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CHAPTER NINE

FIRST AID AND LAST RITES: A SONG OF WRONGS

JUDE IS NOT BEING RUDE BUT REALISTIC

INTRODUCTION

Speaking to an old friend recently, one heard that his son was willing to alter times of work and conditions willingly, had many friends, and had this style in a way that made him popular. What was the word for it ? Was it tolerant ? Perhaps. In that case, it meant he was not easily upset by things contrary to his natural inclination, and that is undoubtedly good. You could call it accommodating.

Indeed tolerance of difficulties and trouble, is good, the more if mingled with kindness.

But the moment it turns into intolerance of truth, it is another thing entirely. Many make their way by having no principles, no foundations and having a sort of flighty interchange in moral space, changing with every wind. These for all their tolerance, readily become extremes of intolerance, since their acceptance of anything means they differ from what rejects anything, and even find it intolerable! It upsets their cause and their trifling with truth, and can be, indeed often is hunted in falling democracies, slaves to convenience, long since lost to any truth, except that there is no truth, a point of view which they pursue with an intransigence like that of the foulest sect. They come often to admit of no truth, since it is simply inconvenient in human relations, and you go further without it: to what end and in what direction do you go, however ? This needs some examination.

A doctor may learn to live agreeably with many particular ways in a patient: a little odd he may think some perhaps, not what he would expect, requiring care perhaps; but if you are to help, why not simply adapt! Perhaps the patient has real troubles enough ...

As soon however as this imaginary doctor becomes so accepting of the patient's ways that he no longer applies the rules and principles of health toward his patient, he is buying the patient for that person's own downfall and his own shame! Some are like that: they comply with everything and stand for nothing, and so fall for anything.

In this, they merely contribute in the end to their own downfall, and that of those who find it convenient to do the same.

Liberty is wonderful; but deadly in the end, when it selects wrongly. Life is partly a quest for the best, and when you knowingly fall short of it for simple convenience, popularity, trouble-free ride and so forth, you become like a pot-holed road, never maintained, no standards, just left alone.

Put differently, making the highest truth that there is no truth is merely self-contradiction. In fact, Jesus said, "If you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins," John 8:24. He came from above, sent by God, from eternity (John 17, 8:58), where time as we know it, is something you can look down on, as a creation. So His works attested^*1, and some became 'secret disciples." If you never let it appear that this is your foundation for truth and living, then you are like an Embassy which forgets for which country it has been built, or an Ambassador who shirks his duty, and pleases his current host, and there is an end to it.

So tolerance, flexibility, adaptability are all good in their various fields: putting up with difficulties, not being hard to get along with by mere personal pride or self-emphasis, accepting different ways of meeting as problem or situation with a good grace. When however you are so tolerant of a life that you accept a lie, tolerate denial of truth, live a chameleon existence to escape trouble, you become a foundation-less ruin, waiting to be exposed as such in God's own time. You may build many superstructures; but when you start accommodating to the point of moving foundations, and trying to change these, you can bring the whole house down. There is a place for variables and a site for strength; there is a room for adaptability with kindness, as for character that does not change. A frog that grows heavy can become a futile plop, a fly that grows drowsy is readily despatched, a dancer who grows bandy loses all grace, a car with adaptable tyres that lose their air becomes a disaster to design. To dismiss truth for convenience is to dismiss life for death; to hide truth for survival is to become unprincipled and without heart, like parrots which lose their brilliantly designed colours and flop and plop without precision or efficiency, mere flits in the wind.

Man without truth is like light without illumination. If he hides the truth, he becomes like light that shines darkness.

Christ did nothing to hide the truth: what was so, He said; what needed doing, He did, where power was required without limit, He showed it, where suffering, He endured it. He had character. He lived by truth and more, being God made into flesh as man to secure our salvation, being the truth, He showed it both in word and deed, neither outstripping the other, actions and expressions in perfect harmony, at the highest level of power and grace, love and knowledge that the world had ever, and has ever seen.

The scope^*1*1 of his spiritual realism and telling the truth, magnificent healing power and control even over natural things was illimitable; but it was not for Himself, for He did it to serve, to save and to show the way home for wandering man, back to where he came from, the God of glory (Matthew 20:28). If you were troubled by His words, He asked you to examine His works! (John 14:11). Passing through shame He did not deserve, to free the books for those who so receive Him, He brought many children to glory (Hebrews 2), showing the way in Himself, BEING the way to be followed, opening the door of entry and caring for those on the way by His Spirit (John 10:27-28, Ephesians 3:16, Romans 8:1-10).

When therefore some try, even within the Christian Church, which names Him as Lord and Saviour, to change the foundations, small wonder that there is an outcry from Jude, as found in the book which in the New Testament bears his name. When, therefore, Paul states (I Corinthians 3:11), there is no other foundation given to man but Jesus Christ, he is simply stating the truth. When some tried to graft things on to the Christian faith, to alter aspects, to open new doors, to re-assemble the foundations, with nothing to show but a heart of rebellion, being neither rational nor reasonable, tolerant of ruin, throwing principles to the wind and asking for the whirl-wind in graceless ingratitude, is it any wonder that Jude spoke sharply!

Would not a Matron in a hospital speak sharply to a nurse injecting patients with the debilitating death warrant of Aids! If not, together with acting accordingly, she would not be tolerant but shameless, her hospital a shambles. Such a nurse at best, would stop at once the evil practice, give account of the matter, overturn it instantly and change her ways to more vigilance with relish and efficiency. This ? not after a while! If not, she would be expected soon to be found elsewhere, in some place where her love of the unreasonable, the unrighteous and death was tolerated, so that all could be ruined together!

THE BOOK OF JUDE

AT THE OUTSET

Jude tells us that he was about to write on the common salvation as his theme. It was a general topic, a concern with the nature of the faith, its applications, its gifts and graces. However, certain developments changed his ideas on topic. Instead, he was resolved to write another matter, the defence of the faith, occasioned by assault and mutation efforts being made treacherously from within it, or by those seeking to gain a foothold or death grip within it. These he compares to various rebellions in the past, where faithless people did odious things, using the very faith they opposed, or abusing it as if to destroy it. These pestilential assault forces were and will be in their future embodiment, dealt with in the hell of their unlovely deceptions, the dire direction of their thrusting flow.

In the meantime, now, they must be fought against, and the faith itself must be defended against them. In the event, you get near enough to their fiery location, you have to be especially careful not to be contaminated - as it were a question of radio-active material - and to snatch the burning soul from its devastating base with watchful compassion.

Thus we learn from Jude, that he is turning from concentration on a whole host of themes,

including

	the running of the spiritual city
	the issues surrounding understanding of its truth, aspirations, relationship of the units of the spiritual suburbs,
	the activation and institution of creation, the invention of its domain and its deployment,
	early defilement of the human race, through rambling into casuistical rebellion,
	justification, sanctification, faith, repentance,
	brotherly love, the worship of the Saviour,
	His redemption, the saving work of His Holy Spirit in applying the Gospel,
	the whole gamut of what is needed for, and in the pursuit of the Great Commission:

	what is not shared at all, not common, extraordinary, intrusive, outrageously devastating,
	occupationally adverse, infectious and calamitously contrary.

The thing is no longer a common element in Christian living, begetting, grooming, development and destiny. Indeed, not only is it not shared, it is not salvation at all, no iota of it.

	From alpha, conversion, to omega, the growing in knowledge and grace and sure arrival in heaven,
	from evangelisation to care of new Christians:
	it has nothing to say.

In nautical terms, this is not about the construction, maintenance and good spirit in the submarine; it is about keeping it afloat under assault. It is not a training manual; it is an anti-missile compendium. You are going to have to fight. What you are fighting for is the faith, and as to that, let us be clear, it is something ONCE FOR ALL delivered, by divine bounty, TO the saints. It is like a Christmas gift, not a site for contribution, but reception.

Given, it stays as it is. It was delivered once. This IS the gift. The new topic is outside that domain. Tigers long for it, hounds drip for it, foxes lurk for it, to devour it; but now this issue must be faced. Never must they be allowed to do this, or leave their droppings on it, maul or mouth it. As well let an eagle claw a tiara!

To drive the thing off, you have to be more than alert, exceptionally vigilant, and more than this, to engage in fighting. You are not being asked to fight WITH the gospel, as if to expose it to those lustful and depraved contenders. This is emphatically and indeed categorically NOT a specialised form of evangelism, even if the rescue percentage is low. It is entirely outside that domain, a matter of the faith being conserved, preserved and so continuing extant! and this, in the face of assault on IT, by those intent on its dissolution, whether by overthrow or insidious insertions or deletions.

Any other topic, such as fighting with the faith, is a flat contradiction of the change of topic, making it an evangelistic specialisation. What is excluded is ANYTHING to do with the operation of salvation, the sphere of Jude's original intention; and included is EVERYTHING to do with the current grave situation, listed with other past assaults and cunning or confused wars on the word of God. Now there is need to rebut, repel, overthrow, distinguish and avoid the invasive dynamic. The call resembles the tagging of germs in the bloodstream of the Church, so to allow the phagocytes and to come devour the assailants, thus preserving the health of the whole. As others repelled assault, so must you, as others experienced doom for these innovations and their style of arrogant knavery, so must these.

It is action to preserve the faith is needed; for it is not going to be generated all over again. That deposit was a once for all grant. You must fight for it. The topic is different from functioning with it; the action appropriate to this seedy sedition is different, just as the examples to follow are different, the setting is war and the potential victim is the Gospel, towards which your action, its preservation, is to be directed.

You may find an occasional bomber pilot able to be extracted, harness burning, to put it in modern terms. But these are nuclear aircraft, attacking to the uttermost; so beware of radioactive contamination if you DO get a chance to rescue anyone from the molten confusion of their crashing crafts. If you find someone not so badly taken in, perhaps one swept in without thought, well on such a one have compassion; but this is WAR, so fight.

Accordingly, you have as the Arndt and Gingrich's work, A Greek English Lexicon of the New Testament points out, in the context, only one option for translation in the context: fight FOR the faith. In fact, you are being required to fight FOR it, in this call to spiritual arms, preserving it from contamination, evacuation, transformation, distortion and invasion by alien ideas, options and optics.

All of that, then, is an entirely different matter from Jude's first thought on subject, this one being substituted for his original intention in writing at all. Indeed, he has been moved to cancel all the former theme of common salvation in his entire choice of topic, from dealing with all that is common to all who are saved, being saved, and all that is in view for salvation, even fromthe entirety of the regions of common salvation. Not only is his new topic NOT this whole region and realm; it has a different aim from that. It cannot be merged as a sub-type, or participating unit within common salvation. It is on the contrary the very defence of this, that is now in point. If the one is darkness and the incursion of light, this is darkness and its assault ON the light.

IN THE ONSET

This in verse 4, we read, concerns creepy people, who perhaps because of sleeper people, dozing guards, have managed to penetrate into the Christian camp. such intruders are not potential for salvation but instead

"were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness,

and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ."

As to the Greek word for 'lewdness' as here translated, it is one of great interest. Some think it may have been derived from the city of Selgn, a model of uprightness, strictness of morals. Accordingly, we read in the Thayer's classic work, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, that the content for the term is this: unbridled lust, excess, licentiousness, lasciviousness, wantonness, outrageousness, shamelessness, insolence.

From this it is clear that this is not just a sexual looseness, such as is now being greatly used to debase our Commonwealth of Australia, or even a gender breach relating to bodies, here especially from Governmental bodies, for it is has a far broader intimation. The sense clearly is what is not right, what is loosed from its native and natural structure, excessive and unrestrained, even insolent. It despises natural law, the course of design, the protection of realism, washes like a giant wave, in danger of shattering the very prow of the vessel assaulted, requiring vast care to avoid catastrophe.

There is a certain spirit to it, what is designated by this Greek term as used by Jude; for it conveys us to the sight of a grandiose carelessness, an indolence towards any morality, an arrogance toward reality, a sort of extreme, infected unrighteousness. THIS is the sort of thing found in that to which Jude is objecting, against which he is directing disciplined and controlled fighting. Yet for all that, it must also be vigilant and EARNEST fighting to prevent its secretive incursions, its spying and damnable slitherings; and this not in any sense a case of swearing, but of fact. It is from the dynamic and desperation of the damned, in general, that this evil thing sails with corruptive lust for the fair virgin of the Gospel. No mere program is enough to overturn it; the response must be from the heart, earnest and convinced.

Don't just sit there, don't smoke the pipe of contentment in the very midst of this infiltration: go and FIGHT the thing, do so with all your heart, be earnest, realistic, defend, deter, overthrow as God did in other instances noted, such as those of Sodom and Gomorrah, which were virtual standard bearers of the downfall of man, the subsidence of morals, the confusion of corruption. There debasement was established and consolidated; and in parallels, as on one notable occasion, the devil himself could act, as in the case of Moses; another variety being that of rebellion from within, as with the company of Korah (Numbers 16). As to the last, this entire group of people God called on Moses to leave, commanding the people to separate from them in a way almost unknown in most churches to day it seems. In a very short time, God acted, opening the ground under this now segregated group, swallow up physically, what was acting as if to swallow the obedience of the people of God, spiritually.

Such is the message of Jude. His topic is other than what it was to be. What could be so far from this common salvation and all its presentation, modes of address, application and care ? It is certainly not about how to run the hospital of faith, the government of grace, what cares for troubled saints even, or those seeking salvation. Instead, it is a manual on protection from terrorists, and required action forthwith urgent to that cause, so that the alternative of nurture is displaced. Not only terrorists, from inveiglers, from denizens of spurious quarters, watchers from spying spiritual satellites, seeking overthrow from within. It is a corps of rebellious nurses, pill peddlers, unauthorised practitioners who, so far from any potential alliance or involvement with empathy, are subject to another categorisation altogether. They are like burning missiles, sent from hell, or those flaring and fuming on their way with much damage, to that destination (verses 7, 11-12, 15,19).

This, to which Jude calls, is not remedial work for spiritual scholars, but a treatise on military assault, specious subterfuge, resistance that comes from the marshalling yards of hell. It deals with a special case of James 3:6, its target for decisive combat, those who are "wandering stars for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever," verse 13. It concerns avoiding being burnt by the searing flames (verse 23), with occasional hope of extinguishing the fire: but the type of assailant is that of persons trenchantly opposed, fierily imposed their devastating heat , like a bush-fire. We are not now in the realm of the practice of living in the bush, and the mode of disciplined life to be desired there, but rather with the stopping of the furious flames, the disappearance from the scene of those who resemble a tempestuous bushfire.

Again, in the city of faith, through Jude comes this manual about extinguishing the spreading of the fiery incendiary bombs, intentionally let loose to ravish. So far from being anything to do with the common salvation, of which the Gospel, the faith is the cutting edge, in its outreach, in its indoctrination, sanctification or common ailments, the work with its workers to whom Jude is opposed, represents nothing less than

	a take-over move, subtle as Satan or puffed up to intimidate,
	an audacious joust, a plague, a Back Death,
	a threatening pandemic,
	an aggressive take-over move,
	filled with diaster.

Just as this is NOT a matter of the common salvation, so it IS a matter of resistance to what assaults that very thing, brimming in its passion with poison with which to infect it. Thus it is like the Pharisee-Sadducee perversion assigned in spirit to hell from the mouth of Christ, and here so described (verse 12-13).

These are spiritual alchemists who "turn the grace of God into unprincipled looseness" (v. 4), spies who "creep in", being ungodly men in the tradition of the unruly rebels brazenly departing from divine authority, contemptuous and unsatisfied, despising authority where it belongs (verse 8), whether in prophet or apostle. They move from this to extravagant notions of their own, unfettered by fact, unmanaged by reason, dissolute, and so far from taking commission from God, they "deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ" (v. 4). As in the devastated Sodom and Gomorrah, their very site is condemned, their nature unnatural, their lust inordinate, their understanding negligible (verse 10). Raging waves are their typing, both portentous and powerful; but it is like a fiery sea, for they are in the realm of those who are "suffering the vengeance of eternal fire," verse 7.

These "defile the flesh," like skin cancer; and how hideous are some of those disasters within the ranks of dermatology (verse 8)! This is war, not weal; it is by nature outside the realm of salvation, despite oddities.

It is not how to live in England or to immigrate, to follow on the image; it is how to repel the vaulting ambition of heartless invaders, seeking to enslave. For this, the name is war; the result is action; the need is care; the essence is exclusion; the necessity is understanding of the crafts of corrosion and corruption, seduction and spiritual oppositionism, and to realise YOU ARE IN THIS AT WAR. As the irony during World War II used to have it, "Wake up mate! there is a war on."

The topic:

	war not peace,
	preservation of the means of salvation, not outreach,
	protection not propulsion;

and the need,

	earnest pursuit of spiritual war,
	deep valuing of divine truth,
	total aversion to subversion,
	protection not inspection as far as the faith is concerned, with deliverance from specious deception the theme of the work in view, not delivering by Gospel grace, for to deliver the scheming fox in the fowl pen, is not to the point when it is gorging.

Rather the need is its removal, the blocking of its access,
and the realisation that this is a scourge,
seductive of all your constructive endeavours,
needing baiting not bolstering.

UNDERTAKING THE UPSET OF THE ONSET

Plans are needed to separate it out, as with Korah's rebellion and hasten its destruction. It must be unmasked, not given cover, excluded not included in a reciprocity of faith. You are not to engage with wolves in sheep's clothing, making them feel at home and comfortable, nor are you to assist the contagion from diseased animals amid your flock. This would be outrageous simplicity. Like Christ (Matthew 23), your current job in THIS aspect of your duties, is never to indulge either yourself or your opponent, but to extirpate the foe from your flock. Only if the sudden occasion may show itself amid the bleak slaughters being brutally applied to decimate the flock- found in the appearance of some way of rescuing any one of this extraordinarily different oddity, may you so act.

Does one of the evil soldiers cry for mercy, seek salvation ? then being careful, since to fight is their task, to surrender their death, snatch such a one out; or is one confused ? then take that other exception. But even this, it is a deadly and perilous thing to do, and you will need a deep discernment amid the extirpation of these thieves of truth, dramatically, synthetically, speciously seeking to remove the heritage of holiness, the way home to our Maker, by infiltration of filth (vv. 16,18). Indeed, their category is that of mere mockers, made of synthetic sin and subtlety, now bold, now cunning, always destructive, contaminated soil, surging chemicals from a ruined plant.

Amidst and against the generic of fighting, the distortion of faithlessness, the energy of souls aflame, the activism of anti-God grumbling, the exhibition of systematic stumbling and remorseless tripping,

be assiduous then!

Be activistic, without delay and when, as with Judas, the case is patently clear, let it be acted on quickly! (John 13:27). This is not Gospel treatment, it is post-Gospel attempts to steal and alter the pearl, and you do not then give the pearls to the swine, lest they turn on you and so rend you, as the Lord announced. There is a place for an athletic camp, a Summer session, a spiritual exposure, and there is a site for the sentence on hell to be realised, and the diseases of foolish flesh to be confronted, amidst the hygiene of holiness. No standard can be lowered, nor assault on the Word of God, tolerated, amid the flock. If there is error of perception, it needs correction; if misunderstanding, it needs enduement with comprehension.

Tolerance is for what is not foundational! Let an Earthquake Man come into your premises, if such were possible, and on you alone would fall responsibility, as you sought to show him the family silver and how to eat with it. Hence you find in II John 7-11, an exclusion zone, and many ignoring this, have perished. Hence appears in Romans 16:17ff., the prohibition zone; and many, going blind when reading this, have brought shame on themselves, actively working by wilful oblivion, to let flames enter the vault where valuables are kept.

To give a reason for the faith (I Peter 3:15), is not to sanction or tolerate treason to it. Even a cricket oval and its authorities would be foolish to have it turned into tennis courts, if they held it for another sport! You do not attempt to be reasonable when vast spaces are already available, and this sport sanctum has prescribed order, purpose and modes.

You are dealing, according to this teaching of Jude, with lords of spiritual lesion, cancers which can colonise in the unprotected body. Do you entertain it for a moment, deal with its intentions and inventions as if they were germane when assault is their name ? Far from it, if like Israel of old as in Numbers 14, some in your midst want to go back to Egypt, that is to the slave-pen which had so abused them, finding the pilgrimage too tough, then do not acquiesce! Flesh in its mental, bodily and carnal maladies want a prior commitment to it! Do not yield then.

Many died for their perfidy in the desert, taking some 40 years to do so. Those who followed the truth, like Joshua and the oncoming generation of the young grown up, these entered the new land, whereas faith failing in the earlier generation, those YIELDED to the YAPPING of ANOTHER VISION. This found place in the heartless and unsanctified recall from faith, resistance to reason, withdrawal from the facts preceding in the entire Exodus. For this, they paid by losing what they had sought; for the entire mission for them turned into one great counterfeit, in view of their lapse. It was therefore in the next generation with its staggering power-backing by God, that God showed by contrast the folly of their unfaithfulness.

Hence if some speak, as did the spies (other than Joshua) with discouragement towards the faith, while seeming to be part of Christ's body, then what ? Then faithfulness is not to empathise, but to solicit others to avoid such perils, for this is an affair not only of the head, but of the heart. Rather DO NOT LISTEN to their "great swelling words of vanity" (verse 16); and instead remember other words. Which ? Why those "which were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ." In particular, realise the lie of the land, like good military commanders, and far-seeing troops, for

"they told you that there would be mockers in the last time

who would walk according to their own ungodly lusts.

These are sensual persons, who cause divisions,

not having the Spirit."

Remember the looming assault on Moses after the affair of the refusal to enter the land ? (Numbers 14:4-10)! There are many who desire to make the ones who STAY with the faith to be divisive, ready for some equivalent to stoning, in order to imitate orthodoxy in their own innovations, and so confuse the issue. Sometimes the innovations and ramming of man's words into the mouth of God, directly or in effect, become as there, so popular that many do not enter the promised land of peace in Christ, at all; and whole denominations flow smoothly, though fire burns on the surface of their flow, to the judgment prescribed. Some flow on illegitimate traditions (Mark 7:7ff.), some by departure from the Bible: but whether it is the liberal dilution or deletion of biblical truth, or the calamity of confessional idolatry, that is, service to the mastery of merely confessional declarations, out of their subordinate place, effectual setting of the word of man above the very word of God, so it goes.

The beautiful has become burnt, and many who do not leave it (as in Romans 16:17), realising that the Bible as sole doctrinal basis is the test (Proverbs 30:6), are in peril of the same 'solution'. Remove the truth and its exponents, call them liars, frauds, cranks and so forth, and subversively intimate that error is the new orthodoxy, and the adherence to biblical truth is the fatal error. In this, as in other things, there is often no limit to the devil's audacity.

The author has received just such equivocation and assault, in several lands!

But what of these entrapments, enlargements of rancour, departures from truth, confusions of issues ? This is the way of Sodom, of novel morals, of the consumption of the sons of Korah (Numbers 16) in their audacious and specious rebellion, of false leaders, cursed prototypes, as that of Cain, sentenced by the Lord to wandering exile, separated not for good, but by the sundering of the Lord.

In the case of Korah, Moses demanded TOTAL separation from them, so that the curse - soon to be seen in that case - of God should not touch the people of the Lord.

Spiritual masks for profit (verse11, cf. II Peter 2:1) is their trade, the false prophet Balaam even insisting that he would speak only what God told him, despite his WILLINGNESS to GO ALONG with those seeking the curse on the people of the Lord! (Numbers 22L1-31). In irony, in much of his words when wrongly attracted to go along with those seeking to curse the people of God, offering him much money for the job, he spoke well, in particular predicting Christ (Numbers 24:17). However, he did evil (II Peter 2:15-16).

Alas, he but deceived himself, for the form was not the fact, as so often in deception. It is such that you are to fight and it is with single-minded earnestness that you are to do this fighting. It is against those twice uprooted already (verse 12), that you are to address your spiritual militancy and vigilance. It is to their entire separation you are point, not grudgingly as if to lose a certain tittivation (as in II Timothy 4:1-4), but with clean minds and pure hearts, acting without enticement or delay. You must act to enable others to continue unmolested, so that lambs are not gorged on, only to be regurgitated as they pass to their second death, chewed till they break in the foul-breathing mouth of their 'tutors'.

This is a time to protect what is assailed, the faith, those in it, the believers, what is of it, the Gospel, and to do no trade of any kind with the assiduous assailants, who grossly mix a certain spiritual laxity and moral indolence with a zeal if not zest to infect. Beware the germs! Indeed, apply the antidote with the antiseptic to cleanse the place; do this rather than wandering witless, woefully swallowed up, your faltering work leaving your neglected flocks as one more variety of doom (verse 15).

If then these be missiles from hell, yet their polluted popularity is exposed, as they burn out, ready for eternal condemnation (verse 6), pollutants of grace, ignorant of their pretended domain (v.10), both fruitless and rootless (verse 12), shame balls, their sites in hell marked out (verse 13), while judgment like a giant tsunami waits their word and deeds (verses 14-15), swallowing them in their own spiritually radioactive waste, which the recent atomic explosions in Japan so well typified .

Thus their lordly and impudent lips and their testimony become part of the marshalling yards for an enemy subject to execution - that of judgment. What then does it resemble ? It is like the response of Britain to the bombing of London in particular, in the great thundering flying fortresses and Lancasters which came to loom over the sources of the assault, in Germany itself, or like the devastation of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, looming amidst the remembered fires of Pearl Harbour. When, however, you attack on earth, that is one thing; but when it is the body of Christ Himself that you assail, then those horrors on this earth, are far transcended by the judgments of heaven. For all sin, and no man on earth is wholly without it; but this, it is assault on the sinless Christ, the One executed that righteousness might be imputed, reckoned by grace through faith to the lost.

This is the attempt to ravage a hospital, to condemn the land of mercy, to invade the only hope of man. What judgment then must such corrupt incoherence await, filled with godlessness which Jude declares no less than four times in one verse (verse 15), en route to the judgment both eternal and divine.

The resistance movement ? It is this which is sought by Jude ? It is more than that: the matter requires total application. This is a commando work, a scene of calamitous gravamen, where deception is rife, foxiness is being perfected, the drowsy are deluded, the luke-warm are set on fire! Fight therefore is the word, not to have pleasing reconciliatory conversations and declarations; and do so with conscientious diligence. The command is to fight for the faith once for all delivered to the saints, not for specious limitations, intimations, transformations, alterations; for it is nothing less than this that is under assault, just as the word of God has been the object of charge and challenge in various tempestuous situations, before.

Naturally these evil dynamics, delusive, oratorical, they cause divisions ( verse 19), and you can trace such in the history of the Church; but never as it is now, as Jeremiah forecast in 23:20. It is part of the foxiness of the indolent brazenness of these interlopers that when someone does as Jude requires, and fights for the faith once for all delivered, so that variations are out, since God being One has spoken the terms of His mercy specifically, then the cry of the spiritual vagrants, the unauthorised immigrants to 'faith' in broad terms is loud. "Divisive," they shout.

So is the challenger miscalled. But why ? It is because when some begin to gain the majority in a Church, those with this flaming incendiarism, then the easy way is to confuse the issue, and make it appear that defenders are amenders, and that the invaders are orthodox. New definitions of orthodoxy appear and become common, as if all police were DEFINED as law-breakers, and all criminals were DEFINED to be innocent, and in some cases, even appointed as police.

Thus again and again, we see it: this fight is not a special case in the common salvation field at all, for it has no part in it. Rather, it is a counter-attack on a subversive movement, as germane, as near to the spiritual ways and costs of the faith, as hell is to heaven, dreams to waking, obedience to rebellion, the unnatural to the natural, boils to healthy skin, raging to relish and shame to regeneration. As to the degradation of the faith-attackers, their sly suggestions, unclean behaviour, relish for rebellion, recorded by Jude amid recitation of the devastations suffered by similar assailants of authority in the past, what is to them ? What is the lot of these defilers of faith, assailants of repentance and faith!

Indeed, it is scarcely possible to conceive of any more utter a rejection, stringent a warning, fiery an exhortation to fight, as pestilence. For the charge of Jude, it is not to clean things up a little, but to reject the way of rout by a vigilance raised to the uttermost level, a resolution that does not flinch and a readiness to counter every feint, slither of subversive squalor, by a charge to be ardent in avoiding and removing such horrors from the midst, as in Numbers 16:15-26, I Corinthians 5:9-11, II Timothy 4:1-4 where rebuke rules, or II Timothy 3:1-9, where as in I Timothy 6, people turn from the wholesome words of Jesus Christ as a principle. From these you who obey the Lord, you have a direct and repeated command. It is this. From such, you are to turn away.

If on the other hand, you WANT people to make merchandise of you, you the bought-and-sold item as in II Peter 2, then know what you AND they are doing!

THE RESET

Rejection, separation, exposure, rebuke, departure, are criteria of the foe. The response ? It is fighting to overcome, awakening to the value of the common salvation and the fact that it is far more precious than any crown jewels, while jewel thieves and picture grabbers, who change the paintings that adorn the site, being consumers of a preciousness they do not even understand, aflame with a usurping ignorance which thrusts them like a vast burning wind, are to be resisted and rejected to the uttermost. They are taken in by those who want to be taken in, and aided by traitors, quislings, those for whom Vichy France was the prototype, the whole "foaming out their own shame, wandering stars." Perversity before such a challenge as this is a responsibility to be borne by the courageously corrupt, the indolently careless and the soporifically embalmed. Thus did Christ speak to them of shutting the eyes, while condemning the contemporary version of such assault on truth as in Matthew 22-23.

How many churches are now grave-yards because Jude was not heeded! (cf. Revelation 2:1-23). Churches using their point of light dissemination are like light-houses taken down and never rebuilt. In the symbolism of Revelation, they have their candle-stick taken, while they scintillate no more, grounded lightless and useless.

Do you join what you fight ? do you even desire to share classes with them ? Do you wish to have their visiting professors take temporary posts in your seminaries ? Not unless you are doped with disobedience, soldiers A.W.L. (cf. II Timothy 2). Do you maintain what is eternally condemned as deserving a place in your midst ? As surely as you can condemn grit instead of grease in your engine, you may do so. Do you agree to the presence of what is right only in its own right, wrong though that principle is there, but condemned in the word of God, a potential plague, ready to become pandemic to the sleeping "virgins" already as far off as harlots from the domestic felicity of the faith ? Do you employ a squadron of the enemy's bombers, complete with their Staff, as one of your own unit ? do you walk hand in hand with an assassin! If not, then, comes the message of Jude: Fight then, deal with illegal immigrants, reckless intruders, fecklessly aflame, not smelling it while they burn.

The fight is

	systematic,
	obliterative of the evil incursion,
	fearful in type,
	reaching almost to the brink of hell in its domain, as it purges.

It is

	a counter-insurgency in high-alert and intransigent rejection,
	categorical in its exclusion,
	fearful in its depiction of the double-uprootedness of the degradationists,

and it covers

	not sin-to-salvation, the common affair, but
	the disjunction from spies with corrosive weapons,
	the exposure of the incalculable wickedness which their surging shame brings in its seductive infection of the faith, if it were possible.

It deals not with health or living, but death and dying, and the purgation of the morals of the mortuary, the false gospels of the frauds and the cohabitation of the spurious and the true.

If, then, at any time, you happen to find one beguiled, swept superficially into recklessness, like a relatively harmless kerytosis amid the skin cancers, then in this abnormal case, there may be exceptional scope for deliverance of the infected agent. However, as with a spy turned, to make a double-agent, there is a poisonous aspect; for a devious and deceptive worker is the type, so that you must beware of the perils in what you then do. Yet in compassion, if such can occur amidst the fighting (like an enemy soldier given first-aid when in agony), then with fear and watchfulness, you might be able to act in some such select case (Jude 22-23).

In all this, amid the typical and the exceptional, in the fight for the faith, the challenge to the usurping agencies, their exposure, the concentration and focus on their perilous pushes and remorseless and aggravated wickedness, yhou must be valiant. Therefore do not delay to act, nor fail to have the faith that the God who calls you, who has spoken, whose definition of the saving faith once for all delivered, will stand amid whatever vicious flames would act to destroy it.It is He is "able to keep you from stumbling." More than that, He is able to "present you faultless before the presence of His glory," and that "with exceeding joy."

It is He who alone is wise, and to Him and His word, His ways and His works be the glory and the dominion for ever.

How vast our His coverages of good and evil, righteousness and unrighteousness, relief and rebellion, healing and unholiness, rampancy and restoration, saving thrust and evil lust, the precious and the polluted, responsibility and reality, how limitless His power, sharp His tests, profound His comforts, as He grasps from the first, the entire scope of chronological phases, from creation to destination, for the entire earth under heaven, and the entire heavens over the earth! Praise God for His tolerance that He might seek the lost so assiduously, protect them so keenly and assure the found so finally a (Ephesians 1:11, II Timothy 1:8ff.), this in its place; and for His intolerance of what befouls faith, destroys mind, deludes spirit and is seductive of man. In Christ, where it was suffering, He was willing, or demonstration, He would act where ears were open, or declaration (Mark 10), He would state, or stimulation, He would speak (Matthew 13), or healing or the very irruption from death, He would do it, flexible in helping; but where there was deception, mischief abroad and foxiness, He would expose relentlessly (Matthew 22-23).

Where a humble heart sought Him, He would not turn away (Mark 7:24-30), or a questing one, He would give scope for finding Him (John 4:1ff.); but where the passion for Him was made subservient for another longing, He did not run after the wayward (Mark 10:21); for truth is, and its departure platform can have swift traffic. Even if He loved some person with some appealing testimony, yet this was not indulged, as if to gain pleasant associate, conversational company; everything was free, truth invariant, love pure to the point of perfection. In essence, from foreknowledge to the eventual divine arrest of reality, and provision of destiny, freedom has its wonder, volunteers their joy (Psalm 110:3) and God His glory.

NOTE

See SMR Ch. 6, Christ Jesus: The Wisdom and the Power of God Ch. 8, Repent or Perish Ch. 2 for example.