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CHAPTER 7

URGENCY

The ultimate pity of the Lord does not remove the current urgency.

If people suffer now, this is not reduced by the ultimate outcome.

If we are shown pity, as we Christians are, then let us show it.

It is not however to be shown in endeavours to make what serves sin to have more power to do this.

It concerns itself certainly with gross need, as James specifies, but more with the cause of it, as shown by Paul in Romans 5 and II Corinthians 5. The horror of judgment, temporal and final, is not merely in its BEING judgment, but being that of the everlasting God, and not only this, because of His wisdom, power and majesty, but because this would come despite His love, so great and so practical to save, for He IS mighty to save, that somehow to MISS THIS is the acme of the contemptible.

That is why it is admirable that no technical hitch can prevent the truth and the mercy which God yearns to show to all in His outgoing mercy; but that is why what is indefectible in God becomes the horror in man, to find judgment for all that, through pure obstinacy, reckless wilfulness and impervious erratic arrancy, if not arrogance. If we see many writhing, some catching from them their fatal disease, do we say, Oh well, some will live and some will die; it is all sure: why worry ? or with a spirit of service, for the Christian, vested in the love of Christ by whom he stands, would we rather attack the danger and seek to limit the result, first by the removal of the cause underlying, but with no delay, IN THIS SETTING, seeking to allay what he may while the ultimate answer sinks in.

Thus do many, some in books, some in blokes, some in missions, some in pulpits, some in small places and some in more prominent ones, seek to spread the Gospel. to make known the health of God in His word, to bring down the inflammation, basic to all others, and contribute, each in his or her specialty, what one may WHILE one may, while it is yet ... day: for the night IS coming, when no man can work! Make no mistake about that (John 9:4-5).

Thus the missionary mandate is as urgent as ever. In this, NOT ONLY is the current need addressed, but the ultimate necessity
is simultaneously forwarded.

Love, founded in the Lord's Christ, has an imperative, both to help and to find where help helps most, where wisdom finds best place.

It has challenge which it must take up. In taking over the reins of life, its values, its schooling, and inserting its crypto-religious religion, disguised as ideas, the current plague of interference models has sauce more than meat, force more than enablement, atheist conformism on fallacious grounds^{*1 .} It provides this, rather than aid to humanity to live with God, not with a void derived from avoidance of the most elementary logic, and any understanding of human nature (John 2:22).

Nothing never did anything. What it took had to be eternal or we could not even be temporary. It had to be adequate. What is inadequate is by definition unable to perform the task in view. The task, to name but one facet, is the trilogy, spirit, mind and matter in man, interlaced and synthesised operationally, the first to make its own language, the second to find out why and how to analyse this and all things attainable, and the third already spoken, in its construction, when it was created into its delimitations, as anything involving information, linguistic manipulation and directed system has to be. In life, it is the more extensive and more obvious; in matter, its laws underlie in magnificent fixity.

Not only do figs not grow on thistles, but logic does not grow on chaos, nor chaos from nothing; for it has to be something in order to be even chaos, if that term had any meaning except in comparative designation.

The fact is that religions of mere form and fantasy, as even Plato saw, amount to little, for what is the basis, the ground and the explanation! Such is in principle, available at will, and if this be traditional, what ultimate difference is that ? Religions which operate without God are merely ornate vacuities, when it comes to Him. Religions of convenience, are mere self-expansive will, and what is the basis for that! Religions where belief is associated with force as a criterion, where battle brings glory on the field for ever, these mistake force for faith, with which it is incompatible, and make the power of man to become an arm of desire. Of what value is man when he insists by prodding or death-dealing violence, that you MUST believe him. What reason is that ? Hijacking an aeroplane is similarly fateful for this earth; but what reason to trust the imperious hijacker, is that!

Religion that depends on its own authority has no authority, for any group can make demands, or imagine ideas; this is mere flotsam and jetsam in the seas of understanding. Whether or not it has become traditional for some, makes no difference (cf. Mark 7:7). It stands up to rigorous investigation or does not; and so does the investigator, who with the religions is also tested by God. Indeed, the Psalmist ASKS God to search him and try him and see if there be any wicked way in him (Psalm 139:23-24). He also asks Him to lead him in the way everlasting.

When God is found, then it counts; when there is ground for so believing, which leaves no other option, then it arises. When God speaks in His word, and it is done, then is time to consider. When He diagnoses man's plight, as His creation misled by its own glory, and shows the remedy, then is the time to accredit His knowledge and find His pardon; for we are a sinful race, so strenuously so that we are now close to extinguishing ourselves, maiming our earth and loathing one another, the ath replacing the v in love, which brings the only victory that man prevalently despises, not in word, but in deed.

LOVE! where is it to be found in the world of wars, mini-wars, derivative wars, ideological wars, crafty wars for power, prestige or riches, confused wars of various ingredients including greed, psychological wars to gain the pre-eminence in mind and then in matter, spiritual wars to bring one illusion to replace another, ANY wars so long as God is forgotten, and cultural considerations and comparisons compel.

Where is the love of God to be found ? In ONE place, in His heart, and in what He has chosen, like any lover, to impart. What has He imparted ? ONE book of ONE series of verified predictions and ONE valid perspective, subject to no quibble or dismissal, in one remedy which has one way of being effective, according to the mind of God (Titus 2-3). The Bible bears no comparison in logical testability, verifiable truth and operational validity^*2. The same applies to its Christ, the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ in His exclusive, ample, once-only wrought, once-only provided sacrificial atonement, offered ex gratia, and constantly fulfilling that word. History has nothing to offer to touch it (cf. SMR Ch. 6, 8 - 9 , The Magnificence of the Messiah, for instance). As a laboratory, this entire globe has no counterpart for its range over time, in quality, in scope, in conformity to the Bible in all things. It all operates as one, for there is One speaking, a cosmos conforming, man dissident as diagnosed, fallen as shown, with his actualities now as prognosis expressed it, long ago. Creation, ruin, remedy are as stated. There is nothing else (cf. Ch. 5 above).

What is to be done about it ?

We revert to our beginning. The matter calls for urgency, for although God's plan in creation, diagnosis, prognosis and consequence, in remedy are clear and to the uttermost competent, yet suffering endures. It does so because of sin, and sin responds to it very largely by doing more of the same, in the ultimate vicious circle. In witless furies and confusion this world proceeds. There is correction, complaint, insurrection, incapacity, pride and over-compensation, gloom and extravagance, in a seemingly mad scramble to avoid truth and take over (what remains of) the world.

THEREFORE Christian testimony is crucial. Saved to serve self and gloat in one's security ? does hypocrisy pay ? Often it does and that richly, as at first Uriah Heap in Dickens' classic horror, showed. Eventually, however, it does not, first because the heart is at odds with the mouth creating tension, then both of these are at odds with truth, which exacts penalty payments not only in conscience but in confusion and weariness of life, and again, because ANY collision with reality can only hurt. Subjectivism does not remove objectivity, or make of IT, a follower!

Missionary work is not dispensable, as a result of the fact that the truth will prevail. That is but one facet. Truth is not a mere ultimate, but present always, ultimately in the past and in the future, because God is its source, who from everlasting to everlasting is the founder, Creator and Judge, and does not move; for time itself is His creation, as a mode like space, for operations of a temporary kind, classifiable and contained as such. Reality is not incontinent; it always has a basis, whether from the eternal, self-existent Being from whom all derivation must proceed, or in the arrangements and procedures which He has established, allowing current causes to have apt consequence, for good or for evil as the cause is.

Missionary work is not less urgent, because God is just, and does not condemn for ever the sinner, just because he has sinned, but ONLY over the aim of His lovingkindness and mercy, and the provision of His pardon (John 15:22ff., Micah 7:19ff.). It is when this is shunted off by the real and foreknown will of man, that love laments and pity is repudiated. Since God is love (I John 4:7ff.), NOTHING contrary to it is His motivation, and if justice and even judgment ensue, it is not because love failed, but having done all, and being rejected, does not harass. We are in the image of God^,and only too obviously, our will and desire and estimate and perspective can be as if gods, when God is disdained. But these are far from being as gods, when the results of this disjunction accrue! (cf. Ezekiel 28:9). We are free to fail, or by His grace, to have Him prevail in our restoration not as gods, but as children of God, a vast elevation (I John 3, Romans 5).

The reader could see on our liberty and motivation, for example, Not only is God Great, but Glorious Ch. 1.

In this some of the missionary thrust and urgency for transmitting the Gospel is shown. Consider this excerpt.

Why missions! It is the same question in essence, whether it is realised that the liberty of man is taken care of with due view of ensuring its action is preserved, or not.

Indeed, when the entire biblical scope of the love of God is seen and realised^*1, then the relevance and intensity and immensity of desire in His disciples, to be like that, to share it, to be part of it is all the more (cf. I John 1). This is so, without mysterious omissions, for God has SAID what is the motivation for Himself, and we are to seek to conform to that wonder in heart and spirit (cf. Matthew 20:28). The mystification process in substitution for a holy and divine clarity may please some theologians; but it has nothing whatsoever to do with God. God would have all come to Him in reconciliation, says so, and has acted on this with the motivation as in John 3. So then would we seek all!

Why then should anyone bother to be a missionary ?

There are several obvious reasons.

Firstly, if you love, then you have a condition, just as a mother has, when with babe in the womb. It is not an abstraction: it occurs and has its own nature. Hence, you would not WANT to fail in securing as soon as you wisely and effectively may, those without God. It is too horrible at any one moment, almost to bear. You do not have all power, but you have sensitivity, susceptibility and desire. So you mission, or act to facilitate it, or move to find.

Secondly, if you love (John 8:42), you do not want perils of satanic viciousness to be forwarded in the race, lest many taste the horrendous and find the unbearable. There is thus the positive side, to bring to the wonder of the God of creation, not as an option merely, but for the reality that this it is, broadly or at least effectually, where life is. Whether human life be daunted or vaunted, proud or pitiful, desire is there to flow on from the glory of God, to endeavour to make up what remains of the manifestation of the love of God (Colossians 1:24). There is also the negative side of the often unrealised plight of the unaware. Would you ignore someone about to walk over a cliff, while drinking beer and listening to his electronic music ? This brings us to another point.

Thirdly, many ARE unaware, whether wilfully or not. This it is desired to prevent. Hence one is in favour of telling them. How will they hear without a preacher ? Ignorance is NOT bliss. Love is like that. It is concerned.

Fourthly, many search in delirium of spirit, even delusion of mind, oppressed and afflicted, seeking ardently for some light, and finding none, degrading to despair, desolation of spirit and wandering woes which augment horror into horror more advanced. Quanderies of perplexity thus proliferate, as more are born. When clarity of light is available, how can love regard this as if missionaries were needless, and missions a folly!

Fifthly, ALL the world has to be TOLD before Christ will return. Since this world is now so tragically wicked that countries once drawing near to God, are becoming like wayward children, enticed into folly, and the whole is becoming like a giant bubbling cauldron, the desire is that many escape, and the glory of God be shown in their deliverance, since power is one thing God does NOT lack. The fact that a forgetting of this fact of the intense power of God is predicted for our times (Answers to Questions Ch. 5), does not make the plight of those concerned less serious! Rather is it made more so, for it is an increasingly potent consideration. There is therefore a great sense of dire need.

Sixthly, there is further, a sense of urgency, for as with a developing cloud filled with potassium cyanide, love hates to see mere inaction, when salvage is possible. It is, to be sure, in the spiritual environment that this is so; but even then, it amplifies on all sides to many species of environment, illustrations, applications and concentrations alike. The very thought of their predicament, as when fire threatens, activates desire.

Seventhly, what brings nearer the return of Christ, with peace and glory and majesty and at last, the one Leader who is perfect, the exposure of what is hideous and the enclosure of what is His in entirety, when the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea: this is to be desired. It is like air suddenly coming to the Black Hole of Calcutta. Who would not aspire to it!

There are more reasons, such as the divine commission in Matthew 28; but it is enough. The command is there. Let it be done.

Today, we are concentrating on the URGENCY of the thrust to help, first with the removal of the cause of suffering, ultimately sin, and then with the results where supreme offence does not continue to annul the good, in mere continuance of rebellion. We cannot run the world, but we can give the answer to its underlying problem. The love of God, so far from being irrelevant, is dominating, but not domineering; that is, we are free, but who in Christ, would not do the utmost to bring the answer where it may take root, and bear fruit, and find persons at once delivered, if not from mere suffering, then from the cause of its continuance and the reason for its impact, so that there is hope for the future, assurance for eternity and relief the the present! God is personal: if you know Him AS God, then you seek to be like Him, though a creation and a new creation as a Christian, if so be you are one, in spirit.

This is a very proper work for a pilgrim, and a fitting thrust for a transient in this world, a member of His body, and a citizen by the grand liberality of God, of the kingdom of heaven (Philippians 3:20ff.).

NOTES

See SMR esp. Chs. 1, Ch. 3, 5. See also Deity and Design ...

See:

It Bubbles Ch. 9, *1A,

Deity and Design ... esp. Section 8, and

LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST.