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CHAPTER SEVEN

THE KING AND THE DOMINION,

THE CORPSE AND THE SHROUD!

A Brief Synopsis of the Trend of this Chapter

Concerning Chapter 7, here is a broad, varied coverage of the fantasies, illusions, invalidities, sophisms, antitheses, antinomy, of modern befuddlements, passing as science on the part of many, though the scientific camp is strongly divided. New are seen in the light of old, and I Timothy 6:20 is given exegesis, in the midst of the considerations of the captivity of children by proponents of the naturalistic fallacies, teaching them  at the same time, anti-empirical bases for philosophic posturing, dressed up as science.

The positive  alternative is considered in its various logical facets, in marked contrast to these rapt wanderings, its biblical beneficence replacing the just curse put on man, its Christian confirmation, centred in Christ Himself, and not man, true not only for life, but in life. As once Israel of old was put in stark discipline, those whose non-innocent waywardness was nationally repetitive, socially and spiritually, morally and even in worship much corrupted (cf. Ezekiel 8, II Kings 16:8-14), now among the Gentiles, as formerly amid the Jews, just such things in modern dress, bring results in suffering to match the insufferable evil of the deeds, whether in mind, or matter's premises. The world writhes.

The way on and out is as delightful as creation, which is considered at some length, and as positive, having relief as well as restoration, and is part of the completion of coverage in validation of what reason finds in God and His word.

1) Introduction and Review

This world, this cosmos, this universe, this mankind, It is not a great massif without foundation, a brilliant formulation by force without intellect, a pervasive intricacy with numb fingers that are not there, its nurse a hand that has no arm: no creativity, its basis. Such a proposition is a farce in this, that it seeks for an answer to the obvious from the most remote and irrelevant and unattested and greatest absentee, what lacks PRECISELY what this has. What is THIS ? Why it is you and me, it is mankind and the majesty of the universe, it is flowers and birds, magnificent in beauty, remarkable in facility; it is mathematics and its basis in a reality which is germane to it and where it works, it is logic, and a milieu where it is at home.

Why should a type of intellectual holiday, a witless abuse  to the absolute uttermost of scientific method be even conceived, some nothing or question-begging something, defined, delimited and despatched from nowhere, be entertained, as if it were a dying man and one took pity on him through such fantasies. Science ? is this delusion, as well ask if faeces strewn  in the stables is hygiene.

This is only the more so when its limits are what is, and its vast and testable expertise is NOT in the field of once for all foundation, but resultant function,  following the establishment. Each field of work and action has its point, each its expertise, and a cancerous self-pondering ennoblement of one member of the human logic team, bent on studying what is there, one field of functional enterprise given to man, and extrapolating this limited facility of investigation to  some kind of lofty maze of self-worship, some  maker or denuder of gods, is perhaps greatest infantility of mind of which science has ever been guilty.  But wait! It is not science, but a large number of people who have studied science, who have pushed their philosophic religions, unabashed increasingly, into their professional field. Often it is from virtual domain of the illicit materialist, leading to the sovereign solipsist of today, in ivory towers, with philosopher turned scientist without apparently even noticing it, that the confusion comes. This, it is unbecoming.

It is unbecoming to logic, to scientific method, to humanity, to a sane estimate of our powers, to the concept of a reality to be investigated with zest and zeal, not with a distorted and inflated pedagogic arrogance, which literally stops at nothing, and in essence, is satisfied with it as the basis of all, though the ordered, organised, systematic parameters of reality to be studied,  could scarcely be further from it, and its null powers.

It is time humanity, in its bold, self-defeating enterprise of self-trust at the academic level in what is merely one phase of its action, confusedly dabbling where it has nil expertise and enormous presumption,  returned to where it is, where logic is, where enquiry is, to what is the field of human enquiry, what are the limits of its powers as seen in each department and what is the result of its due and valid work.

In what follows, excerpted from Ch. 2 of the volume on this site,

EVIDENCE AND REALITY, THE PRINCE AND THE PROOF,
CONSTANT CHRISTIAN FAITH
AND THE FICKLE FRENZY OF FORCE

there is a presentation concerning a) the nature of human enquiry and b) the nature of scientific method in its context, with c) a coverage of the scope of biblical revelation relative to God Himself, and not to man as imaginary governor of divine discourse, as if when God talks, something is limiting His knowledge, so that what He says is NOT what He means, but some dumbed-down residue, devised by man,   based on cultural concepts of today or the day when the revelation was first unleashed from God.

It is all too possible in rejecting this amplification of philosophy into science, with a new reverence for the latter, to divorce the two too much. Let us consider this, and then continue with the present concerns.

In the November 2007 Update of Creation Ministries International, there is much interesting information. Not of this type, however, is what appears a lamentably insensitive statement, a gaffe in a critical area that this lost generation would only too willingly exploit. This body often provides material of great interest, value and exhibiting considerable research; but this does not remove the need to correct matters in this sphere of logic, evidence and proof. What then is the error ?

It is roundly declared that these Ministries have certain concerns. It is stated: "Not evidence that proves the Bible (that's not what we try to do, and it's not possible anyway - you can't prove or disprove things in history using science)."

Now the meaning of 'evidence' in Webster's dictionary, at any relevant level, is this: "Something that tends to prove; ground for belief".  In law it is something which "bears on or establishes the point in question".

This is not an uncommon meaning. It is not limited. It is what is made to appear, and in the context of reason, it has the result that the thing is proven, with due ground for belief.

Science indeed has not that sort of cogent proof to offer, although it can exclude absolutely this or that hypothesis, AS they stand and PROVIDED that tests in view are correct; and it can do this decisively in the negative on ONLY one point. A thing is true or not; and if not, then it is assuredly not science (in theory, that is!).

Science does tend to be a postiori, looking at the area of what is, and considering what it does.

However, we are not only told that this scientific body (although it sometimes moves into areas beyond this orbit or ambit) does not try to PROVE the Bible (as distinct from showing its entire reasonableness); we learn from this dictum that in terms of evidence,  "it's not possible anyway".

This appears an amazing confusion and collation of concepts. IF, and only if, it were meant that scientific evidence cannot prove history, it has some merit. It is indeed too general; such evidence CAN however show what is NOT the case, and exclude possibilities known so that the result at a given point is ONLY one. It can confirm what is found on an epistemological, metaphysical, logical, and multiply evidential basis, in terms of verification of falsifiable propositions, and do so in the absence of competition from what is excluded by such means, as a preliminary exercise.

To be sure, the scientific approach in its most limited sense, is routinely looking to generic laws, and repeatable things, and comparing them with happenings which may leave no known trace, some being from an unknown source, power or operation whether because it has not been met by man's enquiries, or because its works are not within the power of external, episodic evidence to determine at a given point. It is moreover looking for ascertainable developments over time, and seeking interpretations that fit all evidence, are refuted by no evidence and above all, constitute their own evidence by being dominant in their field, however minute.

The term 'evidence' however, is not limited to science. What the 'we' in this Update context, are doing is one thing; but that thing in that body is not only science in fact, but moves into many spheres. Prima facie, the statement is indicating that there are no means to prove the Bible true. What attests it in this way is unavailable. If less is meant, it would have been well to have stipulated that, in terms of what the organisation in question in fact considers. If less is not meant, if what the term 'evidence' has in its cover is meant, then this counter-claim concerning biblical proof is not merely wrong, but slack in principle.

Evidence has been SHOWN to prove the Bible true in SMR; but this is true only if the term 'evidence' is taken in the Webster sense of tending to prove without qualification. It might be said that evidence only TENDS to prove, and that therefore this does not and even cannot mean 'proves'. 'Proof' in turn,  however, according to Webster's dictionary involves "conclusive evidence." Thus there is a TYPE of evidence which in generic terms and due setting can exhibit a proof. The category 'evidence' covers this. It is well to be clear here, since it is a matter of faith, the bible, logic, man and God.

Earlier on this site, we considered different forms of knowledge and the gathering of  it. Science has a useful contribution to make, though one ludicrously glorified at present in a pragmatic age; but it is only one. Thus in The Defining Drama Ch. 2, we distinguished and considered 8 methods:

	1) CAUSATIVE
	2) HEURISTIC
	3) STRUCTURAL
	4) RATIOCINATIVE
	5) PRAGMATIC
	6) SCIENTIFIC
	7) MAIEUTIC
	8) PERSONAL

These can be used cumulatively, with evidence from any or all. Each phase has its own congeries of concepts, procedures, results.

Before we proceed with Evidence  and  Reality ... Ch. 2, let us see what The Defining Drama Ch. 2 had in explanation of these categories, so that we might not only list, but be au fait with the terms and their function in man''s cognitive and investigatory work.

 

As to the first, the CAUSATIVE, it is an inescapable pre-condition of thought, such that even those who wish to argue against it, use it in their grammatical formulations, conceptual interaction and speech-depiction, in communication and argumentation. In order to invalidate it rationally, you have to become irrational therefore, and hence exclude yourself from effectual argument. See SMR pp. 3ff., 17ff., 81ff., 1113ff., the indexes on causation, and Causes 1.

Reason relishes causation, and irrationality in the muck of incoherence, eschews it futilely.

As to the second method of seeking, the HEURISTIC, it involves the act and attitude of keenly seeking out, eliciting, even soliciting, finding by watching, discovering by looking, considering by estimating and involvement in the world of the empirical, not necessarily material or immaterial, but without bias: whatever has effects.

The third, the STRUCTURAL, goes beyond this. It seeks for the apportionments, the appointments, the structure, in what the coherence consists and has its being.

The fourth, the RATIOCINATIVE, refers to something slightly different from the rational, but inclusive of it, practical with it. It means that you look for the reasonable associations, the inferential, the implicative, the course of procedure: in a way, it is rather like the distinction between structure and function, this being the function aspect.

The PRAGMATIC refers to an attitude in discovery which looks for the results as they impact on oneself, one's tribe, nation, society or fellowship, with perhaps scant regard as to WHY this is so, and with maximal concern THAT it is so. Explanation, in this attitude, can wait until eventuation occurs, is made to occur, or is conserved and activated for the purpose in hand.

The SCIENTIFIC is a structured approach, but not only to the structural. Its view and concern is this: that one STARTS with what occurs, and then in an orderly domain of reasoning, PROCEEDS to WHY this might be so, working in the meantime with due care on systematisation of data, depiction of developments and various devices to help highlight aspects of occurrence, in order to facilitate the operation of reason in seeking an explanation. It now also involves the structural intercourse, intercommunion of past findings with present ones, and all with reason. Not satisfied with this approach yet, it insists on finding what are the implications, the results, the projected consequences of the explanation (called an hypothesis initially) which it makes, and then checking these where the thing is testable (and it normally insists that it BE testable, though at times in prejudice against its own approach, refuses this or that SORT of test).

It then finds the explanation verified, since the thing happens, or not verified, if it refuses to do so.

IF it is unverified, and the projection from the hypothesis is clear, then the theory is wrong, abandoned on site, and another invented, preferably with more data carefully exhumed first, ordered, classified and prepared for thought. In this case, it is always possible that the classification of the data will be based on a theory, and so make one blind to some of it, or it may even lead to falsification, either purposely or through a blind spot in the desire-reason duo.

This is what SCIENTIFIC METHOD ostensibly is, but in practice, as in organic evolution (cf. SMR Ch. 2, TMR Chs.  1,    8, Earth Spasm...    1,   7,  Secular Myths ... Chs.   7,  8, Spiritual Refreshings 6, 13, 16), repeated anti-verifications, where the projected not only does NOT appear, but the opposite, or something wholly dissimilar, may come to be disregarded. This has NOTHING to do with science, and is mere myth, the insistence on a robust desire enshrined in the emotional structures of the mind, without credibility ACCORDING TO THE METHOD.

However, such intrusive vexation of the Method,

which is itself a good one as far as it goes, a worthy contribution to thought, while it can and often does so debase science as to make it a laughing stock at which not so many join, since this failing is usually mystically covered up,

should, and need not do so.

It is not the method but the meddling which brings ill-repute to those ensnared in this cultural invasion of science.

In such cases, it is not scientific method^*1 which errs, but the anti-methodologists who import their naturalistic religious desire into the realm which excludes it, by anti-verification. It is this which becomes a cult of the forbidden, an irrational desire to exclude the explicatory force of one particular arena of investigation, because of a hallowed religious desire, vested in prejudice, unannounced, irrelevant to truth, except as its enemy. What is true needs no such apartheid, but values competition in open field. Why should it worry: it will win because it has the facts. That however is the trouble: those who disesteem the facts for religious reasons, however repressed these may be in some cases, because of philosophic pets, cannot find.

What, says Proverbs, is the good of money in the hand of fool for wisdom since he has no heart for it. In the Bible, the 'fool' is the foolish one who ignores or rejects God (Psalm 53, cf. Proverbs 17:16).

Quite to the contrary, some of the most famous names in science have used this method duly and truly, men like Maxwell, Boyle, Newton, van Braun, Faraday, Babbage, and in so doing, have contributed vast advance by their invasive ingenuity, in discovery. Their reasonable expectation has become a valued consummation, as they find what they sought, believing that reason has its place where reason dwells, in this universe, that there is reason for this affinity of reason to this other phase of creation, and using it with all diligence, they have found and discovered with a buoyancy bred of well-grounded desire.

Next we come to a somewhat different method, one nevertheless worthy of some esteem.

 

This is the MAIEUTIC METHOD, roughly that of Socrates as exhibited in Plato, and it has an appealing variation from the above, because it is so different; and yet still it relates to one aspect of the reality to be investigated. It is a matter, here, of eliciting from the mind of the one in conversation, this and that principle of procedure, assumption, inference, and so engineering the discussion that it becomes virtually unavoidable to make certain admissions, and to proceed with these as a basis, to certain consequences. There is with this, at least in the historical case of Socrates from Plato, a trend to seek to establish vast currents of thought, making inconsistencies of principle a butt in the process, if by any means some construction which endures may be found, immune to dismissal, and soundly based. For a contributor, such a method has a place.

Thus in the direct mental interchange, spiritual inter-relationship, honed reciprocities of thought, the vault of truth may be entered, refinements or foozles exposed, prejudicial assumptions exhumed, thoughts fine-tuned, overviews correlated, nonsense discarded.

Lastly, there is the PERSONAL METHOD. In this case, man as a person acts in the integrality (not by any means always the same as 'integrity'!) of his being, and finds what he may. Matter of course is a mere theory of mind, depending for its validity on the latter, while mind is in some ways a dependency of spirit, that power to dismiss its findings, or on the other hand, to endorse them and demand further esprit in a tour de force of some kind or other. In this case, there are intimations, illuminations, realisations, events at the level of individual personality per se: there are conscience, mental and psychic dynamics, disarrays, remedies and the like, for the entire being of man as a personality. What it portends can be considered rationally, and what it does not may be excluded.

These human methods of discovery are not to be confused however, with the domains into which they may proceed. Let us then now list some of the latter.

This reference to Ch. 2, The Defining Drama now having explained the terms, let us add a little before resuming from Evidence and Reality, below.

IF scientific method, as actually practised,  WERE to be limited to the visually observable, or things detectable by the senses, then its scope would be small, and its limitations more obvious. It would not then so readily surge as  some kind of quasi-prophetesque impersonation of truth, as if  unleasing unfathomable knowledge. It is not  normally so limited so humbly, nor do many of its alleged practitioners, in the genus 'scientists', fail to act in such a gross and grotesque way. If however scientific method is to be conceived of as a method which can treat readily of stars and metaphysics, religious issues and social ones, as has been the case in many an apt but ruinous application of Darwin's error,   for  example, then it must be delimited by occupying, for its own part, only one of the  phases of treatment of these things listed above, so that every faculty and power of man is relevant to research, and none runs without bit or rule.

If this method's use  touches other members of the list above, it is subject to their special expertise and  application; though this is often ignored. Science of this illicit kind, expanded like Toad of Toad Hall beyond its domain, and infected with imports from other domains, often unacknowledged, overflowing with irrelevant preoccupations becomes but a weapon of disinformation when it  spreads, octopus-like, its suckers over everything while burdened with its quasi-competence, where philosophy hidden, really dwells.

In that case, human science, defined by its method,  will be subject  to  scrutiny, as it is in this site, and for what ? It is for all the normal illogical abominations which men practice in the  various other fields, into which it also blunders, which ignoring jauntily, haughtily or obliviously, it often becomes  worse than they. In such not uncommon mode in the arena of religion, creation, causation, discrimination, indoctrination, its exponents frequently as if a trade union in defiance of laws against restraint of trade, seek to maintain a certain eminence based on its proper work. In this, those who are absorbed in this treachery are apt to fall in their proclamations, both unillustrious in pride and defamatory of things beyond  single reach of their field.

Indeed, this is now almost normal, as we enter the last phase, the last few laps of the Gospel Age, that of Grace,  where return to Christ Jesus as Lord is  as near as air, as light, as ready as repentance, as available as faith,  while trust in the Lord as with dog to master, is a wonder at hand. When due and true liberty is at last exercised, against the arbitrary indoctrinations, presuppositions, assumptions and use of law to prohibit the liberty of discovery by the mantle of abused authority, then this disease of quasi-scientific doctrine can be terminated. It has no logical standing, being mere extrapolation of assumption, void of relevant evidence. Indeed, observable organic evolution or exclusively supportive attestation of it is as absent as any class member, pretending to be sick.

Forget for the moment, the idol-word science, and replace it with this: a mode of research, being one of man's potentially respectable methods of discovery, often confused with a self-centred wisdom. In practice, a sound  scientific method is subject to anomalous misuse by intellectual adventurers. In this way it illustrates pre-eminently that "knowledge falsely so-called", denounced by Paul for its being a babbling ground of maundering assault on Christianity. His phrase  is thus applicable to modern science as one component of knowledge. Its illicit bumblings in this expansive pride, however, must do nothing to subdue the just and effectual proof of the divine authority of the Bible, nature of Jesus Christ, and the demonstrability of both by all means given to man. Sophistries in modern anomalous 'science' in ultimate topic areas do nothing to restrict the due use of reason, provision of demonstration, in such fields, when scientific method is simply added, and due attention to all the other disciplines of investigatory validity, are in use.

With these explanations and this addition, we resume the listing as at Ch. 2 of Evidence and Reality ... In the use of this in review, material which may be substantial on occasion, will be added and minor changes may be made for fluency and clarity.

There is in this Chapter (op. cit. ) such a list as this, moreover, of 'domains of discovery', and this follows. ALL must be considered for the maximum result.

	1. PSYCHIC
	2. PHYSICAL
	3. INTERPERSONAL (including friendship, hostility, and the political, social, economic)
	4. RATIONAL
	5. EMPIRICAL
	6. AESTHETIC
	7. MORAL
	8. SPIRITUAL
	9. EMOTIONAL
	10. NOETIC and INTELLIGENT
	10. ASPIRATIONAL
	12. IMAGINATIVE (including both the creative and creativity itself)
	13. METAPHYSICAL
	14. DESIGN DOMAIN
	15. MEMORY FIELD
	16. DIVINE

More on the background and implications may be considered by reading Ch. 2  (op. cit.). All spheres may be analysed^*1, the nature of logic itself, the available scope for logical thought, and the necessary consequences for argumentation without it.

Decisive proof, excluding any argument, can be made and often is, not only in geometry, but concerning such things as creation. This has been done on this site in SMR, TMR and The gods of naturalism have no go! There are various methods of doing this, and consultation with What is the Chaff to the Wheat! (esp. Chs. 3-4) can show something of the procedure.

If evidence is what is made evident, and conclusive evidence is proof, then proof is not only possible concerning the Bible, but both current and extant, and on the Web for over a decade with no slightest dent from friend or foe. Indeed, the Creation Ministries statement is simply wrong, in this, that science CAN be used to prove the truth of the Bible. It is true that it alone cannot be so used, but used it can be in this domain, in its orchestral place within the total cosmoi of human knowledge in the world that God made, and in the presence of the God who made it.

Indeed, science cannot prove history, by itself, in general terms, and when we remember that science by itself has limits of a decisive kind, this has point some merit in general, but not in exhaustive terms. This does not however go anywhere near showing that evidence does not prove the Bible. It does, and has been shown to do so over some 20,000,000 words, though decisive coverages within that are available as seen in Apologetics in the index and where already shown. To be sure the method has its own procedure, but the result is sure. As in a key to a lock, you do not simply throw it at the door, but insert it. In our discourses on method, this is shown more than once.

If science could not at all prove history, this would not in itself militate against evidence doing so, of which the contribution from science, at first,  would be of a valuable a postiori kind, not crucial, but providing due weight exhibited in all directions. It would be constitutive of an element in the assemblage of comprehensive proof, even if alone it cannot aspire to multi-competence. It is relevant not ruling.

That is the procedure in SMR. God is first proved to be, the Bible then proved to be His word, and the result then proven as truth. Concepts of God as a liar are excluded, and this, as it happens, is precisely what the Bible asserts of Him (Titus 1), and of what is obvious about Him. Thus logic and revelation, as in Romans 1, in much simply agree. For the rest, the Bible as the word of the God of truth and power and knowledge, is covered whether in the historical or any other domain. Prove the author and the product as His, and the contents follow, historical or other.

The verificatory element mounts like a tsunami, and covers the beaches with its power. It reduces to rubble many of the anti-evidential follies, and in company with logical features not explicitly in the domain of science, brings to rubble the rubbish which has so often been paraded as if the May USSR exhibits of weaponry, in a fit of exasperated delusion from the day of Gorbachev's embarrassment.

A word from SMR Ch. 4 here gives some of the sort of thing which, in its place, militates against delusion (revised slightly for our present purpose).

 

The satire of the spade

Indeed attacks on the Bible's compilation have been rebutted, with such vigour and such marvellous aid from the enormous and growing body of ratifying archeology, that they lie like so many snails hurled against a rock. The scale and scope of it is virtually breath-taking. The Ebla find of many advanced materials in the area of 2300 B.C. is over 800 plus years before Moses, once deemed (because of date!), incapable of writing such things! Well towards 1000 years out of date, these critics must wear the dunce's cap; and yet it was such as these who once took theological colleges by storm, and taught this nonsense with an academic kind of pontifical splendour. The word of God stands, as always; but they, they fall as all do who in anything assault the mouth of God. We were made by its operation; and man can be 'undone' in the same way.

The Ebla materials include what appears to be a statement on creation not unlike that found in Genesis (incidentally, perhaps suggestive of Wiseman's view of ancient background materials used by Moses, as detailed in his New Discoveries In Babylonia About Genesis). Complaints against cultural backgrounds, as not fitting Biblical dates, look more than foolish. The mot juste is 'obsessive' though 'obstructionist' would do. The cultural norms and phases of those times, revealed in the Bible, are so adroitly confirmed both from Hammurabi's time (in Babylon), and Ebla (in Syria); and in the time of the Canaanite labourers near Sinai, before Moses, as well as at Tell-el-Amarna, with its incessant official communications about invasion of the area which was taken by the Jews; at Ras Shamra with its exposure of the corruption of the Canaanites whom God sent Joshua to judge, and so forth ... that it is a marvel that even dedicated unbelief dares to speak any more at all, in this field.

But then it does: for when is a divorcee ever done in her scolding! The trend is there.

The very modern mythology and the very old Biblical truth

This is not the stuff of myths. The myth is this: that man can tell the truth about himself, measuring himself by himself (as Paul puts it in II Corinthians 10:12); and that he creates his gods, and that is all the gods there are. That myth is surely the best in arbitrary irrationalism that could be. (See the EXTENSION on THE MYTHOPOEIC MATTERS OF MAN, pp. 380-386 infra.)

What is it ? It is this. The creature, with his programmed systems alive and alight, attributes 'sacredness' to his own productions, and ignores the source of his power to construct (or misconstruct), to mini-create and to err, to have a responsibility correlative to this freedom, and to have a body written in language which embodies a brilliance beyond his thoughts... In 'seeing' this blindly, he continues to use a brilliance which, though less, is both akin to it, and gained by the operation of an instrument which he did not create. To do that is to live a myth.

But what a myth it is! All these multiplied billions of deft connections of cells, individually with the significance of highly organised cities, have no source but a 'chance' which has laws it could not cause in the first place, and which, though wholly unintelligent, constructs the most intelligent designs ever inspected on earth, leaving behind the greatest intelligence of man in the process... which does this with a language of the most concentrated and constant character, in what is to man still an unachievably minute form, while building ever anew the same prodigious constructions by a copying mechanism we have no way of paralleling. All this moreover is expressed in all living cells, with the direction of the code of one sole language... each human body living cell having the whole plan inscribed, as if for good measure, or an architect's signature. Exhausted, the myth looks away, drooling that all the laws underlying all of this have no cause. No law has any cause; they just stick around.

If this is not a myth, I would not know one. It has all the objective criteria of myth, such as self-contradiction, illusion, irrationality, desire and defective ramblings without rigour. Building on all that is now known, it despises what is known, ignoring every basic logical premiss.

The myth maker par excellence, perhaps surpassing all the former races and times in the scope of his unsophisticated verbal grandeurs, is this twentieth century man. This maestro, with his increasing technology is so advanced that he here denies everything he has ever seen, flouts the way all things are observable to proceed; and based on nothing, in torpid oblivion of reason, he proceeds to devise and cause to arise for himself, something from which everything has come, itself squarely - if self-effacingly, based on nothing. Here is inadequacy idolatrised.

The irrational virulence and absurd popularity of this myth together attest that style of degeneration, departure from the faith, that turning to fables, noted earlier as a verification of specific scriptural predictions (such as II Timothy 3, and 4 and II Thessalonians 2, Matthew 24). It is worth stressing that the other criteria Biblically predicted for the end of this Age are likewise simultaneously coming to pass; and that these things await us in Chapters 8 and 9 infra, where they are seen to be elaborately satisfied. Turned aside to fables is the verdict of the Bible on this time, and this in full knowledge, as Daniel 12 predicted, that knowledge would increase: something predicted for the same period. The great breadth and extreme shallows that would occur together are indeed noted; and are indeed visible at this day... Myths?

What world-sitting-on-a-turtle is worse than this very modern myth! What it lacks in subtlety, it gains in assurance.

Myths, yes, but nothing can compare with the myths of atheism and the mimicries of agnosticism (*4), whereas truth, this is as we have shown, the prerogative of God, and His power to communicate is seen not least in His power to make communication units so vastly programmed, and yet so subtly free, as we are. Myths? Yes these there are, like the myth that this God has seen the ruthless folly of lies, deceit, injustice, murders, genocide, myth-making caricatures of His name and even at times in His name, and has done nothing about it, has not communicated so much as a "Whoa!".

There now, that is a myth to make the child's spine creep. Myths ? Yes such myths as this: That God did not make it clear what He wanted, and what it was He said, or that He did not send what it took to get what He wanted. Myths ? Yes, such as this: That Jesus Christ was not deity and yet was incapable of being successfully criticised and effectively confronted by brilliant and trained men with maximal motives, securely entrenched and surrounded by force, even when He claimed to be God Almighty; or that the people of that time were oafs barely able to think, and so failed to handle it, whereas as Hammurabi and Ebla and the ancient writings showed, in fact, man had a brilliance and the subtlety then, and long before. In what fields ? It is seen in law, imagination and commerce; while involved mathematics is displayed.

In communication and expression, man had capacities long before God sent Christ, which in subtlety and strength challenge the intellect of modern man. We have been at school longer, ever amassing; but the minds are the same. (I could wish for a congregation which would follow sermons of the complexity and challenge of those of Chrysostom, in the early part of the first millenium after Christ.)

What a lordly myth-making society modern man has become. Or if you want myths, take this of His disciples: that they forsook all because they believed nothing, and that they lost their lives to defend a pretence in order to reach hell for deceit, after suffering or torture on earth; or that they practised folly with an outlaw, when the necessary evidence required by the Bible for His authentication as the claimed Messiah, was clearly lacking, and all this despite their overpowering evidences of spiritual passion and the stakes for fraud.

Or again of His disciples, what of this!: that His stalwart followers did not bother about the scriptural identikit, by which the Messiah was to be known, the predictions and requirements showing that He must perform miraculous healings... and just to finish it off, studiously and continually disregarded all thought that He must physically rise from the dead, and His flesh not see corruption, or rot - Psalms 16, 22, and Isaiah 35 - after being fatally pierced, and this even after further advice on the issue (Luke 24:25); this small thing to be  accomplished in 3 days. This He also personally declared repeatedly, foretelling not only the time in the grave, but the reasons for it, events preceding it and following, like a supernatural Houdini, dealing not with difficulties, but with death (p. 760, points 13-15; pp. 781, 788; 931-943; Ch. 6 infra.). Would they not know what they insistently proclaimed, with its scriptural source in prophecy, that this was the test par excellence with the cross, of legitimacy!

What sort of beings are then being invented! What mull-headed nincompoops are in mind! I have found repeatedly that some even of low intelligence (which is not true of the apostles, judging by their fruits) can be very canny about major matters of their comfort and place! It is one thing to sacrifice for everything; it is quite another to do so for a more incendiary tortuous life and a resultant end to dwarf even this. If you want to be realists, do not invent, but follow the evidence, and think.

What then of these dismissive theories concerning the apostles ? Is this the flirtation of fancy ? Is this to be imagined! Or is this, that He healed the sick, resurrected the dead, had to do such things to be identified as the Messiah, was crucified for sin and raised for salvation,  the available and factually unassailable testimony of the time, never refuted at the time by those of the most monumental envy, hatred and indeed professional confrontation so great, that it led at last not only to His death but to His crucifixion ? Small wonder that before, during and after His crucifixion and following His resurrection, people were pardoned, souls won, truth acclaimed, doubt dissipated in thousands, the testimony being secure, synthetic as in a detective case, compelling and constantly reinforced even more by the works of the apostles as in Acts.

Accordingly, Jerusalem was rocked with His actions, words, death, and responded vastly at Pentecost to the simple recitation of the well-known facts which, being irrefutable, step by step in His ministry,  never were rationally dismissible, so that systematic efforts against it, as by Paul when he was called Saul, failed and only death, torture and assault prevailed as provided in the job specifications for disciples (John 16:1ff.). His testimony therefore succeeded at the level of being God incarnate, with never a hope of dismissal, as with all other prophecies concerning Him and by Him. ONE failure would spell finis; God is never incompetent! One inimitable Majesty in word and deed, spirit and life, under all and any circumstances, in wisdom and in patience, in penetration and in rebuke, in appeal and in love: it was all one and one with the testimony of God concerning Himself.

What then is the spurious, the furious flirtation with fancy ? How are the apostles viewed ? Would  they ignore hell, strongly in Christ's teaching (Mark 9 for example) in order to achieve murder and prison ? Would they aggregate horror ? Would they divulge counterfeit in order to proclaim truth and add the eternal shame for keeps ? (Daniel 12). Would they become liars in order to support what already supported itself and had done for years, till swelling crowds followed Christ!

Is their incandescent flame of challenge and condemnation of the priests, repeatedly as in Acts 3-5, a matter of near suicide, in order to have worse to follow as liars ? Or were they empty so that they could be filled with a profound detestation and national infamy ? empty in heart in order to give the most flaming and concerted, sustained and empowered testimony in word and deed, in the greatest category of all time  ? Is conviction to be made by opposites, as in evolution, so that the more the attestation is blisteringly hot, the colder is the irrelevant response!

It is logically irrelevant, but not personally so (as in Proverbs 1).

Tasting a prelude to hell on earth for such reasons, to find it even more negative after death, this is so irrational as to be irrelevant. In fact, as to death, as they spoke, so they acted, fearless, factual, detailed, in ways refutable by fact if it were available:  for why should they worry about going to hell,  transgressing truth, who lived and sacrificed for it! What a foolish construction do such thoughts represent, in order to avoid the demands of evidence and testimony! Such was the nonsense readily thought as ideas were spun like a spider's web, to catch those who were like flies instead of faithful, seduced like voluptuous flirts, unstable, unreasonable! Such were NOT the apostles from first to last!

Thus for such empty theories about the matter, stick men were invented, the realms of discovery and knowledge were ignored. Indeed,  knowledge was unnecessary; the apostles were conceived or implied as being merely engaging in lies to focus the resurrection, just as they did not bother about the fact, on this view and contra-factual model, although in their testimony allied  to supportive works, they were more strenuous about this action and fact than any counter-movement, and against all challenge. There testimony was physical, non-rotting the key, this same Jesus the phrasing, what was laid in the tomb arising, the formulation (I Corinthians 15).

Such were the data of the personnel. This was so,  whether it came from within (duly met by Christ, as with the empirical reply of Christ to Thomas) or from without (as in the murder of martyr James -  Acts 12) or the passion of Paul (Acts 21:13-14). What then is imagined ? that as liars they met hell without flinching, at the hand of the outraged God of truth, through the lust of their idiot minds! or that as three year olds they could not tell whether flesh rotted or rose ? Are we dreaming ? These were EMINENTLY practical men.

Dreams merely confirm reality, by their rejection. So runs the tale, this way, that, in contortions; but in fact, the apostles were citing the prophecies triumphantly fulfilled as always; and taunting the murderous priests, whom they directly charged them with murder, acquainting them with a resurrection so appalling to the murderers, that all they could do was beat them, or seek to leave them thunder-struck with fear.

Fear ? It was as present as in a war-horse charging! (Acts 2-4). They knew what Christ could do with the dead by their own observation; when He did it again although Himself dead, His Father countervailing the rot, it was but the summit of the seen. The scene was not hypothetical, of unsure foundation, but visual, tactile, foretold, fulfilled in detail, adverse to fear, concurrent with faith, obliterative of doubt (John 20), even and especially in the face of clearly and empirically formulated testing (in terms of poking fingers into holes in Christ's risen flesh). These things were like clouds in the sky, impending, imposing, or like rain to come, impelling. So did they become flames of fire in the face of all perilously powerful opposition. If they died, they lived; what had they to fear! So they acted, and continued to act with the courage that knows the truth, and a lie when it sees one.

After all, if 1000 years is not enough notice for suppressing a resurrection forecast (Psalm 16), what moves! It was given through David in Psalm 16 with Psalm 22, as in Isaiah 26:19. Pharisees insisted on it, and were almost reconciled to Paul by it (Acts 23:9ff.). Yet the body of Christ, this the authorities lost as surely as if the moon had sunk forever below the horizon. Stricken their guards were ... asleep ran the story, and so were able to talk of the monstrous tale of theft, detective while unconscious, giving testimony while slumbering! It is truth which is slumbering here. Slumbering testimony ... surely we are in Disney's world.

How arrogant can modern man become in his arrant myth-making! Whether in restoration of ruined bodies at speed, raising the dead even after 4 days, or being as predicted, Himself raised, so that what entered the tomb came out of it, Christ was like His garment, one. In fact,  physical resurrection is really hard to do, especially after crucifixion. Try it some time if you have the mind; and are willing to be experimental; but make your will. As I believe British Prime Minister, Gladstone put it: If you want to found a new religion, just get yourself crucified and rise (according to prediction) in 3 days. It would help to make the test even more extreme,  if the prediction had been out, specifying the rest of your identikit, for a few thousand years and, as we shall see in Chapter 9, the period of history in which this was to be done was also very precisely predicted, from hundreds of years before.

Myths? Yes these, society's current cultural gods in their framework, these are myths: but Christ is irrevocably rationally attested. He showed Himself the living laboratory, deity Himself who sacrificed His body, but not His truth; One not merely unmoulded by the conditions of culture, but directing the very history of culture, according to scriptures He endorsed, or words He provided, meeting all criteria of evidence, reason and morals, and handling contemporary and coming history as though it were His obedient child.

The statement, then, with which this Chapter began,  from Creation Ministries, frequently a quite excellent source in many ways,  would have been far nearer a just one if it had simply added the word 'alone' after the word 'science'!  There is a place for verification, as there is for demonstration; and the former has the force of confirmation, though not institution of proof. It is not irrelevant to the whole ambit of proceeding, though not the prima donna.

This is where the Bible's point about knowledge falsely so-called is so valuable. The term 'knowledge' in the Greek in which this was written, has not the modern, delimited type of meaning which 'science' now conveys. This is true. There is as the above illustrates, both in the listings given earlier of investigatory modes and models, and in the outworkings in history. There is a wide variety of knowledge, of which the scientific variety takes its place, like a violin in an orchestra. There is a type of 'knowledge' falsely so-called. It has been shown in gnosticism of various kinds and descriptions, philosophic ambits based on unproven hypotheses, quite as bad as that of organic evolution for lack of precision of statement, definition of terms, illustration of happening and deficiency in provision of relevant conducive principles at the broader level, to make it rational and practical overall. Indeed, in Cascade of Mercy, Torrent of Truth Ch. 6, the nature of truth is considered, as in  Cascade ... (op.cit.) Ch. 3,  and relates to the meaning of the passage in I Timothy 6:20 which contains this phrase.

It will be helpful here to reproduce a part of this Chapter (though those interested may need to read it all, for full understanding of the points), to show an important pair of points. Firstly, in terms of interpreting the meaning of any biblical passage: when GOD speaks (II Timothy 3:16, I Cor. 2:9-13), one must realise and apply the point that He says what He means with ALL knowledge of ALL things, and His word is not limited to those who may first happen to read it, or to the minds even of those who write it, as you see in I Peter 1:10-12. There is in the communion with God, even in more general terms, a leading as with a mentor, an inspiration that may be effected in help with words, a stimulus surpassing that given by the glory of natural objects, an enticement, an enabling, a leading into waters taken on trust.

Secondly, even a common event at a given time may not validly be assumed to be the sole concern where it is not statedly so. When you are being dealt with by God, making of assumptions is a field best left to the Speaker. His words are clear, not distorted or contorted (Proverbs 8:8), and if one never aborts them by assuming cultural sovereignty, a ludicrous confusion of man and God, or dispelling the grand aptitude on the other hand, of the word of God, in meeting linguistic expectations, or providing imagination and consistency with principles as declared, then understanding is delivered for its fuller work! Then due liberty can replace intrusion, or presumption, and reality can abide undeflected, from His speech, which lives and abides forever (I Peter 1:24-25).

It is however going too far to add that the 'knowledge' of which Paul spoke "in this context refers to the élite esoteric 'knowledge' that was the key to the mystery religions, which later developed into the heresy of Gnosticism." Such an interpretation would require an act of inspiration on the part of the interpreter, quite apart from the Greek text, and represents a philosophical and cultural guess. It cannot be permitted to confine the word of God.

At this point, it is good to add an informative except from  Cascade ... (op.cit.) Ch. 3.

To be sure, there is such a thing as gnosticism, and it would represent what became precisely one of those lustrously dull substitutes for knowledge which had great appeal. It is not that the word of Sarfati here is misplaced as an EXAMPLE of gnwsis, the Greek term in view, here in the genitive case, with the prefix yeudwnumou, likewise in the genitive case. This word, incidentally,  gives us our 'pseudonym'.

That was a specialised development by no means limited to 'later' in its essence, though its inflictions were to become codified and substantial in efforts to subvert, or challenges to arrest Christianity. The Greeks were long specialists in this sort of thing^*1A. The early Greek philosophers were not always merely involved in ludicrous theorising about the source of all things (all atoms, all water, all air, all this and that of creation, as the basis, or all change, or no change, the latter with various interesting pseudo-religious activities), indeed some just as ludicrous as those of the modern organic evolutionary gnosticism which deals with forces and infinitudes with an apparent careless indifference, which seems to fit well with Paul's warning in II Thessalonians 2:10.

Further, the Eleusinian Mysteries are said to have come from prehistoric times, and this partly from Cretan influence:  this also came to Greece, and this too was one of the features in the ancient world, special knowledge, mixtures of philosophy, hope and myth, religion and rites of various kinds, complex and strange.

'Elite esoteric knowledge' then is not limited to the gnostics, manifest in part of the first century AD, and falsely so-called knowledge cannot be limited to them, nor to them and mystery religions. These AND gnosticism, with some influence from the Parsees, it is held by some, were long standing elements, and philosophy itself, from the Greeks, this too was an enduring thrust, long before Christ came. Indeed, there is a vast array of such falsely knowledgeable things from the follies of the early Greek exponents of naturalism, to the Platonic with its variable surveys of the scene, now touching the name God, now working in principles and ideas far below Him, and not even able to be assembled in a logical continuum^*1; as also to those of Aristotle later again. The Greek philosophers themselves reach back to around half a millenium before Christ.

Thus knowledge falsely so-called, the simple translation of I Tim. 6:20,  cannot be limited to some setting of gnosticism, itself seemingly a synthesis of much of mystery and philosophy for hundreds of years before; but likewise it cannot be limited to mystery religion, which is merely one of the examples of the trend. It must include the whole array of what was in vogue, or held appeal, or stretched out arms from the past, contemporary trends and various systems eventually working to compete, in things large or small, with Christianity, with indeed, truth itself. In this sense, there is nothing new under the sun, and clouds of thought precipitate and then are evaporated once again to the nubilous regions.

Nor is this all. Paul's notable phrase cannot even be limited to this. There is the further question of the essences of all these things, the philosophic vagrancy, conceit and imaginative use of irrational and arbitrary self-will, and all the romantic unleashing of the human spirit without God, or with hand-made gods, into the whole scene and scenario of philosophy in its broadest sense, even where evolution in its mystic naturalism, mimics and sports with the follies of old.

(See Secular Myths, Sacred Truth Ch. 7.)
 

KNOWLEDGE WHERE IT IS,
AND THAT WHICH IS FALSELY SO CALLED

Nor is this itself, all. The term gnwsis is itself not limited to this interesting array of influences, notable facades and features of the past, with or without trends towards the future in gnosticism, in its more limited designation, before its extension into a broader definition in terms of essence. The term means 'knowledge' in the simplest sense, and ANY effort to delimit it to some imagined confines is out of bounds in interpretation. One can say, 'Well, you know, I think he was probably referring to this and that, and especially as these things were quickly to come into classical formulations of this kind and that, it is probably about such things that the apostle was speaking!' This is opinion. It is not ridiculous. It is however mere opinion.

If one is concerned not with opinion, larger or smaller in the scope imagined, and there are numerous options available, possibilities of thought, but with the word of God, it is "knowledge falsely so called" which is in view.

It is not more; it is not less. One cannot read Paul's mind, far less the Lord's. It is best to let Him say and then take what is said. The 'vain babblings' noted, these readily included mystery religion, mythology, philosophy of the more strenuously naturalistic kinds, the Platonic the Aristotelian, numerous famous names and features, emphases, religions, elements of religions, syntheses of religions, variations in religions, thoughts, surmises and in fact, just what it means today.

The term concerning knowledge, and its pseudonymic quality, its disastrous misappelation, it  is not restricted. It is as written, neither more nor less.

It is of course true that Francis Bacon did a wonderful job in codifying some of the basic concepts of scientific method as it is now called, and that has come to represent a WAY of seeking knowledge, testing it and proceeding, whether in the more strictly limited application to material things, or in ways where it is to some extent applicable, outside them (cf. scientific method in both   indexes). This is misused in this sphere, just as it was in Aristotle's time when the methodology was less developed but by no means absent; and it occurs whether now or then,  when the meandering musings of undisciplined imagination are inserted into scientific method, like arsenic in fish, and the irrationalities and arbitrary additions are made. Unfortunately, but as a great test for man, this is often done with all the gluttony of prejudice, and worse if possible, all the subversive assurance of often arrant philosophy, equally irrational, surreptitious and out of place. (Cf. Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming Chs. 4-6, Stepping out for Christ Chs. 2, 7-10, A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9, SMR Chs.  1 - esp. pp. 140ff., and 127ff., Chs.    2,Ch.. 10, That Magnificent Rock Chs.  1,Ch. 8.)

These things have had their come-uppance diversely for long, and have their intense homologies and vast elements of concurrence.

The sense of the term of Paul, 'knowledge falsely so-called' is given by GOD, as he states in I Cor. 2:9ff. (cf. SMR Appendix D). Indeed, I Peter :10ff. (cf. II Peter 1) declares this, that the prophets of old were ardently seeking to discern the manner of time and meaning of the predictions of the Messiah. In I Peter 1 it is this which is found, just as in I Cor. 2:9ff. there is to be found the declaration of the revealing both of the substance of the revelation and  the word in which it is to garbed, to St Paul, both from GOD. He has no surprises, needs no surmises and in Him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (cf. Isaiah 46:10, 41, 48, Colossians 2:3, 2:9).

Other predictions concerning false 'knowledge' in particular, relate to "the latter times" (I Timothy 4:1ff.), and are fulfilled for one, in the Roman Catholicism where "abstaining from foods"  and "forbidding to marry" are evocative, provocative and famous errors demarcating a system which has long abused these basic things, tenaciously clings to them, and stands out more and more in the current cultural climate for so doing!

Many other things are predicted of this time, our own (Answers to Questions Ch. 5), and the formalism of religion associated with failure to realise the  power of God, is one of these (II Timothy 3). One of the fulfilments of that particular abuse of knowledge in the format of knowledgeable ignorance was of course, the immense and futile attack on the Bible from many philosophic sources in the last century (modernism, liberalism are tags q.v.), which have fallen into the proper exposure from the truth, which is always assured. It is as in Romans 1, and has moved nearer now to extended to its smoky summit!^*2

One of the failures of such airy romancing is the effort to limit the word of God to the contemporary thoughts of the writers. This notion at no time fitted the facts, and is derelict  of all support (cf. SMR Chs. 3, 8-10, Appendix D).

 

Vast indeed are the forms, formulae and formats of false knowledge, all ultimately arising from ignorance of God, in the last analysis, wilful (Romans 1, Ephesians 4). Large also has been the contribution from the particular form of naturalism and evolutionism, before the day of Paul.
 

The scientific domain, as now defined, and the more so in terms of prophetic illumination being an integral part of scripture, and so defined to occur, is therefore BY ALL MEANS one into which knowledge falsely so-called can come, in terms of the biblical warning. It is applicable NOT ONLY here, but decisively here, since this is one of the most inflamed and pathological misuses of wisdom and reason known in the world today, resembling in its error type a  continuum of naturalistic and mystic  misconception, with its  species from of old, now  seen today in contemporary format. The scientific medley of science and foolish philosophy, contrary to evidence, in defiance of it, based on hope and opinion, ignoring decisive evidence in a manner most discriminatingly false towards knowledge in general, and scientific method in particular, fits Paul's phrase to perfection, though of course it does not exhaust it.

2) Progress to the point of Creation and Reality

Returning, then, to the discipline of enquiry, no more worshipping scientific method, in this way or that, delimiting things by its means, or escaping from the scope of scripture, with whatever intentions, however good and worthy in themselves, let us look once more at simplicity and straightforwardness.

Man's inventive mind  often tends to seek to subdue all things to itself, either in the phase of mystic pseudo-enlightenment, and accordingly to make muddled models for himself, life and the universe.

He often likes to conceive of himself  as having come from something other than what can even be adequately and rationally defined in explanatory terms, from a pseudo-source even less than ill-attested, being based on a desire for empirical satisfaction. Such is a just concern of science in general, but in this field there tends to be a flurry of suppositional slurry, as if in intentional mockery of scientific method. The empirical and its disciplines come to a sudden stop, being staggeringly discarded in mere talk, words without works to match. It is almost as though, having had discipline in many fields, when it comes to creation, mind, spirit, God and the basis of things, there is rest period, resting on laurels while things, to take an analogy, as far from the field of mental athletics as boozing at night clubs, are presented with what often appears a similar glee! There is however no rest period for scientific method, which is not a matter of worshipping the players, but following the game.

Some inflate with fervour which is  unfactual to the point, as if measurement were understanding and not simply a mode of checking relevant assertions where this is their mode and ability to do so is at hand, or as if logic quit and took a holiday as soon as you look rationally beyond the small and measurable, such as now in some areas of life are to be found,  to what ? it is to the study of  the institutional and emplacement powers needed for these things to be here. In a way, it seems to resemble a 'senior's moment,' in many cases among those relatively young, where irrational theories, incompetent to explain, confused in causal themes, begging questions as basic, ramp themselves up to the light of common day, and spew themselves illicitly into once proud professional premises. People in offices often do take wings and change as if into a clown's uniform, if not worse, in political disturbances; and the case in this religious and ultimate phase of what is often found in contemporary science,  appears no better.

On the other hand, there is as proven on this site, in step by step analysis, an adequate, rationally attested, extensively verified, uniquely validated source for the sum of man, his intellect, applied logic, imaginative resource, innovative recourse, as likewise of the synthesis operationally of what is IN the universe with what is IN the mind of man. His name is God and as shown, His works are great, inexplicable entirely otherwise, totally covered on this testable basis.

Accordingly, there is the logos imprint common to both the material creation and the mind of man: they fit, the one able to investigate the other, in its own rational and innate terms, formulating what is THERE, rationally because that is its mode, which otherwise could not cohere with a rational base, and laws conceptually formulable, applicable and at work.

Thus each field is bearing the same marks of intelligence and intelligibility, logical formulation, whether found in law and code at work, or in the same as expressed by man. In line with this, man can interpret in various ways, what the universe is, assuming it is first grounded itself in what gives its own conditions to itself, in matter allied to the mind of man, which itself invented, bears correlative markings. Man finds with mind  what is mind's mode, the one the investigator, the other the investigated, both of a kind for mind, correlatives like twins, one, mankind,  able to find logic's imprint with logic's mode, the other, matter's kind,  open to it. The grounding of the material universe in the modes of mind is what makes human thought in principle reliable, so that it does not cheekily stir itself up to explain everything, as here it so  often does, whilst being on reductionist and materialist models,  itself inexplicable,  with no basis or sound ground for its aspirations or even  existence. It is self-contradiction in a model which would  gain knowledge when  truth is not to be found,  and cannot be around, only reaction; where mind finds mind's expressions, not only like its own, but susceptible in practice, to being formulated in man's logical  lair.

What dismisses the concept of cause for this rational and correlative character,  apart from all  else, instead of having the humility and fidelity of scientific method, COULD NOT be further from it, not even as a schoolboy howler. It is exactly what you do not do, moving to alien fields and terms, in an hypothesis to explain them. It makes of data, a thing of irrelevance, not determination!

It is the demonstration of God and the Bible as His only authorised word to mankind as in SMR and elsewhere on this site, which DOES give to logic and rationality, to the entire excursus, the operational power of man in his mind, that very basis. Indeed it gives a basis for the operation of man's mind in investigating that very mind, so that instead of its being the folly of self-absorption, it becomes a site for  a mode common on all sides, that of the logos. On the other hand, it gives the necessary and productive caution: if you DO try to investigate man with man's mind, without the basis both of man and his complementary features, you merely, as Paul put it,  measure yourself by yourself and are not wise (II Corinthians 10). The desire to investigate, the conviction (even when they say there is no truth) that this is the truth, or the tyranny of forcing it on students if it is not, these themselves are fully explicable in biblical terms. It is NATURAL to man from God's creation, to want to find Him, the truth,  to investigate where he SHOULD have competence, even his own mind, with due respect  to the inherent, innate and supervisory work which as with any other product, has made it what it is. If this be disdained by the liberty also granted to man, to make will forge fiction, then so be it. That is a specific and predictable pathology.

On the one hand, you have  antithesis, on the other hand, exhaustive explanation, the more as more comes to light, showing continually as we gain knowledge, how what is present surpasses in its very construction the highest endeavours of man. What else would you predict, since on this logical basis, it is far greater to make a man than to be one! What explains man, his Creator, necessarily has wit far beyond man, and it is to be expected He would use it! Again, what created man, not unexpectedly is not idle while man misnames truth in reductionist programs which do not because they cannot work, and subdues others with his dreams. Small wonder in Jeremiah 23, God shows the depth of His detestation for foolish, ill-founded, romanticising dreams: What is the chaff to the wheat! He asks.

Judgment produces curse, curse that  cannot be cured, but is allayed in redemption, and removed with the removal of this world, where salvation rules. Deploying the curse as if it were a condition of creation merely adds man's folly to further abuse of his Creator, for His wisdom in rebuke. A smiling and self-sufficient dream for man would only help man to the final peril of the lie, the outrage which has no bounds, like a bottomless pit, but yet one with sides, where man has fallen in. It is well to be awakened.

 However OFTEN and in whatever WAYS this kind of demonstration is presented, and they are not a few in that the thing is so manifest, it is the result that matters. God as Creator, the Bible as manual are the logical result as in SMR, and then comes the application. Then the verification in detail phase sets in, and with this, that of validation comes. If the Bible, if the Christ of whom it speaks had NOT been there, then there would be no solution, and the vapid self-contradictions of escapees from reason who yet happen to be  scientists and to preach as if called  to it, would be the glaring end of a ludicrous mess. It is not so. They are found. Validation greets verification. It is only will which remains, heritor of freedom, site for the spiritual S.I.W..

Thus when the indications and demonstrations that God is, and the Bible is His word in this mode, are empirically tested and found to be as required.

Indeed, when the Bible is found, and its spirit and quality is absorbed, it is discovered to be

	majestic beyond mere creation's style, being
	an exhibit in the domain of deity and not that of disquieted or unsure man, indeed
	speech of a type suggestive of total knowledge of things past and present, open constantly to test, clamouring for realisation that it stands  alone on empirical grounds, in its relationship to  all that is;
	magnificent in the style and manner of infinite intelligence and knowledge,
	fearless in prediction, sure in retrodiction,
	reliable where testable,

and all this in the mode of the faithful creator demonstrated to be.

What logic required, test confirms.

These things we have found over many volumes of intensive study of the said Manual, the Bible, and it is reflected to living perfection beyond all bounds, in the unimpeachable character, words and works of the predicted Christ, Jesus the Messiah of predicted date, whom none could catch out, though He claimed to be God, in His day, and whom later critics merely compliment by making of Him ever new distortions, whether as in the Koran, the sects, the revolutionaries, those who prefer the clown, who never agree with each other in their reconstructions, since none have an atom of historical truth. So does the contrast of truth and fiction continue apace, moving faster and faster, and man does,  to his tomb through inveterate desire, and false fire.

Where on the contrary, there is not univocal but equivocal approach, as in the dream-model of things from nowhere since there is nothing accounted for in the model to serve such a purpose, there abides constant confusion which nothing ever reduces. What reason is used to demand, the model confusedly and illicitly simply omits. It is irrational. It is invalid likewise, for there is already an attestation of its waywardness, in this, that where reason cannot go in the first place, confirmation of reason cannot come in the second place. But it does. That is precisely what it does.

You MUST, if you want to provide reason concerning the nature of the universe in its operations, existence and scope, to have a basis for your elevation of reason to such an office, to provide knowledge rather than procedural aspects only, then you need for this the ground, which being absent, leaves you with nothing. Starting with it, directly or by implication, you end with it; and that IS logical, a null result which is the fruit of logic's defiance. You gun yourself down before entering the conflict, so that no one need bother to remove your errors, they being self-destructive.

Yet on the other hand, to meet the test as it should be met, one must show that the use of reason, something we have, should be taken to its uttermost and, in this  grand voyage of discovery, allowed to find its resultant, so that this can be tested in turn in its products, on such a basis: and when this is done, with the relevant result, in this case the Bible and its Christ, then this is validation. That is what you have IF that discovery leads to the fruits of research where reason and testable reality meet. There is neither a vacancy here, as in the other option, nor a vacuum, but the thing is filled with the due testimony required. Reason is sated, man is met, though he does not always like the meeting. 

Nevertheless,this is precisely what the Bible and Jesus Christ provide. The disease of will, demeaning human character, blinding the eyes, fattening the heart, giving opacity for sight and confusion for clarity, this has its due products, and this is the due invalidation, just as its beginning was irrational. Thus on all sides there is one basic type of error and one truth; and you can pick and choose, but the pick can be turned back upon yourself (cf. Matthew 21:44).

Again,  were such things absent,  so would rationality be for man, then left  a dithering dolt, hee-hawing his nonsense, while as self-assured in his utterance as any braying donkey. If he insists on it that way, then it is his own preference, as Christ declared, for darkness which is his condemnation, THE condemnation. Alas, to think that many are so culturally rasped that with tenacity of purpose, they make of themselves a too close exhibit of that rasping, ludicrous hoarse self-assertion which the braying of a donkey appears to provide.

The other point from the above, is simply to remind ourselves of the considerable numbers of ways of finding truth, testing it and applying it consistently, with mutual bonds on methods to tie the mind of man to realistic enterprise, and to avoid idolatry of any one means,  as if to make a god of some one probe-mode. Again, where models of things are provided, we have to ask, What is in such models, such as those which attest the operational powers of the universe from the first,  to be worse than unintelligent, and existing for no reason at all, being neither self-sufficient and explicative of all, nor arriving with any ground, being rather a sort of orphan of reason, a palace on no grounds!

Reason then is merely defiled, as is man, and defied, as man  doomed in an insalubrious obstinacy, defies God. But for what reason ? Because his folly is not met with acceptance ? because the world continues at all, when it is so abused ? You need what is self-explanatory, self-sufficient and self-attested in ways available to our enterprise, not what is virtually a hee-haw construction of what is the most inadequate basis imaginable, in precise puncture of scientific method, which always looks for the most germane and laterally confirmed, when in pursuit of an hypothesis. If it is not all, but only one of the modes of investigation, it should at least be followed where it is alleged to be applicable.

Not only is its proposed operational nature, in the field of both the divine and the material, a dereliction of reason in relationship to the nature of what is empirically found, but its foundation is missing. From where comes what prima facie appears, and as what does it come ? as  this ultra-nitwit prelude, this imaginary basis arrives with no mind, that eventuates for  starters, composed and constrained,  in elegant deficiency, dereliction of grounds. Here is the quiddity, unaligned yet monstrously aligned, uncomposed, but full of composition, empty container-ship from no dock, that is yet able from nowhere to account for what reaches the acme of the opposite, namely total brilliance as in DNA as a code and contrivance with operational mode in its creative medium, the mind of man and a universe that lies open to it ?

As explanation and beginning, this is a thing of nothing, for nothing is its source in every respect. Nothing is a proposal. It is a self-contradiction. End of story. It is self-destructive denial by definition. It applies equally whether made the defined beginning or what is more, has nothing for its own raison d'être.  Some fluctuation ? of what, with forces from where ? in a reciprocal relationship of parts and paths of mutual interaction from what system-making source ? from nowhere in particular ? is that scientific or logical or apt or an answer at all ?

Let us have reason. It comes from what is sufficient for the results in all respects, including such delimitations as space and time, and such formations as atoms and cells, both without known prelude, and it comes dressed, impressed, operative with such resource that from it is imagined to come the logical penetrability of the laws of the universe, by the mind of man which surveys them and re-formulates them, what is there, into the logical formats of man's mind, his self-stated laws, in a mutual affinity of reason, that being a fact, demands a reason, which being missing, condemns the fiasco. It is always the same: nothing doing with nothing, with the formation of information from such a source, with the power to penetrate and reformulate that information in the mind of man, in a tower of triumphant codification, rationality and contrivance that whether in life or in matter, leaves man gasping at its sheer brilliance, which either in power or in mind is he able to match. Even to follow it is a vast effort; to make it at all, infinitely beyond that. Man is in the presence of his Creator; and not without reason, at the spiritual level, the Bible does not hesitate to announce it: The fool has said in his heart there is no God! (Psalm 53:1).

Further, this same Bible declares this: that such a quality is not a misfortune of birth, but a product of a misused will (John 3:19, Romans 1:17ff.). It accounts on all sides, for all features of the data to be understood. It omits nothing systematic at all.

Let us be clear then. The All-Sufficient and Eternal Being, often known as God, then is there, and the creation is there, as has been shown and here is simply reviewed for perspective, while the rest which finds no rest, genuinely and logically IS NOTHING. THAT is PRECISELY where this ludicrous source-concept DOES fit. The basis is in fact there; just as the result is in fact here. That is all. The idea of some kind of space or time, mere detailed derivatives of designation from the adequate source, is a travail of nonsense. THEY are part of what needs accounting for in terms of self-sufficiency, or not at all. Otherwise, baseless, there is nothing to it (cf.  Causes). There is outside God, then, and His creation, just nothing.

THERE is its place. That is where nothing belongs, nowhere but as a concept,  all removed. Quite literally, there is nothing to it, or any talk based on it in the realm of constructive thought.

To talk of it is  not always wrong. It does exist as a thought in the mind. You may opt to conceive blank as an idea by subtraction of everything whatsoever. As origin, it is a masterpiece of self-contradiction. As a product of imagination, a sport of mind, it can like most things be imagined, for fun or exploration of thought. Nothing ? It is where God and His creation are not. It is the place that is not there, the site that does not bear, the hope that has no housing, nor any ground.  It is just and true that it has never existed at all,  as all, having no future, a thing which is quite something, no potential, which blots out all consequence, whereas we are the future for any beginning.   We came not from an antithetical nowhere, the housing of antilogy amid the streaming of antinomy. That is the NO WAY entry to life which has a worse exist.

Rather do we come from the Self-Sufficient eternal God, who always being there, unlimited by outside influence, free in Himself, never has to arrive; it is we who do, and that from Him: it is called creation. We are sufficiently aware of it, it is close to our lives, as a process, a procedure,  a product making resource, as an experience, and we know it and show it in ourselves. The universe reeks with it, man speaks with it. What reason therefore requires, experience exhibits.

Since then there is only God and His creation, the rest being nothing, no force, no mystic dream, no strange possibility, no resource, no hope, then this is something about which those who do not know Christ, need to take action. It is as in Ecclesiastes 11 and 12, as in Proverbs 1:8-33, Isaiah 55, John 3, 5:39-53. There is something they need  to it, and it is not nothing. It is indeed something quite cardinal.

It is not more works that are needed. The works are done. Creation made us, salvation is calling. It is not more gods that are needed; they have spawned enough for ever. It is to receive the work of God, the eternal Christ, for our sakes formatted as man,  crucified as Redeemer, in this work,  the labour of God. It is Christ bodily risen as guarantee of our own bodily resurrection, so that the cycle (Luke 24:25,29), creation-deformation-defamation-divine pardon, with new life from the dead might be fulfilled and not thwarted, realised and not rejected.

Let us realise where we are then. There is no, first, matter with its laws and forms and logically specifiable parts and operations constraints, magically or mystically imposed already from nowhere. There is God. Then there are such specimens as you and me, space and time, laws and legislation, logical laws as fit for export into the creation, powers of human mind, powers of spirit for imagination, enterprise, the birth of ideas, paths for probing and the like. Outside of all this is not outside of some make, site, power or other. Not at  all. As to what is outside of the Maker, his creation, the Expresser and the expressed, the Maker and the Made, is what was never made, never existed, never had ground to exist: is not. There is nothing outside His purvey (not of course just outside His personal Being which, with its products in entire differentiation of power and capacity is the source of things that otherwise have no existence at all). Thus He and His are all!  You go first to God, logically, and then FROM THERE to whatever limited, law-girt, form controlled universe you find, including the mini-cosmos, yourself with its spirit, mind, body and its planetary thoughts, distant stars of aspiration and the like.

There is never nothing, as the full extent: never was, nor could be. In this, it lies only in the thoughts of man, where in this regard,  it features as one component of the Lie (Romans 1:25, II Thessalonians 2:11).  It is like an active cancer of the spirit (cf. Ephesians 4:17-19).

You are in the field of God's creation. If human:  you are in alliance with your Creator,  or you are in rebellion, with distaste, contempt; you are in dismissal of this sublime Being, source of fact, or in agreement with it. You are an outlaw, or as adopted in Christ Jesus the Lord, you are an in-law (Ephesians 1:5,13). That being so, you are in agreement with what He has said, not only to the DNA (which tends slowly to degenerate, and not to progress,  like other designs in a world which is under duress, because of sin, such as the denial of God), but in His missive, His manual. This is the above noted divine written declaration to mankind, one validating reason and confirming its call, namely the Bible. God is not double-minded, like some degenerated fragments of anxiety. He has one mind, one will, one almighty power, and His word is what He thinks, knows, directs, supports, sustains and fulfils (cf.  Matthew 5:17-20). He does not have alternative modes, like a distrait teacher agreeing with anything, saying anything, as people may become. He directs, He corrects, He speaks and it is done, He offers and it is received, or else it is rejected.

So you agree, you accept, you are reconciled with God, you find life eternal in Him; and are at peace. Otherwise this is not so. You are mastered or maunder. You find your place in Him, or are misplaced. Moreover, as to the Christ, Jesus the Christ, on which the Bible focusses, you have received His salvation, or you have not. That is all in a totally comprehensive and comprehensible totality.

From there you can logically go to the specialised evidences on all sides, of qualities of the Creator. There is a conspicuous innovative brilliance, almost a disdain for limitation, in the variety of methods to attain a given result in life, which He has created. Its diversity is astonishing, like the works of an inventive genius, but this, one of infinite capacity. Thus in things created, there is a use of similar modes in diverse applications on the one hand, and an utter newness in some other solution. It is precisely like a mathematician at work, combined with an artist and a lover. It is profuse, but precise. It is animated, but limited. It is elevated but subject to fall. It continues in kind, but is liable to desolation when it rises too high and sits too carelessly on its wall.

Thus, you see a curse which manufactures mosquitoes with a brilliance of evasiveness, power to pre-occupy and marching ants, scourges which continually unsettle and rebuke man's implicit magnificence in his own eyes, by which he would subdue all things to himself, or about himself, or being immersed in all things, forget God, but have his hand everywhere, overcoming, inviting himself into space though forbidden this (Psalm 115) as were other things forbidden before, or into radioactivity that he might blight his enemy, but then alas, that he might blight the earth which, not infinity, is his present residence. Small wonder he squirms as predicted (Luke 21:26)

"at the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth,
for the powers of heaven will be shaken."

You also read of this curse in both Genesis 3 and Romans 5 and 8 for example, the precise reasons for its imposition and the conditions for its removal on a one by one basis, before eventually the world departs, worn out like an old coat, and stained (Isaiah 51:6). The case is that man lives on a one by one basis in conscience and intellect, responsibility and attitude, in life and in death, the latter available as the final rebuke, from the first. With this you find offer of the lifting of the curse provisions, in status, in the biblically depicted Saviour, who had to do what was multiply impossible for man to perform, in order to demonstrate who He was, from prophetic requirements, a wise safeguard!

That could be only He, and so by the double lines, the cross hairs of prediction of  actions, dates and details such as birth place, race and tribe, and the deeds of renown and vast quantity,  was He known, the thing otherwise unachievable. No possibility of misidentification therefore existed, though on earth as in heaven, many are those who have rejected Him (cf. Revelation 12). This neither alters Him  nor His offer, its beauty nor the folly of sin.

Numbers do not manufacture quality, but attest personal approach in this field, on a one by one basis (cf. Zechariah 12:10-13:1, Isaiah 28:16, 44:1-5, Psalm 145:17-21), each individual finding God, and being  found by Him; and this quality is eternal, the salvation being to know God and Jesus Christ, sent by Him,the very beauty of the holiness of God, sublime, divine, inveterate in integrity, unchangeable, righteous and merciful.

For His creation, He is the beginning, and His creation is all that is not He, whatever its state or condition, and whatever its condition, accursed or redeemed. For His people, He is the Father, the ONLY ONE (Matthew 23:8-10), with Jesus Christ the Saviour, His salvation applied by the Holy Spirit, who  living in each believer, brings back the long lost contact with God, with the everlasting bonus of eternal life (John 5:24).

Great were the prophetic expectations;  vast has been their one by one fulfilment, in  deeds, in individuals, in love, in light amid man. Great was He on whom it all depended, His life  like a vast experimental action, shown  to many, where any fault  would be fatal, the result had to be precise and the power was without limit.

At the level, then, where only One divine could perform what by prophetic identification, He  had to perform, and with this, the date for the purpose and the performance by Him being  long foretold^*1, to identify Him was simplicity, except for sin. It was so then, as it is now. The One who so lived, acted,  spoke, was in such a system, structure and series as foretold, that in all  charity,  clarity was unobscured, rejection inexcusable, except for such later  repentance (as with Paul), that could secure the divine ransom to the one lost.

Thus in the Old Testament sin  was DESCRIBED (cf. Ezekiel 20, Isaiah 1, Amos 4, Genesis 1), Christ was PRESCRIBED (Isaiah 7,9,26, 32, 40, 42, 49, 50-55 for  example, and THAT said the word of God, IS God! When He so humbly comes, believe Him, receive Him (Isaiah 40:10-11, 41:28-42:6, 43:10-11, 52:13-53:12, Micah 5:1-3, Zechariah 4-6, 12:10, Isaiah 48:16ff., Deuteronomy 18). It is this same Jesus who bore the curse, the fruits of which bearing are available on application by faith, with repentance for one's own part from what is the ultimate basis of the curse, namely sin (Luke 13:1-3).

With that,  you find the very basis for victorious living (I John 5:4, Romans 8:1-10), not the self-affirming pseudo-sainthood of the deceived (I John 1:7), but the actively enabled saintliness of the redeemed (Romans 7-8), who know the Lord and hence do not forget where they have come from, or the reason in redemption for this, the need for constant cleansing (I Peter 2:1, 1:2, I John 1:7-2:2), or the hallowed perfection of the place whither they go, empowered by the Holy Spirit, sealed like dedicated timber, to their destination (Ephesians 1:5-11, Ephesians 3:16, Romans 8:9ff.)!

Thus you have the STRUCTURE of things and the source of it; and then you have the empirical results of this structuring, to test what reason finds from this structure, moving from the rational to the empirical, in one overview and test combination.

Looking back then, over the method  of  apologetics used, you find God, His identification, His manual, His Christ, His coming, His salvation. Thus the sentence on man, found in the discovery of the Bible from successive logical steps, as in kindred discoveries in conscience and fact, and the sentences from God in the manual which illuminate and explain our whole situation, and provide not only prognosis for spiritual disease but profundity for salvation, are attested by what is  man's background, divine creation, reason and revelation. These things are further adorned by correlative methods of discovery as listed above. Throughout a lifetime, these sparkle and reveal themselves. Thus you discover what is the reason for the reasonableness of reason, in Him who created him,  and in the sheer liberty of this creation, why mankind in the main became, as before the flood and now, so dissolute in spirit and defiant in mind, so foolish in mutual relationships and so brilliant in intellect,and how remedy is available, applied  and effectual when this is done.

You find why this is even possible, yes plausible, yes amazing, as is creation itself, salvation its  counterpart, both from God; and life and environment alike, structure and function, potential  and actuality,  plan and purpose, meaning and mode, it is thoroughly accounted for, yes all of it. This is done, moreover,  not only with overall sufficiency, but with awesome superabundance of grace and kindness, and it leads to such character development as God's written word is obeyed, that the world finds a savour, despite  numerous hypocrites, which Paul declares in I Corinthians 2:12-17,  and in the darkness are numerous little lights (Philippians 2:15ff.),  pending the arising of the morning star, the return of this same majestic, longsuffering, ransoming Lord, the attestation of His glory on earth (as in Isaiah 11, Psalm 72, Revelation 19-20).

Then the shameful and shameless warring will cease, the devastating misdirection of thought and head, heart and hand will be stilled, the season of shafts of darkness  masquerading as light will cease, and life as it should be, will be as it could be before the whole heavens, the stage for the divine drama, are despatched,  as one might remove seats for a race, and eternal life and shame respectively towards faith and sham, proceeds in its wonder.

What then in the meantime ?

You learn to trust His word, not as a historical and grammatical product of a given age, as if God were limited by our minds as to what His mind can produce, when it comes to speech! We do not lapse into the irrationalist model in expounding the truth! Nor do we fail to use the intelligence granted to us. We do not imagine that thought is irrelevant in reading the words of the God who created our version of it! Thus in the Bible there are overall principles which are given about grace and works, creation and sanctification, symbols and their referents, and we are told to keep to these things; so we do^*2. We have in interpreting the word of God liberty neither to limit it to our concepts, nor to imagine it limited by the concepts of the writers.

Indeed, as noted already,  we are directly told that this is not so, for example in I Peter 1:10ff., where we find that some of the prophets were presenting things that were not for their own time, but for that up to thousands of years later, when as it were, the bud of blessing bloomed, and things to be done, and prophetically sketched out in advance, like the plans of an architect, should come to fruition. The arrival of Jesus Christ, the only Saviour, and with Himself, the performance of HIS works, these being essential for our salvation, are central, with the resurrection the epitome of power, just as were His bringing of life as it is lived, to its uttermost reality in Spirit, word and deed, immortality with it, spread forth as a  glorious view from a high mountain,   as in II Timothy 1 and Titus 2-3.  Life and immortality is what is needed by man, with the relevant divinely crafted beauty; and here it is.

Everything in all ways is accounted for: the problem and solution, existence and differentiation, liberty and remorse, self-realisation and devilry (of which our generation seems to have enormous increase), law and morality, disaster and defiance, divine dynamic and delightful rest, life eternal, immortality on His own basis (Matthew 11:27ff., Hebrews 4, Isaiah 11:10, I Corinthians 15), as indeed was brought to light and life, the creation itself!

3) Farewell ? no Go! irrationalist fantasies,
points with no point or purpose that make both: Begone!

Thus in seeking and finding the cause of all things, including our type of causality, that is, a species of causality fit for things temporary, temporal delimited, externally operative, but with the causative principle embedded in the human mind, making it fit for reality, including the relationships with things made, we dismiss some point that has no archaic point but invents logic in passing from nowhere. What is this dismissed ? It is that ludicrous imagination of the Big Bang (cf. Dig Deeper ... Ch. 1,Lively Lessons in Spiritual Service Ch. 5, TMR Ch. 7, Section E),

bigging away,

banging away,

space-using away,

pressure pushing away,

particle pulsing away,

time engineered away and so forth,

that encyclopedia compressed as it were to a pin's head  ... as if that made it easier to write, not vastly harder! What an accomplishment in causation, to invent it all and made it inadequate, then compress it, then expand. Are bank notes easier to account for if you compress millions of them into a cubic micron, and then lead them out! But as we saw above, that was only part of its antilogy.

We are not willing for inanity even if expressed in urbanity. We realise, who love the word of God, sole rational reality for man in doctrine, as Christ is His personal expression sent in salvation, that it is nothing to do with the brilliance or otherwise of man's mind which is the criterion in this field. The more brilliant, the more ways it can be diverted! It is like a big car. It is not how big it is, which matters here, but how it is driven; otherwise it can readily drive you to your death; and it is in vain to blame the steering wheel when you are so deceived that you twist it the wrong way. The accident still happens. In this case, held in the image, it is the confirmation of eternal death. It, as some might think, judging from their lives and ideas,  deliverance from deliverance, from immortality, from wisdom and from their Maker. Small wonder then that God speaks with such steely irony in Ecclesiastes 11-12!

Love can be like that. A father or a mother who sees an errant or even erratic son may say,

You proceed like that! enjoy your considerable skills as you treat them as if pleasure levers, follow your lusts of mind and body and spirit and leave self-control in the marshes while you climb ever-new Everests with expensive equipment, but realise there is a consequence of spiritual opacity, otherwise expressed as shutting your eyes. You actually do not know what you will hit next. Open your eyes, then my son.

It may sound harsh, but it reminds one of a piece of humour in Punch magazine, that marvel of old in British lore. We see sketched a man hanging onto a sharp and readily crumbling cliff-top, while his partner in adventure, happens to be sitting inside a nearby tent, writing a letter. With his life able to slip away in seconds, the British self-control comes to the fore, and the one whose life is now literally on the edge, speaks to his pre-occupied companion, who so far knows nothing of his predicament saying: Oh I say, old man, sorry to disturb you and all that, but I wonder if you could possibly lend me a hand for a bit!  or some such words.

In fact, it is fairer to both parties to so act that instant action can fulfil the obvious desires of both, that both continue intact. Love is not always hoarse and husky, as many a father and many a son intimately knows.

In bidding farewell, no, saying begone! to fantasies which detach the fingers from the very rock of salvation, on which one should stand, not swimming about it like a frustrated fish, when one is instead a man or a woman or a child, it is well to be decisive, exhaustive and consistent.

With that  ludicrous  and antinomic nothing and its playmates gone from the place of first of all, it is necessary to address oneself to the verified, validated reality^*3 which by 1) the personal gifts within, given to us,  2) the magnificent surrounds provided for us, and 3) the pivotal gift outside ourselves and our habitat, given to our race. That is the lines of interpretation, explanation, directive, deliverance, sustenance of spirit, enlightenment of mind, centring in eternal life in the Maker of life.  It is identified exclusively in the visible realm,  as the Bible as the sole, authorised, written word of the living God to mankind, and Jesus Christ its operative centre. In being so, He has acted monumentally, author and saviour in the universe; and there is no other (Psalm 18, 62, II Samuel 22:23, Isaiah 44:8, 43:10-11, Acts 4:11-12, Colossians 1), who has personally visited this earth. This He has done to expose its viciousness not least in being personally, by plan, crucified as an exhibit of what sin is really like, and also, as a butt for its guilt so that we who are sinners might be cleared once and for all by His work, foundlings now found. Moreover, it has been to show in focussed and wholly pure form, without sin, His power, love, grace and  mercy,  all in a drama of deliverance, impossible to surpass, overcoming all that stood in the way.

Nor is this all, for God by His own Spirit is well able to bring us, guide us, enable us, overcome the self-imposed blindness of sin, and indeed has known who are His before our kind of time even existed (Ephesians 1:4, John 16:5ff.).

Here there is point,

	not in some orphan physical point, a sick, slick folly of begging the question, while becoming one of the most infamous reductionists myths even conceivable,
	not in some infinitely compressed devastation*4, with results beyond the point, itself without ground, but
	in the power not to disappoint, that of the Eternal Sufficiency who always being there, does not need to come irrationally from nothing, any more than anything else.

We come from Him and it is necessary to return there. He has created the path for the purpose; and it is narrow, like truth. It is not the subject of imagination, but as it were, of a road construction. That is, Christ had to die to build it, to arise from the dead just as He had raised Lazarus beforehand, in a double attestation, to validate it; and it is a prepared path with no alternatives. To be sure, it involves a different sort of death in the one who believes, instead of eternal death; it is a voiding of the autonomy which as self, would determine all, whether one's own moral standards (thank you very much!), or one's nicely chosen program for life or anything else (Luke 14:27ff., Galatians 2:20).

It is all a matter of trusting, actually, not theoretically, Him who is the truth, being eternal in that domain which is His. You either do or you do not. IF you do, then it is rational so to do, for He who has all, illimitable, Himself always, basis for all, end of all, except where eternal life is granted,  has no need of anything of any kind, psychological or other, to sate unsatisfied appetites which are not there, since His all-sufficiency is precisely what He provides as the basis for all. IF you trust Him, then to follow the instructions in His book, the book of the Lord (Isaiah 34:16), the Bible, and to know the Lord, which results in the domain of regeneration, that upgrading to forgiven child of God which He grants:  this is like the refreshing of orange juice. It is the result of something that is there. You take it or you leave it, but your taking it does not make it, any more than your thirst makes orange juice; and what it is is well known is what it provides.

Just as in scientific method mode of testing, you now realise its place, the work of God at the personal level (John 6:29), to confirm the accuracy and verify relevant claims of the word of God, as it is applied to yourself, this being along with the other uses of logic and human interchange in the same direction (for example, the maieutic, as listed above). Moreover, the entire range of the methods of discovery, given to man,  exhibits  the nature in detail of the inter-operations of His creation, for understanding and application. Thus to the Christian,  as part of a research team, a place given to each of us, you see not only the reasons, but the results in personal empirics. That is, as rationally you follow to the result, divinely provided like a scout sign to show the way for a hike, so that it is not hard, so personally you now follow the revelation given, which is

	hard enough in some points to satisfy the most ingenious mind,
	simple enough to direct a child, and
	capacious enough to hold any spirit with comfort,

challenging enough to allow no slumber in a sort of cerebral self-sufficiency, imaginations inane the basis,
nor to permit prodigality, but to require self-control (Galatians 5:22), and show a path for our feet which is not vague, but virtuous.

There IS

	nothing else,
	none else,
	no other transport from the relativity of man to the absolute adequacy of God (Colossians :13-18), in logic, in law, in life, in enterprise, in safety, in security,
	no other pattern for living,
	no other prince of life,
	no other deliverer from death:

there is 

	no other ransom,
	no other revelation within the bounds of validity,
	no other attestation that works,
	no other personal power whose words echo His place and power, and for whom history is an objective class-room of the demonstration of its truth.

4) Welcome life!
Salute validity,
Hail narrowness of the secure path
from the wild wilderness to the workable faith.

Just as there is no phase of knowledge which does not yield attestation of the word of God^*5, from every perspective, so there is no phase of living before Him, when Christ is now received so that one lives in His presence and on His promises,  which is not liable and fashioned to express the truth. Like a fish in water, a bird in air, your milieu now IS the truth, and imaginations about it are as relevant as it would be if a fish imagined what it would be like, to be outside in the air with the cat, and did so amiss, till rising to the surface in a sheer prodigy of yearning, it was snatched out of the bowl. There is no need for being immorally expansive, spiritually deceived; but there is need indeed, avoiding every wind of spurious doctrine (Ephesians 4:14), to find and be funded in life to the uttermost, grounded on the Rock, for which there is in fact, no alternative: for there IS no other (Psalm 18, 62, Isaiah 44:8, II Samuel 22:23).

As Paul declares, God has given us what is needed

"for the equipping of the saints
for the work of ministry,
for the edifying of the body of Christ,
till we all come to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God,
to a perfect man,
to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:

that we should no longer be children,
tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine,
by the trickery of men,
in the cunning craftiness of deceitful potting,
but speaking the truth in love,
may grow up in all things into Him
who is the head - Christ..."

What kindly validation we now have. Not only does reason point to the Bible with irrevocable determination, but the Bible validates that pointing with ineluctable consistency, its words gripping history before and ahead as it comes with a like intensity of purpose.  Not only, again, does this occur, but the intensity of the love of God is found in the pursuance of His word in the power of His Spirit, which as a kind gift is granted to each one of His who has been found by Him (Romans 8:9), enabling understanding as in Proverbs 1:22-23, Ephesians 1:17), and work according to need (John 14:12) to His own glory. His ardour for man's salvation has taken almost every imaginable form, used vital and powerful imagery, scintillating symbolism, pithy realism, robust practicality, glorious perspective and summary, stark and startling changes in expression linked to immutable principles and wisdom in dealing with the beginning, the race in the middle and the end.

Everything sings to the harmonious integrity, the consistent conceptions, the beautiful absence of collision in a peaceful vigour, which is neither insipid nor unchallenging, but at times dashing, smashing, building, enticing, appalling, the whole work of creation and salvation passes like some great wind, followed by a lightning storm, seas lashing, a beautiful, cleansing rain and a sudden sunshine to dry the washed.

Yet it does not dry what kept out of the storm. Repentance is like a storm, salvation is like sunshine, regeneration is like the dawn, the sun arising on the distant, snow-covered mountains, glistening pink, symbol of His blood.

Validation is such a strong bond to the Lord. Through reason, gift of God, we can find the place, the site of what He has to say; through revelation, gift of God, we can there find content of what He has to say, and there likewise, the means by whom to know Him, who sent His only begotten Son, His eternal word from eternity, His perfection expression into mankind's format (Philippians 2), to serve as Saviour,

	in savour,
	in strength,
	in testimony,
	as exhibition of the love of God, of His power, of His relevance to man as he now is, of His grace and kindness, of His answer to all life's most intimate or on the other hand, most obvious problems.

Moreover, he has made it a voyage, so that as in a trip around the world in a yacht, one might experience individually and personally what it means to rely on Him who is invisible, and made as a work of creation, the laws, limitations, availabilities of what is visible (Hebrews 11:1-3). As He came to pioneer salvation for man, by His post-creation salvation, so has He moved throughout all things, applying His deed, His word, through His Spirit (Colossians 1:15-22, I Peter 3:18ff., 4:5ff., Romans 11:33ff.).

Validity is thus available in the MODEL which the Bible provides, that of God and creation and the way to show it to be so, so that it does not, as all  else does, contradict itself at the outset. The model DOES HAVE TRUTH, and it has it in a VERIFIABLE form, so that mere assertion, an invalid mode of apprehension, is not the case as in the naturalistic fallacy, but rather, what is open to the gift of reason as man, being rational in the first place,  is open to the gift of grace, open to testing as air to the lungs. It is valid moreover, in that acting on the basis of the reason provided by God, like pieces in a paper trail, we come to find His word, and this fulfils all that reason could require, thus providing verification and validation in the attestation of what we HAVE found and the examination of its qualities, both systematically and episodically, in one march of investigation, finding the summit in life as well as in truth, when one finds Him, through His word, and by His Spirit (John 5:39ff., I Thessalonians 1:5ff., 2:13ff).

What then ?This is one whole, all coherent and self-confirmatory. It is, to put it differently,  valid in having this trail reach something that attests itself independently of being found, in the Bible and in Christ, which are there whether we find them or not in this way, ready to attest just the same thing personally, which is testable likewise in the realm of thought, reason and fulfilment, coherence, harmony and consistency, majesty, scope and height of diction and its content, sovereign coverage of history, judgment and its detailed data, at will.

However you find them, and the Spirit of God ministers marvellously, the criteria of validity are met alike, by all these considerations. There is nothing like it^*6; or Him, who being alive from the dead, is alertly available at all times to His people who call upon Him, so that at length, one may even value a test because in it His fatherly power and brotherly help in Christ, and wise counsel shows itself once more, more than adequate.

Moreover, in this enquiry, this fulfilment, this salvation, one learns the validity of discipleship. Thus when one receives some colossal rebuke (as from the Principal of a College), it is either a test and a good thing, to enable the word of God to show its strength, if he himself has erred,  or a rebuke if it is the student. Events, persons, sequences of operations (cf. Amos 4), all may enliven the wits, teach the mind, chasten the soul.

Sometimes even injustice may refine the heart, showing the love of God even to the persecutors.

Indeed, to revert,  the student may the more be rebuked if the Principal has erred, as for the official,  guilt added to guile may provide a fiesta of persecutory fire. If a test comes, from whatever source, one proceeds in the power of God to overcome it. If it is a disastrous error, as with David, then a humble and a contrite hearts may achieve marvels for the spiritual development, and contrition wear away self-will, as grace is given and disciplined applied, but this, as that of a father to his child.

Again, if there is a rebuke, direct from the Lord or through the mediation of persons, then the child of God through grace,  is moved by that SAME grace of God to repent. If it be test, and perhaps even a privileged allowing one to serve in peril, danger or pangs, as with the apostles in Acts 5:33-42, then the power of God may probe deeply. It was so with Joseph in prison, Moses for 40 years in the wilderness before resuming his work to deliver Israel BY the power of God, in the MANNER that God chose! There lay the difference, for preparation of Moses was not only, then, in his youth to manhood, but for 40 years into manhood, where he learned the tender practicalities of looking after animals, before attempting once more to care for man, women and children. Indeed, 40 years again he endured, this time as leader in Israel under God, when those who be brought out of Egypt in the power and providence of God, refused to take the promise, to accept the premiss of the grace and  power of God, in crucial test situations. They refused, for example, doughtily to enter the PROMISED LAND, even when armed forces, an open door, a gracious God and an historical place assigned by Him in it, all were ready.

Like an airplane that crashes under test, this sets things back. Moses however continued to look after them with a patience which his earlier training would have helped to develop. At length, after the 40 years of disciplinary wandering, Joshua, who had not failed, but was vigorously willing to enter the Promised Land when the time came, was chosen and again with all the power of God, this remarkable leader, under-study of Moses, now directing under God, had miracles fashioned for him which mirrored in scale and scope, those given in the day of Moses. Miracles are the very nature of the case when the God who made laws, transcends them, not lightly, but with a characteristic over-riding power, which is routinely brilliant in conception, a wonder in inception, a testimony of wonder amid the norms of this world.

The point of all this ? The word of God talks of the love and patience, the wit and wisdom of God, and it shows examples of endurance IN FAITH BY TRUST, of those who love Him, and how this can produce things marvellous .Indeed, in the case of Moses, it led to a nation into which God eventually poured, through a virgin, His only begotten Son so that you and I - if so be you trust in Him who saves as biblically He is shown to do -  might in truth and trust, have eternal life. That ? as a gift (Romans 6:23), and even the gift in the giving of it, is by grace through faith (Ephesians 2, Romans 5:15), so that there nothing to be done but believing and repenting and receiving the resurrected and living Christ, by His Spirit, become a child of God and walk in the Spirit, fulfilling all His good pleasure (Romans 8:29ff.).

Validation is everywhere; but the way to God is somewhere only, in Christ Jesus the Lord. Just as an infinitely pressured primordial preliminary point is, in invalid models,  an emblem of a sick systematics, so an avoided point, at the personal level,  in the purpose of God is an emblem of disaster. The point in Christ is not spatial, but facial, not a simple thing, but a spiritual reality, and in His deity what He offers looms broader than man, His life, will and way being capacious for man (John 14:6), friend of logic, source of love, basis of salvation, from eternity for eternity: for all is His alone, spiritual in kind, basis of the visible with visible results (Hebrews 11:1-3) and it is in His gift precisely as He declares it (John 3, 5, 11).

His ardour has made things arduous, with brio, things sophisticated with wisdom, things elemental with originality, things free with results, results with restoration for the creation in His image man, pursued salvation with rigour, provided it to liberty with liberty, and has confounded the rebels, founded the faithful and given grace to the holy.

How deft and expressive is the divine reference to the whole creation groaning, lumbering in travail till the revelation of the sons of God, of there being an "earnest  expectation" which so awaits, as if the breath were sharply taken in at this prospect, natural in that it is fitting, though for a time fouled, supernatural in that only God could so rescue, redeem, and first in bud and in then in the millenium in bloom (Rev. 20, Isaiah 11, Psalm 72) show on this earth, so wickedly corrupt, that life is all about, ex-curse, and prior to that blessed time when our current species of heaven and earth, cast off in a spectacular divorce (II Peter 3), is replaced like a new car, the torrid past, the truth triumphant, the victory terrestrially manifest before the vice is terminated with all its thoughts and devilish anti-inspirations that have obsessed, as they now obsess, so many.

What longing, what expectation is now found in the creation, expressed so  often in the heart of man, what joy in anguish, hope in conflict, delight in the midst of labours, indeed what liberty even now (II Corinthians 5:17), have the redeemed, as the sculptor fashions each one, and the cords of misery and limitations, needless and impoverishing, are broken (Psalm 107:16).

With this liberty (John 8:34-36), awaiting the tender rain of His reign (Psalm 72:6), there is that sense of divine ardour, carrying us on like a wind driving one up a steep hill, greatly aiding the climb, and of its lovingkindness; for the Lord is ardent as you see in Ezekiel 33:11. He has NO pleasure in the death of the wicked. THIS, He affirms with the depth of His entire life. It is elemental, pure and potent in His heart. Rather, He desires that turning from burning, that lifting aloft from baseness, calling to  man, Turn, turn! What is the point ? Having an outline of life in one's being, why should one die ? THAT is the question, divinely posed: the divine desire is for those lost to  live, not merely have psychological lift, but substantial transmutation, regeneration (Jeremiah 31:31ff., John 3, Titus 3:7ff.), avoiding the cascading rock fall carrying  downward in its inveterate path, and turning from it, to live.

"Turn, turn!" He cries with burning ardour, turn from your evil ways, for why should you die!"

This, it is not just a phrasing, but a surging thrust of pity, sympathy in extreme case, where the poignancy, the WRONG of waywardness, the lustre of potential, the hope of fulfilment, the surging wonder of the Creator's heart is shown; and it needs to be realised, as also met with repentance and faith, as hand joins hand, the one beckoning and the other grasping, as in Him the heart finds rest, and in rest, reality and realisation, for this is eternal  life, here and there, forever, to KNOW God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent (John 17:1-3). Past all  friendship and human love is this knowledge, past all desire, for man is a personal being and in knowing his Maker in person, where He may be found, in the sent Messiah Jesus Christ (Isaiah 55, John 5:39ff.), in the heart of glory, now revealed, then manifest, he knows in truth, Him whose it is, manifest in His glory (John 14:21ff.), as He will become known face to face, when it is finished (I Corinthians 13:12, Revelation 22:4). This is the desire of the living Lord and the quickened soul, one met with an amplitude fitting for such zeal and divine ardour. Praise God for that!

NOTES

*1

This is shown at Christ the Citadel ... Ch. 2, with allied references there noted.

*2

On this, see for example The Impregnable Tower Ch. 8, especially *2.

*3

Thus in The Majestic  Might of the Merciful Messiah: Jesus  Ch. 6, in an imaginary angelic conversation, we have this:

News  361 - The Australian, October 21, 2005.
The Advertiser, November 1, 2005

70,000 - A NUMBER NOT WITHOUT INTEREST

I do not doubt that the 70,000 subscribers to the concept that organic evolution must be taught in schools, despite its numerous features of negation in terms of scientific method, any one of which should exclude it even from consideration, in integrity of thought, are a statistical last ditch effort. 

It is indeed, one last way -  after the South Australian Government has consistently avoided the challenge to debate, on its ghastly ghosting of God in its religious defilement thrust, in a Circular to School Principals - for an effort to be made to drown thought in arithmetic.

Imagine it, if anyone said this: 70,000 students insist that the examiner's report is wrong, and that they should be passed.

How irrelevant! They would need to show WHERE it is wrong, and WHY they think so, and HOW they are able to refute the grounds given by the examiners, not just chuck arithmetic about, as if this solved anything other than hurt vanity.

I know and agree, angelic one. 40,000,000 Frenchmen can't be wrong, used to be the song; but they can be, as you see in the case of the famously defected Maginot Line, their so brilliant and costly method of avoiding a repetition of the German invasion of 1914. In 1939, it was simply circumvented, the attack coming from another angle, through another route. How ridiculous to cite numbers, not arguments, as if this solved anything. The human race in its cultural acclivities, activities and aspirations has so often been wrong, at governmental and philosophical level, that it is marvel that they even bother to cite their figures.

In a way, you know, my dear fellow angel, it is almost as if two young people were considering marriage, and they consulted counsellors in large numbers, Uncles, Aunties, Friends, Teachers and so forth, and all said this: Oh but look at the size of his hands, and the scope of her dexterities, for he has hands 1/4 of an inch longer than most of his contemporaries, while she has one more talent than others in her class.

Even the youthful marital romancers might take pause at this, and wonder how in the world or out of it, anyone could be so foolish. It is not mere numbers which determine truth, but rationality, validity, verification and a consistent epistemology, metaphysics and attested basis which confirms itself on all sides when tested, and answers all things without difficulty, indeed with mastery. Many often err, some are sometimes right.

 

At the level of method we turn to

RELIGION, RELIGIOSITY AND REALITY IN CHRIST

a large work with this in the Preface.

PREFACE and INTRODUCTION

 

It has appeared to this author that the many religious perspective operations which have been presented on this site could well be modelled into a compilation, one of reasonable coverage, assisting those brain-washed into comparative religion approaches, synthetic insight scenarios and existential contentions to begin to breathe again.

So often it is assumed that the speaker, whoever it may be, without rational source, has the objective knowledge to enable a classification of all things, in the field of religion at the least, or the evaluation of all things, or to BE the basis, and this is made on the understanding that in discussing God, or gods, you first assume that there aren't any of these, that the class, category is null, vacant, or that you constitute the basis for all understanding, or your experience, gaspings or gapings. After all, if there were not any god or gods, you would have to be 'it', the centre and masterpiece to be able to dispose of all things by your knowledge, which would need not only to be absolute, but absolutely communicable.

There may be palliatives, analgesics, to the effect that people really thought this and that, or were driven to it by this and that, feeble rationales for irrationality, or were deluded;  but underlying is this godlike perspective commonly assumed by those who deny gods, while taking their place with an ease which would be admirable were it not ridiculous. You either become god in order to tell us all about what is not there, or you act as god in order to marshall all things: that is the manner of the modelling. In either case, it is unbecoming, as well as untrue. We are born and die. Without God, we know nothing rightly; but then, we are not without God, and by Him are able to understand all things from Him (Proverbs 8:8, Romans 17ff.).

What however of those who do not actually claim godhood or its functional powers and merely articulate the view that it is all comparative, relative to genes, past, present, developments or any other oddity chosen ? If, however,  all were comparative, where is the basis for evaluation of any ? Assumption ? Presumption ? arrogance of heart ? seizures of the head ?

If absolute truth were unavailable on a model of this kind, there being merely reactors, reactions and reagents, then in what manner is this disposition of things to be known! What is not there CANNOT be known. Since however, it is readily demonstrable both that it is and where it is (cf. SMR, TMR, and other major sets found in Search^*A), we escape - like a rocket propelled adequately to escape the tenacious gravity of the earth - from these conundrums. Pursuing logic remorselessly as in these volumes and their correlatives noted, we find a network of demonstration which moves to a finale in verification in the Bible, application of its data and confirmation; and this proceeds, while avoiding the anti-validation of a model antagonistic in the first place, to what it presumes to gain.

If reason were unreasonable, where would validity be in any knowledge ? It is however given as a gift, and like other gifts must be used to the uttermost, since it has been proven to be inestimable value in much. Declining to use it in any one field is mere arrogance and intemperance, allied to whimsical caprice or worse (cf. SMR pp. 150ff., 330ff.). It becomes a scientistic folly justly named "The Cult of the Forbidden." Contrary to scientific method, it is merely an export of an invalid philosophical assumption, simple begging of the question.

Using reason however as in any field without fear, and in this in particular, it becomes eloquent by results. Finding the necessity of God by it^*B, we find the testimony of God through it, like using a geiger counter to test for radiation. Having found what He has to say, and using reason to show it must have been said (cf. Psalm 50^*C), we verify by showing it has the calibre, or better the qualities which could in any case have come from no other source. When we also find that it resolves all questions of validity and truth in passing, while analysing and extraditing man as the source of his own pangs, pains and tragedies, declaring the prognosis of his diagnosed disease, and foretelling what is needed for understanding and convenience, the resolutions are complete.

Indeed, when further, we find the basis in the Bible for resolution of all psychic, social and political problems, and the call to come out of the problem-making kingdom into the kingdom of heaven, then the practicalities become as grand as the principles. When even more than this, we are told of the signals for the action of the Great Physician who is also the Judge, and that this is imminent, joy should know no limits (cf. I Peter 1).

There is an exception here. When this diagnosis-prognosis and resolution which applies on all sides is rejected by will, so that as Christ put it, light has come and darkness is preferred to it (John 3:19), then there is assuredly no cause for rejoicing. But this ? it is like a man who having a cancer which can be extirpated by operation, refuses it. If he is sad, that is his affair; he is merely being wilful. In this case, man is enabled not only to act as he will, but to will as he will, since in the providence and foreknowledge of God, he is in line to have a new nature which is aligned to God, and it is God who knows the truth and He is not dependent on pathological presumptions, as His love is applied (John 3:16, II Timothy 1:8ff., I Timothy 2:1ff., Colossians 1:19ff.).

With God, there are no limits such as unbelieving man weaves for himself, entangled like a foolish kitten, and in the Bible there are resolutions on all sides, and no wonder, since the return to reality as always, is the path to understanding.

As we survey the scene, then, from a biblical and logical standpoint (as seen in the above, these are correlatives, each requiring the other as we proceed in search of God and what are His wants), we find the lapses, errors, quaint oddities and vicious errors in this or that religion, and using the biblical explanation, find that all fits. In this, biblical instruction, principles and perspective become a course for instruction in religions and their ways. This is a particular focus of this present volume.

These excerpts enable with many references,  access to more material yet on the topics of rationality, verification, validation and method of approach.

*4

As to the infinitely compressed 'point' of the imagination of a Big Banner troupe: obliteration rather than articulation comes from infinity pushing everything continually to the more and more obliterative summary,  ever reduced; so that energy might be propounded as original instead. This however theoretically is deemed to require anti-matter as a participant in any wand-waving ceremony for its translation into matter, and this is not verified, but the contrary in vast scope.  Moreover, on the Big Bang hypothesis, dark matter and negative energy must abound as a make-weight for anomalies without them, but neither can be found to  cover the case. Principles such as the cosmological principle are imagined, not constrained, for the theory, but they are not met by other than  magnificent magnitudes of contradiction in the Great Wall and other more newly found  heavily contrived construction  near the imagined 'source' of this anomalous bang, near its theoretical beginning, so that on  all sides  negativity is the anti-verification met.

Hartnett has dealt with some of the issues and so has Humphreys, who have had a greater success in confirmation of their endeavours to meet  empirical reality with something that does not meet flat negativity. The ONLY successful statement concerning original realities in our domain, comes in the Bible, since it not only gives data that stand, that dismiss those  which in fact are found not to do so, but gives correlative,  evidential  grounds in support, in the normal way in scientific method. See the preceding  Chapter on this area.

Further, energy as an original or participant in originality (and it is hard to make anything move, far less explode, without it!) needs not only, by a smuggling, question-begging fudge, to be THERE, but more than this (for energy does anything without differentiation, and even this, only if there is something on which to do it), it must have direction  in  order to be energic with specific and required  resultants (such as are visible and manifest now, and constitute an  empirical necessity in any effort to account for  anything, and far more so,  everything). Organised, distinctive energy, with space-time, cause-effect distinctive attributes in the basis in which it is involved is required, if you want these things to come for a reason, and not for an imaginary verbal splurge.

Further, THIS ENERGY, this capacity to do work, this organised capacity,  this directive and potentiated energy, has to  ARRIVE.  As always, in this delicate, question-begging, verbally substitutionary idea for reality, this is just smuggling in under various headings, the glory of God. In itself, it is an orphan with no basis, a potential with neither reason nor ground,  an invention of the mind, with the adequate  specifications neither for what it is nor what it is to do. An improvement on nothing as original, it has only that same negativity for its source. It "arrives"! unsourced,  a component in a totality, no more based than the totality into which it comes. If it 'invents' it all, then where is the capacity to do that ? Energy is capacity to do work; the eventuation into actuality is another thing. Put energy and capacity together, with the specifics required for the resultant, and you begin to acknowledge God, instead of having in verbal mockeries, meaningless fragments without self-sustaining power but rather operative significance only.

By nature eternal, personal, creative, He is the basis required for the production of what is, causatively constrained by His power, who invents our species of causation in its temporal mode,  one of the specifications of His creative fiat. Neither nothing nor what is compartmental and a mere mode of action, not a basis for origination is relevant to the arrival of what has come. Only what is adequate for all, and always was, can stand investigation,  and it is part of the testimony to our being from Him, that despite our  mortality and slender  resources,  we both can and do conceive what does not work without Him,  and find in our minds and understanding, the power to display, as for example on this site, the adequacy and necessity alike of His Being. That logic requires it, as a BEING of minimal capacity is far from a constraint ON Him, but a testimony from Him,  to our own created minds, of our affinity for the way in which He works.

Prevarication, equivocation, verbal empires without logical basis, Big Bang in type, or any other: such things do not work in logic, in empirical reality or in internal consistency any more than in validity to sustain their imaginations, in strict contrast with the biblical situation (cf. *3 and *6). God and His testimony, verbal, empirical, intellectual, in all the orders of being, does work for all is covered without exception, at  every level,  mental, spiritual, moral, material, their synthesis: nothing is lost with no exception, and the concordance of all concepts and considerations is more than impressive or startling: it is envelopmental,basic  and sustaining to all that man is and does.  See *3 and *6.

*5

A Small Excursion into the Light of the World

See for example, the approximately 2.3 million word presentation to the point in this part of our site:

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.

Allied is:

Deity and Design, Designation and Destiny.

It is an staggering, delightful thing to find, as in these sets of volumes, the extent and the precision, the scope and the variety of problems for philosophy and science, which are resolved on this verified and validated basis. The range, the style and scope, the persistence and the consistency of explication found in this way is, on the other hand, precisely what one would expect from anything coming, not from man, his words, but from God, His! Verification thus sits on verification in unending seeming strata of confirmation, till the whole universe seems aflame, with intelligibility, and the place of man lustrous with life that is as illuminating as stimulating.

In such ways, as in many scientists and some Christian thinkers of old, you find the thirst for truth if not satiated - for it is ever alive - then utterly replete with relish, and this, it is part of the vitality which lies in following the Lord. Everything fits, and nothing is tale, all is given, and then, past these beginnings, the culmination awaits. How great is the glory of the God with whom man has to do, when only he finds Him. Those, says Christ, who prefer darkness to light have that fact as their condemnation, and it is definitive of it, so that there is no other ground, in view of His mercy and available pardon, but that,  alike for rich and poor, old and new; for all is known before God. It is this same Jesus who told some religionists of His own day: that if HE had not come among them and done the works which He did, and spoken the words He provided, then they would not, before judgment, have been condemned, had had no sin; but in view of the relinquished opportunity, the opposite was true. Guilt therefore remained.

Jesus is the light of the world, and in His light there is light which not only illuminates but brings knowledge of salvation,  free of works, full of mercy, for it is HIS works and those of no one else and nothing else, which bring health to man (Romans 3:23ff., Ephesians 2, Hebrews 9-10, Micah 7:19ff., Ezekiel 33:11).

Man is forever trying to produce rough means of meeting the cursed condition, and whether it be the way of Napoleon, or Hitler or Mao or other misery productive regimes, they neither cover man as he is, his trouble as it is, nor the remedy as provided. It is not empire building, whether in protoplasmic contortions for those sacrificed to the dream, not in mental abortions, such as now in so many Western lands with the naturalistic fallacy, but in return and redemption that the remedy lies.

It is like a car, if it were personal, which is trying every possible mode of covering its rust, with this and that solution and cover, but WILL NOT be replaced or even rust-rid. Such is man, alert to his troubles, anxious for his lot, but too intent on foolish dreams that ignore the necessity to produce what is, and not just fiddle about with it, in order to have a basis for being. The Producer is the missing chord, the missing basis, the Creator, and until He is returned to, there is only burning. WHEN He is sought with all the heart, then He may be found; and where He IS  to be  found is where He is, which - He being a Spirit, is where the locale is presented, in a Person, the eternal Word of God, come to help in holiness, to pay in sacrifice,  to attest in resurrection, to invest with prediction, to heal with power,  to teach with authority and to show to man as in the Sermon on the Mount, what DOES work because it is from the MAKER!

*6 See in exceedingly extensive detail, the exhibition of this face in

LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST

See also

RELIGION, RELIGIOSITY AND REALITY IN CHRIST,

REASON, REVELATION and the REDEEMER,

 The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy.