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CHAPTER SEVEN

THE WONDER OF BEGINNINGS

AND BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND THEIR END

The Master, the Motif and the Message is in Christ Jesus,  the Lord

BEGINNINGS

You begin. It is a question of the start. YOU are the start.

How did you start ? The genome started. How did it start, so that procreation could so distinctively continue it ? It was there, informed, formed, expressive, filled with commands, synthetic, successful. Anything on the way to any one of its cells by upward movement is unknown to Dr Denton. NO cell has gradual beginnings evidenced. That is not what is attested.  Imagine as you will; observe as you find.

Such design increments, sophistication thrusts are not the empirical case. All are special, devoted, comparable in terms of sophisticated intricacy. Cells do not gradualistically attest a species of inclining upward in any kind of observable manner. Data show only the opposite as apposite. That is not their way, nor is this their evidence.

You wish to imagine it other ? Fine, but do not confuse it with facts.

You wish to begin something. In general, why not ? To do so, you use what it takes, which you already possess. Otherwise, desire not matched to performance, you learn it is not in your ambit as an individual operating for yourself.

Whether it be a gradualistically self-inventing system, fully logically organised, penetrable by logic, which ambles from your brain while you live, or something thought out and implemented: you begin. In the latter case, you have or do not have what it takes to do it. If you do not have it, you will not get it. If you want to write like Einstein, and lack the facility or ability, no amount of time will produce an internally logically discrete and mutually apposite system.  If you are greater than he, then we will expect  that we may find what such greatness has power to produce.

We will not expect intellectually organised material from a non-intellect, or brilliant and extended technical achievement from a non-technical artisan. Wait on a stone for a million years, if they were ever there, and the qualities of a stone in that arena will be displayed. If you expect it to produce forms of order not predicable to its own and their inbuilt outcome potential, in the established situation and order of things as they are observable and characterisable, you will wait in vain. Time is not a creator, but acts an exhibitor of the internal properties of what is placed in any kind of system, allowed to interact within itself. What it is and the system is can be tested. The scope is to be demonstrated by coherent and testable criteria.

Matter is not found a creator of logical systems, but an exhibitor of its own properties, enshrined in a logical system. Creation-wise, it evidences and attests capacities inscribed, form, format, laws operative and a certain nature of ability, in various situations, interactions testable for kind. Mind, on the other hand,  is a creator, a maker of a kind which depends on the amplitude of its connections, facilities and symbol-action capacities. It is not created by what does not deal in these fields of symbol-significance-signification-presentation-construction. It requires such propensities for its coming to be, from what has them, in the heightened sense of being able to know and understand and actually install this kind of offspring, resultant. The realm of creation of these sorts of capacities, functionalities, comprehension-capturing symbolisms is a mental one in action.

Each to its own. That is what is normal both in science and in logic: examine what is before you and do not replace it with imagination, but USE imagination to find testable results of your understanding of what is before you. Test always. Get results always so that knowledge may speak. In science by itself, this is hypothetical, but may be confirmed into law.

What then of matter ? What of mind ? what of imagined facilities for both or either ? what of tested facilities for them ? Do they create themselves ?

If things were different, then those facilities would

1) have their background and basis readily investigable. They are not to be seen.

2) have their productions on the way from matter readily visible.

3) have their logical ground for 'arising,  to enable such production, manifestable.

In logic, we find no cause; in empirical residues, we find no such attestation. On the contrary, we find an initial deposit, a tendency for retrogression and a cessation of what produces the deposit. Creation of these material and mental propensities started and apart from procreation, a built-in continuation ability, they stopped. The Bible says so. Evidence so attests. There is no process inherent in any system which is anywhere attested, to make matter from nothing or mind from matter.

In logic, we look for such a cause, and if no residues appear of such efforts, for one in need of no assistance from outside itself, and in view of the cessation, then we find no evidence of such action over time. What is outside the system and the types, if possessed of the ability not shown within them, may create or not, at will. There is no continuation process which grips, commands, insists, constrains. It is an on-or-off situation.

That is precisely what logic requires (SMR Chs. 1   -3), verification attests and design exhibits. This is given in detail in such works as:

Deity and Design, Designation and Destiny, and
Light Dwells with the Lord's Christ,
Who Answers Riddles and Where He is, Darkness Departs.

Thus do things begin. Thus did this begin. It did not create itself. It was begun. It did not arise in the midst of nothing in order to become an antinomy. Logic does not die. Fabrications contrary to it and empirical reality should; but if they do not, like the car which continues to run despite the keys being turned off, then this is MENTAL disorder in the mind of man, not abrogation in the realm of reason. It is INSISTENCE on what is not so. It is what demands the demise of reason, and in giving reason for such demands, uses the very reason it insists on skewering, and so dies by its own sword.

Despite this death to the Darwinesque (Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch. 4, Wake Up World ... Chs.  4-6) and the naturalistic in general, and to all that implies or demands it, what continues to exercise the darkened mind of man in such regions, is

	an intoxication of spirit, disallowed by mind,
	a work of will,
	a wonderful exhibit of the staggering liberty which the creator has put into our schema, in our origination at His will, and of the extent of it!

Here is the exercise of the third dimension, that of spirit, which may use matter or mind, and do so wilfully or for a variety of reasons which may even deliberately seek to subvert reason, such is its liberty as a magnificent creation far beyond all programmatics and indirect manipulation. If this liberty turn to become morbid, so be it; it is still at liberty to be so (cf. Ch. 1 above, with It Bubbles ... Ch. 9)..

We are not cogs but characters; not flotsam but thinkers, not callow but corruptible. This kind of corruption (cf. Ch. 6 above) is that of the spirit, and this type of obsession is that of the heart, which can bestow its affections, carnal, emotional, ideological or intellectual, in this world and its ways, where it will. As the body may be caught on a projecting branch, so the mind may be caught on a projecting idea, which it can no more relinquish than a weasel what it finds for attachment. As the spirit may lust for a given result, so does the tempest thrust into whatever is there, to destroy it. These are fixations of various kinds of forces, and each relates to the realm of its relevant occupation.

You begin ? There is  Nothing strange bout that. You just need to be THERE to do it, and to HAVE all the ingredients for any domain which, or in which,  you wish to create (in human terms, perhaps the geometrical, the artistic, the aesthetic, the analytical, the psychic, the literary or the perspective generation which brings comprehension possibilities. If you have not done this before, then you start to create there. You start and stop at will, so long as you retain capability. That is the nature of a person, given the limitations applicable to the results, and investigable in correlation with the equipment for the job.

BASIC BEGINNING

If you wish to start yourself, as an exhibit of your own creativity, it is impossible; for you have to be already the work of some other creative power, in order to be there and so to attempt the start. Too late the cry! So when you come to the logical correlation at any other level, you need what it takes, produce from the power supply and quality and quantity resources at your disposal; but you cannot create anything of yourself, as the agent, for that is a given before you can operate. To create a car, use one to make it. This is not only begging the question, but unquestionably a fallacy both profound and presumptuous! Thus, to make one Mozart, take a Mozart and follow the following to gain your objective. But THAT is simply to assume it!

When matter, not in new combinations, but in combining format, arises, it is not by anything other than a sufficient cause. It is not accounted for by assuming it. Nature is not accounted for by assuming it; nor is freedom, nor responsibility nor deceit, nor will. In logic, as in science, it is needful to confine your imagination to relevant topics, not as one lost, pursuing arcane wanderings.

If all that is found delimited, designated, integrated in the systematics of the universe is in view, then what is not the universe (a given when you consider it creating) is the cause. You cannot create what is already there. It cannot create itself when there is nothing there. The only way you COULD create it all, would be by not being this realm, singular, single, multiple, whatever its way, and so existing wholly outside it. You cannot be a lurking creativity within it, in order to make it, for then IT has first to be there, in order for anything to lurk within it.

Efforts to gain creation from what is already created merely imply the pre-existence of what is not there. If they do not acknowledge it, it merely loses rationality. Losing rationality is a means of losing ALL arguments, since they use it to make themselves apply. So here.

The name for the Beginner of nature, who made beginning a mode, is God. Eternal since without the adequate always, you have nothing with which to form a logical basis, He just IS. Not dependent, not delimited, not constrained, not apportioned, it is He who has what it takes to make what is there, and is all of those things, as well as the liberty to survey and to convey and to distort them mentally, and to abuse them in spirit; or to do otherwise, and to seek Him.

He acts as we do, as He will. He starts things, He assesses them, He judges them, He shows concern to restore them. As with other logically assessable powers, such as ourselves, this is the cause-effect relationship. Whether it be a limited creation from the created powers within creation (as enables man), which so operates, or unlimited creation which makes the limits and designates the powers with their variable creation capacities, (as expresses God), there is but one principle in view at this level: cause and effect (cf. Causes, SMR Ch. 5 and Predestination and Freewill Section 4).

Such creation, not merely at the macro level, but in the institutive level, which is the basis for the derivative, the dependent, the constrained,  is expressible in terms of rationality, logical competence, and adherence to the ways of LOGOS: by which man's mental competence proceeds, and nature's character is investigable, both being of this moulding. In Greek the term means cause and reason and word and expression, and Christ in terms of the deity, the Word as Flesh or as man, provides all of this, and as EXPRESSION exhibits the heart of God as well (cf. John 5:19-23, 8:58).

If the Creator wishes to BECOME part of His creation, without ceasing to be who He is, then that is merely a change of form (as in Philippians 2), and does nothing to alter the identity (as in John 8:58). Dressed in flesh, or openly manifest, He is who He is, and so His name is "I AM" (John 8:58), or I AM WHO I AM.

Beginning can be fun, for creativity is a wonderful gift, using imagination, concatenation, ratiocination and desire. But it can be tragic, as when someone decides to begin a process of self-destruction, thus limiting creativity, as with relevant drug-usage, swearing (a form of intrusive presumption, insisting on bringing in one type of topic when the discourse is about another, the cause of the conversation). It will always end, when the relevant derivative creator ends (for example, man in his creativity); the babe becomes the ancient and the spirit returns to God who made it. In this world, it ends in terms of its operational functionality, its power to think and to act.  This it does unless attached connected to its source, attached in spirit in some way to the Creator of what can create, that is, of man. Otherwise, it wears, grows old, becomes obsolete, runs down, has its design compromised, outmoded or outwitted. So in this world man grows and goes.

Yet if it should be attached to its Creator, in terms actually of His becoming man in order to bring many of this race to a consummation that does not end, but continues the image of God situation in its fellowship with God target, then it may live forever. These, receiving Christ according to the Gospel, live for ever by its means, through the Saviour in it, by the grant of eternal life, immortality then being exchanged for mortality, and incorruption for corruption.

It depends on the will of the One who made the beginning of creation. If as biblically revealed, He not only takes the form of a man, in His creative excursion, but uses this to so identify with the sin of man, that as man He can bear the breach and death it portends (II Cor. 5:17-21), then that is the elimination of the end for this particular beginning. It is then that  man in the image of God, as His special creation, with sin in its guilt and sentence transferred to the Saviour, has endless life conferred. This is the way of eternal life.

THREE LEVELS OF CREATION

Eternal life for a derivative ? It is a creativity indeed that so made man. This too God began, and for man, through the Gospel, is redemption: itself one of His projects, available for its application to what is not Himself. It does not end for it is germane to Himself, éternal redemption' therefore (Hebrews 9:12). Now there is restoration to the time of creation for man, and more than this, confirmation of the companionship of God as Father through the salvation so imparted.

In this blessed mode, as adopted children of God Almighty through Jesus the Christ (Ephesians 1), each repentant receiver of the Lord freely, of His word, of His Gospel has functions once dead, restored to life. Then the redeemed soul has not only the image of God as at the first -  the power to converse, commune and communicate with God and begin things, but has this as an everlasting gift (John 3:15-10, Ephesians 1:11). Now there is alive once more within the derivative power given to man, by divine purpose, the capacity to share with that very Divine One, cognition and comprehension, abstract or concrete, symbolically or otherwise expressed, but also His sanction. This is the second level of creation for man: first the option, and then the deliverance. In freedom man separated and the results shout loudly and are in anguish; in repentance man may avail himself of his second stage of the journey, but receiving the grant of pardon, government and spiritual re-connection to God.

The third level is a new creation again, but this time a spiritually constrained one, freely adopted, that of a child of God not by being made, but by  being accepted on known terms, on the merciful provision extended for the Divine Lord to the human sinner. Thus now there is in this way available, not only of the form and format of man, as at the beginning, and not alone the restoration and conjunction of man with the friendship of the pardoning and most merciful God, whose sacrifice made the attachment work, but yet more. Coming on the return of the Saviour to the world in which His Gospel has flourished despite acrid persecutions, there is a new and consequential form.

What is this ? It is that of a resurrected and eternal body, where the friends of God have as equipment (II Corinthians 5, I Corinthians 15), what is now fitting for the new heavens and the new earth, to replace this soiled variety, for eternal life where sin and death are castaways, and life is without end.

All this from God has had its beginning: there has been that of man, of sin, of salvation, of restoration, of repentance, of renewal, of reconciliation - the means to know God again provided, and of consummation at last, past the failures of deficiency, in the realm of the sublime (cf. Revelation 21-22).

Meanwhile, man does not find it hard to envisage creation, of which he is a component, for he is constantly at it himself, its animation, sustaining and thrust, its imagination and charm and delight, its intriguing fascination and constructive thrill, sense when done for the Lord, of the presence of the Lord.

For man, it can be FUN to begin what is grand and noble, worth-while and gracious, merciful and understanding. It is FOLLY to begin what soils and spoils. It is a WONDER for God to begin as to time, what He planned in eternity (Revelation 13:8). It is WISDOM for man to accept restoration, redemption and reality, no more at war, but relishing the glory of God (II Cor. 5:17ff.).

It is ALWAYS hard when some grand thing, say an airliner, a cruise liner as recently, is rubbished. Much is hurt. A vision is dashed. There is no use in living in poetry. That is expressive but not the same as what it expresses. Reality has other plans. Reality is the truth, and God is He (John 14:6). It is not the created spawn, but the Creator who spawned it, which is the abiding reality. The spawn, the created world, may be defiled, may defy God, may ruin itself, and is massively so doing. This does not change reality, but only its impact on this world. If you smash tennis rackets, you do not change tennis, but your power to play it.

God, He is not One to be played with, for truth does not quiver or quaver. When asked whether He was the Christ, the Lord replied, I AM (Mark 14:62), just as He had earlier asserted, Before Abraham, I AM. His works attested it, His words reflected it. It is time to BEGIN to trust Him, follow His prescription and live ... for ever.

CULTURAL APPLICATIONS

Creation of man and his environment had a beginning. God in His goodness did not end it when sin entered. Indeed, while it did illustrate the magnificence of freedom, it achieved desecration, easily said, but worn with weight, one that drags and draws downward. Without atonement, there is judgment to the end. Of this Gibeah (Judges 19) is an horrific example, starting with the atrocious disregard of a woman by one man, her abuse by many, and war leading to the death of thousands and coming near to exterminating a tribe in Israel. The folly was enormous; the reproof was no less so; and the engines of horror worked over-time to produce a fitting reply to a sense of justice on the part of those who would not accept such things.

Is it imagined that these beginnings, of liberty and through this, of sin,  will have no end ? My old car endured for a long time, some 33 years; but in the end, it went. A wonder in creation, it was increasingly a woe in continuation. Its power to respond decreased, and its once splendid look, began to sink into the slightness of age.

It did not mock me, but its failings began to complicate, not simplify, that aspect of living. In the case of man, however, he DOES mock God, often. Only yesterday I saw a splendid seeming physician, and at one point in the conversation, he declared that there were up and down sides to everything. To this statement I replied with the citing of an exclusion zone: "EXCEPT GOD," I declared. "You think God is perfect," he responded, though perhaps 'expostulated' would be a better term. Affirming that He indeed was, I then cited illustrations of his ways, both in miraculous and gracious mode.

Faith is not blah: it is reasonable, I pursued. If I work for BHP (as it used to be), and it wanted me to go to China, I would expect them to pay for my ticket. If I merely go on a jaunt, the case differs. When I was working in the creation of many books for a specific objective to His glory, the reaching of the lost in scores of countries, the giving of a reason for the faith, the teaching of the Bible, the reaching of the unreached, the use of what I had been given in my own day and generation, and the time came when my right eye was injured, with blindness threatened unless I took virtually immediate action, there was a predicament. The physician could act effectively only by puncturing the affected eye with a hole. Too little, and too much pressure for the organ; too big, and too little. It was low tech, and if inflammation occurred, I would have to come rushing in to see whether it was or was not also infection.  

A miracle it would take ?  He affirmed that this was so, if such an operation were to be avoided.

So bad was the case, in Church, we sought a miracle. How else could the means for this work effectively be preserved. Anointing with oil, an elder with me sought healing, which occurred in two days, as seen by the physician on my return to his rooms.

A miracle ? This is not a mandate to obviate all travail; crucifixion was the potion for the Prince. Rather is it a practical way of enabling a job to be done as the Lord wishes it; yet it is also a loving provision to aid others to gain what the one provides. So does love flow like a stream spreading.

There is a simplicity about REASONABLE faith, which looking to the Creator-Redeemer in the realm of the redeemed, finds a Father's rule with a Friend's counsel and a spiritual dynamic as required (Ephesians 3:16,20). What is impossible with men, is open to God. Rich in counsel, sacrificial in love, merciful in operation, infinitely intelligent, magnificently true, He works all things after the counsel of His own will. In this, there are included the provisions of love, the supply of mercy, the actualisation of entente with His own, the presence of power. NEVER is power or wisdom unavailable for His work, as His redeemed call upon His name. Whether with James it leads to death, or with Peter, to rescues remarkable in boldness, magnificent in strategy, to proclaim redemption, yet as one goes, so does He: for "lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the Age," Matthew 28:20. And that, it is merely the beginning (John 14:1ff., John 6:50-58, II Timothy 1:8ff., I John 5:11ff.).

This shows the same spare simplicity of motivation, to deliver at any cost but that of truth (without which only the hell of insatiable desire remains, its crushing an infinite loss). Accordingly,  Christ was resurrected bearing the brunt of the lie, breaking its power for those who receive Him, providing its refutation and cure both at once.  Every Christian is on mission, and each needs to find out in what capacity.

Cultural lordship, such as is increasingly apparent in the declining rays of the setting sun of our Age, and in particular in Australia as it follows folly with the strength of a bloodhound on the scent, is moving towards idolatry status, like a whippet. With the agonies of consistently and insistently imparted authoritarian myths, through teachers, lecturers, TV hosts and performers, the media, blasting like the Chinese rural megaphones, the cheap hollowness of faithless treachery to truth: it comes up for judgment.

If there was once here a Christian culture, then for long increasing has been a counter-culture, now inflamed with passion: it propagandises, it applies itself, it seeks prey, its eye does spare; and its movement into crushing into conformity, does not cease. Now the more, it threatens liberty of speech, as the sound becomes more and more thunderous:  in the internet, it WILL have its way, it will rationalise reasons for the clamp; but they are vapid. If man is limited to authority of man for truth, then be becomes a vassal of culture, a victim of delusion and a patterned programmee, in danger of becoming increasingly delirious till he cannot even separate the exceedingly intricate pattern of male and female, in the organised continuation of the race.

He is in divorce from design^*1, divine declaration and the mercy of God. He thrashes it with contempt. He urges that morality is to be man-made, though what simply IS cannot provide what ought to be, except by desire, a mere misnomer. It is only foolishly named OUGHT in that case, for then it becomes but convenience, an agreed conditioning convention and a revolting revolution in which a created people play the part of the Creator, which is a lie: denying the Lord, as I John declares, is simply a lie. What preposterous presumption is here provided! (Ezekiel 28:9).

Nor is it free, for the rewards of gain for politicians arise to bring lather to the hides of wolves; and politics like other professions, is not by any means immune from the lust for gain. Nor is this all: for another passion readily moves to bring to the uttermost, the arrogance of man, even to the point of a universe take-over, a thing of nothing ... so becoming a cornucopia for the agents of illicit conquest.

When, in diverse ways, sex becomes a food bar of choice, where do the fighting forces go, and why be surprised at immense and intensive provocation within them, outrageous outages increasingly reported amid its congregated forces. A JUST war may be fought (to preserve from slavery for example), but when war is just a decision of those whose morals are mere expressions of desire (merely deemed good or bad at will, to be consistent), what of the fighting forces ? Is there here a dedication to justice and truth, when these things slip increasingly away amid the fires of cultural arson ?

Why should anyone imagine, that with this scurrilous seeking of subversion of what is the truth, in which so greatly this nation had prospered, and with the confusion of multi-culturalism NOT meaning gracious tolerance of mere diversity and difference, but characterless subversion of all standards in favour of total indifferentism, the results apt to match the changes will not subversively accrue! Light a match to tinder and watch the flames!

Thus readily  a stray dog comes into power; and with neither heritage nor assurance, will it not  soon be displaced by whatever else works on relativity for its non-basis, as this way is the stray! Then as the way skews the more, so as in Isaiah 59,  there are no insignificant results! This perversion of a gracious spirit of toleration in the nation,  into characterless conformity to the will of the moment, to the will-o.-the-wisp flickers from here to there, this desire to provide for anything its will, and to show respect to its way, like a prostitute with many men who pay, who yet may love none of them:  is it to be denied its sad assessment: "measuring themselves by themselves, they are not wise," (II Corinthians 10:12) ?

In conspicuous delusion, the tolerance becomes a truculent assault on Christ, seeking subversion for another sovereign, increasingly clear, the State, to sanction all things, to rule all, and to stop at nothing. Alas nothing is where such delusions begin, nothing but the will for all in all things, surrogate sovereigns, whether trifling with God, or inventing new ones, linguistic chameleons. ONE WAY is to be seen in innovation: it is the crushing of the Christian testimony and the forwarding on equal footing of ANYTHING which has power and voice and muscle and desire. Subverting all things, the State then seeks governance over all, as the USSR did in its own most vicious way (cf. SMR pp. 971 - 972).

In a school class, there is often the clown. Is Australia to play the clown to the nations, while Parliament has its vast rises in salary, and falls in supervisory discretion ? Is it to become the deep end of fecklessness, and the beginning of new tragedies, so far avoided ?and this, because of passionate non-conformity to the way of Christ, and desperate designs to bring all things into one abominable froth, like a milk-shake left on too long in the vitamiser, meaning nothing.

FREEDOM is the beginning of reform, for it has more options in truth. COMPULSION as in the take-over schools and colleges of the political junta (and in this affair, where is the difference ?), is the beginning of the end of vision, of the establishment of darkness on the streets of life.

WHY should anyone imagine that the devastations of declared deity^*2, in image form, as with pins in a representative doll, will have less to answer for, than did Israel in its utterly grievous assault on the Lord ? How often are they regarded amiss for what in spirit is now paralleled in a massive earth-work, greater than that of even the largest mine, in other lands! Is the Saviour to be defaced ? Are we to have a new and implicitly naturalistic Constitution, who united as in dependence on Almighty God ?^*3 Are things which by reason show His truth, to become exceptionable, perhaps prosecutable, and is comfort to replace reality, as in the case of the Italian liner which seemingly put on its show at the cost of the loss of the ship.

WHY should the reprimand for ignoring the features of ANY design in life (which lives by design - cf. Deity and Design...) loiter ? Whether in Isaiah or Ezekiel or Jeremiah, or Amos or Obadiah, the Lord takes issue with those who breach the rules, the truth, the heart conditions of God who made us all. As example, this is seen in Isaiah 51, where the Lord declares of those detesting Israel (admittedly itself fallen into deep sin), that He will take the cup of affliction out of its hand and give it to those who afflict her! (Isaiah 51:22-23). Do they say to Israel, Lie down, while I walk on your body ? This, the Lord remembers.

Does this nation now say to those who, in freedom, present the truth on which it was founded, as noted in the nature of the nation which founded our culture and the Constitution: Be quiet! Stop dripping your wares! If so, it is as in Israel of old; but when froth bosses, where is the ground! (cf. Jeremiah 23).

That is precisely what the establishment in Israel told the prophet Amos: Don't spout, or drip your words anymore. They disesteemed the doctrines of deity, divested from His ways, and brought dishonour to His name and divorce from His thoughts, based on what amounted to nothing (Jeremiah 23:17-22). Very well: kingliness organises truth to its satisfaction, glorying in the suppression of the free course of the word of God ? It is not new. Its end is old.

Consider Isaiah 30:8-16:

Contrary minds to the rule of law by lore, this is its basis, culture, its self-congratulatory apotheosis, these are to be hocked, their speech slithered into some warehouse for extinction, the light turned off from their productions, while hideously unbased blastings induced by nothing but desire, proclaim themselves, measuring themselves by themselves as Paul was inspired to put it (II Corinthians 10:12). Such is often enough the way, and is Australia, step by step, lowering by lowering, to more and more bellow it: the State rules ALL, including religion, and will sanction all, affording trespass signals as God!

Many are to be shocked, as a flittering mirage announces itself as lord of minds, controller of communications and officer of penalty for liberty. As in any experiment, like this in social engineering, however, fey and vacuous, founded on air, feelings have little chance against facts. Self-indulgence in a specious form of comfort without truth, not even daring its declaration and presentation, this  becomes merely an emblem for a certain grave, and could by this be used as a headstone: We rule all with nothing! Such indeed is the sense of Isaiah's treatment of the case in Isaiah 41: indeed one Hebrew word for idol MEANS breath, wind or vanity. The God-substgitute, in arrogation of power or knowledge, direction or disposition: it  is a vain supposition, a wind that is gone and not to be found. Such is the meaning in Deuteronomy 32:21 for example. "They have moved Me to anger by their foolish idols," or "by their vanities."

Such is the way, unless the Lord of design is sought in an active repentance that wakes a people up, instead of continuing to be called into characterlessness.

Is it to be a case of being crooned into characterless oblivion by meaningless apparitions of the ghost of naturalism, evolutionism, while suffering from relativistic disorientation, awaiting the basement due to baselessness with head in the clouds, and hands on mischievous miseducation at all levels in this type of realm, leading the next generation toward disaster ?

There is always a beginning. There is always an end, except in the Lord. As this is increasingly a purring parallel, that between ancient Israel in biblical times, and changing nations, lookinf for new lairs, it is notable to see the way of it. Beginning in corruption and ending in judgment, its designation is often enough traced in the word of God. Romans 1 gives its basis and prognosis, Titus 2-3 its remedy, II Thessalonians 1 the eventual divine retort, while love gives it opportunity to repent, and grace will assuredly pluck many out of the cultural fire. Here we find in a manner of its own,  a sort of French Revolution with a different guillotine: freedom itself is set to be executed. Where reason fails, silencing is often used as a substitute. Where truth falls in the street (Isaiah 59), the Lord in His time arises in His own place, to assess and to deal with the wilful deformities of man. The Age bustles now, in its jaded collusions and collisions to its end in judgment (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5, SMR Ch. 8).  To what may a person then go ?

	Where heart is reduced to repentance,
	where life is produced anew,
	where king culture is dethroned and God replaces him,
	where imagination no more has no discipline and human knowledge ceases to be governed by a priori recklessness, which ignores evidence,
	when faith arises and life resumes its place before its Creation,
	when redemption is wrought and life eternal is found through faith:

then there is an eternal inheritance for many. It is all free: man may prefer darkness, but if he desires the light, then the gift is free as no less is the sending of it, the cause of it and the consequence (cf. Ephesians 1-2). As Romans 5:17 points out, it is not only a gift to be received by faith, but it is a GIFT BY GRACE. Both its content and its reception are of grace (Ephesians 2, Romans 10), and as in Romans 4-5, thus has the will of God been wrought whether in Old or New Testament times (cf. Psalm 32). Depend then on nothing but God, not even yourself, not even a little bit; and rely on your Redeemer (Galatians 6:14) adding nothing, and entrust all  that is you, potential and past , in keen reliance on the God of your creation, now you Redeemer, through faith. Neither any man or agency nor one's own self has the reliability for this: but God has! Use it (Matthew 11:27ff.).

God is the site for freedom, and as this is eternal, let those who in His logos, His only begotten Son, incarnate deity, know Him reflect that all this contemporary mauling of truth, with disaster affixed instead of restoration, is but for a little time: while eternity has no limits, for there is no end to what is affiliated by grace freely to God (I Corinthians 15). Where love is concerned, that is how it is desired!

NOTES

*1

See-

Deity and Design, Designation and Destiny.
 

*2 See The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy...

*3 See The Lord of Longsuffering ... Ch. 8, and the preamble to the Australian Constitution.