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CHAPTER ONE

EATING THE WORD IS FAR FROM, ABSURD!   

Ezekiel 2-3, Mark 1:15, I Corinthians 12:13

There is so much more in the Bible, when you study it, than in the stars, which have laws of breadth and depth still being found out, ways and modes of assemblage and measurement, phases and findings not found in current developments observable, any more than are the other components of creation such as new types of creatures, or of language other than that in the DNA.

This is ALWAYS the same, PRECISELY as if someone having found an intelligible, workable, concise, brilliantly adaptable language for expressing creative code (that is a code which with the addendum of power, as in other creations), executes the creative thought in view, with the address for which it is specified, which it bears, this being evoked in both its formulation,  as a code, and through its information,  for expression through the code.

On this side of communication, causation and information,  see Sparkling  Life ... Ch. 8, The Bible ... Ch. 4,  Jesus Christ: Defaced, Unfazed Ch.    4, Deity and Design ... Ch.   2, The Desire of the Nations, Ch. 2  Epilogue.

Laws abound in the material, astronomical, chronological, chemical, physical,  geological, physiological, biochemical, botanical, biological, mathematical and logical worlds. They are there. Cramp or dismiss them if you are callow.  Use them if you know. They co-exist with that to which they refer; they are deputy-lords over creation, summit stylings, propositionally expressible as directives. They are not self-sufficient, for they are SET in place without consent, being formulations which describe what in fact transpires so that it does so, in this way and not in another. As describable, equally they are inscribable, that they may be read; and as formulable conceptually, so are they formed. This is their base nature and testimonial exhibit.

They themselves then are in need of either a magical base (that is, one which has effects without citable cause), suitable for very young children (as when Calvin's dad told him that the wind came from trees sneezing because that was easier to  convey than the truth), or for a causative one, sufficient for the consequence which they constitute.

It is only when you deal with what IS self-sufficient (so that it does not HAVE to be anything  except by willing it), and what is ETERNAL (so that you do not need to invent it by magic or from nothing which comes to the same thing), that consequences can come causally. When The Eternal Being speaks, then laws can come into matter, with form and dynamic sufficient; and since time is itself a passing thing (try recalling it AS history on the way, except in memory or imagination or their derivatives),  the Eternal lies back of it, for being always there, this One never passes. From  eternity to eternity He is God, as He says in the Bible (Psalm 90:1-2). God ? It is the name given to this necessary Being, whose words are found in four  major places, as testable, verifiable and empirically investigable.

First, they are fond in life in DNA and associated structures, ONE language of ALL life, a hierarchical phenomenon of the first water, including connotation, concept,  administration, execution and empowerment, as in any language which does things: an abstraction  correlated to reality in such a way that it rules it,  collaborates with it, or induces it (cf. refs. para 2 above). 'Chance', the ungoverned movement of a system (so  that movement is definably able to be present - cf. Ancient Words ... Chs.  9 , 13) can bring only what its form, laws and constitutive elements provide, with whatever inherent syntheses are demonstrable. It is not relevant in one language in billions of things, with some having billions and even trillions of governed, law-girt elements within them, all under one linguistic roof. If a sentence from space could indicate intelligence, how much more myriads of sentences IN OUR OWN VITAL  SPACE within our physical beings, each one of us, in one language, integrated into waterfalls of wisdom, concatenated, correlated consequences,  typed in cells, moved into systems of overall community of constraint and command!

Thus you do not speak of colour as a component where non exists in many formats, of cleverness in various complexities and modes, where no IQ of any kind is ever discernible, nor of blockheadedness where various degrees and margins of machination appear. It is not relevant so to do.

Secondly, the words of the Eternal  One are found in the Bible, which has laws and concepts and correlation of concepts in one systematic whole, the conspectus uniform, the plan entire,  the development unified, the thrust in one centre and the deposit office specified as the mind and the heart of the created being called mankind.

Thirdly, they are to be found in the results of the Biblical prose: what it has foreseen. When therefore with a precision which is sufficient to guarantee major, practical results and even a system of a defined character,  from millenia beforehand, WHEN this comes to pass, it is in no mean  sense, a further form of DIVINE SPEAKING. You see it now, not in the plan, but in the performance! What myriads of events could have amplified into complete contradiction of a prophecy over millenia, through ONE error having multiplied effects down the centuries, arising at one only point!

This is scrupulously avoided by the only One who having infinite knowledge, uses it! (Isaiah 46:10,  and Chs. 44-45). Do the same,  predict likewise!  says the Lord in Isaiah 41:21ff., "that we may know that you are gods!" That, it is a simple empirical test: let it be done in the world of persons and events. What is the difficulty ? It is a challenge: then meet it. It is in these as in many other areas that modern culture is humbling the scientific into the scientistic, and some even admit to materialistic philosophy as a basis for their method: and that ? it is science^*1 ? It is not even rational (Repent or Perish Ch. 7, Christ Incomparable ... Ch. 2).

In addition, these are not only matters of future findings, foretold, but of contemporary results, imposed, as in the case of Pharaoh and the 10 plagues as in Exodus. This is put with delightful brevity in Psalm 105:34: "He spoke and lucsts came, young locusts without number..." A CEO, depending on how advanced is his power in his company or collection of companies, governmental affinities and so forth, SPEAKS and it is done.

It is not a matter of telling us how many typists, executives, what kinds of electronic conveyance and communication kinds were employed on what engineering machinery, with what co-ordinations of company policies, for all that is understood according to the case. If he has power, the means of power are not unknown, to itemise is otiose.

When God Himself speaks it is done. His speech rules. That He is so merciful and patient is one reason why it is not fully reallsed, as is so readily the case when Islamic militants blow up soldiers who are seeking to remove them  from their bases of aggression and so protect their homeland from further assault. An or a leg, a coffin here or there, it is dramatic, telling; and this is the tale they tell, whether in removing people abroad, or nearby. It can be read. When God, however,  acts in patience, nevertheless, eventually with power, some forget in the interim the cause of it; and then blaspheme His name even further. So does the cyclotron of folly breed upon itself. 

Fourthly, the words of the Eternal God are  found in the  core,  centre, quintessential focus of the entire Bible: that is,  the Saviour, the Lord, the incarnate Messiah, the Sin-Bearer, the Site of  Pardon and the Place of Peace, who came at the foretold time into history as shown in Christ the Citadel Ch. 2 and in other sites there  specified, at the precise chronological point forecast; just as He  also  died at that point forecast (cf. Possess Your Possessions  Volume 6, Ch. 8).

Thus when we find in the Bible, as in Ezekiel 2-3, the Lord telling a prophet of His,  to  EAT a scroll of His words, that is to appropriate them personally and intimately, digest them minutely and  apply them with the energy they release into history,  we are not surprised. Being too perfervid with our own desires and too listless to listen and  too obstinate to bother is one of the chief reasons why man is in his present insoluble position: that is, it is insoluble EXCEPT in terms of the word of God.

Since God makes things and governs them by His word, it is not at all surprising if He also providesd remedy for the mischievous misuse of the delicious gift of liberty, with which, beyond all man's own  creative powers, He has blessed mankind. Let us then consider the case, as it is edifying for the heart that reasons, for the mind that listens,  for the thought that heeds evidence and follows reality where it is.

Not surprisingly, there are also moral laws, concerning duties, responsibilities, organisational optima and the like, which come with the equipment donated and dowered to man. These too are found in the Bible, and indeed, there are rulings and organisational elements concerning the gamut of man's multiple functions, which can be spelt out just to enliven the mind to see what it is with which it deals, when man is involved.

Thus there are certain features noted in History, Review and Overview Ch. 5, and certain correlative considerations which come with them. A citation from that work follows.

It is all or nothing. It is not only

 irreducible complexity, but

indivisible integrity,

indissoluble co-operation,

inter-and intra-systematic proliferation,

coherence of logic and symbolic notation with
executive receptors, skilled to catch meaning and execute orders, 

continuity of sequence from

connotation, to denotation, to implementation,

in a series of systematics incomprehensible except in totality.

(Indeed see SMR pp. 332Gff., Stepping Out for Christ Ch. 9, Repent or Perish Ch. 7, in End-notes,  for further considerations!  See The Bible ... Ch. 4 - 5, especially the later, on Perspicuity, another feature and Bewilderment ... Beauty ... Ch. 3. on Exuberance, a further one again.)

The path of true reductionism, false to science, of course, is always to ignore what you have got, and to explain what is not there. It is however the essence of the challenge to meet the case as it is, in all of its sequential, symbolic, integral and mutually intimate and pervasively singular procedures, whether in code type, implementation, co-ordination or exuberance of methodology; and to do so in a world which likes energy for construction and time for destruction. The other point about the construction ? it is direction. The third ? something to do as directed. In this world, and by any form of valid logic, the specifications of life parallel the requisites of intelligence with available power.

The result, life, it matches nothing but mind, requires nothing less than something as far beyond mere genius as the heavens above the earth, requisitions an artist, artificer and maker down to the last electron and the least of the biota. Paintings do not paint themselves, Raphaels do not come by omission of the artist, and life is as far beyond these things in what it demands, as a genius beyond a talented toddler.

The perspectives and nuances of art, its undertones and its overtones, its sentiments and its modes of communications to receptors called human beings, who may decide to pretend not to like it as a competitive device, such is their programmatic liberty of will in certain arenas: these do not arise from what does not cognise them; but only in what goes far further than that. It must with enterprise not only appreciate but perform, and not only perform, but meaningfully perform, and activate the executive elements of the body of the artist to ensure that the result actually appears; and that the way in which it does so can be 'read'. Art is merely one facet of life. ALL functions must be accounted for in any reputable endeavour to present its basis.

As soon as one discovers one phase, feature or facet of human life in particular, there are realities within, meanings beyond, there is all the grooming of a thorough-bred horse, all the intestinal reality of a cathedral, the coherence of a great speech, the intricacy of superb mathematics, the intimacies as of love, such is the subtlety and the inter-dimensional as well as intra-dimensional sophistication, as if intelligence were easy, and brilliance a manner of life.

As if ? THIS is the testimony. If someone places a new Boeing 747 on your drive-way, it is not as if it had been built! It is not the nature of life, or logic, to give output without input; and what we see now as the centuries progress, is no more input, but the same residual decrement. In design terms, there is to be found, as Gould emphasises, DECREASING residue. The progress of centuries in this system is the regress of design types. What is needed is simply NOT NATURE. It needs its author.

There is vast loss of the remains of output, one not now to be found, as is natural in creations, which tend to dissipate. As with creation in this world generally, on the part of human participants, this decrease follows the vast effort of bringing things to be; and as that is distanced,  forces work to the detriment of what one has made. All this is precisely as the Bible depicts (Isaiah 51:6 for example), and it is simply anti-scientific to dismiss the enduringly correct, and uniquely present solution, while appealing to the calamitously non-verified imaginations of the heart, which dismiss the eyes and dispense with their testimony.

That is quite literally anti-science, what is biblically called knowledge falsely so-called, one of the chief dimensions of that falsetto spuriousness, which infects much of modern 'science' to its profound detriment and everlasting shame. Do not misunderstand, science has not done this, for on its method as shown in SMR pp. 149ff. and TMR Ch. 1, this is the result: creation is indicated irrevocably by all the criteria of scientific method. It is the work of some who name 'science' as their trade or profession.

Scientific method is clear, and delightfully sure in its results in creation^*1; but since science lives in culture, a pathological culture can even constrain it till the point comes that argument is substituted for admission, non-reality is explained by reductionism and pathetic propositions are constantly presented, which neither logic nor observation ever sanctioned.

In the intimacies of ever-more unravelled marvels in life's visible provisions, we find increasingly that everything provides for something else, and the more we dispense with ignorance, the more simplistic substitutes for empirical observation surge into the farcical.

For centuries now, man in his growing secularistic conceit, sham imaginations and shameful self-fulfilments, mere ferments of disorderly imagination, has tended to under-estimate all of creation, except himself.

What we are facing then, is not only all the above. It is also directional dynamic with integral meaning, once exceedingly fast-moving, now long arrested. As well have spare tyres and spanners and gear levers in incomprehensible confusion lying about, as think of this or that chemical as if this were at all to the point. The electrons have their partitions and procedures; the atoms likewise; as do the molecules; the compounds are characterisable; the genes have their task and the DNA its blueprint. Each is a construction. Each has required the art of the artifice and the power for the presentation. ALL require a totality of systematisation to render coherent their interaction, univocal their meaning and practical their interaction.

Moreover, chemicals, as Wilder Smith points out, operate in their conventional and coherent norms; they do not perform alien tasks. New information input can be invented and disposed with the appropriate sophistication and power: this is not seen now, but it is seen in the nature of the creation. This is how it works.

Indeed, in the actual design situation (cf. SMR pp. 86ff.), that author shows that 

"it is no mere matter of order, even of the spatially variable order. You can put atoms in a given arrangement, but there are still variations in their spatial relationship, three-dimensionally, which can have significance. Beyond that dimension, there is a fourth - the super-imposition of code specificity. There is, he notes a code-conveying specificity superimposed on the 'macro-molecular stereospecificity'."

The chemistry is not only variable in the spatial configurations, but on top of that, there is code significance, another dimension of meaning exhibited by the formations provided. There is economy in that there is multi-purpose function; there is compression. We also seek our own form of compression, for example, in the field of computing, in modems, where by using symbols in more than one way, we impose additional significance on the situation, and achieve faster results by preparing more intellectual forethought about our symbols.

Proceeding then, from the unreal world of magic and non-method, to that of effort and labour, construction by logical devices with ground-work for the task, through which are created by intelligence what could not arrive by itself, things being limited, each,  to and by what it is, we find life has its lessons. These appear not only morally, ethically, aesthetically and civically, but in procedure. Input and output, removal and inspection, with operations of intricate character are required.

'A factory that has no source of raw materials, or which has no market for its product must shut down in a short time. Living systems are extremely complex, having hundreds of series of metabolic pathways perfectly co-ordinated and controlled... Each chemical task performed is useful and purposeful because it is coordinated in a marvellous way with all the other activities of the cell.' Dr Gish (op. cit. p. 28) proceeds: 'Without this coordination, enzyme activity would not only be useless, it would be destructive.'

For instance, if there is an enzyme capable of catalysing the formation of chemical bonds between amino acids to form proteins this same enzyme would catalyse their breakdown to amino acids. Gish points out that the input of raw materials, use of same, output of end products - including 'waste products' is so coordinated and controlled 'that the amount of intermediate products and the structure of the cell, itself, remain at a steady state...' (p. 29).

With the cell in its systematised, linguistic, mathematical expression of plan, program and procedure, instituted despite the fact that 'the longer the molecules are exposed to random forces, the wider will become their random distribution', let us reflect on what the case is.

This situation is merely a technical way, or format, or illustration of the fact that non-intelligence does not, in time or without time, produce the specialised constructions for which intelligence is required. This is not to beg the question; on the contrary it is, at last, to face it!

In more detail, there are additionally, further pin-points of articulation in the living reality of mankind. This from SMR pp. 332ff., brings some of these to our notice. 

A PATTERN OF MAN - For Survey and Simple Mnemonics - A Summary Structure (PSC). This is envisaged as a skyscraper, and may be conceived upwards or construed downwards. (See pp. 140-145 supra, and cf. Repent or Perish Ch.7,
Endnote 1, where there is further development on this theme.)

THE ELSEWHERE-EARNED EDIFICE,
 WITH OPTIONS PROVIDED FOR MAN (View as one skyscraper: floors are in general in order of their management significance, though this may vary.)

1.  Principal (top floor)
2.  spirit
3. perspective
4-6.  personality-imagination-expression (PIE)
7.  principles
8-10.  priorities, penchants, affections (PPA)
11.  purpose and purposes
12-15.  comprehension-analysis-intelligence-mind (CAIM)
16.  proposals
17. corporicity
18.  procedure
19.  principial error
20.  plan
21.  performance error
22.  program
23.  unsuccess
24.  significance
25.  semantics
26.  syntax
27.  signification
28.  symbols
29.  cells (equipped as per 24-28, the 5 S - Words)
30.  system
31.  sequence
32.  series
33.  singularity
34.  subsistence (ground floor)

Added to these, further functionalities could be noted, such as:
CREATIVITY, INTER-PERSONAL CONSTRUING; LOGIC, MEMORY,
SYNTHESIS, SYSTEMS, DISCIPLINED-IMAGINATIVE-CONSTRUCTION; SURVEY -
WITHIN AND WITHOUT.

While these extend our sight of the donated territories accorded to man, they can be understood in such terms as: mind, spirit and their intimate inter-relation. Here we see not only worlds within worlds in the construction called man - a multiplicity of cosmoi, but a disparity of components, duly combined and correlated to work as one unit: that is the art and essence of creation. The splendour of the architecture that creates, together with the wonder of the elements in man, themselves creations - the legally inert substructure, the vitally informed, the alert, the discerning, the comprehending, the volitionally directive, the spiritually profound, soaring inexorably: these in their display and their unison attest and verify at work... the sublimity of divinity.

SURVEYING THE SCINTILLATING SCENE OF THE UNITARY SKYSCRAPER

Now let us look from the top storey down.

At the top, the spirit (q.v. - cf. Possess Your Possessions Book 6, Ch. 8, esp. *2A) of man, as active but non-autonomous, and derivative (2), is subsumed beneath its principal (properly God, but it may be opted for or yielded to as the devil, self, self-sufficiency, self-satisfaction, self-fulfilment, ideological activism, existential angst...), whatever it may be (1); just as perspective (3), in turn, is set below spirit.

Then is seen the personality as functional upon this, with its principles, priorities and purpose, all functions of it, proceeding in turn to utilise the whole realm of the mental and engaging the physical, with all the errors which in practice may divorce purpose from results.

The structure in its course then moves through the purely programmed to the anatomy of matter and the singularities of what subsists (ground floor). As to the principal, on top, this may be subjective, merely existential; or the upward gateway to reality.

The control room is in the top floor; and the merely existential per se lacks what life requires. The reality incomparably and immovably attested, is the Lord Jesus Christ who, the only begotten Son of God, the Word of God, achieved the building and offers to restore the mismanaged to the designed holiness: at cost to Him, by sacrifice once made, and power, epochally shown in His bodily resurrection. This restoration comes through personal faith and repentance, including His actual top-level reception, where He belongs; and His free acceptance of the purpose-deflections and other errors, sins at any level, unburdened to Him and His waste management.

Again, in Repent or Perish Ch. 7 (esp. *1 AND *2), , the componential complexities and wonders that inhere in man are found, and to ignore them is like watching a TV screen, while ostensibly measuring the match of stress and strain in a laboratory. What is there needs assessment, by methods apt for ordering it for thought and organising thought around its own organisation. What is less, is nescience, not science.

indeed, when  science ceases to be a co-operation with data and becomes instead a complicity with what is never found and never made to work without intelligence at the helm, a danger in effect pointed out by Lord Zuckerman in Beyond the Ivory Tower, it is an ostentation as ludicrous as that of some tramp who claims to be king. Such a trend is deliciously evidenced in its unempirical in such presentations as that of Dr Jonathan Henry, found in Journal of Creation, Vo,. 24(2), 2010, pp. 87ff., where not for the first time,  we find naturalistic 'experts' noting that if the theories available are to be ruthlessly applied, then the moon or the solar system do not exist! Such is the romancing that by obstinacy replaces empirical constraint. There is obfuscatory dedication!

So comprehensive and consistent are the negatives to the efforts to get something (directly or indirectly, in parts or all at once) from nothing, that whether it be cosmological, universal, moral (News 19), psychological (cf. SMR Ch. 4), logical, linguistic or palaeontological (SMR pp.199ff.), it becomes a mist of must, a direction of desire, replacing a sight of the actual situation, lucidly insisting on its wares despite every coercion and constraint (cf. TMR, Ch. 1, *2,   The gods of naturalism have no go!  31). Empty reductionism comes as sauce, and lack of interfaces for imaginary contrivances is both normal and systematic (cf. Spiritual Refreshings Ch.  9, incl. End-note 1 , Dizzy Dashes ... and the Brilliant Harmony of Inevitable Truth Ch. 6, as marked esp.) Such are the furnishings of the Flat of Fictional Fiascos, No. 1, Urbane Place, City of Destruction.

On the other hand, in the same Journal of Creation, a fascinating article from Dr John Hartnett (pp. 105ff.), shows and this not for the first time by researchers such as Dr Harold Slusher, evidences of no mean order suggesting strongly that the earth is near to the centre of the universe. While not a required datum in any sense, it has its mark, and meets it well, with some singular attestation sustained assiduously.

In fact, if anything be eccentric, if anything irrational, it is this erratic desire^*1A, for it is no more, and it is in the face of the whole assemblage of empirical and logical reality that it is held. To which erratic desire does one refer ? It is that for something from nowhere, from nothing nameable, identifiable, while always starting with what is estimated to produce what is, but never found to be so, nor found to be so productive, nor given ground for so much as being, itself!  The collapsing cavity, the black hole of concentration of what never sees the light, or yields to it, is all too apparent. Into this, you do not need to stumble: it draws in its victims. 

With this supine surrender goes the antinomy of never facing the lack of adequate causative background, let alone interface, for the imagined basis or the results: equal one universe with one rational, spiritual, analytical, soaring spirit embalmed in the utmost of hi-tech equipment, beyond his own powers, in a format called mankind. Able to look beyond his being and his placement, he with an  almost stunning frequency, despises his background and exalts himself, and quite predictably falls as now in this 21st century of disgrace, disharmony, disjunction from peace and brutalising bravado.  Despising his foundation, he founders.

But let us get back to the source of all these laws, all this integration, this refusal for explanation except from creation, this manifest contradiction between decay as found and creation as given, and return to that validated and verified word of God Himself^*2, and its application. This, after all, is more astoundingly important than the interstices of atoms, the modes of energy or the functionalities of systems, intriguing those these be. Car knowledge is very useful; driver instruction is orders of magnitude more compelling, if you want to live.

EAT THE WORD, DIGEST THE TRUTH, AND APPLY IT 

Ezekiel, then, was one of the prophets  at work immediately before the destruction of Jerusalem. Commanded, as seen in Ch. 2, to speak to Israel,  deemed "a rebellious nation", "stiff-faced and hard-hearted", or unbending and blatant, or impudent and ornery. They kept their faces from  repentance, set on sin, and their hearts from softening, set in stone. To God, they would not listen, from  evil they would not relent, from transgression they would not repent.

Hence Ezekiel, being  set on his feet, was sent to them to speak the word of God to them, "whether they hear or whether they refuse," and "they will know a prophet has been among them." Ezekiel for his part was not to be afraid of them, or their words, "though briers and thorns are with you and you dwell among scorpions", but speak to them the word of God; and indeed it was God who would act for Ezekiel:

"Like adamant stone, harder than flint, I have made your forehead,
so do not be  afraid of them,
nor be dismayed at their looks, though they are a  rebellious house."

Amidst these things in Ezekiel 2-3, we find at 3:1-5, that the prophet is asked to EAT the scroll of God's words, and then go to the people to  speak.

"Son of man, feed your belly, and fill your stomach with the  scroll that I have you."  

Ezekiel ate it and it was "like  honey for sweetness." Thus the interest of God is love and mercy (as in Ezekiel 33:11, Micah 7:19ff.), and to be near His word with, as  for Ezekiel, a BELIEVING HEART IS SWEETNESS; but as you see in Revelation 10:8ff., when John ate "the little book", it became bitter in the stomach. That is, in both cases, though the love of God is moving to select and find His people among so many, yet the wild-minded, hard-hearted response leaves only judgment, which is bitter, to come.

As  is the whole world of today, now declining into the condition shown as Revelation moves towards its end, so then in Ezekiel's  day, was the case for Judah and the Temple. It was terminal with hope. Now the whole world is terminal with an end in view.

Then, misused, religion became an incubus, and equipped with idolatry, as now, it became a ground of judgment. It is not  false prophets who  make a nation great, but rather ruin it (Jeremiah 23).

Those now sent, 

	whether they invent gods  who  do not acknowledge the Bible and Jesus Christ as necessary and only Saviour, as with Islam,
	or worship bread, as in Mass - far from physically being His body, since if it had been, He would have suicided at the Last Supper,
	or else manufacture new evasions:

are a wake for judgment.

As to the bread, it is statedly IN REMEMBRANCE of Him. More is invention. Nor do the other false  prophets fare better, who have spiritual blooms substituting for the second coming personally of the Son of God, Jesus the Christ, who is to return in a way like that in which He went (Acts 1): after the sufferings, the glory! Some churches want to re-create creation, some salvation, some spiritual affairs, with multiple baptisms of the Spirit (never BIBLICALLY mentioned, though many infillings indeed occur - Acts 3:19-21). Thus are the pilgrims renewed and strengthened on the way, granted seasons of refreshing as the word of God declares.

As with Israel then,  there  seems no limit to human invention and contention, the brow hard  like rock, the heart set in its own prison. Yet instead of this, man needs not to play with the word of God, add adulterants and needless preservatives to it, toy with toppings for it, but to eat it, taking it in the intimacies of his mouth, into his system, using it for life, and personally being filled with it. INGEST, DIGEST and APPLY, this is the need. 

THE EATING OF ROLLS AND SCROLLS -  Ezekiel  2-3

It is then, the word of God which is to be eaten, not spiritual fast food. You see that in  Revelation 5, where history itself paused until one  was found to open the scroll for which they all waited, and ONLY THE LAMB OF GOD  could open it, and did. Then it rolled. Then history was unveiled, with judgment at first and heaven the haven at last. Do not add to His words,  lest He rebuke you and you be found a liar,  says Proverbs 30:6. But how "eat" the scroll ?

Like a  roll, you eat it with your mouth,  chew it with your teeth, digest it into your system, and using the energy derived, apply it with your life. It is the sweetness of love which has prepared the food, and love is the keynote to communication between God and man, except that when the offer of love is rejected, and the hard heart of man is exhausted in its travails,  resisting mercy to the death, then judgment supervenes. This world is now full of it, a thing  some, in their privileged nations, do not yet realise. Yet even now, these with things like massive floods hit the headlines, touching tens of millions, and famines wreak havoc in the earth, slaying millions more, while atomic bombs bring fear to many (foretold in Luke 21:26), from the hands of religious godlessness.

Threats of extinction come from the lips of the deluded, like a vile vomit of hatred. You cannot plunge your teeth into and infest your inward life with what derides, degrades or dismisses Jesus Christ without bringing shame on your own name, as you show shame for his. There is no scope for compromise or equivocation.

This is where President Obama^*2A has so misled his people. You cannot serve two masters.

"Either he will hate the one, and love the other;

or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other,"

Matthew 6:24, as in Luke 16:13). You cannot make much of Islam, which rejects Christ as the Son of God, Redeemer required for man, place of pardon and Judge, call the Koran a Holy Book amid much congratulation, and then expect such sharing of shame to be called righteousness.

If someone calls your wife a slut, is this to be a source of agreement ? If someone says she is NOT what she seems, and that her name is wrongly held in high esteem, in fact not true in what she claims, indeed that properly she is not a human being at all, that her reputation is based on what is not fact: do you then hold out the hands of peace, and call such lying words holy! If someone says, I am the King, and he is not, all power is given to me, and it is not; I am the truth, and he is not: we are not facing some minor infraction, but a holus-bolus discount and derogation of the entire person to a baseness inferentially equivalent to a minimality of madness (cf.  SMR Ch. 6).

Does a man so associate with what so treats his wife, or indeed, his God ? , God forbid. President Obama is now talking about Ephesians 4 where it says that all bitterness should depart, amid the Christian family, who indeed should likewise "put on the new man", as testimony of their knowing the Lord. While it is true that bitterness is not to the point, and that love expands beyond the body of Christ, since it is like that, yet the rules of life in Christ are not the same as those concerning wolves who gobble up His people, or defame the name of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Jesus Christ.  That is what is done systematically in the Koran.

Hatred of man yields to love of man, indeed; but aversion to those things which  defile the name of Christ must not stop with emotion, but rather must the flock be protected, not by anointing with accolade what assaults Christ, but by seeking the good of its people while rejecting the wrong recipe for this end, with strength, addressed with personal integrity. For the difference, the sin of misled priests and their invading adherents, as to MEANS, Christ died; for their pardon, He lives, but when it is rejected and defamed as with Islam, even to adopt, or respect or dignify or exalt or honour it, let alone call it holy, this becomes betrayal of Christ.

No calling can countermand this: a good leader is first led, and one fair to all does not cease to be a person whose values will speak as loudly from throne as from coal mine.

It is indeed true that we should  LOVE Moslems and seek their good. In this, Obama is of course right; but it is equally true that these verses for Christians by no means require us to cease to denounce the evils, show their errors, attest the truth which condemns Islam, as Christians, and reject whatever advances its efforts to show itself powerful, its dominating preoccupation and danger. Many  are its incitations to victory in war till Allah has sway (cf. Divine Agenda Ch. 6, a thing so  well  attested in  Robert Spencer's work, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam).

As with Ezekiel, as with Christ in Luke 9:23-26, there is a word of God and there is no other, and whether you dwell with scorpions (Ezekiel 2:6), or "savage wolves" (Acts 20:29, Matthew 7:15)), you do not relent, but adhere to it, apply it and exalt CHRIST ONLY as pre-eminent (Phil. 2:8-11). As with Paul, cast down imaginations, bringing every thought into captivity to Christ!

This is very different from being captivated by Islam, or unfactually singing its praises as a religion of peace which nearly took over Europe by force^*3.  By all means allow freedom, and seek the good of all, whether of Islam or Hinduism or other; but let there be no yielding on the part of any who names the name of Christ, and no ostentation towards such things on the part of any nation which seeks to honour Him (whatever pockets of this and that may be in it), without this simple realisation. For the individual, this means HIS shame on you at judgment; and for the nation, you are engaging in seeking that it be NOT exalted.

Righteousness exalts a nation, and God, the God of the Bible is its definition. Truth IS intolerant of error; but this does not mean that love relaxes its hold in grace, merely that deception does not have an entry into any Christian heart, and what a nation resolves to BE, becomes what it is going to BECOME! There then is its base for judgment.

Like a salad ROLL, so the SCROLL, the word of God, and nothing else or other, is to be chewed, meditated on, and digested, assimilated into thought and applied, realised into life. You must regard it, whether President or pauper, as the word of God, distinctive, His, unmoulded by time, uneroded by compromise, unmarred by qualification and synthesis, like bread mixed with blood or dirt, and so act,  loving your enemies indeed, but NEVER joining with them in principle or practice, in their contrary ways. You must be fair to all, but join in deed, word and spirit only with those who are His, and thus keep His words. It is not enough to cite His words; their tang should make them felt, and with their energy one should always speak distinctively as a Christian, though scorpions, or loss of votes, be the result. 

THE SET TIME - Mark 1:15

When Christ Himself came to His ministry, after being 40 days in the wilderness, fasting and with wild beasts, tempted, choosing aright, He came out declaring that "the set time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel," (Mark 1:15).

There are many words designating time in Greek, but the one here chosen has a special force (kairos). It may be rendered as "a fixed and definite time, the time when things are brought to crisis, the decisive epoch waited for".

It was in fact that set time given by Daniel. Just as Jeremiah declared to Judah there would be 70 years of Babylonian exile for its sins, so Daniel in 9:24ff. said there would be times measured in sevens for each one, till Christ the Messiah died, being cut off, with nothing left for Him. As in Isaiah 53:1-6, this was because on Him would be laid the sins of all restored by Him. Thus we now had seven league boots,  and history was to be seen in 69 of these groups of 7 years: then would the Messiah come.

That 483 years leads (as in Christ, the Citadel Ch. 2), to a date of approximately AD 26. In the middle of the remaining time (as there were 70 groups of 7, there was one left, and this 'midst' then meant three and one half years later, half of seven - and that space in fact appears the time of Christ's  actual ministry), the sacrifices would cease. Indeed as Christ died, the very veil of the temple was torn asunder (Matthew 27:51), ending the divine authorisation for temple sacrifice, because of the final sacrifice in ONE PERSON, for ALL TIME, in Jesus the Christ (Hebrew 7-10). The 70 lots of seven given by Daniel, these had a starting point: they were set from the time of the command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, so enabling the dating of Christ's coming.

PART II

HIS WORK

We have been looking at the eating of the word of God, from the words of the prophet Ezekiel Chs. 2-3. In the process, we have focussed the ultimate and living word of God, Jesus Christ, who so far from disdaining propositions and verbal units,  set His seal to the full to the most minute degree of all predicted by the Old Testament prophets. For His part,  we saw, His works were categorical, unique, possible only from the power of God, and as He worked, He claimed the closest possible affinity with God as His Father, and eternity with and by Him.

There was to be an  APPOINTED TIME, when as in Daniel 9, He would come, and this is calculable to 26 A.D., given some months, and for the ending of sacrificial authority, place and portent, some three and one half years later, as occurred after His ministry of about that length. Then the curtain to the Holy of Holies in the temple was rent asunder by invisible hands, and after the three days Christ so often  stressed before resurrection, He entered the earth as raised from the dead, with no human intervention, and sent His Spirit, promised as in  Luke 24, apparent as in Acts 2.

Let us consider it more graphically at this level.  Thus just as He knew that the APPOINTED TIME, when things were brought to crisis, the KAIROS had come, so also Christ acted with unique and disturbing power, not to clamour but to heal, speak and proclaim,  deeds and words married.  Firstly, He made Himself ready in the temptation; then He ANNOUNCED the SET TIME had come. Thirdly,  He demonstrated it in His power and vast healings which set the nation alight, as did His words and His dynamic in all to which He was sent, fulfilling all the specifications made for the Messiah in the Old Testament prophets (whom, amazingly, despite his rejection of Christ as Lord, Muhammad deems people sent from God! a real misled muddle in that prophet!).

Thus not only had the set time come, as Christ announced, but He SHOWED that it had done so in power, in sacrifice and in service. In declaring the kingdom of God was at hand, He was announcing the new epoch where the Gospel would indeed be preached to the poor (Isaiah 61). The scope remaining for the exhibition of God Almighty on earth, would now know no change, till judgment (cf. John 5:19ff., Acts 17:31):  for it would be of Him, and from Him, set at nought though He was. HIS, as Daniel declared, is the Kingdom which does not fail or end (Daniel 7:25), unlike all the others; and to Him will all nations bow (Daniel 7:13-14).In this, it is categorically unlike all other empires and kingdoms.

He has come to save; He will come to judge (Acts 17:31). In the meantime, however, He must not be set at nought by any Christian, be he leader or other, nor must any congratulate what sets Him at nought, in this crucial feature, that it removes His authenticity, revokes His testimony, alters His word or makes a new 'Christ' who has nothing in history: one who issues from the mind of someone 600 or so years later, or from any other mind of today, a season abounding as Christ predicted, with false prophets (Matthew 24:24). Just as such errors are vast, so is any other meander from the SET TIME OF CHRIST. The kingdom is at hand, has no further events before it is consummated, is in His name, and HE has bought the pardon which brings one freely within it (Matthew 20:28). There is no other way in, on or out! (Acts 4:11-12), though all the world is seeking something synthetic, or false, untested, unproven, the word of man. Of all of this beware! (Acts 20:28-32).

THIS, the word of God, and not another, it  must be chewed, meditated on and realised to the uttermost. It must be appreciated, for by Him, we who are His, LIVE. In the Communion, He, the living and eternal word of God, is symbolically eaten, taken intimately with one's person: He broken as bread, on sin's account, we with the broken heart.

OTHER WORKS FROM THE RESTLESS SEAS OF SEDITION

Whatever is bound to run this world is going to have travesty and not truth, with the sole exception of its Maker, since it is He who quite distinctly has stated His intention, when the preludes are done, and the freedoms are consummated, as in Psalm 2, 67, 68, 72, 82:8, 86:8-10, 96:10,13, 98:9, 110:6, 102:20-22, 145:12-13,21. His coming just rule with power in His own name, as Lord God and revealed  Creator, in the Bible, is seen in Psalm 145:19-21, 98:9, 76:8-12, 72:12-15, 67:4, 45:5-7, 18:26-27,43-44, 9:8-10, 2:8-12. His compassionate rule to come is found in 22:25-27, 45:4, 72:13, 76:9, 82:4 and 8, 145:17-21, 102:20-22. His overwhelming power is securing is found in such places as Micah 7, Deuteronomy 32, II Thessalonians 1, Revelation 19, Habakkuk 3, Isaiah 59, 66 and Daniel 7.

Communism, Islam and Romanism have over history been a threesome of intimate similarity in the use of force where matters of faith are concerned (cf. *2 of Possess Your Possessions Vol. VI, Ch. 1,SMR pp. 911ff., 1032-1088H, 971-972, More Marvels ... Ch. 4, Divine Agenda Ch. 6).  Each has possessed, controlled or manipulated much of Europe in its day; each claims hegemony for itself, and actively seeks it in this world, the most obvious ground of its operations and desire for control. None gives ground for such claims, or has right, whichever of the threesome is in view, nor has any what stands up to rationality: all however have taken much EARTHLY physical ground in its terms, only to yield in whole or part when the inordinate desire is limited by what counters it. Much of Islam is now back to the terrorist phase of yore. It is all one, one mounting, then another, in surges of aspiration to control mankind, whether with Roman law, sharia law or brute State law.

 If you want history to be your horrid mentor, ignore it; if you despise the truth in Christ, find your new masters (Isaiah 26:13). If you want peace in truth and eternity, then walk with the One who rose from the dead and proved His power in prophecy and performance on this very earth. No one else has done anything like it. There is no competition. No head can successfully contravene it, but each heart must individually meet it, and find Christ. It is a matter of the heart, but the head cannot reasonably disagree.

Violence in matters of faith such as all three of these religions have widely practised, in terms of their universal rule aspirations  - cf. *2 above, Ancient Words ... Ch. 14, SMR pp. 50ff., 62ff. - is close to the lowest level of man, and by many apparently deemed the richest ore for crushing. It is now, let us face it,  this inordinate and very often religious violence which is being practised increasingly even in some democratic peoples in a different way. As to this, more humane in some elements, it is just as ghastly in effect! In such ways,  tasking or toying with the minds of the young is not merely tiresome, but tragic; and with those  somewhat older, it is pertinacious presumption. It is wrought by the very simple means of making some cultural  clique the mode, the rule for education or orientation, then applying this to what it likes to remove, assaulting it legally or financially, by suppression of free  speech. Fines, imprisonment, dismissal, all are freely used instead of freedom of speech.

Thus what has no logical ground, by legislative dragoons is enforced. Schools and colleges are a major field for this suppression,  repression and indoctrination by taxation's funds. Universities become a site for secondary infection, professional loss the simple guide to  conformity for the developing student or Lecturer. One has found this out personally, it is attested further in the Ben Stein disk, Expelled, and is rampant in many seminaries.

What of those younger ? Notwithstanding the turgid realities of the forceful three religions, there are other forms of vain philosophy, irrationally springing existence from nothing, the causeless  chatter of matter from  fairyland and the marvel of mind from mindless matter, the match of mind and creation from nowhere. A devilish kind of god can be added,  to taste. The fact that millions of children even in democracies are being force-fed illusion must begin to rank among the greatest atrocities the world has ever known, and it occurs in places like Australia and the USA. The closure of the mind in many universities then becomes the path to the confused folly which is often prelude to fall and failure, as is happening increasingly in a way often masked by parallel follies in other nations, which may elect to use religion direct, as with Islam, to indoctrinate at the governmental level.

The embroilments of such forces simply secures irreparable damage from misled energies and triumphal substitutions of force, direct or indirect, for truth. Often the media glory in it. Fear may bow to it. Pugnacious parades may destroy for it. or threaten to eliminate a nation for it, as in the pronouncement from Iran..  It is as it was to be (Matthew 24:24, II Peter 2). It will end as it was foretold (Revelation 19). While there is much more in the finale of confrontation between God and man, than this, there is assuredly no less!

(cf. TMR Ch. 8,

FREEDOM, THE NATION, THE INTERNET AND THE NEXT GENERATION,

Government Papers Composite).

 Is it any wonder that many formerly great nations are now in deep and murky trouble ? You cannot invent reality, and slave drive the minds of the young, inducing illusion, and expect peace. God is not mocked. As to those who have overtly used physical violence however to advance what they are pleased to call their 'faith' and done so in the stated interests of domination, that is in the domain of force and doctrine, the following from Beauty for Ashes, Ch. 4, *2 is added.

A pair of brothers brought up in the Islamic mode, now professors in Baptist areas, have interesting insights to share, as shown in New Life, June 20, pp. 10-11. Wanting to attain some balance of good over evil, in order to inherit paradise (always difficult to make eternal results depend on a fraction of a percentage!), they indicated that many seek the 'certainty' (as in the Koran) of paradise by death in battle. "Only one thing guarantees eternal security for a Muslim: Martyrdom after a declared war and jihad." Acknowledging that the term 'jihad' is not in the Koran, he notes that the concept is, and such quotations appear often enough in our own coverage.

In the June 27 issue of New Life, p. 8, there appears an extract from the Berean Call, which includes this: "It may be that {the leader concerned} has never read the many verses in the Koran condoning and commanding violence (especially for temporal and eternal rewards) and he simply was misinformed." As shown earlier on this site (cf. More Marvels... Ch. 4), such verses certainly appear, and they mount for this cause and that, in this context and in that. The crooning of Islamic leaders about Hussein of Iraq in Beirut, recently, and the strong words of non-repentance re terrorism from Egypt to Malaysia, at least trying to justify it, and the strong weaponry made available in terms of such Moslem incitements to Palestinians and others against Israel, in Teheran in 1991, and since: these things suggest the method of choice.

The god of choice being Allah who fails to exist, and the methods being as in the Koran, the results are as in history. Rome controverted and as far as possible, subverted Christianity notoriously, not only in doctrine, but in violence (John 18:36, SMR pp. 911ff., 946ff., 1032-1088H); but the Koran is similarly controverted and condemned by the concept of violence in the faith area of religion, as shown in detail through our reference above (More Marvels... Ch. 4, cf. Divine Agenda Ch. 6, Red Alert Ch. 10. *4), together with its lack of redemption (cf. It Bubbles … Ch. 9, Dastardly Dynamics … Ch. 1, SMR pp. 50ff., Highway to Hell, Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch. 8).

Again, it is interesting how Communism was notorious (cf. Solzhenitsyn's First Circle, One Day in the Life of Ivan Ivanisovich, Gulag Archipelago) for its effort to change minds by force; and Romanism's inquisition must have been primary data as to methodology for the same. Islam is in the same mould. Force and more force is a means of spreading! It is supposed to honour Allah, but it dishonours man and God alike (cf. SMR pp. 51ff., 65ff.).

Whatever is bound to run this world is going to have travesty and not truth, with the sole exception of its Maker, since it is He who quite distinctly has stated His intention, when the preludes are done, and the freedoms are consummated, as in Psalm 2, 67, 68, 72, 82:8, 86:8-10, 96:10,13, 98:9, 110:6, 102:20-22, 145:12-13,21. His coming just rule with power in His own name, as Lord God and revealed  Creator in the Bible, is seen in 145:19-21, 98:9, 76:8-12, 72:12-15, 67:4, 45:5-7, 18:26-27,43-44, 9:8-10, 2:8-12. His compassionate rule to come is found in 22:25-27, 45:4, 72:13, 76:9, 82:4 and 8, 145:17-21, 102:20-22. His overwhelming power is securing is found in such places as Micah 7, Deuteronomy 32, II Thessalonians 1, Revelation 19, Habakkuk 3, Isaiah 59, 66 and Daniel 7.

Trying to invest the earth with some force-related dogma on world supremacy for some -ism, from false and  unverified prophet or philosophy, desire, dynamic, is not only fated to doom (unless a short time to exhibit the depth of the folly be deemed 'success' before eternal damnation), but irrational. FAITH means trust, conviction, assurance so that one commits oneself from the heart and with the mind.  Mindless doctrines cannot attain to it; force cannot substitute for it or engage it. It is as irrelevant as force in love. You MAY secure submission, but never love. So in faith: you may secure the movements of the tongue saying 'yes', but the heart is not subject to nut-crackers. You may break it, but not make it.

When it comes to the WORD, eat it, then, the word of God, ruminate, cogitate, meditate,  ingest, digest and apply with joy. Realise the extraordinary privilege of being FREE to receive it, FREE to love it,  called in love, so that you may be quiet in pace. There IS joy in truth and peace in it, not least because He who IS the truth, being God, knows what He has made as none else either does or could, and is love as He has so often declared, shown through His prophets and  epitomised in the sacrificial love-gift of substitutionary atonement to bring man back to God FREELY, as many as come, in Jesus Christ.

 THE BAPTISM OF THE SPIRIT  - I Corinthians 12:13

Finally, let us realise that when Christ was once baptised, John the Baptist protested that it was he who should be baptised by Christ, not vice versa. However, the anointing of the priest was a solemn Old Testament practice (Numbers 8), and so it was done. The Holy Spirit like a dove anointed Him, while His Father spoke from heaven, identifying Him as His beloved Son. Indeed, in the transfiguration (Matthew 17), He was not only identified, but this was added from the Father: "HEAR HIM!"

In parallel, John the Baptist had indicated (Matthew 3:11) that though he baptised with water, the Messiah coming, would baptise with the Spirit. Thus is that confirming power and grace given.

It is God who does these things, not man. That is, the baptism that matters most is that noted in I Peter 3:21, that is the baptism which saves. It is no sprinkling externally with water (the form noted in Ezekiel 36:25, when Israel returns to the Lord and hence to the Gospel as in Galatians 1).It is not that; for it is not "the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ."

This is an inward washing making an inward cleanliness and a total cover for the soul and the spirit of man, through the realities of the atonement, and the power of the Lord in the heart of a person. Nor is this all. Thus the baptism of the Spirit of which John spoke, this was an advance total and ultimate on his own work of baptism for pardon from sin.  

Thus of Christ, John the Baptist attested this: "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world," (John 1:29). Here is the foundation, and through this comes the inward dynamic of salvation. What the power of God wrought on the cross, it applies in the Spirit (II Corinthians.  3:17-18). Thus  the power of God, the surging fire of renewal and purging, brings home the enlivening thrust of the very presence of God. It is this which is that confirming power and grace given, like energy from bread, sent from the Father by the Son (John 15:26), and this spiritual baptism as in I Corinthians 12:13, BRINGS ONE INTO THE BODY of Christ. Water washes. Fire seals. Christ keeps (Ephesians 1:11, II Timothy 1:12, I John 5:11-12, Romans 8:29-30). Here is glory to God!

As with other baptism, this baptism of the spirit is a code for coming into the covenant, but this time, expressed with life-giving power in the name of Christ. It is never specified as repetitive, as shown above, merely being a ONCE for all thing like water baptism; and there is none who is a Christian, who does not have the Spirit of God (Romans 8:9). It seals what the Cross accomplished (Ephesians 1:1-11).

This acknowledged, however, and fanciful multiplications displaced, let us rejoice that as the word is food, so the Spirit brings water (John 4:14, 7:37ff.). Thus is our thirst quenched because of Christ, balm applied by the Spirit, grace given with power to act. EAT the word of God: the Spirit strengthens you with might in the inner person, to apply it, and encouraging you, brings love, joy and peace.

No less does the Lord bring faithfulness, which all Christians must highly esteem, as that of Peter and John (Acts 3-4), in confronting misled priests with their false doctrine, with the courage of lions. In this, they did not wound, but themselves were whipped. WHO then suffered! Christ does not authorise violence against others in His name: this is left to those who, lacking truth, use force instead. He DID authorise truth, the word of God being preached, the flock rescued from delusion and lupine intrusion. Let us then be faithful also.

Rejoice therefore in the Lord, being steadfast and immovable, full of faith and His Spirit, forgiving but not forgetting whose you are: in the truth. STAND and remain standing. Eat the word of God and live by it, in Him whose it is.

NOTES

*1

See for example, the volume on Scientific Method in its logical setting:

SCIENTIFIC METHOD, SATANIC METHOD

AND THE MODEL OF SALVATION

*1A

 As discussed in The Kingdoms of This  World and the Kingdom of Christ Ch. 9,

 Everything is by nuance, by dream, by assumption, by construction without interface, constriction without cause, production without reason, so that floods of work are done in magnificent array, without any worker, contrivance without any contriver, art without any artist, one code to cover it, brilliant life to  express it, modelling as per maestro,  and existence enters with no ground or entry point, from nowhere to facilitate the ways of skill. That, it is not a tour de force, but a tour de fraud! Indeed, that this is precisely what we never find, and disobeying all reason, stands nakedly irrational as to base,  bankrupt  as  to empirics. Logically and practically, it has one standard assessment: it  does not go (cf. Causes, Alpha and Omega ... Ch. 2, SMR Ch. 5, pp.402ff., The gods of naturalism have no  go!  17, with  16, Lively Lessons in Spiritual Service ... Ch. 5, Red Alert Ch. 11, TMR Ch.    7).

How scientific is it to select the most jealously contrived anti-reality to explain the commonly observable ? If you want speed, do you look for a tortoise, if you want stupidity, do you look for the fox, or if you want wisdom, do you seek fit from a moron, or worse, from what lacks all understanding BY NATURE!

*2

See, SMR, TMR,

Deity and Design ... and

Light Dwells with the Lord's Christ, Who Answers Riddles, and Where He Is, Darkness Departs,

for example.

In terms of method: see at some length,

Bright Light Ch. 7, and more briefly

It Bubbles... Ch. 9, *1A.

For dissertation on apologetic method: see What is the Chaff to the Wheat! Chs.   3 and   4.

*2A

THE CAIRO SPEECH

compare The Unsearchable Riches of Jesus Christ Ch. 3

In his infamous Cairo speech - so not perhaps chiefly because of its views, as there expressed,  but because of a conflict and a contrast. Thus,  despite the plain indications that have been made both by focus on Church attendance and on the call to the command of the Bible, on the part of President Obama, who makes his claim to be personally a Christian, he  has yet said things as far from the biblical Christ and His message as it is possible to go. Indeed, despite that, in that very speech he declares in four bare words, "I am a Christian."

With this, come words of a syncretic, synthetic kind, code for a creeping paralysis of faith and a philosophic notion of total  rejection of the Biblical  statements. JESUS SAID, I AM ... THE TRUTH. He is also I AM THE WAY (John 14:6). Obama said:

This truth transcends nations and peoples, a belief that isn't new, that isn't black or white or brown, that isn't Christian or Muslim or Jew. It's a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization and that still beats in the hearts of billions around the world. It's a faith in other people. And it's what brought me here today.

To be sure, he prefaces this with these words:

.      There is one rule that lies at the heart of every religion,
        that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

If the faith which brought Obama to Cairo is the Second of the Commandments as defined by the person noted, namely Jesus Christ (Matthew 22:37ff.), and even  if it were to have the same place in the Koran, yet it is not only subordinate to the First and greatest commandment as defined by Jesus Christ, whose name is being used so shamefully, but it is defined by it. The place of the Chief of Staff is inferior to that of the Supreme Commander, and part of its definition is derived from the primacy of the latter. Similarly, if you wish to USE the Bible, and USE Jesus Christ, then this commandment, the second, is definable only in terms of the first. Without this, it is a fraud, being speciously absolute. Implicitly or explicitly, the first rules over all, and defines the second.

It is not co-ordinate, but gives a perspective which is never to be forgotten, except you wish to forget God, whose it is. It is not that you should not love your neighbour as yourself, but to qualify as Christian, you FIRST set yourself by His grace to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and in this light, proceed to the horizontal relationships. Forget that, state it or not, and you are snapping your fingers at God. It is He who says, "God is love" and as the I AM (John 8:58), it is His love, as HE loves, which is the one in view. A beast, a monster, an assassin, a murderer, a phoney politician, a people mover may all 'love' in some way to their own satisfaction. Where God is concerned, He shows what His love is both by how He defines it in His own terms repeatedly, and by what He has done through and with it. It is not something different: in citing HIS commands, one remembers both who HE IS, and what He has said.

It is epitomised in His sending ONLY ONE Christ to give ONLY ONE salvation which is ENTIRELY NECESSARY and discloses HIS love! (cf. I John 2-5, esp. 4:10,  Acts 4:11-12, Galatians 1:6-9).

Part of doing the First commandment, is to recognise the IDENTITY of the ONE to whom such  love is FIRST due. In the Bible it is as stated in the Bible, and as in Deuteronomy 4, 12, Proverbs 30:6, Revelation 22, you are not to add to it, not a word. It is the self-defined communication of the self-defining God, whose account of what He has done, and how,  and why is clear-cut and focuses  on the One with this distinctive life history shown as entered in the Bible, and no other.

To USE THAT name and attach it elsewhere is fraud,  precisely like that in forging a cheque. The name looks similar, but it is demonstrably not that of the one to whom it refers. To toy with the laws of physics is far more plausible than taking lightly what God has to declare in the Bible; for those may be wrongly formulated; but the Bible is self-declarative. He TELLS us the form and formulation. He has done this work Himself (I Corinthians 2:9-13).

In this book, the Bible, God who is One and as stated, chooses a nation, which is one and as stated and located, Israel, and sets its worship in one place (cf. SMR pp. 823ff.), and  requires a temple there for the practice of what He has specified as His requirement for worship. He promises the land to Israel and specifies that it will lose it if it practices chronic rebellion (Leviticus 26), but will unconditionally have it back when God sees fit (Hosea 1,  3, Ezekiel 36-39, including 39:13, Micah 7, I, Isaiah 66, Micah 4, Isaiah 2). Truly this is no glory to Israel (Isaiah 36:22), but it is stated to be to the glory of God  that it be so (Ezekiel 39:21ff., Micah 7:15ff., Micah 4 with Isaiah 2). It is not to the obliteration of other nations at all (Isaiah 19), but each goes to its place and that appointed to Israel in Genesis 17:7-8 is both clear and incontrovertible.

Another book might opine otherwise; the Bible designates this as the place.

More importantly - but the more important interprets rather than suppresses the less so - it is the religion of the Lord as in the Bible, with the appointed doctrine, worship and life, and fulfilments to come, one which is to be shown in the place of His choosing, for the latter helps to define the former because of the historical continuity. Further, the place is one which, in the last analysis and epoch, as in Zechariah 12, is to receive a transformation  in spiritual intent, as deep as  is crucifixion from glorification and resurrection; for it will be one where a Jewish people will once more worship the God who first revealed Himself to them. Instead of crying for crucifixion, in Zechariah 12, we find that they repent,  and look on Him, the Lord, whom they have pierced with a grievous lamentation of heart and change of mind and  testimony.

SO receiving Him, they wash in the fountain at Jerusalem. Yet it is this Lord who is the God who first called them (John 8:58, Ezekiel 35, Hosea 13:14), who as incarnate in the Messiah (Psalm 2, Acts 2:25ff., 4:23ff.) has shown to Israel and to the Gentiles in turn, who He is in this transfixing form.

To vary from Him, from Jesus Christ, to submerge Him into an icy sea of transoceanic mutability, to have this a religion found in the  cradle of civilization and which pulses in many religions, is to pervert and convert it. Christ and Christianity is not about BEING converted, moreover, but about conversion from the place of what is NOT in this self-same Jesus Christ,  to what He is,  as the head and founder and source and centre. It is  to CHRIST, and in particular Jesus Christ, who alone has died to pay for sin and bring reconciliation to God (Acts 4:11-12, Galatians 1:6-9). It is not the religion but the dissident soul which does not so receive Him, which is to be converted (cf. Matthew 18:1ff.)

Any other 'faith' , apostle, 'christ', 'gospel' is bogus and fraudulent and oppressive and cursed is he who so proclaims (Galatians 1, II Corinthians 11!). This is what the Bible actually says.

Now is the time to note another matter. It is always important in dealing with anyone's cheque or will or  words or works, to know WHAT HE SAYS, and to put this above what one thinks. That is the manner of INTERPRETATION.  WHAT IS SAID. If you contradict this, it is no more  interpretation and any effort to make it appear so is merely specious, the sort of thing which would make a lawyer dishonest and even dishonourable. To put yourself above other people's opinions is one thing;  to put your opinion above that of the person whose words you are 'interpreting' is another.

These things are not difficult to understand, nor do they require the acute to understand them. The 'truth' which brought Obama to  Cairo, by his own declaration, is what in the Bible is the second  of the commandments, and not the first and the chief. It cannot be without the FIRST commandment implicitly or explicitly in tow, yes more, in priority and precedence. This is impossible for the consistent Christian. The presence or power of the first commandment must with unqualified reality be understood and applied. If the first rule of life were to breathe, whether this is stated or implied, then if the second were to be clean, vain would be the cleanliness of a corpse.

The truth that brings you ANYWHERE, ANY TIME and in ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, is GOD who IS the truth, is Christ who IS the truth AND the way. He is not only what truth is but the way to it and for it and in it,  since they are identical (John 14:6). Cradles without the cradling of Christ in His mother's arms, these provide a cradling of a categorically different sort. They omit the criterion of WHOSE it is!

Anything less or other, such as a second echelon 'truth', one divorced or exempted from the FIRST, is a vagrancy, an arm  cut off,  an  ear sliced off and used indifferently from the heart. This is a divorce from the entirety of who God is, and in particular, from the core and centre of who He is. Moreover, for Obama, this faith is called a "faith in other people," which cannot even slightingly be reconciled with a faith in God, as Lord, who is to be obeyed, as in Ezekiel, whether people obey Him or resist Him. It is all one. It is to be said, stated, required, transmitted faithfully by the prophet, whether other people take it or reject it, love it or hate it. There it is, and it is no more subject to man's preferences than God Himself, whose it is (cf. Galatians 1: 10).

It is categorically and STATEDLY NOT what the people say, be they many or few, but what God says that matters, and frequently in the history of Israel, God has declared the difference to be categorical (cf. Jeremiah 7:9-13, Ezekiel 2-3, Isaiah 1. A faith which is able to be called a faith in other people is not rationally able to be called faith in Christ, since HE is not other people, but the source of people; and people vary almost to infinity in heart and mind and spirit and soul, in direction and application.

What if, however, one DOES just trust in people, this or that group, or all, as the populous geyser flows  ? FOR doing so, in one instance,  Israel lost its nation and  capital (that of Jeremiah) for 70 years (Jeremiah 25). It is not a recommended course even to use the name of the distinctive and unique and only living God, and then do something else, such as marry religions, equate or appoint them to a community of a religion which is belief in other people. It is with disgust that God tells Israel that according to its cities, so are its gods! (Jeremiah 2:28)

"But where are your gods that you hast made for yourself?
let them arise, if they can save you in the time of thy trouble:
for according to the number of your cities are your gods, O Judah."

What then of the omission of the stark, central, self-defined centre in His unique glory ? All you omit in this synthetic religion is the basis of it, the words for it, and make a crash course in singular semantics  to  marry Saviour by grace alone, and not so, the only begotten Son of God as Jesus Christ and not so (John  3:16 with 3:36), the Cross of Christ as that in which you must glory, through which you are  crucified to this world (Galatians 6:14), and not so. Here is the paramount and all-excluding Christian requirement; in Islam and all other religions, it is not so. Such a marriage of what and not is a what-not, and not God! (as in Deuteronomy 32:17-21).

This then becomes a not so comic comedy of errors. It is a new religion, and in this religion, not once but twice does Obama refer to the Koran sd 'the holy Koran'. This holiness that rejects the categorical imperative for  all mankind, faith in Jesus Christ, and not another, Jesus Christ who came in the flesh and not another (I John 1-5), as  found in the Koran as a depleted spectre. Here then is a holiness of complete aversion from the primary requirement concerning Christ, who has declared that not the smallest part of the law or prophets will perish till all is fulfilled. Here is Jesus Christ defaced, defiled, debarred from deity by the hand of one writing some  600 years later. The circumstantial historical evidence for this aggression is nil, an emptiness not there.

If then Obama wants another religion, it should not be called 'Christian', since it is an innovation and categorically disregards primary commands, finding love for the neighbour without the defined love source with His defined desires, character, ways and rule, and indeed in such a way as to enable gods of other desires and ways and wills to rule, or some one such. It could be called, Christianity plus, but in all integrity, it should then be Christianity-Plus-and-Minus: and then there would be clarity and perspicuity. It would be biblically a condemned religion, but it would be clear as to what it had in store for this world.

It would be at war with God, whose word, Jesus Christ, comes to deal with those who reject Him  as Son of God and Messiah, to judge the world (Psalm 2, Revelation 19,Acts 17:31), to be sure; but it would be a straightforward war, and not one of propaganda or confusion or whatever else makes one thing have the name of another.

We have been warned of false prophets plentifully in the Bible, notably in Jeremiah 23 and Matthew 7, Acts 20 and Jude, II Peter 2 and Ezekiel 14, as in the notorious case of the equivocating, self-preserving and self-advancing Balaam (Numbers 22ff., with Jude 11). Indeed, Jeremiah 23:20 tells us of this false prophet phenomenon, that towards the end of the Age, "you will consider it perfectly",  that is, to the uttermost point. Revelation 16:12ff.  tells us of the spirits of demons performing signs which "go out to the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty," and adds from the Lord:

"Behold, I am coming as thief.
Blessed is he who watches , and keeps his garments
lest he walk naked and they see his shame."

Revelation 19:20 gives something on the destiny of that false prophet.

It is not that he is chief, but a chieftain, very like Goebbels for Hitler. As the world is to be gathered for the religion of this world, a synthetic innovation to draw man together against the God of the Bible and Jesus Christ as sole judge, so is its religion at work. It is not easy to glue the diverse and contradictory parts, but fear or lust or madness can do it in some gobbledegook form. It would look like any other ludicrous self-contradiction, as comic as Mickey Mouse, as calamitous as a plague, taken as seriously as a medicine, but alas, it is not the medicine of immortality but the senega of shame.

What then  ? It is not that one does not pity those caught up in this, and seek to pray for them if  by any means any may repent (Jude 20ff.); and indeed the tragedy behind it all is profound. It is that one cannot for anything make 2 plus 2 to be 5.493874. You would need to change the definition just as for this conglomerate, you need to change God, which like two into one, won't go. Then you get splinters only. One has to face facts, and in the end,  as stated in Amos 4, there is one finale for such presumption:

"Prepare to meet your God."

Israel  at that time had to face that calamity, of God in judgment for a time (70 years); but now it is the world which is to face it as in Revelation 19. Be then prepared, and be merciful to yourself, any who reads, and ensure that be you President or pauper, yours is the peace which comes from having prepared, and in being prepared,  in the ONLY Christ of God, JESUS Christ, so that God forbid indeed that you should glory except in His cross, His sending, coming, crucifixion and resurrection which is married to it. There is no such cross of Calvary to be found elsewhere, the place of the transaction for salvation. Take it or leave it; but He came to take it, and it is not so hard by comparison to come to it, and STAY THERE, not as a fitful ocean wind that touches now this wave and now that. Rather, ABIDE in Him! (John 15). To use this imagery: Runaway sports amid the branches of the vine, cannot stay. Differently generated (cf. Matthew 15:13), they have another basis. They do not relate. They do not stay.

*3

That was at the Battle of Tours, where it lost to the Franks, 732 A.D..

On Islam, see the following.

More Marvels ... Ch.     4, esp.  *4, 

SMR   pp. 829ff. , 1080

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,

DVA    6, Highway to Hell
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,   7

Jesus Christ, Defaced,  Unfazed ... Ch.    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.

It must be fully realised that impartial investigation is not limited to science (cf.  The Defining Drama Ch. 2), just as it is often not found there, when some of its proponents,  as has often happened in history, become  enamoured with an ass,  as in  A Midsummer Night's Dream, the love potion for  some philosophical and monstrous dream  temporarily possessing them (cf. SMR pp. 199-200, 230, 234-237, 252A-L, Wake Up World ... Chs. 4-6 ). While there are many modes of investigation, nothing is to be left undone in assessing the internal harmony, the external reliability and the causative capacity of any alleged system, of whatever kind. That the Bible is beyond all  comparison in eminence in this is what is to be expected of the word of God (cf.   *1 and *2 aboive). Millenia require no arrest to its principles, man makes no dent in its declarations, nor does time erode its significance, as its words control the reality of history in our generation, no less than in the First Century (cf. SMR Chs. 8-9, The Pitter-Patter ... Ch.  4, The Highway of Holiness Ch. 10).

In science, religion or other themes, investigation must be orderly, rational, responsive to data found, humble before attestation, aware and beware of false logical formats and the powers of prejudice. For Christianity, such domain of truth is inherent, testability a theme in the Bible, integrity a requirement, its testimonies so assured on all fronts that it is pure joy to find that its revelation in Jesus Christ and the Bible, though outdistancing reason, meets its every requirement as nothing else does.  On this, see Deity and Design ... and Light Dwells with the Lord's Christ, Who Answers Riddles, and Where He Is, Darkness Departs, for example.