but with God, it is not so. Man is responsible, God is not irresponsible, but caring creates the path of care, His own; and no God is to be found who is so removed as to wholly unlike man, in this, that He made man in His image.

If He is to grieve as rejection by this or that person, so be it. Love will not be prostituted to gain results. Self-control prevents such a distortion. But the scope, intensity, indeed passion of love, not to become something else, but to find, so that it is RECEIVED as sent and where it delivers (John 1:12), this is crucial. You do not drug a pre-bride into saying yes, or overcome with expressions of power. Love has other ways and nowhere is this clearer than in the Bible.

Now we are at this point interested in the concept of CONDITION. IF you receive, THEN you find all that is offered, and this includes a new heart.

Unfortunately, man is already fallen (Romans 5), as he displays in various artful and obnoxious, cunning and hypocritical ways, self-made soarings and self-congratulations, self-centred paranoid professions of the ways for any good judge to judge him and the like. Hence, since this disinclines the reception of God (cf. I Corinthians 2:14), the matter is brought beyond the mere pathological quirk of rejection, to the realities for man before sin raged or was even available, before man was even created. GOD KNOWS HIS OWN and FOREKNEW THEM (II Timothy 2:19, Ephesians 1:4), and being who He is, and they being so known, takes them. There is not one He misses out of those who are His, who are willing to receive Him, and predestination assures this result.

Thus in the end, because of sin, it is the last word that is said from the first, and inherent is the IF, though this can result in practical realities down the track into history, and the choice is real and assured, for God ensures that (cf. John 6:65, 6:39), for "this is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing but raise it up at the last day."

God KNOWS His own before time, and WOULD HAVE ALL even in heaven and on earthy, but with grief loses some, where love - and God IS love as in I John 4:7ff. - is not to find a place, even before sin, even in the annals of eternity. What Christ showed in earth is true in the wonders of heaven, in time, before our time (Hebrews 13:8), after and before the space-time continuum which physicists so admire. Thus consummation appears when all finished, all preparations complete (John 14:1ff.), the conditions are broader, but the results better, more lasting, not subject to decay, and pain has passed away.

The Lord knows them in prospect, and then later in retrospect, He selects in truth and elects in wholesomeness, being not subject to carnal passions, like those who MUST have this or that because their unsublime and delimited natures find or feel a vacancy TO BE FILLED! Needing nothing in any dimension, He is content to give, both in creation and in salvation, and indeed as also in the rescue of His Church as in Matthew 24 and I Thessalonians 4; and on His giving we all depend, whether for salvation as for His children, or damnation for those too grown up in desire, for what is less than this, which defies, neglects, ignores, sets aside, debars or mocks, derides or scorns the Maker and His mastery of the mystery of iniquity in the restoration of redemption!

No small thing is it to make man, to make him free, and to save Him; and the credentials for this are limited to One, the triune God who sends the Saviour through whom is sent from the Father the Spirit who applies and enables, inspirits and inspires man, when once He receives this, the everlasting Word of God made flesh as sacrifice, Saviour, Lord, God and ... the answer.

This the Bible teaches, and fussy, fuzzy or pretentious theories are very welcome to the cultures of man, but these, they do not create the means for man, or for his salvation, which rests ultimately in the heart of God. Resolving all problems of human philosophy, of freedom in its reality and law in its impact, of the place of all things in their various components, God has made clear His own way in His own divine nature. Thus in Him we find revealed the ingredients for our condition and rescue. They are not hard ... for us.

It is that

	in His love, He should even be bothered;
	in His purity, He is not seeking secretly or unknowingly something for himself, making man's option a fraud, so denying liberty;
	in His steadfastness, He does not give up until He gains the results of His counsel;
	in His reliability, once it is prepared and propounded, His precious children are safe and sure (cf. Psalm 138, Romans 8:29ff., Malachi 3:16-18);
	in His being the Creator of man, there is nothing too hard, erudite, hidden that He does not know, understand and have capacity to treat IN HIS LOVE;
	in His devotion, it matters profoundly as well as decisively to Him that one be saved and not lost,
	as in His love of peace, wars will come to cease because of truth and love and reality, and the knowledge of it, sponsored by Him, found IN Him is exportable where He is found in the heart of man through His chosen channel and sacrificial and everlasting Saviour, Jesus Christ (Revelation 21-22).

Hence if any man WISHES he could find the Lord, it is not that HE does not have the desire of heart by any good means that such might be saved, rescued, given deliverance (cf. Hebrews 6:18ff., Luke 15, Matthew 22).

It is not that He seeks to obscure the way to the zealous, not liking them so very much, but selfishly selective, sovereignly elective as if love were not IN the sovereign Himself, He disdains low level life. Take comfort therefore and act; but if you do not find it so, and your soul remains as if in concrete, then it is not because your way is deliberately made impossible by Gid, but that despite the love and provisions of God, your heart is negatively moved. The responsibility for that is 100% that of man, for there is nothing further for God to do, but provide the means of rescue, the mode of it, the man for it, sent from heaven, His own Word in executive role to save, the results of it through the power of the Holy Spirit (cf. Titus 3:1-7).

What liberty is this which God has done so much to ensure, for in love there MUST be liberty for response; for without it, it is programmatic push or putsch, not personal. And God has made us persons, in His own image indeed, one magnificent in scope, but free to be delusive in option, or clear with the divine light that fills when gained.

Not one philosophic, logical or principial problem can be found in His way, word and revelation, for making all, He covers all, and like a mechanical zealot can explain, but with infinitely more wisdom the nature of the equipment, of its plight and the reasons for its restoration. This being a PERSONAL product, is no mere matter of analysis, though analysis does apply; for it involves will and disposition, thought and rationalisation possibilities, squirming often and twisting of truth. Yet with God, all things are possible, even the rescue of each one of us who freely comes, product of grace, found through faith, with a salvation the grant of God.

How delightful that there is no room to complain - "I was not chosen by God!"

If that were felt, put it to the test right now. WHY would you want to be chosen ? It is because you trust God more than yourself or all ? Then DO IT, abandon your sins like bags to the tip, and your sinful self with it, rejoice in the sacrifice sufficient to cover you, so that being reconstructed, even regenerated, you might find a heart filled with God, who made it, and that ... freely (cf. Ephesians 3:14-19).

NOTES

While it is true that many of this Islamic religion may neither approve nor participate in the wild excesses of IS, or the almost innumerable incitations of jihad, but at least be highly selective, yet

	the practices of the past have been so manifold, so far-reaching, involved so many nations, so much oppression, ridicule, so many taxes, such cruel affronts, such in a word, subjugation, so that many have lived as second class citizens when they have lived at all in lands affected or areas of assault;
	there has been so much tilt to rule over nations which have no desire for it, while
	there has been on the part of some nations such an apparent desire for genocide against Israel (cf. Israel Pentad), and
	so much that would have given peace in that field has been by so many rejected (as in the UN offer of 1947):

that the dehumanising use of force in the field of religious orientation, environment and life has come to apply to large swaths of this religion for many reasons and in many outlets for many centuries.

This is the direct opposite of the way of Christ as illustrated not only in His own willing surrender to the purpose of being a substitutionary sacrifice for sin for those who freely come to Him, but in His prohibitions on the use of force even to defend Him, and His announcement that HIS kingdom is not of this world, and HENCE His servants do not fight in wars of preservation or domination of man (John 18:36, Matthew 26:52ff.).

However many may disregard the incitations in the Koran in this field (cf. Divine Agenda Ch. 6, and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam by Robert Spencer), this does not remove them. So while generalisation as in much, must be fastidious, yet many are the overt and sustained grounds for associating aspects of this religion with the follies of force in its very extension, application and imposition.

It is not that Roman Catholicism did less in the Inquisition (cf. Ancient Deeds: Modern Words Ch. 14, SMR pp. 949-954. 1033-1041); or that Communism (making worship of a hollow left when they left God, for a naturalist fantasy cf. News 97, 98, SMR pp. 925ff., The gods of naturalism have no go!) has not done at least as much in the sad history of tyranny not based on demonstrable truth but crass reductionism. From such sources have come such a thrust of power over this world as to have made suffering a common thing, folly a frequent one and heartlessness a fever. Amidst many tyrannies and crusading nations in their own day, these have had that special intimacy with force in expansion and expression of their wares, and hence amid myriads of corpses and mutilations, they require watchfulness whatever may be the amiability of some. What is currently most conspicuous of the three is thus given careful attention, in survey (cf. SMR pp. 1074-1080).

The entire Middle East in MANY jihads and nations in MANY ways for a LONG time has been eruptive and calamitous not least because of the clashes involved, the insistences and the charges, challenges and condemnations, Israel by many being referred to in its restoration to its land, as a calamity.

God has in the Bible not only insisted that despite Israel's often paraded evils, in ancient times, and its foretold rejection of the Messiah (Isaiah 49:8, 52-53, Micah 5:1-3), it would after exile be brought back and stay back. In due course amid many troubles (cf. Romans 11:25ff.), it was predicted to be converted to the very Christ whom the nation had crucified (cf. Zechariah 12:10ff.); and that this would be comparable to a vast love story.

Not only is this shown in such sites as the book of Hosea, and amid illustrations of a divine compassion in restraint and faithfulness (as in Jeremiah 31:16-31), but it is made clear that the forces to eliminate Israel at the end of the Age will be both very active and hence suffer more than a little for their presumption in prescribing to Him (cf. Micah 7:14ff., Isaiah 66, Deuteronomy 32, Exodus 38-39). Indeed, the scale of the divine action foretold here is expressly compared to that of the Lord against Pharaoh in the Exodus (Micah 7:14ff.). With great bravura you can tell God what you are doing to do; with undeterred power He does what He says.

This covers not just this or that contrary power, but ANY case of ANY body for any reason and on behalf of any conception or conviction, seeking to overthrow Israel in the last of it, then converted in type, when judgment prepares to sit, and new religious efforts are being made for complete control of man by the enemies of the Lord. This eschatological development involves an image, and a control of finance, in the field of false christs and false prophets as predicted by Christ, and reaches a desolatory height before its catastrophic end from Christ Jesus (II Thessalonians 1-2, Revelation 13).

When any nation or religion or enterprise makes a point to use power to overthrow what God has said, it is simply a fact that God does not lose. It may suffer, but the Church does not fail, the Gospel does not sink, the testimony of truth does not coalesce with dust and whatever God has prescribed happens with a peculiar force, irremediable by man, though God test long and give to human freedom the scope to show itself, amidst its self-imposed ruins (Acts 17:24-31).

It is small wonder that Mahathir of Malaysia was expressing wonder and concern that so many millions in the Moslem world, over so long a period, still had Israel on its hands! The exterminative approach to Israel as predicted is of course a guarantee of more conflict, but it does not lessen the reality of the final outcome as foretold (cf. Micah 7, Isaiah 66, Jeremiah 23, Ezekiel 36-39). Interfering with God's business is never a happy thing and how many in how many nations now are killing Christians, destroying churches and marauding, however extremely in religious terms, on behalf of some sort of Moslem pretext or push. Nor is this all; for it has no monopoly on such practices however high its news profile.

On this, see Ch. 2 above, *1.