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CHAPTER ONE

Secular Strife, Ruined Vision and Sovereign Life

Life from First to Last

INTRODUCTION

Many fail to see the basis of all things, preferring nothing, all at once as the basis, or in stages of importation, though by definition there is nothing to be gained from nothing, whether you invent matter and motion, or space, or any other highly systematically question-begging starting stage. Invent the start, is the way with that model; then proceed, adding just as rationally unruly, whatever else you want to rob from logic, out of the air which you got from nothing at the first. Acting thus, with stunning resolve and stunned unreason, you proceed, finding just as much in the way of evidence, even from your imports from nothing, for progressive continuance: namely nothing, whether in the way of demonstrable transformative machinery or in partial, misformed, tossed away results, bad tries of what does not try..

These fairly tales and just-so stories, as Professor Lewontin of Harvard has entitled some of such things, are a diversion, but have no rationality (The Lord of Longsuffering, Prince of Peace, Christ of Command, Ch. 2. *2).

Once however you go past this vague and pretentious nonsense, and come to God the Creator who was always there, this being His nature, so that logically anything ELSE could ever be there, then there is a beginning of sorrows for many. Reason, despised in the absence of God, now continues to be despised in His presence, just as foretold in Romans 1:17ff., for man in sin is bound to divert the aircraft of truth from landing on terrestrial soil, by wresting unreason, in the service of active unbelief. Founded on nothing, or on biblical and philosophic bases, each way alike, man founders. The one is tradition, stalking the truth and seeking to subdue it; the other is unbelief, stalking the truth from outside of it, and seeking to slay it, baying the while, like suppressed but ferocious hounds. Sin is like that. It drives people.

What then of religious sweet nothings, idols, inventions, metaphysical affairs, like those of adulterers in the flesh ? We have looked at some of these in Ch. 8 of The Word and Wisdom of God and the Ways of Man. More detail may be found in the assemblage, RELIGION, RELIGIOSITY AND REALITY IN CHRIST, and further on this religious multiplication topic, in SMR Ch. 10. Again, however, for our present purpose, we pass the mere philandering of man's misplaced affections on idols, and turn to the living God whose word, the Bible, attests itself as the only authorised divine declaration from God to man (cf. SMR, TMR with LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST). Where verification and validation is to be found, we look. But even here, in the Bible, we need to look carefully. Carelessness is prerequisite for NOTHING, and in the end, can lead to nothing just as stark irrationality does.

Coming then to the God of the Bible, we find at once the resolution of the secular dilemmas on predestination. IF all is predestined (meaning, in some secular sense that it has to be because there is no other way, although the term is in fact here misused), then where is freedom ? If man is not free, then where is the validity of thought ? If truth does not objectively exist, why tell it ? Why be fraudulent even in your own model ? Unless truth is self-proclaiming, how can what does not have what it takes to take on truth, find it ? If it DOES have what it takes to take on truth, then HOW is this so ? How can what IS a matter of reaction in a contained series, HAVE the scope for truth, being contained in the interstices ? And how could it have it anyway, if it were not there. So they daze in their dreams.

Indeed, if you want chance to sponsor rationality, it is mere mischief, since the term is merely a type of the Boat People immigration program, which currently seems virtually sponsored by the Government in Australia. It may not seem to be there, but as their legal bills are paid what else is it ? The case deserves attention.

However that may be, chance is merely a name for what lacks purposive input, so that anyone or thing coming into its realm of operations must take precisely what is coming, there being no holds barred, nor indeed any discernible hands to make them, on this model. It is one of the logic-by-lapse verbosities that come like squalls from time to time into this world, and its thought. What the thing IS which SO operates ? it may be anything. It may be a waterfall into which someone falls, and by 'chance' escapes because there was a mini-spout where he landed and there was a bundle of matted material a little along which amazingly brought him to the bank. Yet the waterfall has very precise hydrological laws, and the water component its own chemical ones, and the aerial disposition above it all, its own gaseous ones. It is just that there was an environment into which one person or thing came, and there was no allowance or provision for its welfare, or concern with its nature in the midst of the rest of this environment.

Things may even be said to arise by chance, but there has to be something for chance to operate; that is, there must be scope for an entity which will NOT be subject to whatever it is which is deemed non-chance. What might that be ? It cannot be matter with its immense laws and layers of laws, so long sought by such as Avogadro, Gay Lussac, Dalton, Newton, Einstein, constantly being better realised, as are the limits of our own observation which in no way diminishes the course of reality by its slow advance into more governance and its perception.

It cannot be force and energy, for this is either there or not; and the capacity to do work is a very constraining one, since work is in some field or other so named, or in a multiple of fields, such that in each there are precise limits and provisions to be met. Indeed, logic is ingrained into language, into cause and effect, which recognised characteristics and depicts them, and follows out the results and their effects as it surveys its schema (cf. Causes). There are ingrained in language and the procedure for test, validation and verification.

"ARISE" ? what a school-boy howler that is, as our Matriculation Chemistry teacher used to orate. Arise ? Come by what means, with what interface, by what law, with what competent basis are you asserting this! Learn SCIENCE and stop waffle! This was the message.

You cannot logically move without God to institute ALL that the systems WILL have, in their constituted and non-constituting careers: that is, in their procedure AS made, but NOT able to make what it is that DOES so proceed. Telling how what is there got there, is not really at all germane to telling how it came to be there in order to operate; and while it would help a little if there could be found MEANS in what is there, for it to make itself on the same the type of scale or originality as it shows already, the fact that this is not so renders efforts to explain what is there by what it is, is like trying to explain how a car is made, by how it runs. It is just short of lunacy. It would, again, be helpful a little, if you could show it producing aeroplanes and you could study the refined means required; but it does not show this.

Chance is not a void from which, like a magician's hat, you just take what you want, and smile in unsophisticated folly, by taking what is NOT given, logically, and then making it do what it does NOT show itself have either the means to do or the facility or the attestation, as if an add-on feature for rabbits from a hat were hares from rabbits, except that it is ALL imagination, NOTHING of the kind coming to mind. Such proceedings are just mindless misuses of terminology.

Let us leave that turgidly illogical mess.

God however, what of HIS procedures and interfaces for man, what of His controls and constraints ? What of His tested, verified and validated word, the Bible ? Some invent dust even here. They talk about what is not known, as if revelation were swallowed up in mystery, and plain declarations wallowed in the dusk, while imagining what does not cohere, even attributing such things to God; but the Bible has the thing most clearly; and it is remarkable testimony to the obfuscatory powers of man that many still argue with more heat than light, about this.

Some say, HE WORKS all things after the counsel of His own will (Ephesians 1:11), and in heaven and earth does what pleases Him (Psalm 115), and leave it at that; so that it is as free of freedom as Islam, whose god allegedly cannot even be known (according to the doctrine of Tanzih cf. Surah 42:11), being free from involvement in the turmoil of earth. There is no self-imposed restraint upon His dealings. In the end, Allah is unknown as sovereign, disposing as he is disposed to dispose. What however does not reach the essence of the sovereign God, is not free of the arbitrary, where the mind cannot rest, where liberty cannot obtain.

What indeed cannot be known, it is idle to tell us about! Such approaches of obscuration, whether secular or religious, make the point by their failure, however: since for truth to come, not only is there the necessity of God, but of His willingness to divulge it; for marking and measuring processes tells nothing of the reason for their origination, of the plans for man or of the heart of God, though much may be found (as in SMR), concerning what CANNOT be true of Him, and what would contradict His very being. If God is not found and the heart of God does not speak, then truth being absent from human knowledge, obscured in the unknown or unknowable, the concealed or the unfound, it cannot be communicated on such models.

What more then does the BIBLE tell us about God that relates to our current thought: predestination. He works, we find, everything after the counsel of His own will, but by no means does He leave it at that. He confers knowledge, and truth to the uttermost in its depth (I Corinthians 2:9ff.), and if more is to be found, it is not lacking in principle. Indeed Christ is He who has told us the truth, and IS it (John 8:40, 14:6).

In Ephesians 1:9, we find that God has made "known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself..."

There is a 'good' characteristic which rules.

Does this limit even God ? Of course not, if you want be logical and biblical, since it is what to Him is good which so cherished, and so enabled, the how is His own purpose a limit! Words ought to have some meaning, if they are to be used.

Does some criterion limit what He does for all that ? Of course it does; for it is His standards which are in place at His option. Yet these are not outside containments (for nothing outside God is, He the Eternal base for all, so that it can manage to BE); they are personal preferences. Since nothing was besides Him in the beginning, then these things were invented, opted, adopted, at will for creation. These were bases and He tells man of them.

Further, outside all process and intention, GOD IS, so that what He wills to be LIKE, and what criteria He will to have His own, are not imported (from nowhere), but eternally select.

Can you be freer than having an option, and pursuing it without limit, force, contrary thrust or other extant object or action! Does God's character rule Him then ? What a grossly irrelevant import from our created state that would be! Naturally there can be no such scenario to the ultimate and uttermost spirit, on which all depends and who depends on nothing, being eternal and the basis of all that is constituted. IF His character ruled Him, then IT would be a foreign, alien, or adventitious thing which pushed Him about.

There is however nowhere for it to come from; and one has to realise that with the ultimate being, things controlling things are mere imports from creation. HE and ALL that He is, is Himself, personal, moving as He will, inventing as seems good, with His own furniture of function and power, preference and rule, ultimate, without beginning. Alternative ? NOTHING to be the basis. Hence God has character AS He pleases, and confers liberty WHERE and to the extent He pleases. We find out by His telling us, and displaying it in His word and in accord with the reason He has given us, and in the history which His word foretells and fulfils. It is all one and all in agreement; but in His word, it is express, explicit and definitive. If you want it, it is there.

God, being free, gives degrees of liberty as He will; and there is no other source for liberty.

But you may ask ? If He then so disposes liberty, where is His own rule ? If someone in liberty hates God, where is His rule or good pleasure in that ? If God wills in accord with His own purposing in Himself, as the Bible puts it, to make beings of such a type of liberty, that is His business. If He prefers to make what can prefer to avoid Him, how does this weigh on His liberty ? MUST He then do as WE prefer in order to be free ? Hardly! (cf. Galatians 1:10). Why is it simply assumed, then, that total power and/or liberty MUST mean that nothing dare differ from you in anything, contradict you or arraign you! Some teachers almost seem like that, and recently one had experience of a medical doctor, who seeming almost an amateur provocateur, began to follow such a molested norm!

If you want freedom and its trial, test and fruits, HOW precisely is this an abrogation of deity or sovereignty or purpose or will or majesty ? In WHAT precise manner is this to be shown! Is God then to have mentors who caution Him that really, you know, this or that would not be entirely a matter of freedom for Him! This is to prescribe to deity, the lavish tyrannies of flesh; where they do not fit: for God is not seeking to gain glory by intemperate and dictatorial dynamics. To be sure, total and continual adversative antics would destroy peace, but to give them their way and their day till all is shown, the follies in precise detail, where they lie, and the wisdom, of truth, this is indeed a majestic, divine enterprise (cf. I Peter 4:12ff., 1:7, Job 23:10). Having MADE man in His image, is it so very strange that He desires that man, AS in His image, be found in truth and in reality, to love truth or not! and this entirely personally, neither by programmatic nor merely disposing dynamic!

It is precisely this that He decrees: HOW He selects is AS His own criteria, of personal kind, show. It is in love and in pity and compassion, so that failure to find is grievous to Him in any one; but it is in truth, so that failure to find in truth what loves truth, is His, is isolation of the self-sufficient, or the otherwise-determined, as it is in reality, before time and sin and fall made technical steps the harder. He sees in the snow, each personal particle, before pollution wearies and despoils it. The Lord KNOWS who are His own (II Timothy 2:19). Such knowledge, after the manner of wisdom, finds out, and is neither dictatorial nor daft; but consummate in reality (Proverbs 8). The issues are direct (Proverbs 1), and suffer no subterfuge. Such is our God. He gets what He wants, but IN so doing the superb nature of His wants is implemented in pity, impervious to corruption,and not in mere power.

Thus if someone asks: How CAN there be liberty if God cannot be be baulked ? the reply is this: How can there not! If GOD ELECTS to confer a liberty, in such and such a field and to such and such a degree, so that as with man, He may be hated cordially and His name defiled abusively as a very lust of life, then that IS His good pleasure. What is good about it ? It is this, that it is LIMITED. Thus, although it permits spiritual games and wars, it does NOT permit all power, though it does allow realistic results that SHOW the nature of the type of use made of the conferred kind of liberty. If in His plan, evil must show its teeth so that their nature may be observed empirically, and reason and not only authority freely confirm the truth of revelation, so be it. If, further, the one who will NOT hate God will be tested to the uttermost as to fidelity, good: you do that in chemistry to ensure purity of product. What is the problem ? This is how He wants it and this is how it is.

But some then say, But does it not say, "So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy" (Romans 9:16), and in Romans 9:19, "Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens."

It does, but it also declares in II Thessalonians 2:10, that an active delusion is sent to those who did not receive the truth. What if, as Paul reasons in His revelation in Romans 9:22, "God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction!"

In other words, Paul is here declaring three inter-related things. GOD will work out what He wants to do, and that is that. This is proposition one. Then, He both can and will meet any level of assault, evil and enterprise in His own way, time and procedure, reducing or waiting as He will, bowing to nothing, allowing much according to His own method and purpose in Himself.

The third proposition is this: While in sovereignty, He does no abdicate to the power, wiles or seductions of any of His creations, He DOES have inclination to suffer, to be longsuffering, to be merciful, and in asserting His overall sovereignty, we must assert no less a wise discrimination to His assessing eye, who does not cease to love the unlovely (Romans 5) and to provide at vast cost (John 3:16) for its redemption. Christ came NOT to judge the world, but to save it! (John 3:17). The outreach was between God and man, one Being and one total, as in Colossians 1:19ff., and the thrust of the love in view was total, positively, and exclusive of judgment in the thrust of its concern, negatively. This is a sovereign datum too.

Some then say this, MAN has NO liberty and is simply pigeon-holed this way or that, good or bad. But this is not biblical. ALL men are pigeon-holed from birth as bad (Psalm 51, Romans 1-2). God selects some and these are then redeemed. Nothing can alter this, and before time it was all finished.

That is, God knows what he is doing and is not subject to time and tide in His ultimate determinations. Why should He be ? He made them. Calvin even speaks of the horrible decree of God, in determining those to be lost, and speaks in terms of mystery. Certainly, there is much to be understood more (I Corinthians 13); but the deep things of God are already revealed (I Corinthians 2:9-11), and in Ephesians 1:9 we find that He has made known from mystery His vast intent. There is nothing in the least conceivable degree mysterious about Colossians 1:19ff., in this, that God, "having made peace through the blood of the cross," has a GOOD PLEASURE. What is this ? It is that ALL things, yes whether in heaven or on earth (Col. 1:20), should be reconciled to Himself. It is by Christ, "by Him, to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven,"

This is not duplication but information: BY HIM, for God having made SUCH a sacrifice, did it not in some isolate's sovereign majesty, but in the most passionate of all passions, going to the uttermost to secure what might be found, the banners of mercy flapping in the wind, the seas of mercy red in mercy, the atmosphere about driven by mercy, the thrust enormous, the desire, incomparable, but the purity, unbreachable, unimpeachable, as He finds His own. He is not baulked, but has self-control, which alas one would see in some theologians who mess with His mercy and decode His longing.

As John 3 declares, the LOVE has the positive scope concerning the world's salvation, and the negative scope of avoidance of judgment in its issuance; so that WHEN there is NON-FULFILMENT, there is ONLY ONE PARTY responsible. It is statedly in man, that this cut-off is to be found, not in God's love, its scope, quality or disposition. What then does the Bible, the word of God, say is the culprit, and where lies the containment of the mercy of God so that all are not found ? It is statedly in the preference in man for darkness (John 3:19).

It is God who knows both where it lies and how it is to be penetrated - for it is useless to limit God in any way or time, as if He were subject to law, rather than its Author, so giving the throne to philosophy, and the government to humanism, even concerning GOD! and it is He who knowing from before time, who in the face of such love, are His, implements in time what time does not alter. This, it is the short-circuit in the eternally discerned preference for darkness: in man differentailly. GOD LOVES ALL to this EXTENT. NOT ALL are so reached. He came NOT to judge but to save the WORLD. Whatever occurred to prevent this vast and unrestricted love ? At once we are told: it is God-read, truth-to-tell PREFERENCE on the part of some for darkness. It is not a commonality, in its ultimate scope, or all would not come; it is a particularity and THUS some never come.

Contradicting that is mere persiflage. It is neither more nor less true than this, that whom He wills, He hardens. What if Pharaoh was borne with, God being longsuffering, for MUCH, and IN MUCH, before he was given that delusive height which allowed him to do a Hussein, a Hitler, a Mao, and play God as if it were a game; but these, they could not work the works of God, and so ended the litter of lust.

But how ? someone asks, how can a man be predestined and yet free to relate to God, rather then become a mere particle in the divine pleasure ?

It is simple. Read the text. It is totally amazing to me how this seems repugnant to so many in this field. What does it say ? WHOM HE FOREKNEW, HE PREDESTINED. Why start in the middle of an equation, rather than see the thing, first and last, and altogether, as one. What is this ? some kind of theological game, or quest for divine truth from God's book!

So the predestination merely FIXES what is found, like a lab note-book, attesting what has been found. Then it might be conceived of as bound. But what is really back of it ? It is the lab experimentation, and the note merely affixes notation to reality. What was found ?

Knowledge finds, and foreknowledge finds, as only God can find, ahead of the creation, just as aeronautical engineers can find ahead of construction, what is to be; and if they are imperfect, this is because they are mere creations of God, with liberties and errors; but with God this is not so, so that foreknowledge is awesome, lovely and unlustful. If God lusted, He would have to lack and be frustrated or contained contrary to will; but THAT would require something thrust into Him, that He might so desire, or kept from Him, that He might not get, and that is another model, in which "God'" is subject to something else. Using multiple, contrary models simultaneously is mere logical confusion, and contains the blending of opposites kaleidoscopically.

But HOW did God foreknow ? That is, what are the criteria of selection for Himself, among mankind, or not ?

God is quite simply AS stated in the Bible, and Christ is similarly His exact image, so that He too may be called the I AM (Exodus 3:14), and as God is sent by God to earth, God being triune (Isaiah 48:15ff.). What then does God say ? In Colossians 1, we have already seen this, HE WOULD HAVE ALL RECONCILED TO HIMSELF. What did Christ say to Jerusalem ? before its election to the coming devastation became fact ? It was this: "If you had known, even now, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! but now they are hidden from your eyes." You even find the same heart and desire, pure in its intention, vast in its loving scope, but lust-free in its application, relative to Moab! (Jeremiah 48:30-36). Those who act as if to excavate God's heart from His head, or more directly, His love-passion from His organisational control (in fulfilling what He purposes in Himself, in such depth), act as if they scarcely KNOW God who does all these things (Jeremiah 9:23ff.). But mercifully, we do not have to judge one another!

This, then, is what He says. The other part is what He did. He wept over it. You see the same in the Word of God in Isaiah 48:16ff., where God deplores their failure to heed, reflecting on the wonders that they had freely avoided by voiding His counsel for so long. He obviously is lamenting, heart-wrung, desire emptied in the realm of that to which He had given certain degrees of freedoms, including that to love truth or to hate it, to love mercy or to revile it, and so on. He has deemed it GOOD to make man a person, not a puppet, and to grant a liberty to such beings to find their way, not without vast promptings and openings, but without mere control, so that truth is seen under test, and philosophy may be judged with her ... children!

He tests, and He tells us to do the same. TEST ( I Thessalonians 5). What things are we to test ? ALL THINGS. Truth is utterly fearless. Before time, and man, and therefore human sin, with its differentials amid men, God FORE-KNEW all, and as it is, so it is predestined; as it operates before Him in His total knowledge, so it is scripted in the lab note-book of spiritual destiny. It is BECAUSE this is done that NOTHING which may be found, can FAIL to go where HE WOULD HAVE ALL to go, and nothing that is merely a lie, a deception, can by any means get there.

Now let us consider things in steps, to pin down the ground-sheet, and make a place for understanding.

STEP BY STEP

God is indeed sovereign, as you see in Daniel 4 for example, and indeed, does as He will in heaven and earth, and there is nothing withheld from Him; and whom He will, He puts down and whom He will, He raises, and there is nothing hidden from Him, and to Him and of Him and through Him are all things (Romans 11:36). To whom He will (Matthew 17:27), He grants eternal life, and from whom He pleases, He withholds it, and a breach of rupture of His sovereignty is merely a whim or caprice or hope of the rebellious heart of man.

ONE of the things that SO pleased this God (cf. Ephesians 1:9), is to TELL us concerning Himself, the thoughts of His heart and this, to the uttermost depths (Ezekiel 33:11, Lamentations 3:33, I Corinthians 2:9ff.), so that although details are yet to be discerned (II Corinthians 13:11-12), yet the principles of His love are sure as surely as He lives. Furthermore, God IS love (I John 4:7ff.), so that nothing of a contrary kinship is attributable to His character.

III

ONE of the things that it SO pleased Him to tell us, concerning His purpose and love, is this: that it pleased Him, having made peace through the blood of the cross, to reconcile all things to Himself, in heaven and on earth; and to do this through Christ Jesus, a point He repeats emphatically at once! "by Him ... by Him". When the cost of such love is infinite, the repetition is pertinent; and its omission in theological studies, IM-pertinent. By HIM, in heaven or in earth, by HIM, it pleased the Father to reconcile ALL. If it pleases man to know the heart of God, there it is in love; and if it does not please man so to find, then why play the fool and act as if not the heart of man is the mutative factor, but in some ludicrous and contradictory way, that of God! That is the ULTIMATE blame-game, blame shift.

This ONE THING then is that it was His good pleasure that all be saved in heaven and earth, just as it is His desire that all men should be saved, and come to a knowledge of the truth (I Timothy 2), where once more, what is involved is GOD and His will on the one hand, and man and His gathering up, on the other, universal, categorical to the uttermost in context. Thus in I John 2, we are told that "He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world."

Thus ALL of Israel had the atonement sacrifice made, for all it was sufficient and provided: as to scope it was total in disposition. As to reception as in Deuteronomy 29, disjunction was still possible, thus aborting the sufficiency, so that NO COVER whatever came (29:18-20).

ONE of the things that in which He illustrates the depth and certainty of His word, is this: that He weeps for those lost in their pride or intransigence or hostile emptiness as in Luke 19:42ff., Matthew 23:37ff., or expresses His grief in terms of His lament, His heart churning as in Jeremiah 48:31,36, or of elemental yearning as in Hosea 11:8, Jeremiah 31:18-22, or elemental principle as in Lamentations 3:33.

ONE of the other elemental aspects of His desire, His good pleasure, is that the world should be saved. This we find in John 3:17. There is no hint of judgment in this desire; for it is unmixed, pure motivation, surging from within, untutored and unqualified, though preference for darkness, as foreknown to God, while not reducing the desire, does prevent its implementation (John 3:16-19). If anyone is a person IN this world, then such is the impetus of divine love; and if anyone wishes if only he or she could be saved, determining that there is no hope, in the beginning, as to the end, it is a matter of divinely discerned reality, and His desire is for you. Strangle yourself if you must, spiritually, but NEVER blame God. You are not quite sincere ? So be it. You are quite sincere ? Then it is not God who prevents you. Give up on rationalisation and come (cf. John 5:39-40).

ONE of the ways the Lord obviates the defilement of the heart that paralyses by pollution man's very sight and mind in spiritual things (I Corinthians 2:14, John 1:12, Ephesians 4:17-19) is to make a GRANT of salvation. This occurs where it SO pleases Him in the terms already found revealed in His word, in 3-5 above. This one finds in John 6:65, 38. No technical flaw, divine inability, frustrating foozle or clash of opposite occurs there; for these things are affirmed, all, unequivocally as well as with passion. Indeed, they are univocal in tenor and thrilling in penetration.

Knowing where it is right for the consummation of love to be, the Lord ensures that it so comes, by grant; and this, not as if it were an injection into an iron man, but where it was before time found to be fitting; and so, not a matter of divinely preferred character, or any spiritual elite, but of the WILL of man, the PREFERENCE of man as divinely known (John 3:19, Isaiah 48:15ff.). That man is now so debased as not to be able (John 1:12) to find His own heart and master it even in such choice, is a problem that grace might face; but not with God, when it is He who works, and His grace which finds. Never let us witlessly infer or grossly inter what is circumscribed for man, when it comes to God's dealings with Him, whether in creation, regeneration or predestination and salvation.

You have seen giant earth-moving equipment, eating up what is before it; so God has nothing that can give Him pause, but consumes what to man is impossible, and deposits answers; for He is indeed, as Daniel declared (2:20-23,47), unique and superlative, indeed sui generis.

Thus here we find the most deserved of panegyrics:

"Blessed be the name of God forever and ever,

For wisdom and might are His,

And He changes the times and the seasons;

He removes kings and raises up kings' He gives wisdom to the wise

And knowledge to those who have understanding.

" He reveals deep and secret things;

He knows what is in the darkness,

And light dwells with Him. I thank You and praise You,

O God of my fathers;

You have given me wisdom and might...
for You have made known the king's demand."

Whatever depressions and reductions the power of man as made might (and does) suffer, and in whatever he now lacks power, as formally it was his, to accomplish, yet God does not share these limits. He triumphs over human weakness with divine and sovereign power to perform, know, exhibit the state of the case such that His own word is verified. And what is this His word: THIS is the condemnation that light has come into the world and man has preferred darkness (John 3:19). HIS is the intimation of unqualified desire to save the world and not to judge it at the outset; MAN'S is the unqualified ground for rejection in the very face of this stated divine desire. Thus does God Himself elect in accord with His stated principles, and does not declare trash but truth, while He trashes what denies the truth, what even dares to deny what puts forth the contradictory thoughts of man in place of the precise and perfect thoughts of God.

So God foreknows.

Because this is the truth, the incoming reality in history, in our time, is not amiss, for truth does not miss; but where some slither, there traffic problems arise, and you cannot traffic in God. Thus where the generic love is meeting deception, there the devious declines, the taste of it all being left (Hebrews 6). On the other side, where it is a grant in goodness to a heart foreordained, then there is possible some awareness of the divine pleas of entry, and so man will at times invent a place for the DEFILED will to which it has no relevant access (John 1:12). It is the word of God re the love of God and the way of God alike, which must be accepted; for He alone knows. In this, and accordingly, He not only acts, but does so in advance of the Fall, "before time began," as the apostle Paul puts it (II Timothy 1:9). What precedes our time, prevails likewise in it.

Flouncing and bouncing into philosophic penchants and their play-care spaces is mere persiflage. That is no way to interpret the word of God. You take it as it is: you may reason concerning its truth, as authorised (I Peter 3:15), but in doctrine you take it comes without pepper, salt and mustard or any other spurious additive. It needs none of this and will take none (Proverbs 30:6).

What He declares, this only is to be believed, received, authorised and applied. It is then that one finds that His word in so declaring, without addition or subtraction, clears from the decks of reason all problems; and this, it is merely a confirmation of His affirmation (cf. Ch. 2 of The Word and Wisdom of God and the Ways of Man). Where divine revelation rules, reason is content, as well it may be, since the Speaker of the word also spoke man into existence and gave him spirit (cf. Predestination and Freewill).

It is indeed a vast bounty that as a matter of empirical fact this is found, this fascinating and unique reasonableness without omission or complication, found in His word, the Bible; for the Lord might have left us in strange waters as a trial as do all the religions of man; but it is not so here, for His word being His, is internally harmonious and externally verifying on all fronts in which it is tested. It is the most meta-philosophical, intensively reasonable depiction, providing perspective, specification and presentation concerning man and his plight, nature and ways, that has ever been published; and there is nothing near it, for all else ends in conundrums (cf. Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer, with The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy, with SMR).

It was noted at the outset in VI, our current item, that "No technical flaw , divine inability, frustrating foozle or clash of opposite occurs there, for these things are affirmed, all, unequivocally as well as with passion." Let us extend the point in another aspect.

VII

ONE of the ways God achieves this is by foreknowing, apart from any merit in, or achievements of man (Ephesians 2, Romans 9), of those who are His (II Timothy 2:19), seen even before and apart from time and its pollutions (Ephesians 1:4), before lust and blighting blindness ever arose in mankind, or its results ever surged into history. Before sin ever differentiated the more seemingly meritorious from the less: where all was innocent, God knew where He, who is called love (I John 4:12-16) reached in His own integrity (II Timothy 1:9) and with His own desire (Colossians 1:19ff.), and who were to be His own. ALL who have believed in Him, do believe or will believe, has He so foreknown, and ensuring the reality is not lost, predestined (Romans 8:30ff.).

VIII

ONE of the divine empathies with man is - by His word and His will by revelation - shown in this, that His grief is to the heart. We hear of its churning and learn of His lament in acute yearning for what is nevertheless lost (as in Jeremiah 48, for example). God in His purity does not indulge lust but promotes love. A mother can mourn for the son she so truly loved; but she does not seek psychiatric replacement of his mind in order to MAKE him different. He is a person. God can and does change hearts with infinite power; but the purity that precedes the power does not wander from its own wisdom. Thus God grieves and laments, a testimony to a love so deep that He sent His only begotten Son into the world, born of a virgin so that He is called the Son of God, when the everlasting Word of God, in the insurgence of love without limit, became man (Micah 5:1-3, Hebrews 1, Philippians 2).

The Lord does not grieve because He is impotent, but because He will not bend from truth and righteousness, or make mercy the servant of deception or corruption; yet merciful He is, and IN mercy does not turn all to hell, by varying from truth, or indulging in deceit games, as He well might. He grieves therefore, as might befit One who so loved that He sent the One whom He did. It was NOT that the world might be judged, but that it might be saved, the condemnation residing not in a paring, sparing by God, but in those with a final and ultimate, a foreknown preference, one divinely pre-discerned in man, in as many indeed as so desired it (John 3:19); and these selectively, and with unselect results, receive what they have first desired (John 3:36). Preferentially they desired; and preferentially they obtained, heedless of wisdom, aspirant of other things.

Responsibility is not a mere theological axiom, but a fundamental fact, not a clouded contrivance, but a basic reality.

So does man grieve at loss of some in his own way, from this or that outcome, things, phases or good results, gone through intemperance. He understands, for he is made in the image of God. In the case of divine love, it is through man's intemperance that the Father in love, mourns. THAT is the source of the condemnation, not a non-love of the world or a non-desire that it be saved, or a non-decision that in so sending salvation, judgment would not be in view. THIS was the mandate and the mission, the commission; it was in its negation by man that the entirety so sought by God, with such heart, was not found. It was equally in the sovereign knowledge and pre-assessment decision of God, that this is so. God is very competent and needs no help from human philosophy in re-writing His heart!

THEREFORE, to call it a mystery in basic and far less pejorative terms, that He excluded some is categorically wrong (Ephesians 1:9, Matthew 23:37). HOW OFTEN has He called, tenderly as a hen her chicks, like a shepherd the sheep, through the images of prophets, multiplied (Hosea 12:10), only to be rejected; and this not by some devious division, but by MAN'S specific departure from a mercy which God is offering with a heart which can lament its ignoring, and even grieve over the time in which things might have been far otherwise, as entirely divinely desired (Isaiah 48). Liberty was not made for annulment; and even sin which limits is, does not remove its constitutional relevance to man, one so deep that only God can re-activate it by regeneration, and restore it in washing.

You do not need to 'protect' the power of God at the expense of His exhibition of love. Purity protects. Truth preserves. The full and fervent flow of divine love is precisely as in John 3, and the ground of exclusion in view of it is entirely as there stated; and it is differentially entirely in man that many are lost, through their indomitable preference. It is time that the ear heard and the eye saw the glory of God in His word, and stopped reading back from aspiring philosophy into His word.

The mystery is there as always with God, that He COULD and WOULD SO love, and so be concerned and be SO magnificent; but it is part of this, His magnificence, that there is no mystery about His love, as to its nature! You see it in its elemental purity in such sites as Jeremiah 31:16-22, Jeremiah 48, Isaiah 48:15ff., Luke 19:42ff., I Timothy 2, Ezekiel 33:11, the book of Hosea, including Ch. 11, in Hosea 13:14, Matthew 22. ALL HISTORY has been able to develop because of this love, for it could have ended at the time of the flood or before; but God in His love and mercy has NOT blighted and blotted out man. He knew better, He did best; and 'better', what is it but that which is nearer to the merciful heart of the sovereign God.

Thus are the divine mourning, entreaties, passing aside the blight for time on time (as in Ezekiel 20), as God has continued times innumerable, patient and longsuffering; and thus is the divine call to come and ask, as in Psalm 107, only to acknowledge and seek and entreat; and such is the poignant atmosphere of Jeremiah 13:18ff., and 13:27: When will you be made clean, and when once will it be!

Indeed to call THIS action of God, enshrined in foreknowledge, ensured in predestination, filled to the uttermost with love, a mystery in any substantial sense - let alone one such that the rejection of the non-elect is deemed by Calvin, a horrible decree, as he proceeds to reject the biblical declaration concerning the heart of God as above: this is banal. We do not know all, but we do know what we are told, even to the depths as in I Cor. 2:9ff..

It is in this Christ who SO came when God SO loved and would have ALL to be saved, that all things are to be gathered (Ephesians 1:10-11), the will of the Father and that of Christ being as one (John 10:30), and Christ Himself determining His own (Matthew 11:27), just as does the Father, for their intimacy is infinite (John 6:65, Matthew 11:27. Whom the Father grants, to this one the Son wills to reveal. There is neither cleavage nor is there defect in the exact definition of God to be found in the Son. How Calvin erred in declaring to the contrary (cf. Christ's Ineffable Peac and Grace ... Ch. 2 ), even if, for the time carried away with his philosophic penchant, he may not at all have realised into what deep error He was thereby moving in Christology! A change of form does not remove the identity or the truth or the speech in direct dependence on the Father (John 12:48-50). It was not not-God but God who was incarnate. It was in the image of man made in turn in the image of God, that He came, yet without sin, not destroying but deploying His identity once and for all, even to the uttermost as in Hebrews 1-4.

It is so for ever, was so from the first, between the living Word of God and Him whom He reveals; it was so in foreknowledge and the heart that sought salvation for man, then as later; it is so now and it remains so to judgment. God does not change (Psalm 102), nor is He in any way divided. The principles of His heart are stated to the depths (I Cor.2:9ff.), concerning man and his salvation.

To call, therefore, the RESULTANT divine decree of predestination, which logically follows the foreknowledge just considered (as in Romans 8:30ff.), a horrible one as so readily arises from the turmoils of Calvin's here mistaken exegesis in Matthew 23:37, is a misapplication of the term. What is horrible here is Calvin's exegesis! Christologically it is virtually a schoolboy howler. While Calvin is in general sound, and often brilliant, here it appears some passion and philosophical penchant closed his eyes.

Indeed, it is hard to find any great theologian who did not in his own day, especially if the more expansive, in some point or other stray. We humans are never to be relied on in such fields (Matthew 23:8-10), let alone made classics (I Corinthians 3). Each over time may be used in the contributions which God enables; but not to become a source for devoted disciples! Perhaps this is why we all have this dangerous tendency to make such errors, somewhere, somehow. Though it is not possible to generalise here, there are many examples! It teaches wisdom, so that whatever the field, theology or other, the ground must always be tested, so that no merely cultural or personal preference pollute the presentation of the word of God!

What then concerning this horrible decree that Calvin horribly attributes to God ? There is nothing horrible about God, and you can talk for weeks if desired, about appearance and reality, but it will never alter the attribution. GOD has provided the answer to such thoughts, placing the restraint in principle in man, one pursued in practice by God before time. It is MAN ONLY where the mystery lies in this regard: WHY will you DIE! God accordingly exclaims. AS I live! He clarifies for all time, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked! What more does it take!

Sin is like that: it dulls, annuls, disturbs reason, distresses understanding, evokes horror, defiles wonder! "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked!" the Lord announces. TURN, WHY will you die! He exclaims (Ezekiel 33:11).

So far from any such mystery in God, there is here the parallel to man's folly, not only in spoiling what he has, but in spoiling what he might have or might have had, and the heart of it is not diverse in this regard, even when it is GOD who uses His own power and wisdom, and knows before time. It IS grievous!

Sin is like of this kind, inveterate, vicious, and it is the testimony to the love of God in its supreme wisdom that He has overcome the madness of sin by discerning and determining personal outcomes in the face of the love which He is, before its fruit makes of man a mockery, before time was or creation was deposited (Ephesians 1:4, Romans 8:29ff.).

Nothing about God is horrible, and NO mystery concerning Him is abhorrent; for this is altogether to misrepresent the case which as God declares, lies in man, both in his sin and in his sundering from the salvation offered. And this: it is not because God does not desire, as if being a liar, shameless thought, but because past all equipment failure, man in the very sight and wisdom of the eternal God, in vast numbers STILL does not want God, salvation or not, free or otherwise, given leave to respond or not, foreseen in this or not. Some are simply foreknown in the domain of divine knowledge before man became historical, not to prefer darkness, and accordingly are saved, as the vast splendour of the unequivocal love of God to man, to save the world, being unleashed, they are made manifest as His own.

Therefore, O man, do not deceive yourself when you choose to enjoy the fruits of sin for a season, saying, O well, if it must be, it must be, don't blame me! The truth concerning you is known to God and you are inexcusable if you so treat the Gospel. God has no technical failures in its application, and what is ashamed of Him NOW, of this will He, the Christ, be ashamed at the judgment. So He declares in His harmonious and glorious presentation of truth (Luke 9:23-26).

Where the Gospel is known, there is no excuse on grounds of ignorance, as you see in the account of John 15:22ff.. IF HE, the Christ, had not come and done such works and spoken such words as no man ever spoke, AMONG THEM, He declared, they would not have had sin (that is, in the context of inclusion or exclusion from His way). WHEN they had heard it, indeed, reacted to it, carried on and carried away in their hearts, were but negative, THEN they had NO EXCUSE. Such is His word, and such therefore is the truth (John 8:24,38,40). The equivalent at least of informed rejection of the truth in the very face of the love, presence and testimony of the love and offer of God, this is the criterion. So it is in John 3:19, held up as the aborting option, made manifest in the flesh according to the pre-time wisdom of God.

Thus as the Westminster Confession (X) rightly declares, when it comes to infants dying, the elect among them, they are still His. They could not hear or know, and so it goes back to His predestination. It also of course, logically before this, goes back to His foreknowledge of ALL. Thus, those foreknown to be His by His invariable decree and understanding, not preferring darkness to light in His apprehension which knows all, whether they be infant, or deprived of normal rationality on this earth, through faulty birth, or ignorant of the Gospel, in all cases outside the normal ministration of truth, will be saved to this point. This, then, is so for as many of them as are elect from before time, according to His FOREKNOWLEDGE, which as seen in the invariant character of Jesus Christ the Messiah, involves just that application of His love which John 3 declares and Colossians 1:19ff. shows of His heart.

Thus here the Westminster Confession rightly declares it: "Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth. So also are all other elect persons, who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the word." This testimony is true, in biblical accord.

There are no technical failures in God; He is a God of knowledge as well as power, and it is the desire of His heart that the wicked do not die, that all come to a knowledge of the truth, that in view of the blood of the cross, all, yes whether in heaven or on earth, might be reconciled. He achieves this knowledgeably, none missing, no not one. It is always in man only that the barrier to salvation exists, at any time, before all time; for God has no such barrier, only truth. God according to His foreknowledge can grant salvation in terms of foreknown truth, to any at His will (John 6:65), just as Christ saves whom He will (Matthew 11:27). So far from exploding His love, this fulfils it without making it over into force, or lust, or push. It remains just what it is and has always been and will always be, as in I Cor. 13.

Whether on this earth, for those confronted by Christ, by the Gospel, or before time was for those to whom this does not come, all according to the same truth and the same love of God and the same desire and the same question of preference for darkness, before sin was or the fall was made manifest: God knows and saves His own. The exclusion of John 15:22ff. would not have been applied if HE had not come and so spoken as no man did and done as none other; but NOW that it DID occur (John 15), then and THEREFORE, being without excuse, their destiny becomes distinct and negative. When He speaks, it is well to listen. It is enough that Christ so speaks. HE would have all, and differentially, as foreknown to Him, preferrers of darkness are not bent screaming into heaven without their desire. They go instead to their own place.

ALL are liable to receive what is done in the flesh (II Corinthians 5:9-14), just as all in Romans 3:19, we read the parallel:

"Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God."

Lawless or law breaking, man has only wrath and judgment awaiting. BUT

"now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely, by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness..."

ALL are set to receive at judgment what was done in the flesh BUT GOD having made His free grace and gift of righteousness applies it to those whom He foreknew, whom He also predestinated, making things sure (II TIm. 1:8ff.). Indeed, as Paul declares here, this righteousness of His through faith in Jesus Christ is "to all and on all who believe." So the apostle shows in Romans 5:18: "Therefore, as through one man's offence judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even through one Man's righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life."

Thus the thrust is to all as in John 3, Colossians 1, and the desire is to all, and the latency is toward all, but in His knowledge it is actually APPLIED where it fits, where it in love may be so presented, without duress, and with truth. God intervenes; in heart is ready to intervene, in wisdom has already done so in His knowledge which will out in the end (Ephesians 1:4). The gift of grace is toward all, apt for all, desired for all, but addressed to some only, in the refinement and purity of love which is no highwayman, but acts in its own domain towards its creation, desiring all, forcing none, providing enough for any, applying it with a bounty and an abundance which NONE deserves.

Short-circuit of this divine love never occurs, for God is not baulked. Short-shrift to it differentially is known by God apart from the works or superiorities of any man, before such entered, even before creation; and this is as found in John 3:19. It is THIS which prevents a love from the stated desire of saving the world, and to avoid judgment for it, from in fact delivering all; and it is found making this difference in man only. God's love never dims; man's rejection is responsible, before the din of sin, and the various depths of it. Nothing could be clearer than this in John 3. As far as God is concerned, to save the world and not judge it is the very heart of His mercy and in the vastness of His love. It is only as far as man is concerned, that the bloc occurs, foreknown to God before man ever was, according to truth.

Thus is He the Saviour of all men, especially of those who believe (I Timothy 4:10). Believers are not the dominant point here, but the salvation of all men. He does not change His ambit, or confuse His speech. As far as ALL men are concerned, His salvation is sufficient and free, offered and He is disposed, nay passionately disposed to give it; but He is not ruled by desire, and so the outcome especially is for those who believe, even though in income it was for ALL MEN, just as in John 3.

He is the living God and He works by His life and through His stated principles, revealed even to the depth, and none can counter what He says of love or judgment, of the Gospel or of its application. As wide as the oceans, and yet far wider, is His love; as narrow as the small track is the way, that of the cross; and to avoid salvation, there is that differentially in man, that the Saviour of all men, as in heart and principle He is, becomes in practice the Saviour only of those who believe. These are governed by no mere circumstance, but foreknown, lest any be lost who should be won, or any seemingly won who merely deceive.

What then of John 15:22ff. ? In PRINCIPLE, God being omni-competent, and in PRACTICE, this presentation being by divine appointment and declaration by Christ on earth, the case is SO covered that contrary to any protestation that might be made, there is for them then NO EXCUSE. Why ? The case change when they heard and saw this of Him. It was not so beforehand. AFTER the meeting and the information, THEN all excuse evaporated. It is as with Jerusalem and Christ's lament for it: if ONLY they had realised the day of His visitation! But they did not and so their house is left to them desolate. God did not withhold; HE did all. It was in the face of total, unimpeded opportunity, that they breached the hope, overturned the opportunity and brought on themselves a position, as in II Chronicles 36 for the nation, where there was no remedy.

Confronted, they fronted up to God and declining to believe, they showed where they are, and where they are not. This it was that left them with no excuse, even in the face of such love as that of the Lord, who wept for Jerusalem, and so often would have gathered its denizens to His wings; but lamentably, THEY WOULD NOT! (cf. SMR Appendix B). They did not realise the day of their visitation, as they should, or receive revival as many did in the day of Hezekiah. Hence they had no excuse. Thus the case was shown determinate in principle and in practice, fulfilling the wisdom of Colossians 1:19ff., and the contour of charity as in Ezekiel 33:11.

It is not only the infant dying, but all covered in the same way, through ignorance or brain damage, birth defect that the case applies. WHOM GOD HAS FOREKNOWN, these are His, in whatever category they may appear. His love is such; His desire is such; His purity is such; His taking is accordingly such; for though even the justification is surging toward all (Romans 5:18), it is found in but few.

It is well in interpreting the word of God, to READ it; then to keep to it, all of it. God is infinitely important; and to dull the edge of His pledge is folly. He needs no help in speech: so let us just take what He says and follow it.

What then is involved here, and what is the scope of the judgment ? It is not only for sin (Romans 6:23), but for the avoidance of drastically secured divine remedy (Jeremiah 31:22, 13:27, Hosea 12:10, 13:9-14, Jeremiah 51:9, Hosea 7:1, Isaiah 48:16ff., Luke 19:42ff.) as assessed and both known and foreknown to God, that judgment comes.

How vast is its case, like a net flung over the waters; how deep are its claims! How foul is a world where contention and spite and strife can empty full treasuries and proud madness reduce wonders to woes. If nations pay for their woes, is it to be imagined that the world does not! Hence the more superbly precious and delightful is the divine measure of remedy, the more spurious the human election to ignore it; and how foul even to dare to involve God in some inscrutable way in mysterious fashions, when God speaks entirely to the contrary, so making the case a little easier for man. Despise love, before Him who knows you infinitely well, sick or hale, and what do you expect! It is odious to reject truth and mercy; but more so even to rant amid rejection, at the woes of your choice, eternally apparent before God.

It is not that one wishes man to suffer the more, but rather the less, in this, that when the MAGNITUDE and purity and restraint of God is more fully realised, then the necessitous and responsible position of man is the more acutely seen, for there is nothing but air, hot air, between man and his actions and the horror which sent Christ to the gallows at the instance of love. THIS BEING DONE, why put the Lord to the test, as if wanting a new hospital, before your cancer can be treated!

XII

Accordingly, there is no short-circuit, there is no non-love amorphous, neutralised or atypical segment in the heart of God, or limit to His love (Ephesians 3, John 3:15-19, I John 4:12-16). There is statedly NOTHING in any concept that would impair the proposition that God IS love, as a basic tenet, concerning the nature of His heart. NOTHING in Him or His ways is contrary or qualification of this divine declaration.

Where love in its divine integrity - one as deep as the cross in precise depiction as in Colossians 1:19ff. - does not go, neither does positive predestination, for foreknowledge logically precedes results, which predestination secures. By its nature, love neither invades, nor harasses, nor manhandles its object to MAKE it in some way, respond. Integrity prevails, and thus lamentation, even divine, cries to the uttermost, though wisdom ends the matter as it must. That love is not baulked, since it does not force its way, in all its divine purity and splendour, as in Proverbs 1, is one point; that power does not surge to secure what would not be love, but seizure, is another.

That God is LIKE THAT is the manifest testimony of the Bible, and the delight of the heart which hears of His grace, kindness, multiplied mercies as in Hosea 12:10, magnificent outlays in His very self, as in Ezekiel 34 and Hosea 13:14, John 3:15ff., and His glorious self-control. What a God we have, who worship as depicted in the Bible, and wonderful in praises! He knows what He is doing and His banner is love.

That judgment attends its rejection simply attests the vast step which God took in SO loving the world, and SO sending SUCH a One as the eternal Word, the Messiah, to accomplish SUCH a salvation for the world (I John 2:1-2, Hebrews 2:1-3). As shown, this is sufficient for all, but not panzer-propelled into any, so that it is free (Isaiah 55), and NOTHING impairs its application but the very nature of that love which is God, who laments instead of lusting in lordliness, whose humility is astounding, the beauty of whose holiness surpasses all the praise we redeemed sinners on this earth can muster. As Psalm 106:2 declares it, " Who can declare all His praise!" God is also truth (John 14:6) and the harmony of these features is infinite, who in truth loves, and in love cherishes the truth (I Corinthians 13:6). These are not abstractions but qualities of the God of all lovingkindness and wisdom. He is utterly pure, and it is our hearts which need to be united to His fear, His awesome wonder, His staggering glory, and rejoice in it as it is (Psalm 86:11).

XIII

Thus the rigours of reality for chronic rebellion are just what the vigour of love attested in the woes of the cross of Christ. Such blessings as heavenly joy attests, are not to be found lightly, nor could the alien heart abide heaven except as a celestial version of hell. Where reality is deemed ruin, then ruin in the end, is the consequent reality.

The gap between heaven and hell, being with and against God, not having and having His Spirit: it is vast, unfathomable so that the vicarious suffering of Christ led to the exclamation: " My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me!," as predicted in Psalm 22:1, the Psalm of the crucifixion, and so performed at Calvary (Matthew 27:46). The scope of God's foreknowledge is infinite, wonderful, enchanting, time no object but a subject in His hand, before whom all things, past, present and future are as leaves of a book, which lies ever open in all its parts (Hebrews 4:13).

Dauntless and indomitable, God is also filled with compassion as in Psalm 103, and accordingly, covering a whole period of historical review, in II Chronicles 36:15, we read: " And the Lord God of their fathers sent warnings to them by His messengers, rising up early and sending them, because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place." But what ? alas, making their hearts impermeable, who as with Stephen's word, "always resist the Holy Spirit" (Acts 7:51), they

"mocked the messengers of God, despised His words, and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the LORD arose against His people, till there was no remedy. Therefore He brought against them..."

Mockery of messengers, contempt of His words, scoffing for prophets: the assemblage is precisely as an evil spirit so often leads so many in so many countries in our present world, who inflame themselves in woeful mode, like that of those who called for Barabbus, seizing, destroying churches, killing the young, defiling, grasping, horrendous in hate, blind in heart.

XIV

Therefore let everyone on this earth, every one of mankind, repent while there is time (Luke 13:1-3), and grasp the universally offered salvation (I John 2:1-2), while there is opportunity; for here is responsibility that divine foreknowledge and predestination simply secures the more totally; for there are no mistakes. What the love offers, past human power or disablement, is what is with radiant desire available, and by infallible certainty gains its emplacement; and none of these who are His elect, are lost (John 10:9,27-28). A masterpiece ? but so is the DNA, and such is His salvation on this earth, wrapped with the wisdom of eternity, and leading to its wonder for those who receive Him as He is (Luke 2:26), and not in the remolded images of idolatry (II Corinthians 10:12 -11:14).

What yearns, is not met by negativity but positivity (cf. Jeremiah 29:12-13, Psalm 145:17ff.); yet what yearns only for escape from conditions of truth and gluttony on grace, without truth, is as readily excluded (Hosea 7:14-16), just as, on the other side, mere internal ruin is no barrier. Where man fails, God succeeds! What would you expect with the Maker, who is infinite in understanding (Psalm 147:5).

As to each man, limits in you are not limits in GOD, and what you cannot do, God can. He can make the dead live, and the unseen gain knowledge, and nothing is removed from His hand, except what in love, He disdains to take (Song of Solomon 8:7). It is sin that produces the enmity, God who provides the remedy and there is no excuse; for sin needlessly pursues its way despite the prodigies of divine will, cost-bearing and offer.

While in God's accounting competence, none to be lost has the payment of redemption (Romans 8:32, Isaiah 53:3-6), yet God SO loved that He would that the world be saved (John 3:16ff.). Therefore, the ultimate ground of loss in the ultimate divine knowledge and foreknowledge, is not one of a hideous decree of exclusion, but of a specious human exclusion even where love would come; for there is one God, one Trinity, one desire and one result of its exclusion as in Jeremiah 13, Proverbs 1, both for man and in heart for God. For man, the fruits of the exclusion of God is grief for the lost; but where He is found, there is produced spiritual delight for the foundlings made into adopted children of God.

Thus there is ONE sovereign,

ONE Saviour:

sufficient for all, apt for all, designed for any, desired for all, with salvation fulfilled in its own integrity, of sovereign and majestic will, in some; and these though few comparatively, are many absolutely, from ages past and to the end of the Age of Grace.

These come from epochs of preparation and consummation alike, with no merely formal bars (Galatians 3:26-29), inclusion in to His kingdom never yielding to God-makers who would make God other than He is, or by whom His word is ignored, deprived or supplemented. Such presumption has no effect on His sovereign will (Galatians 1:6-10), perfect wisdom and unfailing performance by which the Gospel and its application are and continue to be immutable as beautiful; nor can it limit either His purity, mercy or its grounds as He purposes within Himself.

As He says, I AM WHO I AM (Exodus 3:14, John 8:58), not imperious but impervious to mutability, time His own creation, subject to Him from the first to the last, who is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end of all creation: but that for some HE is the end that does not terminate, both destiny and destining, there is a glory which no rebellion in its pride can wipe away. It is I AM who sent Moses and was sent of the Father (I John 4:3-4), His perfect expression and eternal Word, living and not written, whose wisdom is written by His Holy Spirit in the perfect engagement of God.

As to the God-makers, who are rife in sects and ever-changing squalid spiritual transformations, such as those made by Muhammad, who accepted the Old Testament prophets, set himself above them and contradicted their message categorically and almost without cease (cf. Highway to Hell. and index), these have always made a mess, whether of the lives of the prophets, slain, or of the form of Christ, tortured, crucified, despised and taunted, because they do not and will not accept the unchanging Lord and His never forsaken salvation. Inveterate hostility to Christians has been an inflaming zest exceedingly often, and not least in the present, where even prayer meetings can be forbidden, and tortuous charges made because of some presumptuous assumption that something not in accord with their view of Allah deserves death, as if the world were theirs to rule. Faith is not violence (cf. SMR pp. 50ff., 62ff. . Truth is not stampeded, however.

It is as it was and will be (cf. Isaiah 59:21, Matthew 5:17-21, Galatians 1:6-9). Let therefore none seek to change Him, repress His word or intrude his own thoughts into adjustments to that domain. Let His word sovereignly rule with its greater grace.

Let us simply and plainly rejoice in Jesus Christ, the acme and the alpha, the omega and the origin (Colossians 1:15), definitive expression of God, and His Lamb of love, for redemption. It is He who is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:5), in foreknowing, as to salvation going, in love as in lament, when present on this earth or absent for a time in heaven (Acts 3:19ff.), before His long foretold return (Revelation 19).

He is God the Word. Through Him you know God, by His holy spirit, in believing in Him, refreshed, regenerated and renewed (John 3, Titus 3). If God has exalted His written word above all His name (Psalm 138:2), how much more His living and eternal word (Hebrews 1, Micah 5:1-3, Philippians 2:1-10, Isaiah 43:10-11, 45:18-24 with Philippians 2:10-11),

	by whom He made the worlds (Colossians 1:15, Hebrews 1:2), and
	in whom He is truly manifested,
	to whom He has granted all authority whether in heaven or on earth (Matthew 28:19-20).

Then, the Messianic work done, the glory of the trinity, infinite in intimacy, glorious in fellowship, one in Being, continues; for it is He who made time, and will make a new heaven and a new earth which does not depend upon this one (II Peter 3). There is nowhere to stand but in Him (Isaiah 51:6), for when the world departs (Matthew 24:35), it is His salvation and His righteousness which will remain. The Rock impervious, this I will praise, on this stand, through this be secured; and it does not move, as do others, as have done all others, because God cannot be moved, and those who are His, in love His redeemed, by faith His saved ones (Ephesians 2:1-12), these through HIS grace cannot be moved (Psalm 55:22, 62:6).

Let the adverse will foreknown from the first, wilt to the last if it so be pleased; but let God be praised forever, in whom is no iniquity and about whom there is light unapproachable (I Timothy 6:14-15). To approach Him, you need the blood, the smitten life of Christ, slain the just for the unjust, and then you can brought in where your condition, need and approach are sure and certain. To see God face to face as at the end, this is a Spring never to be forgotten, and to come.