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CHAPTER SEVEN
THE ULTIMATE DIVIDE
AND THE
INTIMATE WAY TO IT
I
HOSEA 1-3,14
CALAMITIES AND CATASTROPHE
AS
PRECURSORS
IN CURSE ...
CAUSE OF THE CONCENTRATION
AND PRELUDE TO INCALCULABLE BLESSING
I Devaluation: Truth Comes out
The case, as seen at the start of Hosea, is so blatant, the furnace so hot, the roasting so perpetual, then as now in our own lands, that God acts in a decisive manner. It requires some adjustment. It is rather like coming out of an early afternoon motion picture show in a city, where the dreams of delightful colour and quest leave you lulled amid a kind of indistinct loveliness, but alas, outside is the same traffic as before and reality requires attention.
So now, man is being lulled by the inane propaganda of such bodies as the UN. Here is a moral mouth without the basis of Moses, a law-giver without foundation, riddled with Islamic hatred of Israel by many of its milling and militant members, unwilling to act to defend the peace in 1967 when Nasser stormed toward Israel, ineffectual to the point, while millions die Africa, and that not once, yet trying to govern the world as if truth and wisdom, power and purity were within it. Small wonder Shirley Hazzard after working in this same UN, spoke of People in Glass Houses and Defeat of an Ideal, in covering its delusions.
It is this body which in 1947 tried to give to Israel little bits of a residual Palestine, left after most of it had gone to Jordan, and to make Jerusalem an international city. It is the Islamic, Arab group which REFUSED to take the large residue then appointed them, made war instead on little Israel in 1948. After a divinely predicted defeat (as in Zech. 12), on its return, this same body and Arab, Islamic masses in vast territories on almost all sides of Israel, has wrought endless strife by trying to make the country non-Jewish through forced immigration, or non-existent through repeated wars of annihilation. ONE victory and what then for Israel ? destruction as per invasive agenda of its enemies. MANY losses for the invading forces of many nations, and what then ? They simply try again, while the UN tries to seduce Israel into giving back more and more of its land till so little is left that it would prove indefensible EXCEPT for the pledged power of God, as we shall DV see in studying Jeremiah.
With man, all this inequity and harassment seems intolerable tyranny toward Israel; with God, its end is fitting and sure (cf. Micah 7, Isaiah 59). God is neither deaf nor blind and has indicated what He will do!
Anything, any pretence, any continuation of the motion picture atmosphere, and not reality will do. Man is already at war with God as even in Australia, where education has long been hijacked by quasi-science and is at constant risk of anti-God take-over entirely of this field in the name of ancient hatreds as a description, for example, of Christian love. The current government, rich in atheism, is moving fast to clip the wings of biblical truth, and keep liberty caged. Whether it will go to the end of the matter may be more a matter of what Parliamentarians blindly vote in yet more repressive folly, or else, beginning to awaken, baulk at it! For our country's sake, one hopes they will begin to awaken ... soon!
In Israel's day with Hosea, it was not unlike this, idols becoming almost compulsive, non-truth proclaimed as truth, in their terms, as if inanity were replacing minds, and the baseless alone would be heeded. THIS, moreover, is wrought in the very face of the God of action and power, whose word is never broken! Do people not WANT to learn ? Is Dunkirk and the Prayer Day from the War Office of that day, now a mere beginning of a disastrous decline ? It would appear so.
GO! said God to Hosea and marry a harlot. Now this may seem extreme, and the multiple diseases and scars of mind or body might seem an incredible burden. However, the God who became man and died in the vast and ghastly ghetto of the shadow of death, indeed on a Cross while taunted as bearing sin for those who receive Him, action centre, for their operation to clear sin and invest with life eternal, does not stop at pain. Nor does He stay at suffering, agony even, in clearing the decks for action, even the Son of His love, resurrecting His body in testimony of the unabashed power of truth. Love, His love, the original of all love in man made in His image, is like that. It acts. It loves truth and secures it (I Corinthians 13:6). It is not simply self-desolatory, but procures good.
The point was that Israel, as if married for centuries to God who evacuated them from Egypt by mighty power and sustained provisions, was now like an adulteress; indeed worse, she had become so loose in idols of varying appeals, that she was like a harlot. To show the perspective of the thing, this was the way. Hosea married a harlot! When God had taken Israel, she was nothing to rave about, but it started with mercy and continued in kindness, and you see this aspect in Ezekiel 16:44-47.
Ostensibly brought to the mercy of God, Israel then became worse in its dispirited desires and spiritual lusts than the originals from which she had come! Now however, by the prophetic day of Hosea, the case requires action, to jolt the mind, stir the imagination and bring action to the legs for the right way. In God's sight, it is AS IF He had married a poor specimen who had then committed adultery on top of that, and made an open practice of it, so that God used Hosea as an audio-visual to SHOW the sheer horror of it.
The children of the marriage were called Jezreel after a disaster, Lo-Ruhamah, to mean No Mercy, and the third, L0-Ammi, to mean Not My People.
The children were named for coming events and divine alienation from such hypocrisy and faithlessness, thanklessness and baseless romancing with life, as if it were some game! As with marriage, its spiritual violation meant that masses of the people did not even KNOW GOD, and were far from His comforting presence, covenantal security and blessed enhancement of life till it becomes a thing of illimitable beauty (as in Hosea 14, at which we looked last Sunday).
2 Abhorrence: Divine Activism
Bring Charges against her! we read in Hosea 2. Let her cease these philandering follies. The generation grows up, 'children of harlotry', for she said "I will go after many lovers," as in 2:5. Ignoring realities of gracious divine care, the people can now face their increasing removal, as in our generation we face implacable radiation pollution, power propulsion to use it anyway, decreasing ozone protection from skin cancer, and meteorological changes which now largely are coming to the point of how much, and why! People spend or do not, argue, contest, ridicule, but the disorders, the vast floods, tides, meltings whether in the Arctic or in the high lands of Asia, source for many a much used river, continue. They ponder, and scratch the communal head; but they do not repent, so that terrorism become most popular, and religious mania a staff for idolatry, to inflame it further, even New York not escaping.
In the case of Israel in Hosea's prophecy, for all that, this being a special people with a special task, which often cost as it diverged from its commitment, God indicates (2:14ff.), that He will bring them back to Himself,
"And it will be in that day, says the Lord, that you will call Me 'My Husband, 'and no longer call Me 'My Master,' for I will take from her mouth the names of the Baals,"
that is the false 'lords'.
"They will be remembered by their name no more. In that day I will make a covenant with them." Indeed, "I will betroth you to me forever."
This is the New Covenant, to be written in the very heart as we plan to show in Jeremiah 31. Then He will have mercy on her who had no mercy, and say to those who were not His people, 'You are My people!' (Hosea 2:23).
3 Redemption and Restoration
This is applied to Israel on the grand scale, but to individuals and to all
RESULT OF DIVINE INTERVENTION
How is this to be done ? God again used Hosea to show the case in all its horrendous unnaturalness, ingratitude and vagrancy. Thus his own wife, this harlot who had borne him children, she even went off to make new adulteries, instead of mere fornications! (Hosea 3:1, 2:5). She stopped at nothing and was enthralled with almost ANYTHING! for indeed, it was just like now the Gentiles in so many cases, today.
Hosea bought his sinning harlot-wife back to himself. You might find this too horrendous to contemplate, but this brings home what is behind the mercy of God who brings conviction and repentance to sinners, and has even love for them! As in Romans 5, you can imagine someone being willing to die for some extraordinarily noble and fine person, but in fact Christ died for us while we were yet sinners! How could He bring Himself to do it! The love of God is like that and it is time to respond to it with love, and delight in Him, and by waiting upon Him, and drawing near to Him, and trusting in Him ONLY, for salvation, and resting in His grace. These are words. Needed are ACTIONS to match!
Hosea did it. He PAID for this defective strumpet, this recidivist relic! (3:3). He instructed her to stay with him many days, and to be faithful in love, as God would be to her. Then came the prophecy, that for many days Israel would have neither king nor prince, and would have to wait long and then they would seek the Lord and that descendent of David, on the human side, the Messiah as in Micah 5:1-3, Psalm 2, Isaiah 11.
Thus the promise was for a time to come, what Jeremiah calls the "latter days", WHEN Israel would come back to the Lord they had denied categorically in Jesus Christ. Such has been for millenia, the word of God in His chronoscope, teaching to the end from the beginning as befits the Author of all, covering events till now and beyond, including the return of Israel to its divinely appointed land, all fulfilled with cardinal and verifiable accuracy.
Actually, the crux of denial came when the Messiah came and they hated him (Isaiah 49:7) as predicted, and killed Him (Isaiah 53), so that it would be only when they returned to Him at last, that this new covenant would have a more national spread. It would however be from Israel that the first beginnings of the Church would come, persecuted even IN Israel as they would be for that! this believing remnant of the people (cf. Joel 2:32, Romans 9:24-29 with Isaiah 10:21-23, 9:3ff., Romans 11:5-7).
If then apostles and thousands of others from the remnant of believers in Israel came to Christ, how much greater as in Romans 11, will it be when this 'election of grace' (Romans 11:5) is swollen in a vast awakening to Christ in Israel (Zech. 12:1-0-13:1, Romans 11:25ff.), so that at last the reality of redemption, with all the wonder of love as in Romans 5, that God secured our salvation by sending Christ for us WHILE WE WERE YET SINNERS, like that harlot, spiritual adulterers or spiritual fornicators, is fulfilled on this earth.
When Christ returns to rule this world (Isaiah 2, 11, 59), then will be seen what was the basis of the hatred of so many for Israel and for the Church: Israel BETOKENS that God is doing exactly what He said, and call it what name you will, this stabs the spiritually adulterous heart of those singing as they wing their way to spiritual foolishness and idolatry. Again, the CHURCH when it is found faithful to the Bible and the Lord who gave it, similarly is hated because Christ is hated, because ONLY when He is set at nothing, can rampaging man seize all for his unlovely self, and seek to rule the universe for his own part, and have all for it lustful desires.
As you see inscribed in the prophecy of Hosea, likewise explicit in Isaiah 29:13, useless is it to draw near to God with your lips, while in heart far away; to be 'married' in congregational affiliation and yet not know the Lord as King of one's life, living God of one's very being, not only sacrifice for sin, but spiritual governor and guide, counsellor and friend, through the Holy Spirit abiding within, who does not testify of Himself, but of Christ! (John 15:26-27).
There is a vacuity which is vague, and exists in a formal, nominal relationship to God, unable to stay the sway of contrary currents and spiritual forces; and there is a phenomenal relationship, that is one which has practical, empirical, continual reality, as does one's walk with a friend. The difference is that of a photograph and company, of a telegram, 'Will help!' and coming and doing it. Christ came and did what was required for eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:12) on one act culminating in one place and site, in one situation, in one sacrifice, and came alive from the tomb in one body, which now glorified, is in heaven and will stay there till He comes at the regeneration of all things (Acts 3:19ff.), and in the meantime, we need to consider our obligations and responsibilities, duties and scope of labour (Matthew 28:18-20).
This is the work of one team, but each member is active, participant, part of the body of Christ; for there are no extras. There is one Spirit who moves and quells, aids and counsels (Romans 8:9,26), one word of God written, the Bible, one set of promises which do not fail, one mission, one commission, one joy in His presence (I Peter 1:3-8), one capability to overcome the seemingly impossible squadrons of evil which seek to capture the Christian, the devil like a roaring lion, to be resisted in Christ's name; and there is one result.
The ultimate divide is Christ or not Christ, for Jew or for Gentile; but God does not forget all His plans for the sake of someone's desire for 'simplicity', for our brains are themselves marvels of intricacy, and the outline as Paul traces it and John in Revelation, is scarcely stunning to the interested mind, but rather a joy to behold, like a sportscar, or aeroplane lifting its lofty nose, all things now making sense in the poise and power of actual flight.
Let no one hearing these words from the word of the living God, fail to apply to himself, to herself, young or old, the requirement of repentance (Luke 13:1-3), or fail to seek the grace of restoration through redemption, glorying in the cross of Jesus Christ, who died, the just for the unjust to bring us to God (II Peter 3:18), abiding in the presence of Christ and calling on His power to live aright. If you prefer to stay away, it is like preferring the night; but the day comes, when you awake, and it is not hindered by unbelief. It will surely come. The time to awaken is NOW.
II
INVITATIONS AND THE ROYAL ONE - Hosea 14
We pass on this occasion to the end of Hosea. Here there is an invitation to sanctification, to the knowledge of the life of God, of being planted by faith in grace; and it is as is the challenge in Chs. 1-3, to one and to all, even though its chief national application is to Israel the nation, singularly signified throughout in terms of her history and its unique stages, variations and promises. The spiritual side however is for Jew and Gentile alike, for Israel has nothing more in terms of spiritual leadership to give (Isaiah 65:13-15), all being not only epitomised but given eternal place in the Messiah, as in Isaiah 55:4, and small wonder in view of His atoning work, God alone capable of the innocence to draw the sting of death, ruin for sin, and present eternal life as a gift. It is for one, for any who receive it (Isaiah 42:6, 49:6), and when Israel in large proportion returns to the Lord (as it will like "life from the dead" as Paul notes in Romans 11), what a magnificence of a truly Royal Show that will be (as in Romans 11:25-36). O the depths o the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! declaims Paul, at such a prospect of consummation in One of all. "How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!"
How wonderful that He has TOLD us even deep things (cf. I Corinthians 2;9-13), that in this depiction from deity we should learn the wonder of His heart and the glory of His wisdom!
To receive such bounty, Israel was first to be restored to its land and then to its Lord, the first already accomplished despite mammoth menacings from many stirred by a hatred that must be near to the parallel of a 100% concentrated solution. This has biblical promise been traced (It Bubbles ... Ch. 10, SMR Appendix A) often enough, already in large part fulfilled. Here however, we look at that salvation whether for Jew or Gentile, in its abundant fruition, whether to be experienced here or there, with this world a mere stepping stone at this level, to the next, a transition precipitated by the return of Christ to rule as in Jeremiah 23:5, Psalm 72, Psalm 2, Micah 4. No small concentration will occur on that famed city which crucified Him; nor will His decision to focus Israel be displaced; yet all will be displaced spiritually, till this earth dismissed (Matthew 24:35), the residue, the ultimate remnant, the children of God whether from here or there (as in Revelation 7 as a prelude), are as one (as in Revelation 21-22). Then is their most manifest the ULTIMATE DIVIDE spoken of by Christ in Luke 16:26!
Let us here then focus on the payload for all, available in the ONE Messiah who on ONE occasion purchased ETERNAL redemption for ANY who put their trust in Him (as in Acts 2:36ff.).
I. The Preparation
a) Positive 14:1-2
INVITATIONS AND THE ROYAL ONE - Hosea 14
An invitation has come. Is it exciting or droll ? Distinctive! What spiritual dress do you have, and in what is your spirit clothed as you prepare to meet this invitation ?
Introduction
World-Weary Weediness and Spiritual Seediness
In the world of Le Carré, sophisticated henchmen of intelligence in the spy-world often find their principles and practices more or less abhorrent or meaningless or uninspiring, or tradeable, in a general ennui.
At times there appears a suggestion that perhaps it is not at all worth it, a contrived, even specious, almost self-propelled situation which we should as a race outgrow. There is perhaps the hint that there is some overall new view, beyond the neighbourhood fence issues of USA and USSR or such, where there is a liberty from liberation, which will enable the ultimate sophisticates to get beyond the growing pains of interested follies and wasteful liaisons, often multiple, vexed and subtly deceitful. They perhaps they just might do this, and BE!
There is however no such broader view to tap for this world. There is NOTHING BEYOND, IN IT, this littleness of mundane assumptions of lordliness (cf. Matthew 20:25-28), written into the corrupted hearts of the nations; and the more they intone to the contrary in speech asylums like the UN, the more their specious actions and specific goals merely mock them. They appear as with Nasser and Biafra, with surging scenes of horror and scourging furores about the little shrimp of land left from the broken decisions of the League of Nations, out of Palestine, for Israel, as if oil would grease their slipping consciences, or make up to their raging militant hearts, some kind of peace. More and more, they echo, for the multiplied millions of Islam, amid the shrouding and vast territories of its control or dominance. How they know what should be done ...
What Israel needs is LESS, they reveal; and no singular capital, even if they win it amid many national insurgents, tongues alight for its destruction! It is indeed a broken ideal, and a captive calamity, a dream that does not awaken to the light of common day (cf. It Bubbles... Ch. 11, Mystery of Iniquity). It is an Islamic hierarchy, amid flaming deserts which Israel has done so much to tame.
Where is the new hinterland of reasonableness ? Where is the unity vision, seeking in vain since Babel, to realise itself ? It is but a specious unity of those who wish to make their compulsive religion regionally, if not internationally, compulsory; and where is its basis to be found! (cf. Highway to Hell, More Marvels ... Ch. 4 and *1).
Is refusal to accept a vastly disproportionate amount of Palestine in 1947 a ground for acting as victims! Is immediate or near at hand onset of a multi-national invasion force for the tiny remnant left from the vast gift of the League of Nations, a ground for pity for the invasion force! Is the departure of many in the face of this, till Israel was beaten, with desire to return and so inundate it with alien votes, a thing to be desired in view of this capricious, malicious, never-say-live attack on Israel ? Is the continual harassment, is what can even be blasphemously named 'God'-given work of slaughter of those in the tiny residual fragment called Israel, to be blessed by international AID ? for what ? Must mother UN help the incessant despoilers of this victim, the many nations who are bent to it already, or aid the direction of these depraved attempts at genocide, destruction at best ?
Is some god to be made an arbiter of such gross and defiling inequities, iniquities and breaches of promise! Must some in even Australia try to harass the more as if the UN were not more than enough in its outrageous bias, together with the Madrid Quartet, itself also seeking YET MORE lands to be removed from Israel, which has some lands despite vast and disproportionate assault from many nations, and voluntary ceding of some back again, in the interests of peace! God has His own answer as noted and it will be felt when the time comes, in the detailed scenario He has so clearly traced (cf. Micah 7, Isaiah 59, Isaiah 66, Deuteronomy 32, Jeremiah 30-31). It is sad to see such misled missions do so much harm with so much unreason, with such lust to destroy! But then this is a phase as the End comes (as in Revelation 6), and poor man without Jesus Christ the Redeemer, not only is prone to distil other gods from his cultures, but hatred in his heart.
As such things occur, such persecutions whether of Israel (a telling symbol of the word of God coming precisely to pass) or of Christians, and principles fall, standards become tarred, strife becomes second nature and scheming a substitute for vision, many grow weak in their love, cold indeed as Christ also foretold (Matthew 24:12-14). Yet the Gospel goes on being preached, prior to the return of the Ultimate Victim, voluntary and predicted (Isaiah 52-55), who is the Ultimate Victor in resurrection come and regality to come, when words will be those of judgment, and scenes of martial thrust will come to a rapid end!
So does righteousness in the hearts of many and not a few nations, rot; equity perishes and indeed it becomes as foretold in Isaiah 59, leading up, in verse 20, to the return of Christ the Redeemer. Former loyalties for many are fading.
Patriotism grows weak as national vision rots. What is BEYOND the despising of patriotism which once included zest for liberty and hatred of tyranny: this is not in this world found outside the sheer littleness of heart in the big-headed aspirations of man. Sinner, man shows himself inveterate, hypocrite, he becomes wanton destroyer, with an ill-considered morass of desire, as in his fallen state he runs about like a rabbit in a cage; often indeed admiring the state of the beautiful grass outside it, but never considering escape. He merely wants a bigger cage, and tends to persecute what thinks otherwise. IF you are determined to forget your Maker, whether in atheism or agnosticism or idle sects or some semi-dreamer, ill-thought out wantonry of devious philosophy, or drifting thought, then there is no escape. What remains except in dream that does not transpire, or heady affluence which waits to go, followed by want and debt and weakness, tending to oscillate with misspent wealth!
The form of this world is passing away! said Paul (I Cor. 7:31). It lies in the nature of the case. Forget your basis and you are baseless, and trying to find a base outside the actual one HAS to be a work of vanity, confusion with all the impediments of established philosophy to help you remain confused (cf. SMR Ch. 3 with Ch. 5).
There is then for us a message to be found, to the point, in Hosea as he is speaking not only to Israel, in its final Chapter 14, but to all degraded by trusting in merely peripheral dynamics, unworkable patterns of idols, their odious names often suppressed because of dignity, of the need for illusion to prevent the pangs and pains of reality, amid naturalistic mis-foci, opportunistic nostrums. RETURN to the Lord is Hosea's plea. Cause and effect enter in.
Let us listen to him, since here lies the answer to the sophisticated, disheartened, vaguely hoping world, on the one hand, and the zealotry of the wildly torrential world on the other, where reason has abdicated, truth is fallen and body bags are a method of thought (cf. Revelation 6 and its mania for death, making virtue in violence, and Isaiah 59).
Now let us resume with our invitations! and what they mean.
INVITATIONS AND THE ROYAL ONE with Hosea 14
I. The Preparation
a) Positive 14:1-2
What spiritual dress do you have, and in what is your spirit clothed as you prepare to meet this invitation ?
You must realise the sin which separated,
express you realisation, be vocal, neither merely shame-faced nor brazen, but acknowledge your transgressions,
return to your heart's Creator,
appeal to Him to remove rubbish,
ask Him to receive you just as you now receive Him.
It is God who is inviting you. Take heart and go.
b) Negative 14:3
Dismiss apparent options - as Israel had to dismiss Assyria as a buttress, which in fact abused it: alas even Judah dabbled in this in the spurious King Ahaz (II Chronicles 28:16-21). How fearful to hear of a large group of Anglicans, willing even to consider returning to the massive idolatries of Romanism (cf. The Great Divide Ch. 5), amid scandalous accusations of that immorality sustained in priesthood circumstances, which so readily accompanies the elevation of what is not God, to the level of things uniquely His own! (Romans 1:17ff.).
In fact there is NO OTHER NAME UNDER HEAVEN GIVEN AMONG MEN, by which they may be saved but that of Jesus Christ - not Mary or pope or bread in sacrifice instead of in remembrance (cf. Ch. 5 above). Sects multiply with just the same fatal fault - this or that person has come to tell us about it, with no authority but vanity, no place but distortion and no basis but self-belief! What is the use of someone's self-belief when it is remedy, redemption and realisation that you need. Can man save you ? or bits of stuff called this or that ? or Assyria ? or the UN for that matter, or unsubstantiated vision of any other kind! Decidedly not.
SO with Israel, following the word of God to it, declare roundly, "Assyria will not save us," no, neither naturalism, nor proliferation of gods nor sects nor centres of non-God-appointed authority. These will not save you. Don't put your trust in what you or someone other than God can do ("we will not ride on horses, nor will we say any more to the work of our hands, 'You are our gods...' ").
It is not strength but spirituality which matters, nor is it socialistic spree spending, but actual care, not in pink bats or with batty pinks, putting God securely to one side (cf, SMR Ch. 10) as money is sprayed like the odour of the skunk, leaving an infamous trail. It is not prancing thought but reality which counts, not urges and surges in political power, but movements of the heart which start with the God who created us who created the problems, and THEN in His wisdom seek answers, BY applying the only answer that is primary. Omit the heart and the hands are relatively useless. Give God a back seat and you are sure to find a front one for folly!
2. The Processing
What more then is this message from Hosea to tell us ? Returning to the Lord being clear and with preparations in order, we come to what matters most. GOD is willing to act: call on HIS NAME (not that of an idol or idol-god-combination), and find in Him the wisdom and the strength and the power and the purity of purpose. It is HE who acts.
"I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely, for My anger has turned away from him."
Do you even KNOW the Lord, the singing in your heart, the joy in your life, despite suffering, the grand Person of Jesus Christ by His Spirit dwelling in you, interpreting life to you, granting to you eternal life, remembering your sins no more, giving you conviction, confidence and direction according to His word ? (John 17:1-3).
Backsliding in the current occupational pre-occupation, appears spiritually, in Britain, Europe, USA, Australia, where having tasted liberty based on the Lord who KNOWS, and TELLS us the way of life, such nations are finding funding problems in being free FROM God instead of free FOR God; or else massive and compromising debt. Atheists swell like an ill-kept wound, spiritual squalor surging into the crack like crickets into an untended house. You find ill-thought out things flung at you. Instead of an election determining a major issue, we find in Australia an undertaking to do one major action, turned through the use of another Party and independents to enable a NON-mandate, a failed commission to do the opposite. This was achieved in a way that would appear devious, delinquent morally, undemocratic and an act of usurpation. Where is wisdom here ?
It is necessary to have all options considered, apart from personal invective, and the tone and criticism made stringent on the POINTS AT ISSUE, the strong and weak points in every approach, the degree of guess-work acknowledged, the failures and even counter-productive or illusory aspects noted, these given factual and careful answers if possible, and all made clear so that voting can occur by a people who if they want to gamble, or be careless, can be. At least, they could make that decision after due effort in a balanced model. Both sides need to demonstrate thought in action, wisdom at work, care in diligence and a shaping worthy of a nation that spends time, and not just money, where it is needed, to present the issues with a minimum or preferably a lack of cover-up!
This nation has been bent on backsliding for long now, and it is always surprising that its stanchions of democracy, decency, self-control, care for the weak, concern for realities, freedom of speech and education about facts rather than fancies, have lasted in so much for so long. The last-named however, tutelage, now has systematic prejudice heavily ideologically entrenched, the naturalistic fallacy with its spree into organic evolution, putting merely fanciful ideas into the legally enforced program.
What has at least ameliorated some of the increasing failure is the secretly working endorsement of truth from relatively few Bible-believing churches, such as are left, and urgent prayer, which helps renew the failing face of the land before its cut-off, as with ancient Israel, becomes inevitable.
The same watchful awareness is needed to be put back into currently sky-jacked education, which is becoming increasingly a ground of absurdity and intolerance, as former P.M. Howard was beginning to show before he was dismissed from his lively stay at the Lodge. It is not that he had all the answers by any means; but a certain balance and poise and watchfulness is apparent, in contrast to the current eruptions and evocations and battering personal words, bulging in a politics that fails.
Truth needs to be valued, not considered for nuisance value, and the current investigation into news and media is well able to spill over even yet again, into a determined witch-hunt, to ensure that even more than now, the presentation of truth in God's name with eminent reason, is made as exclusively abhorrent as so often in the schools of this nation, are the eminently clear realities of His creation (cf. The gods of naturalism have no go!). Slant is seeking to call itself societal security; and the days before more outrages follow up a detestable surge of tyranny against truth, may be few.
Backsliding is spiritually based as many churches have forsaken the Bible, contradicted it, made of Christ a draw-card for social and political agendas. In contrast to all this, it is the Lord Himself who is the answer, as with Israel in its revivals under Hezekiah and his like: "I will heal their backsliding. I will love them freely."
Divine anger is turned away when repentance and a humble and a contrite heart are to be found, and return to the Lord (Isaiah 66:1-2). What the nation is increasingly failing to do, however, individuals need more and more to do.
3. The Results 14:5-9
What then, when repentance, redemption and return comes to the land ? What then is renewed man to find ? God will be like the dew. Quietly, unharmfully, He will bring refreshing (cf. Acts 3:19ff.) where human hands cannot find. "He shall grow like the lily." A certain naturalness of inward beauty of heart (II Cor. 3:18) becomes normal, as grounded in Christ, the most natural seeming people become sculpted in grace, adorned in the Lord with His peace of heart and presence. Their grounding in Him will become increasingly obvious, their roots lengthening as all kinds of spiritual goodness are accessed and brought into the holy home of His presence (John 14:21-23).
"His branches shall spread;
His beauty shall be like an olive tree,
and his fragrance like Lebanon."
Results of the outpouring of divine grace begin to flow like a pervading perfume, where the eye does not trace or the foot tread (cf. II Corinthians 2:14-15); and one contemporary means for this is the Internet! and another, works where the right hand does not know what the left is doing. It reminds one of John 7:37-38, where the Spirit of God was to come, not speaking on His own authority, but overflowing the heart, in Christ's name. Where do the impelling waters go ? As in Ezekiel 47, it is into many channels which tend to make more for the fishers to find, as they angle on the banks.
Such a transformation, which can come with increasing revival and return to the Lord in many a fallen church (cf. II Peter 2:1ff.), such decomposition being part of the disgrace of our race as the end approaches (II Timothy 3), will bring some back in revival that is real, as when a coma patient awakes. This, it is not in mere emotion, far less in anti-biblical profusions of social torment and psychology, but it comes in return to the truth which needs no parade and is inhabited by no allure of this world (James 4:4). To seek to be hated by God is not so very hard: LOVE this world! and you are well on the way, as the apostle points out.
Indeed, as steps of true return and revival appear, those concerned, by the tens or hundreds or thousands, will despise the idols which misled them, the combinations of worldliness and godlessness, cultural norms and forms at which they fell in virtual worship, and say, What have I to do with such things! Many then believing in the power of God will find the rational reality and spiritual power of His work transcends any mere kick from the mule of milling culture, which in itself, is likely to hurt as well as direct!
It is then, returned with grace to the Lord, that the heart can say,
"I am like a green cypress tree,"
and the Lord returning His word to the heart declares,
"Your fruit is found from Me,"
as in John 15. There is release and restoration. It is like a movement, to change the figure, from frothy flummery to the everlasting arms of the vital and creative God! Now you walk in the Spirit (Gal. 5:16), so that your good works may speak of the Lord when your tongue does not (Matthew 5:16). Now you see the application of Isaiah 40:27-31.
This is the way of it, and the prudent need to know it (Hosea 13:9, 14:9). It is not some new educational revolution, confirming godless and pointless warping with sovereign contempt for critical care in handling knowledge, it is not this which is needed, but the realisation that the Lord who made Britain great, despite all her errors, and now has before Him a declining nation of declining moral singularity and faith, unlike the day of Dunkirk, is unchangeable, unchallengeable.
Follow Him in righteousness; but if not, then stumble (Hosea 14:9). Stumbling has become almost the chief feature in Europe and Britain and the USA in their massive debts, over-spending, shrinking from direct acknowledgement of the Lord, UN type airy-fairy falsetto platitudes and dark deeds.
The past is not one's sponsor; it is the living God who is needed. Thank God that those who have been reconciled to Him by the redemption of Christ and have placed in Him their hearts and heads and thought, and find in Him their salvation, He is able to keep from falling and present faultless before the throne of His glory (Jude 24-25, Romans 5:17, 6:23). It is well in any confrontation, to be covered; and to go to the divine auditor naked of any help but that of boasting, is vanity itself. Praise God for the cover in Christ for sin, for power, for peace, for spiritual propulsion, for the heart, whose peace is past all understanding, and whose truth is the source of understanding.
NOTE
More Marvels ... Ch. 4, esp. *4,
SMR pp. 50ff., 62ff., 829ff. , 1080
Dancers, Prancers, Lancers and Answers Ch. 3, *1A misconceptions about the Cross, variable and mutually conflicting, on the part of the Koran
Lord of Life Ch. 3 (and force), 1081ff. (and faith), Outrageous Outages ... Ch. 5;
His Wounds Opened Eternity Ch. 4; 3
Stepping Out for Christ Ch. 9,
Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch. 8 (in perspective), see also *1,See Divine Agenda Chs. 6
with 3 (an overview of religious truancies, including Marx, Darwin and Koran)
and Highway to Hell - (Koran citations in both, with ideational parallels in perspective, in the latter two; and in the former, futile depravities in endless ideologies such as Sudan has shown so significantly, Islam ablaze without glory),
cf. Overflight in Christ Ch. 1 (and the Koran's musings);
1493 (esp. Britain and sharia);
News 138, Beauty for Ashes Chs. 4, 7BARBLISS 5, Acme ... Ch. 9 , Great Execrations ... Ch. 3, SMR p. 1O88D - three major religions in some ways in concert, astray.
News 138, Beauty for Ashes Chs. 4, 7, SMR pp. 1074ff., esp. 1079, 1081ff.
(These latter show this religion, with the other three major conspiracies towards the ultimate - why conspiracies ? It is because men conspire, or breathe plans together for a control, rule or oversight not ordained by God: these are breaths of man, and the breath that matters is that of God, in and by which all scripture is inspired by Him (II Timothy 3:16, Isaiah 8:20), in the Book of the Lord (Isaiah 34:16), the Bible, and sustained and implemented by Him (Matthew 26:54ff.). Other ideas for rule are always unruly, since they always tend to use power for what neither reason nor truth compels.).PP 8, app., PP 11, 4, 11, 5 (national character and character of Islam).