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Chapter 2
FAITHFUL IS HE WHO CALLS YOU
WHO ALSO WILL DO IT!
I Thessalonians 5:24, Philippians 1:6
Faithfulness! How glorious a topic, for it MUST involve not only a form of service, in which one can rely on another to keep agreed rules, conventions, procedures or appointment of whatever type, and so it moves into the realm of truth and truthfulness: it must also involve the heart.
Who will prove faithful whose heart is one untempered morass of self-centred, society centred, man-centred or sin centred insalubrity! It must also involve a heart of simplicity of morality, which does not find why to breach truth and responsibility to God and man, in respective modes, but how to avoid doing precisely that. If your heart is not IN such an effort, and if your faith is not in the God of power, then either in understanding or perception or ability, your efforts to be faithful, indeed if they are in universal coverage, desired, have opportunity about equal to that of a blind man attached to the truck of a runaway kid on a truck run, to succeed.
Is it one in 10,000 ? Solomon queries. Certainly a faithful man is not easy to find; but once you do find such, it is a pure joy.
This leads us to consider those who, dependent on the Lord, themselves remained faithful.
Jonathan was to David as in Samuel, Luke to Paul as in II Timothy 4, the Lord to Josiah as in II Kings 22:18ff., 23:28ff., as indeed to His Church, against which the gates of hell will not, cannot and do not prevail (Matthew 16).
This is shown, not the less, but the more, in that those same gates of hell have waged an imperious, impetuous and impelling war with as many changes as a spiritual chameleon, now hiding that it be not seen, when it is in weakness, now blatant as with recent Hindu attacks in India, Islamic assault in Sudan and scientology attacks on individual souls. This last has been in a work which uses devices without demonstrable effect for any good, to achieve a dominion that appears so total as to act as if replacing God while denying Him. With God, replacement is mere delusion: He is eternal, we wait upon Him for being, basis and truth.
Thus the Lord has been faithful to preserve His Church amid some of the most malevolent, murderous, heartless, abominable and abominating dynamics you could wish. He remains true, and the Church remains intact, however many its imitations.
This faithful keeping on the part of God, like that of the Jews for their day, when they in large measure repent and come to the Church, has been in the face of
1) the gnostic attack as in Colossians 2. This extended with its presumptuous re-drafting of God by philosophic preferences, notably in Philo and later more specifically in Arius, engaged in stripping Christ of deity rather like Jehovah's Witnesses and the huge conglomerate of sectarian dissidents from Christ's deity, who less and less awareness of their awe-ful work, in the 21st century.
This Arian thrust came in the 4th century, and of this, the Christian linguist Jerome declared that the whole world groaned under his error; but not for long, despite this trope of Jerome, for he was condemned and excluded from the Church by the General Council at Nice in 325. This however, with the heroic Athanasius repeatedly attacked and being forced out, only in the end to have complete victory with a creed now named after him, shows how a two-pronged attack could come, after the lions, the lines of popular heretics. In those days these things were corrected. Vast and various have been the seemingly deadly attacks, always overcome, since that time.
2) the Roman Empire attack in the first 3 centuries especially
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a) to kill, torture, maim the Church,
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b) to subvert it by making it official Empire property, in effect. |
As an illustration of b), Emperor Constantine, a professing Christ, attended the
Council of Nice, but personally decided that Arius should be re-instated after 3
years: Arius died, however, on his way back, thus interrupting the folly of the
Emperor, and exposing the dangers of imperial alliance once for all!
This brings us to the whole portent of such evil aspirations as would dismiss all or part of the word of God, make new christs, with more or less naturalistic fervour (II Corinthians 11), and trading in the name of Jesus Christ (II Corinthians 4) for authority and listening appeal, yet plagiarising HIS property, while mixing philosophy with His word, omitting the undesired and making a desideratum to satisfy the sanctions of sin, mangling His word as formerly His body. The sin of man, inspired by Satan, knows scarcely any bounds, for there is a bounder indeed, active from the first, the deceiver of the nations, a murderer from the first (John 8:44), "who does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him."
The Arian heresy, in its distancing from deity, its revamping of Jesus Christ, its disastrous blindness in throwing away the very basis of belief and acme of divine righteousness, was serpentine indeed. Thus did it move from the basis to another platform, one in the space of the human mind.
The truth in this was wanting, no more to be seen. But yet truth did not wander, and God was faithful to overthrow this wantonry of spirit, judged by His word (cf. II John with Romans 16:17, Revelation 22:18-19, John 8:58, 5:19ff.). It did not, as it does not alter.
Still we have it, the word of God, the Gospel of grace, the revelation of the reality, for God is faithful who by His word has kept it clear ...
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God as man conquering sin, |
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in person exhibiting the conquest, |
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paying the costs for those who failed (these being all of our race from Adam), |
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breaking the disastrous hold of death, |
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granting in His own resurrection the guarantee of our own in
individual personality and eternal mode |
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as Messiah coming to reign on this earth |
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dying no more but alive for evermore (Revelation 1:18-19), |
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ruling on this dissident earth and when this is done (Revelation 19-20), |
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completing judgment, salvation effacing all guilt for those now remade and restored (John 5:24), indeed adopted as children of God Himself (Ephesians 1), |
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and dismissing the earth itself and the heavens (Isaiah 51:6, Matthews 24:5, Revelation 19-20), |
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while inventing new heaven and earth (II Peter 3:10-13) |
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with that same creative thrust evident from the beginning, and present to the end: |
for God, He does not change.
As Jeremiah warned, when outlining false prophets and false prophecy in his bulldozing of such sites, in Ch. 23, these prophets ran without being sent, and in the latter days, that is the approaching end of the Age as it now is, for ... time has past, and Christ in His suffering phase has already come and completed it (John 19:30, Hebrews 9:12), there is something special to come. What is this ? It is that there will be an advance in the frequency, the scope of this false prophecy. Now in his own day, it was already rank and rampant! What then was it to be ? It is what now is (cf. News 121, 122, Ch. 3 below, Answers to Questions Ch. 5,SMR Chs. 8 - 9), where even what had once been sound churches have become naturalistic, philosophic, sophomoric, plagiaristic, sorrows of separation from the word of God, and scarcely seem to know it.
Sad ? It is as with the Lamentations of Jeremiah.
Has one not warned for decades, with many others ? But it continues, as if on the Lusitania, a proud sister ship of sound sailing vessels, when they smashed into the unyielding iceberg, as these into the rock of Christ, they were to use explosives to hasten the drowning of all aboard. Who would not weep for it ? but the naval works of the grace of God continue without that vessel, the very symbol of seduction.
3) Islam for several centuries, with recrudescence from crude oil's riches, recently.
This was notable from the time of Muhammed, 7th. century, till the Battle of Tours in 732, which halted this carnage and conquest rather decisively. For all that, it continued in various molestations, the scimitar and second class citizenship notable, in various modes, and the crusades, moving into Africa, and through the Moors in Spain (from which they were expelled at last), with a significant gain in 1453 with the fall of Constantinople (modern Istanbul). To some extent, it took over the former Eastern division of the Roman Empire, which had flourishing after the fall of Rome in the West. For centuries, the Ottoman Turkish Empire harassed much in the Middle East and some places beyond, but its fall was sealed ignominiously when the Allies in 1917 took Jerusalem with the end of the World War I, having jurisdictive control over the Middle East. Yet it was not till 1923 that it formally ended, shrinking into modern Turkey.
4) The Roman Catholic church idolatry and armies alike, from the 11th century to the 17th particularly, so that two large heresies*1, Roman and Islamic, took it to some extent in series, like relay runners, to wreak fury on and ravage the Church. Yet it still stood and abounded in many nations.
These two insurgents have mounted statistically, amazingly, occupying nearly half (formally) of humanity with various placements to Jesus Christ, innovative, plagiaristic, using His name and fame for things forbidden (Matthew 23:8-10, 24:24), an implicit testimony to His greatness, that they cannot and do not do without His name, though they manipulate it by anti-biblical additions, subtractions, dreams and dealings.
Take-over movements are the very name of the game in assault on the Church of the Lord Jesus, the Christ. They have happened in regions, in nations, in empires, in individual churches, as may be seen in Revelation 2-3!
5) The Protestant State Church and armies (Covenant Days and the Church of England, installed in the State).
6) Armed struggle against it, as in the National Covenant confirmed in the Solemn League and Covenant, with a perilous synthesis of Church and State interests (against John 18:36). This Covenant has been described as practically a treaty between Scotland and England, and all over 18 years of age were required to subscribe. With small modifications, it was even approved by the Westminster Assembly.
7) Liberalism, a subjugation of the biblical revelation to obscene hands, permitted in top-heavy churches as they fell increasingly into various degrees of confusion, mixing the mouth of man with that of God with an imperious insolence reminding one of Arius' recall by Emperor Constantine.
Bodies once proclaiming the word of God as messengers elect under the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20), now became as clear as the Gulf of Mexico recently, and Christians were persecuted by the 'Church' as so often before by the State. Few seemed to resist it (in New Zealand, in the 1966 Assembly, the present writer was the only final rebel against the entirety of those accepting an arrangement by which the bodily resurrection of Christ was made optional: like removing the foundation from the Twin Towers, and seeing if they would stand - an alternative method to that of the Islamic people involved.
8) The New Gnosticism, in Neo-Orthodoxy, and later, the Emergent Church as exposed for its vast extent, for years, and more recently in some of its early thrusts. In the magazine, Israel My Glory, July-August 2010, in an informative, news-coverage article, some of the exceeding provocations to the Almighty are noted. One exhibit was that of a conference promoted major denominations, under the auspices of the World Council of Churches: feminist Re-Imaging Conference in Minnesota. Churches forwarding this. These included Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian Church, USA, United Methodist, Episcopalian and Mennonite, with the Uniting Church of Canada.
Delegates were participating in chanting with a view to some mystic woman figure, object of worship and offering, as goddess Sophia*2, in terms of the naturalistic mother concept, a sort of renovated 'Mary' who is to universalise nature cults and others, synthesising such constructions in one vast thrust of utterly abandoned corruption. The Lady's Supper was in a later Conference (2003) added to another item and standard bearer of mockery, however intended, a 'sacramental apple' into which ladies were to bite, as if to reassert the Fall of man in the initial woman part, and so laugh salvation to scorn by making its symbol of remedy occasion for figurative repetition of the cause!
Yet people, with such travesties and confrontationist arrogances sent direct to God, WHILE misusing HIS name, wonder why this earth is being compromised! If your chemist is a professional adulterator, what chemicals do you expect ? If you take them, what life do you hope for ? If in such a world, with such abuse of the very instrument of salvation at the level of proclamation of formal teaching, you do not condemn the evil, separate from it and insist on seeking the Lord in repentance and entreaty, like Daniel in the exile of his nation, what then is the ground of hope ? While not all can speak to the point, as they might, they can normally at least ACT.
Abhorrence of those who faithfully follow Christ, their incorruption on these lines, their intransigence masked as if schismatic, their Bible as if man-made, their worship as if narrow, is an impious implication thrust in the face.
9)
Secular
State subversion of Freedom of Speech through 'concerns' for hurt feelings, so
chaining the Gospel, bringing legal action against the saints, and pretending a
concern in so doing as if it could EVER be the case that when truth hurts, lying
helps. It is paid for in the end*3.
10) The same with UN principles in support (cf. Mystery of Iniquity).
We now move
through 9) and 10) in conjunction with 8) and human racism,
racism's ultimate tilt against God, making itself central, whereas man is merely
a construction, however liberal the divine creativity to give him potential
access to Himself.
This gives vent to specious human yearnings, to be made official in the man of sin to come (II Thessalonians 2),who is to show himself that he is God before being shown the meaning of spiritual destruction amid flaming judgment II Thessalonians 1-2).
While the fourth Kingdom of Europe (as in Daniel 7) is set to use financial constraints and alliances, propaganda and panache to make a new Nebuchadnezzar situation, rather like that met by Daniel's three friends, the statue this time is this time pseudo-plasticised, built into the mind, as well as plied onto the body, in a new dynamic of more versatility (Revelation13,17).
Thus a certain mystic humanism becomes a new thrust against the Church, which as always is faithfully maintained by the Lord, now as often before, despite its seemingly impossible position: who, however can be against you when God is for you AND faithful! as He always is. What joy this continual triumph, despite suffering, brings as it comes to its finale.
HE is the omega! and In Revelation 19, His very name is 'faithful and true.' Advisedly!
NOTES
World Population of those formally adhering to Islam or Roman Catholic religions has varying estimates, but may approximate to 3 billion. Since world population is estimated at some 6.6 billions, this is some 45%.
On Romanism, Islam and force in religion see:
Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed ... Ch. 5, esp. *2,
Acme ... Ch. 9 , Great Execrations ... Ch. 3,
Ancient Words and Modern Events Ch. 14,
SMR p. 1O88D - three major religions in some ways in concert, astray.
Three Anzas, One Answer Ch. 5,
News 101, SMR pp. 50ff., 62 ff.,
Secular Myths and Sacred Truth Ch. 8
On Romanism, see SMR pp. 911ff., 946ff., 1032-1088H.
On Islam see:
More Marvels ... Ch. 4, esp. *4,
Dancers, Prancers, Lancers and Answers Ch. 3, *1A misconceptions about the Cross, variable and mutually conflicting, on the part of the Koran
Lord of Life Ch. 3 (and force), 1081ff. (and faith), Outrageous Outages ... Ch. 5;
His Wounds Opened Eternity Ch. 4; 3
Stepping Out for Christ Ch. 9,
Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch. 8 (in perspective), see also *1,
Divine Agenda Chs. 6, 3 (an overview of religious truancies, including Marx, Darwin and Koran);Highway to Hell (Koran citations in both, with ideational parallels in perspective, in the former; and in the latter, futile depravities in endless ideologies such as Sudan has shown so significantly, Islam ablaze without glory), cf. Overflight in Christ Ch. 1 (and the Koran's musings);
1493 (esp. Britain and sharia);
News 138, Beauty for Ashes Chs. 4, 7Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed ... 5, Acme ... Ch. 9 ,
Great Execrations ... Ch. 3,
SMR p. 1O88D - three major religions in some ways in concert, astray.
News 138, Beauty for Ashes Chs. 4, 7, SMR pp. 1074ff., esp. 1079, 1081ff.
(These latter show this religion, with the other three major conspiracies towards the ultimate - why conspiracies ? It is because men conspire, or breathe plans together for a control, rule or oversight not ordained by God: these are breaths of man, and the breath that matters is that of God, in and by which all scripture is inspired by Him (II Timothy 3:16, Isaiah 8:20), in the Book of the Lord (Isaiah 34:16), the Bible, and sustained and implemented by Him (Matthew 26:54ff.). Other ideas for rule are always unruly, since they always tend to use power for what neither reason nor truth compels.).
See also SMR pp. 822ff., 986ff., 1O88D.
In Proverbs 8 and elsewhere, you find wisdom personified, as it might at first seem. Christ speaks of it in this figure in Luke 7:35: "But wisdom is justified by all her children." No one would be like to imagine that Christ is envisaging 'wisdom' as a female her, but as a figure of speech, feminine as the noun is in both Hebrew (the main one used and found in Proverbs 8) and in Greek. It is a mode of speech, a figure of easy acceptance in transferring the concept of having things born into you, or even simply of the grammatical fact of femininity for this noun, a mere passing datum.
In Proverbs 8, however, you have a keen development of great significance. It is in one aspect, like our English reference to a boat as 'she' without wishing to convey any thought of its having a personality as such. 'She's a beauty, manoeuvrable, magnificent, she really is!' Such talk would mislead no-one.
In the case of Proverbs 8 (see Proverbs 8 which expounds the area), the term is used to develop into what appears as 'one brought up' before God, and indeed, with this, the additional point that it is one ALWAYS there. The ''eternal procession of the Son" relates, as an orthodox Christian doctrine, its essence in the 'Cappadocian fathers". I AM UNDERSTANDING, this Wisdom declares.
It is at once obvious to the willing mind that since ONLY God IS understanding, and this wisdom is always there, that this in context, produces two resultants. Firstly, it is one name for God (as in I Corinthians 1:30, where Christ is the wisdom and the righteousness of God), in this, when it is so used, since none but God has it in this unlimited degree. Yet there is more. There is a distinct inter-personal relationship between this WISDOM and God by His most obvious name. It is as in Colossians 2:9, that in Christ "dwells all the fulness of the God head bodily."
As He took the FORM of a man (Philippians 2), and was found in FORM of a bondservant, and in the likeness of men, then it is clear that Christ Himself is this personal Being, and we have moved through a norm for usage in terms of this feminine gender abstract noun, to a revelation of the intent back of it when it is taken in depth, namely a poetic device to express personality with wisdom, which then merges into a theological method of exposing the Word of God, His wisdom, who became a man.
A boat, call it 'she' if you will, if it were suddenly to become personal, is by no means tilted to the feminine because idiomatically we might have used the term 'she'. It would all depend, when moving from a linguistic device to fact, what that person was. Of course, Christ became man.
However the use of this background for the invention of a female deity, which fits so well with the Roman Catholic raising of Mary to Redemptrix and Queen of Heaven, in various usages, is ludicrous. Christ is DEFINED as the wisdom of God in I Corinthians 1:24. GOD refuses to share His glory with another (Isaiah 42:8), and no one else has His unlimited qualities of wisdom and righteousness as He is careful to define these things (Isaiah 43:10, 44:6, 45:6-7,18,21).
As well turn a speck of sand into a mountain chain, as try to extract wisdom without God, or understanding of the nature of all things, or of His heart, without which there is but blindness: so far from total understanding, none at all. Thus what lacks the supreme essence and power, compared with what does not, does not even figure. Such is any number compared with infinity. You cannot get close that way. God has no limits, for there is no one and nothing besides Him, but His creation, which has only such part, in its newness, as He sees fit to give it, being derivate from His origination, who is there that anything else EVER could be!
This sort of utterly irrelevant slide in the use of the term 'Sophia' for a naturalistic pseudo-deity is precisely the sort of lying (verbal) wonder which Satan so loves, as you see in his exchanges with Christ, as recorded in Matthew 4, in the temptation.
Someone has to pay, whether responsibly, as did Christ Jesus for His people, each one in particular, or irresponsibly for the unredeemed, whose hearts become as adamant. Sin invites payment; rebellion refuses the offer to redeem. Faith receives (Romans 6:23).
As to Government in Australia, and the Internet, see News 145, and Freedom, the Nation, the Internet and the Next Generation esp. Chs. 1-4.