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CHAPTER 4
THE CREATOR, THE DESIGNER, THE SAVIOUR,
THE HISTORIAN AND THE BEGINNING AND THE END
Freedom is a wonderful thing,
and the Lord has kept its meaning intact,
as we have just seen,
despite the virtual alcohol of sin and the scenarios of Satan,
that profound manipulator, and exploiter of sin's sullying spree in this race,
currently more and more moving to a resemblance
of such heightened splits amid errors,
and rampaging amidst delusions
as to resemble almost an army of the dead,
mysteriously vivified.
Freedom without love is like
air without oxygen,
like purity alloyed with profanity,
tenderness with tiresome truculence
or faithfulness to mere fixation.
As we draw to the close of this volume,
we would therefore do well to refurbish our minds with some of the most elementary,
yet necessary aspects of our lot, and outline of our actual position,
so often either bucolically mystified where clarity rules,
fantasised where fiction dooms and militarised where truth is made all but a memory,
that it provides what resembles a picture, but of what ?
It is like a rendering of some premature Altzheimer's disease, yet different in this,
that vigour is not diminished, and direction is what is lost, with understanding paralysed.
Yet this disease is not so much of the mind as of the heart, and that,
not of the organ of blood-pumping fame,
but the centre of the human soul, life and being.
Many in mumbling materialism have even lost sight of it, and site for it, having forgotten what they in fact are*1.
In particular, it is time to express once more concern about the flow of folly which is inhabiting Australia,
not so much as a challenge, but more like soldier ants,
swarming with ever increasing confidence to the devastation of this once hopeful nation.
GENESIS 1, EZEKIEL 1, JOHN 1, REVELATION 1
Now that Australia has set sail politically with a majority-of-one PM, who assigns to herself no religion, which implies no God, which is practical atheism, and the Constitution is being eyed by some enviously, as if jealous of the place assigned in its Preamble to Almighty God, it is well to see what it means quite simply, should the nation elect to smack the face of the glorious God of creation and salvation, orientation and strength who has in some measure protected this land, since although Christ as Saviour is not central in the Constitution, as least there is scope for that within it, and in the early days, Christianity had a very considerable recognition, just as it did in the Mother Country (gloriously not the fatherland, since fathers often use much authority, and this though not slight COULD have been far greater). There is not too much about one nation under God, or 'humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God,' in the present situation, as Australia shrugs its shoulders more and more; but there could be much less.
It is not for nothing that we are a cynosure for boat people and others with more money, for there is, in this country, less armed fight, social restraint in terms of authoritarian thrust, more productivity and more harmony than in many another land. Poor though our own performance undoubtedly in much of this is, there is yet much, derived from the constraints and teaching of a more Christian past, that has much appeal.
This may be lost in freedom of speech if an atheistic indifference to the propagation and preservation of the testimony of Jesus Christ is arrogantly and arrantly reduced by ludicrous Classification muddles, such as now threaten, which would seduce the Web to a socialised control unit, with fines or prison for offenders who dare to speak as the Bible does. Already Schools are increasingly required to teach the imaginations of Darwin, though his theory is long dead*2 and the evolutionary titans assail each other's ludicrous theories with an all too understandable sharpness; and the State routinely poisons in this way the waters of youth*3, in arrogant defiance both of truth and of Almighty God who constitutes the only possible and always verified truth according to the Bible. Yet to be led by one who has no place for Him, devoid of the domain, when the nation is statedly in such humble reliance on Him as a people means that the nation his changing from its initial basis in the most important of all matters, and that it will either re-affirm its commitment or devastate it, as if to tear all the towers of Melbourne and Sydney down, and start again on a foundation of air.
A nation can have standards and values and constitutive bases of one kind or another, and proceeds on these either with force to make it so, or sincerity to show it so. In this country, we do not use the former, most mercifully, in this domain, and we are to a vast extent losing the other. Thus what was the basis for blessing, explicitly in the Preamble to the Constitution would, if the trend continues, become the basis for due divine correction, shame for thanklessness. It is always one thing to be wrong and astray, another to leave what the light you have, and stray with the thrust of will. Like a family, a nation can have great vision or not; and any member can share it or not; but just as there is such a thing as a family, so a nation. If the leader of the family defaults, then the house is no more such as it was. If the leader of the greater house is electable, then in such election the nation may confirm, or otherwise, what it is about at this level, according to its statement.
You can have liberty*4 while you have standards, whatever those may be, except as now threatens, and in some parts is actualised, when you demand actual statements of allegiance to someone or something, conviction and persuasion, WHATEVER the person holds. Such is the situation in many examinations now, for you are often not asked for an evaluation in this field, but for a presentation of the case. If it is not the case, then you can be penalised to a vast extent for your daring to deface the grace of the authorities who know. As I was told, when lecturing, there are things not convenient to be said, and the testimony of truth with due respect for what is defensible and necessary for true coverage is not at all to the point! My own tongue does not interest itself in such travesties: for truth is always paramount in investigation. Civilisations have fallen for this, the heart moving from their standards, the results being sought and the causes ignored, despised, mocked at or simply relaxed while pleasures draw. Pre-eminence has thus become subservience.
Freedom, now eroded, in these fields in schools and colleges, and in many universities, is ready to be made reprehensible. SAY in such and such a context what will annoy, frustrate, upset, offend, grieve someone and you may be assaulted legally as a disturber of the peace, arouser of ancient hatreds, offender against ultimate sanctions imagined in some way. THEREFORE you become a political serf, a financial target or a prisoner for stating the truth. Already you can lose a professional career for it; the next step is poised to happen, and an atheist leader does little to make it appear less likely than it already was! The very Party concerned has been moving towards this electronic barrier*5. It will expose much when the question next arises.
Two world wars were costly; this special version of the Australian Cold War on the biblical Jesus Christ could dash their work very readily in much! Let us then consider the wonders of the Lord as found in Genesis 1, Ezekiel 1, John 1 and Revelation 1.
THE CREATOR
In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. In the Hebrew there is an intense alliteration in the first part of this, so that it comes as a rhythmic shock, with great impact, to hear it so announced. There go the commands for the heaven and the earth; there follows those for the earth in particular; then in verse 14 we move to the formulation of the already created heavens, with its purposes stressed in this concentration of form, for the heavens, as earlier for the earth, and the stars are here involved. The three steps proceed in a beautiful planned structure.
We see the masses of matter, the marvels of the earth, those of the functioning heavens and then those of life on earth in its major categories relating to man, set in the scenario of the term 'days' which introduces us to what we know in terminology, but did not know in history: it was in evening and morning days that this happened, correlative to our week, and God rested on the seventh. That ended the circuit, so that the rest was mere maintenance (with curse or miracle, from, time to time, as the case might require). We were instructed to use the same formula, 6 days of work, 1 of rest, and many millions are they who have profited by this provision of pity and grace (cf. Isaiah 58:13-14).
God has not abnegated this, neither abjured it nor renounced it; for until fulfilment, there is no speck left out of what He has ordained in the law and the prophets (Matthew 5:17-20), and salvation makes no change in creation. In fact, man is not yet fulfilled in resurrection, but continues as at creation: the shadows of things to come pass, but not the commands of creation (Colossians 2:16-17). The Lord of the Sabbath (Mark 2) has changed its day, but not its way, nor was it ever to deny emergency, but to allow rest.
Many are the efforts to show procession, change of nature in God or man; but the word of God is irrevocable, true from the start and to the end (Psalm 119). As for man, the most ancient seem like ourselves in form and footprint, and many are the dashes to pretence administered by such as Professor Oxnard and Lord Zuckerman, the former noting that there is scarcely a find which is not touted as a transition, but where are they, these wonders*6! Man continues without superman, and the litter on the littoral of the most ancient to the most modern times refuses to expand into testimony of failed attempts, all being fully operational, or transitional clarity, as if multiple systems were enabled to make grossly complex changes in perfect functional array.
On the contrary, for man, as for sin, the more it changes, the more it is the same; for God has shown enquiring man that there is in the non-coding DNA a large provision for control, information about information (information itself being never found in practice without the work of intelligence); and modifications within environmental changes are beautifully provided for. Things can be turned on, as it were, in the car of man, but they are there to BE turned on, and it is still ... a car.
It is because there IS a creator that there IS rest. Flustering non-verified concepts do nothing but make the mind of man sick, and create nothing. As Isaiah 26:3-4 declares:
"You will keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on You,
because he ruts in you.
Trust in the Lord forever, for in Yah, the Lord, is everlasting strength."
THE DESIGNER
In Ezekiel 1, we find the Designer*7. Here there are vast wheels, with inner wheels within them, and in these are eyes, and the wheels were related to wings in living creatures, and where they went the wheels with their eyes travelled too. Thus there is symbolic reference to the fact that it is a CREATURE which is made, that there are categories of creature, that each one has a series of contrivances for operation, and each one has programmatic provision for intelligence in design with practical outcomes. Each one can move and the equipment moves with it, and in the equipment are many eyes, sensors, mobilisation techniques, controls. SO it is in the marvel of divine brilliance, that the human body, brain and with this, the human person, the spirit of man is able to direct himself with all this on board, to effect that which comes to his mind*1 (cf. Dig Deeper, Higher Soar Ch. 2).
"Wherever the spirit wanted to go, they went, because there the spirit went;
and the wheels were lifted together with them,
for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels."
The spirit led, the means followed; the spirit decided, the structure followed. The spirit of man is his discursive, deciding, dreaming and resolving power, and for any man to forget this, is to be of no known address: LOST!
Yet beyond that, over all, sits the Lord of creation (Ezekiel 1:4ff.), whose design is here shown for His creation which, without Him is a mere intelligence product without intelligibility, and hence a fastidiously made mess. Such is man in the 21st century, as he wars to survive, and forgets the point of survival, uses the best equipment in the world, in material format, his own body, and breaks it like so many oceanic breakers writhing to the shore, in his inert follies and broken mind, wilfully corrupt, endlessly corruptive. Some even make a religion out of it, to kill and prevail for some religious or secular idea or other, from their own minds.
As a policy, it does not work, since the work of design which God made, is prepared for leading and purpose from the God who made it: without Him, it is like a Boeing 747, with no pilot, hangar or runway. It runs amok, as man is now doing lavishly in lordly fashion, often pretending he knows what he is doing, but ruining as he runs.
THE SAVIOUR
This is very wonderful; and God is more and not less than this; for far more than this, Creator and Designer of man and the universe around him. is He Himself, Maker of man and His other products, for creation or for censure (cf. Romans 8:17ff., Exodus 7ff.)
In John 1, we learn yet more: that back of all the work of intelligence and design, yes and creation itself, is one called the WORD, who was with God and who was God (as He is, since God does not change). In the Bible there is precisely ONE God (Ephesians 4:4, Isaiah 44-45), who created man and all things. This Word as in Philippians 2, has the status of God, and hence as in John 8:58 Christ declared that before Abraham existed, HE WAS, but He said it in the signature mode of Exodus 6:4,
"Before Abraham was, I am."
Christianity is built on this revelatory fact, just as creation is built from God. Not only was it built with intelligence, wisdom indeed (cf. Proverbs 8), but it was built by the Trinity, the Father who propounds, the Son who expounds and the Spirit who applies; and Father and Son, since in heaven there is no gender, are also Sender and Sent, and Speaker and Word.
Indeed in the DNA there are millions of words, as if 1000 volumes had been written of specification for man, of how he is to be made, and how the symbols are to be applied. The coding is complex, brilliant, miniaturied, now discovered to have a triple capacity to command in staggeringly clever format, enabling ready adaptation within the basic structure (hence the accurate word in the Bible, KINDS).
This Personal Expression of God, this living Word of God, better than any photograph, His exact likeness who does what He does in the same way (John 5:19ff., Hebrews 1), giving voice to His will, became man, and became a sacrifice for sin, and became tormented by the hatred of God by reckless, racking man, acting like driven wrack. Yet in the very midst of this hatred, He excelled in love, forgiving those receiving Him as the Word of Salvation, even seeking pardon for what they did WHILE they were doing it: crying out in agony and love in a cherishing mixture,
"Father, Forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."
Luke 23:34 shows that He kept on calling this out for a season, on the Cross. He calls still, though not still on the Cross, standing ready at the door as in Revelation 3, ready to enter and offering pardon from guilt, grace of living and a new life in His presence, despite the dumped past. There is, says Isaiah 43:10-11, NO SAVIOUR BUT GOD, and so this, the WORD OF GOD incarnate, 'made flesh', is found paying in Person the penalties of sin, and providing in Person the glories of restoration in reconciliation to God Himself (II Corinthians 5:17ff.).
THE HISTORIAN and
THE BEGINNING AND THE END
In Revelation 1 and 22, as in 4:11, we, we find out more about God, the Almighty, that He is the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End of all creation. This also we find, in 2:8, that this same unique name is given to Jesus Christ, the word of God incarnate (as in John 1:1-14). What then does this Word have to say in this book, called The Revelation of Jesus Christ, from its first words. Identifying Himself as the First and the Last, as He who was dead and now is alive for evermore ?
Jesus Christ tells John "the things that are and the things which take place after this." The entirety is hermetically sealed with the seal of God (Revelation 22:18-19); for just as the Gospel is sacrosanct, the prescription for the sin of man from the Great Physician of souls (Galatians 1), so is the history to come. For this historian is different from any other in this, that He tells not only what is the case, but what is to be the case, a future historian as some are historians of war in the past. Here however we see much of wars in the past, present and to come, and of blessing, peace and power from and in the Lord to appropriate, and the conditions of use of all that He has given.
Such a Holy Historian is priceless, just as such is the Holy Saviour! He indeed not only tells the first and the last, the beginning and the end, but IS it! (Revelation 22:12-17). In what way is this so ? It is in this: that there is no beginning without Him, and it is from His mind that the very possibility and then the actuality of the beginning comes. God speaks it, and the living and eternal Word of God, like a powerful executive on earth, but He is in heaven, causes it to be done, since His is the power to implement what is spoken.
On earth, some have much power to speak and do; in heaven to God belongs all power to speak and to do, as the Sender and Sent. It is the triune God Himself who is the Beginning and the End, and the Word of God in particular. The end ? without Him what end could there be but a jumble of worn-out equipment, in a collapsing world as its order, like that of an old car, wears out eventually, this sooner, that later (just as chimneys are all that are left in ruins, but these ARE left somewhat longer). What a hellish, a devastating and devastated situation that would be. However, He who is the beginning, the first, is also the last, so that it is at His word and idea, that the end comes. It was a staging before eternity, this world, a magnificent one; but the permanent house is yet to come when the trials and work is past (cf. II Corinthians 5:1ff., I Corinthians 15:50ff.).
Then this mortality must put on immortality! It is fine with me, for the love and longing for the God of beauty and peace and truth and reliability, of faithfulness and wisdom and creation and salvation is so intense that to put on the mode of living which becomes eternal in the heavens with Him is a glorious wonder; but to have it, being bodily esurrected as a child of God is far better yet. With such a Father, what a sonship! as I John 3:1ff. shows. Moreover He is love, so that in His intensity and immensity of power, is yet the tenderness of fatherhood, now that in heaven itself, the sad wraps of sin are things of the past because of His work as Saviour.
NOTES
See
Glory, Vainglory and Goodness Chs. 1, 2 and 3, Dig Deeper, Higher Soar ... Ch. 2.
1) Christ Jesus: the Wisdom and the Power of God Ch. 7
2) Little Things Ch. 5
3) It Bubbles ... Ch. 9
4) Repent or Perish Ch. 7
5) Christ Incomparable ... Ch. 2
6) SMR pp. 348ff.
7) Scaling the Heights ... Ch. 5
8) Deliverance from Disorientation Chs. 7 and 8
9) Swift Witness 6
10) Ancient Words and Modern Events Ch. 9
11) Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 13
12) History, Review and Overview Ch. 5
13) Scientific Method, Satanic Method and the Model of Salvation.
Further refer on spirit, and spirit of man:
Little Things Ch. 5; It Bubbles ... Ch. 9
Great Execrations ... Greater Grace Ch. 6 (man and autonomy, alone, in the nations),
Let God be God Ch. 2; Scaling the Heights Chs. 5, 6
(the nature of spirit, in man, and the work of the Spirit of God in both Testaments);REFLECTIONS ... Ch. 5 (survey of our world and its actual scope in spirit and other);
The Wit and Wisdom of the Word of God, the Bible True to Test Ch. 2;The Lights and Perfections in the Lord Chs. 8 - 9
SMR pp. 348ff., 1-70, 611ff., 620ff., Ch. 4, Sections 1-2
Lights and Perfections of the Lord Ch. 8.
See:
Dig Deeper, Higher Soar ... Ch. I, *1A,
Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch. 4 and Ch. 3,
Wake Up World! ... Chs. 6, with 4 and 5, SMR pp. 140ff..
See also: The gods of naturalism have no go!
See for example, TMR Ch. 8) and compare Beauty for Ashes Ch. 3.
See Journey to God or Fantasy's Flight to the Infernal Ch. 7.
1) Two matters must be carefully distinguished. Thus, given standards to which a country may be committed, as in the case of a Constitution, someone may positively and designedly seek to advance and advantage those who hold them, thus compromising equity for those who, in a free land, do not. On the other hand, given standards to which the country is committed, a leader or ruling party may expressly determine to uphold these - stanchions on the pier of operations but not requirements of agreement, or devaluers of liberty, EVEN IF it means loss, personal or Party-wise. This has long been regarded as noble, the preference for equity above personal gain or loss. Such standards of an internal character are what helps to make a country stable, and not seething.
Personal conviction is never required to be altered, evidence is never chained, preference is never the mandate for others; but principles of operation are to be kept, and where these include equity in desire for all, with an agreed sub-structure in kind, then the results duly accrue, depending on what that substructure is. There is no possible case in which there is no substructure, for even if the idea were that everybody could do anything any time for any reason, that IS the sub-structure, a total agnostic licence. If you don't want to live there, then instead of taking a boat there you might take a plane out of it. However, your own faith is not compromised if you are not required to show subservience to the ruling conditions; only your comfort and scope. It is when as now, things not only not demonstrable but demonstrably false are required for teaching or listening, without criticism or scope for rebuttal without institutional claims of culpability, that the case becomes increasingly one of only quasi-liberty.
╦╦╦╦╦╦╦
2) In fairness to the Australian people, while the trend noted is obvious, and its extent large, there is a question whether at the purely political level, it has endorsed an atheist leader. Let us be abstract, so that matters of detail are not in view, but only the case that exists if the empirical presentation be accurate. This helps clear thought.
Thus if a Party states what it wants to do, and people in a democratic country assign it so many votes, indicative of what the state of the nation relative to this group of objectives may be, and that Party fails to achieve a majority, then its entire plan and scope and nature is not given mandate, nor is its assemblage to be regarded as opted. If it then abandons important sections of its list of what it wants to do, for which voters gave consent, and in order to rule, for any reason, abandons some of these, or a major one, then it is not representing those people who voted for it any more, and so their wishes are diverted, not converted into action.
This then is NOT the will of the people, in this case, the Australian people, but a wilful diversification from it. If now the Party had been duly elected, and had proceeded to govern in the terms of reference given to the people, but later found that a huge error of judgment became apparent, either because of a false understanding or oncoming events, then there is a case for it making some change, with sensitivity to its not being contrary needlessly to the voted for case. YET, if the Party, not elected, and before given right to rule, CHANGES what it has in mind SO THAT IT MAY RULE, for whatever reason it may desire to do this, then there is not a representation of the will of the people. If then, there be an atheist leader, this is definitely not sanctioned by the people, who withheld that vote at large for the Party concerned, keeping it to the basic list offered. The list included of course the persons AND the program, both.
Thus while on the brink of vast change, in this case, if this be what has occurred, then the Australian people may not be represented by this kind of change, but misrepresented. The importance of this, to the extent it is applicable in 2010, for our spiritual purposes is this: that in this case ungodliness has NOT been elected, per leader for that part, at all. It has been rather resurrected from a grave of rejection, by a change of program. Even so, the warning is clear: the way of this nation is that of a peril unperceived, because of a dulling of perspectives, a confusion of imperatives with operating preference, and its alteration cannot be without result. Should another opportunity for the will of the people to be more accurately ascertained, it is to be hoped for the sake of the nation, that it will avoid further movement off the constitutional rails, rather than change the rails, and find a very different destination.
See also: Possess Your Possessions Vol. 5, Ch. 9: at these sites, on this topic and theme.
See Freedom, The Nation, The Internet and the Next Generation.
See for example:
SMR pp. 204-207.
More broadly, consult The gods of naturalism have no go!