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MESSIAH JESUS CHRIST

AUTHOR AND JUDGE OF HISTORY,

AGELESS TERMINATOR OF THIS PRESENT AGE

AND LORD OF GLORY

CHAPTER ONE

TRUTH HAS NO DUPLICATION

but Declares Itself Immutably

The title is not a duplication, but rather a reflection of historical association, in Hebrew and Greek respectively, first of the vast prediction of the Old Testament concerning Him, His suffering and the glory to follow, and then of the precise portrait in the New Testament, focussing chiefly the first phase, but filled with power from the world above, which is the basis of earth and salvation alike.

What then of the Gospel, the impartation, the central action of this Messiah, foretold as fulfilled.

It is not an adage, but an act. It is not simply an episode, but the axis, the basis for any event. It is not a growl in the throat of the beast, but a nail in the coffin of its due. It was not an index for ascription, but a propounding of power, divine, dutiful, beautiful, unconquerable even by death. It was not a mere fulfilment of countless prophecies, here direct, here dire, here blessed, here intensely revelatory, there subtle, cast this way and that: but a conquest of darkness by light. It was not an arraignment of mankind - this is to come (Acts 17:31), but a provision for pity. Its coin was death, its pageant was death's disruption, its key was compassion and its theme is love.

What He has done is not only for this Age, but for the Age to come (Ephesians 1:21). In the fulness of glory, great is the originality of the Lord, including His coming creation of a new heavens and a new earth; but this same Jesus the Messiah, whose own body was raised (Acts ), who has raised up His own people in the heavenly places for the spirit now (Ephesians 2:6), and will raise them for the body in its own time (I Cor. 15, II Cor. 5), is equally the Mandate of mercy in the self-same grace in the ages to come. This includes the millenium (Revelation 20), where the devil is suppressed and the earth is filled with the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11, Habakkuk 2:14), but also the Judgment; the grand new creation of heavens and earth, and the wonderful ingredients of eternity.

With such a God as this, it is like having Raphael and Michelangelo in residence with a student artist; but infinitely more so, for this is the expression of God, His living Word in infinite intimacy with His Father who sent Him, of the very King of Eternity, the Messiah. To Him with His Father is one throne, with the Sender is the Sent, one God (Isaiah 48:15ff., John 5:19ff., 8:58).

It is this same Jesus, who will come again as He left (Acts 1:7ff.).

He is imminent, in His return to call His sheep home to a better pasture (Revelation 7:15-17), a home unturmoiled, where truth is not only immanent but eminent, not only available but declarative as the sun sends forth its light (I Corinthians 13, Revelation 22:3-4).  He comes moreover as the old earth and heavens depart in their time, to create the rule of righteousness on earth (Psalm 72, Isaiah 65, Psalm 2, Revelation 20), before this present scene goes, its scenario finished. He is supreme over all,  above all, sent as a sacrifice, kept as sovereign (Philippians 2, Ephesians 2:15-23).

It is well to  keep our eyes on the road, that highway of holiness of which Isaiah 35 speaks, for to name but one of its greatnesses, the wayfarers though fools, do not go astray. The test is not too hard; nor too easy. Growth is assured but testing no less. Life is like that; there are a thousand ways to die spiritually (as physically, to put it conservatively); but there is but one WAY to love. Jesus Christ is that way, and to ignore, in modern terms, the helicopter of rescue (Hebrews 6:19) is as wise as insisting on staying on the lip of a smouldering, turmoiled volcano, spewing ash in invigorated rumblings. You CAN do it, for a while perhaps; but you do not have to do so. The prognosis is not good.

Rebellion is free; spiritual madness has no barrier. It is only when the helicopter is taken, so that you find the Pilot and what He has done, that you become aware,  alive and realise the wonder of His salvation, its security and its sheer delight of challenge; for dark and deep is the pit, and many the avenues to it; but out of it, there is splendour, first within, Christ in you the hope of glory (Colossians 1:23) and then outside,  when what He DID on earth, establishing the Gospel Age precisely as Isaiah for one predicted, is what nothing can undo, neither malevolence, cynicism or hate. It was prescribed, Peter for a short moment sought to proscribe it (Matthew 16:22-23), in an excess of misplaced zeal.

Yet the thing as prescribed, lustrous in love, agonising in attainment, was actively pursued and done (Luke 9:51-56, 13:32-35). Even His cry in bodily dissolution and spiritual burden-bearing of sin as a sacrifice, was as foretold (Psalm 22:1, Matthew 27:46). The three days foretold (Luke 18:31-34) ticked by, under the hand of the Lord over the time and times He had made, until at the very break of the dawn of the sun-tip, He rose, like a great steam engine gliding after an exhausting night, into the station at the end.

His body could not be produced, since death itself had been reduced, payment for sin completed in Himself; nor could His testimony be reduced by the greatest military power on earth, even in connivance with the site of testimony, now turned into a situation of betrayal. But not by all!

The Christian Church is the embodiment of what He did, and vastly abused by impostors, it has been harrowed and harassed, misrepresented with many diverging from its mission, specious and unctious, or vile and violent, until now, the day of its own betrayal by many (II Peter 2, II Timothy 3-4), as this world attempts the second rupture, that of His body, the Church, and tempters seek to confound the issue and like hyenas, pick up the bits of what lies strewn.

But while the farces may like straws strrewn, the Church does not; and while the ornaments of civilisation vary, the source does not change. The word of God both written and smitten has stayed, and is steadfast, as fidelity is, to the end. Though now actual Christians are being persecuted, impoverished, their homes and churches destroyed, their lives impugned, their liberties lost, their testimony hated; yet their lives continue on this earth and in heaven, till the day when this abominable, disruptive dynamic of the devil being done, the accomplishment of redemption becomes the only news left. Then is darkness swallowing up in the vainglory of ingratitude and the pomposity of ruin, its inhabitants, those who grievously and sadly remain faithful to doom, working their way to satisfying their selves, god,  hope or delusions, aspiring to power or content with man's culture till it festers in judgment itself.

Science, when it keeps to its domain, continues AS and IF so acting. Christ DID keep to His domain, allowing neither pleasure nor dignity nor self-preservation nor preference to dictate; He was  "straitened", narrowly constrained, till His work was done, declaring this, "I have meat to eat which you do not know of", John 4. The domain of what happens now, of what is to come,  is impressive. It is that of the Author and Judge of what was created and contained and given laws and powers of investigation, from His own will, as Creator of it all, now that time has come in the final phases, to the finale of this present Age. It is He who towers over it, as One Sent to secure salvation, Himself both its source and sustainer (Philippians 2, Hebrews 1:3ff., 11:3ff.).

Over all, Christ Jesus  is as man over his own book, as mountains over streams, as space over valleys, as knowledge over the fitful self-proclaimed masteries of man. He as the Word of God is their genesis and end, the donor of eternal life (as in I John 1, John 5:24, John 6, 10),  as foreknown in the trinitarian marvels of the  Alpha and Omega. Here is the only God of glory, lover, loved One and love itself, whose truth invites all, repels the repellants and conquers all things, that it might BE available and found. Christ the sent Saviour, being faithful, remains as He has been,  source of blessing and consummation for those who know Him, Shepherd and King Resource and Rock, Redeemer, reliable as faithful, steadfast and unfitful, and to be sought as the cattle seek their evening water (cf. Isaiah 63:14).

His kingdom continues as truth over folly, and the requirements of truth remain: repentance and salvation or ruin and justice. There is a beginning and an end, but as the beginning is loathed by many who want to centre on themselves, mere born things, the wonder of it all, with their tidings and trappings of the psyche, so the end is loathed the more; as increasing desperation drives incoherence of thought, a current topic of foolish education, the eminence of fallen culture, the adequacy of what is made to have made itself before it was there to do so, and the evacuation of logic wherever it gets in the way. Dunkirk involved an evacuation to save; this is one to damn. Damage to truth is an inveterate assault, from which style of life there is no relief but in repentance.

Justice, it is a wonderful thing, but not so marvellous when you gratuitously suffer it because of a stiff neck, shut eyes, unbalanced furores, desire for eminence or vengeance or mutual acceptance among men. Take it or leave it, Jesus Christ remains the Author and Judge of history, in the most willing and acceptable place for any judge.  What is that ? what CAN or could make any Judge's position desirable for those whom He judges ? It is this. HERE ONLY is the Judge who FIRST bore the penalty for all who receive it, and only then - as is to come - but yet applies that judgment where the remission in mercy for sin, is rejected,  confronted in effect, rejected in fact. That, it leaves hell as an inheritance; or heaven as a gift.

Things do not change, because God does not. Sin can only be remitted or remain. As Creator and Redeemer, He presents truth, divorce being from life, that eternal life of which He is the source for man (I John 1). All things that are the Father's, are His (John 16:15).That is why He can speak, and it is done: He knows, loves, lives and acts, time an invention, liberty a grant, both in style at the first, and in spirit at the end for those who knowing the truth, and loving it, are free in truth itself (John 8:32).