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CHAPTER 7

THREE ALTERATIONS

SO THAT EVERYTHING MIGHT BE THE SAME

THE UNIVERSE

ALTERATION GROUND ONE: THE UNIVERSE'S LAWS

Three times has the Lord provided for vast changes in the dispositions of things in the creation.

The first was AT the creation, when obviously what instituted has its own laws, ways, power modes and considerations, not at all the same as what operates WHEN it IS installed in the creation itself. A factory has rules, but they are differently disposed for the production of cars, than those applicable for car maintenance and use. To create and to maintain are two entirely different things: the one may require at least genius; the other mere application of given knowledge, and even if this has first to be found out, as when a youth tries to comprehend how a car works, yet it is substantially accessible to quiet study. It requires operational perception rather than logistical deployment of imagination in law-creation, and form imposition, as at creation. In first creation, there is no limit; after that, the status quo, if kept, becomes a consideration as a prelude for operation tactics.

The ways in which it was made are sui generis, apt for what is being done, unique.

The way in which it was cursed, this differs again, so that things may be destroyed, adapted or installed differently.

Such in fact happened in two parts, both of the same basic kind: at the curse on the earth (Genesis 3), so that the creation, to put it in an imagery too close for comfort to man's own heart and very near to the literal, "labours and groans'' under this curse; and again, at the flood, when the sacrilegious non-sanctities of sin had become endemic, epidemic and gross (Genesis 6). What of the creation now ?

Its magnificent technical facility, even now observable with unreserved awe, here gets rust and degradation, mutations expressing overall decline of the wonder at the first, even in the human genome^*1, thus showing the opposite of advance in technical reality as distinct from the illusions of unblushing carnal hope; and while death and disaster could now thrash the earth and man on it, at first it did not threaten his very existence. The first curse made it very difficult, the second component in the flood, almost remedied man's sin by removing man, the most decisive plan that could be held. God however is conspicuous in longsuffering and a marvel in patience: able to act decisively, He gives vast and extensive opportunity, even making the most magnificent of all opportunities, by hard labour, made so by His becoming man in order to do it to divine specifications of purity and legality.

At the world-wide flood, still so inexorably attested, that ever new wriggles are used to avoid its obviousness^*1, there was a near miss if you like to put it that way, for the very end of mankind. In view of what our race has done since, that would perhaps have had its points.

But God - who is the Creator of laws, invincibly operative in the universe, whether at the creation, at the devastation in drama at the flood, or in the unvarying diminution which greets each successive year, depicted in a major systematic contribution of that great scientist, Lord Kelvin - has patience; and for His creation He gives hope. It is only when it seeks to get it without Him, whose it is, that it becomes like a gangling, rebellious kid; and when it puts on its superior smile, as if so knowledgeable, while dismissing its every opportunity and occasion of mercy, it is indeed like a silly dove.

That is precisely what Hosea the prophet, said of Israel of old. This needs verification, so let us see Hosea 7:11 - in fact, we will take it in context with 7:8-16:

"Ephraim, he had mixed himself among the people;
Ephraim is a cake not turned.
Strangers have devoured his strength,
and he does not know it:
yes grey hairs are here and there upon him,
yet he does not know.

"The pride of Israel testifies to his face: and they do not return to the LORD their God,
nor seek Him for all this. 1

"Ephraim also is like a silly dove without heart:
they call to Egypt, they go to Assyria.
When they shall go, I will spread my net upon them;
I will bring them down as the fowls of the heaven;
I will chastise them, as their congregation has heard.
Woe unto them! for they have fled from Me:
destruction to them!
because they have transgressed against Me:
though I have redeemed them,
yet they have spoken lies against me.

"They have not cried to Me with their heart,
when they howled upon their beds:
they assemble themselves for corn and wine,
and they rebel against Me.

"Though I have bound and strengthened their arms,
yet do they imagine mischief against Me.
They return, but not to the most High:
they are like a deceitful bow:
their princes shall fall by the sword for the rage of their tongue:
this shall be their derision in the land of Egypt."

The condemnation of Ephraim, in reference to Israel, here found in Hosea, has several prongs.
First, the nation, both segments (cf. Ezekiel 20) has not remained distinct, distinctive, an arrow of grace in a reeling world. Instead, it has mixed with the nations, occupying itself in establishing itself by alliances (resembling the failed endeavour of the USA in recent years, to ally itself with moderate Islam, so-called, in seeking to deal with militants, an obvious taunt to the Lord, since it was He who made the nation great when His was the overwhelming religious presence, as far as any religion was concerned).

There was no need to have such dealings with Islam AS A RELIGION recognised with honour, in dealing with the nations. This misrepresented what had made the USA what it had become, a place of extraordinary opportunities and liberties, more recently removed, step by step. When the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ was thus partially disowned, in that the Koran dumbs down its imaginatively innovated christ' (600 years too late for observation, and invents one neither deity nor atoning sacrifice nor in one of the two conflicting accounts found in that book, even one killed^*2), what happened in the USA ? Its leaders, the latest the more so, honoured what dishonoured Christ absolutely, centrally and with ardent and insurgent autonomy. Even so, this book, the Koran, was honoured by the political leader of the nation, Obama.

This, it was just in the way that ancient Israel itself had gone, on its way to the horror chambers of history. National repentance is always the answer, and those who love the Lord should make their categorical horror of such talk by their leader for the nation, which is thus so defiled.

What had made it great, it thus diluted with the travesties of human imagination among the nation, and that, not even its own, but only of a small fraction of itself at this time. Now let's compare the nations further.

In the case of Israel, it was even a FORMAL covenant with the Lord which they so abused. This is close to the case of England, which alas, is moving in much the same direction in its own special way. But whether formally or not, this was the direction of decline from the Lord.

It was categorical, incapable of being hidden, and as in all dealings with forces, it had results. In this case, it was not only a force to be looked at and considered, as to how it worked, however; for it was as it is, a personal Being who is in view, not ready to be made up like cocktails shaken this way or that, but back of every constant found in scientific law, which is merely a commentary on what He instituted, so that it could be bound, its causal commencement and its mode of sustenance. Even a nation needs force to keep its laws; and God does no less, though with infinite wisdom. indeed as He is personal, creator of codes and those who themselves are enabled to make them Creator, there is more than physical law. There is the moral and metaphysical law of His mouth: what HE HAS SAID.

He is not dumb, but the Creator of derivative intelligence, the logical power of which is precisely parallel to that evinced in what has no mind, matter! That is why it can be and is investigated; and why the Bible may be read with no small measure of understanding.

Force is something, and logically is incapable of coming from nothing. There has to be something first, when you talk of ALL, or NOTHING would remain the totality, and it isn't. That something has to be personal enough to make created persons with understanding and near enough to itself in mode of operation, or at least perception and understanding, to be capable of co-operation. This, then, is the case, in that our minds can be used with coherent and consistent logic in looking at the universe, God's unwritten word (though the DNA part is written, and the laws are codifiable), and at the Bible (His written word), and seeing how both fit each other like two hands (as shown in such works as noted in Ch. 6, *2 above).

The NATURE of His Person is partly as seen logically from

	His works,
	His eternity as to Being,
	creativity as to work,
	rationality as to performance,
	brilliance as to products, Himself beyond nature as to reason for it, over it as its determinant,
	Maker of liberty for a product as to innovation, in that man can curse Him, and meet mercy for a time or discipline when needed, as with a fractious, spoilt child.

Moreover, it is partly seen in His word, where His kindness is overpowering, His justice is often much delayed, and His judgments as in the flood and in man's castigation of man, can be spectacular, just as they may seem never to be unleashed, in His patience, longsuffering love.

In Hosea 7, then, you see the adulteration of the product called man, by man, a self-destructive, disingenuous, deadly, ludicrous failing like some silly dove, caught or bewildered, temporarily bereft of all reason. Dealing with God includes the spiritual^*3, since the plane of contact is spiritual, God being Maker of matter, with its confining and delimiting laws, which did not because they could not come from nothing, which in such matters as in all others, has nothing to offer, its very self being of that order!

It is as if the Gentiles nations, intent in large part on despising Israel - which for all its failings DID serve as a repository SOME of which could be, and was used for the revelation and presentation of the Bible in the Old Testament, and nearly all of the New Testament, and a part as a format base for the incarnation of Jesus the Christ - is yet hypnotised into imitation. It is in this way: that they seem mesmerised into following the exceedingly bad part of its example, as far as may be: the way it treated the Lord.

Actually, such passionate errors are from a common source, the disease called sin which is no mere series of errors, but an infection which can CONTROL the mind and body of man to the point of agony, anguish of heart, and all the perils of mind in disordered motion which are now surfacing increasingly among mankind. This creation, this mankind, it is no god really, but equipment, supplied with spirit, endowed with mind, equipped with will, susceptible through abuse, over centuries, to the liabilities of ruin.

Behind this our race, , but as a dynamic agency, not a directive power, is the work of another creation, called the devil, whose distaste for God is one of the reasons why man is given, so often, such facility in the deceptions of false religions, philosophies and politics, as hammer the earth, as if by the action of some huge battering ram, intent on the earliest possible disgrace and destruction of all (cf. Revelation 20:3).To the considerable extent of his success, he has achieved a mockery through his deceit, lending an able hand to man's own self-deceptions and planned deceptions, which mock his stature and ruin his planet with a real zeal.

With then this in mind, then as you read Genesis 6, and reflect on history and its exemplars, not least the present situation, it is far from surprising in reading the incontrovertible evidence, to see why the flood came. It is only in the everlasting mercy of God, to use the title of one of John Masefield's beautiful poems, that man continued at all.

As to our topic then, laws and legislation affecting creations, such as in the institution and continuation of the universe, including man, whose laws are almost beyond measure, expressed in the DNA which governs format and underlying equipment with autocratic directives, as if a blueprint could also publish and create its resultants in one document: we have now found two phases.

First, there is the production of law amid form and substance, with indeed many other facets and features, such as freedom not to follow some of these, with expected results on the part of some. It has its own ways as in the furnishing of the universe and man.

Next there is the production of desecration by man, amid eventual curse from God, at the Fall, when all this delightful brilliance of creation is mocked, in its high point of human liberty, in a felonious seeking to live at the same level as God. This is madness, since our equipment is infinitely less in time and space, which He even made, in instituting what is not in itself underivative and undelimited by constitutive forces. If it were, then we would logically simply have to look for what made THAT, so we start where we would rationally have to end, making a short cut to save us from wayward and unproductive, if tenacious unwisdom, action without logic.

Thirdly, there is the situation of the flood, when devastation, but not quite total, is the purpose, and in this there is scope for changes in the operative mode of laws, in that the purpose is to dismantle, not to create.

As both the flood case and the original fall case are degenerate and dismantling in kind, making things less operative, less sustained, and this involves the entire nature of the case, laws in these two features are certainly going to change at the will and according to the chosen purpose of the Maker. For example, man's life tenure is going to change in the less ameliorative environment, and the genetic controls will be changed to allow for disestablishment. How and how much is the business of God; for the result in view, opposing the mode of the original creation, there is abundant scope for change. What had been disposed to be protective, can now be changed to become laborious, a veritable conduit for labour and difficulty.

The two features, fall and flood, above noted, being of one kind, they are for convenience bunched here together, like two stages in a disease: there is but one syndrome.

Syndrome-wise, there is the creative and the desecrative, but since syndrome is often used of disease, we can change the term to make it more inclusive: there is the synthetic and the syndromic, the laws in institution of the universe, and those whether systematic or applied, in its partial dismantling or dysfunction.

Thus at the creation, and in the curse and its various phases, there is law and such mutation of law as institutes the result of misuse, above all, of the relationship with the Creator. After all, if a youth growing up lights a fire in the crop, that is one sort of destruction; but if he puts poison in his father's tea, that is another. One is impersonal in MODE (though not in intent); the other is personal in very mode. It is the latter which is more profound in the case, so that the results are more direct.

Eventually, the declining universe, as empirically it is^*1, is given what things made often find, indeed habitually, except provided with a superb protection and a differential history: its end. This procedure of termination, is as in Isaiah 51:5, II Peter 3, Matthew 24:35 and elsewhere. In this case, the total devastation dynamic is apt to have its own new laws, which can include both the adroit use of existing laws (as in type, when you pour kerosene on a building and light a match, knowing what works best for the new purpose, a destructive one); and there may be institution of other laws. Again, there may be, for the moment of destruction, new operating features evoked, such as are met in the increase of velocity of objects in our system, near to that of light, or when matter is in the plasma state, so that light is transmitted vastly more quickly^*4 .

Just as in the phase of creation this could be the case, leaving no trace because the system is a resultant of supernatural, spiritual and mental power, giving it its new sanctions to hasten its departure; and this is quite utterly different from the operation of these things once they are in place. It applies equally to creation and de-creation, removal in entirety in destruction. This is a quite fundamental distinction, inherent in creation or purposed destruction as such; and when such things are made operative, modes for the devastation are readily invented, as when someone seeks to destroy a building quickly, giving it a form of cessation distinctly other than that from its natural state!

Thus it may have been weathering slowly; but its departure can come in one hour! So in creation, whatever any phase had, it can be increased by parallel creative powers, limited by nothing but intelligence, imagination and purpose. Argument on a naturalist basis, one logically impossible in itself, is doubly ludicrous in such a case, yes trebly, for not only does it presuppose what is NOT in the creation model, as if simply to presuppose its own model, it does so in a naturalistic model which logic dismisses^*1, and it confuses institution with running mode, on top of all that. Truly it is a remarkable achievement, to have seduced anyone to believe it: but then, from Eve on, sin is like that, the selling power of sin is no sinecure, for it is disproportionate to the value of the 'goods' sold, to the extent of infinity! Life is not least, a test!

Thus in CREATION first, in CURSE second, and in DE-CREATION, third (following a prior desecration) or DISMISSAL: there are three areas for law to be produced, adapted or wrought actively for un-productive occasions.

In ANY of these phases, such things as the velocity of light (sometimes a complex resultant, as where it is part of a process containing light, and so affecting its ultimate characteristics), the rate of radioactive decay^*5and the self-sustaining modes of creation, plus or minus, are apt for change. It all depends what is being done with it, transmission, emplacement, acceleration via carrier, or other. It is too lordly for words, to imagine that things cannot be deployed, exploited, enhanced, given normal concomitants on the absentee list or whatever else is proposed, purposed and performed. Next, we would with equal presumption be telling Shakespeare what imagination cannot do, and therefore, what he must not devise, on pain of penalty from 'the scientific community', displacing its role from description and the explicatory, to the prescriptive and the peremptory. That particular community is of course hopelessly divided on these issues, some presuming as a basis, and some insisting on logic.

Such then is the ambit; and that fits the case. This is what intelligence might perform in order to advance its designs and purposes, to arouse them to being, or dispense with them at will. This it may readily do, when it has a thorough understanding of what makes for any given result, in any given time, by any given mode, as of the relationships between all laws, and of the reasons for these, moving readily beyond the operative media at any stage, till creation is complete, or devastation, as the case may be. II Peter 3 gives a completely reasonable description of the de-creation phase.

Great diversity of action is available to the Creator to extend or abort anything which might otherwise have happened (as, in analogy, when a builder interrupts what would have been unstable by deft crane work, having foreseen the danger, and corrected for it at the crucial moment of what otherwise could have been instability). He can tend or extend, abort or qualify what and as He will, not only what comes, but what tends to produce what it not designed, but now through such interplay, works to conform to divine desire. This is the very essence of creation: WIT and wisdom, will and directive work, imagination and intervention, in any given environment of interplay.

To such things as are created, there may in the divestment, then, be laws and forces which may be moulded, subjected to new interplay modes, added or subtracted, or subsumed to higher orders of action, according to purpose. Destruction can be an entire parallel, opposite in direction, and doubtless, rather less demanding: yet in some ways, a mirror on the intervention, for all that.

It is therefore not in the least surprising that precisely such changes have been found in the rate of radioactive decay^, reasons for which are being researched, if by any means the marks of the inputs may be used to fashion for thought, something of the mode of it. Many and remarkable are these marks, and attested by many in varying ways. Diverse attempts to fathom the manner of velocities and commotions in the initiation of motion have been made, one with substantial empirical results, in the making of predictions^*6, as Dr Lisle points out, a good protection from the mere impudence of making up little themes of what might be, without the slightest evidence, mere avoidance techniques in seeking to obviate the attestations of deity, things that are like the work of a 'silly dove', adrift and without rationality, merely reacting.

The necessities of logic cannot be avoided; mere preoccupations for the mind may be proposed, but nothing alters, the application of reason to creation.

In what way, however, can it be said that some things are altered that everything may remain the same?

It is in this: that when the PURPOSE is to create, there are laws formulable and modes, which are most apt for THE PROCESS of creation, which obviously is quite different from the methods determined for the creation once it has been instituted, so that it might be, and be fully functional. When the purpose is to desecrate, or de-create, then this will relate most aptly to what matches that purpose, in what is not determined by a mode apt for another purpose, but by what intelligence and imagination sees fit to do, in order to use what is there and what is decided upon with judicious imagination and discrete wisdom. That action is to make radical change, in order to get what is to come. IN each case, this is the purpose, one to put it there, one to remove it.

When the purpose is to remove, the most radical case apart from its creation, things will be devised or activated or changed at will, as seems fitting to the mind which made it all, and the Spirit which devised its operation, and the Word of God which causes execution.

What remains the same ? Firstly God does; secondly those who are in harmony with Him, being redeemed from the ruin personally, and so to be rescued from its blazing results (as in II Peter 3). Thirdly, His non-technical ways remain the same, that is, what HE IS, as distinct from what He creates, curses or dismisses.

But WHY are things made so changed, in such cases of arrival and departure, though their tenure, while it lasts, perhaps for some thousands of years, SO THAT the things which are permanent may remain so ?

What in eternal things, eternity, the divine wisdom would have such change in the creation, such departure from routine for the categories created ?

Why! it is the desire to create (not alter the Creator Himself, by becoming imperfect, departing from omniscient all might), and to deal with miscreancy, with a mercy categorical in quantity, refined in quality, requiring a narrow access, but allowing unlimited provision through that narrow entry mode! Even in the Tour de France, there is the phase of erecting the many emblems, signs, posts, stage exhibits and platforms, then of using them, then another of dismantling. Is this difficult to understand ? Was the weathering in the few months they were up, comparable in kind to the modes of establishment or removal ?

Were not the modes used relevant to imagination and purpose ? Is man to become so hideously bucolic that he imagines that what a thing is given to be, somehow was always, before it was made, and will be always, after it is destroyed, as if wit had vanished and will replaced intellect!

Is there information available from the Word of God, the Bible, on WHY such actions occurred. Yes, it is a vast compilation, and includes many elements some of them in direct principle, some available for intelligent inference. LOVE is central in all; judgment is requisite in some things; patience is necessary for results; discipline is required at times; friendship with God is one priceless gift, godliness of character, quietly developed in the people of the Lord, that is another.

The conquest of sin is on many fronts. There is the categorical bearing of its guilt in the crucifixion, applicable to all who believe (Isaiah 53, Romans 8:32). There is the application by the power of the Holy Spirit, both in sealing the redeemed (Ephesians 1:1-11), and empowering the life for sanctity (Roman 8:1-16), as well as attesting eternal salvation in its midst with no small voice. There is the growing moulding by that same Spirit (II Corinthians 3:17-18), in an exquisite combination of love and liberty. There is its final judgment (Revelation 19-20), and in the midst, there is the growth in Christian character as living translates reality from God to the life in the heart, the mind, the spirit and many functions grow (II Peter 1).

This multiple marvel of grace from God through Jesus Christ, who has achieved the reconciliation for all who have received and will receive Him, involves the GIFT of eternal life and the discipline of development (Hebrews 12). HE suffered to redeem us who believe; we suffer to express His love to a hostile world, to win sinners to His side, to warn, to attest, to preach, to teach, to do good to all men, to serve as imperfect but sincere examples of His will and way (cf. Colossians 1:24). Yet never is sin acceptable, always its way is horrendous, from the least subterfuge, bruising truth, to the utmost folly, exemplifying the hideousness of hell.

Much needed to be done. God did it. Love was the way, Christ IS it, and man follows it when his eyes being opened, his heart is moved to faith and he is saved (a simple fact, present or not as in Titus 3:5ff., Ephesians 3:3-8, John 5:24, 4:14, Romans 8:30, II Timothy 1:1-12, I John 5:11-2). Salvation is comprehensible, to all the people of God (cf. John 10:9,27-28), comprehensive and comprehends an entire people, a new nation, one of priests (I Peter 2), in this, that no intermediary is needed to know God, Christ Himself, who is Lord, being the SOLE ONE between man and God (I Timothy 2, Isaiah 48:16), deity set in flesh to live eternal life, on a Cross to provide it, in the resurrection to demonstrate both the divine power to perform, ratifying His earlier works, and the practicality of His gift. . Thus is it all comprehended in one who comprehends all.

So has God acted. No greater mercy is possible, necessary or conceivable. It is because if sin were allowed to ascend to the heavens and possess all, then EVERYTHING would be open to change, and the eternal blessedness of the sinless, and all-knowing God being lost, the priceless gift of life would become ersatz, like shocking coffee during World War II. Since it is NOT allowed to do this, nor its exponents to secure this (as in Revelation 12 in its account of the dynamic of the devil and the power of God, with results as shown), THEREFORE God in His own decided ways, eternal, maintains as always an utter unalterability, being beyond time and ready for any time (cf. Acme, Alpha and Omega: Jesus Christ Ch. 8).

Nothing has either the power or the prevailing skill to secure otherwise, nor would defects out of love declining from the sublime to the separated, arising as if the ashes of sin were to construct the acme of holiness, being any love to anyone, simply made supreme, do other than, merely spoi the common superb superiority of God as He is. Unmixed with the macabre, the maelstroms of mortality, glorious in holiness, without fult or failure, governor of time, instant over all developments, knowing the end from the beginning, lacking nothing, delighting to show mercy, it is He who not only has but IS love (I John 4:7), its crux, criterion and eternal sufficiency.

Some desire it otherwise ? Instead, what opts out, gets it, lonely in disembarkation from the testing pilgrimage in the glorious gift of life. When man covets himself, God apart, when He is factually not apart and never was but for man's sin, this he loses the lustre of authenticity, reality and becomes merely a mutative deformation.

Derelicts thunder on to the concourse, as at an Agricultural Show, as if wonderful, and are shown in the race to be otherwise. History is always maintained by God, and nothing by anyone distorting will have any standing; indeed, the efforts to distort will be part of history, and what is known in part now, will be known wholly then.

God alone has what it takes to be enduring and wise and all-knowing and loving (since He needs nothing, psychological, social, political, technical, the rest being merely His creation, it is giving which is His specialty). Giving grace is a splendid impetus with results of the uttermost wonder, as to Noah, Abraham, as to His people, as exhibited in Christ His only begotten Son, FULL of grace and truth.

Despite the groanings and moanings of self-desecratory creation - Romans 8:17ff. - such as mankind as a race, when unredeemed: truth and grace, gospel and glory remain on offer. Some prefer darkness, to avenge themselves, assert or obtrude themselves, or glorify or gluttonise their desires. It neither works nor can work, for it is untrue, to have such things on the basis of fraud, by mere complicity with crime, violence or vileness, by villainy of whatever kind, extending unworthiness by power. It fails sometimes at once, while at other times it is given ample opportunity to show its malevolent, self-centred spiritual basis, so that history provides as it were, slides for subsequent instruction, even when people prefer for the time to shut their eyes. In this context:

"For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; nor hidden, that shall not be known,"

Luke 12:2.

History is the demonstration lesson; though logic outdistances it, the reality of God having been made so obvious that only sin can distend its perception^*2(cf. Romans 1:17ff.).

But we have covered only the first exhibition of this field: the Creation and the Universe.

ISRAEL

The second item is Israel and the third is the Church, as we survey three items where there is a certain constancy, but for all that, change that the things that cannot be changed, may remain the same.

As in the case of the universe, there is a brilliant creation, first of all, attested most obviously, extraordinary in history, made manifest to a marvel, disclosed in decline through pompous will and desire for detachment on the part of many, till its phases finished, its searchlight from truth leaves it exposed to thought, analysis and judgment by God, from whose treasures we may all draw. Wisdom does not perish; operatives to the contrary do, inherently in departure from life. The first change, creation, that it might BE there, is for purposes as considered briefly above; the second, continuation is for manifestation, reception of the love of God and the drawing of tangents from the truth where desired; for love is like that, refusing absolutely and utterly to force, manipulate or give rein to appearances merely.

What then of Israel ? and indeed why is it mentioned in so vast a set of fields as these ? It also had its creation, in Abraham, the covenant and the promises, which included the One to bring blessings to all nations (Genesis 12), an international affair from the first. It had its maintenance, sometimes after rampantly wrong driving into various doctrinal, moral and physical ditches. Then with the crucifixion, it had its national crusade against the Messiah, a brief not yet terminated; for though unbelief in their crucial need, does not satisfy, and while the nation has endured exile and a multiplicity of murder, yet the restoration to God is not yet accomplished, there being a hardening from which only a miracle in time can effect cure.

Thus there is a certain ecclesiastical failing, linked to a national one, in the case of Israel, leading to loss even of the Promised Land as predicted (Leviticus 26) often enough, and then to its restoration: and that, even after its arrangement of a death knell for its Prince of Peace. It was to come, and it has come, as in Ezekiel 36ff., Zechariah, Hosea, Jeremiah and so on. Then there is arrangement for its conversion back to the Lord, the amazing facility of the matter being this: that the very ACTION of killing their Prince, becomes as done, the same thing that allows their redemption.

THEY, albeit it unwittingly, performed the sacrifice in terms of which they, like anyone else, and by which alone, any can come back to God. This coming development in spirit, life and heart is greatly to change their place in the order of things: for the change to come, unlike the relatively small number of Jewish conversions so far, to be in its scope and suddenness, in contrast with the small numbers coming to Christ over two millenia. As in Romans 11:25, there is shortly to a drastic and wide-ranging, a radical change back to spiritual reality, to receive Christ as Lord and Saviour, one affecting the very nature of the nation.

If the universe is to suffer very distinct, change, in three phases, those of entry, decline and dismissal, the case for Israel is not widely different. WHEN it was INSTITUTED, the faith of Abraham being an instrument of origination as God moved upon him, it became an entity, and when it grew, it was given a covenant, producing understanding and giving promises and premisses alike for its operation. When it rebelled, it was given plagues of various kinds (as in Leviticus 26), just as Egypt had been given at the time of the Exodus, God inventing what He desired, changing what was apt to the purpose, deploying what was there already^*6.

When it killed its Prince of Peace, and did not repent over a generation, it was given dispersion, and a new and appalling history, this not merely being man-ex-God by abhorrence (cf. Isaiah 49:7), but by breach of a specific and specialised covenant, in which the blessing to all nations was to come via that nation.

Despite the acute rebellions, from time to time, culminating in the all but unthinkable killing of their own Prince of Peace, it performed its task, if at times minimally, yet effectually, an active remnant continuing again and a gain, as with Ezra and Nehemiah, with Daniel, and as shown is Isaiah 11:10. Thus the basics needed come to be, nothing of God's decisions being voidable; and judgment has ensued not once or twice (cf. Ezekiel 20). Nevertheless, mercy can dismiss the case where repentance and faith re-enter, as will largely come to Israel, as to many another, depending on the sort of body, individual or national, which God has in view.

Hence the MODES for blessing changed not a little, much becoming a mode in a model for a changed relationship where it mattered most, that is, with the Lord. In the process, it was made manifest that just as Israel had been given historically amazing successes and triumphs, so now it had by contrast. A splendour of positives (cf. Deuteronomy 32s account) thus became a surge of negatives, of things deconstructive (as likewise, with Hitler's assault). Where action had been constructive (as with David and Solomon, and later, at first before the corrosion of corruption, with the Maccabees in their mini-empire), now it became in many phases and areas, constrictive.

Things changed so that they might remain the same: God's mercies were curtailed, because they are not such as continue forever with a limited being like man (Isaiah 57:15-17), who could not sustain himself forever in dis-alliance from the Lord, and a misalliance with evil. Results altered, so that His judgments were exposed, and the resultant case was made clear, overall, as in Romans 11.

There are no favourites; but God in mercy held out and is establishing a happy ending, not for the pride of national glory (Isaiah 19), but for the concord and power and protection to be given to a people exposed for so long, like those without protective clothing in a radioactive area, but soon to be reconciled. Thus will the nations, the peoples, advisedly consider the realities, not only of creation, but of history and the divine dealings over time, and if willing, draw wise conclusions (cf. Psalm 2 explicitly). It will come assuredly when God acts as in Ezekiel 38-39 and Micah 7:15ff., as the text in those places makes eminently clear. They will come to see why Israel left, and that God Himself brought them back, and that no one made them the Judge of Israel, fain though many seem to be, to take over just such a post!

When Israel came back to its land, the rule of exclusion was lifted; and when it comes to the Lord, the restoration of the divine power in a constructive sense, will continue and be enhanced (as in Micah 7), according to the pre-stated purpose. In all these things, the nature of God is shown, and it does not change, mercy and justice, judgment and deliverance being precisely as planned and STATED in much, not least concerning Israel, with results accruing as meets the case as it develops, God as He is in prevenient wisdom, foreknowledge and understanding having known the end from the beginning.

He, remaining the same, changes what needs changing accordingly, whether to bring it into being (from mere nothing, into the state of being extant), to continue it in stability and strength by strenuous faithfulness (Proverbs 14:34), or to judge it by division, allowing many to find the meaning of miasma of heart, and mesmerism of mind, detesting the light of the Lord, while others escape.

We come now to the third tier, example, exhibit of what is changed, that God may remain the same.

THE CHURCH

First, we need clarity. What is the Church ? The term is used of 'the church in the wilderness' (Acts 7), referring to the RELEVANT gathering of Israel, when in the exodus and moving towards promised land phase. It was a gathering of people on the basis of a covenant which characterised their relationship to the Lord: quite simple in essence. When it comes to the New Covenant, which replaces as a bloom its former bud, that following the Old Covenant, then the Church is the gathering of those who are operative in terms of this culminating covenant, where many a symbol is replaced by what it actually meant, Christ, for example, becoming as in the case of Abraham and the lamb, slain instead of Isaac as a sacrifice, the ONE sacrifice.

In this case, it is not only an episode which gives a sacrifice, as for Abraham; on the contrary, THIS sacrifice is an axis of history. The former, with Isaac, was illustrative; this is demonstrable. One prepared; the other performed.

But is the Church gatherable as Israel was ? Not really, for many reasons, of which the geographical is one: that is, not in this world.

Can we then re-formulate to cover more aptly both cases ? The Church is the association of persons in a covenantal relationship with the Lord, all equally covered in essence, however diverse in performance or periphery. It does not, this association, have to be arithmetically and locally presented, since man having spirit, is capable of closeness without sight, co-operation without propinquity, and of love without nearness.

The Christian Church was originated in power, that of the One who delighted to serve, the eternal Word of God (John 1, Micah 5, Isaiah 48:16), actuated in a specific and predicted impetus (Luke 24, Acts 2), activated specifically by the Holy Spirit on the basis of what the Eternal Word of God, incarnate as Jesus Christ, had just DONE: dying as sacrifice made once for all available for sin, and rising, as attestation once for all, of the resurrection of the body which is the inheritance of the saints (as in Acts 2, Philippians 3:20ff., I Corinthians 15).

Its law was as given from the mouth of the Lord, who was careful to emphasise that not one jot or tittle of the law and the prophets in the Old Covenant, would pass till all was fulfilled. Indeed, a huge massif of it was soon then to be fulfilled in His own atoning, sacrificial and substantial work on the cross, replacing symbol and temple with Himself: He the Temple of Truth, the High Priest offering sacrifice in the Person of Himself, and the sacrifice itself, which He offered in His own body: all this, to the very uttermost a gift of grace. Once received in its reality through faith, this altered the place of sinful man, from destruction to construction, indeed regeneration and eternal life, as many as believed Him and His word (part of Him via His mouth, and the intents of His mind).

In this, the law of life was operative, so that its ending in human body as given, occurred; the law of death was operative, when the law of life became negatively applicable; and the breach of that law occurred, in form but not in principle, when the body so smitten, duly arose, demonstrating that though this law was impervious in justice, in that Christ actually died, yet it was displaceable in mercy, when that justice in its demands was met., Met they were, and met adequately, to the standards of perfection of God Himself. In this, His saving work in Jesus Christ, God used His sole prerogative as the Being, both infinite and sinless, who could do such a work. He could; He would; and He did. The Church was created, like the universe, in a time of short order, the foundations being provided (I Corinthians 3:10-11).

However, as predicted for Israel, so for the Church. There would be formalities and pretences, and pretensions and perversions, rebellions and distempers aplenty. With Israel, it meant loss of power (as in a smitten engine, unserviced by the default of the driver), and then loss of function. This is seen, when as in Isaiah 30:8ff., it gained dismissal notice, relative to the 'people of God' specification, spiritually.

Again it is to be seen in Isaiah 65:13-15, at the most dramatic level.

"Therefore thus says the Lord GOD,

'Behold, my servants shall eat,
but you will be hungry:
behold, my servants will drink,
but you shall be thirsty:
behold, my servants shall rejoice,
but you shall be ashamed.
Behold, my servants will sing for joy of heart,
but you shall cry for sorrow of heart, and shall howl for vexation of spirit.

"And you will leave your name for a curse to my chosen:
for the Lord GOD will slay you,
and call His servants by another name:
so that he who blesses himself in the earth will bless himself in the God of truth;
and he who swears in the earth will swear by the God of truth;
because the former troubles are forgotten, and because they are hidden from My eyes."

The covenant in this was not broken by God, in the sense of ignoring it, but implemented for those who elected so to break it. Their breach brought breach in company and from protection, but not so that they could be removed (Matthew 24:34), for they had unconditional promises in Abraham (cf. Luke 21:24, Genesis 17:7ff.). This truculent severance, becoming one of the sins of Israel, could be dispensed with - through repentance the preliminary, Christ's sacrifice the cover, His resurrection the criterion of power and the provision for His presence in fellowship. Until this, His eventual widespread reception in Israel (Zechariah 12-13:1), it remained outside. Even then, however, it was no matter of mere exclusion, for God would do, as He has done, precisely what He said concerning their exile and restoration, first as nation, and then in heart (cf. It Bubbles, It Shrieks, He Calls Ch. 10).

THIS meant that they would, a substantial remnant in an extraordinary and regenerative mode, find that there was indeed an expectation and a hope, the cycles of belief and unbelief, first of Jew and then of Gentile, moving through their phases of folly, repentance of a remnant and restoration. For the Jew, it was first to the land and then to the Lord, as in the above reference; for the Gentile, it was first into often large churches, but as the end draws near, to these also, it is given to suffer and to become sprinkled amid the nations, whose bestial teeth seem to grow both unshapely and suddenly, in mordant mode!

The Church started as a small (but not minute) body of thousands who came to the Christ, largely in Israel; but it rapidly expanded to the other nations, the Gentile world, and in form, eventually took over the entire Roman Empire. A people, however, do not become 'Christian' by decree, any more than Israel had become godly by existing and having a covenant to which they could refer, however much they might choose to break it!

The external paraphernalia of the Christian Church In time, having for a little been tied to an Empire, was moved to regard power as resident pre-eminently in a city, Rome itself, and in its pastor, and so it became as with Israel, something entirely different from that in which it began. Moving in this vast and ramifying edifice, at last it was to become the Roman Catholic body. From this, Christianity had escaped, for as Christ declared, the gates of hell would not prevail against it. Indeed, many like John Wickcliffe and William Tyndale, John Huss, scholars all, were moving before or during the Reformation, to lead many to another and a biblical way, evangelical in thrust, worshipful in spirit, pious in perspective, following the word of God as those at a great feast, with neither addendum nor pretence.

As things developed, there came horrifying Inquisition movements, but later sometimes even into national perspectives, vision of truth, testimony of the saints, separation from the rot and inculcation of truth rigorously, and many were those of a beautiful piety, both slain and left to teach.

But what of Rome and its multitudes, misled, following a prime bishop by his sub-prime presumption (Matthew 23:8-10). As to this, it is simply not the case there that "all you are brethren" and only "one is your Teacher," for that ONE is stated to be CHRIST.

In fact, in Romanism, the disparity of human orderer and human obedient servants could scarcely be any greater than that between pope and people (cf. SMR pp. 911ff.). It is, then, nothing to do with the Church, but an imitation. Indeed, let us recall to the point, that this body began to attack Christians in ways not vastly different from the ways Communists did much later, using psychological techniques, designed to alter minds in a welter of wickedness, alas NOT rarely seen in this earth; but this was at a level not easy to match (cf. Ancient Words and Modern Events Ch. 14).

That was merely one distemper. Modern sects grow like measles spots, and similarly misuse this or that part of the covenant. As with Israel, in the Old Testament, so with the Church in the New Testament, the case has a massive resemblance at the formal level. Wolves like lambs, foxes destroy fowl that fly, and which would have done better to fly long before now, yet many remain where they are cordially forbidden to be! (cf. Separation 1997).

However, despite this degree of similarity between the developments in Israel and in the Christian Church, the one formally as a nation, and the other in many formal edifices of height, there is one essential difference. Israel IS a nation. WHEN the Church as a formal entity is dispersed, its mode of being is altered therefore, and its gatherings are no longer obvious. However, Church is NOT literally a nation, its type of 'nation' being spiritual, and the notion of nation not at all being literal. Thus when some parts of the entirety which MAKES SOME REFERENCE to Jesus Christ in an elevated position, moves to create a new christ (as in II Corinthians 11), there is merely a movement out of what does not belong, like people entering for cricket, and finding it is tennis, moving out to find an oval.

It is more horrible however; for many are those, tempted by the ease, social prestige, customary character of things, buildings and easiness of adjustment to cultures in these profane bodies, that they lounge, loiter, hang about as if trying to find if extensive exposure to radioactivity REALLY matters, and the word of God to a vexatious point for comfort, has to be done. Thus staying, like Lot's wife, many perish.

What is close to the heart of what is for man, and near for determining what He is and has coming to and for him, for some remains, they NOT changing, that God may remain the same. Others turn aside to new ideas founded in the mind of man and not in the matrix of history or the word of God written, with additives, adaptations, alterations, and these become bereft, that God might remain the same, inviolable, and having paid the price, invulnerable, incomparable, pure to infinity and above all reproach, a delight to know, consistent, imperial but never to His people imperious, impervious to corruption, great in giving, original in conception, Himself just the same. He keeps His word, and is faithful (cf. Joel 2:11, Psalm 111, 119).

In this case, just as Israel was told not to mingle with the nations religiously, share their worships and ideas and ideals, but to keep closely to the God of creation who, as a nation, had redeemed them from the slavery of Egypt, so the Church of Jesus Christ is told not to mingle with the cultures of the nations, in whatever form, including that of those who make new christs and are guilty of plagiarism, using Christ's words with their own, and putting all under their own specialised banner. This we have seen many times, as in ..., and recently in such sites as Ch. 2 above, esp. *4.

Those who ignore this, becoming subject to another lord, their own desires, detach from the church, but the Christian Church, instead of being made subject to such follies, where obedient (and there are limits to folly) becomes de-segmented, losing parts formerly somewhat attached, like bits of a worm broken off. The residue is still the Church; the bits are gone.

It was imperative that Israel should be most obviously different from the nations it was sent to REPLACE, because of their wickedness of those nations, following the flood (cf. Genesis 15:15-16). When it failed to complete the task, rather tending in due course to imitate the cultural follies of other peoples, it moved into a series of steps of decline, and judgments, these culminating so far, with Hitler.

Now, despite large help from the USA in such times as those of Nixon and Reagan, there is coming more and more clearly something resembling anti-Semitic steps coming from an old-time ally, the US. When you are pinned down by 1000 thugs, a 'friend' who suggests you give them your watch is not an ally. It suffered for its sins, but is soon to come to the Lord on a large scale. The Christian Church has suffered for lack of discipline and vulnerability to foolish cultures often enough, and sometimes has paid heavily in unnecessary persecution; but at other times, amid faithfulness of a high order, it has shown to the world the face of Christ with a certain loveliness, spoilt by various ailments, but yet, enhanced by courage and heart.

As for Israel, there is here a certain blending of the two histories, the national and the ecclesiastical. A time of reconstitution in the New Law situation, with the old Lord, with the First and Second Commandments of Christ, as an orienting start, the Sermon on the Mount as an inspiriting presence, and Christ's words as determinative, is coming. Then the Israel contingent will as in Romans 11, come back. It will be in a way, like a regrafting of a cut off branch, back into the same tree, which has grown to maturity, in the New Covenant.

Thus two preserved bodies intermingle, the one by repentance from past national sins, and present perception of guilt, at individual levels, finding at last the same Christ; the other by having kept its identity in Christ, even when worm segments so were severed that no great part seemed to remain; but they are there, often in persecuted countries, vicious regimes, at times standing all but alone in past nations of affinity for Christ, at times in temporary triumphant growth, at times having to face as did the early Christians, new forms of persecution, even in democracies, where mandatory teaching to youth of evil doctrines, fanciful, foolish, at war with logic, truth and scientific method, is an imposed torture.

For both segments, in one Christ, one love, one truth, there is now a desire for the gift of righteousness, and it is a grant to all who are Christians (Romans 10:9, 5: 17-21). They, one and all, rely on His keeping of the law which is the perfection required, the attribution of which to individual believers is and can be, only by faith. THEN, they seek to keep it in the reciprocity of love, for the expression through obedient, of the delight in the Lord, which brought forth these, his words of wisdom, beauty and of peace.

In principle, for the Jewish people who have not yet known Christ, this is a change, but only in mode: before the New Testament era, there was the same essence: it was shown in predictive prophecy and in symbol, and now it is demonstrated in divine performance direct (cf. Psalm 21-22, 32, 49, 51, 130, Isaiah 1, 40, 49-55, Deuteronomy 29:18ff.). It was ALWAYS only by divine forgiveness freely offered out of love, that ANYONE could know the Lord in this fallen world. The centrepiece was always in the Messiah, and His essential provisions were increasingly viewed, for faith, just as Abraham had started in faith, and believing, has this accounted to him for righteousness (Romans 5-5). Israel was a prelude of concentration and exhibition; Christ is the performance; and dissociation from Him and His words is the modern equivalent of a disobedient Israel.

Thus the Church continues, for the gates of hell do not prevail against it, since they CANNOT, since the power of God is operative in this law of His mouth, which precludes this option. When in Revelation 11, you see the testimonial body, the Church, apparently dead, but actually merely deprived at the end, of large and clear institutional exhibits, then its arising from this dynamic of intensive persecution is predictable, since the appearance CANNOT be the reality.

It isn't, for though for a moment it seemed smitten, yet it arises with power, and the impact is startlement as this witnessing body moves, called to heaven, to leave in their own vomit, the fallen, the recidivist, the godless, what glories in the flesh, as if creation made you gods.

Here is the second exodus, not this time from Egypt as the slave driver, but from the international, controlling body known as the Beast (Daniel 7), the last product of devilish design and deception. In this, the resurrection, is its departing testimony, collecting in its midst, the now expanded Israel and the Gentile Christians as one body (Galatians 3:28, Revelation 14, Romans 11). The one and the other tributory have but one river of truth into which they flow, the form and purity of the waters of which is stirring to the heart, and joy to the spirit (as in Deuteronomy 32:43). Now, inextricably correlative in the Church, here is the association of those who are under the New Covenant in Christ.

At present, it is in one external sense, almost like the case of Israel when dispersed: the Church is being removed in such large segments of what was once a socially and financially impressive body, often largely obedient. Thus now, the residues have to re-organise in their operative format, not to change what they are, but to manifest what they must: which is TOTALLY UNCHANGED.

Thus there are changes in its relationship with the world, in terms of numbers and apparent significance, but NOT in its nature or its actual mission. It WILL not change, since God remains the same, and the more its mere external format changes, the less do the people of God, who learn to leave such haunted trees, where foul spirits lurk, and unclean and hateful birds (cf. Revelation 18:2). Those things, the departing former parts of the Church, are changed so that what remains may not be altered. He, the Lord, He remains unchanged, the same (as in Psalm 102), and His people with Him, except for the constant impulse, impetus and labour of love, as we are changed to greater likeness to Himself (as in II Corinthians 3:17-18, and II Peter 1).

That is the third and final instance in view.

In each case, the superstructure may alter, the modes be changed, but the foundation remains the same. The point remains the same; the successive purposes, to build or create, to discipline or chasten, and to remove segments or a phase, at the end the universe as a step, make relevant processes applicable, whether additive or subtractive or adaptive in the truth, in nature.

As to God, it is as in Malachi 3:6 and Habakkuk 3:6...

"He stood and measured the earth; He looked and startled the nations;
and the everlasting mountains were scattered the perpetual hills bowed.
"His ways are everlasting."

"For I am the LORD, I do not change;
therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob."

It is BECAUSE God does not change, that changes have to come to man, according to obedience or disobedience, faith or rebellion, fatuity or slowness; for out of love, God does not alter His delight in mercy (Micah 7:19ff.), though man may exempt himself by evil preference from its arrival; nor does He lessen His insistence on justice, though He Himself has met it for every man who receives it, having foreknown His own before time was, and appointed likewise. SO does saving grace come for all those for whom He is actually delivered up as distinct from merely offered: and these, they have ALL THINGS (Romans 8:32).

Further, it is because God does not change that man can live: for if He were, impossible though it is, to lose His temper, in confronting the case of diabolical and unholy horrors from man, what would remain But since His temperate truth, His total understanding, His loving hope persists, there man is not consumed.

If He CEASED to delight in mercy, it would be all over. If He ceased to disregard the past for the redeemed, and grant them absolution through the faith which receives Him, and His word, then where would man flee! Do not Psalm 11 and 30 show this! But since He is not so, but always the same, Jesus Christ accordingly being the same, yesterday, today, forever, whether in foreknowledge or predestination or incarnation: THEREFORE man is not consumed.

As to Him, His ways are everlasting.

On the other side, it is, as Hebrews relays, a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (ex-mercy, but with personal pre-emption of folly); for what remains outside! He is a consuming fire, as the very universe, so tainted will find, till it be gone altogether: for its works will be burnt up (II Peter 3:10-13), and a new heavens and earth being created, these will endure. Why ? It is because He does, and does not change. His kingdom is the one which is not destroyed, as Daniel was given to divulge (Daniel 7:14), and what more could one possibly wish, being at peace with Him, than to enjoy Him forever, where He is, where He may be and IS found, the redeemed with the Redeemer, the created with the Creator, the forgiven with the Giver and the immortalised, with the Immoral God.

What therefore HE has to offer, Himself, is immutable, beautiful, peaceable and profound; and the ways of creation, whether of a universe, or a missionary nation, the association of believers in Him as He is, and not as He is re-invented to be by shameless shambles of imposition, He is the same, and what remains with Him, find He is ever the same.

A Church exhibitive of His ways and will, a Church amid all nations, testifying of His Gospel of grace to the last place in history, or a synagogue of Satan, and John puts it in Revelation: these vary, as He permits or requires. The foundations do not alter; the exhibits for good and evil, these alter upwards or downwards, according to sincere reception of the Christ in His covenant which cannot be added to, or subtracted from, and will admit no additional elements, be they a changed christ, made by the invention of man, Romanist or Islamic or in the case of any other sect. It is no small highly focussed feature, therefore in Revelation 22, with Matthew 5:27ff., John 14:21-23 and Deuteronomy 4 and 12 to match, that attempts to alter any part of His word. For such negative or positive contamination, to hold and teach thus, these are like efforts to add polonium to your tea.

It is not recommended; but the results in the end, are very sure, and most painful, as alas the Russian case in the city of London illustrated so sadly, a few years ago, when only man was involved! TO fall foul of God is a formidable achievement in view of His love. It is best not to be wise in one's own eyes, and to die for one's own wayward cause, forgetting the One who constructed causality of our type, and made it operative.

His ways are eternal, and His will is always applicable; and if mercy is despised at the source, there is no stream at the end of the line.

NOTES

As pointed out in Ch. 4 above:

God has given discipline for man likewise, by instituting the curse, under which the whole creation labours, as the Second Law of Thermodynamics pounds away, whether at the human genome, or as the consequences of misuse of equipment. That miraculous healing still abounds (though often pretended only) on the other side, is one heaven-to-earth provision, often found with grace as a bloom on the beauty the Gospel which enables this special feature at God's own discretion, a visible warmth in the richness of His mercy.

See on this:

TMR 1, pp. 8ff., 17ff.;
TMR 8, pp. 200ff., 210ff., 224ff., 226ff.,

News 68, 82 cf. SMR 329ff., 315Aff.,

A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 4, pp. 58ff.,

Swift Witness 4, 5 (STEP 2, 3);

Stepping out for Christ Chs. 8, 9, 10;

Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming Chs. 2, 4, 5, 6
(incl. overview of the torturous windings of a meandering river, that ends in silt),

and Epilogue;

See further, work of Dr John Sanford of Cornell University as in Reflections ... Ch. 6.

Hopes and dreams, these must always be distinguished from empirically observable facts. No begging of the question by imagining something else, which of course also has to be made and to be subjected to the same causal laws (cf. Causes, SMR Chs. 3, 5), can have any bearing, being merely a hobbling around, like a dog tossing a bone about. Do it here or elsewhere, and make imagination, for some obscure reason, the very badge of your science, and examine and apply it, despite endless negative findings for your pains: It is still the same bone, and just as hard. Getting things from nothing is almost endemic to a human race when illicitly preoccupied with its own greatness, and forgetful of the underlying logic required for all valid reasoning.

On this, see for example SMR Chs. 1, 3, 5, 10, TMR, REASON, REVELATION and the REDEEMER,

and Deity and Design ....8 , together with LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST ...

Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch. 8, *1

See Ch. 4, *3 above.