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CHAPTER FOUR

SHELVE IT, BUT IT WON'T STAY THERE

EPHEMERAL IS THE NAME OF THE ANTI-CHRISTIAN GAME

The Lie is not abstruse but absurd! I John 2:22

PITY, PLEA AND WILLINGNESS

Why should you die ? this is the plea and challenge of God to Israel and to man today. It is found in Ezekiel 18:312 and 33:11. Below, bold is added to point the issue here in focus.

“Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit.

"For why should you die, O house of Israel?

“Say to them: ‘As I live,’ says the Lord God,
‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked,
but that the wicked turn from his way and live.
Turn, turn from your evil ways!
For why should you die, O house of Israel?’

WHY ? Is the worm to be a friend to the body ? is parting grief to be a balm to the spirit or severance from senses a joy to the mind ?

It is God who has invented sensory perception, and not nothing.

It is God who has invented logical strata underlying natural objects and systems, so that they may be meaningfully investigated by logical methods and logically formulable laws made up to  MATCH them. What is there is what is found, and the One who put both law in nature and law in mind of man has one mode, rational for organisation, one integrality, one unity, character, one point and purpose, creation out of abundance of vitality for one glory which is to be found in His own outgoing love, and He has one grace, sufficient for any, deficiency in which is far worse than that from any vitamin, for it debilitates not the body merely, but the soul, the very life of man so that he becomes as mostly he now is.

That ? Bundles, increasingly, of fretfulness, offence to the ego, that is the essential  spirit and life underlying his goings and thoughts (NOT some imaginary component of a non-system with no meaning to the whole, which nevertheless assigns, as if mad entirely, meaning to other things!). He becomes a warring point in a line of incidents and furies, frustrations and worries, tiring of right, inventive in wrong, touchy in disposition, angry as he drives, assertive in manner, wicked and corrupt in morals, persecutive of principles and those who hold them, derived from the Maker, intolerant of what tolerates God and this in the name of tolerance, confused, mixed up with evils innumerable, cautious in goodness, callow in character, corrupt in disposition.

It is not ALL like this, for some in pride love to parade themselves as if saintly, because they have some better way, found in themselves, exported to the fortunate, benevolent to those thereby blessed, maddened in inner arrogance, presented in meekness amidst a profound assertion, that theirs is no sin deserving condemnation by ANYONE, God of course included, for in them is the sum and substance of goodness. Such idols, made out of one's own being, are amongst the most intolerant, for theirs is no truck with truth, no alliance with trust, no need of the Saviour, for they save themselves and others by their own means, very gods in the making. For this reason, some may love Mormonism with its gods-in-the-making, as if anything not starting as God could so end, or anything not eternal could aspire to that status, without what IS eternal granting it!

The UN loves to parade such a mentality, amidst its manifold and inherent frustrations and weaknesses, making of itself a laughing stock for high words and callow deeds, too little, too  late, too afraid, too  pompous by stages (cf. It Bubbles ... Ch. 11).

But God remains. He does not talk of making peace, merely, but makes man. He does not talk of saving man merely, but regenerates those who put their trust in Him. He does not make speeches on WHY this saves, merely, but DOES what it takes, thus becoming man in the person of the Second Member of the Trinity, who came as Jesus the Christ, so that in Him, sacrificial offering for sin, He might find man's salvation.

God remains with no limited shelf life, for He made the shelves, the library and the very scope for the history of mankind.

PASSING PARADES DO PASS TILL THEY ARE PAST IT

Thus as noted in Ch. 2 above, Babylon, Tyre, Assyria lie, as prophetically  they were to lie, their laurels strewn in the dust of history. Other intemperate empires have come and gone. Indeed,  much of the lustful outgoings of Europe in Portugal or Spain or Germany or Italy are now in recess, now less effulgent, but found often in feebleness, in war or disease, in the process.

The glory of man lies in the dust, his nuclear reactors not harbingers of a new clean age, but sources of the utmost danger amid the martial, the militant, the madnesses of fighting man who yet in this defiant destructiveness, has much to offer in such terms as polonium dusting, which can be used as a weapon like fertiliser over crops, or induced blasting of nuclear reactors and the like. This may appeal, when he is not inventing mini-machines whether cybernetic or not, which can pursue man with invented maladies on their tiny bodies, to sue and pursue with horror.

Just as the curse of God has come (Romans 8:17ff., Genesis 3, Romans 5), to complicate the beauty and wonder both of natural things, with disease and distortion, and to instruct man by sight in the ways of folly, to avoid them in his own heart, so man in turn is cursing, or acting as if this is the case, in one nation turning to bully, provide illusory comfort to another, while prosecuting a narrow self-interest. He  thus creates a cursing blend. It is hard to take; man was hard to make: but he is made and in his unwise waspiness, he is working his own ruin. Repentance of the basic cause is the preferred option, like giving up smoking at the physiological level. Indeed, Jesus Christ indicated that unless men repent,  then the natural events in their arrays and forays are quite open to strike as they will, for as Psalm 1 declares it, then one is open entirely like chaff to the wind. Wind has little care for chaff; but God cares for those who repenting, receive Him at last.

If one method of ignoring, assailing, devising evil of thought, or murder for Christians, or misappropriation from them, or destruction for their houses or professions does not occur, there are always more modes and means. Man is inventive; but it merely assails his soul and takes account of his life. Man changes the wording, but the theme tends to remain just the same.

So do the variant anti-God, subtly destructive, surreptitiously godless, or openly assailing philosophies remain as mere vestiges, constantly replaced by the new look, like Autumn clothing for women, elegances for men, which is ever like the old, and no better, but expensive for all that, while having the same concept back of it^*1.

For who creates havoc like modern man ? whose powers have increased and his heart in horror, so that even in enlightened, highly civilised nations like the USA, Britain, Australia, Canada, he can insist on nature myths for children, deceitfully portrayed as if science, contrary to evidence, appallingly indifferent to exposure by non- and anti-verification^*2, never confirmed, never shown, no, not once, in laboratory or in method.

Nothing say they, is the source, or else something endowed from nowhere with all that it takes to be what is somewhere, for no reason and on no ground, this from a logical nothing, a dream, given powers to machinate without machinery or mind, inventing mental objectivisation and legal modes.

PREDESTINATION IS FATHERED BY FOREKNOWLEDGE

A THING OF INCOMPARABLE BEAUTY

BECAUSE OF WHOSE IT IS

Freedom, they say, is not there; and they say it freely. Man does not have a mind that can be objective, say they, and they say it objectively. Knowledge is beyond our grasp, we but see what happens and follow, seeking to intervene as we may for our own purposes and power, say they, but they speak knowledgeably.

Nothing made it, they say, but they are careful to endeavour to give the appearance of logical reasons of substance, for their nothings. If these things are not a species of madness, a syndrome of disturbance of mind and collapse of soul, logic to show it is not so, for it remains stubborn, and will not yield.If the use of laws of thought to show that law is irrelevant, of concepts of compulsion as a base for free expression of understanding and securing of the way for man, if indeed, the driving of necessity to secure freedom for our race, if these are not delusions, then what possibly COULD be!

It is always true that in terms of logic, if you contradict yourself, there is no need for anyone else to clash with you, self-eliminated from the stakes.

But what more do they say, the many in so many ways ?

They point to predestination in any form, and they say, Ah yes, an interesting topic, for of a certainty, it is all there somehow, we have no freedom, but are the pitiable butts of sovereign forces which contrive both what we are and can be! and this they assert with SUCH freedom of thought that it is to be believed, not as the meaningless jabber of human insects, buzzing without rational mind or its powers of testing and originality, penetration and survey, but as if liberty to find were the product of compulsion that is pitiable. Why is it that man tends so often and in so much to accept what is not merely mere noise, logically, but perhaps even to accept it the more readily when it is a giant belch of chatter, ignominiously ludicrous before reason, like a fairy tale.

When added to this, such things, such thoughts are customarily presented as if the rational outcome of a reasoning mind that finds what is so, and says so, we have the mental malady spectacular! Such is life without God and as such, in principle, does He characterise it (cf. Ephesians 4:17-19, Romans 1:17ff., Ephesians 2:12).  This is more than moving by miracles; this is to LIVE the miraculous as one's very nature, always contrary to what one is, never imbued with what would enable one to act as one does, speak as one does, aspire as one does. It is the highway of self-contradiction, self-seduction.

Yet in this, even here, they may mix models even further, as if it were a sport, like throwing the tuna in Port Lincoln, something like the tuna capital of the world. How far can you throw, not tuna, but fantasy ? that is the question. Obviously, many say, you CANNOT escape your past, your structure, your engendering forces, your genes and so forth, so that it is all predestination by fashioning forces, natural laws, inherent structures, inevitable functions, and we merely shove as strewn about by natural forces.  Sad, they sigh, but true. Yet how they KNOW it to be so, when there is nowhere to find it so or otherwise, no truth around in the melding world of the intensively relativistic, this is the mystery. It is like a beggar offering odds for gamblers on horses: but where are his funds for the payout ?

This imbroglio with fantasy is not without reason.  For everything, there is a reason,  even for madness. Man MUST seek and attempt to find and disclose the truth, even with passion, even if it occurs to him to be the very model of exculpation to say that there IS no truth, and to declare this to   be the absolute truth itself. He can in this way proclaim, what he passionately rejects by name!

 Why ? He may do it deviously, being often the very heart of the devious in his distorted and distortive mind (Jeremiah 17:9); but he so often does it that it is virtually a standard of reference, an axiom among the so very wise. He is DRIVEN to do it by the logical force of his construction, within, in mind, in spirit; for if he wanders, he wants  to do it as a seeker, and if he speaks in antitheses, he is surging on the path of exploration to which he moves as a moth to the flame. Though his ABILITY to be so driven comes from the very liberty abused, the misdirection of the urge into the malady of the counter-surge, like flood waters turning in their course through the contours of the valley in which they move, yet this but makes the shame of misused glory the more biting.

No, it is not by some unfortunate force that he is moved, which just happened to gain the prodigious intelligence necessary for his construction, and the absolute truth to enable man to be able to find it, so that it is there as required, for this is to imagine all in parts and programs, instead of rejecting it and living on the edge of the irrational abyss. He is moved by the rejection syndrome, the disorder resulting from his Creator, as he moves to suppress the sublime, and to inherit the ridiculous. He acts on the basis of the One who is God, with the conviction and flow of natural desire, yet he denies Him, and riots into irrationality with a pseudo-sublime insouciance, as if facts were enemies and fictions were truth. He acts in terms of God in his implicit assumptions,  though the name is suppressed for reasons of international security against the sublime, which not fitting into the little mind of man, is banished forever, so that hell might live.

Devilry in man is no myth. It is seen in those intense horrors whether wrought by civilised Germans in death factories, or classically famous Italians in mustard gas in Ethiopia, or tradition-soaked Russians in their USSR myth, which is now thankfully closed to visitors, being no longer there. It is seen in crudities unthinkable, preoccupations deplorable, hatred rising like H-bomb mushrooms into the atmosphere of life, indifference unspeakable and the flames of oratory, when it gives to his imagination, the desires that destroy. If you do not believe it, this power, this force, this active delusion (II Thess. 2:4-10) read history; and failing that, try the new media.

Man is driven to speak of, long for, insist on and argue for the truth by the fact that it is there, tantalising, enticing, on the very brink of discovery by those who hate the name of the actual God, and THEREFORE invent any manner of ludicrous non-deities which in combination, like a gang of ruffians,  all gentlemen beneath, so that these can make a picture for him to live by, so that they might abide under the  shadow of these, their own creations (cf. Deuteronomy 32:!5ff.). 

Why is it there, the truth ? It is there because man is not the centre of the universe, even though increasingly evidence is coming to hand that maybe this earth is near the centre, to which point, we look a little later. The universe does have a centre of power and meaning, and it is not air or water or fire, as the Greeks fastidiously in their early days liked to imagine; nor is it solidarity which does not change, a desire with Parmenides, nor on the contrary, does it change without matrix, as Heraclites loved to declare. What then of this ? Then change itself has neither pith nor basis, nothing to effect change upon, for that too must be changing, and whatever would be changed is not there to be changed, since it is always changing. It assumes the solidity so that it might magnify the change. On the other hand, the assumption of the  static, what is also the Einsteinian desire for the fixed, whether or not exported into an image of 'nature', this is to deny the dynamism which has inventive flair and coherent thrust.

Man must move and merge things, instead of following the evidence to its door, and finding God as in SMR, for example. He wants the visible instead of the invisible, and makes motions of thought to indulge this, his fantasy, though his own thought expression is invisible, his desire for truth of another realm, for peace immaterial, for justice elemental but of another order. All man's actions spring from desires which in the end, are invisible in nature. Truth has no physical magnitude, though the One who is truth invented magnitude, with space and time.

There is no centre in itself, for the physical universe in terms of meaning, meat and power, whatever the geometry of space, constantly undergoing change of model over recent years. There is only its cause.

Even a car may have a centre of gravity, but that is not its centre of reason or design. It is merely an exponent in one function of its integrality, of its design, its purpose, a caveat fulfilled.  But for what ? Why, it is for motion in controlled circumstances (not air, for example, advisedly), so that the purpose of translocation might be fulfilled, transport achieved, with some provision for attendant materials along with the driver. It is obvious. It is all obvious. Design and purpose are writ large in man, to the point he is almost always ACTING as if it were so in his own thought, however deranged, TELLING us all about it with knowledge and authority, BECAUSE he is in fact a design and one with purpose, and one of the purposes is to have purpose, and to be able to tell the truth. A clock ticks. If so made, it has to.

Man seeks and speaks in terms of truth, he is so made and he has to,  despite nebulosities all but indescribable in their heinous trans-logical excursions, for which many would argue with an intensity worth the lives of millions in this or that World War, -ISM, or religious imagination. Imagining gods is par excellence the work of man, and disguising their nature is the modern way: it looks more sophisticated, though it is merely the same. Yet the more it differs, the more it says and does the same thing as the forefathers in their dilatory dithers dressed up as philosophy, which one MUST know and SHOULD follow BECAUSE it is so very true!
The anti-truth philosopher becomes the ardent disciple of SHOWING it truly to be so, in achieving subordination to the Lie. It is indeed a SIW, as in other wars, a self-inflicted wound. When it is hidden from  help, while it does not defeat all pity, it is the less pitiable and the more fatal.

In cars, the factory underlies their centres of meaning, and the engineers the construction of the same, while the inventor is the participant in the realm of need and entrepreneurial action. Everything has its place for what takes place.

PERTINENT PURPOSES ARE PROFOUND

It is no different elsewhere. This is simply so, not argument by analogy; for it is as easy to state it without analogy as with it. Thus order is not inherent in nothing, for nothing has NOTHING there, call it what you will. Order IS inherent in life, for in DNA there is the very exquisite consummation of order, way beyond the current powers of the sinful minds of man; and in man's thoughts there is such power for brilliant exposition of order in this and that, seeing and seeking below the surface with extraordinary mental agility and address, that to imagine it has no PERTINENT cause is to deny not only scientific method but logic itself. If consequence has no cause, then nothing is brought in, instead. In fact, power is needed, form, formation, information: and nothing, that non-entity, it is not good at any of these.

Precisely trained power is equally needed. Directed power is required. Thought is needed for law and order. Understanding is needed for conceptual abstraction such as appears in commands in the DNA. Understanding requires purposes, that it might not be satisfied just with understanding, but action; for without action,  we would not be here; but we are. That is the empirical fact.

What then IS the purpose of man ? Clearly to find the truth is not the least of it. Why then does he not find it ? But SOME do. Where then do they find it ? Why, in the only POSSIBLE receptacle, the Maker: He knows His purposes and having made speech, inherent as luxurious potential in man, to develop, anew or from past linguistics as he will, He knows how to do it in His own way. And how does He give it ? He does so by using the equipment, the mind of man, invented to enable it. And why does He make it formatted for man that he might know it ? It is because, not least, otherwise man would be an ingenuity of ingenuities of prodigious invention, tussling with truth and killing for it, a frustration and a fool, and what is the point of making a brilliant fool like that ? Man must know; he has to be told. He is fallen; the need is the greater. But why is it a concern to the God who made him ?

Is it to satisfy pride in the Maker ? But God has no need of any contribution from His creation, for if He did, He would not, because He could not be God. What LACKS is part of a system which sovereignly imposes itself on its recipients, and since it is God who is the basis, that it might be, therefore this in the model would merely be to confuse the major terms of the discourse.

God has told the truth so that it might be known, acted on and madness avoided. Why then is madness NOT, certainly not avoided ? It is because man has this lust for truth because it is necessary, but NOT because it is obligatory. There is a difference. Necessity is for right action, not for life. You CAN live without truth, though it is of course a form of dying. To live in truth, however, is the necessity for living when it is not to be for the Lie.

Man is dying. His genome is wearing out^*2A. His patience is wearing out. Even in motor driving he becomes angry almost to killing, at little things, called driver rage, because he is weary of holding in. He wants amidst all his non-truth, false glamour and imaginary satisfactions, merely skin deep,  psychically titillating, not satisfying, he desires to have some outcome. Restless, he wrestles. Engaged to error, the heart engorged, he loves to rage. He will do and BE something, even if he assigns his life to nothing!

So does nothing chime like a bell, that turns suddenly into a siren, as if the air were filled with squadrons to blast all  to obliteration; and he trembles at the carnage in Japan, when he does not tremble at that from Hitler or Stalin or Mao or sundry petty dictators in Africa, or larger ones elsewhere. Instead of trembling in awe at divine love, he loves to tremble, as if tremolos were in fashion for the heart, and no more to be called palpitations.

Man is furious about truth because its absence is rightly perceived to be injurious, to make of him a nothing amid manifest mentality, a cipher among legal wonders wrought into laws in the universe, constantly seen in more majesty and subtlety, as well as in simplicity. Man MUST have the truth, even if millions must die. You see it in things great and small, repetitively. It is, this strange lust,  as Libya's leader seems to have begun to feel, even as Stalin felt, and Mao did, just as bin Laden appears to find, attesting a religion of force for its performance, and hence making of truth itself,  a martyr. Man surges for truth, while denying its very possibility, and the more ludicrous his delusions, the more martial his spirit to insist and persist and seek to subdue the earth. If he wants form, he invents gods or a god, without power, proof or precision of diction. Thus does Moslem militancy operate increasingly, now as hitherto in earlier times, by intimidation, by fear, by threat of force: that is the psychological strut. Give us everything you can think of, even rights about what your religious observances will be while you are liberating us from danger, as in the Gulf War in the case of Saudi Arabia: then we will tolerate your help!

Fear and threat of force is never relevant to force. It may help you to awake, but it is not the truth. Mosquitos are like that: they have their point, but they are not the truth.

In truth, man asks for punishment, and with a profound reserve, he gets it. He asks for truth where it is not to be found, and blasts the universe or any god about, for not providing it, rather like those who seeking  help from the UN, in Libya, now object that it hurts to be delivered, and that some are hit when weapons from which they seek deliverance, in the hands of the dictator, are destroyed. No expense is enough. Let others foot the bill. No bravery or sacrifice counts. Everything is to be taken for granted.

It is so also with truth. DO NOT GIVE IT ? Look where it is not to be found, and yet the confounded thing is not there! How terrible, how infuriating say many!  In desperation and aggravated delusion, then such would blast you to smithereens, and to any actual God standing around, or thought to be so, he calls for devastation, and incidentally, very often, that of His disciples.

But why should you find laws by rage ? (Psalm 2) or why truth by impudence ?^*3 (Ezekiel 28:9)or why salvation by imperiousness! Do laws come by because one is frustrated and oratorically demanding, complaining, fretful, insatiable for desire ?

GETTING TRUTH WHERE IT IS TO BE FOUND

You get truth where it is to be found, in the centre of the universe, not geometrically, but meaningfully, purposefully, in power and in conception.

You get it from God, when He opens His mouth and addresses your race.

You get it where it may be found; and when it comes, be sure to be thankful, for it is a kindness to such a race as ours, that truth be given to its corrupted mind, to its traditionalistic pollutions and its amazing pretension! When it comes, be sure to test! It is no impertinence to test, but the very height of wisdom: TEST ALL THINGS, says the Bible (I Thessalonians 5). It is most pertinent to test, and in such works as

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

for example, testing and finding is displayed, and the results  are clearly to be seen. This is as in the commanded in the Bible, in I Peter 3:15. If you want reason, then there it is! It ought to be used, and when it is, that is the result in logic, in principle, in practice,  empirically, historically, aesthetically, ontologically, in all. Seek  God with all the heart, and you will assuredly find Him (Jeremiah 29:13). If your heart yearns, then use also your mind.

Thus Isaiah 55:6 tells you to SEEK the Lord WHERE He may be found. This is the very crux of the sensible. On finding it, then be sensitive to it. It is precious. Christ died for it. What! you say. How ? It was in this, tha His death came: "Because He did no violence nor was any deceit in His mouth!" How do you know that ? First by reading the account, and second by noting this summary. Where is it to be found, this ? It is found in Isaiah 53:9. It  states that this is the case. It is not hard to see. When asked if He were the Christ, He only had to change His mouth and live. For example, He might (but God forbid) have said something peculiarly modern to the mischiefs of man, like this, and seeking survival have mouthed words such as these:

Ah well, that is a question for us all, isn't it. Look I am perfectly willing to undergo any psychological test, truth test, you like, mechanical, electrical, electronic. It is indifferent. I want to live, you see, and I am perfectly reasonable.  Let's be friendly about this thing and see what we all find. I admit I find a stirring within me, but let's look at this. It may be that in some perhaps even obscure seeming way, I am the truth. Amazing isn't it ? A rock concert you know would quieten the people, and if you get enough speaking in tongues without an interpreter, you might get enough confusion that they won't know anyway. Yes it is intensely interesting isn't it, so let's get together on this one.

But He didn't and He died.

He might have called the same supernatural support that enabled all His testings to be secure, His miracles at every challenge to occur, every one, and delivered Himself; but He did not, being sent as sacrificial victim, both enormous in compassion and healing power, and willing to do the final mile, the course of bearing sin. Yet in truth, He would not yield the slightest space; and thus,  the jealous found only death to be adequate as an outcome for overcoming His threat to their way of life and to their prestige and their power. He might have had them exterminated,  as in one course in history, Elijah did to those who wanted to use force to quench his life, before its time (II Kings 1). In the case of that prophet, when the third captain sent to take him,  fearful because of the fate of his predecessors, sought kindness from Elijah, he got it. When the  truth is concerned, find it where it may be found, and then delight in Him at such pains to provide it. It is sent in a marvel of simplicity, at the point of junction, in the Gospel, and in depth to meet the mighty, in the more meaty areas. It is all there.

The truth is that God is love and so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. He did it for a reason. It was this. It was so that anyone who believed in Him, sought  the truth as it is and followed it to Him and His provisions and took Him to heart as salvation and Lord, should not perish. He did not want to abort mission mankind. It came in elemental love.

Not only that, the truth is this, that God not only so acted, in a practical outcome of His love, that man so believing should not perish, but He did so with a further purpose. It was this. It was that man might have eternal life.

That is proportionate to truth. Truth IS eternal. If it is so from the mouth of God, it IS so. It does not cease to be so because of this or that academic, social or political dictator, cultural vulture or other bird of prey amid the corrupted race of mankind. If you get into the kingdom of truth, you are where eternity is. MY KINGDOM, said Christ, is NOT of this world. If it were, His servants would fight, but they don't because it isn't.

"I have come into the world that I might bear witness to the truth.
Everyone who is of the truth, hears My voice!" - John 18:37.

His kingdom is not of this world, He stated, the TRUTH speaking! It is eternal; this world is dispensable. It is the kingdom of heaven, but that of earth, in its many forms, formulae and formats, is earthy. It goes. It is far better so. It gets so murky, so roiled that morals are broiled, the serpentine is coiled, love is boiled, passion is soiled and reality is  farewelled. To continue some things, like mundane cancer of heart, too long, by artificial means, can be cruel. Sometimes supports can be too much. To  all such there is and must be an end. It did not begin from nothing and it does not end for nothing. There is a reason,  as always. Some races come to that point, some civilisations, some cultures. They end like Sodom, have demise like Gomorrah, all at once.

Sin and sentence are ambling partners, never far apart, till salvation resolves the issue and brings peace, and with it eternal life.

Heaven is hallowed. That is the truth. It is described in the end of Revelation. Sin is then gone. Hence pain and sorrow and grief and anguish are gone. These have their points on this earth, where they are on the one hand, attestation of sin, the lamentable thing that it is in all its consequences, and may act as brakes on it, and on the other, incitations to gain wisdom. In heaven, these evils being dispensable, and present no longer, pain and sorrow are no longer dispensed. It is good to live with the truth, eternally. Since we are long past the day when truth was a birth rite for the race, now it is gained only by salvation through grace, by unmerited favour, unmitigated grace. You find that in Ephesians 2, stated doubly in 2:5-8. You don't work for it, as if grace were really income; you don't achieve it, as though sinners were really sanctified; you don't attain to it, as if mercy were predictable.

It is not predictable but it is predicable, it is assigned, where it may be found. And where is it found ? Why it is where God in His practical action out of love, put it. Where is that ? It is in the Messiah, the Christ, the willing voluntary sacrifice of His eternal word in the format of man. When ? He died about A.D. 30, as centuries before, Daniel said He would (Christ the Citadel... Ch. 2). He came to and died in Israel, as Micah and Isaiah indicated He would. He died for sin, since it kills and He took it on Himself, to liberate, as Isaiah 49-55 makes so clear, and Hosea 13:14 shows in the purposive pondering and passion of the Lord who is God.

Why then do people not find it, the truth,  where it may be found ? It is because they prefer darkness - insatiably seeking to be sated with it, to this light. God is free, since all depends on and nothing is beyond Him, nothing making Him, who is the eternal, voiding eternally all nothing by His own Being. The denizens of truth are likewise able to be made free, since what is conversant with truth, knows what is what, and this cannot be if you are in part or whole mere program, a reactor, not an understander. God who made us in His image made us for truth,  with the accompanying need for liberty to obtain it, which no man can impart.

Liberty depends on NOT being controlled, whether by programs or pronouncements direct or indirect (however much construction goes into the sub-structure for spirit's  motions) except enough to ENABLE you to find and respond to it.

TO imagine that man MUST be determined by this and that, going back and back, here and there, and so be susceptible to depersonalising and alogical forces: what is this ? It is merely to assume materialism which CANNOT logically be true (as in Repent or Perish Ch. 7 and Christ Incomparable... Ch. 2). Besides that, it is to mix models, which contradicts rational thought, merely speaking what does not conform to your topic,  a form of gibberish. On the biblical model, which is the truth, there is God and there is Spirit and there is liberation and there is liberty and that is the thing man CANNOT make but may receive from God, at His will. It was so at the first, lost secondly and may be regained thirdly, in terms of freedom.

But how, one says, can freedom be operative before it is there. After all, he says as the smoke slowly arises from his narcotic pipe, if sin causes servitude, severs from the truth, and truth sets free, so that you are not bound by conventions and cultures and forces irrelevant or even antipathetic to truth, how can you being sinful, be free enough to choose the light. Nay more, if you cannot choose it, how are you not simply brought into a new servitude when converted, captured or even captivated when unable to show real preference at all!

The question has an answer, for in  God, who is the truth, there is always an answer, and in Christ who IS the LOGOS, there is always a reason (John 1).

GOD states that selection of man is HIS business, concerning who is to be saved or lost. However HOW He selects is ALSO His business. It is as foolish to ignore the first as the second. Arminianism ignores or falls at the first, Calvinism at the second. John 1:12 will not let you ignore the first. John 3:19, Colossians 1:19ff. will not let you ignore the second. We are not seeking ecclesiastical culture, but the truth where it MAY be found, where it must be found, where it is placed, in God Himself, in Christ whom He sent, the Way, the Truth and the Life, and in God's second line of truth, that written, normative and prescriptive, the Bible. The FIRST opening is for Himself who inspired it (John 5:40), and there warrants, guarantees it to the last particle (as Christ made clear in Matthew 5:17-20 with Paul in I Corinthians 2:9-13 and Revelation in 22 cf. SMR Appendix   C and   D).

NOT SEEING DOUBLE BUT SEEING IT ALL, AS WRITTEN

 What then ? God STATES that man's preference to the contrary is what aborts His loving presentation of His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him might be saved, and with this declares that His purpose in so coming was not to judge the world but to save it. Operation salvation, in other words, directed in the setting GOD PLUS THIS WORLD, depicted as just two containing all, the second made by Him but here in survey before Him, is presented to our regard. This we find in the text of John 3. The case is one shared with us who read, and given to us who believe, and the divine motivation as stated, was this concerning the world: that it might be saved. It went right down to the individual in application: WHOEVER should believe would be saved. It was a one  to One, and a one by one phenomenon that was in view.

Further, NO ONE was in view as to be judged in this operation. That was excluded, ultra-mission, extraneous, not relevant. Its text and context was salvation covering the scope of the entire world. Its cop-out, its exclusion zone was nothing at all, from God; it was altogether from man. THIS then is statedly the condemnation... John 3:19 declares its nature: human preference in the face of such divine initiative and envisagement to the world. That is what secured condemnation in a region of action, a realm of action where judgment was outside the borders. You had to abort this to avoid the salvation. You had to reject this to secure separation from it. In itself, it included you, by yourself, you excluded you, if you had this preference. In this lay all the negation; and it was total, as to securing the exclusion zone.

But wait! you may say. What is this about condemnation. Did it not just say that it was NOT to condemn that He came.

True, but it also declared that it was to save the WORLD that He came, and this is now shown to be the motivation, the extent of that quality of love; but it is not the love-type which secures simply because it wants. This is never associated with love, but rather with callow passion. This is inferentially excluded, this severance in the face of a love which in God's heart is toward all, for all, extraneous to judgment, operative outside those bounds entirely. That is all.

What then is this love which takes account of the will of the one loved, and what does it declare when it speaks in truth of the results of its mission, so enterprising, so entirely amazing and glorious in abundance of kindness, pity and empathy ? What is said. THIS is said in John 3:19: that

"THIS is the condemnation that light has come and man has loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil."

There is no other condemnation. This is its definition.

So GOD loved, and SO loved, effectually in kind, adequate in force and structure, but  man in negation, wherever this occurred, loved darkness more than God. Now since love is by nature both from and to, between two, a mutuality of minds, as distinct from a torture of frustration, partial or total, there is in this resultant, a conclusion.  HENCE and THEREFORE such people are condemned. Somehow God has the freedom model operative then, so that in despite of the love of His offer and free presentation, it might be that some do not wish to be where He is, where His kingdom is, or what this implies.

That then is the case. God did not even stoop to let pathological specimens determine amiss in their diseased, and correlatively misdirected state, and so obsessively exclude the gift of eternal life offered. Instead, before time was, before creation saw the dawn, or the dawn the creation, before human thought was or will was to be found, before freedom erupted on this earth and liberty found the place to love or to hate, truth or persons or reality: then God found out, discovered, researched to put it perhaps a little anthropomorphically, saw if not, but in case KNEW who were His. THEN it was done, before our kind of time, our bodies, were so much as created. That is what is written (Ephesians 1:4, Romans 8:30ff.), and that is therefore in accord with the mind of God.

In His mind, all as with an architect of due note, everything is seen before it is,before it comes to be in terms of natural alignment. It can be traced with fond fingers if you will, with intimate thoughts if you won't, and its nature found; and this precedes not only its actions, but any scope for them!

Before man was (as with an aircraft before it has time to crash, secure in the mental vision of its creator!), God knew each one. You stagger ? Why ? A computer can perform billions of operations per second. Are we to imagine that the God who made the matter for such design specifications, and the mind to make the specifications, and the purposefulness to so use the mind, and the will so to conceive action, Himself, even He COULD not do so ? That would be a contrary model, irrelevant.

God knew in advance the response of all, before the fall; before man even existed. Hence without sin, in this state, man could be seen, each one without any determinant, each in the image of God, each with that underlying liberty afforded in the construction of spirit by Spirit, child to such a Father, as to creation. Since sin had no place, neither did differential merit in each person. All were sinless. None had any darkness. None was better. None was in being any less. Each could choose. In choosing, each simply used the given equipment of liberty.

 Is not, one might ask, the very term 'equipment' suggestive of conditioning and so of the absence of freedom ?

It may seem so to the mind soiled by the baneful and baleful, the irrational conceptions of determinism and materialism; but these are not merely reductionistic, selecting empirical segments, like preferred shells on any beach, but irrelevant. Our model is liberty and it is both rational, cohesive and applicable. We apply it without trouble, contradiction. If you prefer the gift of liberty to the equipment of it, fine: in either case, man is equipped with it.

This being before creation, and God the truth and only possible truth, then in all truth GOD KNOWS WHO ARE HIS, as you find in II Timothy 2:19, just as He foreknew it as in Ephesians 1:4, and  in accord with the love of John 3, so CHOSE His own. He is sovereign. He did it. In this Calvin is right.

But the principle of choice stated, in the divine love, is that man is the only one who can abort the relationship in view as in John 3:16-19, and here is its exhibit, as in Matthew 23:37, Luke 19:42ff., Ezekiel 33:11, Lamentations 33:11. Indeed, it is in the entire history of interaction between man and God, as in Isaiah 48:16ff., Proverbs 1, Ezekiel 20, Psalm 78. Man can deliberate and pondering, determine to fall, and on the other hand,  he may be found freely in the divine foreknowledge, operative ultra-pathologically, hence freely. His celestial love is indeed toward all even to the uttermost and there is no question whatsoever at the impartative and foreknowing level of anything else. In this quality of love, Wesley is right.

Each has a point, Calvin and Wesley. Calvin also has a system of no small merit in his efforts to display the tenor of the Bible, but it is fouled in this, which while it does utterly destroy his systematic thought, does destroy his approach, since it contradicts scripture.

Whoever, whatever, however, such is the love, such is the sovereignty of God.

But someone persists, if GOD is the ONLY one to make a choice concerning those who are His and those who are not, even to the ultimate and uttermost point that He does this choosing before man even exists, and moreover does it not in respect to any works which man might when created do (as in Romans 9), is this not one-sided and hence not liberty and love at all ?

No, not really. This is the reply. HOW you do something is not the same as WHO does it. The principle of selection is that God would have all reconciled to Himself whether in heaven or on earth, and He says so in Colossians 1:19. Why then is it not to be believed by those who propound their adherence to the Bible ? Many are the mysteries of man, and this not least; but alas, stubbornness can easily be worse than witchcraft!

To contradict this divine declaration is mere impertinence. It is inapplicable. The processing of selection, to be sure, is done by God, who does it in view of man's declining liberty, set in the concrete of sin. He does it beyond that distortion of sin, but not at all beyond the relevance of the will of man, whose preference therefore remains in the omniscient sight of God.  THE CRITERION of condemnation, this even in the face of such love for the world, so conceived in terms of His gift of His only begotten Son, the nature of which gift, as stated in Colossians 1, is to the very blood of sacrificial offering: it belongs to man only. God knows each one, and this is one of the things that He knows; and so He states it.

To be free is to be fully human, and it is rather like being a paralytic suddenly able to walk freely, to have spiritual freedom. It is almost inconceivable, but it is true. It surpasses the very heavens above; but it happens. It is the heart of yearning granted, the gift by grace, secure.

It is the same with the truth: it is almost inconceivable somehow at once to have it, to embrace it, to find it one's darling, delight, to be inhabiting it as a destiny. This is overpowering, delicious, superlative in wisdom. It IS different, to be sure! It is natural in this, that it is what man is made for. It is uncustomary in this, that it is what man has declined from. It is miraculous in this, that being truth, only in such sacrifice could the removal be accomplished, in the remedial action of the Cross. Hence Galatians 6:14, a pivotal verse in the Bible, one correlative with Romans 3 and Colossians 1, John 3 and Ezekiel 33, with I Timothy 2 and Luke 19 and Matthew 23 for example.

Light thus comes, and continues, and it is for ever. The Lie has a limited shelf-life, being a product of pathology, like puss from infected lungs. You still breathe, but it hurts and it is in an infected milieu. To breathe freely once more, how marvellous!   This however, it is not a victory of modern medicine, but from the Eternal, the Lord of creation, who paid plenty for this hospital of holiness, the Emergency Rescue squad of one, in giving Him for such a purpose. Indeed in form, it is like being a worker residing where radioactivity is, to deliver others from it.

Hell has nothing more to add, and He, Christ Jesus,  paid. So that account is settled and the path of purity and dynamic of godly character (Ephesians 1:19, 3:18ff.), in liberty and love without force or compulsion lies open once more. It is what man is made for, natural. It is moreover supernatural by creation and intervention, just as then it is sustained by the very Spirit of God, being sealed likewise by Him (Ephesians 1), till the redemption of the body. Meanwhile, it is so sealed and secured as  1:Peter 5-8 and Romans 8:28ff., declare publicly, and in this, it secures the truth that the mouth does beforehand in this earth, that Christ is Lord (Romans 10:9,Luke 9:26).

CREATION SMILES, GOD LAUGHS AT FOLLY

Even in the creation, the shelf-life of the Lie is short. Thus when man became so wise that it all is said to start with some Big Bang, substantial  reality arriving in phases fast and  slow, from a bloc blocked into a point, from matter compressed to a point, we ask, How can mathematical symbolism about a point be translated into substantial reality, which being substance, has nothing mere ephemeral about it like a mathematical point! This is to confuse conception with reality, as in Communism, atheism and the rest, as if thought, however self-contradictory in what it affirms, could obviate actuality. It is not so, never was, never  will be.

Two domains are not one, and thought is not actuality, but a mental process and particularisation that MAY be susceptible to realisation, and IF so, then not realised until the action is done. The idea may be great; its implementation is another step, as any longing retiree looking for a seaside cottage (so that he might be swamped ? ) might advise you.

After that, the substantial astronomical structures, now discovered near to the space now representing its alleged beginning, are blowing it right out of bounds. This is anti-verification. Thus the structure of the universe interferes again with idle and vagrant thought, be it  called scientific or more correctly in this case, scientistic, the great  lie (cf. Romans 1:17ff.). Further, the supernova count devastates once more the predictions of the theory, and the time on the Big Bang model for a high degree of uniform temperature such is found in space,  is inadequate, while the theories which insist that the earth is near or at the centre of the universe come with more and more scholarly authority. It is not that the Bible required this centrality in space, but that it fits with the conception of particularity very well. This is all as in TMR Ch. 7, and it has recently been extended as shown below^*3A.

The exposure of the dream, the mythical mentality is already effected logically; and empirically it constantly comes nearer and nearer. Thus Dr Russell Humphreys has talked of a white hole, a thrust from within to outward of such force and strength, that time dilation occurs, time being, in his theory,  a changeable item as in Einstein's view, so that clocks at the furthest extension have gone far faster than those on earth, gravity being less obtrusive at distance.  Dr John Hartnett, associate professor in Astronomy in Perth, has a complex mathematical contrivance, intent on prediction, meeting facts, overcoming inconsistencies as in the Big Bang theory, and in this he achieves much also, once more the universe expanding with time dilation, but with the mode and manner different, new  dimensions in space for this effectual result being invoked, in developments from the scholarly theories of Carmeli.

In each case^*4, there is question, as there always MUST be, as to how far either of these theories meets reality, how far it obtrudes into the supernatural creation. It is endemic to creation that what it is doing while it is doing it, is not the same as what is to be found after it has occurred; and this difference may be prodigious. Writing a poem is not savouring it (though in some cases, there may be some measure of simultaneity, it is not necessarily so, different faculties being employed). Creation is sui generis, an exalted action of using what is known, sensed, intuited, discerned in a complex, compound synthesis or  soaring overview, application, integral review, ascent of understanding, or a visionary deployment, that leaves the participating media behind. These are means; the end is above them. Such is creation in itself. You may even love some of the means; but means they are, and vision it is which so uses them.

In its high office, when it is to a good end, creation in general has a  focus and featuring  which is as  far from the ingredients in themselves, as are the  faces of the US past  Presidents from the nature of the rock on which they are hewn in Mount Rushmore, in their meaning and  visionary contribution. The mount is one thing, a means,  elevated, conspicuous, the carving is another, ingenious,  contrived, impressed and imposed, the sense of correlation: geometric carving to meaningful face, this is a third. The relationship of the carving to the image held in the mind of the one carving, to the one whom it represents, this is a fourth. The bond between that image and the actual image in its precision, this is a fifth, and the relationship of that image, however accurate, to the actual face in flesh, is a sixth, while the significance in symbolic presentation in this way, in terms of the life and ways, the vitality and vision of the President in things invisible but having visible results, this is the seventh.

Creation of the rocky images,  to be witnessed by bystanders, therefore, is one thing of one domain and it is deep and rich, with many movements in frames of reference,  symbolic significations and the like; the rocks are comparatively insignificant to the POINT, but useful for the PURPOSE.

In general,  the means and the ends, the methods and the vision, the content and its imposition, and the result, these are related but significance is not substance, means are not ends, performances are not meaning, and  vision is not mode. Moreover, and to our present point, what is and how it is made to  come to be, these are so utterly diverse in the total  realm of reality, that any confusion is  scarcely worthy of a smile.

Hence we are not bound to any such views, when they move into the created-as-is or even as imagined-to-have-been realm. So many things can be done by supernatural action, as in any creation at a higher level; but here it is so exalted in character, God Himself the Creator par excellence, that it can become almost a precious, or suppressive occupation to  work in the already created realm, in seeking the ways of the creation when it was in progress and in process. Yet it is not useless to  meet naturalists with natural things, where these might be involved. It can indeed have its points.

These two, Hartnett and Humphreys, in their models, have efforts to  correlate findings with explanations, and each theory may be modelled with various allowances for process and imposition of divine constraint, so that none is assertable in exclusion of the other. The point is that BOTH provide a structure for exposure at the natural level, of the folly of the Big Bang and by contrast, of the reality that the supernatural creation which lies back of it all, showing that even at this level, in this model, there is superiority past all  measure on the creation model, to the materialist machinations which neither work nor are even rationally statable as  to their beginnings. You either beg the question with mere assertion without rational ground and contrary to it, or you use concepts which on examination, amount to the same thing. The creationist testimony avoids all these perils, and can even sit steadfastly before examination by logic and empirical challenge in terms of its model.

What then of such scientifically oriented creationist theories ?

You may or you may not find a way for its correct testimony from the CREATIVE PHASES, as you seek  to assess the passing of the period of creation to that of the now made 'natural'. With the natural ensuing, there is room for divine intrusion on the way, indeed there is precisely the divine action^*5 which constitutes the creation in the model. On the other hand, the Lord  is able to take steps, to relate parts of the creation procedure to others in a sequence, as in the 6 days of creation, first doing this and then engaging  with this or that additive (as when the Lord in Genesis 1:9 is specifically seen to be acting to provide dry land as an interventionist act, following the earlier action, as when God MADE the dry land -verse 9); but there is no limit to explanation.

The secular contrivances, on the other hand,   abound in self-contradiction, anti-verification, but here in facing creation, there is logical peace. There are no problems in style, method in the  creation  mode, none whatsoever. It has  unflinching powers, it has tedious data, it has  ease of action, and the more it is considered, the more its  action-result mode may be discerned, so long as naturalism  does not unconsciously take over!

Be as natural as you will, this solves natural problems in its own model, and it does so without necessary contradiction, let alone spurious suppositions alleged to be all but pervasive things, though never found.  The Big Bang, here met at its own level, does not rise to match this. It is fallacious both in thought, empirically and by comparison with supernatural models. At that, we are not bound to naturalistic modelling; but if such be in view, these are thrown out since the Lie has a limited shelf-life, and the truth endures forever. It laughs, and does not merely smile, as in Psalm 2. Casting off the Creator is not easy; and when it is done, the marks stay on the wrists; for what are attachments of truth and reality in which man is created, so that he might be what he is, become for rebellion,  chains, ruptured and leaving the marring marks on the wrists. This occurs to the full  when being so contained grows irksome, and God in all His glory of love and liberty is thrown out.

BUT THE LOVE IS STILL THERE,
BEFORE NATURE WEARS OUT,
IN MAN AS IN ALL ELSE, UNLESS REDEEMED

Ban God and it is bandages, if not death, for millions of bodies, seeking to survive, ignoring what life is for^*6, inventive of mischief, masters of mis-rule, fooled to death, fighting for life and killing to secure it, while dying in the Lie, dead on arrival, too late for help in many instances, deceived by passion, incited by preference, that for darkness.

The light is still there. It is turned on. You need to enter the room.

"I am the door. He who enters by Me shall be saved
and shall go in and out and find pasture,"

He declared. Window break-in is not excused. The door is there for a purpose. The love that set it open is still there. The basis for its freedom of entry remains. It is all there still, to this hour. So are you, and so am I. Isn't it good to know your purpose, and to find the God of creation with you in this. It is not only reasonable to seek to fulfil this, all necessary power being promised (Matthew 28, Mark 11,  Ephesians 1:19), but a sheer delight. With God, it is love, it is a matter of friendship with an inspiring, firing, delectable Friend, above all others, kind to admiration, true to discipline, profound in faithfulness, worthy of worship.

That is why He is worshipped.

You DO worship Him ? Good, join with others who do, fellow Christians who love Him and revere His written word, the Bible. You do not ? Ah, then  won't you join us. Remember the door. Enter it.

NOTES

*1

See for example: 

 SMR Chs. 3, 5,10, Spiritual Refreshings... Ch.  13,
Religion, Religiosity and Reality in Christ Jesus Appendix, Ch. 4, Dancers ... Ch. 7, 
The Defining Drama  Ch. 2, ,
News 121, 122).

 

*2

In general, see the Hexad Set,  The gods of naturalism have no  go!

In particular,  see SMR pp. 140ff., and TMR Ch.  1.

*2A

See Waiting for Wonder Appendix, and Ch. 1 above.

*3

The distemper of disbelief disrupts from  reason, divides from reality and dissipates understanding, inclining to the drift of dreams,  delusive by nature, destructive by dynamic, mocking life, creation and destiny alike. Like all rampant pathology, if it be not interrupted, death is its end, just as it has been delinquent concerning life. See Jeremiah 23, Ezekiel 14, Romans 1:17ff., Ephesians 4:17-19.

*3A

TMR Ch. 7, Models and Marvels, even in Section E on such topics, is now large. It covers much. This may be pursued here. Below is the latest addition, this year, alike suitable here and there..

Here, a particular focus is used, in relation to the concept of a point of infinite density as a beginning; though from the outset it misses the point that whatever you invent, it requires a reason, ground, basis or is begging the question. With things material, constraint operate and control, requiring a cause. With what is logically necessary, free existence and power and capacity adequate for all that follows, must always rationally precede; for otherwise nothing at any time would mean nothing for all time. This must be before anything not self-sufficient and eternal by nature, or nothing could only remain. If it were ever all, that would be all. As it is not, since nothing is not all, then what is eternal must have power to invent whatever is to be constrained, or enabled, and the conditions of its composed existence.

Talks about bits or points simply ignore necessities of reason, while reasoning, in a staggering display of irrelevance. However, let us pursue in some detail some modern concepts, and move them into the light of examination.

There has been quite journey in terms of the empirical failure of the Big Bang hypothesis. If it all began as a mathematical point  for entry, then this is a mere  conception, not a material  entity (ten billion of them still have no space), and  irrelevant to actuality. If it had size, then it is more than  a point, a relative matter of how good your perception is, concerning the content of points (as with microdots in letters - science does not know all, only what it sees, when it is science, and what it finds). If much in the 'point'  were merely greatly condensed, what was  condensed ? Why would its expansion  reveal intricate laws and forms, formats and  mathematical constrictions and  constructions ? ONLY,  rationally, if there were grounds for these in the non-mathematical  relative point. You get  out what you put  in. Potential  for  laws is  greater than laws,  for it involves the constructive  facility to make them, just as the factory is greater than the cars, in  terms of  cognitive content.

When the point exploded - as it appears to be thought it did, finished with sitting about, in the approach to beginning which the nothing partisans desire - it did not do so by magic. There had  to be a reason if we are  to be rational,  and not merely perpetrators of a dreamy-eyed irrationality. There must have been in 'the point'  an  enormous pressure coming from many components, where interactions were prodigious. If any element of the point were to be thought of as having room to be in any sense of scope, then this at once must go, because of infinite compression, which would insist on there being no scope for any expressiveness; and turning space and time to nought within it, merely makes it a mathematical point, with no reality and no actuality: a pointer. It is a disappointing pointer.

It must have been very much  more than a point, just  as it must have been  much more than a simple, uniform point, and must have  contained the equivalent of command constraint, in order  to impart these things to what  became  subject  to the same. If anything could at any time become visible, then we should have to have this compressed far more, to prevent this. There is simply no limit.

It is certainly an inventive thing, that, to use the imagination to create the entire universe. Out of nothing, the indeterminate, the undisciplined, the unimaginative, the unstructured, the formless, shapeless, unintelligent, non-ordered (not disordered for that would be something), the non-material (for that is assuredly something), the invisible, comes entity. That in itself is a miracle. Either that,  and you invent entity by imagination, and lurking secretive, do not admit it, or you are taking away all  claim to rationality. Then it has to be out of something; but what sort of a beginning is that, which requires the means for a beginning in order to begin! In factual terms then, you have nothing; and it is not tilted towards being intelligent or material or stupid or inclined to do this or that: NOTHING.

Impossible to produce from that, lest to it must be prescribed potential, very much a something, as any ambitious child knows. Instead the ONLY alternative is to grab something from somewhere, in social terms rather  like grabbing money from a bank, where it is entirely out of bounds to do so; but this is intellectual, where such action is by definition irrational. You ignore reason in giving reason: irrational  twice over.

So you question beg on your way to your  entity. Now it is to be infinitely compressed entity (cf. Hartnett, Dismantling the Big Bang p. 13), which we have, and it has come, free and gratis, without reason. Remember: If there were reason, it would not start things, but what was the reason for its existence, and compression, and the infinitude of its density, and the phenomenon of density, and the capacity to expand, and the thrust to make it explode, and so loose all the neatly packed highly differential, mutually coherent entities which are to be released!

Since this is reputedly the beginning, then it cannot actually  be the beginning and hence it is not only begging the question (precisely like having a new car because you imagine it) but self-contradictory; it is not merely irrational but delusive.

Let us examine that further. In it, infinitely dense, all is compressed, space and time, as if this made it any easier to have grabbed the whole impressive compression out of a space that is not there (because it is all so compressed inside the point which is so convenient as a container unit). All becomes sited  in the nothing from which it came in the first place; for if there is reason, then there were grounds for its being, its compression, its later expression and its ability, despite an infinite power to compress in a space that is not there, all coming from the same source, nowhere, since somewhere is all stitched up inside.

What then ? Ignore the grounds for the imaginary point, for its ardent thrust to change its nature, and its inward cohesion of content for expansive consequences of some note, and you beg the question. Assign them and it is not the beginning. Say they are not there, and you remove the causality which is inherent in logic, which you deploy,  at least in presenting anything which could be confused with argumentation.

The matter develops whichever way you turn. Ignore and pass by these grounds, in order to return to reason, becoming merely obtuse and obfuscatory, and you bypass grounds which must be spectacularly multiple, cohesive and constructive. In doing so, you confront the immovable: you ignore reason, beg the question and perhaps silence will cover your causal nescience and irrational withholding. In addition, you make it harder by using laws or ideas that may, in some measure,  relate to what is, once it has come to be, and then seeking from this to make what is not yet there, to operate. That is like founding a business on a university degree, before there is a university. You operate according to what is not yet there, and seeing what it does when it is there, you put it there. Not so bright, really. When you put it there, however, then you make it infinitely dense by compression, which later gives birth to expression, despite its most anomalous and disadvantageous start.

It is certainly a point they make there, but it is not a rational one.

Structure, law and this at macro- and micro-levels, all this was inherent in the point, one of the greatest export-laboratories of  all time, scintillatingly managing to impart order, organisation and containment controls to what for no reason was in it, as contrary to all reason, it exploded into time and space, neatly inherent for the sake of  the spatial and chronological features provided. Having had nowhere to go, it becomes expansive indeed, like some once impoverished Corporal, who becomes the Dictator for the world, no more coiled up.

Indeed, with space and time packed into it,  in terms of infinite density, all things within it had neither room nor motion for their pains. There are the things within, insideness and outsideness in terms of which it is conceived, a mode of existence unspecified, force, power, susceptibility to infinite compression, so that space and time equate to the limit of zero. It is good that they are able to become something again with the customary magic of these concepts.

Where was the point ? Nowhere, for space was inside it. Where  could this non-being nonentity be, when site and time for it were compressed so that as to any time you seek to allow ANYTHING for their action, it is too little, infinitely too little. If it were figured as not so, then at once any scope must be reduced by infinity, and when you have compressed still more, then you are left with infinitely more of this impressive force which manifests itself in terms of the point, so making it a point. So with nowhere to be, all being, with nowhere to come from, is constrained by whatever imparts an infinite compression, to have nowhere to go to, since space is infinitely compressed.

Thus there is no time to have for this being so subjected to infinity, to occupy itself, even in any most miniaturised manner, for stark and wonderful though such a thing might be, if it could be done, yet any attempt at any action of any kind being less than a compression beyond bounds, such compression and such density must then always be extended without limit. Just as infinite dispersal would lead to nothing, since if at any time something were yet discernible, infinitely more dispersion must act to make for ever less till its differentiation from nothing is ever unsustainable, so is the opposite process. Thus with density: make it ever so dense, that it is scarcely conceivable how it could differ from expulsion from existence, then you must make it more dense, until any concept of escaping reduction being removed, there is nothing to reduce. Call it a limit; but it must be pursued to that limit, for if not, the specifications are inaccurate.

It is a fantasy to get something from nowhere, while trying to give account of the beginning. It is a greater one to confine it so. To use the realities of what is already here as the grounds for making it come is beside the point. It assumes what it has to get it here. Such confusion is painful.

Points  do not contain commands, exhibit controls, manage systems, originate areas and arenas susceptible to rational investigation and exhibitive of logical scope for formulations concerning it, in depicting it; but are sites for notation to  fix a location only. It is better not to use the term 'point' if you do not mean that, here, since its ambiguity can hide a slide! The point is just a way of avoiding the point: you need not a physical concept or a mathematical one, but the whole potential for whatever was to come, liable to  logic's probes, susceptible to law, creative of matter, legislative for its forms and functions, acutely contrived, discerning enough to devise language and to organise commands to make generals look like babes by their very ingenuity and complexity, sifting mind into the game, inventing spirit to imagine and call forth from originality.

Potential involves reason, not a riotous resort to  the realm of little things as if this made the underlying logical omission easier to take (is it not a little one!). With no potential, the point is vacuous. With potential, it has meaning and causality built into it, operative for it, a program in which it inheres, and so far from being a beginning, is in a logical  wrap, happily constraining its conduct, operative regardless of anything else. Indeed, worse yet, just as time is used, coming out of its recess, it must proceed, along with space and logic, as if to make the CONTINUITY of the exercise of these powers, also a given thing. It has to have this character, added to its causal wrap. It has to be able, empirically, to retain in facility of function over such times as cover the universe in its extant condition (as distinct from the imagination).

Here is to arrive, with sufficient potential its base, what is to be the very model of system for man's mind, matter's laws, space's structure, life's code, its additional constraints in epigenesis, life's vitality, reason's applicability (which is not the same as its existence), all to be far more enduring than any projects made by man, and than any man as such. Reason, realisation, continuation, penetrability by reason as well as operation in its terms, spheres of interactive engagement, mind, matter and spirit as empirically active in man, regions of being such as cognition, concept, conceptualisation (it takes work to get the concept, try and see), information, envisagement, all must be the product of potential, or irrationality, like fungus, sets in. No potential ? no result, no you or I is to be found. Potential, then this is a facility which exists in the point and its constraining implicated forces and activity modes. It is not only not nothing, but contains everything adequate for mind, matter, spirit, their synthesis and their sustenance.

Forget the point. You need the potential for all, and if scientific or even rational, you look for what has what it takes to provide it, and in so doing, investigate the results of this potential with quality and cognate features in mind. When you find the least, the minimal background for it, you cite this and apply it, since its denial is irrational, and its affirmation is causal and you have to come to terms with it.

In fact, it was quite some point, this one! It was smuggling in, as is usual in naturalistic confections, the Creator. But since He was not  recognised (as if a courtier to the throne room of Queen Elizabeth I did not realise that he was in a place, or that  there were a queen, but  just admired the  grounds, while Her Majesty was  talking to his abstracted ear), results of that fact  appear, in no mean  terms. First they are logical: you ignore the need for cause, invent without ground, surround with implied forces and powers, require potential or must deny causality, and if denying it, remove the logical validity to which you appeal in any argumentation.

Let us look a little further now at developing constraints in the universe, and gain a sense of movement over the last few years in some of the lesser featured areas of existence. .

Thus as  Dr  Carl Wieland pointed out in Creation  Magazine, 1996, there was, as astronomers  looked further back  'in  time', as they conceive it, a certain 'lumpiness' about the  structures to be found, instead of the imagined relative consistency from such early developments, without time to grow in greatness, as imaginations of many liked to conceive. In fact, however, near what was deemed the first, there were found to be " structures the size  and shape of the Great Wall" which has been such a dash for uniformity hopefuls, though these were even dozens of times further away.

Developments were perverse, or the theory was. Things progressed for these stubborn theorists, by reverse. In science, you attribute perversity however,  to the unverified theory, and ponder how to change it, since the theory is what is used  to explain, and the data are the material  for explanation, not lamentation.

Wieland proceeds to note the affair of Tift that red shifts (a light phenomena once imagined  always to indicate in this context, speed of recession and hence distance in certain environments of terms) were found to come in packets. They were discovered to exist in quanta, like ladder rungs, specifically  arranged. Interestingly, he compares this RESULT with an imaginary scene in which particles are coming out of an explosion in velocity groups, at 100, or 200 miles per hour. That of course is precisely what an explosion is not, so that such a theory is just what scientific method anti-selects! Indeed, at Oxford, he notes, two astronomers, Napier and Guthrie, massed data to give the same orderly, scaled effect. Napier apparently tried hard to avoid the characterisation that the red shifts were quantized, but could not  do so.  The asinine Big Bang concept was being shown a failure not only in conception, but in expression, empirically. Objectively, if you LIKE an explosion, you cannot have it unless the empirical facts conform to what it is.  Not in science properly so-called...

This was an orderly thing such as above noted in NATURE journal, January 9, 1997, when it published the results of research by an astronomical team led by an Estonian academic: Their conclusion concerning galaxy structures -
 

"The large-scale structure of the cosmos is an orderly rectangular, three-dimensional latticework of clusters and voids." It is found, by report, that 'the lines of concentrated matter appear to be spaced at fairly regular 91 million-light-year intervals'.

Worse was  to follow. Dr John Hartnett, as in his Starlight, Time and the New Physics (2007), not only uses a still more abstruse piece of mathematical construction, extending from Einstein and Carmeli, to seek to cover the data without the abuses found in the theories of the Big Bang idea, relative to them, but in the process removes certain ad hoc hypotheses. These are those about vast quantities of (unobserved, unevidenced, but theoretically needed) 'dark' matter and 'dark' energy', so that such unempirical nostrums being dispensed with, Occam's razor can become operative once again, and the palace of theory can be purged of such settlers.

In this way, on his sphere of thought and mathematical interpretation of the evidence, there is an elimination of the otiose, the needlessly complex and the merely suggestive, of what here is unprompted by knowledge, being merely imagined by hope. The fact that over 85% of the total matter content of the universe (op. cit. p. 40) on Big Bang notions appeared to be required, incognito, to be this dark matter was rather an impelling ground for seeking an escape from so much, with so little evidence, on such a vast scale, in so many situations, for so long! Hartnett also manages, on his theory, to escape having some 74% of the mass-energy content of the universe to be negative energy, as the secular Big Bang thrusts to obtain for its composure, indeed survival at all.

Hartnett declares (p.  41): "Neither 'dark' matter nor 'dark' energy is known to modern physics, yet it is supposed to be all  round us." Whereas the power of God is perceptible  all round us (cf. TMR), by its fruits which nature does not noticeably ever manage to compose, and its like is far beyond the reach of the most powerful intellects of man, to make anew as to kind, even with the example long visible and investigable before our very eyes, on the contrary, these dark and indeed mythical inventions of that same mind of man loom as the chaff-like chatter which is needed for a failing theory. What then of the otiose, the unnecessary, the unevidenced and vast concepts like dark energy and dark matter  ? They are simply symptoms of methodological sickness. Their lack of need, on Hartnett's approach,  on a creationist mathematical and astronomical hypothesis is a jar which those already facing the facts of the ludicrous nature of the cosmological principle of sameness in the universe (because it is supposed to have had so undistinguished a beginning), are looking for some new physics.

Hartnett points out on p. 74 (op. cit.) that Edwin Hubble, whose telescopic work is so famous, initially concluded that the earth was at the centre of spherically symmetric distribution of galaxies. There was the isotropic phenomenon. On his interpretation, things seemed to be speeding away from him in proportion to their distance. Only by using what was to be an anti-verified hypothesis on uniformity of a type resulting from large time and initial explosion, could he escape. Escape ? Indeed, for his religious orientation, not science, called for it, so that he expressly stated that this would give to earth a special position, indeed one unique and in his view,  "Such a favoured position is, of course, intolerable..."

If now the universe is in fact bounded (and there are hose who speak of the enormous spread of theories possible - cf. Ellis, cited p. 79), then the fact that this assumption is part of the relatively coherent and competent seeming theory of Hartnett, makes things far more anomalous for logical prowess, scientific accuracy and procedural plausibility. Order, structure, early structure, further distances confirming the further structure, in the findings of space probings, all this would never ordinarily be a basis for a theory about an explosion from mindless nothing in one of its transitions which it cannot make, being nothing.

This applies whether beginning with a point which cannot contain anything because mathematical points to not contain any space, but are designations, or with a smuggler's cover presentation of all sorts of stuff  'there', in a somewhat broader 'point',  one mystically constrained, and containing ever so much for the reasons associated with nothing, that otherwise it constitutes NO source. It has not only to be the source, but an adequate one. Some point!

Moreover, it must likewise be endowed with power to  apply the contents, for  with no power  to apply it, even if it were there, it is null. It is a half-formed thought masquerading as something. Nothing is like that. What is not there, has no being, is nothing, has such features, and what is abstracted, cannot act in this intensively ludicrous challenge to sober thought.

If you want something, you simply have to add it:  matter, matter-maker, mind, mind-maker,  spirit,  spirit-maker. It has been apparent since early childhood. Nothing is unproductive; words without relevant power are images of the imagination. We are not imaginary. That is not the point and any 'point' which fails to point this out is pointless.

If nothing is the source, ever, then nothing is the result, always. That is the logical result have having the entirety so based! Stages of advent from nothing do nothing to mitigate the nullity. Results show causes, the matrix of thought (cf. Causes).

The more by naturalistic preoccupations,  it ought to be amorphous in type, unsystematic in content, uniform in its meaninglessness, and the more to the contrary,  it is SHOWN in  terms of concerted data to be highly special in kind, the more even special results proclaim what principle first showed. It is mere empirical confirmation.

This now perhaps is being found even in earth's position, since when you join Hubble's initial read-out concerning earth's centrality to Hartnett's finite and bounded space concept and its use in obtaining so far successful mathematical results, especially insofar as it eliminates need for the mere fill-ins of dark matter and dark energy, fill-ins of such enormous size as virtually to characterise the universe in overview: then what ? Then you have a cohesion of order, organisation, limits and character that aggravates the collision with the initial ideas of the point. Professor Slusher, long ago as noted above, expressed his reasons for the apparent need for earth to be around the centre of the universe.

Now even some secular astronomers are beginning to consider at last, the non-application of the cosmological principle, together with a universe with centre, and it is even found that the concept of earth near the centre is being regarded. In Journal of Creation, the first for 2011 - 25 (1), there is discussion of a relatively recently found type 1a supernova, a star which reaches an explosive situation. Viewed without the astoundingly anomalous and merely philosophical cosmological principle, the data from this high-luminosity star in its intense phase fit with Hartnett's theory with what the author of the Journal article deems,   'incredibly good'.

That in turn involves the elimination of the dark energy and dark matter notions as Hartnett's theory is propounded to do, notions which lack nothing more than evidence and plausibility, being mere stop-gaps, not prompted by data but impelled by philosophical preference. Since tradition by type of preference, a mere philosophic study is in view, then any such choice is in total irrelevance to scientific method, which takes things as they are and seeks to account for them with the neatest, most evidenced, most implied, most cognate means available.

When even secular scientists, such as Hawking's somewhat dissident fellow worker, George Ellis, want review of the cosmological principle, and look for research in a near central earth situation in the universe, not only is common sense and sensible science taking place, but rule by tradition, and tradition by religious preference, secular in this instance, is being assaulted, and truth given more of its proper place. Another scientist of similar bent is noted, namely Célérier. In this way, we move not only in a cosmic orbit but a little better, at the personal level, out of orbital wobble, in the field of fidelity to fact. Improvement is occurring, even here!

That is the direction of flow. Evidence confirms what logic has always demanded. Now a point is needed in the scope of consideration.

It is important to clarify. Firstly the Bible in no way requires the earth to be conceived as the universe's centre. Nevertheless, if its galaxy is near it, there is a conformity which is striking, to a certain particularity.

 Secondly, the terms of astronomical  reference are vast. It is not the planet earth or associated cosmos which by some,  is being assigned to near centrality in the universe. Rather it is the associated galaxy of which this forms part which is thought to occupy this place. In the hypothesis of Humphreys,  associated with biblical criteria in no small part, as with an excellent prediction concerning magnetic fields in space, confirmed in space exploration, there is for our celestial group of stars, a degree of centrality which though moving somewhat, is nevertheless more than impressive. He discusses this  fascinatingly in an article, Our galaxy is the centre of the universe, ‘quantized’ redshifts, which may be  reached from this hyperlink. In this  article, first published in Creation 16(2), Humphreys cites an earlier claim:

‘In particular, the “quantized” distribution of galactic red shifts,^3,22observed by various astronomers seems to contradict the Copernican principle and all cosmologies founded on it— including the big bang. But the effect seems to have a ready explanation in terms of my new non-Copernican “white hole” cosmology.’⁵³

As things progress indeed, it is fair to state that just as DNA is not a junk issue, for that is a mere junket of those who had no evidence for the concept for much of it, but more and more manifestly shows extraordinary mathematical and structural complexity in its construction, including varieties of consummate complexity of method and singularity of result (such as you and I) , so in astronomical thought, there is some awakening. Thus, as in the life material, so in the realm of space, of  non-life material in the astronomical macrocosm, ultra-cosmos or whatever you wish to call space and its contents, there is this increasingly clear modelling effect and impact. Models once sacrosanct in what Paul calls "the rudiments of this world," in Colossians 2:8.

"Beware lest any man spoil you
through philosophy and vain deceit,
after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world,
and not after Christ."

Christ as the LOGOS (John 1) is the source of the reasonableness of our logic, the coherence and consistency of its presentations (cf. Predestination and Freewill), the correlation of its findings with what is available for formulation in the natural order, filled with conceptually expressible laws. They did not come either from a pointless point, or a submerged and secret vehicle in which the conceptual container ship having nothing, is found to abound with the marvels with are what we are, find and live. Smuggling is no better before logic and the law!

Laws and orders agree well with cause and correlativity, so that the cause is not selected as the most distant possible basis for what is found (contrary to scientific method), as has for long been the field of the gradualistic hypotheses concerning the universe:  their theme, start with nothing, or simply assume some delimited object and go slowly to much more for no reason. This is currently the usual professional procedure of the cognoscenti, because of such irreligious proclivities and merely personal if not uncommon preferences, such as Hubble himself quite directly stated. Instead, now there is this commendable move towards the notion of looking at what meets facts more intensively, and to abandon what invents solutions without and contrary to evidence, thus starting fresh revival of objectivity.

Hence there is a move towards scientific method, here even in the midst of the religious occlusion to which so many are tilted from college onward, in the chartered flights of imagination which confuse science with the writing of novels, imagination first, events second. Perhaps in some more at least, we will return to scientific method, even here, so that hypothesis will be sought in terms of the most correlative observable and implemented activities known, for comparison and application, extension and formulation. This is a great improvement on current widespread practice of taking the most divergent thoughts, and making from them emergent ideas, as if choosing a window would produce a car.

Logic has long held sway with the necessities of God, as shown in this volume and in SMR, and others on this site. Now empirical strictures to confirm the rational strictures injure more and more at every local level, the fancies of naturalistic myth, whether in life or out of it. A limited shelf-life is always the plight of the Lie. Thus is the scriptural notation and the field observation (cf. Romans 1:17ff., II Thessalonians 2). Truth will out, and even the most devout anti-religionist can have no rest; for reality squabbles in the mind, scrabbles in the heart, squirms even professionally with mere personal preference.

Thus,  turbulence of heart moves at least from time to time, into the fields of effrontery in preference to fact, with a pseudo-scientific, a scientistic bouquet. Similarly,  imagination to occupy the seat of thought, before the images from outside are given place, and reach the minds of those who enquire. Indeed, when the heart is averse, there comes a real bottle-neck, rejected realisations crowding at its  door; and here lies some reason for the exceeding ferocity of those who seek to turn aside those who use creation as the optimal resultant of scientific method, with reason, and confronting them, as was the experience of this author.

Thus in the arrogantly abused sub-field of science, through this class of philosophical putsch, the employer when met with reason, gives mere prohibition without reason. Treason to reason is a correlative to trading in truth, professional abuse, and the lose of the sense of reality which is one of the trends which works in those who are willing to be seduced by what is definitionally indistinguishable from myth (cf. Secular Myths and Sacred Truth). Alas for them: that some might escape!

   For further on this line of development, see *4 below.

For the parallel with the abuse of the term or concepts of  'bits', inglorious basis of glory, and uninhibited exponents of integralities of purport and unity see:

Waiting for Wonder Appendix,  and REFLECTIONS  4,  and Index at BITS.

 

As noted in the first of these concerning our universe (and not  some other imaginary one):

This is not the work of origination from systems 'arising' from systems, 'arising' from units, bits, 'arising' from nowhere in particular, 'arising' for want of anything else in view in this model, from nothing. There is nothing in such views, either at the outset, however much of the question of origin is simply and unscientifically begged, or in any of the later phases, imported from the same null source.

 

*4

See:

The Defining Drama Ch.     3, Christ the Cumulative and the Culmintion Ch.    9,
Cascade of Mercy ... Ch.   6,

Lively Lessons in Spiritual Service Ch.    5,

Dig Deeper  ... Ch.    1

 

*5

See What is Life for  ? in TMR.

*6

In *3A above, some of the elements of creation are seen in contrast with mere continuation.

It is of interest that just as infinity in the field of density produced logical anomalies, so infinity is not applicable to the created in overall conception. To be sure, it may be granted by divine action, but since there needs to be, for the relevant mode of  existence, an imposition of the constraints, delimitations and delays, directions and commands in creation, including time and space and all things so subjected and subjectible, such as the correlative, matter, which without time could not move any part, and without space could not inhabit it, that it might have scope for its internal motions and being, such things are always dependent on divine action, on the work of God.

In causation, essential to logic (cf. Causes, Deity and Design, Designation and Destiny   8), what has what it is not self-sufficient to be - in contrast to the self-sufficient Eternal Being, on whom  all logic and creation depends, without whom there is no ground for existence, as an entity, because of whom any desired and relevant type of existence can be invented with grounds for the action - is irrational irruption. Eternity of sufficiency for all, vested in such a Being,  is one option for logic; omission  at the outset of this is another option. If you do not commence with it, then you cannot get all, by definition. Further, if ANYTHING always exists, as bound and ground for all that is to be, it needs to be self-sufficient, lest it is then involved in ITS genesis. Thus, merely shifting the issue in an inelegant slide, it misses the point.

What is subject  to constraints is not of this kind, for there is always the logical need for the source of the constraints. The eternal Alpha, source for all, is not so subject, and is sufficient in Himself, alternative therefore to nothing, which has, among other things, no future: for this would have caused it to have always potential, which is far from nothing. It is nothing or the all-sufficient and eternal Being, whose normal name, to prevent confusion, is God, and whose nature is shown at the minimum in SMR, and in the eventual assured revelation to be as the Bible depicts, and Jesus Christ personally intimates and exhibits.

It is therefore always to be the source of anomalies and confusion, when infinity is attributed to creation, of which space, time and matter are parts, ignoring the mighty necessities in mind and spirit for the moment. It is inapplicable in kind, for literally there is no time for it, or space for its consideration. It might be argued that God might have always wanted to have a material universe beside Him, and who can limit Him ? However, since time is a constrained part of such the universe, it needs creation. Such constrictive, restrictive impositions on actualities have a created beginning, and hence cannot be eternal because of who God is. He has no environs nor are things temporal compatible in kind with what is eternal, that is, past and beyond time as we have it, for One is needed, self-sufficient and institutive of time, or any other non-divine entity, non-eternal and caused to be, by nature.

Self-contradiction is a choice morsel left to naturalism and any other variants from the Almighty. Nothing has no need of creation, since it is not there, except as a concept, which does not give to it any actuality of being in itself, merely the glow of thought about its mental image. What is not nothing, but endued with constraints,  does not have this privilege. In its being, lass, nature, constraints, delimitations, subjections it needs a logical source. If this is eternal, that is it, provided it be sufficient for this result. As shown in SMR, God is. If you prefer nothing, you end with it and your theories likewise come to nothing, since something is the case. If you want to argue that you might be deceived, even this does not apply, since in order to be deceived you would need to be there for the purpose, and this is far from nothing.

There is one exception in terms of what is eternal, and not God; and even this is but partial. Thus what begins in time, may end beyond our type of time altogether, and be gifted with eternity onwards, though nothing could make it so backwards, since its basis is always necessary, as that of time, and antithesis is not a tidy nor a sustainable attribute logically. While, then, God is who He is and there is no other, all systems of constraint being subject to Him, yet it is the case that eternity may be conferred on a creation FORWARDS. There is no contradiction in God's creation of something which He determines to last forever from then, whether in this or that system of time.

Our particular universe has a run down nature, as the second Davies# points out. Its nature is to end. The Second Law of Thermodynamics (see Index)  formulates this in terms of regression, increasing to total entropy. What is running down needs first running up, in whatever mode or by whatever device. What mini-universes might be thought to inter-relate for any purpose (though in terms of logic, they have to be relatable for logic to have applicability, and they are conceived in thought), create only an irrational diversion in this regard.

Thus, there has to be the SCOPE for alteration and interchange, the plus, for the minus to occur; and for this, creation in the first place is as necessary for (anomalous) multi-universes as for one. Indeed, as in any other field of pertinent creation in the thoughts of man, this is rather easier for creation, than the thing itself! To think is not to do.

Spatial modes of extent do not alter the necessities for the cause of one or all, and their inter-connections to achieve relevance, the one to the other, in a total system subject to rational thought, merely make them once more, one universe in any case. Existence, order, form and laws such as those of inter-change must be invented, and made applicable, so that firstly, variability can apply from one to the other (all therefore needing creation in one matrix, just another name for the universe); secondly, so that there is anything to discuss; thirdly, so that the conditions of energy, form, format and formula may be mutually applicable; fourthly, so that logical thought can be applicable and fifthly so that each cosmos, that is functional realm, namely thought, spirit and matter, may be inter-relatable, as is now the case, and the subject stateable. Necessities do not diminish by proliferation.

The universe runs down. Such is the indefeasible empirical fact. Unless therefore it is taken up by God, it is finished. In itself, the realm of science, it is found to be going down, and its processes attest therefore a beginning, which no invention of imaginary complexes alters in the slightest degree. The Bible indeed indicates just this (Isaiah 51:6, Matthew 24:35, Revelation 19-20, II Peter 2), and indeed far more than this. As Isaiah tells us, it will be cast off like an old garment, a thing, however nice and useful, which serves its day and then is gone. As Peter shows, this will not merely be a wearing out (though the mortality inherent is not denied, as in I Peter 1:24-25), for God does not merely wait its end, but causes it. Just as you could wait for paper on your desk eventually to disintegrate, but find it more orderly to chuck it to the bin, this neither denies the nature of paper nor of time, but simply shows your normal purposive self in action, disposing things as able, to where they are deemed to belong.

WHEN God however institutes an eternal nature to something He has made, there is nothing contradictory in that, but rather it is an embellishment. The degradations of time on creation, on design, are made inapplicable in a new heavens and earth (Revelation 20, Isaiah 65, II Peter 3), of new specifications, and neither subject as this one is, to curse, nor invasible by its underlying cause, sin.  Each person redeemed, and thus not so subject - for flesh and blood in this system are not as such capable of immortality, it must be conferred as in I Corinthians 15 - may indeed be the target of the gift not only of truth, but of the very companionship of Him whose it is, and without whom truth could not be, there being less than infinite knowledge in any other source, in terms of which to divulge it, or non-subjection to events and powers, in such a way as to retain it.

Eternity by donation can thus, in the forward sense be conferred, and thus out of this milieu of majesty and minimality, grandeur and littleness, intricacy and eventuation, vision and viciousness, holiness and atrocity, sin and sainthood, the Creator and the delinquent destroyer - an object of creation gone astray with considerable power: from this,  there comes the end of the beginning, and the beginning of the endless for such redeemed creation (cf. Revelation 22:1-4).

Was it worth it ? overall. That is for God to determine, and in eventuating, to know and to show. Indeed,  it were not so, in His sight, it would never have been undertaken, for there are no limits imposable on His knowledge who knows the end (a matter of time, His creation) from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10), and even declaring it, and ensuring it (cf. Romans 8:29ff.).

Worth it ? Assuredly, for my part, assuredly it is. Not only has God made it to be so, but its very nature exhibits it. Thus,  as shown so often from the Bible in this site (cf.  above, and Possess Your Possessions Vol. 6, Ch. 6), eternal life is in terms biblically, of a gift that for any imagined shortage of divine love, is withheld from none (Colossians 1:19ff., John 3, Ezekiel 33:11ff., Luke 19:42ff., John 4:7ff., Acts 13:46). It is on offer to all, desired for all, sufficiently available for all; but not imposed on any by mere constraint, the gift by distraint of what was in favour of what is to be. While in procedure, God is sovereign, in principle of operation, He as love, does not dictate. In foreknowledge He applies the principles He so often declares concerning His love; in predestination He ensures that they as applicable, are duly applied, so that none is lost who would in heart be saved, and none is saved who would in heart, prefer darkness.

 He whose nature is love, being not characterisable as in any way short of it, does so love. It is not the same, this love, as indifferent. It is not the same, to be sure, as the lie, which would have what is unholy wedded to the holy, or the grievous and the baneful, destructive and thankless, welded with the redeemed, so that all over again, the wars leading to peace by donation, would occur. Not at all. If any prefer darkness to light, as is necessary in anything where love is concerned, then there ultimately,  this is the option, rather than forced steps into the light. Results of course occur, and the odious becomes so in the end; but this not for lack of a beginning, far otherwise.

Is it worth it to have light and those able to receive it, love and those able to accept it, wonder and eternity with the most blessed God ? Is infinity better than nothing, and infinite quality of goodness better than nothing ? Only infinitely so, only thus! Far better ? nay, better entirely.

# Note:

THE SECOND DAVIES

Davies at one time was advocating a source in nothing, but since this is definably a contradiction in terms, there seems to have been a change out of such a contradiction, though the case still needs attention as in the Chapter of the excerpt below (cf. News 57, for a parallel). The sub-title implies this. As to nothing, see for example, Barbs ... 29. Below is a small excerpt from Sparkling Life ... Ch. 8.

The artifice of seeking to find in 'nothing' the nostrum for the universe is clinically delightful^*1.
What better exhibition could there possibly be of unscientific method, than attributing to what by definition has neither past nor present, nor potential - each of these being something other than nothing - the source of all things. It is in itself a comment on the aptitude of Romans 1:17ff..

However there is a new contribution, one from Paul Davies: it is an interesting exhibit, exposed by Alexander Williams in Creation Ex Nihilo, March-May 2000, pp. 42ff..

Some admissions here are of great interest, and most commendable. They are noted by the reviewer relative to Davies' The Fifth Miracle, Penguin 1998.
 

• 1. The known laws of physics, chemistry and biology do not explain the origin of life.
   
• 2. Chemical evolution, as in the Miller Urey experiment, are not relevant, since "Throwing energy at amino acids will not create delicate chain molecules, just as putting dynamite under a pile of bricks won't make a house."
   
• 3. There is no evidence for an inbuilt bias or even conspiracy to create life, in 'Nature'.
   
• 4. Chance is not favoured (after all chance is merely the name of structure or system in which one's purpose is not held in view cf. Ancient Words: Modern Deeds Ch. 13, Deliverance from Disorientation Chs.  1,  7).

Disposing of these common nonsenses of pseudo-science, in this case in principle correctly, Davies proceeds.

What then is considered for the basis of buildings using material 'bricks', buildings, for example, called man ? What source is summoned for mankind,  with his neatly constructed systematic interrogations which make not only a Boeing look like child's play, but the Empire State Building look like the work of a Primary School student, by comparison with the entire and staggering brilliance of the organic totalities integrated to generic and specialized purposes: plans for man, and through man, to a degree which nothing in man's own capacities can even begin to touch, since the making of a will like man's, does not commence on the horizon.
 
 
 

THE POETRY OF PRINCIPLE

From the article mentioned, a useful introduction as a review of the book, we find it is 'some sort of principle'. We have, however,  already discerned how barren and futile principles are in this connection. Let us here cite one approach made in SMR pp. 157ff., emphasis added.

Thus creation alone stands before logical thought. Denton and Schützenberger and Eden are all looking for something quite different, some principle to make it all happen. Where ? But what becomes of our poor bewildered friends ? They look for a 'principle', something unknown. What is this thingummy, this quiddity, this strange... thing ? What then is its function, or what must it do ? That after all is the call here; they need something which somehow will do what is not being done, but must have been done.

This it must do. It must have power to institute law, to constitute concepts in material form, to constrain, contain and restrain, so that copies are made and errors are fought against in cells and organs and organisms; it must rise like a phoenix from the ashes, equipped with powers to conceptualise therefore, and to implement. But wait! what do we say about ashes! We are discussing institution not destitution. Our wars and judgments make ashes too near; but in the institution phase, what was not instituted has no ashes, or anything else destroyed, for destruction must first wait upon construction. So, not after all like a phoenix from the ashes arising, but rather arisen, without pile beneath, is what makes the piles, the foundations, instituting and constituting the world of change in order that it might change from beginnings to endings, from creation to desecration, judgment or performance as the case may be.

And it must provide mind for man and spirit for him, that he might conceptualise and implement in his own derivative and contained way. And for man, an 'image' is needed so that he may do business with God and have ground for truth, without which he is mere reactor and could not intelligently discuss what is and what is not; nor, therefore, this, to affirm or deny.

It is here alone that the irrepressible human desire for truth, to declare it or rebut what others think it to be, has its rational basis. (Indeed, the capacity to know God is the ground of the assurance, and even where this knowledge is lacking, of the assumption of availability normally implicit; while the frustration so common in this, is the result for the renegade from reality, for refusal of truth. The underlying reason for that is that God lives; and many do not want that life, whatever private gods they may create - cf. John 3:17-19.)

It is here Bible gives the evidence... shown in SMR Ch.1. We need not however recapitulate: it is the same. The movement from the conceptual calamities of the organic evolution hypothesis is the same thing as movement towards the God of the Bible. The circuit to avoid God is now in the re-entry phase. How shall it be formulated ? Where shall it be found ? Oh, just in the same place as always, in God, who from everlasting to everlasting is God. (See Psalm 90:2; cf. Isaiah 29:13- 20, esp. v. 16 - "Shall the thing framed say of Him who framed it, He has no understanding!")

What sort of a principle thinks and conceives and even constructs conceptual apparatus in man ? Oh well, not quite a principle. After all, a principle is a name for some thing which is caused to operate in some way. It is the cause which makes it do so which is needed. A principle is a description of an order and procedure; and because of this, it needs its base, the force and creative content which it describes so that it can be a principle. You need the worker to make it work, the creator to allow it to happen, the structure in which it is to work, the imagination to formulate it so that it might work, the thinker for whom it is a thought, the functionary for which this is a function. Something which is in order needs the orderer, if code then its commander; and what operates needs the gear in which to operate, the power by which to operate and the basis on which to act. (Cf. pp. 252B, 315B-316G, 348-353 infra.)

Very well, as always you need God: all we are seeing in modern evolutionary gasping and panting after immediate 'creation' is a denial of the cause and a clamour for the effect. It is always the same: God is smuggled in and His name is smuggled out.

(End of Excerpt.)