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CHAPTER 9

THE HAZY FLAW

Jerusalem is no Smudge

Let us think back a moment to Department of Bible ..., Volume 11, Ch. 16,where realism about Jerusalem and Israel in prophecy was in view (as indeed was Israel in many a Chapter before - cf. the five volume, ISRAEL PENTAD).

Biblical realism insisted on the stark and unqualified, unique and unparalleled predictions concerning Jerusalem. This was in the predictions as in the fulfilments, one. If it was to be the Bible and not independent thought that was in view, there was no other way.

It has now happened like a led lamb.

Now we shall take the same point in a different aspect, one not only logically inescapable but scientifically as close to that method as can be.

OBLITERATIVE BLINDNESS IS NO BLESSING
The Divine Signature on Israel

A Contemporary Matter

Suppose now that two items are to be investigated. One item denies obvious data but claims allegorical status despite antithetical elements in its base (cf. Ch. 16) noted above. That result we pass beyond, for the moment, to examine the point/issue/topic in a different way, to make a complementary investigation.

Time passes. A test arrives in terms of what is now contemporary history relative to vastly earlier and repetitive prophecy. Let us fearlessly and with integrity grasp this test and apply it, and find the result.

It is easy to see that if this new area of testability enables anyone on one of the two approaches, or items, like Aaron's rod, to exhibit conformity to unique criteria, and the other does not so conform, that the former is the correct one. In history, the unique does not arrive customarily, but in due time, in its day; and when it is predicted AS unique, being of divine origin in affirmed status, then it is doubly confirmed, having been affirmed to be a signal in the matter, a sure exhibit and sign. Nothing in the Bible has more emphatic stress on its certainty and inability to be refuted than this (cf. Jeremiah 31:35ff., 33:19ff.), while the distinguishing elements of the subject in view similarly are made massively apparent in these contexts - it is the land and the people whose blessed beginnings are slashed for their sins to dispersion, destruction and suffering, to loss who are so assuredly to resume, restored singularly. God sees fit as it were, to underline their most blessed future in terms of the specific identity so conferred, three times in red ink. It is as emphatic as that.

This merely accentuates the simplicity of the test, which is of God's word as well as of its applicability to Israel in these contexts, and their often discussed adjuncts on this site. One theological 'item' is the null and the other is the full occurrence of the matter presented, the blessing and deliverance and sustenance and continuity of the body, in the terms of contextual definition.

In other words, if the 'seed' or assigned potential in the one item, the one presentation, can produce amidst the torrent of data, certain results in the laboratory of history, duly able to be affirmed and confirmed, it must be the one, for it is far too complex to be accidental, being in fact of the order of the unique in history over all its scope, and far too vulnerable in being predicted, to have the occurrence dismissed impetuously or derisively by its adversarial opponents, the nullifying group relative to the topic in hand. When it is the Lord who speaks, in the scope of His very numerous predictions, there is a standard of performance and a strong conception of confirmation when word=deed at this level. If possible, when He speaks in the noted terms, it is even stronger, more stringent, more of a warning for those who would dismiss it, and more important yet as a light right up to the Lord's return, for those who are pilgrims (II Peter 1:19).

Not for nothing does the inspired Peter indicate that the light of prophecy is as light in darkness UNTIL a certain time. What is that time ? It is 'until the day dawns', which is NOT from a viewpoint in the first century, a future where nothing has happened, but a TERMINUS of trial marking a blessed arrival of the day of the Lord in the Person who is awaited (II Peter 3:9).

Let us consider the test conditions once more. Again, it resembles two pieces of material, which in one case only. that specified by the Maker, is to produce an overlay of artistic design and remarkable craftsmanship, to be adorned with jewels, and this without human intervention to make it happen. When one arrives to find this happen, then such in the predicted environment, the matter is settled. The one is a failure; the other is authentic - the prophecy happens, the negation does not. It is as conspicuous by its failure as the fulfilment by its romping success, profound detail and utterly amazing prodigality: all this really happened! It was neither dream nor vitalising vision: as stated, it was; as history, it came to be. The word of the utterer is empirically honoured, factually fulfilled, and the promise with the premiss, is utterly confirmed.

God is vindicated in making it happen at all! We for our part, are directed WHERE it is made to happen as WHAT was the signal, and what was its portent as stated for example, so clearly in Luke 21:24. In those specific terms, what does this mean ? It signifies explicitly that Christ's second coming, coming as ruler, judge and king, is "near".

Again, Israel as a criterion for this second coming is then confirmed, being sustained as prophetically relevant, the words of Christ and the prophets as normal, in felicitous harmony and mutual confirmation. Just as the omission from the Bible of any terminus to relevance of this element of Israel, as a prophetic entity at work, gives no authority for addition, so the contravention of what is written gives no room for ambivalence. Its place as a major entity and continuing fulfilment of promise from the God who does not forget, remains where it always was, to be fulfilled to the jot and the tittle. Imagery is one thing; appalling clash with context is another, and when to this history also conforms to the word of God, the question becomes more acute and potent for the Christian Church: How long before what is written is not smitten, but applied!

In this Age, the word and the work of God is equally attested. Thus Israel's return to its God-given land (Genesis 17) is shown as predicted, just as the issue in Luke 21:24 concerns a city of renown and under divine discipline, being trodden down by other nations, until the day of those nations having set and fulfilled, is finished. Then this international treading down of Jerusalem by non-Jews has its time up call. Israel is back, and the alienation of the land from Israel, rather of Jerusalem, will likewise have seen its day. Now it is back, is established and its loss to those who tried to take it over will cease to be the case, as in 1948-1967 progressively and 1973 in confirmation and 1990-1 in application.

The Christian Church is not characterisable as trodden down by the Gentiles for an era, but Jerusalem is. It is a matter of having less than flat contradiction in 'interpretation'. Jerusalem, as Zechariah 12:6, repetitively points out, means Jerusalem, and her restoration is in a place, namely Jerusalem. It is there, as if a patient tutor were instructing those not quite awake, or deaf. Again, as in Micah 6-7, indeed in 7:9, we learn of the characterisable nature of the people in view, those who "have spoken lies", who inhabit the indignation of the Lord, who must wait until "He pleads my case," whereas the Christian's case is already long pled.

In the prophecy of Micah Ch. 6, God asks of His people what He has done to them! to breed such vehemently negative response. So apostrophied, they wait for pardon, restoration, His people are they but out of His hiding hand, dispersed, and soon to be restored by divine power and humiliation to their captors and despisers. As in the Exodus He delivered them, so now back to their nation as in Ezekiel 36-7, they come. Whereas the land lay desolate, Israel scattered, now it is retaken by the power of God Himself who restores the excluded butts of the nations, to their own premises of promise.

The one item, excluding Israel from prophetic significance, whether in return in taking of Jerusalem, or in the passing of its time of systematic scorn, leading on to the arrival of new miraculous divine deliverances as in Zechariah 12, has failed to meet its evacuative role. There is, in other words, no place to be found for this type of prophecy of Jerusalem except in meaning Jerusalem, not the figure or the hope, thought, aspiration, but those liberated from captivity, those envisaged as still very much in it, to whom this assignment of restoration comes. Jerusalem is there, and they come back to it..

The rod, if you will, has bloomed, the skies have opened, the hand of heaven as foretold, has acted as in the Exodus and will act (Micah 7:15) as also foretold, for the recalcitrant who busy themselves with their ideas about the disposition of Jerusalem. It is never advisable to fight God, as Paul found. It is not only that you will not win, but He is right, and from Him is the very concept given validity.

In the approach of 'textual fidelity' as we name it^*1, Jerusalem back with the Jewish people, unlike that inaccurate panache of allegorical condensation, has succeeded in meeting the (designedly) miraculous provisions concerning it. What was foretold, is now tolled into history. What was to spring forth and blossom, has done so. The distinction is clear, uncontested, without competition.

What then ? This 'rod' is the one that has flowered, its prescribed action flowing into being. It involves a prediction statedly to be a signal of the near return of Jesus the Christ. It is one where, contrary to expectation in this, there are massive and startling victories given to the returning protectorate, Israel back in place, in the sustaining of the returned city, Jerusalem. It is to be as now under Jewish dominion, despite an epoch of suppression under foreign rule, despite later assault by armies ready to annihilate it, so that the outcome in Israeli victory is statistically astounding. That too is also as predicted - Zechariah 12:6ff.. SO it was predicted for their TYPE of situation, just as the fact that they would be victories, was predicted for the results. The division of Jerusalem into two as in1948, also has been as predicted, and the astonishment at its latter-day endurance is in train with these foretold proceedings.

Again, if the one item (approach to the relevant Bible predictions) , in which these late era references to Israel are gratuitously denied as the content of the ultimate and extraordinary and sharply affirmed passages, what results ? It is then as if the Christian Church, the drag-in that does not fit, were by a strange transmutation, to be described in that case as habitually prisoner, excluded from Jerusalem and a rebel (Isaiah 52:2, 49:24, Micah 7). Such things are indeed being said of Zion, in captivity, dispersion and exclusion from its place. or in Ezekiel 37, of "the whole house of Israel" as dead bones scattered amid the nations, and to be re-assembled into a living entity, not a dead symbol. That is the transformation for Israel, for a suddenly repopulated Jerusalem who had lost her children, and was astonished to find them back - from where! she asks. An empty Jerusalem is not the Christian Church. It is an empty Jerusalem. depopulated, repopulated.

You may thus make these multitudinous references in various domains, as

1) a matter of allegory. In effect, what is NOT listed in its own terms, instead is going to happen in its own terms, while what IS listed in its own consistent terms is NOT actually going to happen. Hence even the pursuit of such events on a biblical AND contextual base readily comes to be regarded as constituting the denial of its position. Those allegorically concerned become inclined to deem the alternative and careful exposition to be, for some philosophical but incoherent reasons, fraudulent or foolish or misaligned, or in some way legitimately to be negatived.

But there are no grounds for the rupture of context, ignoring the continued coherence of definition, and imagining fancy in preference for some of the most dire, reasoned, defined, developmentally precise and repetitively surveyed scenes and scenario you could wish.

Thus, when a body which is

	NOT dispersed among the nations from a former close coherence as such, with the Lord, and is
	NOT so dispersed because it struck the Messiah as in Micah 5, is
	NOT currently converted but is instead is at some later time to be converted and in so doing, repent AS A NATIONAL BODY of what it did to the Lord as in Zechariah 12, is
	NOT any more at a set and (then) coming time to be brought from unbelief to stark realisation of what they did to the Messiah, and this with profound repentance, and does
	NOT have its capital city trampled by non-Jews over a protracted period, after which it is is restored to it -

is "interpreted" for the case, it is a profound error. It is a comedy of contradiction, and a work of will, a carnival of contradiction.

Then what is its score ? It fails utterly, and scores nought out of one hundred per cent. You are given something to interpret, you change it in its presentation, cancel its content, divide without a divisor. That is its score, quality and case. Further, it becomes a confused medley of wrongly stated descriptions which do not fit the allegorical passion. In vain then do you look for the prophetic light in dark places of which Peter with assurance spoke as very present in this crucial area of understanding history with conviction and aid (II Peter 1:19).

But then, if you will not accept defining characteristics, unique and multiple in texts on various aspects, what would you expect ? The word of the Lord both blesses and exposes, and clever campaigns of harassment of it, never work.

If on the other hand,

2) this thing, impossible to man but by its very nature most assuredly most possible to God who enunciated the predictive material, is affirmed as legitimate and confirmed by a happy history which is now almost complete, what then ? As actualised, then the score is 100%. The entire program is fulfilled right to the Messianic end which repeatedly as in Ezekiel 37, Zechariah 12ff.,appears in these events. God has indeed left a criterion for evalulation by the doubters and confirmation to His people. Israel WILL COME BACK to its own land (God alone owns it all, and decides where any part of it is to go at His own will), and IT WILL have vast military victories, as in Zech.12 , against all statistical probabilities, the people of Israel fighting those who would control and oppress them, spoiling their insurgencies in staggering triumphs. The 1967 case has in fact not only been noted as a victory of this type, but set forth as one of the classics of such military actions, arising to smite and overcome with a brilliant thrust over vast enemies. It is deemed a classic in the annals of warfare. God in Zechariah 12 made it clear that the ultimate ground of these victories would be supernatural assist, and even this world recognised the staggering character of the performance against humanly overwhelming odds. That is why LIFE magazine devoted an entire issue to this particular war.

For that rendering of word of the prophets to history of our contemporary world, that prediction concerning the so carefully defined nation, 100% is by contrast the score for success both in context, definition and history. It is one of the clearest things ever presented in history. For the poetical approach. on the other hand, there can only be 0%, for intrusive distortion and missing of the entire point which presented human impossibilities as divine possibilities and graphically and repetitively indicated their nature, an amazing predictive testimony to an equally amazing divine love.

The added point is this: that also, even this result, is ALSO precisely what is to be expected of the word of God when it orders the paths of nations, and characterises its topic. The characterisation in Micah 7:15 of the Lord's deliverance by divine power of the subjected and castigated nation, as parallel to the Exodus makes a parallel in type and scope.

The difference between the two assessments is therefore total, and not marginal, empirical and not notional. It is fulfilling what for millenia has not accepted the negativity, the nullification and the arbitrary invasion of mere imagination into the text of the word of God. "Has God said ?" is thus shown to be the nullity here as before; for He has both said it and done it. The approach that affirmed the expectation was not without reason, but rigorously endorsed by it. It often regarded such a null read-out as loose liberalisation and grievous trivialisation, antithetical in much to the context even as allegory, and presuming against the word of God in its clarity. It was a view taken as a contextual violation of an ill-fitting piece of self-contradictory piety. Did it matter ? Truth always matters and impels results.

What now, this pseudo-oblivion about divine intentions despite the word of God ?

Now it has led to perilous approaches by some churches, to Israel, even commercially, with seeming bypassing of the enormous land possessions of the foes of Israel, the vast failure to honour the international gift of Palestine for the Jews and the need for non-genocide.

As this is so, then what ?

Then the result is as clear as with Joshua's long day, and more so now, in this, that the result can be inspected every minute of the day if so desired. It is there. It persists. It is like a fog-horn sounding, sounding to the inattentive ear. Israel is back, the trampling is overthrown, the deed of this precise deliverance is done. Yet some attend to this matter! It is well that they do. Mistakes have their place; but the time to correct them is not vague and futuristic, but at once!

Miracles are not materially inducible. They are induced by truth in the hand of God. That is why this is a good level for operation in prediction; it is a double action. The event and its style, the fact and the features.

Moreover, Jesus the Christ even gave more data about it. He declared that when these things BEGAN to happen, then the signal would be in place. Their beginning has spread from the acquisition of land, its development, and in parallel the development in multi-national assault on resident Jews. Here then, is a second such assault on now national Jews. It has by divine mercy been sustained through both, and instead of failing has proceeded to its third step in the taking of all of Jerusalem in 1967, and the fourth ij declaring Jerusalem its eternal capital.

Already, there is added the dealing with Iraq in its statedly continuing war with Israel, which ended with a huge devastation of that nation in the Gulf War.

Things have assuredly begun in this uniquely predictive area! The beginning is the sign. It cannot be undone now, after 1900 or so years. Events still to come include the mass conversions to the crucified Christ with vast repentances in depth and with solemnity, and a spread of devastation on the inveterate invasionists, many seeming to want the designation, the bitterati. Set on denial to Israel of ANY part of the WHOLE land of Palestine, assigned to it both by Britain and the League of nations, it inflicts suffering and suffers. It is all written, the return and the assaults on Israel. It is done before our eyes.

It is not Israel alone for which repentance is appropriate; and the Lord is forgiving, but forgers of conspiracy against His revealed will can do so, remembering that their very physical existence is dependent on the power and mind of the One who invented man as one capable of rejection of truth, God, mercy, and equipped with responsibility for orientations, prioritisations and evaluations.

To be sure, it was also predicted (as in Isaiah 42:9-21) that Israel, the one once the Lord's and then a quitter from His care, Israel itself would come back to its land still disbelieving in its Messiah (that, as a nation!) as in Ezekiel 37, so that the Lord asks, Who is blind as My servant! an oxymoron normally, but here simply descriptive. Yet this servant was still blind to the point, and would be till the set time came as in Zechariah 12, where what is set to come is exposed! For all that, Israel in coming back from the devastations of her children would find the land too small (Isaiah 49:21), for many would they be, and how the new nationals would grow despite their preceding slaughter, for the Lord is exceedingly gracious! How small the land is (unlike the kingdom of heaven which has no limits to its intake as in Matthew 22, with its highways and byways ingredients), compared with Israel's huge intake (as happened).

Thus the net result is that some Gentiles are also blind to the reality, which rumbles and roars with the utmost possible clarity, that even the deaf might hear. Some even seek to assail Israel commercially in blind peril to their folly in so doing to a nation with a sufficiently obvious charge on aggressors. God is one rightly able to punish; so to join and add to the lashes is neither seemly nor wise. It is a long history as traced in Romans 11, and confirmed in Micah 7. Omission of regard for the opening door to the Gospel during Israel's ills (as in Micah 5:3), brought on by Israel's long rejection of its Messiah, and the Gentile opacity is bringing a parallel, the more as it takes armed form. The Lord explicitly warns those who do not realise His thoughts towards the predicted seed of Abraham, through Jacob (Micah 4:11-13, Jeremiah 36:26, 46:27-28).

"They do not know the thoughts of the LORD,
nor do they understand His counsel,
for He will gather them as the sheaves to the threshing floor."

What then ? On all sides confirmed, in the specific issue of the predictive word of Christ, this is verification, validation and confirmation. It is cogent, conclusive and viewable.

Must then some who affirm they are believers, still affirm their traditions of negativity at this topic, in line with the obstructive failures of yore (Luke 10:13) ? To be sure, some may add what is not there; but that is no excuse for removing what is!

Israel then has place as a nation of a special kind, despite its long lapse, was to be and has been restored to its land, and is to be in great measure assigned abundant life, to the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31ff.), in the Messiah (Isaiah 49-55), so that God is faithful to it in spirit, in its conversion, even both in word, in its site as specified; for He who made the earth does not need to pay rent for premises, wherever those assigned for a given purpose may lie.

Does this however mean that they will be superior ? Hardly, having like someone recovering from a heart attack, being very glad to be alive (cf. Galatians 3:28-29), it is acceptance not superiority which is in view! History is not altered; there have been different appointments to races and peoples, and different lessons to be learned by all from each; but Jerusalem is and will be for a sign, for as many seem to forget, it is the site of Christ's self-sacrifice, redemption, death, burial and resurrection. It is equally the site of the prelude to the substantiation of the Gospel in Him, over many centuries. It has its place, and so have we all, and it is most wise to know what it is and not to get exalted ideas whether as Jew or Gentile (cf. Romans 11:18), but to face facts and profit by these performances.

Thus the fact that Israel is not food for the dogs, the devourers, those who would eat her up, by no means gives scope for the grandiose, those who seek greatness at their own instance. This is so whether it be for their pope, a forbidden item in view of Matthew 23:8-10, their 'teacher', another prohibited high ranking prohibition, or for territorial extravaganzas or empires using the very name of the One who forbad violence for His sake, even to protect His Person. So has He made it clear as Messiah, that such expansions and elevations relate to a different sort of kingdom from His. His is ENTIRELY (John 18:36, Matthew 26:23-36), of a different kind. To none is such eminence given, but to Christ. Such is His teaching.

Even for Israel, it is not to become a special force to grab as if a sanctioned super-power rather than a protectorate, now that the exile is complete! Even now, it is not an invasive force, but a recipient of the gift of God in premiss and promise. To it, this in its time is assigned (as was the cut-off, noted in Isaiah 30:8ff.), and its acceptance comes with ITS OWN acceptance of Jesus the Christ, on the same basis as others, but with a most special history and a most relevant tenderness (cf. Jeremiah 31:18-22).

Rather to it comes a special restoration as in Romans 11, with Jerusalem on parade, as a special site of salvation's attainment (Isaiah 2, Micah 4). Now again missions proceed from it (Micah 6, Isaiah 66).

Here is the singular site of the singular Gospel in its attainment, the redemption in its payment, the resurrection in its irresistible certainty, where the power both of the Roman Empire and of the Jewish Temple forces failed to stop, embarrass, inhibit or decry the exposure of false ministers and prophets, who were so DISobedient to their master and employer, the Lord of all and the source of saving symbols as well as ultimate salvation, as to kill Him. Here all has been fulfilled, in an exhibition greater than that of the Exodus, whether in multitudes of healings, revealings, revelations, confrontations, teachings, removals of death and reinstatements of life, whether physical or spiritual or moral. Such there has been the appearance and action of the Creator-Redeemer as man. It is a city of spiritual note and a site of singularity which is its own witness, reminder and exhibition like a tower in the desert.

Much is assigned to Israel, restored rebel, former participant, site of multitudes of miracles, of Old Covenant nationally and New Covenant available to all, of renewal, of grace from majesty, protection after exposure, and singular significance in displaying the faithfulness of the Lord to His word and His utter reliability. Thus His word does not decompose into rubbish, but takes hold; and just as the New Covenant salvation is assignable to the Jew, so it is for the Gentiles IF they believe, for it has no impact for good where evil is wrought instead of faith working. It is always true that without faith you cannot please Him (Hebrews 11:6 cf. Romans 10:9), for that is an integral feature of the 'operating system' and there is no alternative to that (Galatians 1, 3, 5). Moreover, it is more than a system, though not less, being personal, an integral matter and in it is the very quality, function and vitality of life.

It has an attachment of eternity just as the faithful word to Abraham does, through Jacob, for God is beyond the passing, and what cannot be shaken, never will be. It is well then to stand with Him, all prevarications, preoccupations and pied piper false Gospels apart. The rebellion of Israel before and at first during its predicted return, need not be and should not be shared by the Gentiles, who however are doing a wonderfully apt job in apparent imitation, even of last stages in Israel before the crucifixion of Christ. Many Churches have theologies and false prophets which are exponents of unbelief with another Gospel, which as Paul declared, in fact is NOT ANOTHER! (Galatians 1:7,cf. II Peter 2, I Timothy 4, II Timothy 3-4, Jeremiah 23:20). Some even try to have the Spirit of Truth as if it gave them liberty to re-write the word of God; but it is the Spirit of TRUTH (John 14,16), and all that is alien is apt for purgation, and all that is pure for affirmation. It is the Spirit of GOD and not of an alien. Major focus is on Christ, Deity, not some other Being. God is not an escape from God.

Nevertheless, Gentiles who name the name of the Lord need not, should not contribute to the parallel to the earlier failure of Israel. For one element, the clear teaching of the Bible, without antithetical allegory, is sovereignly fulfilled before the eyes of all, the latter day mercy to Israel amidst a specialised program fulfilling itself like a giant wave, rolling over and down till crashing, it has finished its course.

Like the denial of the demonstrated bodily resurrection (cf. Romans 10:9), this is the place to avoid, for the evidence is unique in kind, specified in detail, and speaks even to the deaf.

NOTE

TEXTUAL FIDELITY

In this approach to the text of the Bible, instead of philosophising and romancing, inserting and deleting IN MIND, to adjust the text to one's generic thoughts and personalised mode of approach, be it playful or fanciful or under the control of some view of 'religious language' or other unscientific approach, one takes the text as it comes, allowing for all the norms of expression and imagery, emphasis and contextual light to the uttermost part, so that nothing is excluded in potential, and interprets with due regard to all other divine utterances in the biblical field. At times, it is so obvious that even the birds could fly with it; at times much depends, as in all our speech, on this or that subtlety, allusion, biblical theme, but what is there, is determinative. There may as in oratory, be a spirit of thrust or vividness, the graphic or the simply methodical in the presentation, and this may be of enormous impact and significance; but nothing is to be omitted.

Instead then of quietly passing by some anomaly in a 'view' of what is being divinely said, and yet clinging stubbornly because with an assumed superior, nous to an intrusive view of the words given, ignoring some clear breach in a way that can even amount to suppression, as if the words being divinely chosen (Matthew 5:17-20, I Cor. 2:9ff.), they are rough-hewn as if a clot made our minds calloused: there is the faithful alternative. It is this, that quietly and securely what is given is allowed to determine its own meaning, as before Him who presented it, not a toy or a setting of idle or careless words, but in order to be understood (Proverbs 8:8). It is on this basis that one finds from the God of power, precision and perfect faithfulness, coherent meaning in things small and great, the resolution of problems. Take it as it comes and so go with it as intended, not trying to teach it an alien gymnastics but with joy receiving its
matter, method and meaning. Then clarity awaits, meaning abides, consistency comes, light shines. It is like electrical connections in one way: it works when everything is in place, not with romantic dream but in actuality.

Some textual alchemists even try to import a chemistry of their own, so that quite frankly, it is a combination of their perfervid invention and what is written that they seek to interpret, a sort of psychic god added to the actual one in a work of insidious and invidious blasphemy of no objective significance. That is not interpretation but perversion, with the manner of perversion as variable as the skies.

The alternative is not to add or subtract or make oneself or one's view a sort of ventriloquism, spouting out where another is supposedly speaking. Presumption however is not the point in dealing with God for the proud He loves to lower, and with reason, for their way is like grit in the eye, a dysfunctional intrusion. It is to rejoice that God has chosen to speak and with delighted anticipation to find what He has to say, as accurately and with as much responsive acuity as is given; for the Lord is liberal to those who seek with all the heart.

Such is the approach of textual fidelity which has nothing to do with using or not using this or that mode of presupposition, but facing each text as a test of accuracy of approach. When this is done, one finds left no oddities or anomalies. The biblical text has many a challenge, and it is well that it should ("it is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the honour of kings is to search out a matter," Proverbs 25:2). Good teaching includes what puzzles perhaps at first, requiring digging and a feeling of attainment, when the matter is resolved, and with this, a deeper understanding. Other things are so boldly clear that only scriptural anarchists could fail to find them.

Like weather, one takes it as it comes, rejoicing in the diversity and the wonders of it all, and realising that both peace and storms, sunsets and gloom may come in the word of God, with artistry or force, and it deposits what is the current position as one surveys it, here or there in the text.