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Chapter 3

SUMS, SUMMITS and IN SUM

Adding Things Up, and Getting Things Down

Birth!

of God on Earth, and

therefore of the

Day,

Age,

Roaring Rage,

Restoration

and Index to His Return

Revelation 14:6-16

The Day, The Age of Grace

The everlasting Gospel broadcast! says Revelation 14:6 - to all. It features God's birth on earth , incarnate as a babe! (John 1:1-14, Isaiah 7, 9, 48:16, Psalm 2, 22, 45).

When it happened, there was no drum roll, but there was a birthday on this earth which was to be forever singular, significant more than the rise and fall of mere nations, a blight to many by showing the subversion of their own souls (John 15:22), and a grinding for the haters of their own souls. Yet in this lay man's only hope, not in Copenhagen and its inane haggling, with self-interest making mockery of need for the race, and morality spurned, earning its shame of face. No, it was not there; while others awaited a temporary deliverance, amid the dissolving stanchions of our physical home, destined for convulsions not a few before its termination in His Majesty who came as a babe, and not a blight, whose light will shine not merely as a lighthouse, but as a transforming brilliance.

Wait a minute! you may say, when precisely WHAT happened, to make this the beginning of a day for a babe, for its life on this earth, for an epoch which could never be the same as what preceded: what then ?

Why do you not know, have you not heard ? When GOD became in format a babe, through the Person of His own infallible, eternal Word, not mere words but in Himself personal, there was not an eclipse of the sun, but of all history. He who had spoken of this day for millenia, now made it His own birthday in babe format, for a task He has savoured with passion (Hosea 13:14), to give death its come-uppance by meetings its just demands of sinners, and to give life for man its manifest eternity, through a door as narrow as the babe, and as high as the heavens.

Thus His birthday, was the intention of man, should divide the Ages, B.C. before Him, A.D. afterwards, He the pivot, division and Lord over history.

Why, you might pursue it, would it make such a difference ?

It is because God being infinite - our Creator of all verbal systems, such as DNA, all cogitative capacities, such as show His being and eternal, nature and might, all that deliberative and rational freedom which makes of man a responsible agent and true lover, or hater - became one of us in this way. HENCE given birth in the day which we celebrate by means of Christmas, His coming was not only that of a babe born, but that of an Age. In this, the Gospel payment being made, its beauty arrived with a masterful pregnancy which in turn brought forth an epoch, that of grace, where God who did not come to judge but to save the world, and not with a heart just for some of it, but for all as in Colossians 1:19ff., set about His own method.

Method ? you may ask. What is this about a method ? Surely His mere presence would suffice, if anything would.

Yet there is method in His cogitative splendour in the DNA, enormous, in tripled intricacy of storage and dynamic, we learn in the most advanced miniaturisation of command conceivable; and there is method in His spiritual provision for our roving spirits no less than for our adventuring bodies. God is not profligate, although liberal beyond all imagination. I was much impressed with an employer who gave to someone working for him for only two weeks, a holiday at Christmas of the same duration, provided he stayed on; but this is the birth not only of the babe, God on this earth as one of us, yet without the sin which slices spirit and dumbfounds mind, but of the Age in which God who thinks, acted, and God who speaks, secured salvation, long thought of. Now, in its predicted time, it was at last fulfilled. If not, then all who had gone before could have had no eternity such as King David delighted in (Psalm 17, 21), and there would have been a mass abortion of hope.

Here then is the birth of God on this earth, of an epoch, an Age for His work, His strange and marvellous work (Isaiah 29:14ff.), starting with a babe sought so hard for premature death, that a King slew masses of babes in a vain effort to kill Him. Such is the way of this world, in the heart of the nations, which though they at times flare with a light which reflects something of the Grace which this Age provides, yet fizzle too soon, just as the Empire of Rome, flashing in sudden subscription to Christ under Constantine, yet aborted in the papacy,. In times in and out, fragile and strong^*1it fell to those proud boasts by a non-Christ from Rome. It stirred in phases of submission and restoration, often subjected in much to one presuming on His majesty (cf. SMR pp. 904ff.,911ff.), who alone is Master and Leader, proceeded in vast plans, as if to supplant Him on this earth.

The papacy in its European clothes, came on, centred in one nation and place, not in the Jerusalem of His cross or the Christ. It was focussed on earth in one man, oracle, neither sinless nor eternal, rather than only in Him, the Saviour Himself in heaven till the restoration of all things (Acts 3:19ff.); in pieces of bread, and not for worship only in Him the only Head, leader and master, Trinity member, its summit and meaning (Matthew 23:8-10, cf. SMR pp. 1032-1088H). It was focussed in countless traditions^*^1Aand not in the Bible for doctrine only, with its paramount practical point, the certain and eternally assured salvation of God, nor was it subjected, prone and prostate to Him who declares Himself only to be the Master with all of us brethren, who believe Him and receive what He offers (Isaiah 53:1-10).

It is a replacement christ, and not an effacement before Christ. He who exalts himself will always be abased; but how many with him! It arose to a pre-eminence forbidden, and slew in its own ways, as Herod earlier in his, in an Inquisition such a short-circuit of truth and mercy, as almost to provoke comedy in the very heart of witless tragedy, for such obvious defilment of glory, as Europe lurched into inhumanities deplorable, almost unimaginable (cf. Ancient Words and Modern Deeds Ch. 14).

These have been instances, items in the movement in that sadly afflicted, but often dominant Europe, the last of Daniel's empires. It reaches its climax. Though many in Europe have done excellent things, and vast gains have been found in knowledge, yet its poor people have been so gripped in such gripes and assailed by such imperialisms of thoughts and design, aim and ambition, such witless waverings and quaverings and bombasts, that for all its great developments, it is a war scene not only in bodies slain, nor in booty stolen, but in spirit also.

In many ways, tormenting and truculent, then peaceable and hopeful, Europe suffered and many were killed, Jew and Gentile alike, by papacy and Islamic forces, by Nazism and Communism, by various infections and stirrings, as it sought through this or that channel, or such sought through it, to rule the world; and its forces were amazingly dominant^*2, when dominant they were, which was not seldom.

The world meanwhile continues on its lurching path.

Copenhagen, the dervish dance of devilry, the acme of disagreement, the triumph of formality, the abasement of virtue, the exhibit of man's confusion and pretence, pretension and impotence, this is merely another view of what the United Nations drably displays.

How the nations rage against Him, as in Psalm 2, Acts 4:25-26 picking it up and applying it, and this, not merely in the early time of this distemper under Herod, babe slaughterer, not only with Pilate and priest in inglorious communion in the crucifixion, nor in their godless lapses from whatever profession of Christ any of the nations once made. It was the same sordid story in the ruined but restored Roman Empire, in the persecutory and most unholy Holy Roman Empire, in the godless boiling of Communism as in the erratic dreams that master so much of the East, one aggressor in which we now learn also has atomic bombs courtesy of the USA. This is but one which threatened the earth in living memory; but many are the other sites slowly or suddenly becoming spiritually unsavoury.

There it booms in the gross depths of immorality that even the USA and Australia, England and Europe seem determined to plumb in their increasingly godless permissions and pollutions for the ways of man. If the physical air is at risk, how much more the very spirit of man.

Yet this, for all that, is the Age of Grace: not a mere time for technical progress, but for an advance which will never regress in a kingdom which will never end, as the angel told the father of John the Baptist, as Daniel 7 exhibits, and Christ showed (Matthew 24:35). Indeed, HIS kingdom, instituted by the payments of the Gospel, which is everlasting (Revelation 14:6), is to come for a time in manifest splendour on this earth (Revelation 12:15), replacing this present misrule as a youth replaces a fractious child, or a man a dissolute youth.

Small wonder, then, since after that the very earth is to dissolve (II Peter 3, Isaiah 51:6), the Gospel is energised on this earth in this Age of Grace, gift of the generosity of God, through the birth of the babe, which instituted not just the ground of celebration for one being, but that for millions, to be born again each one in his or her own day, by faith. When ? when as in Isaiah 53:10, the Lord is taken, His soul a sacrifice for sin, thus giving Him, though Himself childless through early murder, yet a spiritual species of children, in the millions! (Psalm 22:30). These with Him in heaven's haven, live for ever.

The Wry Way, the Epoch of Disgrace

Yet as we follow Revelation14, we find that in this overview Chapter, intense in its depiction of the resurrected arrival of saints, freshly grabbed from the torments of the persecuting nations (vv. 1-6), there is a quick sequence. The deceptive spiritual harlot, lure and pit to the deluded, is defeated (as in Proverbs 7-9): wisdom has prevailed in her call (as in Proverbs 8),and a sudden flash of light exposes a fallen body, corruptor of millions.

What is this, then ? this fallen body, you might ask.

It is Babylon, identified in Revelation 17:9 as Rome^*3, who there bears the death mask to the charade that has blasted this earth with ceremonial mockery for millenia, that of mixed religious pomposity, underwritten by the State, its surrogates or diverse powers. Here is the end of the Age, and here is the focus on evil overcome, exposed for a flashing moment.

It has survived in Rome as Romanism, misnamed Roman Catholicism, the least catholic possible in its citified centre, with variable degrees and kinds and species of international rule over the Age.

Here in Revelation 13, 14, 17, we are coming to the end of the Age, and here is the focus given for a flashing moment. This Babylon, mystery Babylon as in Revelation 17, that is the embodiment of all the evil that Jeremiah apostrophied in Jeremiah 50-51, it is featured and figured as a final site of rebellion and witchcraft; and here in preparation for Revelation 17 which identifies it, it is seen as about to fall.

"Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she has made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication" (Revelation 14:8, cf. 17:5-9).

The city of the seven hills, in its religious disposition, is seen as about to be destroyed by fire. It has survived in Rome as Romanism, misnamed Roman Catholicism, the least catholic possible in its citified centre, with variable degrees and kinds and species of international rule over the Age. It here comes to an end.

She, said the angel of it, has made "all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication." Such has been the way of the spirit of Babylon since the very term was made a cry, and its overarching condemnation a proverb and a byword through Jeremiah.

Now a nation or city as such does not literally 'fornicate', though many in it may do so; but this is a spiritual designation as in Ezekiel 16, 20, and in Hosea generally, expressive of corrupt dealings with the God of salvation, such as moving even while naming Him, into other religious beliefs, like those who despise the differentiation in 'denominations' even if some worship a piece of bread and others pursue homosexuality in pastors as quite acceptable, though biblically condemned for such liberties (I Corinthians 5-6, I Timothy 1:10, 4:1ff.), idolatries and such laxities. The babe become man, did not die by suicide in broken bread at the last Supper, a thing in fact expressly for remembrance, nor did Christ die in order to liberate from morality. He both died and rose to make godliness available, even to sinners, and eternal life a dower to those deserving only death, and that as a beginning (Revelation 14:11): to be Lord over both living and dead (Romans 14:9), not licence pool.

The Right Way, the Reality of Restoration

Against such things, the saints have set their faces; and whether in flaming and fiery deaths, their own spirits a flame (Psalm 104:4), their bodies burnt as in the Inquisition, which put man in torment for centuries, courtesy of 'Babylon', this same Romanism, or in the earlier days of the Roman Empire, or in whatever manifestation of this same spirit, they have had to show patience (Revelation 14:12). This they have done, and will need to do still further, as Rome's religion in its power structure is at last cast aside by the ruling nations (Revelation 17:16-18) and there arrives the final imperial dynamic, that darling of the devil (Revelation 20:3), the "man of sin" to mar this earth more than greenhouse gases will ever do (though they make a notable contribution), that of the antichrist, the man of sin (II Thessalonians 2, I John 2:18), who meets them clad in its arrogance and carnal pride.

Patient the saints must be in the face of cultural propaganda regarding,

	firstly, the imaginary NEVER exhibited fairy tale of life in its glories, by organic evolution,
	secondly in the sedated dreams of organisation by actual or pseudo-imperial power from man (and Copenhagen will greatly strengthen the force with which this particular dream is pursued, just as Hitler, Stalin and Mao sought it),
	thirdly in the moral diatribes against morals as from China and increasingly the West, as if to be evil is a righteous right, and
	finally, in the seductive clamour of the devil himself, no mean agent of ruin.

No wonder the cry is heard, as in Revelation 14:13,

"Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on,"

and the following accord,

" 'Yes,' says the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours, and their works follow them.' "

With them, their works do not precede them, as if a means to grace (which would be contrary to Romans 3:23ff., as to Ephesians 2:1-12), but they follow, as fruit FOLLOWS a planted tree of the right description.

Every tree that is not planted by MY FATHER, Christ declared, will be uprooted (Matthew 15:13). What could be simpler than that. Eternal life is NOT a gift to the lust or imagination of man, but by the grace of God, and a gift it is! (Romans 6:23), and at that, a gift BY GRACE (Romans 5:15). What a delicious rest, after so much trouble and such patience, that the works wrought by faith, follow like a delightful dog, the saint not made by his/her own works, but rather for them!

The Rule of Righteousness, the Index to His Return

and Judgment at Last

Alas, as in Jer. 13, there is need for humbling by church and nation, individual, old and young alike. It may sound old-fashioned; but then man was fashioned long ago, and God, his Creator, does not change (Hebrews 13:8, Malachi 3:6, Psalm 102). It is He who is the source of growth, and stability, and alive as that Eternal Spirit whose existence has been the eternal ground for any existence in time. It is from Him there pours into creation its intelligence, its wisdom in construction, and its blessing and its cursing, as also eminently in this Age of Grace, the dynamic for its dispersion in inglorious judgment. It is this which is prepared. for as much as prefers darkness in the very face of light, foreknown to God before the ages ever were (John 3:19,36, Matthew 25, Acts 15:18).

What then of Jeremiah 13 ? There the king was told this:

	"Give glory to the LORD your God, before He causes darkness and before your feet stumble on the dark mountains, and while you are looking for light, He turns it into the shadow of death, and makes it dense darkness.
	"But if you will not hear it, My soul will weep in secret for your pride; My eyes will weep bitterly and run down with tears because the LORD'S flock has been taken captive."

The Lord can so express Himself through the prophet the more readily because it was HE who would come as the blessed babe in giving a birthday not only to His personal presence on this earth, in the format of a man as He would become, but who would even dare to die to cover the sin which excludes from heaven both judicially and practically; for there is no haven in heaven where sin is! Thus He proceeds as God to speak in Jeremiah 13:24 in continuing His address in its pity, poignancy and pathos.

No wonder there is blight for the worship of the 'beast' (Revelation 14:9), which is the obvious and devilish course of its core desire: the elevation of man through him as a pinnacle to maximum height. Ignoring God in delusions about man and might, it is as if he would estimate himself worthy to take over, once and for all, the lands God made, and to make some time of partial occupancy, the certificate of ownership, as some like to do for one race in Australia.

No wonder there is a coming reaping differentially of those of whatever race who in patience possess the promises of God, who look for a city which has foundations and a grace which never loses it glow.

No wonder there is a reaping differentially of those of whatever race who in patience possess the promises of God, who look for a city which has foundations and a grace which never loses it glow.

Finally in this Age of Grace, there comes then, a reaping (Revelation 14:14-15), wrought in the name and power of Jesus Christ (Revelation 14:14, as foretold in Matthew 14:30-31). To be part of a crop is to delight in the sickle, otherwise symbol of death; for when you are prized as wheat, your grain the desire of the Desire of the nations, Jesus Christ, it is well; and then to be found by Him and eternally to be separated from sin in His presence is like a vacation after enormous toil and tedious labours, a rest after prodigious wrestling or a wash after the mire of the common day, with the perfume of His presence, whose word is truth.

Being gathered to His barn, that is the destiny to be desired. When this earth finally is made recipient of a rule in righteousness by Him whom it despised (Psalm 72, 45, Isaiah 11, 32, 59, 66, Malachi 4, Revelation 19-20), and the knowledge of the glory of God has covered it as the waters cover the sea as Isaiah and Habakkuk foretold, and its history completed, it is de-energised with vast energy, degraded and dismissed (II Peter 3), then it will be most pleasant to have a place, when this is gone (Isaiah 51:6), where His righteousness and salvation are indispensable.

The universe may - will go, and a marvel of concentrated energy intelligently stored in contrived masterpiece of wit and wonder it is, and will be till it is gone, like a house by the sea, a war camp in the hills, a deceitful servant indulging himself, or increasingly, a harridan at large, as well as a place of peace past all understanding for those for whom Christ IS the peace, even the Lord's Christ, Jesus the Christ and not another - but what of that ? It is eternal life which stays because it is God who remains, and it is His, in the dower of Christ, to confer.

A universe is great. God is far greater. An artist's painting may be great; but the artist is greater; the product may be a marvel, but the creator of it, the more. Let the sin go with those who prefer it, and let the universe go with its history of wonder and woe, wrought in the will, domain and in the wonder arena provided, but let the results of rescue from it, remain.

There yet with Him, is the conservation of what is made good by grace, the salvation accorded to many, and remaining at the summit is the mode of it in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ (Galatians 6:14); for here is found what is more than a salvage: even the salvation of God (Isaiah 51:6, 52-55, Romans 8:29ff., Titus 2-3).

The ship may be wrecked; but many are the survivors, who are not saved by swimming in such woes as these, but by the Saviour whose task it is, and whose glory and joy. It is by Him who, for the joy that was set before Him, despising shame, triumphed over foe and feebleness in death, summing to the end the strength even there, and having finished the sacrifice for redemption, committed His Spirit to His Father's hand. It is by Him this comes, not by luxury or pride or accomplishment of the survivors, who are saved by Him, and not by swimming. These are taken from falling worlds by the word of God, and installed for ever, saved Jew and saved Gentile. Resurrection is transference not only of mortality to immortality, of ruin to the redemption of the body (Romans 8), but of those taken to a city which has foundations, a governance directly by God, a spiritual scenario past all scenes in its beauty, where holiness is a given, and His people behold the very face of God (Revelation 21-22).

Look, it comes near. The time is not far distant.

This is as sure as is the word of God. We MAY NOT presume to forecast the day or the hour (Acts 1), but are CHARGED to recognise when the time is near (Luke 21, esp. vv. 24,28).

The cyclical does not exist in this supernaturally determined finale. There was none of it in His incarnation for death at the set time, the foretold date (Christ the CItadel Ch. 2), and the display of the lovingkindness of God on the way, of the power and of the grace is simple and straightforward, if wondrously kind.

There was nothing cyclical in His resurrection, the sending of His Spirit in His own name (as foretold in Luke 24, shown in Acts 2 and ever since, to His people),

Nor was there the cyclical in the development of the mutant empire of Rome, the last in the series foretold in Daniel 2, 7-8^*⁴ and exhibited in some detail in Revelation. It was to be partly fragile and partly strong, this deceptive chameleon, and so it has been. Thus did the imperious Empire of Rome continue through its permutations and combinations

	first in the East and the West imperial locations, in parts, and then
	in the growing aspirations of the papacy, with surrogates in Spain and Portugal, for the territorial ambitions of which the papacy would have liked to divide the world,
	in the Holy Roman Empire which was so unholy as to be a plague on righteousness,
	in the lurchings of Napoleon and of Hitler, those from France and from Germany, then
	in a sort of sheltered compromise of powers, in the Common Market, flowering despite its initial modesty, into the European Union.

This duly blew its trumpet by making it as 10 nations for years and then flourishing beyond the 20 mark, while retaining the 10 in its Western European Union, a martial arm.

This, it was a continuation as prescribed, getting ready for the smiting stone of Daniel 2 and II Thessalonians 1, the Messiah in His second coming (Revelation 19). Cyclical ?

This, Daniel's predicted fourth and last discerned empire, It has been a mutation in operation, always harassed in its fragility, while tending in its grabbing for power, changing, yet always tending in its strength towards the abominable; at times seeming virtuous, and showering the earth with its powers, before more horror erupted. It combines, it seems this, that, a flux of operations; but it continues without God as the recent title deeds for the EU controversy has eloquently shown. It has been a land of vast gifts, and numerous starts to achieve great things. It starts, it matures, it develops, it proceeds ever weak, ever strong, always vulnerable, moving with menace, declaring aims whether with pope or Hitler its power, and then becoming fragile, enfeebling, only to arise again, always the same, changing the name, Europe the land of Spain and its former dominions, Portugal and those of its time, Britain and its empire of marvels, France and its flush, of enlightenment and darkness.

It continues like a child growing, for its end. It has had to be such, and such it has been. Europe has grown as foretold, coming in strength, retarding in fragility, aggregating about the 10 of the finale.

Nor was there anything cyclical in the return of Israel to its land, a thing that by Christ's word HAD TO HAPPEN, for it was to be subjected to Gentile rule UNTIL the end of the Gentile era. It is this era which is now closed, as it seethes and fumes, like hot concentrated sulphuric acid, dissolving itself in ruins amidst the characteristic pride. The terminal is preparing as the train rolls in.

Is one event in 1900 years cyclical ? Is Israel's return after some 2 millenia, ONCE, cyclical ?

On the contrary, it is a designated index when the time is near. Fool with it, if you will, but that will make folly no more respectable than before.

That, cyclical ? Not if the term has any meaning. It has happened, and like global warming, though there is controversy, still the famed mount in Africa, Kalimanjaro, and the drying Tibetan high plain, where vast river systems arise, these speak but one language, as isles deplore their submergence, and a whole arena of ice is threatened with the demeaning fall into mere ocean in the North. It is convenient to ignore signs if you like to be bound to blindness, and to forget warnings when you have them, if this is your desire for contentment. But this is but part of a parcel of heat and astronomical disturbance alike, that is coming, coming, as Israel did, as the EU did, as the endless succession of pitiless wars did, all precisely, and in concert foretold as a bunch, a battalion of woe (Revelation 6-8).

Similarly, just as Revelation predicts what appears an asteroid or similar type of ocean fouling impact, so these very bodies have OFTEN missed the earth by a slender margin. It is well to awake, and not to slumber while the canons roar, and it is well not to dance as they did so famously in Belgium, as Napoleon neared, as focussed in the famous poem, The Eve of Waterloo, by Lord Byron.

THERE was a sound of revelry by night,

And Belgium's capital had gathered then

Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright

The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men.

A thousand hearts beat happily; and when

Music arose with its voluptuous swell,

Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,

And all went merry as a marriage bell;

But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!

Did ye not hear it? -- No; 'twas but the wind,

Or the car rattling o'er the stony street;

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;

No sleep till morn, when youth and pleasure meet

To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

But hark! -- that heavy sound breaks in once more,

As if the clouds its echo would repeat;

And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before;

Arm! arm! it is -- it is -- the cannon's opening roar!

But what of Israel ?

That is just one of the criteria, and through the blighting centuries, Israel has awaited it, longing with dreams of Zion, and then the Lord did it, in 1948, ratified it in 1967, sustained it in 1973, confirmed it in 1991, but Israel has yet, just as foretold, to come back in spirit to the Lord. It is a two step process as in Ezekiel 37, leading to the Messiah's coming rule.

The first is past. The second remains. It is not cyclical, that, but procedural, two steps, the first after 19 centuries, and the next soon, for that is the impact of the 'near' which Christ predicted, in the assocation of these things on the one hand, which one CAN see, and that to come, which as in all biblical prophecy, will come. Meanwhile, it is war as foretold (Zechariah 12), and plenty of it , and this both with triumph (as above) and with trouble as constantly discerned in the news. They have returned, Israel, but not for peace without Him, though He sustain this people as He foretold (Zechariah 12), amidst a reviling by press and Islam, liberal and humanist alike, each for his own desire. So it continues till another great unique event arises, even their repentance in faith, as the Holy Spirit opens, as it will, the eyes of many to the crucified Christ (Zech. 12:10-13:1), a thing not at all cyclical...

That, it was news around 500 B.C., incorporating with other sections of Zechariah, both the coming slaughter of the Messiah, and the coming restoration of Israel, and of the Christ whom they would kill some 500 years after the revelation was given. As God emphasises, there is NO ONE who so predicts, nor could (Isaiah 41, 43, 48). This too can be avoided, like the buzz of the mosquito, well equipped with appetite, but the mosquito itself is not so easy to avoid. It bites.

But when that next step, so uncyclical as were its forbears, comes, then what ?

Then Jew and Gentile, in one way, one faith, one life, that of Christ, one forgiveness, one pardon, one basis for pardon, one unity in the one God are at last united where no union lay (Romans 11:25ff.). Then the pirates of Israel who seek to board the land and take it over for themselves, will be terminated in their lusts (Micah 7, Deuteronomy 32, Isaiah 59, Ezekiel 36-3) as this once and once only vast change occurs, and the land again knows a godly people such as those who were first given it by faith. This, it is not cyclical. It occurs when the EYES of many in Israel, and the Lord acts. BLIND, says the apostle, UNTIL that time, THEN they see. This too, as in Luke 21:24, comes at a season. Jerusalem is under Gentile rule UNTIL, the Gentile age is FULFILLED, and Israel is blind UNTIL the 'fulness of the Gentiles has come in'. WHEN that UNTIL comes, THEN the event comes, and not before.

Thus, as to the Jews, both in the sprinkling of the small percentage who have come since the apostles came, and many others in the centuries following, and in the large percentage to come suddenly WHEN that fulness of the Gentiles has arrived, as Christ declared in Romans 11:25: at that time, this is an aggregation in two phases, the slow and the fast. Then there unfolds to sight the entire congregation of Jewish Christians as summed in the beauty of Revelation 7. Nor is this all.

There is a summation and a consummation.

There too exposed, in that very Chapter, are all, Jew and Gentile, who have come to one place. In this, the consummation of history, the scene is not on this earth which departs like an old and worn garment (Isaiah 51:6), but where there is a new heavens and earth where righteousness dwells. If it is worn out, the old, then it is also disbanded by a dynamic colossal in kind to match the energy of its original divine construction (II Peter 3), and it goes not with a whimper but a vast noise and heat.

But the Lord stays, and those who are His with Him in the place prepared (John 14).

What is that place ? you may ask. It is a place by Him, because of His grace, which His birth portended, His death confirmed and His bodily resurrection exhibited with power, with Him whose are the worlds, by whose power was the creation, and by whose wisdom is judgment. How wise is it to use this Day of Grace in this Age of Grace to seek His face, receive His redemption to the heart, and repenting of sin, begin in grace which never ends (Romans 10:9, John 10:9,27-28, 4:14, 7:37).

NOTES

*1 Daniel 2:42.

*1A

From SMR p.981, we have this on the topic of Canon Law, for example.

One of the elements of the PEACE OF TRUTH, our immediately following consideration (p. 983 infra) is the consistency, persistency and consummate accuracy of articulation of what it provides; of what, in this case, is written. The defilement of this consistency, of this persistency and this accurate articulation, is one of the negative properties which shows up in false claimants to the status of the word of God... where indeed anything rational is provided at all! Let us illustrate.
The Roman Catholic body provides a good example. Parties have arisen in it, pushing now this, now that doctrine. 'Fathers' have said this and that, over the centuries during which the 'Canon Law' has been compiled; so that it almost becomes a romance of adventure to seek to compile their utterances, for sheer diversity. Some hold starkly to Christ and some are church-based: one Pope indeed (Leo II) declaring heretical the doctrine of a predecessor (Honorius) as did Church Councils and Pope for 800 years. (Cf. Dr. Laird Harris, Fundamental Protestant Doctrine, II, p. 13; The New Schaff Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, V, p. 353; Lorraine Boettner, Roman Catholicism, Ch.'s 4, 6, 11.) Yet 'they', these 'fathers' should be believed... What would you believe; but rather Christ (Matthew 23:8-10), who covered the case by forbidding such practice from the first (cf. also Mark 7:7).

Again on p. 1088A, we have this.

*14 John Paul II in The Code of Canon Law (prepared by The Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Ireland et al.), 1983, states:

"It is hoped that this English version of the Code will be a fitting resource
for an attentive and fruitful study of the law of the Church...
We order that henceforth it is to have the force of law
for the whole Latin Church,
and we commit its observance to the care and vigilance of all who are responsible."

Not merely is the massive Code of Canon Law adhered to, rather than departed from: it is BOUND, explicitly being given indeed the FORCE OF LAW. Revisionism this is not!
GOD SPOKE: THEREFORE LET THAT WORD SPEAK - "not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually works also in you who believe." (1 Thessalonians 2:13.) Indeed, "Add not to His words, lest He rebuke you and you be found a liar" - Proverbs 30:6. God knows what His words are and who His Son is; and will require of any who abuse His name by seeking to direct, correct or replace His spoken or His living word (Matthew 7:21-29, 4:4,10, Revelation 22:18-20, Galatians 1:6-12). It is necessary to ABIDE in His words; and this is not a work of speech, but of being still (Psalm 46:10).

Dastardly Dynamics ... and Immovable Faith Ch. 4, *1.

See SMR pp. 946 with 886ff..

See Dastardly Dynamics ... and Immovable Faith Ch. 4, with SMR pp. 723ff., 886ff., 902ff., Biblical Blessings Ch. 2.