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CHAPTER 5
SHAFTS AND SHALLOWS OF MIND AND SPIRIT:
REMOVING IRRELEVANCE AND CONSIDERING CONVERGENCE
OF
COMPLEX CAUSES, FROM THE ETERNAL ORIGINAL,
AS ALSO FROM ORIGINALLY MINDED CREATIONS
THERE ARE NO SWEET NOTHINGS
How childish is the irrelevant reductionism of the blind! No ear for music, so it does not exist; no place for art, so it is just scribble, no thought for architecture, so it is mere stuff and sundry shape! What is the use of such cavalier obstructionism and bewildered, needless nescience, built on non-perception, incorrigible in what resembles nothing if it is not obsessive fixation.
Yet reality is not fixed, but fluent, with powers, regions, regimens, realities and the constructions of creativity.
A baby may be fascinated by its toes, and for all we know, may consider them items of marvel, objects of fluency, powers unimaginable, and if it were so disposed, might almost worship them, being incapable of the thoughts of causation, mobilisation, control, the considerations of integration and the realities of construction. However, we, we are not babes.
For constructions, you need what constructs; and for this, you need not merely the configuration conformity but the configuration conformer, and not merely this, but the directed dynamic to do it, to overlay on possibility, actuality, so that in seeking the product of thought and imagination and will, you intrude this artistry held in mind, this vision held in spirit, this power kept in thought, this knowledge of ideas and actualities, and vesting your contribution in the matrix, bring about the birth of your vision. Vision is not an aspect of matter, nor is matter an aspect of nothing. It is all form and law, power and direction, control and sequence, held in place by sustained imagination and vision, whether this be subsumed into measures of programmatic control, derived from thought and congealing it in dynamics, or direct. There is no substantial difference, at least in ultimate necessities for the case; for in the programmatic, there is the recognition of the routines which, having been imparted in the vigour of the vision as subsistence units (like the refrain in a poem or the theme of a symphony), may be set in ward, and caused to be repetitive.
In the mind of man, there is the vision, the vigour of the vision, and to this is brought the imagination which makes of what is not, what is, of what might be, what is to be, and plants on the plan, the production impact of thought, control, savour, concern, consideration, watchful apprehension of forces, their diligent direction, protection from error, inspection of results and adjustment as required. The thing is created, whether it be a pen, pencil or rocket.
Remove the information, and you remove all opportunity for the product. There is information in atoms, in DNA and in life, but it is not reversible. Resurrection is not a function of nature, of the natural, often programmatic forces which control so much as just described. There is information known to human intelligence, and even then, it has to have its point of entry into system so that the totality can live. Life is more than, far more than, but not less than information. For it to be, there is a multi-layered concourse of basic materials, bio-materials, bio-systems, material systems, configurations for character so that the entity may be describable in its various shafts of structure and thrusts of function, as likewise in its integral resultant of design, whether in life or in non-life.
We do such things, at the non-maestro level constantly, continually. There is the vision for the fact (to be demonstrated), for the structure (to be built), for the function (to be teased out of that structure), there is the knowledge to enable vision to become reality, figment to become fact, there is the power to enable the knowledge to be artfully applied, and there is the product. In all this, there is the concurrence of multiple causes in the construction of the consequence, the house, the novel, the pin, the golf-ball or whatever it may be which is not an adjunct to its basic atoms, but a use of them with information and power and thought and ideation and consideration, for the purpose in hand.
Here is seen the wedding of cause and effect, of multiple kinds of causation, each apt for its cosmos, realm, sphere, agency level of construction, with multiple kinds of effects, with artistry, elegance such as in fact found constantly in DNA and the Bible, where what is to be, comes to be, and what is to be, is specified that it may be verified in its prodigious singularity throughout all the earth, these two testable creations set for investigation by the creative thought and constrained and disciplinable mind of man.
We do not find non-cause with effect, the attributes of nothing, the fulfilment of what is not there in what is; but we do find the cause and effect, in all our creativity, in all our thought, whether whimsical, missing the point with playful sadness, ironic, missing it with sharp tongue and dulled min, or confrontational, missing it with the very powers required to confront in use while they are denied their spiritual savour and flavour. Logic is attempted as something to use, while its basis is denied; its validity is assumed, while grounds for it are dismissed, discipline is employed in thought, in speech, in production, to achieve an end, while it is denied to what uses it.
You have then man a by-product of nothing, or a product of begging the question, instituted by what is not there, from what is not to be gained except by smuggling amid all the talk, precisely all that is required, so that the powers being assumed, the product is gained only in the imagination. This occurs in nothing but confusion, which is highly unproductive. Such are the musings of the mental, when its resources are excluded, its basis is rescinded and its capacities are nullified in models which have no truth to achieve, find or invent, being mere occasions of various variables. Such are the assertions of what denies assertability, because truth lies dead at the sword of this model, unattainable and proclaimed in a hideous idiocy, at the systematic level, showing the depths of rage against the Lord, as in the case of Sennacherib, attested in Isaiah 36-37.
One of the ancient exemplars of ignoring agency and structure, the source of function and facility, logically and physically alike, is to be found in that Assyrian Empire of which Sennacherib was such a bombastic and thoughtless tyrant, seeking to extend the empire of his ruthless domain over facts as well as nations. His words ring false with just that impassioned folly which characterises all naturalism, all imagination which forgets the cause of things, and worships the consequence, along with its agency, whether man, nation or mankind. Let us hear Shalmaneser III, one of the earlier kings of this cruel and ruthless Assyrian Empire, ruminating in his inventive mind:
"the mighty king, king of the universe, the king without a rival, the autocrat,
the powerful one of the four regions of the world,
who shatters the might of the princes of the whole world,
who has smashed all his foes as pots"
(as noted in Unger's Bible Dictionary from Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, I, section 674 - D.D. Luckenbill).
Whilst humility is not the outstanding feature of this concourse of words, this trumpet to adorn the life of this noble lord, unlimited panache and ludicrous neglect of reality is. How be an autocrat when neither birth, features nor death time or manner is in your own control, and how be king of the universe when you do not even know all that is in it, or what it will do or when! this is exquisite nonsense, inflated ego, asinine proclamation of a ruined spirit. How rule when you do not rule your mind or when information from your tongue does not agree with data before your eyes!
Here is the very type of autonomous man, who nowadays, except in extreme pathological cases, is more inclined to use the human race as the base for these claims, or some processes deemed to occur, contrary to observation in every single occasion, within it. Here, he emptily claims, is what made me, holding up some process in what is made! Mental idolatry and logical nullity mix in marriage in such cases.
What is the base of the actual processes which ARE seen, which NEVER give free information from non-intelligence or provide means for it, since information is a logically honed, prepared and precise assemblage of meaningful items, becoming more so in aggregation, towards a direction in view. In addition, such information is true or false, a feature or a fidget, knowledgeable or ludicrous, differing from power and precision in this, that it may or may not be knowledgeable; and truth continues to rule despite any fool.
As then the complex and meaningful contributory causes operate, being duly synchronised, synthesised, strategically arranged and effectually organised, since a concourse of informative features causeless does not come, and without intelligence in the cause declines to evidence either itself or any mode, the result of such a cause appears, whether it be all natural phenomena, a universe, or a pin, depending on the power and purvey of the creator in view. It comes from due cause, and will not do so, any more than anything else, including matter, whether it be this, or thought and drive, purpose, ideation and comprehension, indeed, the very capacity for comprehension, whether or not it be rightly used (cf. Causes and Predestination and Freewill Section 4, SMR Ch. 5).
As this creative work is done, with rigorous discipline, being directed, and before that made dirigible so that this may be directed, designed for outcome, integrated in input correlative to that outcome, and directional in dynamic, as also equipped with detailed data of input for the expression of thought and the fulfilment of vision in specifics: so do the products of man and God come into being.
There is no sleight of hand. Man can operate in the realms attributed to Him by a prior creation, when he was himself created; and God acts in that prior creation, and is eternal, since firstly, the alternative course, nothing, whether admitted or implied, is definitionally ineffectual, and secondly, we as the human race, have been effectually constructed, to the point that we are here. God being adequate, the results occur. If He were not so, His information would fail*1, the synthesis of causes would be mere wordiness and the results would preclude rather than include our race.
The alternative to all of this, a causeless world which is not there in the first place, since it requires information and input of structure and correlative function, space, time and life, and so equivalent to nothing, simply won't do (anything!).
Faced with God, man blights (himself, his world, other cities, nations, ideas), and bites (his life, his environment, his competitors in collusion and confusion against God), cites (other gods which do not evidence themselves, powers dependent on the creative facilities of man, mere constructed gods who do attest themselves, ignores what gave him face and function (cf. SMR, TMR and LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST WHO ANSWERS RIDDLES AND WHERE HE IS, DARKNESS DEPARTS), or simply skites of his powers and ignores their necessary source: and of course, the judgment comes at last, just as it sits like rust on an old car, when it has quite finished its use of the productive equipment with which it was dowered in the factory of its creation.
Mankind's frequently found nimbleness in excusing his vile conduct becomes a cause in turn, for the devastation of the planet, of its environment, both social and psychic, both physical and moral, mental and spiritual, and his resultant disorders vex his peace, and now threaten his very existence, which is precisely what one would expect when nothing is the presumptive basis, and not at all nothing is the outcome of such confusion! Nothing comes from nothing, but anything but sweet nothings comes from the desecration of creation, roistering arrogance visited on the children of the race, individually spoiled, ruined, cajoled into organised and systematic incomprehension, larded with pride, empty of wit, without wisdom. Cause and effect continue to operate till judgment comes in the end; as to all illusion, and contempt; as most readily for all confusion; and abasement arises like a crowd of stinging gnats, to all pride.
As to man, his functionalities are known by what they do, visible to the ocular equipment or not, it is immaterial; but what is material is the array of grace, peaceableness, truth and fulfilment, nobility of heart, sacrificial love, the understanding heart, the spirit with meaning not vested in its incognito self, but from its source, the testimony of evidence in all domains, and the verification and validity of what remains past all criticism (cf. SMR Chs. 3, 5, 8). What was eternal from the first, always there because nothing comes from nothing, always adequate, since inadequacy by definition doesn't accomplish, 'stays eternal to the last, and what seeks to mimic this without the relevant powers, is as butterfly wings, held up as a marvel, and blown away in the wind.
THERE ARE MARVELLOUS REGIONS, REGIMENS AND REALITIES
It is well to remember the realities which are woven into the seamless robe of what man is.
This is done in different emphases, as in
Repent or Perish Ch. 7,
Glory, Vainglory and Goodness Chs. 1, 2, Grand Biblical Perspectives Ch. 7,
Sums, Summits and in Sum Ch. 11
SMR 332G-H
In such extensive listings as these are revealed the operational felicities vested in man, indeed SOME of them, and they are enormously numerous, as these presentations attest. The hoodwinking of this blinking race, as much of it is more and more characterisably becoming, into imagining (with an invisible imaginative power) that what is invisible is not real, like thought, conviction, courage, distaste, fascination, as shown in It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, is like imagining that only my little toeies goie! on the part of some blathering or blithering or delightfully playful child (depending on the considerations in view).
What then of the morbid fascination with matter on the part of the invisible cognitive power of man, when matter is but a primary plaything, work-horse, unit, systematic contrivance (depending on what your purpose is in the contemplation), refusing to be aggregated with that diligently difficult to find anti-matter, desired by thoughtful vacuity occurring in the human mind (Dig Deeper ... Ch. 1, Lively Lessons in Spiritual Service Ch. 5)? It is not energy, the capacity to do work, but what HAS it which is in view; and matter is not made from it, refusing the anti-matter requirement, but with it and for it, as is much else. This fascination with little toys like matter on the part of man, like children with parts of their own bodies as they play in infancy, is not only ludicrous, but beside the point. Actual functionalities, not desired reductions, must be faced; they act, were made and make!
When political action based on such anti-causal conundrums grows great, as with Shalmaneser III, Sennacherib and people like Stalin and Mao, the final Darwin and his accomplices in later days, then the syndrome of spiritual obfuscation can result. This it can do quite naturally, indeed in the MOST natural way, in the destruction of millions of human bodies in the baneful and ludicrous idea that life is some sort of comic tragedy, in which you do what you have to do for your city, tribe, race or the human race, and casting aside all thought of thought, just use force. To be sure, it IS forceful, but forgetful. This Stalin-Mao-Syndrome, or Hitleresque Hiatus, and all like it, is the perfectly consistent outcome of the confused concept that to get, you postulate a nature which doesn't create information, making things naughtily, and then requiring you for everybody's good (whatever that is, in such a model, an import of some kind) to do nasty things for progress (to whatever direction this is to be assumed in this most monumentally unscientific of all philosophic scams).
Even Stephen Gould in his Wonderful Life, saw beyond that, although naturally enough, he ended in confused rhetoric getting nowhere for no reason, but being there anyway (cf. Wake Up World! especially Ch. 6). It is not lack of verbal power or intellectual brilliance which causes all these ideational jolts and logical jilts, such as those to be found in the tortuous writings at this level, of Gould, but the necessary result of not knowing your Creator, Since this is foundational to all logic and rational thought, it necessarily excludes consistent logic, enforceable rationality, and must end where it does, in confusion, contradictory propositions, self-contradiction, anomaly, antilogy and antilogism (cf. Deity and Design ... Ch. 8, Predestination and Freewill Section 4, Repent or Perish Ch. 7).
Thus the Stalin-Mao-Syndrome, slaughterer alike of logic and man, whether he play the logician or not, do not represent occasional madnesses, but mere peaks of human misology;. Such is the strength of the disease, that it not only breeds death and decease for innumerable battered bodies, by-product of battering thought, belittling truth in confusion, but also normally covers up its irrationality with arguments as miserable as the lot of the writhing bodies it desecrates*2 .
THERE ARE RUINS OF MAN, IN MAN, MANACLES IN PLACE OF MARVELS
These are matters of spiritual vagrancy, ruthless reductionism, there are voyeurs of what is not there, accomplices of confusion, obliterators of the obvious, with obfuscation of the light of logic and the character of law, inventors of cohesions not present as there are dreams of those who seek to unchain actuality even rom its visible reality, and make dreams of their own souls. Jeremiah told mankind some 2600 years ago, that this business of having ludicrous messages, delivered as if with divine authority, the work of false prophets, whatever kind of coat or smock they may wear, would become RIFE towards the end of the Age. It is! Such false prophets, declaring with an inane authority what they neither find nor know, have become like high priests of unreason, their talk unsustainable in informed argumentation, as shown in all but countless confrontations. Indeed in South Australia, the Government has consistently both ignored and thus declined challenge repeatedly, for such debate; but it continues to solicit folly from children, not even permitted to argue rationally in Class for their own protection.
What then of this vagrancy ? What of the philosophers and those scientists who occupy the same place, combining it illicitly with what they can see, awkwardly ? (cf. Scientific Method ...).
They represent adventures in the vague recesses of the droll, like divers, with flickering, artificial light groping in the bottom of the sea, or again, stars of engulfment, black holes of the Jeremiah 4 type, drawing in all, and compressing it to what cannot shed light, dreadful dynamics where misrule finds the reason and expression for its name. This may be as far from their intention as light from dark; but it is not intention which matters solely when you teach; it is also evidence and rationality and verifiability and comprehensive defensibility of what you say.
What therefore is the position increasingly for man with his various philosophic, educational, militaristic, chauvinistic chatter in the twenty first century ? More power produces more marks for this methodical and miasmic madness, more marring imprints as things are made delusively more attractive, until the prey is caught, as in the USSR, in China and by compulsion, in the Eastern Europe of not so long ago. This is what occurs when the dimness of irrational vision becomes the bright light of forcible compulsion, if not in interrogation rooms, then in the horror of stark day. It leads to man, moribund in mouth and spirit, moving to more explicit devil worship, glorifying power which kills but does not bring life, which crushes, but does not create beauty, life or freedom, all a part of the dismal whole he makes for himself, as such matters surge in the days of their popularity, and resurge in the day of their defeat. As he regresses, he serves in increasing numbers, empires of philosophic maladjustment, tentacular like the groping arms of the octopus, gloating in coverage, squeezing in the dark, assigning destiny while removing all grounds for it, making law while denying its necessary source, mouthing morals while laughing maniacally at their basis. Here is man made to the stature of a dwarf; and if he must be so reduced, then cutting him down may be required. It is not for another, if he does it himself!
As Christians do not use force in their religion (John 18:36), so the evil mounts; as man mars himself and his so rashly abused cosmos more and more, so the outcomes move towards that predicted NO GO region, when man is his own shame and shambles becomes his own prison, self-made as he is self-taught, declining in his decline, to hear the voice of his Maker (Matthew 24:22).
Nor is it only in the ostensible field of the agnostic, the atheistic, that such antics in antilogy occur; for in the creation of implicit and explicit little gods, things of the imagination just as the non-created creation is another, devices to produce law without it, logic without it, something from nothing, necessity from the pool of non-resource, there is no end. The gods end; but their prey mumbles, rumbles, stumbles, moans and exalts, from time to time, depending on the phase of the delusion.
For man thus to act as god, or god-creator, either affianced to some imagined non-Creator, non-Redeemer, defective godlet without power or understanding or design, or to some other product of deceased rationality, there is now an increasingly obvious trend for comfort, to ignore, twist or despise all past godly attainments of the human spirit. Reviews of educational history one found hard to come by, in an education course at a well-known University, so that one had to create one's own critique! The nobilities, sacrifices, love triumphant, the sanctity in which the stature of the design of man may be found and seen, these things become displaced memories, as mankind, hideously led as it forsakes the Lord of all truth and verification, moves on to his clear finale. What is that ?
The concentrate of confusion becomes vested in a new regulation royalty, mundane ruler, as to a substantial extent in the past, in Hitler, Stalin and Mao, with many earlier exemplars in history on a somewhat more limited scale. With an integration attempted by many an imperialist, with vastly increased power, we come quite simply to that final epiphany of what it is all about. In the end of the antagonism towards truth, the devil's messiah, the man of sin, the antichrist, dutifully appears. The Bible has long indicated this (cf. Daniel 7, II Thessalonians 1-2, Revelation 19-20, John 14:30). His work, like a bacterial infection amide a viral episode, completes the picture, making a display of in elemental mock-grandeur at last, parading his power like a coquette in her own domain.
History, like creation, has its time. It is not always at its climax when the actual deed is done. The invisible preliminaries, preludes move to their evidencing, and then it is done. World War I, then World War II, then the Cold War, then the Arab-Islamic war, all these happened or happen. The things do not loiter, but move to their causally induced and divinely supervised conclusions.
As to the quintessence of evil, so nearly presented to a sightless world already, in many misfits, some broader in impact that others in the last century, there comes to its final efflorescence, and then it is met, like the army of blaspheming and blasting Sennacherib in the days of Assyrian greatness, with devastation (II Thessalonians 1).
In the searchlight glare of the coming of the Lord, the Creator, the Redeemer, Jesus Christ (cf. SMR Ch. 6), whose offer has long been present for His spoiled and soiled creation, and in most ignored or despised or mocked or set aside or derided, the ashes of evil power finally rest; and for that, there is no resurrection, try as evil might (Revelation 20: 7ff.). After all, the universe as a gift by force to be acquired, it is quite a plum! For many, this has its points, even for those who cannot handle even their own lives and their own thoughts without the gaps and abysses of logic and truth, liability and death.
Those interested in hating God and finding treasures for nothing will find, however, that just as nothing was a mad irrationality, as the starting point, so is it for the end-point! They gain nothing but judgment. Truth is not manipulable nor creation subjectible to dreams. Liberty is a requisite for love; but power that corrupts and corrodes, being a misuse of liberty, meets its Maker in due time, when the lessons are visible for eternity.
THERE IS
REDEMPTION FOR MAN,
A REQUIRED RESOURCE FOR REASONABLE USE
It started with creativity and it ends with the judgment, with the desolation of the desecratory (cf. Daniel 9:27).
For all things there is reason; and for some redemption (Matthew 20:28). One hopes that the reader has made sure of his or her place in the realm of reason and righteousness, wisdom and truth, indeed in the Spirit of truth and knowledge and fear of the Lord, of wisdom and might in their conjunction (Isaiah 11); that thus has been found the Saviour and the salvation of the Creator, from whose reason, method and wisdom, vision and liberty all things have come; for it is not He but mankind who is remiss; and to fail to obtain remission is more than remiss, it is to miss altogether! (John 3:16,36). The Messiah, Jesus Christ has come, and time has come for the Gospel spread, and it has spread as foretold (Matthew 24:12); and the time comes for the finale.
Neither history, prophecy nor truth is dispensable. Ignore it, but it will not ignore you.
There is a time to reflect, and it is no intended reflection on those who do not reflect, to point out that this may lead you, in the mercies of your Maker, to find a repentance not to be repented of, a truth not to be departed from, the source of light to the universe, to the mind, to the heart, to the spirit of man, and the place of pardon where there is peace (Isaiah 48:17-22, 53:1-12, I Peter 2:21-25, II Corinthians 5:17-6:10)*3.
NOTES
See:
The Desire of the Nations Ch. 3, Epilogue,
Little Things Ch. 3 (esp. *3),
Beauty ... 4,
Dancers ... Chs. 3, 5,
Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed ... Ch. 4.Thy Word is Wonderful Ch. 5 .
See:
Aviary of Idolatry, Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch. 5,
News 37. 44, 69,
97 (the exploiters, the fanciful,
the Communists, the de-godders and the realities),
98,
News 150 - Taiwan,
The Grating Grandeur and Aggrandisement of Man,
and the Meekness of the Majestic Messiah Ch. 2Beauty for Ashes Ch. 6
(and Hong Kong, and the movement of nations in the last century a concern),
Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch. 8;
SMR pp. 925ff., 971-972;
Beauty of Holiness Ch. 3
(war and force, rising downwards, Tiananmen and truth),
Ch. 4 (liberty, Tiananmen, worship and its direction in time, its terms and code of truth);
History, Review and Overview Ch. 1,
jImpossible to Men, Open to God Ch. 5See also Lord of Life Ch. 8.
See:
Sermon Luke 11-12 (2). It is provided below, where the final and ultimate, invariant criteria of association or otherwise with the Creator, in filial connection is displayed biblically. Unlike the DNA messaging, by which we are constructed physically, there is no mutative deterioration in the Bible, the word of God to our hearts, which having deteroriated spiritually, are in need of restoration, for which the Creator provides, as in DNA, by one way. This is in the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, unsurviving by arrangement and prediction, on this earth, in order to rupture death and provide reality at its source once more (Titus 2-3)..
AUSTRALIAN BIBLE CHURCH February 14, 2010
Continuing the work of the Australian Presbyterian Church (Union 1901),
following the Lord without Compromise
and the Bible without Qualification, by Faith
SHORT DIVISION NOW CAN SAVE LONG DIVISION LATER -
Part II: Luke 11:5-28, 12:35-48
with attention to some intervening verses
A SHORT DIVISION
Last Sunday, spent also in Luke, we saw something of earnestness, urgency, the spirit of necessity driving for home, the Lord's grace to such entreaty, and the wild folly of trying to impute cleansing from the devil, TO the devil, simply to make frothing assault on Christ, who snatched souls free from the power of the devil. We saw the opposite, when a man is cleared, but only superficially, and seven worse devils come back; and that the great thing is to abide in the Lord, know and keep His word, and so be blessed in securely based strength, not inflated squalor. It is not whose breast fed Him but whose heart follows Him that matters (Luke 11:28 cf. Matthew12:48-50).
Next we find the people, restless in the face of reality, seeking some sign, as if they had not already been wallowing in uniquely significant signs! (Luke 11:29-32). Christ speaks of Nineveh: there a rescued Jonah spoke, and they repented, but in Jerusalem, an empowered Christ speaks and they do NOT repent. Nineveh, He said, will rise up in judgment on this generation! In fact, faced with Christ, even Tyre would have repented if it had met with the works Christ did in places like Chorazin and Bethsaida (Matthew 11:21). Indeed, the only sign for those there querulously questioning, apart from and beyond all given in type already, this would be that of Jonah. Jesus is the Jonah of His own day, and much more; He would stagger His generation with a sign for all time.
In what respect was it similar to the sign of Jonah ? In this, that just as Jonah, as we read in the parallel passage in Matthew 12, was three days and nights hidden in the belly of a great fish, so Christ was going to be in the depths, in the heart of the earth for such a time. What is the meaning ? It is (as He declared in Matthew 16:21ff., in accord with John the Baptist's statement at the first - John 1:29), that He would be killed by the elders, chief priests and scribes and be raised on the third day. There is the parallel.
Why however three days and nights ? It is because on the Thursday night of His capture, He was in the heart of the earth, in its heat and intensity, immersed in its depths of horror, punched, clouted, mocked, dragooned, during the night of the trial, and much more at the hands of Pilate and his rough-handed men (Luke 22:63ff., John 19:1-4, Mark 15:12-20).
There was the intensity of the hatred given physical form, verbal twisting and grossly unfair expression, so that the One who had made man, the Logos, was being rendered physically a mutilation by-product of man's hate of his Maker, as, for that matter, were the hearts of those who afflicted Him, for whom, nevertheless, He sought divine pity, as they did not know what they were doing!
After that night in the heart of the earth, in the ruinous depths of fallen man's subterranean horror, He would be killed in the day, put away to the tomb, and after three nights and days, so recorded, Sunday morning the third day, raise His physical body, rebuild His temple as promised, that very body which was destroyed (John 2:19-21).
He was like Jonah, but far more categorically, raised up. With Jonah, it was from impending death, with Him, from three days with His body among the dead. Not potential drowning but actual death would be the sign, in the light of the resurrection of that self-same nailed body, this prodigy among all escapes. It was not someone else who was raised up, it was not some other body, for man has but one body (Hebrews 2), and God became man; but it was He, the One who spoke, who as such bore these criminal assaults, who was put down, and who likewise who would be raised up from the dead with which those frantic in misplaced fury, had placed Him.
You do not raise up a spirit; it is up already. It was His body which was the sign to parallel and surpass that of Jonah, the more so in this, that in Psalm 16, allied to Psalm 22, it was explicitly declared that the dead body would not rot, and hence be raised. Spirits don't rot; bodies do.
The clearance was of the body, and hence Christ declared, "A spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have!" (Luke 24:39). It was HIS flesh that did not rot (Acts 2:31).
That is the elementary lesson lost on so many millions of spurious, spiritually intoxicated and furious deniers who like the priests, think they could obviate the concrete horror of having the One to whom they put paid, arise like a broadcasting speaker, to declare what had been done and what HE Himself would do. But then, as for Jerusalem, this coming and awesome destruction, He had declared, with tears for its woes, already (Luke 19:42ff., Matthew 23:37ff.). He would rise in 3 days; they would fall for centuries!
Thus there was, as there is, a dividing of the ways. Some crucified Him; some believed in Him; some would not believe in Him, seeking to dispense with His rising as He foretold (Luke 16:27-31, Matthew 28:17), as some destroy papers in the shredder: but they shredded their own souls.
The Church BECAME those who believed in Him, His bodily resurrection, His words, His actions, His life, His eternity and His sufficiency for man, as God sent to crusade for glory for man (Zechariah 2:6-8), first as Saviour, and then in power as King (as in Luke 24:25-26). To them were added those who shared this faith, even among the priests (Acts 6:7). It is all or nothing, to be full of light or emptied of it in darkness, as Christ displayed (Luke 11:33-35). One is filled with the radiant light of Christ or one is not. There is no mistiness. One comes where this is preached, presented, core and character, or one goes with the mob of miscreancy.
THE LONG DIVISION
Christ went on to bewail and condemn the religious lawyers, scribes (Luke 11:37ff.), telling them this, that their fathers killed the prophets and they built their tombs, part of the seething culture of unbelief, civilised, verbalised and tormented: it was then as now. On this generation there would come all the blood of those slain, He stressed. After all, this was an inheritance, not only to the third and fourth generation of those who continued to hate Him, as all too clearly shown in this frank, face to face encounter with their God, but over a long age of dabbling, dribbling and departing, and in so attacking the head, they summed up in one the work of an Age.
Thus this alas was true not only of that particular generation, which was to suffer utter desolation in some 40 years, when the Roman Empire ruined their land, but of the very race, to the extent that it kept to the paths of unbelief, and approved in disbelief, the work of this crucial generation in its own day. So it was to be, has been and in much, still is, though the signals are out with the return of Israel, for the great day of their emancipation as in Ezekiel 37 and Zechariah 12. Then, with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, there will be a huge turning to Christ in Israel, doubtless not unlike those vast and strenuous revival of the nineteenth century Britain and America, about which Dr Edwin Orr has written so much.
Thus there came the second great division in Israel, the former being that between Israel in the North, and Judah with the Temple in the South. This time it was the murderers of Christ party, on the one hand, and the Christians on the other, both Jewish, several apostles!
Some endorsed it, or did not leave the religion, immersed in corruption as Christ showed it to be, both in His words and in their deeds; some followed Christ, the essence, fountainhead and basis of their religion from the first, Himself Jehovah (Isaiah 45, Philippians 2), that God to whom all must bow and other than whom none could or can be found, verified, vindicated. This trinity, of which Christ is the word, who operates and on whom man operated, the resurrection being the practical and physical rebuttal of the change! is the ONE GOD, warrant against agnostics, atheists, liberal pseudo-Christians, State religionists, Judaism and cults based on myths or manufactured gods, as with Islam (SMR pp.1080ff.).
Just as there is ONE division in Israel, Christian and non-Christian, and Israel NOW is almost entirely NOT Christian, there even being questions of heavy limits and persecution in some ways of Christian outreach, so there is division in the world. It too has its pseudo-orthodox frauds, whether with idolatrous armies, or not, all relating to what is not God (Deuteronomy 32:15-21), whether in sects or the secular worship of fantasies (cf. 'Errors', The gods of naturalism have no go!). Division has occurred, and it moves like a cancer, stratifying unhealthy flesh in the body of religions among men, whereas that which has the power and the purity from God, appears in Christ. One is by Him invested or by myth infested. This is for millenia the norm (John 14:30 cf. Religion, Religiosity and Reception of Christ as Lord). You follow the clear-cut Christ channel to glory, faithful, or fail.
Whether in Israel or out of it, the challenge is the same: the Christ of history and of the Bible, whom God sent and divinely ensured in fairness was made available biblically to all, or NOT. That, it is quite simply, the OTHER way. That, it is numerous, and as with cancer cells in different locations manifesting themselves differently in different organs, it has this in common, that it is destructive of peace and content, threatening death to the race, just as cancer does to the individual. Yet it is not entirely to the race, since Christians are in remission, having had their sins remitted; but these have escaped (cf. Hebrews 2:1-4).
This division among men has been throughout all recorded history, from Eve on, the fundamental character of the departure being simply this, that the word of God, focussed in Christ, which He endorsed and history confirms as nothing else is or can be confirmed, is either received as it is, or not. Man worships the God who made him up, or makes up his gods. It is God who, trusted, is in charge on His own terms, or a substitute, a prepared proxy. It is in this, the same as in the Army. There are not two COs, nor is there room or scope for a plethora of voices. Opinions may be great; authority is in one.
When man is concerned, this can be bogus, self-important and strutting pretension; with God, it is fact and truth, essential for man far more than air for lungs or gravity for stability.
In Luke 11:37-53, you see in ancient Israel, just one generation before its temporary demise, the Lord's rebuke to what adds to and subtracts from His words (Luke 11:46, 42). They left out rigorous justice and care, basic to life, and added fictitious and hypocritical things such as, condemned by the prophets of old, would lead to their confrontation or even assassination Immorality was one and false, unsent words were another, as in Jeremiah 23, Matthew 23:24,28. It is so now as it was then. It is Christ's new man or man's new man! There is innovation in making new gods and men, or there is recognition of divine invariance. When man makes himself new, it is like a disassembled caterpillar, now a dead stick.
It is necessary, we find in Luke 12:8-21, as in 9:26, to recognise God. Thus, we find that if you confess Him (not some variant) before men, so will He confess you before His Father (cf. Romans 10:9), but if you do not, neither will He. It is the LORD'S Christ (Luke 2:26), however, who is to be confessed, not some confection of philosophers or neologians.
THE FINAL DIVISION
Thus in the finale, the division is categorically simple. It is IN Christ and Christ IN YOU (John 15), with enablement by the power of His Spirit, as you abide in His words and these in you (John 15:7); or it is something else which governs you: whether, yourself or your inwardly anointed appointee, whatever you elect in the not-God, NOT CHRIST, category. Luke 12: 35-53 shows the necessity, as in athletics, to be in constant training, zealous, spiritual, concerned, applied. This does not earn your place, since fruit does not make a good tree, but rather a good seed well planted (Matthew 15:13, 7:17ff., I Peter 1;23, 2:24) shows itself in its fruit, though in some cases, because of distortion and slander, few other than God may know it!
For bad servants (Luke 12:42-47), there are two types of punishment. One servant did not know, having not learned about what is on offer; and the other knew well, but failed to do it. The former is beaten, says Christ, with few stripes, the other with many. While this could mean that in hell, one is more writhing with guilt than the other, guilt foolishly not carried to the Saviour for remission, it could also mean that the one is rebuked but a little, for not using well what he had, whereas the other has interminable punishment. In the one case, there may possibly be some who find the Lord, having in ignorance never known the Gospel on earth (as in John 15:21-23 and I Peter 3), so that for them the confrontation is not terminal, but introductory, followed by repentance, as known to God before time was. With none is it chance: it is divine choice in foreknowledge framed in love, sought in truth, sealed by Him.
ALL stand ready to receive at last what was done in the flesh (II Corinthians 5:10), but for ALL, once more, there is no other resolution, no other answer, cover, escape than this, that Christ has died for them, and risen, claims them through faith. If any received one ha'pence worth of what is done in the flesh, all would be damned; for sin has NO place in God's eternity. The Gospel is the ONLY way to God, eternity the place of His foreknowledge and the mode of application of that same Gospel, His and His alone (Ephesians 1:4, Romans 8:29ff.).
Rejecting what is known, is fatal; yet the love of God is such that it is NOT immediately called fatal if it is not known (as in John 15:21ff.). If they had NOT heard His words and seen His works, HE states that they would not have had sin (that is, in context, fateful and final judgment). So we move with His words, seeing both love and justice in tandem. One thing is very certain here: there is NO remission for knowledgeable renegacy, and the latter has no further cover (John 3:19,36). Here the word on earth becomes the word in heaven (Luke 9:26,Romans 10:9).
Then the faithful, having shown reliability, being redeemed and alive in the Lord, Himself alive in them, are given their place for service in Him (Luke 12:44). In the end, there is no revision of the division, which God foreknew from the first, no alteration of or alternative to the Gospel of salvation through faith by grace without works, and no other Lamb for man to claim, but this same Jesus, the same today, yesterday and forever; nor is there other Lord, director, who must be obeyed. Found with Him, you are in the end, permanently divided from all that offends, just as you seek in the beginning of new life, to follow His instructions, avoiding both sin and false prophets like cancer and like army ants on parade. God be praised that He has made the Gospel so easy for man, so hard for Himself, its fruits so beautiful and its ways so dutiful.