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Deity and Design, Designation and Destiny,
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SCIENTIFIC METHOD, SATANIC METHOD |
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W W W W World Wide Web Witness Inc. Home Page Contents Page for Volume What is New
SUMS, SUMMITS and IN SUM
Adding Things Up, and Getting Things Down
CHAPTER 9
THERE IS NOTHING LIKE IT
FOR SOLVING PROBLEMS
SECURING SPIRITUALITY AND
MAKING SENSE OF THIS WORLD
Why ?
Why what ?
Why is there nothing like it for solving problems, securing spirituality, and making sense of this world ?
Do you know to what I am referring ?
Of course. With you it could only be one, the Gospel, or two, the Bible, or three, the Lord Jesus Christ, or four the Trinity.
Well, we had better clarify. I am referring to the Gospel in its setting in the Bible, and its focus on the Lord Jesus Christ as a member of that divine tri-unity which, within its own fellowship, holds the beginning, the meaning, the purpose, the way and the end of all creation.
What about the non-end of those saved from sin by the substitutionary death of the Saviour, Jesus Christ, and given the power of the Holy Spirit to walk in the highway of holiness ?
Some of the creation ends with Him, where there is a new beginning which never ends, called eternal life.
Very well, then it is clear to what you refer, but how about a little explanation of how you get this result from that beginning ? After all, if this is so, all the fallen philosophies of the millenia become so many clottish substitutes for simplicity ...
I did not say it was simplicity but that it made sense, solved all problems and left nothing for comparison in its capacities.
So it is not so simple ?
Its pith is simple; its perfection is as deep as you choose to go. That is just one of its wonders, that at whatever level you choose to investigate, it has the answers, coherent, clear, cogent, clarifying mists, objectifying musts ...
By which last point you mean ?
Why surely, showing the reason for the necessities of duty, realities of responsibilities and the bases of divine judgment.
How can there be any responsibility on the part of man when he is predestined anyway ?
Could you explain your problem so that it is not an emotional twitch but a logical presentation. Putting those terms together does not constitute a case.
Very well. If the divine tri-unity ...
Why do you say tri-unity instead of trinity ?
I suppose to draw attention to the realities in view, and not allow custom to veil the grandeur of it.
Fine. Go ahead.
If the divine trinity, then, acts in such a way that the plight in the end of the fight, in life, for every man, woman and child is set before it happens - like a race with 1, 2, and 3 places all arranged before it is run, how on earth, or indeed in heaven, can you talk sensibly of responsibility ?
That is a question, not an answer. I mean, you are actually asking this, not merely assaulting words without explaining what you mean.
I know what you mean: no it is not ranting. It is a real question.
If then you consult Romans 8:29ff., you find two things. The first is this, that God has a plan, purpose and program for every saved soul ( you know, you mentioned these yourself, those covered by the redeeming passion of Christ, so that their sin is deposited on his account, as a debt for Him who paid for it in His own vicarious death, and His righteousness is set to your account, as a credit from Him who gave all that He might win some - II Corinthians 5, Galatians 3, Matthew 20:28, John 3:15-36).
That is hardly a problem. Psalm 1 tells it straight. God KNOWS the path of the righteous, so made by His salvation, whether in prospect as with David (Psalm 32, 17), or retrospect as with us, who are covered by what He ONCE did for ONE purpose, to save some and offer salvation with strength of heart to all.
It is not the blessed who concern me. It is the rest.
FIne. Then your question is this: how can you blame, and hence judge negatively, any who have never had a chance, being consigned to a destiny undesirable before this world even existed - for it says in Ephesians 1:4 that those who are saved are those whom He chose before this world was.
Notice however FOR WHAT He chose them. It was that they should, being so chosen, be holy and without blame before Him, in love.
Well, what difference does that make to the negative case, in terms of responsibility ?
This is a preliminary. They are NOT chosen, to take the case of your departure, to be rich or to have pleasure unremittingly with maidens or to have arrogant and aristocratic fulfilment, as with some religious ideas, to be sovereign over rejects, with legal nihilism, as one writer in The Australian, January 9-10, 2010 said of the trend in Russia (perhaps better put, judicial nihilism), and as some bomb-blasters say of their intentions for themselves, as distinct from those for their victims, over whose mangled bodies and anguish of pain they hope to have it rich in heaven. It is not like that, irrational madness.
They are chosen for HOLINESS, by love (not arbitrariness) to be without blame (by salvation, not HARD for anyone to receive, but MOST HARD for Christ to make FREELY available). Any problem with that ?
None at all. TO have something like that available freely to all, is not a problem, but a solution.
Holiness, now, it is not a freeing up of constraint, so that you may enjoy with unfettered liberality the riches of your new arrogance in a new aristocracy, like that of the Communist Party in China, where neither law nor rule nor justice is in principle done, but the will of the Party, subject to no review, open to no judgment itself, merely an exercise in unelected power. Instead of all that sort of thing, which is not answer but entirely a problem in power manipulation and absurd arrogance, if not worse, this is entirely another thing. Holiness is an entire submission of the saved will to the Saviour, in love, because of love, because He is worthy as in Revelation 5, so that it is delightful to yield all to Him, and having Him as centre, control and authority, to find in Him, untroubled and untroublesome truth, a desired criterion, and a sure foundation, melded with mercy, reinforced with assurance. This is unmixed joy, as He is also the Creator, all being created through Him (Colossians 1:15-16), such that one moves with Him, for Him, in Him, organically connected, intimately personally alive in Him, through the power of the Holy Spirit.
That is not a problem; but I see your point. To what are the saved ones chosen ? It is not to some purely external place and site and authority, a sort of election to the House of Spiritual Lords, in which your new-found powers can enable you to build (as of old) castles and have many servants and exude riches of breeding and the like. To be sure, they were not all at all like that, but some were, and the potential for that was there. They are saved to serve, humility being built-in, discipline and chastening being requirements because of the totality of the triumph of the beauty of holiness, to which they are called. As Christ put it, You are My friends if you do whatever I command. No, that puts point, purpose, character and standards, principles and perfection before us, so that like a well-organised car, if you run well, it is utter liberty, but if you don't, then it is a matter of 'having a service', and in this case 'having a spiritual service' so that the agreed objective of holiness may be reached.
There are not many who would want that. In fact, most people, when offered it, have internationally, after perhaps some skittishness among men or nations, at the possibilities wilfully misinterpreted as a means to power and pleasure, or some similar irrelevance to the point at issue, have turned it down. When they cannot make God SERVE their lusts, they dump Him. It is the same with prosperity Christianity, where anything for prosperity is the lust, in which all is surrendered. Perversions of Christianity are certainly sought because ...
Because its bold clarity and charity make it desirable, its verification, dynamic and its solutions necessary; but its path is not the path of restless arisings.
And these are of particular enjoyability to the volatile, desirability to the adventurous, and hope to the hapless!
Why therefore is it so often played with, the Gospel of Christ ? the way of salvation, by those who quit (as in Matthew 13:20ff.) ? It is because the real thing, being a saved person elected to holiness in Christ (as in I Peter 1:1-3), has such an authenticity, explains so much, achieves so many desires, removes so many problems, solves so many puzzles that many feel obliged to chat with it, to try it out, to seek to subdue or seduce it so that it may fit into their own conquests and desires. Then finding that God has an unutterably magnificent integrity, and that neither can He be seduced, nor the Gospel made an appendage to some other aim, for which it is to serve, they leave with more or less fanfare. Sometimes, as in the Presbyterian Church in New Zealand, in 1966, they leave the bodily resurrection out, because they don't want a God who is too practical and physical and actual, intruding into their little world, and so make the 'spiritual' to relate to some extraneous official who does not deal with a body which does not rot, as Peter made clear is the crux, in terms of the Cross, of Christianity, as seen in Acts 2.
But they leave. Yes, and often manage to take hundreds of millions of dollars with them, as when the Uniting Church took over a large chunk of a vast inheritance specifically left for Presbyterians. Yes, I know. The servants of Christ willingly allow, or should, their possessions to be stripped, and that is one reason why Christians are forbidden to go to law with each other - I Corinthians 6:1-6. When they do, it is a crucially significant sign of evil and error. No, it is not the life of the saints, of the actual people of the Lord, which troubles me. That is a piece of poetry, but not only poetry, it is a piece of architecture, of symphonic music, utterly lovely.
It is not that then that is your point of trouble, or thrust of enquiry, if not challenge ?
No. It is rather the plight of those who are NOT to be included in this group, of those predestined to be OUT of it all. While it is unutterably wonderful for some, it is utterly horrid for others. How does this not constitute a problem, and I mean, I say this in the context of there being NO problems left in the Gospel of the Bible, concerning the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, in the glorious and holy Trinity, the tri-une wonder of those infinitely infinite persons whose intrinsic oneness is no organisational achievement, but the eternal reality from which all our own relationships of unity in spirit have their source and meaning.
But surely you are not serious ?
I almost said, Of course I am serious! But I know you, that you do not mean simply to chide. You are implying that the case as I put it is a misinterpretation of clear scriptures in the Bible. Yes, then what are these scriptures and what is the point of your answer ?
But did I not mention Romans 8:29ff. ?
Yes, I guess we have been on the 8:29 part. Let us move then on with it to 8:30 and further.
Let's do that. What does it say ?
It is this:
"For whom He foreknew,
He also predestined
to be conformed
to the image of His Son,
that He might be the firstborn among many brethren ..."
Let us stop there for the moment; for this will remove at once one major misinterpretation in the idea which seems to lurk in your problem.
Let's do that.
What do you notice about predestination in this statement ?
It is that it is preceded by the word 'also' which stresses that this is subsequent to the main thrust.
What then is the main thrust - is it this concrete and responsibility mocking predestination, as you seem to imagine it to be ?
No, in fact it is not.
What is it then ?
Why, it is His divine foreknowledge of each individual person, summed up in the series of 'whom' terms.
Good. It is then not based on caprice, that some are saved and some not, not on whim, not on self-interest, that these might be better captives for the labour camps, as in Communism's extortions, practised with such elaborate cunning and devastating arrogance, such sallow sin and such wanton mercilessness for all time, in Siberia, for example.
No ... No, it isn't then. Please explain.
What is the divine foreknowledge about ?
It is about PEOPLE that GOD knew all about before they were even created.
Yes, that is true, for all things are open before Him with whom we have to do (Hebrews 4:13), and He does not remove His light from anything, except for the darkness of those who, in the end, have made this their preference as in John 3:19. Remember, as this principle states, THIS is where condemnation finally takes off, and continues to fly. THIS IS THEIR CHOICE despite the statedly opposite desire of the triune God, that they be not judged (John 3:17), and not perish (John 3:16), even every last one of them, as seen in Colossians 1:19ff., I Timothy 2, 4, Ezekiel 33:11, Matthew 23:37ff., Luke 19:42ff., and indeed, the entire fabric of God's seeking as shown with laments and appeals, throughout His word.
You mean that WHEN, or better, in the ACTION of foreknowing people, individuals, God was as always, as attested in His word, the Bible, wanting, desiring them all to come, just as He says in the prophets and in Christ, and that He even lamented with vast passion for them, when they did not; and He being the Spirit of Truth, in one member of the tri-une marvel that He is, IS true and not mere appearance ?
I do mean that.
So you are implying, stating, indicating ...
All three in fact.
You mean that it is not a summary end mysteriously planted on people ... you know, the way some people plant drugs on other people, in some drug-means-death country, so that they may be killed though innocent, or imprisoned though guilty of no fault ? It is not like that ?
It is the opposite in fact. God WOULD like ALL to come, and to able to plant salvation in the pocket of EVERY ONE; but He is truth, and His is the very Spirit of Truth. Deception is impossible as an aim; He is not willing to be seduced into lie to do it. He WILL not make a great talk about love and seeking, and free salvation, when it is fact wholly unfree take-over, as when the USSR invaded Hungary.
Could you summarise the point then ?
Yes, why not! Predestination is a RESULTANT. If you want the underlying cause of these things, the rejects as you seem to think of it, those to be damned, it is NOT in God that it lies, as the individuating cause. It is in man that it lies as the point of application. In man, the DIVINE PRINCIPLE that God would like all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, meets the liberty of love. If you do not wish this, you are not forced to have it stuck in your pocket, and then to find that after all, since it got there, then you are that sort of person and can be judged... except that in this case, it is not incrimination but deliverance which is in view. God is NOT WILLING to save by deceit, by manipulation. If He were, then it would be predestination as the ultimate, human will as a mere prevarication, and divine exclusion by some 'mystery', some horrible decree, as Calvin so erroneously*1 and unbiblically put it.
I see. Then there is divine openness about His love (which I always prefer, I don't like these distantly suggestive, almost clear, ambiguous, merely tendentious charms some seem to want to weave in human romance: let your yes be yes and your no be no!).
And it IS love.
So that it is NOT a divine wilfulness, since He is openly in favour of having ALL come to Him, but human wilfulness, so that many knowing this full well, yet do NOT want to be among those who come to Him, in whom their destiny would then become so very different.
Yes, but it is all worked out by total divine comprehension before creation occurred.
That means, then, does it not, that it is a blight on the name and love of God to act as if it were otherwise, as if God mysteriously got some, and with a negative profundity hard to plumb and horrid to contemplate, even in our reduced ideas of love, chucked out the rest.
True, it surely is. Spurgeon spoke very sharply on this horror. He was altogether right in this.
Then it is merely that some people do not ACCEPT the power and knowledge of God, and then try to foist their littleness of understanding - you might say, some other model concerning God - on Him, so making problems that do not exist ?
Precisely. It is like saying that 2+ 2 makes 4, and this is a mystery because numbers always change.
But numbers do not always change, so there is no mystery at all in being able to make this statement without qualification, equivocation or arrogance of intellect! I see.
That means then that every man is responsible, and that every negative destiny is the result of desire, of refusal to be divinely loved, and hence saved from that squirreling away which is sin, which seeks to take bits of creation, in oneself, and hide these away, store them up for later consumption, as a lord of life, unwilling to be open with God, far less subject to Him, love though He is: it does, doesn't it ?
Assuredly. This means that when saints suffer in their efforts to show the love of God to people - a thing you see in allegorical form in Song of Solomon 5:7-9, and in practice in Acts 16, for example, this is part of the transmission, the publicity, the performance index for that love, as Christ makes up in them for impact on this present Age, the very meaning of love, if by any means their eyes, even yet, might be opened.
So that's what Colossians 1:24 means.
Yes, it is all there. It does not matter which point you pursue, which issue, which difficulty, the answer to it is in the Bible, the principle, the detail, whatever it takes, so that there is no puzzle. There are however two things ...
What are these ? are they problems then ?
No. They are cautions (you know, like lifting your head when trying to drive in golf, before the shot is complete). They eliminate problems, do not cause them, and are not any of them.
Elucidate then.
First, we must avoid the logical infantility of bringing in ideas of some system of thought, and illicitly smuggling them into discussion about God. That is a slide of model which is mere deceit, deviousness or confusion: take your pick, but pick right in the case, for fairness' sake.
I see, you mean ...
that God is so great, that to cut Him down to humanistic size is an abuse of terms. Some people want to reverse the biblical depiction, while pretending or imagining themselves to be expounding it. They at times act as if making Him in their created and delimited image, rather than responding to Him who made them meaningfully in His own.
Perhaps they cannot see how great He is and so reduce Him by confusion.
There is no confusion about what the Bible SAYS about Him, as in Romans 11:36. You cannot fault or flaw God, for every time you may try, He is beyond it. He has the answers, and the more you seek, without limit, since God is infinite, bounded by nothing, the more you find. By HIS WORD, you find truth, and in that truth elaborate, perfect, magnificent harmony and adequacy of all principles and procedures, history and project.
I see. In this case, God really knows before creation, what is the actual truth about each person and in predestination simply makes this true result sure as well.
Correct.
Why that is marvellous! What on a false and irrelevant model, some would make into a problem, is in fact the solution.
You could say that.
But what about the endurance of hell ?
First, we need to know what hell is.
Well, it is a state of eternal destruction, everlasting shame, unending exclusion, no hope, so that there is no return to God who made man. I mean, that is found in Mark 9, Daniel 12, Matthew 3.
That is true. But in what does it consist ? It means that those who positively, endlessly to the very point of their beings and their power to answer a question, still and as far as it would be possible (Isaiah 57:15-16), yet refuse God.
If you refuse your designer, then you are a design amiss, and that becomes refuse.
But is this fair ?
How, in what manner does it seem to you to be otherwise ?
Wouldn't it be better, more merciful, to give them a second chance ?
No, for you see that is merely to deny the model, make another God. WHEN THIS GOD FOREKNOWS, He foreknows facts! There is nothing further than the ultimate truth.
But what of those who are infants without proper minds, dim-wits ?
Even the Westminster Confession, a strong document on authority, makes it clear that such children are not because of this excluded, but it all depends, just as the Bible says, on divine foreknowledge... except that they use the allied term predestination, which in the biblical model IMPLIES a preceding FOREKNOWLEDGE. Indeed, it is statedly prior logically. If you want to be biblical, this is the principle stated by Paul.
So you don't need a second chance ?
No, there is no chance. People may attack you for saying so, ignorantly and evilly, but the love of God is not a thing of chance at all. In the beginning God loves and He knows.
What of those who never hear the Gospel, then, and simply did not know that they might be saved, and join the elect ?
Are you not once more moving to another model ? GOD KNOWS from the first who are His (cf. II Timothy 2:19, and I: 8ff.).
Does that mean then that SOME who NEVER hear on earth the Gospel, may yet be saved ?
Certainly it does. Thus Christ in John 15:22ff., makes it very clear that if those Jews who had seen His works and heard His words, things unique in history, and a living testimonial of the living God (as in John 14), had NOT done so, then sin to the ultimate would not be charged to them. In the context of damnation, at that level, they would not figure. You might read further on that in Chapter 7 and Chapter 4 of the volume, Sums, Summits and in Sum.
In other words, God is consistent and insistent!
Yes. There is nothing obscure about it, but clear. THAT is my point. If you forget systems of theology and just see what He says, all is laid clear like scone dough, set out ready for the imprint of the scone-cutter. It could not be plainer. We do not have to explain why Calvin had that terrible idea of the horrible decree, and that silly mistake about Matthew 23:37ff., as if God the Father were not in total holy communion and concord with His Son, as if it were untrue that everything the Father did, the Son did in the same manner (John 5:19ff.). We are not expositing that great and remarkable theologian, who alas is open to error, for we all need to be humbled, however great: we are simply showing what God has to say and noting that it solves all philosophical problems that man faces, answers all matters of internal harmony, covers all reaches of fact needed for total comprehension, and while leaving to us the delightful chores, as his children, of seeking out detailed material and vital facts, yet places the whole in such a covering conceptual perspective and historical mode, that it is impossible to know and deploy it without finding answers to all problems.
If He says that He so loves, then He does NOT leave it to circumstances to determine what some will get: He FOREKNEW them all, and leaving nothing out, will if the case so requires, show from foreknowledge what history gave no opportunity to disclose.
But of course: they would have had NO SIN, if He had not SPOKEN and DONE the miraculous and stupendous divine things IN THEIR MIDST, that He did. He WANTS to save all, but does not prostitute love in the process; but at the same time, keeping it to love, not lust, He does not force any to come, and knows the realities for each.
But isn't it a merit on the part of those who are foreknown, that He finds in them this willingness for light ?
Merit is a product of differentiation. If you are invariable, that is, without sin, then there is no room for merit. You do but do your duty, as Christ put it. Humility is just doing what you should, not blowing a trumpet about it. Preference for light in our fallen state would indeed be a merit, compared with the opposite, but then, remember , in the biblical model, it does NOT, repeat NOT (read John 1;12, Romans 9:16) depend on the current, the contemporary exercise of your own will. To make it do so has nothing whatsoever to do with the biblical principles. It is a self-criticism, not one of the Bible. It is excluded, just as His accurate foreknowledge of you is included, so that the divine and categorical conclusion of the matter in principle is simply this.
Yes, spell it out.
It is NOT that God did not love the world to the uttermost, sending Christ not to judge it but rather to save it, but that He DID so love, DID so send Christ, WITH such a purpose, and that this being so, the resultant is simple: THIS is the condemnation, that THIS light came, with this mission, message, matrix, Christ, and not some other for some other purpose, and in the very face of this, men preferred darkness to light. Contest with God if you will, but NEVER pretend that He has said something else or different. That is irrelevant to criticism, a problem of the psyche of the one mismanaging the message, and not of the message. Sin IS a problem but you do not need to keep it as your overlord! That sin is a systematic consequence of liberty, necessary for love, and misapplied by will.
So before time was, and sin was on this earth and amid the creation known as man, God THEN, that is before our patiently awaited sequential time and the fall in particular of mankind as in Romans 5, God KNEW who were His, and His eternal truth is that THIS is the condemnation, preference for darkness in the light of Gospel truth. shown, heard, applied, in whatever direct or indirect the deity prefers. It is not for us to tell God how to go about His business; but if the question is this. WHAT IS THIS BUSINESS ? what are the principles, what are the tests, and how are they made, then if we keep to what He says we have only solutions with no problems.
You mean that before sin is an active and dynamic ingredient, fouling the perception and making the spiritual seem foolishness (as in I Corinthians 2:14), God knew. Hence the meritoriousness of being a sinner who sees in himself, better than others is not the case. We are dealing with unsoiled, unspoiled reality as with Adam and Eve, but in the prescience of God, this being more perfect yet, for it is ultimate. Hence preference has its due place for people made in the image of the unbounded God, and in this precise point, preference for Him or for darkness, there is an elemental reality known to God concerning each person. Those who so choose are given no credit, since they but go where they should; and those who reject Him, are hindered by no unfairness, since He knows past all works and events, what the case is. That's what you find from the principle of Romans 9:11.
So it is NOT a matter of better people choosing better because they are made better, a sort of X-factor, in them, as if God were merely giving credit where He had placed it beforehand!
No, that is another model. Here God is testing the will of people sin apart, by omniscience. IS there or is there not in this living being, here pre-envisioned (one made in God's image, and hence not determined being), a preference for Him, or is there one for darkness, that pseudo-autonomous desire to BE as God, to be ultimate in oneself ? TO the one so choosing, it may not at all SEEM to be a choice for darkness, for ambition expresses itself, perhaps in a corporate form, such as irreverent, mystic humanism; and there may be desire to inherit the universe as a playground: you know, the old case of 'killing' the relative who then leaves you millions. That is the point of choice, of will: WHEN you will, you show what you are; and prior to sin as an initially controlling agent, what you do IS what you are, for there is no division.
However, WHEN you so act, you obscure in that very act, the truth which hitherto had been available, and become pathological, seeking the impossible and pursuing the polluted. That is the elemental reality, foreknown to God, exhibitable in history, irreformable because truly known, as indeed are all the strivings and revisings, hopes and changes, temporary self-deceptions, and whatever else, works apart, and beyond mere happenings, which simply show what is known (Isaiah 46:8). His knowledge is of its own kind, but is beyond and not beneath temporary realities, being honest, honourable and sure.
It is matter of pure choice then, that is, choice not determined, but evidencing itself before God who before time knows the answers, and implements them.
Yes, even in historical life, you often seen or feel something of the pulls and tussles involved, as darkness seeks to creep up and in, and light rebuts it. But in the end, God knows, and man is one hundred per cent responsible because God, as God, has discerned from the first; but for all that, being Light with no darkness at all, He insists on showing things in history, concerning persons, programs, philosophies, political or metaphysical, so that His light shames the shams, and exposes the truth, so that to eternity all is clear, and nothing testable is untested, and nothing can be falsely claimed.
I see: He made man pure but he has fallen to many evil devices.
That is what He says!
But God has a plan called the Gospel, in terms of which, with a reality of human responsibility often seen by millions in practice throughout history, He judges. It is not to condemn, the Saviour came, any or all, but to save, though what refuses this in the light of reality, exposing the reality of foreknowledge on the part of God, then it is judged already.
That is what it says, in John 3:16ff..
But we did not finish the question: Why is it eternal punishment, everlasting destruction ?
It is eternal shame, as Daniel 12 states, and it IS so because it IS shameful not to love the light of the loving God who by His own power invented us and gave to us not only this universe, some play-pen, but opportunity, when we have misused the divinely made equipment and environment, of returning freely to be at peace with Him, with His power available, to live His life in this world, to be like branches of His vine, so that others may find Him and be relieved of their burdens and blights.
But why eternal ?
This is elemental. It is not a possibility business. Thus it is final, and God is eternal, and we, being in His image, are not some passing little heap. That is the horror of devilry, that to such height as that in which man was made, it may reach for forwarding destruction. How often does God lament, appeal, plead, and go further and further in His seeking for all, as so constantly seen in the earlier Chapters of Jeremiah! How heartfelt are His cries, how hearty His offers (as in Ezekiel 33:11, Luke 19), how vast is His compassion, how often He stays His judgment (as in Ezekiel 20), and how far He went, even to the Cross of bearing this same shame, eternal in potential, in actuality at Calvary!
Then being final for beings in His image, this thing necessarily results in pain and grief for those who cannot make their delusions work. Too proud, to receive pardon and power from on high, by grace only without even any sign or symptom of merit (for when you are saved by the death of another, who paid your penalty, there is nothing left but wonder and praise), they continue their impotence, and receive the reward of their mindless fury, intolerant self-elevation, polluted passions or perilous panache.
Could not God have forborne even to make the bad ones ?
Say rather those who prefer darkness, for it is not you recall, a matter of character, some being by nature preferable to God, the trend although not intended, of Calvinism, but a matter of will in those made in the image of God, and foreknown as before the fall ever arose, in divine omniscience. If He had removed the test, then where would the light have been ? Then mere authority, untested and unexposed, would be all, and vast could be the evil thoughts and wonders. But God IS light and in Him is NO darkness at all, so that in I Thessalonians 5, He says, TEST ALL THINGS. It is advice from Him who does it. It is better so, making freedom responsible, and reality a self-testing entry.
What will happen when this world is gone, and the former things do not come to mind (Jeremiah 3:16, Revelation 21:4), or at least come home to roost ? What happens when there is even a new heavens and a new earth ?
It is not for man to devise plans for God, or to presume on the nature of what Paul in Philippians 2, calls "the form of God". That is, how our kind of time will be unveiled in the final model is something of a marvellous character to find out. Thus Christ even before being glorified, could pass through doors, and yet eat. There are elemental things and there are elementary things, and when God exposes the precise nature of time in such dimensions and developments, then we can know this. In the meantime, as He is both good and merciful, we can be sure that He has the most merciful resolution of being, as Professor C.S. Lewis put it, both eternal and destroyed. How can you BE there if destroyed, and how can you continue if deleted ? It is processive: but In what mode does what is thus smouldering continue ? I am no expert on hell, like the boy who asked the bishop (finding one visiting at last, in his own home), Sir, could you tell me please, what is the exact temperature of hell ? in the Punch cartoon.
You mean that we should not presume to interpret the finale, and be satisfied with what we are sure of, in considering problems.
Precisely. It is not a problem that those preferring darkness, not because of deprivation, but because of pure will, which immediately then becomes impure as known to God, getting it. It is not a problem, since they would act to loot heaven and govern earth, in single ones or large aggregates, the perpetual desire of many an empire and man, in things smaller or greater, but in principle anyway. How long are they to suffer their follies ? Since foreknowledge if final about who they are, then there CAN be no end, to their inculpation and its exhibitability, for otherwise it would NOT be final, which is another model and irrelevant, a mere intrusion of wasted words. What happens to time, even in some models of the material universe, interactive with space and gravity, is something we can leave to God. Certain it is that there is no end to the ending, foreknown, only justice in it, that none suffer more than the LORD did in His entire life of humiliation and rejection, and final infinite agony of His infinite being when He even felt separated from His trinity, crying, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me! as predicted a millenium beforehand.
God of course KNEW what He was doing, how much He would suffer in the incarnation of His living word, and did it out of love. If it had been a temporary thing, would it have been necessary ? But this was God once in time doing all needed for eternity for many, offered to all in a liberality of enthusiasm correlative to His love. If not wanted, He is not angry at being jilted, if you choose to put it that way, but in love not willing to surge in and capture what is not His. If He were, force would rule, and none would have haven. That WOULD be a problem, monumental, eternal. But God is no fool. He did all; but does not change.
So those who WILL not to change are merely demanding of God that He do so ? but He is ...
Purity and love, and should HE change, there would be no source, resource or recourse in this domain, and life then, without Him, would be nasty and brutish. Those blind to Him see it so. But it is not short. Short-circuit the love of God, and you give short-shrift to mercy, and no shortage to arrogance, which does not cease to declare its folly, set like a spiritual arthritic, in the bones of his life.
Where can I go to find solutions to particular matters, verifications of the word of God on all sides ?
Why to SMR, to TMR, and then to THE LIGHT .
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
There you can look, with emphasis on verification, for a coverage of God's designs and destiny on all sides, in quarter after quarter.
But where for a coverage of God's designs and destiny on all sides, in quarter after quarter ? Why depending on your field of interest, to Deity and Design, Designation and Destiny, or to
Why, depending on your field of interest, you can move to the set of volumes on
Deity and Design, Designation and Destiny, or to the hexad,
On Predestination and Freewill, Liberty and Necessity,
Responsibility, Duty and Creativity,
with special reference to
the last volume of the set:The Spiritual Sagacity of Predestination in Love Foreknowledge and Christian Faith
SCIENTIFIC METHOD, SATANIC METHOD
AND THE MODEL OF SALVATION, or
So that explains why the determinist is wrong, because man is REALLY responsible, knows it, therefore, being no maniac in racial form, FEELS guilty as he should, suffers agonies and anguish from the same source, as he well might, and yet ...
And yet he is not so free as some extravanganzas want him to be, as if he were a god. Sin damps his clear sight, soils his open heart, twists his vision and makes turgid his thought, often through vain rationalisations, like vapid determinism on the one hand, which could not even know the truth in order to state it, as in Repent or Perish Ch. 7, and imaginary autonomy, which is making the puny potent, with ludicrous results.
And that shows why empires and callow creeds drawn from the French or Russian revolutions become mere card-sharping contests in inanity, taking some elements, and removing others, till the whole thing becomes a predictable disaster, as in Napoleon and Stalin, as with Mao, it duly did, mass murdering marauding instead of any peace or truth at all.
Indeed, it is so: for without God, the DESIRE for liberation is there, and it is a most powerful drive, but the means are not. That is why innumerable false creeds buzz about the honey of the Gospel, but do not swallow it, and why the results are bitter in the stomach, in the end, fraud and impotence being merely slightly obscured by deceit and brutality, twistiness and incoherence. That is why otherwise incredibly foolish people are drawn in: the DRIVE for such a program is there, but the truth is not; so they are pushed by their own appetite for goodness, and betrayed by their blind refusal of it where it may be found. It is as in Isaiah 55, Let the wicked forsake his way, and God will abundantly pardon; and as in Proverbs 1, Deuteronomy 32, then the going aside of fools will slay them.
Thank you. God is very wonderful. It is grand to know that when things are purely tested, on their own divine model, solutions are the order of the day, and problems disappear like the morning mist when the sun rises.
Not only so, but the Sun of Righteousness even now, arises with "healing in His wings" (as in Malachi 4:2), and there is a satiety of beauty, a majesty to praise, a glorious God to worship, so that all the spiritual twirpiness and inane chirpiness of man can be supplanted by the thing we are made by and for, by the One, by the reality to which man so spuriously refuses to relate in ever increasing acrimony and odiousness, and futile squirming. At last, in the warmth of truth, the reliability of reality, the pace of accord with mercy, the wonder of being forgiven, the joy of being forged as children of God, sanctified as an objective, that He might be glorified, we are ... IN PLACE. What a palace that place is!
NOTE
*1
On this, see:
Predestination and Freewill Part 2 ,
To Know God, the Power of His Resurrection and the Fellowship of His Sufferings Ch. 1, *2,
Repent or Perish Ch. 1,
The Christian Pilgrimage Ch. 3,