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EPILOGUE

The Great Divide

and Multiplication, Addition and Subtraction

A PEOPLE, THE PEOPLE AND THE PLAN

In Israel V, recently published, there was a Prelude, which here comes usefully as part of an epilogue; for just as the theme in this work has been the DIVIDE, in that with Israel as the theme, in this world, that was the very stuff and substance, this and the remedy, the cause and the consequence. It did however put this sub-theme into a broader context, which is stimulating to thought here.

SMALL THINGS WITH VAST IMPLICATIONS

Thus there follows the ISRAEL V Prelude, for us part of the Epilogue.

Does Israel heed ? Not yet.

Does the EU ? the Madrid Quartet ? Does the UN ? Does the USA or Russia within that Quartet ? The pickings are there, and so are the teeth, for whatever diversified reasons, and the flesh is succulent to some, savoury to some, and to be yielded for policy, perhaps, for others! Yet it goes, and the time comes for the biblical confrontation WHEN Israel is without strength in particular, WHEN her resources are not adequate (as in Deuteronomy 32:32-36), and HIS judgments who IS the Lord, will not be a matter of voracity or puny policy, but defence of that to which He is, by honour, committed.

It was MEANT that Israel should go into exile (Ezekiel 39:37-38), as that they should at length return (Ezekiel 36-37 cf. It Bubbles ... Ch. 10); and that a massive crusade of antagonistic nations should gnash and slash, this too was foreseen (Zechariah 12:1-9). This was to be after the return of Israel to its final earthly resting place in its own land as in Zechariah 12, before their then impending nationally vigorous conversion to Jesus the Christ, once crucified (12:10-13:1). Then ? It is in our present time zone (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5, SMR Ch. 8)

It was in the mind of God that a vast further attack should come with swagger of self-assurance (very like that of Sennacherib in ancient times - Isaiah 36ff., this too, well-known beforehand - Isaiah 37:46). This is made clear in Ezekiel 38-39 and Micah 7, Joel 3:13-31; and the confrontation is shown in Isaiah 66:7-16, as in Deuteronomy 32:39-42.

In Isaiah 66,  you find this vast outpouring of divine wrath on the exploitative forces facing Israel after the people have returned to their land, a nation "born at once"; and "who has heard of such a thing!" the Lord asks. "As soon as she travailed," says the word of God to this finale, "she brought forth her children!" ; and it was so in history as in forecast. May 1948 was that fateful day of the sudden announcement of Israel's statehood, as they moved from a group within a nation under other auspices, betrayed by Britain, in terms of its Balfour declaration, to its own actuality, as in one day!

We are following the prophetic account in Isaiah 66, in this way. It is THEN that the Lord makes clear His thoughts of peace to Israel, and in this milieu of time that He brings conviction and conversion to many (Zech. 12:10-13:1).

The Lord is plighted to come forth "to render His anger with fury, and to rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and by His sword will the LORD plead with all flesh; and the slain of the LORD shall be many," (Isaiah 66:15). You may be sure^*1 that the Lord does not come forth with fury when the GOSPEL is preached, but the opposite; for then He comes with peace to the afflicted, and joy to the penitent. This is a matter of peace in the furore " to His people", for "the hand of the LORD shall be known to His servants, and His indignation to His enemies," Isaiah 66:14. There is no question of church here, for violence is forbidden its ministrations; but rather is the Lord working to the defined and definitive Israel, unique as noted in Ch. 11 of THE GREAT DIVIDE, as in Appendix A of SMR, and as readily distinguishable as is a precipitate from the liquid from which it falls.

Here it is a people dispersed,  but brought home to their former land, cast  out but brought in, one which had been a source of mourning, now a matter of rejoicing, one lost found, restored to former religious acceptance. Here is a nation NOT THERE, but suddenly born, in the most extraordinary of fashions IN THE LORD'S OWN EYES, so that NOW it IS there!  So HE regards it, an astonishing thing! Associated with this sudden birth of a nation, is the peace proposed for it and the fury exposed to defend it against those who seek to overcome that nation (Isaiah 66:14ff.). By force, the Lord will meet at last their force and defending it, invite the Gentiles to give praise for its deliverance. As to the Church, the Lord re moves it while He prepares for His crusade against the antichrist, and it comes with Him (Revelation 19:8ff.,11ff.). 

When it finds peace, this restored nation, no longer in terms of its great city, a subject of mourning (Isaiah 66:10), but restored, renewed, new-recreated, God does not suffer its overthrow. He acts.  He does NOT pour out fury on the offending nation in Gospel terms, but to protect that same peace of the new nation, restored to where it was in the first place (cf. Ezekiel 37-39). Not in spiritual wooing, it is, but rather He engages in military enterprises of indignation to slay the enemy.

In fact, He is talking as so clearly in Ezekiel 36-39 and Micah 7 of the nation covenanted, disciplined, dispersed, returned, suddenly restored to nationhood, assailed and then, as here, defended with indignation and with fury, as in Ezekiel 38-39, leaving many slain. It is this where the action may be found, and it is associated as a distinct and different phase with their restoration in spirit (Zech. 12:10 quite diverse from the wars differently described in 12:4ff., as in Ezekiel 39, and quite opaque to the concept of conversion, for it is blood that flows and not a matter of tears (Isaiah 66:15-16, Ezekiel 38:9-21).

In this case, there is a Jerusalem for whom all are mourning, to whom the Lord brings comfort in the return of His people to it, where they were before; and this this given peace and new joy in restoration, becomes a source for which, nay as it is personal, for whom He uses indignant and scattering power on the slain enemy. To a restored site, He thus brings comfort that does not pass, and when this is exposed to the assaults of the enemy, in due time, He assails the assailants who, heedless of long warning over the millenia, insist on being brought to ruin (as in Micah 7 likewise), by presumptuous exercise of power, as if God did not exist.

So far from being forever in mercy patient (Isaiah 57`15-16), God in judgment provides the end of the program amid the nation of Israel and the other nations, setting folly to rest in reality, as so often before throughout history, whether in the world flood or in the ruin of northern Israel, or the exile of Judah, or indeed in the long dispersion of Israel, now to be so comforted, and this to the point of crisis, as they again seek the face of the Lord and find Him, as in Zech. 12. When THAT happens, we hear not of indignation, but of spiritual tenderness (as in Jeremiah 31:18ff., and Zech 12:10-14).

When however the nations riot once more to seethe Israel in its own milk, and assail her, the Lord provides the power, as in the creation, as in the redemption; and He does so on account of that nation for which He is multiply plighted to act, so fulfilling the covenant to Abraham. With the dead bones distributed across the earth as in Ezekiel 36-37, God acts first to bring them back to their land, and then in their conversion, shown in the second command in Ezekiel 37, to bring "life" to the re-assembled "bones"  brought back to their homeland for their boneland (Ezekiel 37:9-14).  This leads on to the international assault and revolt of Ezekiel 38-39. 

So does He bring a nation at once, and so does He intend bring it back to spiritual life, and to defend it, not only in triumphant battles as in Zechariah 12 (preceding 12:10), but in direct confrontation in His own power, as in Ezekiel, Isaiah, Deuteronomy, Micah and Joel 3:12-17. Again and again the Lord repeats it: one result of His action is this. It is that they may KNOW that He is the Lord, know that  He brought them out and brought them back as in Ezekiel 39:27-29. There is no other such nation, and there is no excuse for confusion in these contexts. Israel will know what the Lord has done (Ezekiel 39:22).

Moreover, the nations will "My judgment which I have executed,  and My hand which I have laid on them," Ezekiel 39:21. Indeed, they also will know that Israel  went into captivity, from which it is now gloriously returned, because of their iniquity. It was "because they were unfaithful to Me," 39:23, that God hid His face from them and gave them into the hand of His enemies. It was not some national matter, or ground of pride; it was divine discipline directed against Israel, as now it is in turn and in parallel exercised against her inveterate and militant, chronic persecutors.

They do not hear, who seek to dismember Israel, taking Jordan's land from Palestine, making pressure for more, as Israel divests itself willingly of Sinai and of Gaza; and yet in voracity, they mount and seek more and yet more, never satisfied, whether with the colossal gift made by the UN in 1947, making of Israel little islands and removing Jerusalem from their site as their city, or with that made with President Clinton in the case of Arafat in the Camp David enterprise. NO! they have said, not taking as a GIFT these amazing surrenders of land and city. Instead, they have warred and lost as divinely prescribed.

While Israel waits before her vast moment of conversion of very many, the powers that be, the Quartet, the Arab, the Islamic nations, they desire more, they demand place, they will not rest. It was not enough that Jordan opened her doors to the displaced from the small slice of Palestine Israel gained, left from the gift of more than half to Jordan in the 1920s. No, for it was not mere lion's share they wanted. Instead,  even from Jordan,  they had to war on Israel, even from there, till all but causing a civil war in that land, they were no longer received.

It is not enough that Gaza is freely restored; they have to war from there. There is only war. It is not enough that Sinai is largely restored. They have to creep in from Egypt for more war.

It is no surprise that this incessant chatter whether of words or guns, will be met in due course. In the intemperance of coming assault, will be the result, and it is the divine power which will deliver Israel. When GOD disciplines a people, it is His affair. When other nations seek to clamour and conquer, they appear as bullies, and their time too, it comes (cf. Jeremiah 50:28-34, Isaiah 51:21-23).  God has plans. ALL the earth is His. It is spiritual madness (cf. Hosea 9:7) to contest a small portion of this earth with Him,  and to say NO! on the basis not only of no objectively demonstrably word, but even  contrary to what objectively demonstrable as His word^*2. 

Yet the nations rush on as has been foretold of them, in ruinous renegacy, unable to hear, unwilling to heed like those adolescents, young people, who blast their own ears with savage or invasive music, till their hearing is impaired. Will they listen to the uproar of their own hearts and will false prophets persuade ? Are the dauntless, multitudinous Islamic or quasi-Islamic nations making clandestine or confrontational invasion of Israel a way of life, so to act that it is all to be translated into a way of death ? Will they not hear ? Is this to be one more component of the domain of dynamic death to enslave so many in this world in its day as in Revelation 6 ? like a macabre Mexican Hat Dance, lunging and re-lunging at death, in a mordant thrill, a dance out of life itself. Is life so to be made a play-thing, and death a march!

What of that prophecy in Revelation 6:3-4 ? It is a matter of death as a way of life ? So the deadly dynamic moves, as if a horseman were sent out, "and it was granted to the one who sat on it to take peace from the earth, and that people should kill one another, and there was given to him a great sword."

It is deadly, a polluted peril, and it becomes a pitiful end to searing passion. Terrorists of varied backgrounds, but often of this or that Islamic clique, passion, pogrom or program seek to shred at Israel or wreak havoc on any nation or people which dares to support her, or to have variant views on genocide, while seeking to intimidate or even on occasion, to replace laws of freedom with their own lore, so acting to paralyse friends of Israel. Bin Laden of Al-Qaeda was quite explicit about this point of terrorism, to subdue Israel's friends, while holding in the eye vision of territories once held under the sword or scimitar of Islam (cf. Lord of Life,  Ch. 8).

The world, whether in Beast I or Beast II, precisely as predicted in Revelation 13:1-14, is obsessed with a swagger and a thrust to oppress mere truth by fear and by violence. Indeed, for it is as if  "truth lies fallen in the street," as noted in Isaiah 59, before the ensuing assault of the Lord on this reckless renegacy from truth and equity (Isaiah 59:15-21). The Lord can keep accounts where truth is dismissed and evil is propounded (Isaiah 59:18). When He is ready, He acts (cf. Isaiah 64:4-5).

But what of the growing human lust for the land, for the name, for the site, for the prestige, for the power, for the taking of the land of the Lord's chosen people (Genesis 17:7-8), for His chosen purpose and in His chosen program ? It is not all in one package. It is multiform, and multifarious, this grasping, rasping attitude which disrupts peace, glories in war, is insatiate, insatiable (cf. The Divine Agenda Ch. 6).

Rule becomes the work of desire, reinforced by alternative tributaries whether of atheistic flamboyance, as for example, seeking to take over the culture of Australia, telling "truth" where their model can have none, or of self-contradicting agnostic obsessions as if it were true or could be, that where truth is not to be found, on a given model on systematic grounds, it is yet the truth that proclaims it!

The nations when not killing their own people - Germany (many of the Jews WERE its own people), the USSR, China became magnificent examples of guilt, and when not seeking to invade each other - millions slain in the repulse: then have other things to do. They spend time in many cases, to organise their anti-truth, their proclamations about things, based on nothing, kicking like a fractious horse at God's  very image (cf. Dastardly Dynamics ... Ch. 10). They have shut-downs on creationism and systematic Bible knowledge, preferring very often blistering and irrelevant, unknowledgeable and propagandising assaults, so that the source both of man and of his humanity might be expelled. It assuredly appears that even Europe from its constitutional crisis, is finding it to hard to formulate where it is going: just that they will go there together! (The Grating Grandeur ... Ch. 7, Christ, the Cumulative and the Culmination Ch. 4, ). They are to have ... a 'common destiny'.

The world mocks the God necessary for man's salvation;   and reality in return gives it financial or cultural or moral or religious concussion, or some medley of the same,  to the point. Yet this world wonders, scratches its head, kicks with its feet, oppresses rather more, or perhaps less, turns over and goes into fitful slumber once more.

While this Volume concentrates on the anti-Israel phase of the passion for non-conformity to the word of the living and all-powerful God of the Bible, this mood and movement is also to be seen, in the dynamics of past and parallel pollutions, belched out by the spiritual blast-furnace of a world varying between insensate passions, moods of depression, cunning deceits, illusory dreams and predatory devilries. Small wonder James indicates that a friend of this world is no friend of God (James 4:4). Nor is it in the least surprising that Jesus the Christ declared that the prince of this world has NOTHING in Him! (John 14:30).

It is realised that for every million slain (whether by hunger from simple lack of food or this through military intervention to prevent its coming and distribution, or from missiles, or from invasion, or raids), there is an indeterminable crowd of those wounded, a large number of these providing additives to misery, additions to pain or accretions to agony, or long-term anguish or both! It is one whether it is iran and Iraq, locked at loggerheads while many heads, young and old, perish; or brutality in the Sudan, or in China, or in Zimbabwe, or in India, or Somalia, or Afghanistan, or deceit in Pakistan, as would appear from the high-profile keeping of a jointly sought enemy, near a military base! Were the soldiers asleep ? the commanders inert ? the military intelligence preoccupied ?

It would not seem in the least degree likely. One should never under-estimate those with whom one has to do. So it goes on, militant, ready in many cases to hack or hinder Christians, churches, pastors, forbid the Gospel, or even Christian prayer as apparently happened in the case of the Gulf war in Saudi Arabia. Should a free nation submit to such strictures when helping a nation at peril!  The world, when not roaring and soaring witlessly aloft, seems to be gliding like a stricken plane, unable or unwilling even to consider its landing place.

The terms of truth, the gift of God, the Saviour who came, the Book, that Bible which lasts under every scrutiny, the foretelling and the forthtelling which cannot be faulted, it continues like a Lecturer, bent over his notes, in the little light on his desk, till it is finished. But this lecture, it is from the Lord.

He speaks, and always acts accordingly. He gives notice, warning, exhortation, appeal, information. But this world, it will not listen! It has agendas competing to take over from God, whether He be given lip-service (Isaiah 29:13), or just lip (Malachi 2-3). It is rapidly approaching the direct confrontation with God of Revelation 19:19!

It is like traffic light, but in the auditory level: if you will not heed, what can you expect but collisions^*2! Not heeding does not reduce the pain afterwards, nor does it lend wisdom to wilfulness. Where passion precludes even pity, alas, O world, you see why Jesus did not pray for this world, its systems, its silliness (cf. Hosea 7:11), with its rankness and its rancour (John 17:9); but rather did He pray for those who have heeded, do heed and who will heed the word of God , and in the Creator-Redeemer, put their unqualified trust, following the written word of God (Matthew 5:17-20, John 14:26, 17:6-8), in the power of the Saviour (Ephesians 1:19), which is sufficient, while seeking always to do the very will of God (Matthew 7:21ff.), from the heart (Ephesians 6:6).

Whether with nations, and their times and attitudes, known and foreknown to God, or with individuals, with phases or periods, or vast epochs, the Lord seeks and offers, and in His majestic truth and loving heart, He knows the ways of man and the seekings (as with Nineveh in the day of Jonah) or withering disregard (as in the last phases of the Northern Kingdom of Israel - I Kings 17) and acts, whether there or with Judah in the onset of Babylon despite all His entreaties (as seen in II Chronicles 36). As Paul declared it (Acts 17:26-27) of God who made the world:

"And He has made of one blood every nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each of us."

That, then, with the addition of the last two paragraphs,  was the prelude to Israel V, and it spilt out into parallel divisions in the world, just as we have been considering these, indeed all, in our current theme. Israel was first called IN, then went OUT and then is being called back IN; but there is but ONE site that is in, graced by the sight of the slain Saviour, vicarious atonement for sin. The Gentiles were out, but many and some nations came IN; yet for all that,  many of these now have severed almost all ties, and are effectually OUT, while Israel, in large numbers, is now prophetically poised to return. But there is only one site of salvation to which to return. Before all time, in the mind of God, it was known, and the lamb slain before the foundation of the world was the prepared and indeed predestined appointment for mercy.

The division relating to Him, for or against, with or without, precedes and is prior to the other features below, and it remains; and on this consider the presentation in Dizzy Dashes ... and The Brilliant Harmony of Inevitable Truth Ch. 6.

MATHEMATICS AS A MODELLING TOOL

With division, however, consider multiplication. If the ultimate division is simple, sheep and goats, is there place also for what multiplies.

What then divides, what is the division ? It is those who see the need, find the resolution, take the remedy, are redeemed, have a barrister in heaven whose word is built on deeds (I John 2:1-3, Colossians 1:22), wrought in love, secured in labour, whose status is deity, whose name is Jesus the Christ, on the one hand. On the other, it is those who in the face of this light, prefer darkness. So is there division; but what then of the place for MULTIPLICATION.

We who are redeemed, are indeed to multiply. This is to be done with  good works as Paul emphasised twice in the Epistle to Titus. The first is from 3:8 and the second from 3:14.

This is a faithful saying, and these things I will that you affirm constantly, that they who have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable to men.

And let ours also learn to maintain good works for necessary uses, so that they be not unfruitful.

To be sure this comes in the context of a massive emphasis on free grace, merciful washing, attributed righteousness by faith through vicarious sacrifice, removal of any rubbish which might seek to add itself to the proceeds of salvation wrought in Christ, as if to share the foundation as in Titus 2:11-13, 3:5-7, Galatians 2-3. Indeed, it is immediately after that grand sweep of FREE AND GRACIOUS SALVATION Titus 3:5-7 (cf. the consolidated certainties of Ephesians 1:11, John 10:9,27-28) that Paul puts in good works as the very outburst, like prepared buds in Spring sunshine, of the new, free, gracious and inner reality of Christ in you, as in Colossians 1:27, the hope of glory.

Again, there is a parallel in Titus 2.

 Here,  having shown us that by faith we become His own special people, because through faith we have received Him who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify  for Himself His own, we learn that this very people whom He has so purified for Himself, are one which is zealous for good works.

Such gracious works are to be multiplied. Thus we add multiplication. It is not through lust that this is done, as if with the spirit of some financier ever seeking greater wealth, his being forged in money; for that is lust. Rather it is a quest for the best, an intensity of the longing of love, not law, not obsession, an outworking of His in-working, so that we might rejoice in this our precious time on this earth, to become like a savour, like salt, like lights in a dark place. We are to be meaningful in purpose and composed in Christ, like a beacon peeping constantly on the horizons of many, that they be reminded of the truth and might seek the Lord.

Sound speech, must Titus show, for the task is great, and no subversion is to be suffered (Titus 2:7-8, 1:9), for the word of God needs to be adhered to, not subject  to the squalor of variability.

In other words, saved freely as in Ephesians 2, let us freely and liberally allow good works to exit from the riches within, in Christ, so that we are not mere holders of  placards, but purposeful people, labouring in love.

Then there is addition to add to division and multiplication.

This is readily found, as in II Peter 1. Here, having told us of the place reserved in heaven for the believer,  in I Peter 1, where the knowledge of God is apparent in the description, Peter now prescribes six fine additions for which to secure binding. Thus to FAITH ADD virtue, knowledge, temperance (self-control), patience, godliness, brotherly kindness and that divine institution of the kind of love which appears in I Corinthians 13, in the Gospel, in Romans 5!

Even these are no amorphous add-ons, but part of the very texture of life,  to be distinguished, realised and cherished. After all, by "great and precious promises"  ALL things required for life and godliness are provided (you need to claim promises - availability then becomes a matter more distinctively, of presence!).

There is even a CALLING to glory and virtue (II Peter 1:3). So things are given, but they need a visit to the treasury for clear-cut claim, from the vitalities of acclaim. Other things need to be added as if they were ferns with flowers in a vase, a distinctive reaching being in view, but a natural grasp through grace.

These promises of all needful for life and godliness accrue in those who having "escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust" (of mind, or body, or spirit), become through regeneration and sanctification, "partakers of the divine nature!"

These then are the seven additions on a vital basis of active accord and close company with the Lord, and His purging presence and enlightening Spirit.

Yet with all this, there is subtraction. In no small measure, this is already seen in II Peter 1:3-4. IN escaping the corruption of this world through lust, we are subtracting its painful insurrections and empty corrections, its foolish inhibitions and its craven conceits. Don't be conformed to this world, says Paul in Romans 12:1-2, but be CONFORMED to the Lord, a lively relationship with a glorious territory for movement of spirit and burnishing of heart.

Do not set your heart on the things of this world, says Paul (Colossians 3), the form of which is passing away (I Corinthians 7:31), but on the things above, being risen from a death to the former attractions and misconstructions, to a life in HIS presence, which like the sunshine on plants in dark places (such as this world), makes ALL the difference. So is it, IF they be rooted and grounded where they belong (Ephesians 3:17ff.), and the seed is as it should be, that of the word of God. Indeed, in I John 3:9, we see there is a divine seed (as in I Peter 1:22ff.) in terms of which we are re-engendered, regenerated.

Even mathematics therefore has a burden to debouche, a song to sing when it is deployed not only in engineering feats, but in spiritual accounts amid countless blessings.
 

 ASKING AS A THEME FOR THOSE WHO STAND ASIDE

Israel in large measure will come to the Lord; many in the Lord will add and multiply and subtract wastage and woes; but what about you, reader ?  Are you alight with the fire of the Lord, a strange energy in your very bones, are you crisp with His charity, governed by His grace, do you wait upon Him daily, have you made of yourself a living sacrifice, a joy in this, that to act with and for Him is better than honey, than delight, for it is is a substantial and a spiritual thing which is more natural than water, more beautiful than the clouds, more living than rock, but just as sure!

Bishop Ryle, that faithful Anglican of a former day, who even then deplored superficiality and wandering in spiritual things, made one point monumental and grand in his sermon: DO YOU PRAY!  in his work, A NEW BIRTH. I know Christians are foreknown to God, He says, that it is of grace, but DO YOU PRAY ? he asks. If you cannot invent your own regeneration, or create repentance, you CAN ASK! If you do not want to, what is this but a designation of your desire. Why worry ? It is a field alien to your desire, not equipped with what draws you ? Take it, then, this negativity, for much good it will do you.

You PREFER to be out of it ? Very well: it is not as if God in His choosing was unprincipled, for He is very clear that HE WOULD LIKE TO HAVE ALL PEOPLE RECONCILED  TO HIMSELF (Colossians 1`:19ff.). You CANNOT in all truth, blame Him. If there is any lack in any person, anyone goes astray and stays that way, it is biblically NOT because of a lack of interest on the part of God who went His Son that the word might be saved and not judged. It is STATEDLY in the very face of this, a matter of preference, and it is man's and not God's which is cited (John 3:19). While He would have all, many will not have Him and He knows and has known it. God who KNOWS and has always known the heart of each and all (Ephesians 1:4), whether or not the preference is for Him, before time dawned or man was made, that architect of souls, is NOT going to STOP or DEPRIVE you as far as His power and purity go.

It is entirely, utterly and altogether the preference known before sin ever differentiated the morality of man, and that  which excludes,  it is of man in the face of God and His love, and such is the sovereign will of God, that it be so, and so does He operate and fulfil His foreknowledge in predestination which prevents any other thing from distorting the truth, and makes it sure. It is that knowledge of God's which is the truth, a foreknowledge of Him who does not change and tells us clearly of HIS desire (Romans 8:29ff., 5:1-11, Lamentations 3:33, John 3, Luke 19:42ff.). In foreknowledge, predestination or seeking at any time, God has active what is the truth, and what is His attitude that all should be reconciled to Himself, and His love which does not grab as in lust, but seeks as with a pure desire.

He does not in the first place, MAKE you fail to come to Him, because it is explicit desire that you SHOULD come to Him. It is always you, in your spirit as known in truth to Him, who would prefer other things. If then this is fine with you, so be it. You are undertaking an entire responsibility for giving God the go-by, appointing Him a desert and not your heart as far as you are concerned. Your choice in His eternal sight, it is, despite His love which does not make imitation people out of the unwilling, but having made man in His image, brings truth to light, without either distortion or manipulation. He IS the truth.  Truth lives IN Him, is of Him.

Ryle says this: "I hold salvation by grace as strongly as any one. I would gladly offer a free and full pardon to the greatest sinner that ever lived. I would not hesitate to stand by his dying bed, and say, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ even now, and you shall be saved." But that a man can have salvation without asking for it, I cannot see in the Bible. That a man will receive pardon of his sins who will not so much as lift up his heart inwardly, and say, "Lord Jesus, give it to be," this I cannot find."

In other words, NOTHING of merit or pride is to be found in man that will help him to be saved, no canny wit, no boat-people desire to get somewhere better without regard to what it is or requires, as some seem to have it; no immigration lust to utilise the good and not seek the good of the kingdom, can help. In the flesh of man is no good thing (Romans 7:14,18). The heart of God, as designated by Him,  is toward your salvation; but it has principles of purity and even love does not force. What is truth will be. If then you WANT in, for what ? Is it because of a high standard of living reputed in the kingdom of heaven ? There is certainly a high standard of dying, but many live in testing conditions, and EVERY Christian is to make himself or herself a living sacrifice,  living for Christ! (Romans 12:1ff.). It is not a holiday from duty but rather relish for the divine, for God Himself. In the last analysis, it is a matter of love for Him and service in Him because God who made you wants you, and you want Him, and an ethos of love, a delight in duty.

You do not need or desire this ? So be it. What is true has come out. But just as you CANNOT make yourself new, God CANNOT be baulked either. If in the end you desire Him, and He knows it even when you do not, to Him you will come. He gives effect to truth. THEREFORE CALL ON HIM, IF YOU DESIRE HIM. It is as Ryle points out, not impossible to call on Him. "I find that nobody will be saved by his prayers, but I can find that without prayer anybody will be saved," he avers. The underlying idea is this: NO EFFORT of ours is the condition of salvation as base. This is true. NO special grace of ours is the ground of salvation. This also is true. However NO refusal to call on the name of the Lord fits with salvation. God can do as He pleases, but you can call. How it comes about that you are here and can listen and call is His business. THAT you could call if you willed, and MUST do so, in the face of information and invitation, is the point of Ryle (cf. Luke 9:26)..

In other words, again, we are not so automated that man is rubbed out. His merit and fallen will in themselves will do NOTHING (John 1:12, Ephesians 2:1-12); but refusal to call merely confirms a negative finding. God is not baulked by pathology, or disenabled by man's disability, nor are the gifts of man beyond His reach. He knows His own and can reach them, and the truth is not abandoned because it is negatived by man, nor circumscribed as if God who made us, is prone before us! What He wants in man, and the way He want it, is what He gets; and what He does not want is to leave man without mercy, or to find man by fraud, as if to make up what is not true. It is truth always and in all things that is His. Cosy relationships without truth (as in Psalm 50:22ff.), or melting tongues without reality (as in Isaiah 29:13), proud entrants congratulating themselves (as in Romans 10), He does not desire.

Indeed, when the will hardens (cf. II Thessalonians 2:10), He may send an active delusion; where the love of the truth is not received, He may as with Pharaoh (Romans 9), use the very wilfulness and in confrontation, harden its wicked and wayward bent, and so help others to realise their folly, in the depiction of the course and force of depravity, when its dynamic wreaks havoc. It is before Him as a book, and He acts as seems best (Romans 9:22); but in so doing, and in giving effect to resultants foreknown, He does not cease to be Himself, sovereign and THE ONLY SOVEREIGN, patient and profound,  whose intense and personal desire is that all might be saved, and whose purity will not rest in relief programs for the unchanged, but only in realities perceived and implemented, foreknown and sovereignly despatched in whatever forms and formats show grace, attest mercy, and as necessary, bespeak just judgment. Of this, Ezekiel 33:11 with 33:27 are eloquent!

Emigrés from earth come in love to truth, not as profit makers to seduce heaven or secure it as selfish advantage (as in Malachi 1:10). Love is a mutual reality and not an induced compulsion on the one hand, or a contrivance to invent a new person where only the continuity remains, not the reality. The new person results from salvation, and is not the basis, but the sick soul foreknown to God as such, and indeed before its sickness ruled it. Thus while the will of fallen man contributes nothing, the will is no cover before God, who knows it before its fall and moves with integrity into it after it, and so draws in truth and finds His own.

It is not God's will versus yours. It is not that because of Him you cannot come. It is not a mysterious reluctance on His part which eternally damns you. HIS approach (Colossians 1:19ff.) is entirely the opposite and HE IT IS WHO SAYS IT. Why many theologians reject this fact is a mystery, that I grant you. However, they can do what they will; but God has said what He will, and it is God and not the theological entrepreneurs that I trust. Even the greatest can err; therefore I trust in the word of God without them, and if they concur and expound wisely and well, praise God, this is a gift. But it never displaces one word of the Bible. Fear God and follow His word.

What then ? You perhaps would LIKE to know God, but feel it is hopeless, that you are not at all sure to find any interest on His part, that it is all a gamble, or worse, and so you will not stir yourself up to call on the name of the Lord and seek from His gracious gift and willing heart, salvation ? This is nonsense. God's interest in saving the world and NOT judging it is stated clearly in John 3:15ff., and His desire for every soul in Colossians 1:19ff., as in I Timothy 2, and His attitude is seen in Ezekiel 33:11, and His mourning for the lost in Luke 19:42ff.. It is nothing to do with any restriction of seeking love in Him that anyone in the end, will not call on His name, as if to implement His will. It is a permission given in the very face of His love, that one remains aside, BECAUSE He WILL NOT force. If there is any way, if any grace, if any mercy, then it is designed for the sinner. Only if each and all of His mercies is despised, not because of culture as king, but in the very accurate knowledge and foreknowledge of God, who mourns for the lost, is there a place in hell, a site for the arbitrary, the wilful, the abandoned, who abandon themselves to themselves and find fealty in the fields of sin.

He does not appeal and call because He does not earnestly desire, but because of that self-same desire which He is so careful to formulate and to declare! nor does He say, "As I live," both of His desire that we should turn, and of the judgment if we do not, because it is less than to the depths of His heart, but because it is, that we should come to Him; nor does He weep because He did not really want the salvation which is lost, but because the prime surge of His love knows no bounds (cf. Ezekiel 33:11,27).

You would know Him ? then CALL on His name, as Peter presents in Acts 2:21. After all, whoever will call on the name of the Lord, in truth and in reality, will be saved. He is not present for mockers but for the site of seekers who relying on Him, call to Him. If you should have done it sooner, then repent of that. If you should have sought Him  earlier, then repent of that. If however you have done well to think of it at all, repent of that, for it is God who does well, and as far as our untutored and natural wills are concerned, they are rendered in our own day, inoperative in this because of sin. We CANNOT lift ourselves out of being outré. With God, however, all things are possible and it is possible for HIM to find what we cannot find, and to operate what we fail to have power to operate, and to find us and our wills and the truth as it is foreknown in His all seeking love, and to liberate. Ah! why did I not come sooner ? you say. Repent then of this and of all that occludes and seeking Him, find Him, knowing His desire for you!