W W W W  World Wide Web Witness Inc.  Home Page    Contents Page for Volume  What is New

CHAPTER 10

HAVE A LITTLE SHUT-EYE ?

BUT DON'T BLAME THE LIGHT

FOR THE DARKNESS YOU SEE!

Talking about gods and goads:
is not the same as finding or serving the God of creations

God has said many things. For an absolute innovation, why not let the people listen!

Are they listening in Iraq ? Are they listening there, with its new Shi'ite efforts with Hussein and the USA gone, to make things tough for Sunnis, who it is alleged by some, are feeling quite explosive about it, and in those territories, this seems often to be take quite literally ? Perhaps some are, if they are permitted to live.

Are they listening to what He has to say, while the Koran is praised, despite its centuries-after-Christ attempt to make a new Christ, attempting to level Him somewhere a little above or below ground level, in the caricature of His life and history which they unfolded through a man who had visions ? Listening where ? Why in the USA, by Bush a little, who seems to have been selective in his reading, and by Obama a lot, though he claims not only to be a Church-goer, though one may ask to what church has he been: and this was, during the election, a highly pertinent question, perhaps now cleared up a little, but the main point, not a lot. The book of defamation of Jesus the Christ, called the Koran, he named holy; and the religion related he elevated to no small height. Never would the USA war on it. What if, like Nazi Germany, the religion decided to make subservience to its latest thought mandatory, by bombing places in New York, not once, but often ?

How can you NOT war where somebody has a grievance or imagines a greatness, whichever, and would like you to submit for some reason or other, to this idea! It is not uncommon in history, and people plot for "a vain thing" as the Bible puts it in Psalm 2! Of course there are branches of a religion; but it is remarkable how the generics can stick, whether in the ludicrous relationship of the USA and Pakistan, after all a nation highly Moslem, or in Indonesia or Iran, when the desire is to quell some of the more flamboyant aspects of the Moslem religion in terrorist areas or domains. The failure to transcend religion for other reasons, to have a meaningfully secular State, or at least one not devoted in practice to the greatness of the god whom Muhammad invented so late in history (about 2000 years after the start of the testified covenant with Abraham, and 6 centuries after Christ,  employing parts of Jewish and Christian things, while attempting to subordinate both), was made dramatically plain. Europe was nearly over-run by its mere force, and though much of the Middle East was seized by the Allies,  after World War I, including Jerusalem, after General  Allenby's victories,  since World War II, perpetual spat has seemed to take the guiding reins of ever new Islamic movements in the area.

Whom was the USA seeking as number one target at the individual level, in recent years ? It has been reported that it was one, Osama bin Laden, whose body is declared to have been off-loaded at sea. Where was he living ? Why in monumental obviousness, very near to a major Pakistani military facility... It as SO near that it could seem  almost as though he were a mascot!

Did they have a lapse in leadership concentration then, a failure in routine military security measures, so that an enemy of the State, a leader of the terrorists who had invaded the USA and wrought massive destruction, could among other measures, be caught ? Do you fail to proceed against a fox living in your backyard in a wired off segment of it, next to the fowls ? Don't you notice at all ?

Mixed loyalties, and clashing objectives are never attractive. They can bring death to many who labour in the military for the USA in such places, only thus to be betrayed by elements of the power with ostensible connection, and for  long,   subsided by the USA!

It is time those who name Christ, at least, listened to the Bible, and those who are interested in truth watch what is happening, not only day by day, but word by word as the Bible unfolds the history which was to come, and is coming. It is time truth transcended political  ambition, convenience and subservience to this and that power  or consideration.

While sects sectionalise many in Christianity, from Rome on, and now proliferate in biblical terms, like weeds as foretold (Jeremiah 23:16-20, leading up to the return of Christ as in 23:5 which heralded it there, II Peter 2:1ff., Matthew 24:24), and unwarranted religions announce their place, and many follow, and leaders (at least to all appearance) fawn, and convenience seems to rule, it is a mêlée undesired.

It is well to return to the tested truth of Jesus the Christ, and for those who assert it, to implement it; and if you want

	to reject Him, nationally, politically, subtly, openly or diplomatically, or
	to subside in your testimony and make noises of ecumenism at a level which to be meaningful, makes mere subjectivity of all:

then it is well to consider what you are doing, and why, and with what result (Luke 9:26). Talking about Him and doing the opposite is not really approved.  After all, Judas only did one pivotal thing, at the top level, betraying Christ to another party, another group, who had an issue with Him, as do Moslems... however irrationally^*1.

Listening to the well-attested word of the living God

There is a word^*2 which above all, and contradistinct from all, is both demonstrably that of the demonstrable God, and subject to all tests, and is both verified and validated. It is called the Bible. There is a living expression of this same God, the Word of God, Jesus Christ, who has fulfilled the call of that written word, lived it, shown it, and unique among the denizens of history, has evidenced and attested with that word, for millenia describing what was to be, who He is.

In  doing so, He has  vindicated all that was written, while likewise adding His own words, from the same Father who sent Him, which history fulfils continually before our eyes. Israel for one, remains a stupendous fact, arrived like a mouse in the face of scores of well-nourished cats, all well-supplied with claws and a dribbling mouth, desiring meat, and often  saying so. As foretold, it has had almost incredible victories against vast odds, been troubled by many who interfere, been a problem to them and the time moves slowly into place,  like a camera being set up for a crucial picture, for the conversion to  come and the intervention of God to come^*3.

Its coverage of the crises, conditions, call for man, remedy, reasons and all in sovereign, divine direction on the one hand, not fiddling freedom but implementing it in awesome overall control (cf. Ezekiel 29:17-21, Isaiah 44-45), and on the other, the ultimate in love, is justly notorious even among His enemies,  and  glorious before His saints. It has naturally been a continual irritation to the godless, since its coming true jostles their nerves, annoys their consciences (where any tinge or tint is left, in the constant collisions with their Maker - as implied in Isaiah 57:15ff.) and destroys their irrationalities (cf. II  Corinthians 10:5), leaving only will in defiance.

In this Chapter, some of its provisions, often not grasped, are uncovered.

How can love judge ?

From  The Great Divide  Ch. 3.

His covenant would endure, His presence continue, His Spirit enable, till the end (as in Matthew 28:19-20). When it DOES come, it will take many by surprise which is His intention (Matthew 24:40-51, I Thessalonians 5:1ff.).

II Peter 3:9 tells us more: a thousand years in such a setting of the divine patience toward man, and His love, as this, is like a day, making it in that sense, two days so far! But the items on the agenda to warn us of NEAR approach (Luke 21:24-28)  are mounting up (Answers to  Questions Ch. 5). It has been no short spurt, and has extended, for God yearns to win more, and as we saw in Ch. 1 above, earnestly desires the liberation and restoration of mankind.

Yet the time comes, as in all exams. Thus the end is no meek and feeble thing, but being the judgment residual to man when Christ's bearing of sin is ignored, or rejected, it is so momentous that time is appointed and make large (but by no means endless) before He comes. Then not only is it to terminate the desolation, by desolating the desolator and his works. It is to consummate the consecration of His people, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to fulfil all residual prophecy, to dismiss and dispense at length with the very earth and heavens (Matthew 24:35), and lay down one in which, oh relief, dwells righteousness, and most importantly (Revelation 22), both Himself and His people, freer than air, more blessed than the purest mountain stream, not only regenerated, but resurrected, and better than repatriated, placed where He is, children of God.

When in patience, you are waiting to collect your child from school, that is one sort of waiting.  When you are preparing for your Master's Degree examinations, that is another sort. When you are courting, that is a third. Where, however,  personalities and races are involved in a question of the psychic, the moral, the will, their incitation to realisation, their rescue from their own pride and folly, from their perhaps remorseless offensiveness and carefully cherished sense of offence, then the bringing home  first of subsidiary judgments in the interim,  as stimulants to thought and stirs to repentance, before the final international assizes, then the case differs. Here indeed, the coverage is one of nations, of mankind ... and the term may be long! But not too long ... it has parameters and point, as things are hung out like washing, not only on the Siegfried Line, but on many another. It can be ... observed by the watchful eye!

Thus, when, as with Handel's Messiah music, you are dealing direct with inspiration by mastery, the time of waiting for the final production may be very short, weeks. When the Actor is God, and the power is infinite as is the result in its significance; when the subject is man, and there are many threads affecting the location of the human heart, then time may swell, as hearts may do, with courage, or with love.

Indeed, love which is longsuffering may indeed suffer long; and as II Peter 3:9 tells us, this is precisely what the Lord is showing towards us as a race; but to be longsuffering, though delicious as a morsel of personality, is not auspicious as a manner of life with the rebellious. As in Revelation 12, it can in due course lead to ludicrous revolt, to ruin all.

There is a term for rebellion. There is a term for the human race. It imagines itself almost eternal, has expectations which with (constantly mocked pseudo-knowledge) extend almost as far; but it can never, in its rampancy of corrupted and foreclosed cultures,  adjust to the fact that its past is relatively short and its judgment draws near with the patient but increasing thunder of an approaching express train! (See for example TMR Ch. 7 E, SMR Ch. 8, Answers to Questions Ch. 5, The Defining Drama Ch. 3). When then you come to the actual model of the Bible, irrelevant questions about undue delay,  vanish. Peter, from the very time of Christ on this earth, tells us of what may come to seem a long delay, but explains this in advance, so making just one more prophecy, this time, concerning time.

Thus there is not even a relevant question about how LONG this and that has been. There has been a relatively swift movement of freedom-creation, freedom abuse, judgments and the flow of mercy, reconstruction after the flood (cf. News 1), covenant forming and formulation, focus on the Saviour to come, adorned with glory and disadorned with the burden as sin-bearer for the redeemed. Not least, this was provided  to prevent any possibility of reasonable avoidance of His gift (Matthew 11:1-6). The attestations of it and for it mount to the skies, with precise prophecies about recognition of Him (including date of vile and sin-bearing, violent death as is Daniel 9, shown in The Christian Prescription Ch. 2, made centuries before), and then the fulfilment of the Messiah's own prophecies in the false christs and prophets, including those of the whole gamut of degrading and abrasive civilisation foci and follies (as in  SMR Chs. 8  -  9 in particular, with Answers to Questions Ch. 5), duly leading to the catastrophic judgments to come.

These predicted developments cumulatively are now beckoning in something at times like passion,with all ten fingers stretched out,  beckoning to what is to come, in the deadly perversions of human passion revelling in futile mating (fulfilling precisely the prognosis in Romans 1:17-32) and heartless killing alike (cf. Revelation 6 and its prediction, with Romans 1:17 and its outline, its prognosis now come to pass abundantly!). In fact, in terms of sexual misalliance, it covers the additional point that the WAY in which this is to be done is not to be shamefaced at all, but linked with APPROVAL of its being done (1:31), something now perilously close to formal institution in this rapidly swaying and swerving land of once more blessed Australia, kicking its heels as it sells the ground under its feet, both in mining and in morality.

Man is no small product. He bears with him, trillions of neurally based connections, which appear in each brain from billions of cells, and the blueprint for this most brilliant of all earthly designs (as defined by performance criteria - cf. Deity and Design ...    2), is even investigable logically by an esoteric part of it, that is - the human  mind, which resides in the free spirit of man. This can see and discern the modes of miniaturisation in the vast schema for the brain, the logical steps, the sequential innovations, the multitudinous organisation and the precision packaging of it all, the very source code investigable by reason and using it just as we do, in that investigation. Small wonder men used to glorify God for being the first in MAKING us who make so much, for reason covers all like a fog-clearing wind, opening up sight of wonders untold.

The mind of  man has a multiple marvel back of it, a computing analogue which is far the best ever seen in material format, enough for us to begin to copy some of it, though the zenith and height of it far beyond us and will remain so.

We have freedom to stall and to install, to poke out the tongue and to steal and pretend the gifts of God were never made, even when constantly unwrapping them, in our beings, by our minds and glorifying God.

By that liberty, the greatest inherent marvel of all in potential, the prodigious creation, mankind, is able to caricature, assault, defile or debase himself, and as far as lies in him, taunt or mock or ignore his Maker as well as defile (though the defiling in that case is external only, since Christ, while a sin-bearer in order to provide for those penitent and trusting to Him and His work, did not sin at all). Hence in terms of man's removal for judgment, for lying, indeed 'the lie' as in Romans 1, and when that judgment comes to the point of the deletion of man's place on the planet, together with its surrounds, the universe with installed around him, there is much at stake.

You do not remove all buildings, for example, in New York in a  momentary phase of intense irritation. If you could (and it becomes more of a reality, that), then It  would take a lot to take such a step, for that city harbours much investment of time and thought, has many people and much of man's creativity hidden in it. You would be loath to remove it, and more so, when with it the same fate would be given to London, Moscow, Paris and Rome, with all civilisation ... would you not ? God spoke in this way as you see in Jonah 4:9-11. Rebuking Jonah who felt miffed that his evangelisation had proved highly effective, producing repentance in Nineveh to which he had been sent with an ultimatum, the Lord said this:

" And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city
in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons
who cannot discern between their right hand and the  left - and much livestock ?"

Rationally, yes. You, if able to destroy even on great city, would suffer much first ... God has done so. You would reason from time to time, perhaps, with those near to be appointed to destruction in judgment. You might appeal, take measures to awaken, both positive and negative, remind them of the wonder of the heritage lost, through befuddlement, to lust, desire, anxiety and ask, Is it worth it to continue like that and to lose all! Do you HAVE to continue to merit judgment ?

You might well attest to the imperilled city, the folly of trying to obey impulse and desire, covered with a mere dust-coat of illusory and clearly rotted reason, misused as is desire, itself cherished in spite of the condition and consequence of all this defilement. You might indeed present, if you are able, as God is, the remedy. The way out of their plight and the way on with living not merely as designed, but as desired in patient love. It is their woeful wills that kill them, both in florid imaginations and heartless indoctrination of their children, victims of a cut-throat culture, which increasingly demands through both education and law, conformity to its follies, or else death, by degrees or otherwise.

You might hint at it, to arouse interest, expose it clearly as when mists cease for a moment to cover a mountain scene. You might  give an example, even a personal one if you care enough, give it with self-discipline and courage,  while making return and restoration readily available (as in a minor but significant measure, the USA did for a fallen Europe after World War II). This it did despite the enormous losses - estimated in one phase in the early 1940s at some three millions tons of shipping, victims of U-boats in the Doenitz campaign - as it sought to supply Britain. Christ however paid far more, not becoming richer by His atoning death, but putting on, Himself eternal in being, mortality that we might gain immortality rather than everlasting destruction; for these things concern not merely the body, but the spirit of man itself.

Now in our own case, this fallen  race, there is far more to it. Thus amid all these things - and God as in Isaiah 49-55 and the Gospels has done far more, infinitely more in value and sacrifice than that which we have envisaged as to what we might do, had we the power and the place -  SOME souls are won. It is by no means in vain. Each one is precious, a free lover of the Lord (Psalm 110, II Corinthians 3:17, Matthew 23:37, John 7:17, Luke 19:42ff., Isaiah 48:15ff.), in awe of truth,  adorer of divine peace, taught the ways of righteousness and relishing the wonder of the Lord. It is God who has given from the first the licence for liberty to man, which man at once used (Genesis 3), and it is He who knows how to preserve it with vast patience, enormous power, costly washing and total foreknowledge. This, it is not only or even of what man will do (Romans 9:11), or how in sickness of heart he might act, nor of any work of man or his flesh. Instead, it is wrought out before God, by God, who knows all and is full of understanding, and it is He who knows where each soul lies before it is so much as created.

As history churns and turns, then at times, here one, here another; some spirits are subdued; some lanky streaks of pseudo-adolescent gawkiness and self-importance, still come to find  rest in reality, through a redemption complete and eternal; and so the battle is not lost, but gains as TIME PASSES. Some are saved; just as all deserve to be lost, so the cost is vast; but just as the love is far greater, so the enactions, the covenant fulfilments proceed inviolate and inviolable (cf. II Timothy 1:8-12, Romans 8:30ff.) from the first (Ephesians 1:4), to the last (Revelation 20:11-14).

Not only so, but as God waits, being longsuffering as II Peter 3:9 depicts it so clearly, there being different cultural norms (or more accurately, abnormalities) from which to rescue, different oblations to different idols from which to deliver, different mentalities,  philosophies, delusions, illusions, from the midst of which without violence or force at all,  to pluck, here one, here another, so wonders of conversion occur. Accordingly,  the Lord with His salvation over time, is achieving many a rescue, none too hard, nothing impenetrable to God. None deceives Him, He deceives none; for He is the truth.

A troupe of variety is thus found over the centuries, exhibiting the working of the mind of God in His many rescues in many situations from many thralls by ONE hand and ONE way and ONE Gospel and ONE  remedy, in ONE Person, Jesus Christ: the sacrifice sufficient through ONE trinity, the Father sending, the Spirit applying (Isaiah 48:15ff., John 16:8ff., Titus 2-3, I John 4:9,14). Opportunities multiply (as in Proverbs 1),  while errors divide themselves into groups, and the vengeance of evil becomes the place for the search and rescue work of the Lord (as in  Jude). To such wonder He came to deliver (as in the  words of Matthew 5-7), and by such works as also found in Mark's report, Luke's presentation and John's testimony.

Again, lost and mistaken opportunities for flesh multiply also whether

	for the League of Nations (war no more the hopeful score),
	for the UN (the peace among the nations the feeble feint),
	for the Atlantic Charter (the moral encomium for the brave new world),
	for the WCC, as for the exhaust from  truth into the worship of anything that moves, that is  found  agreeable, that is voted in: or
	for the Madrid Quartet, virtuously taking over from God in seeking to  determine what to  do about Israel.

They lunge, sink and fizzle, at greater or lesser cost, dreams without legs, or with legs, as in the last case, but with useless arms, divided, beholding what is derelict. Yet they press, despite the prediction of such interference with a returned Israel and of its result (Zechariah 12 -14, Isaiah 59, 66, Micah 7), and  despite the amazingly precise  fulfilment of all that God said^*3. The illusions of men, in time, are shown  delusions; and costly they all  prove! When it comes to direct confrontation with God, as in the last case, the cost can escalate sharply. One can pity those who persist.

Yet the word of God continues, from Bible to history, as by an impermeable link.

From this, it is easy to see how love can judge. What after all, is left in the end of all allowance, the passing of every opportunity,  the provision of felicitous scope for human repentance, the free offer to man made by enormous divine actions of sacrificial intensity and vast reservoirs from the love of God (as seen so keenly in passages such as Luke 19:42ff., Isaiah 48:16ff., Matthew 23:37ff., Ezekiel 33:11, Isaiah 55) ? What is left after many exhibits of the love of God in and to and for those who find Him and abiding, obey; for God gives the Holy Spirit to those who obey Him (Acts 5:32), and has done so over centuries, in martyrs, workers, whether with wonders of deliverance and or those of willing sacrifice. The Lord has acted faithfully so to provide help in that special measure apt for the needs of obedience as with Peter and John, even if like a good father, He chastens laxity, and that not as a task-master, but as a tutor and coach.

What then of the outcome ? Truth remains where mercy has overflowed and flooded the earth. Truth demands reality, and in reality man as a race swarms with sin as does a moving bee-hive, out to colonise afresh.

Man, still in much interminably seething,  is always seeking to colonise further,  far from the farm of his creation, in territories not prepared for him, in a spirit not apt for him, with a lie that frustrates him in his heart (as in Ezekiel 14); and when he has tried much of this earth and the domain of his errant and erratic spirit, and acted as if to taunt God by questing into the surrounds of space (Psalm 115), then love does not burden endlessly a fallen race. He cuts it short (Romans 9:27-28) in the end, to terminate what was coming - ever new corrosive and corruptive horrors based on old moulds, these thrust on the minds, spirits and even bodies of the new generation, increasingly oppressed, then obsessed, often ruined relics fired by culture from an early age. From all this, there is an end. There is a time to terminate, after saving many.

As the rigours of its near approach arise with a roar, then there is even more opportunity. Some asleep on the rails, may awaken, even with the reverberation...

But what of hell ?

What of hell?

First let us gain orientative  viewing.

From The Great Divide Ch. 8,  *2, therefore, let us first read this introduction.

 

Christ

	1)  was put to death in the flesh, just for the unjust.
	2) was made alive in the Spirit.
	3) through the Spirit, went and preached a greater rest than that in Noah, to the spirits of a former time now deemed 'spirits in prison', not a biblical figure for those still living in the flesh but for departed beings (Jude 6).
	4) being the Eternal Ark for all who are lost,  is One condemning finally ONLY on the basis of John 15:21ff., 3:19ff.. God is PLEASED to save, energetically so (Matthew 22:1-14). These are not a select elect, mysteriously made of the spiritual aristocracy, but product of a divine desire for ALL whether in heaven or on earth, BY the Lord's OWN STATEMENT (Colossians 1:19ff., cf. I Timothy 2), and allied testimony (Matthew 22:8ff.), that of Him who knows Himself better than do theologians. His will is seen to be a chaste love which forces none, but would rather weep for the devastation to come AFTER exposing the truth direct and dynamically, and NOT being received, than procure by mere power, however mysterious in operation.

If He is refused (cf. Luke 9, John 15:21ff.), despite His practical love and glorious passion, even in this desperado refusal to receive Him, even when He was present, filled with desire, then in love He still weeps for the judgment according to truth which follows this proud rejection (Luke 19:42ff.).

Here is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us, and gave His only begotten Son for us, His grand plan of salvation, His personal intimacy with suffering, His glorious defeat of sickness and death as held in store for His people to come, and when present, He made it so exceedingly clear. He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, swearing it so by Himself (Ezekiel 33:11); but He insists on what before His eternal wisdom is a turning, even going back to when man was chosen or not, before time was, predestination (Romans 8:29ff.).

It is there that lies the confirmation of the true findings of foreknowledge in divine love which condemns on one principle only: light has come and darkness is preferred; saving light has shone, but the gloom of personal preference elevating itself, falls and fails. The determinant lies explicitly in man even when the most powerful being in the universe desires it otherwise. He for His part is determined that in man, and not in Himself, is the negative to be found, for He SO loved and man SO preferred, so that THIS is the condemnation that light has come and darkness is preferred. Trying to put it into a divine mystery may seem bright, but it is dark; for there is no mystery in this which He affirms in such contradistinction. It was HE who did ALL; it is man who prefers otherwise, and so it is for many.

He is not thereby baulked; for His loving restraint is not overcome by His loving constraint, but stops with the eternal perception: I WOULD, YOU WOULD NOT (as in Matthew 23:37).

He really would like everyone to get into this ark of salvation; destruction is a last resort. Blaming God or even opening that door of thought is nonsense; it is invention. It is contradiction of His word. It is a speech against His self-defined love. It is man only in the face of a passion so vast in a breadth so total that it is even seen in the light of the blood of the cross (Ephesians 1:19ff.) on the part of Him who in amplitude of desire and provision, is "the Saviour of all men, especially of those who believe,"  (I Timothy 4:10). It is not apt to blame One of this stated purpose and express action to the uttermost; it is apt to repent that in you it was necessary, for you this was the cost, you having only liabilities to the point at issue (Romans 10, Ephesians 2), and to receive in Him the remedy which His love which stops at no good thing, has provided.

You might have to be taken in as a spiritual cripple with a fallen will (Ephesians 4:17-19, John 1:12), but the Lord knows the will of man before man does, and beyond, and the celestial PRINCIPLES of the program are as divinely stated; and there is no technical impediment for God! (cf. John 15:22ff., 3:19, Ezekiel 33:11, Jeremiah 48). He,  being as He is, does according to what He says (Ephesians 1:11, Matthew 5:17-20, I Kings 8:56, Joel 2:11, Deuteronomy 7:9, I Thessalonians 5:24).

If then you see this other spiritual Ark, the sight of the saving Lord Jesus Christ, the better than Noah, God Himself ready to be joined in embarkation, then enter it at once. You are most welcome; but wipe your heart on the heart-cleaning breast-mat as you come. No disease is permitted to come in (Luke 13:1ff., Jeremiah 13:27, Isaiah 1:18, Hebrews 9:12).

As to Christ's descending even into hell, as in the Apostle's Creed, the following applies.

From What is the Wheat to the Chaff! Ch. 6, we have the following (here extended) on this divine thrust of love, this penetration that nothing stills, as far as it will go.

First let us note I Peter 3:18ff. suggests what the Apostles’ Creed declares, Christ ‘descended into hell’ so completing a vast universe tour of triumph in which He ‘preached’ to the spirits in prison there. This is a phrase not used in the Bible of people still living on earth, but closely resembled one used of those awaiting judgment in Jude 6, and the entire conceptual presentation in Jude concerning this; and hence it is not only comportable scripturally with such an understanding, but matches no other scriptural concept in its form and content.  Christ is there shown preaching to the so far lost, for in view of John 15:22ff., this is very far from surprising!

Again, in I Peter 3:18ff., where you find Christ preaching to the spirits in prison, you have a thrilling sequence. It is this. 

First, Christ is seen suffering, then the reason for it is given, then the form of it is shown, put to death in the flesh but made alive in the Spirit, and next after this vitalisation by the Spirit comes further reference to the Spirit in whom Christ went to the spirits in prison, those from Noah's day of mass judgment, and the information that He preached to them. Hence the focus is, and remains, Christ the Saviour, and the movement is into the earth, providing action, achieving salvation, then declaring it, moving even into hell, covering all. That in turn is precisely the scope noted in Colossians 1:19ff. for His love, to reconcile all. Not waiting to execute is the Lord, as if justice loomed in gloom for the doomed, though it comes to judgment in the end, but only after enormous travails, practical toils and marvellous intimations and expeditions, not least into flesh itself, on the part of God, the very eternal WORD OF GOD! The follow up in all domains is concordant with this. It is like a vast reservoir filled with rippling water, swept by winds, a surcharge of its plenary fill spilling down the runways.

 

Here is cohesion, sequence and focus on Christ's movements, raised by the Spirit, moving by this Spirit while His body lay dead, in spirit to preach to the last vast agenda of world judgment, even notably moving back to the last epoch of all but universal judgment, testimony of devotion to His self-proclaimed duty. The love is universal, the scope is universal, the tour is universal, befitting Colossians 1:19ff.. John 3:15ff., I Timothy 2, Ezekiel 33:1 and much more. The meaning is universal in OFFER; and although it is most limited in the limited ATTAINMENT, according to the foreknowledge of God, for it is a narrow way and by no means do all receive Him, yet this is not to be read backwards as if the self-control of love were to be equated with its demise or delimitation.

There is a limited atonement because there has been a limited attainment, foreknown to God, so that those for whom He is delivered up, have all things (Romans 8:32). Provision is one thing; and it is sufficient as in Israel of old on the Great Day of Atonement; but it is applied to process where it fits. Redemption is not stuffed into the back pockets of those who run away.

Scripture continually gives just such a breach of all that could or might seek to  hold in that sacrificial splendour and conscientious zeal of the Lord, to limit its Spirit or demean its thrusting scope; and of Him it is written, "The zeal of your house has eaten me up!" (John 2:17).  

These things were hard because His love was unwavering, and nothing was just dumped, nowhere was just ignored. They were hard for Him, but they are not grievous for us (I John 5:3-5). HE did all the work, made all the provisions, all the applications with knowledge, for the Lord knows who are His own (II Timothy 2:19) and did so before time was (Ephesians 1:4, Romans 8:30ff.). We who are His are recipients of grace, with nothing added, but the love of God. Let however none lean back on predestination, since this simply confirms what is foreknown according to truth, past the blight and the fall of man. Therefore if you seek Him, take Him, for there is neither prize nor deliverance for mere thought, that does not act. Imagine a space ship about to leave a ruined area: thinking how good it might be does not put you on board. The principle remains, even though in this case the proposition is abhorrent!

The descent to hell in the profundity of His passion as in I Peter 3 ?

Such then is the thrust and language, concept and sequence in the Scripture. But to avoid this, it is a strange adventure! 

It is  to refer by an alien phrase

(people may be seen as prisoners of sin, but the phrase SPIRITS IN PRISON of people on earth is more Platonic then Biblical; and this is not Plato but God speaking),  

	to a breach of sequence,
	and then to aggravate the situation, by dispensing with the liaison and development of raised by the Spirit and going by the Spirit,  this in order to satisfy some desire to depict a sudden breach in the focus, with a reference to Noah's day becoming thereby an oddity more than an odyssey. Let us pursue this error in interpretation of I Peter 3.

 To think about some earlier time when the Spirit is conceived of as speaking to people who, though alive on earth, are 'spirits in prison' seems to abandon an odyssey of meaning and sequence, closely composed, for an episode of breach, like drinking coffee while you type; and it appears as forced in sequence and relevance, as alien in verbal construction to the Bible.

 Instead however of such time-displacement, like a lecturer having a sudden aberration, or someone reminiscing instead of proclaiming an intense and coherent doctrine: when the issue is taken in order of depiction, as written, then there is time concatenation, the sequence moving from first to last, from achievement to consequence, from action to application, from attainment to its delivery, from the love that sent to the love that gives vent and acts.

 So does theme determine the matter in wedlock with phrasing, and that with the biblical depiction of man, not as a spirit in prison, when alien on earth from God, but as a spirit in sin, and a prisoner self-condemned. Prisoners there are, but they are on earth, held in bars of sin, not celestial quarters (Isaiah 61).

Thus as in Colossians 1:19ff., we find that God has acted to make peace in the blood of the Cross. He DID more, SUFFERED more,  ACHIEVED more, PAID more than any man so that even among those who would feel as if they had SINNED more than any man, chiefs in the field of sinners, the category in which the apostle Paul placed himself because of his past, there is no comparison. Saved by grace through faith, they go in it, the whole not of themselves, but of God (Ephesians 2:5-8).

There is nothing more to do except  receive it, not ceding the soul to an Islamic type or Communist type, or Darwinian type take-over^*4 (though Professor Gould can see no merit in the selectivity of such a process - Wonderful Life!  pp. 236ff.). Whichever illusion you like (cf. Wake Up World!  ... Chs. 4-6), there is one for you, where minds admittedly subject to purposeless laws coming from nowhere nevertheless make an exception for men who want to find a truth which in their model simply is not there. It is marvellous what imagination can do for you, spiritually or temporarily, to bankrupt you, and a wonder if the mind of man, so that even in misuse, it is staggering, even if in folly. For the wayward, fabrication is its pearl, imagination its content, ruin as in all crashing into reality that is ultimate, assured, except mercy intervene magnificently and then magisterially!

You can romance without even reading a sickening novel of passionate frippery and strumpery, and freely live a lie (Isaiah 44:20, 50:11), though admittedly, reality not being illusion, you have to pay in the end. When God at last brings to a conclusion the few thousand years man has had, for all that showing enormous patience, truth with its judgment is all that is left for the obstreperous soul,  the rampant  rebel, for whom heaven by virtue of desire, is simply an intolerable hell.

To force then ? Do you imagine that God should have done that, as Iran did, as Babylon did, as Assyria did, as the USSR did, as Nazi Germany did, as Romanism did, as every fallen idol is apt to do when its appeal wanes and its nonsense aspect is too obvious ? There is no nonsense about our Maker, who is the guarantee and warranty for our own minds, without whom logic could not exist either in those minds or in the outer world, the logic of its  creation making a match for investigation and for that very knowledge in which God-forsaken scholars love to glory. It is not in what is there to find out that the marvel lies, but in the author of mind and logic and matter so  arranged, God to whom ALL  glory belongs.

Making man free to reject Himself (as he almost at once did), He does not make him something else in saving Him, as if to amputate both arms in order to save a leg. He knows HOW to save man freely, so that it is not a rather spectacular technocratic device, but a genuine salvation when man becomes a child of God. He saves what is there, and in doing so, both transcends its woes and pays for its uncleanness, investing it with His own love which is free and neither imposed nor imparted. Such is the way of love: it may redeem, but it does not squash or compel into a mould, but acts freely. The regeneration is not, ultimately, of the unwilling but the willing, who are volunteers in the day of His power (Psalm 110), made into children of God, not grabbed but gained for all that.

Not desiring this, but instead some kind of glory for man, or mankind, or a model man, or model theory, or model way of life, or a model brave new world, or whatever other impossible world may be in view (and one by one, these marvellous worlds fade from proposed glory to wallowing horror, since they cannot be, in lust based on nature of other things rather than that of God, as in Romans 1:17ff.), man proceeds to find out. Woe upon woe shatters his pride, injures his vanity, but it is a tough thing, that! Nevertheless, left in the shredder is the pattern of imaginary brave new worlds. This discovery is far more important than marshalling power in space in another rebellion (Psalm 115), as if it now had something to give to resolve the madness of man in his cultural dynamic and increasingly dictatorial human racism. Take off for space to distance the follies of this earth ? and with what beings would you take off in this madcap adventure ?

To find ashes where wood was, and not life eternal or reality, is helpful if you take the point. It is also advantageous to man as a demonstration lesson. It promotes the desire to look elsewhere than at creation, to the source of logic, liberty, grace, power and goodness, where truth MAY be found in a model which INCLUDES it. Instead of mere relativity between all, there is reality back of all, and a mind to make minds and a Spirit to create spirits so that both this world and its Maker can be KNOWN.

So mercy acts even in the midst of such miseries as in our very recent times, Stalin, Mao, the Khmer Rouge and the caresses of Zimbabwe's leader have made, along with the tyrannies in Iran. In this last, a major dynamic in the whirling world, it appears that the rampant feeling is this: it is not victory over Israel but its annihilation that is desired, deemed to be the apt step. How magnificently Revelation 6 and its diagnosis and prediction is proved to be! It is almost like marionettes, dancing to a tune; but the script appears as if made in hell, the acting on earth. God uses evil to promote good, calamity to instil wisdom, overthrow to impel to His own undertaking; but He does not willingly afflict the children of men (Lamentations 3:33), rather as in Amos 4, acting to invite to reasonable relish for the grace of truth, through mercy.

But what of the perpetual renegades ? Those so committed, leader and led, so inflamed are already on the toasting fork, in love with the flame. Are they meekly to enter into the kingdom where the meek are blessed, the pure in heart see God, the merciful are shown mercy and the poor in spirit are the very children of God ? On earth, this sort of thing has appalled them, and many have mocked it in their macho extremes and eccentric imaginations, only to find the cost of being lost, like compound interest, mounts fast and questions early the power to pay!

Thus many proceed in the rigours of religious death, biblically defined; and defiance of the only God who has shown His will by his validated and verified word, has inflamed them like a bush-fire. Is it to be imagined that there is a sincere, realistic, spiritually understanding love to be enjoyed, realised and recognised, where what they have hated is not only  in charge but incapable of subversion, and the spirit is the criterion, openly regarded, where seeing God, face to face, is the character of the haven called heaven ?

What would you ? Where duplicity with all else is exposed, pretence is impossible.

As to the nature of hell, this author is no expert. One leaves to those who are experts such oddities or odysseys as seeking to determine the exact temperature of hell. This after all, was a neat piece in Punch Magazine of old, when a small boy relishes the chance, as a Bishop calls on the house, to find out such a datum as that!

There are however a few clear points which need to be understood. First, if there were another way for power or love or mercy, if there were more that COULD be shown to the soul oppressed, it would be.

God in His foreknowledge (remember, we are talking about the biblical situation and considering it) has already worked out who are His, without force, without lie, without withholding anything HE might do who did all for all, that any might come. To be sure,  the payment of ransom  and redemption is not disbursed where it is not received - as if social security were to be paid to empty addresses of those who are not in a nation. The Lord  WOULD HAVE all, we find from  Colossians 1:19ff., I Timothy 2, 4:10,  for He is the Saviour of all men, especially of those who believe, and His sacrifice is enough to cover  all the world (I John 2:2), just as in Israel, the annual sacrifice could cover all of Israel , though it had nothing to do with hypocrites and  mere formalists, for God IS a Spirit (Deuteronomy 29:18ff.). He  SO loved that He GAVE His ONLY begotten Son, the Lord of glory incarnate, that WHOSOEVER believed in Him should not only NOT PERISH but HAVE ETERNAL LIFE. He did not come to judge, to condemn the world. He says so (John 3:17). That is the last resort (as in Isaiah 61, where Christ read only up to 61:2A, the first part of that verse, and did not at that time proceed further. Psalm 2, in its final application, is executed when John 3 is past! God is in no hurry to condemn, though judgment comes when all mercy is past, and the spirit of man can take no more (Isaiah 57:15ff.).

That has to be made very clear. This, judgment, condemnation, was not a lurking purpose. That was expressly and statedly put aside as to the purpose in the incarnation,  in the excess of love, the flowing extremities of divine seeking. The world was the target,  not a part of the world, all of it,  as shown similarly in the other contexts;  for God and this world and its inhabitants are the two in view in John 3, totally, finally, and firstly. There is no greater love; there is no broader love; there is no more personal love, there is no more efficacious love.  There is no gentler sovereign than He who FIRST of all dies on your behalf, and then rises to give you not a mortuary for a religion, but a vital communication in your own God, whose only Son has become the Captain of your salvation (as in Hebrews 2). He lives, arisen, His body defying rotting in resurrection, and declared this, "Because I live, you will live also,"  John 14:19.

 But does hell have to be so long ? How long is truth ? when does it alter! It is not in essence a matter of time but character, will, preference, that elemental inherence of disposition, psychic flush of loyalties, intractable pursuit of goals, gods and esteemed values, whether in cynicism or aspiration, selected to control. Time is an audience; life is the thrust.

While sin detaches man from liberty, a blight in its power, it does not delete his responsibility any more than any other reliance on drunkenness. It may elicit a smile rather than an exoneration, and a grave smile that can readily change to grief. Time is an apportionment in our present terms to exhibit a reality;  but beyond our time is reality-manifestation in all its depth, in ways perhaps past knowledge in some things, but which like much else, will be in particular revealed when the time comes (I Corinthians 13). The divine principles will  always be kept; and the means for its activity may reveal far more light on the significance of liberty, not only to find and be funded, to rejoice and be delighted with the spirit that brings it, from the Lord, but to despise its very self, its given powers, and to mock its Maker as if this were liberty's own extension, rather than its ruin.

TIME as Professor Paul Davies once remarked, is a criterion of understanding of the universe. Whatever he meant at the time, the statement has point. Time is as given to man by God from a realm where it has no more sovereignty, dominance or direction than does a gun in a book being written. It is a medium for expression, a stage for action, a mode of revelation, an access point for divinity, a field for man's spirit and an environment for thought. It is used, not sovereign, a source of exposure, not director, an illustrative technique rather like pictures in a book, not a governing resource. Like all else, it is in God's hand who works all things after the counsel of His own will (Ephesians 1:11).

Time as we have it, this can be written off at any time by any number of means, as by an author in imagination gripped, the matter depending solely and exclusively on the mind of the author of that book. There are things beyond time, which occur in time, at the mind of God, in the mind of man, in the spiritual environment which man inhabits,  even when he is so keen to announce that he is subject to no man, to nothing: yes even here and all the more for that bragging, his bondage is already apparent. How is this so ? It is then to himself, and whatever other agencies are ready to prey on his self-confidence, that he is bound. Man is found out by God, and though often directive rather than inspective, he is responsible, just the same. It is well for all that God liberates any, since His foreknowledge unleashes the divine power to see beyond particulars to the elemental and the ultimate in any person, before the fall colluded, discoloured, complicated and unfurling, brought confusion, before time so much as rousing itself, saw the first day.

Nothing MAKES God do anything, but He tells us what He seeks. While some wills make one shudder with pity as well as with horror, this is their way despite the power of God to redeem, His desire, His means and His insistence on not cheating by making someone different by decree, so that it is NOT the will of that being which has been implemented, but a simple invasion and alien duplication of type.

This sort of misconception is to mix cause and effect. God in His foreknowledge knows all and each, and the change which is apt for any He institutes sovereignly but not tyranically to save by subterfuge, as if to elect in the very face of the elemental preference of the party concerned. On the contrary, He ensures that it is done, but not in accord with works and products of that person, or the pathological perversion of spirit that sin brings. It is as HE KNOWS. It is all founded on HIS KNOWLEDGE (Romans 8:30), in terms of HIS PRINCIPLES as often stated in the Bible, and applied  with conscientiously diligence in time and beyond. Some confuse the will of God with the means; but God is perfectly competent to know the persons,  the principles and apply them in His own way, transcending normal bounds, but not His own word!

He does not elect what has a contrary preference in His foreknowledge, being Himself bound by His own word that it is NOT in Him but in MAN that the selectivity comes, this being the preference for darkness at the final and vital level (cf. John 15:22ff.), though He THEN implements this, in terms of logical sequence. That FOLLOWS in the flow; His divine foreknowledge provides that data which lead to that flow.

He does not make man in His image in order to create illusion, far less delusion; but freedom is in the way for man, however much pathologies of sin compound the issue. God is neither mocked nor deluded, but knows His own, and SO acts. He does not make people in order to remake those who do not prefer Him, voiding the image and not fulfilling it as first created: so that now they have to do it and like it.

WHY WILL YOU DIE ? is not misleading histrionics. It is the heart cry of the eternal God who is so far from these horrible fantasies as to make them  blush by the very mention. He does transcend man,  but does not obliterate what he is by mere directive fiat. Such a fiat is necessary procedurally; but this is not the case principially; for the principles of God are on show in practice and direct statement. HE keeps to them; and so should those who talk of Him!

When the heart of God sounds like a harp (Jeremiah 48:35-38) in a very wonder of grief, it is not a form of fooling! His word is truth.

He has made man in His image and WILL NOT falsify preference, but only exhibit it. While this requires the very wisdom of God, that is a wisdom He possesses. He knows how to make John 3:19's statement that whereas God SO loved the world as noted above, nevertheless this Almighty Being on such a motivation as He Himself cites,  acknowledges not His own limit of love, expressly denied, but MAN'S RESOLUTE IF NOT IMPERIOUS PREFERENCE OTHERWISE. As the ground of damnation, this God cites. In confusion man is apt to reject this; but he cannot reject the word of God and painfully seek to send back this message in order to gain some new and qualified statement. God is not like that. He speaks His mind; He is not told!

In John 154:22ff., we find, let it be well stressed, that IF He had not come and spoken what He did and done what He did, totally unique, and of course fulfilment of the prophetic identikit for the Messiah, even then there might have been excuse for these unbelievers. How patient can patience be! but this is the Lord who made patience for man, in whom is its very being. What then of those who STILL, even then, would not believe ?  The case as He stated it, was this: SINCE they had both seen and heard, and still rejected with relish, then THERE WAS NO LONGER ANY EXCUSE. Excuses are sought, but not invented. He longs to bring home the lost 100th amid the 99, even the least. Love is like that; it is not thwarted by sheep being what they are, for so they were invented; but it is grievous for all that, a measure of the motivational love to no small point!
 

THE COMPARISON OF CHRIST

AND THE RESULTS OF HIS EVACUATION

The motivation of God is as divinely stated. The power of God in parallel,  is also as stated. The means for redemption by God are enough for the entire world. The action of God is enough for any who believes in Him, meant as sent. The citation of God is that despite these things being true of the almighty and pure Being who He is,  there is what is not touchable, the ultimate preference of man. It is something generic, though in pathology it is rather like what is degenerate in type, moved contrary to base (Ephesians 4:17ff.), infected, infested, partially dysfunctional. Alienated, it is still there.

As to HIM, He SO loved the WORLD that WHOEVER believes in Him, so sent,  does not perish.

As to man, he so preferred in the case of many, that NONETHELESS such are condemned in entire isolation from any defect, deficiency, lack or narrowness on the part of the mercy of God. HE would have ALL things, in heaven or on earth, come in repentance. If not, He WILL not have pseudo-souls mixing as on earth, their hypocrisy or their blatant unreality smirking, stark pretenders, in heaven. What one is, is not what one will be: and it is what one is that is being saved. It is thoroughly reconstituted as ONLY God COULD do; but it is not being commandeered. HENCE all the pity and compassion and crying of God, lamentations and exhortations, and citations of what MIGHT have been if ONLY, as in  Luke 19:42, Isaiah 48:16ff.. I Samuel 3:13, II Samuel 12:8, Isaiah 48:16ff..

Yet even here, there is yet more wonder in the purity of the love of God, itself the criterion of any love. He knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 44-46), so that He knows what it takes. Nothing lacks, for the motivation is total and the means the same, the finesse to match the finality. Thus IN foreknowing each soul (Ephesians 1:4, Romans 8:30ff.), He does not guess, or allow an inconvenient slip to determine all. He does not even take coming WORKS into account at all (Romans 10, Ephesians 2). He KNOWS, and in this case foreknows His own, and He takes them. There is not even any possible error, and this is the whole beauty of it.

The time then for the endlessly averse, for those for whom heaven might well be than hell, even worse ?
I for my part do not know the precise formulation for the eventual type of time which is to rule, for many images are made of things to come, from former times (as in Zechariah 14 ^*5). I DO know this, that for my part, I have no desire to find a stamp and seal on a misbegotten soul, borne on its own say-so, judged because of the ethereal pretension of imagination, a particular stamp on the underlying and ultimate preference to be contrary. How does one desire to help avoid, at least for some, that stamp as self-selected out, and by divine fiat then excluded. It would be parallel to the marvellously avoided horror of having some impostor in heaven, securing a false stamp on an invalid passport to glory! God however has gone to infinite pains for man, and all is as ordered in truth. The way home is magnificent, provided, effectual.

Hence one preaches the Gospel and attests the word of God, for love is like that (Colossians 1:24): though an army be undertaking the effort to deliver, each one has heart for it. Love is not a mere thought; it acts; it has desire; it looks for deliverance. If HE came, we go!

But what stamp is not then desired ? It is this; EVERLASTING SHAME. IT SEEMS THAT IT MIGHT HAVE IN EFFECT, EVERLASTING SHAME FOR EVERLASTING SHAM, printed on it. This to Me is infinitely abhorrent (as far as a finite being may through creation and redemption participate in this way). As a child of God, summoned and surrendered, I find it unutterably detestable. It is enough to fall in this or that; but simply to fall by being enthralled with, caught by, entangled in something without ground or reason, hope or righteousness, truth or mercy is eternally to be avoided, by the only available means, to the uttermost. The paln does not alter the propulsion, but rather enhances it (Matthew 28:19-20).

Thank God it does not apply because in me as in myriads, Christ does apply, who has said that He will neither leave nor forsake, so that even foolishness is not able to escape from the confines of His ever-present mercy, and in that I glory, as in its means, His cross cancellation of loss, way of access to God personally (Galatians 6:14). HE is the Saviour, and I am the saved from the sovereignty and the destiny of sin; and as receiver as a gift, of Christ's very own righteousness (Romans 5:17), I am rolling free and sustained,  in the oceans of His all-satisfactory atonement;  and I have not the slightest desire to change places with anyone else! HE IS ABLE to keep what is committed to Him against that day  (II Timothy 1;12), and He will (John 10:9,27-28): for HIS seed, His seed of regeneration to make of the lost the saved, this STAYS in you (I John 3:9).

What would you expect ? that Christ died to save sinners who did not need it ? That He issued the charge to receive His broken body and blood as a melodramatic nothing ? (John 6); or else, as was the case in fact, this: that He died because death awaited the violators of life known as sinners, and that their confounded confusion and shame would be their everlasting, personally purchased monument! Were hell less available on the double desert of sin and a squalid spiritual ruthlessness that would know no reality and share no salvation bought by the only One ever to attest the remedy of God in Person, and pay for it, does anyone imagine that the huge cost of the provision of free salvation would have been paid! Far less would it have been paid with such passionate compassion and such deadly determination, inordinate humiliation and utter exposure!

This infinitely precious gift, it is my delight to  receive, with everlasting gratitude. It takes and remakes life; it shuns the impact of death and grants the post of child of God with the God of glory (Ephesians 1). Time has no effect on this eternity, beholding the very face of God, in tune with His will, in terms of His adoption, guaranteed by God, so that living is neither perilous nor vacuous, but  exceedingly abundant in truth and mercy,  goodness and grace.

On the other side,  where guilt is glutted and shriving is sent away,  what then  ? Time may abide as it will, but this alien stamp is then alas for the everlastingly alienated, ever addressed, renegades with guilt never repealed, declaring if words are even troubled into use: this final resolution, it is not for me, but my own endless non-solution fits me in ANY mode of time, and never would I solicit any for some gift by grace, let alone one that does not pass away.

Like dirty washing on the line, alas, it is what it is, and if there had been any way to redeem such, it would have had it; but now it is as C.S. Lewis points out, in everlasting destruction, BEING EN ROUTE TO DESTRUCTION, diminuendo and yet not gone. That time, in that everlasting shame, is covered with the creative power of God, and His mercy is great within Him; but be it what it will, my praise to God is that what Christ bore, makes its removal sure, and for that I praise the love of God, and His mercy, which is from everlasting to everlasting. Without His action, no action of mine could even have attenuated the condemnation due; for how will even conceivable righteousness pay back debt. The best is mere conformity. Repayment then has no source. And those who dare to imagine anything remotely like parity with that righteousness of life which was Christ's, alas deceive only themselves. It was not a matter of avoidance of error merely, but of commitment; not of man only, but of God in man to cover mang; not of moral niceness, but incandescent and luminous spirituality.

There is no hope without that. Heaven is so because this is its NATURE!

Did you then expect that love expectorated would be digested ? or that truth vomited would sustain, or that what is sent for eternity, the soul that lives before God, can be set aside, and have no waves from the wandering of that soul!

This is where we are placed,  and it is all on site. There is no domain where the splendour of the Lord does not reach, and hell itself is where it is pertinaciously excluded. It is for those who would deem heaven, per se, to be hell, the very violation of what they hold most precious. An everlasting torment of an everlasting desire to replace God with human ideas that do not work as history has abundantly shown, and will demonstrate their own vexatious maladies as man  reaches the self-destructive and crucial point that the earth itself could no more contain Him, unless the Saviour returned (Matthew 24:22). Allegiance to what is irreparably dysfunctional becomes the pass for entry into the lair of the lost, these unrelenting, gone by desire, who "always resist the Holy Spirit," Acts 7.

Their ultimate leader, the very spirit of their evil, error and intransigence to truth, the devil, does nothing to alleviate their sinfulness, since goaded or not, there is their chosen lot. In his defamation of deity, inciting mankind to declaration of independence when they are dependent even for their very being on Him chosen for such disregard, that devil is not only deceptive, deceitful and devious. Implacable, remorseless and rapacious in renegacy, with any kind of presumption seeking to destroy, harass, defile the kingdom of heaven, the God of truth, but he acts to antagonise to God the subjects he would enthrall, slaves to his own doom thereby. He acts with a presumption as articulate as irrational, to lead man with an embroilment at the boil, to his hideous toil. Placation is never in view; the very take-over of heaven did not seem too much.  When Christ saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning (cf. Revelation 12), it was an event far more significant than the huge destructive colossus of the first atomic bomb. Hell in this spirit is not forsakeable, the very pith of evil stirring as far as it may,  forever.

What if then their torment who so treat the truth,  be self-imposed ? if it moves from within them, however stimulated from without  ? There comes a point when the inviolable exposure of their lie within them, and the inveterate choice of it, sears the conscience as with a hot iron. There is an eventual end to the drama of man in his rebellious limitations, as far harassment of unholiness can well bear, since the fever of it all is against the truth (John 8:44)! Hell is its name, no help for me is its name, not from God!

Restless, in the end, you CANNOT lie down with the lie! You are exposed forever, if you so choose what is not choice and tender, but a truth bender, amender, as you seek to fend it off, however often it comes near (Isaiah 57:20-21).

The memoirs of the lost are not lost; and since God is so very merciful, one looks for the most merciful possible way of dealing with beings fit for eternity, when refusing to receive divine mandate to annul the guilt and sovereignty of their own sin, and so involved in it that they would rather have it fit in their hearts, even to eternity, than ever be separated from it. As past time perhaps merges into new seasons for operation, it could even be that coming time will swallow it up as we know it, and the fabrications of the chronological past will become the innovations of what is coming for those so lost. Time it whatever way may come to be, however, everlasting shame is a stamp not to be added to one's stamp collection; for then one enters into it, a sad exhibit.

What is sure is this: for the followers of the Lie, when the day is done: there is no return, the loss is eternal, bred and kept in shame, and it is quite different from annihilation or extinction.

For me, I will trust in His word rather than in my thoughts; in His mercy and not in my deserts; in His promise and not in my premisses; in His truth and not in the Lie; in His Christ and not in my own conceptions; for nothing is my desert, and all is my attainment, but through another, who to me is all in all, having made all and paid the redemption for any. What He has taught me from His word, I have learned, and where He has helped me do what service to His people and for His love to those still lost, I have received it; but my trust belongs to Him.

What more could you ask  ?

	The scope of His sovereign will is as broad as eternity in time and infinity in space;
	that of His mercy is wider than earth itself, ascending to those in heaven;
	that of His grace is the souls of His image-bearing creatures, and it expands even despite the curse (Romans 8:17ff.) which contrasts in results so sharply with the pure joy of His creation itself!

There is not one for whom He has not given Himself, though there are many who have refused the gift, the gift by grace (Romans 5:15), some even trying to pay for the postage, the process of giving and getting, as if this were not work (Romans 10), as if this did not violate the express statement (Ephesians 2:5-8) that the whole thing is of grace through faith, and this, it is not of works but of grace. Indeed, it is of God personally and altogether. Satan sneaks in as with Eve. He allows himself voice without penitence. Resist him vigorously, however, and avoid his fatuous fulminations, bred for fear, to corrupt, from first to last.

But as to the Lord! For Him what living is too much! Paul could almost count himself accursed in concern for his brethren, still without Christ! (Romans 9). There is a heartiness about His service, in reaching us, in our enlivened response, which is one of the major missing components of modern man. What is the use of method and superficial knowledge, if the heart is on the shelf, in storage, occupying a philosophy or breeding one!

For Christ ? What less would you do than ignore the premisses and pollutions of the flesh, your whole apparatus of self-affirmation, the world, the engineering structures of the devil and the sins which merge truth with fiction to engender folly, as likewise the devil,  that prince of lies,  for whose word contempt is merely fitting. Do not dally therefore, nor delay, if you are not  yet redeemed. Repent, return and receive His salvation, for as we read in Proverbs 1, He will pour out His Spirit and teach you, so that you can learn. Enrol, rather than  scroll the offer of divine mercy! It is a great school.

NOTES

*1

On the religion of the false prophet Muhammad, as in Matthew 24:24, John 14:6, see:

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

SMR   pp. 50ff., 62ff., 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,

See Divine Agenda Chs.    6
with  3 (an overview of religious truancies, including Marx, Darwin and Koran)
and Highway to Hell - (Koran citations in both, with ideational parallels in perspective,  in the latter two;  and in the former,  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

BARBLISS   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.).

 PP 8, app.,  PP 11,  4,   11,   5 (national character and character of Islam).

See also SMR pp. 822ff., 986ff., 1O88D.

On many sects, see SECTS and ERRORS, including the references there hyperlinked.

On international movements embracing an absolute attitude to relativity, that is a complete trust in what is compounded, comprising works in the nether lands of compromise, qualification, innovation and religious engineering, together with secular sub-varieties, not so keen to unveil their religious content as to apply it, the following gives a territory for inspection! For the titles of books set here in acronyms, use hyperlinks at the site, or consult this link.

News 121, 122;

LLSSCJ   6 (lively lessons on unhallowed alliance with the unholy - religious parliament); FM  2 (actual and commonly suggested ... antidotes, incl. survey of many supposed unities, from the particulate to the social);

AAA 9 - glamour, stammer, hammer  ... flitter and glitter, and the unity that counts; ; REF  3 (the soporific self, and the unity glide, under the sedation of sin),
REF    8, the embracive unity of reality created, not desecrated in reverse;
IMMFAITH 10, Glory that is yet no glory, and good that is no good in the welter of political options, and spurious secular identities that are not one but many;

OPENTOHIM  4 (the giant declivity of quasi-church mutation in South Australia); OPENTOHIM  6 (convenient cultural dope when the door to truth is closed, and childhood is only a name);

FM 11 - twigs and towers; NFF 8 - sham, shame and co., cf. News  132;
SMST  8 (the necrosis of naturalism and the futility of pulping when script is needed),
STEP  9 (the array of unities which speak, ordered, considered, acclaimed, source named), NFF 13 - symphony and seditions - two heady heads, NFF  14 -  deadly d's; OVERFLIGHT 5, cf. SMR pp. 867ff., New Age unity is so divisive from truth;
ISRAEL IV  3,  11,  ROP  5 inventions in mind, gender, politics ...  AWME  15,

SMST   3 (spiritual - political - economic surrealism, and reality, and various modes of escape from efficacious unity, where it belongs), and  with this,
DVA   6 (specialising on religion miscalled demanding faith by force and the pathos of power's puny imprint), PITTER 6 (world movements that cry for what is coming, the Judge, Jesus Christ), GG   4 (Middle East conglomerate of religions, officially sought, with implosion attested - detailed);  IMMFAITH 10, and News  152, wide-ranging, including UN; 
DVA  3 (sums three absolutist religions including Communism, Islam, and considers an Anglican trend  towards new religious 'unity',

*2

For the word of God vis-á-vis humanly generated religions, not from the only living God, see such works on this site as:

1)  RELIGION, RELIGIOSITY AND REALITY IN CHRIST JESUS,

2) SMR, esp. Chs. 1, 5, 10

3)  LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST

WHO ANSWERS RIDDLES

AND WHERE HE IS, DARKNESS DEPARTS

Bible or Blight, Christ or Confusion:
The Comprehensive Resolution of Man's Intractable Problems
is Found Only in the Bible, the Word of God.

4) The references in *1 above.

 

*3

See Israel V   and Israel Tetrad, Secular  Myths and Sacred Truth Ch. 5.  .

See also It Bubbles, It Screams, God Calls ...  Chs.  10,  11, and more generally, *2 above.

The latter considers the  spread of religious aspirants, something of their grounds,
their errors and their irresolvable contention, given that the truth is first of all
rejected by almost all, and all major fighting parties,
so that which error is to be preferred becomes a matter of inveterate contest.

This mercifully God will in good time judge and adjudicate, 
when all He wishes to be exposed IS exposed,
and the time is ripe for Israel to repent of what led on to the mixed muddle of misled nations
playing God over it,  as far as they could.

That day of repentance and divine action to restore this long troubled people is shown

     from  Deuteronomy 32 in long-range prediction,
     some three and one half millenia beforehand,

     in mid-range in Isaiah 59,66, Zechariah 12-14, Micah 7 and Ezekiel 37ff.,

     while the finale when  all is essentialised,  is found in  Revelation 19.

There we find that an aggregate of the unruly are ready to make direct war on the  Lord:
this,  not wisely, but with all the worthless vigour
of a kind of insurgent vice, a rampancy filled with void:
for it is He who is the very source of wisdom, and site of the power
invested at such enormous thrust, into the universe.

The result for rebellion has long been delayed, but it is sure, for God is most merciful. Truth prevails, not because the heart of man is good, but because God is, and those who love Him are not in the end left bereft.  On the contrary, their innings has been varied but strong,  and many have been those who have been  kept by the power of God (as in I Peter 1), whose love for Him reciprocates with very good reason, that shown them (cf. I John 4).

In the interim, now, Israel is what the ungodly might regard as the very devil (almost literally) of a nuisance, for in view of the vast territories which are being effectively ignored in the present negotiations, open emotionally to Muslims,  a common pre-occupation of  Arabs for example,  and the vast  populations within them, it surely would not be too much for them to overpower the tiny State. Dr Mahathir of Malaysia came near to saying this very thing. What is the matter with them! that Israel so continues.

God is the matter with them.  He has other plans as so often shown in the prophecies which predicted Christ (to be  slain and then  resurrected in body), and  Israel (still without Christ as a nation,  to be returned  to their land, assaulted and yet victorious over numerically ridiculous odds against them, before having a massive change of heart  as in Zech. 12:10-13:1, Romans 11:25ff.), is suddenly to be moved spiritual by the Spirit of divine grace and supplications. This proceeding,  leads on to the advent of Jesus the Christ, by His Spirit, into their hearts, to their washing in the fountain of life. He comes within; and after that,   into their land (Isaiah 59:20, Micah 7) also, and great will be the wonder of it all (Micah 4).

The babe (Micah 5:1-3) who ,before incarnation had ways everlasting, has become Saviour and LORD indeed (Micah 6-7, Joel 3:12ff., Habakkuk 3:13); and the nations learn at last their place (Psalm 2:7-12, Micah 7), and the tang of the resurrection becomes as biting to the rebellious as that of vinegar in the mouth, which they gave Him in His crucifixion. Thus mercy abides and truth rules.

A great action, then, a stimulant to rapid change is that change of heart within Israel the nation; and then, the clouds of guilt removed, what a wonderful reunion is there (Romans 11:15,25ff.): it is like life from the dead, as they join with what are then their fellow Christians, in diversification total and absolute from the frenzied mass of the treacherous (II Peter 2, II Thessalonians 2), whose gaunt haunting of the work of Judas, the betrayer ceases to be lordly, and is shown disloyal.

Israel back then! It is this which opens the way for the Lord to act as desired, changes what engineers might call the parallelogram of forces and brings on an effectually and indeed dramatically different result. In this time before all departs like a stage structure for some drama, the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11, Habakkuk 2:14), and it will not be courtesy of Israel or Britain or the USA, for the nations will be rebuked:  it is when the Lord sees the power of Israel is gone, that He comes! (Deuteronomy 32:36).

What coverage is that of the Lord and how vast is the canvas, not to cover walls in a house, but almost the very heavens with its magnitude.

*4

See on this:

Spiritual Refreshings Ch.  9, incl. End-note 1 (esp. programmatic psychology and its ilk),
The Marvels of Predestination and the Ways of Will  Ch. 7,  including *1;

News 80,  44, SMR 4;
Repent or Perish Ch.   7, Extension 1 ;

The True God has Go, Gives Growth and Glory Ch.  2.

*5

For the concept of the key, the principle biblically provided to enable understanding, see Aspects of the Glory of the God of all Grace, Ch. 8 as marked.