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Chapter 5

REJECTING NOT MAN BUT GOD

I Thessalonians 4:3-8

Commands are not  Captions

but have Teeth of  Steel

Yesterday, a tradesman performing a service on our equipment volunteered that it would be good if we realised there were fewer wars now (than when ?), that it  would be good to realise this was a Christian  country (HOW! since they formally and by force indoctrinate children proceeding to and through University so that humanistic naturalism is by omission and commission, made to appear mandatory, an  anti-Christian thrust, empirically monstrous,  logically ludicrous, parading what on its own basis cannot be known, and on any basis is never found to confirm itself ^*1 ).

He seemed impervious to  facts;  every time one notion  was  exploded logically or  empirically or both, no response coming, then fresh from his confusions came more of the same kind of irrationality, oblivion of the facts seeming to be part of a sort of parroting of ideas, not subject to the discipline of reality. However, with these exposures mounting, one happily left the seed, including the word of God itself, where it had been planted.

This is the kind of result of an educational system constantly imbuing young minds, with compulsion and without right of reply at the relevant secondary level at least, with naturalistic fantasies, by affirmation, implication or omission. So far from this being a 'Christian' nation,  as was stated by this non-believer, as he eventually confessed himself to be, it was pointed out that while it was true that many ingredients of past work of Christ in midst of this once so blessed nation were indeed mercifully still here, including relative non-violence, yet it was more empirically apt to call it anti-Christian. After  all, if you take sweetener instead of sugar, there ARE indeed quite a number of similarities; but the substance is not the same. It has been changed, moreover, for a reason!

Thus, I pointed out, if I were in some  kind of dictatorial authority, as in China or Saudi Arabia, or many another land, and in my case decided that I would take his children and educate them, by excluding objective assessment of various fields,  in the realm of science or social studies or both, from a place even conceivable as absolute truth, if he held or had access to that, and instead forced on them say Buddhism at this level, what would he regard me to be ? Would it not be a presumptuous dictatorial pedant, pushing ideas without foundation because it appealed to my motives or desires or  flirtations of fancy or whatever else took my mind along!

How then CAN it be claimed that this is a Christian country IF you directly and by discipline require in one vital area the direct contradiction, or its ingredients, of what the Bible states,  and for that matter,  empirical facts reveal, and further this in  a systematic and irrational manner, while elsewhere requiring that any religious option is not to be laid down, but may only be  considered in a subjective  fashion. The very operational concept of truth is barred in this entire field, as if becoming non-intellectual, blinded ninnies were the objective. Gulliver's Travels gives some of the same sense of inveterate foolishness, set on high and now it is not fiction, or satire on trends, but nearer to fact.

NO TRUTH is allowed, except never verified, never demonstrated, never validated captious cant! which serves instead; and the only logically sustainable concept of reality  as so often on this site and elsewhere,  is systematically excluded! (cf. SMR, TMR, Deity and Design ... esp. 2 and 8, Secular Myths and Sacred Truth, Wake Up World! ...).  This exclusion and the sullen dreams of what is presented alike, attack the Bible in mind and in life. It is anti-Christian. It is not  neutral.

It kills one brief, and insists on another. It does not allow rational and ordered contest in the school situation. Yet as surely as it is unsustainable logically,  so  it is sustained politically and by disruptive educational authorities, the authority of which many schools acquiesce in accepting, as if the beast (Revelation 13) were not really an issue, merely somewhat intrusive.  But the teeth on the souls of the young are not blunt (Matthew 7:15, Acts 20:28-31).

Indeed, the more they are taught

to  follow

	never seen unoperational myths (as foretold, II Timothy 4),
	mere verbal machinations; and

to tolerate

	never investigable experimental reality,  and
	never observable fiascos, always changing, this one even  challenged vigorously by followers of that one,  from within the evolutionary establishment, many experts even at odds with and ridiculing the thoughts of others in the pseudo-academic junta given to such dreams as to idols in days of old:

the  worse it is.

Thus the estrangement from experimental start in this region of science,  by many, properly FOLLOWED by theoretical  explanation with due reference to co-ordinate issues or laws or finding, and integral understanding of the entire  spectrum of relevant issues, is reversed in order. FIRST, origins, actions,  resultants, become the theoretical postulation FOLLOWED by cant, indoctrination and continued despite refutation in experiment and law alike (cf. TMR Ch. 1, The gods of naturalism have no go!). In this way,  students are taught first to dream and then to rely on the way some things happen now, as a basis for what happened in the production of what is there now, of this universe.

At that, the phenomena of the present do not in fact show the directive power of institution, but merely the trend to decay and deteriorate, right down to our own genome (Waiting for Wonder Appendix), so that there is a negation so intense, a misdirection so remarkable, that its survival in teaching media is testimony to what Christ said about hating the light (John 3:19-21), and  Paul about "becoming futile in their thoughts"  when departing from the active reliance on the living God. There is such a condition and where as here, empirically and rationally its results show, there is a biblical explanation which covers the data. That too is merely one more fortification of its perspective, overview and fulfilment of its predictions. 

Simple  and basic is the fact that apart from what is required for anything, despite the absence of change of kind or basic type empirically, is how they arrived in any case.

In this  we have a double mischief. Thus living things are, as in the case in information  science, as shown for example by Dr Werner Gitt, NEVER known to  embody so  much as information from unintelligence now (Not Only is God Great, but Glorious Ch. 5). Empirically, it is found always to  the contrary: for just as  one DOES find by the  processes  of personally  inventing information control, intelligence does the sorting, the concept continuum work,  the collation of considerations for intimate, linguistically controlled programmatics, SO as Gitt points out, one does NOT find unintelligence doing the job at all.

Indeed, if it were not so, then work would be done by nothing for no reason, providing living objects with coherent and highly systematic, commanded results, set in a milieu where the commands are obeyed, and where every phase would call for what is not supplied in one of the most monumental pieces of forlorn magic ever attributed by some to science.

What is found not to happen thus becomes the basis of happenings, unintelligent ordering of information. This is myth: the attribution of powers not on display or attested in any way, as the source of occurrence. This is confirmation of the philosophic pathology involved, which has invaded science,  and in this special field of origins, nullified its method (Scientific Method...). It is necessary to pursue all the evidence logically to its conclusion without prejudice as shown in SMR.

It is not enough to  ASSUME the basics in some big bang of pressure and time and space and logical  correlations,  all provided free and compressed in a high-tech marvel which is to unfold. The way life comes is not gratuitously to be taken  by a road never seen to be followed in principle or practice, in index or resultant. Nothing CAN come from nothing so that the assumptions to the contrary merely mock reason, while invoking it. The initial nostrums need a cause, eternal or you impact with nothing again; and adequate, or you merely contradict yourself.

Matter or  energy - the power to  act, which in practice requires with it something to act on - is thus merely given, origins bypassed, and methods of adornment,  like life,  are to be produced by what is never found. It is still worse than this. The changes upward in kind are to  occur by forces never found, leading to errors never discovered, fumbled results or forlorn life failures not littering the path, while yet the assumptions of continuity are imposed where the results are not empirically present.  Nullity becomes creation and variability within kind becomes their institution.

Consider it further.  What happens  IN something already there is NOT the issue as to HOW it arrived in order that it might happen.  HOW you arrange your lottery win is one thing,  and interesting to the covetous it might be; but HOW you  got it is an entirely different question. Ignoring this in the fascination of conserving or observing it raking in the interest, is wholly irrelevant.  If you want to know where it came or how, this is bypassing the question, and ultimately leads to begging the question.

Watching the winner arranging his wealth MIGHT show some of the thoughts of the one who entered the lottery, but the whole matter is different in KIND. Without the win there is nothing to arrange.

In principle, then, first there is the occlusive ignoring of the need for the institution of anything. Then there is the ignoring or bypassing the contradiction of what is invented as question begging, and set off anyway (cf. Lively Lessons in Spiritual Service Ch. 5, Cascade of Mercy,  Torrent of Truth Ch. . 6, Dig Deeper ...Ch. 1, Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 13). Evidentially, it runs aground, even given a false start. The whole  matter is surrounded with non-confirmation, non-sequiturs, non-compliance of assertion to empirical reality (cf. Ch. 1 above, list of references, as marked).

Then the notion of using the present as of something already there, to account for it getting there, as if writing a poem were really just a matter of keeping a book of poems in the library, is simply a non sequitur. Even drafts of the failed non-efforts to write the poem, as in the case of life,  are never  found,  littering the shores of time; but only completely manufactured marvels of functional finality.

Finally, there is the problem that what is so simplistically assumed to be the way to come (that is, the way it goes), never comes in what is here. What has come does not operate to show you how it came. In principle, a result is not the same as a cause, resultants are not the same as originations, and assumptions are not the same as realities and realisations. You have to look logically and empirically and FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS, how it happens, on what logical basis, and move on to the logical consideration of adequacies for these things.

What is here now in the way of life does not so produce, nor can it be induced to do so. In fact,  matter does not create itself, let alone out of nothing; and even if it did, it would have to be there to do it. Its origin is the point, not contrived powers which do not happen to evidence themselves.

This is the fourfold lapse.

If someone prizes his children (as this nation unequivocally CLAIMS to do), and treats  them in this way, then it follows that this is the ruling concept, the dominant idea,  the binding theme; and it collides with the Bible as a devastating asteroid or similar space body appears to be predicted to  do, with the earth. When is this revealed ? It is  as the end of our  Christian era^*2 comes as foretold in  Revelation 8:10. The "star" or "great" astral  type body which there is seen to fall from heaven, assuredly was not the Hollywood variety, or the sentimental type, but the type it is hard to miss, since its impact  will not miss oceans!

This is the diet, the sole diet, the exclusive diet, the required diet, the philosophically fatty diet of the rigorously irrational didactic system in the area of origin of our systems and laws inscribed in the universe, in life and in mind, on which the so cherished children MUST subsist, and not argue in their science, or imagine they may reason logically to the end, in other subjects likewise. Insulated in the curriculum from truth, force-fed rubbishy foods of no sustainable value, they may in some places outside all this, and requisitely in CONFORMITY to it, receive subjectively conceived religious teaching from those willing to contribute it in such shameless conditions.

Hence the composition of authority in this nation is anti-Christian.  If you want to define Christian in terms of another christ whom you make up, or  someone  else does within his head and culture and concepts, that is mere unscientific confusion. The biblical  Christ is defined as to time, power, nature, actions, plans, purposes, scenario, historical  setting, place of birth, of death, mode of death, and all the cognate elements as predicted and as proclaimed. You cannot use the term Christian therefore while  ignoring or transforming this contemporary testimony founded on the testimony of, nature of and impact of Jesus Christ, the Messiah foretold to die in the area of A.D. 30, without increasing the confusion of rejection by a case of double identity. As to the biblical Christ, you may wish to contradict the testimony, despise it, alter it, you may be roused to awesome wrath by its very designation, but you may not make up one of your own, and give him Christ's name of fame embodied in the term 'Christian' (Acts 11:26 cf. Acts 26:28, I Peter 4:16),  and this without history or basic character, except in wish fulfilment. 

It was  tried  early (cf. II Corinthians 10-11), to offload the name, power and wonder of Jesus Christ where it had not been earned, but exposed equally early. It sometimes seems sad when a well-known firm of great quality in some land, is acquired by an international body, and made to stand for something lacking the original diligence, flair and character, whether in the services surrounding it or in its quality or both. However, such things may be bought and sold, and the name lost. When however it comes to what is not reproducible by man, and this is 'sold' to spiritual entrepreneurs, then this is acting in the area of the unduplicable,  the unmimickable, and as Christ has a testimony unmatched, the inimitable, and it becomes a plagiarism of personality, apart from its religious  parasitism.

Man is an amazing creation, not least in the arena of free spirit. God has given you immense, even colossal freedom,  so that your  spirit can ignore logic and history and anything else that  takes your fancy,  and your mouth can say practically anything. This is an enormous facility, but it requires one to bear  responsibility, the same as for the use of one's fists.

You  could  write a book and state why you would call by the name, Jesus Christ, something you created in the book; and this might be an essential variant, or a cut-down version, a revolutionary,  clown or nice teacher, and so ignore the primary evidence,  and make ideas at random. It  could be as if you were asked to  state the result of a given figure of 80 when  multiplied with 800, and saying that you had decided to ignore the 8 bit, conclude that it was really a matter of multiplying noughts, and so there was no point in it. You can SAY such things, but only in deliberate  confusion. Deporting the name that Christ gave to the world  as Messiah, may comport with desire for ease of fame, or installation of importance on  scant basis, but it merely disports erratic dynamic,  seizing as plunder what does not belong to the inventor, but to the original.

Another Jesus, Gospel and Spirit, indeed it may be accepted, but Paul does not hesitate to deem  it the work of false apostles,  deception and  sets it in perspective as a virtual take-over bid.

The term 'Christian' therefore in normal usage refers to Jesus Christ,  who has made it historically famous, and comes from its equivalence with Messiah, linguistically, famous also from the Old Testament of Israel (Romans 9). If you want to use it for something else, available by  pure imagination or  ideas without demonstration,  it is only confusion; and to attribute to such a creation of your own mind, the name of someone historically and logically utterly different, diverse or divergent is just poor communication, quite apart  from the ethics of it. It is as far from  science as you can go,  for it confounds the issues at the outset by poor, ambiguous definition. It is just as far from logic, for the same reason.

In the terms of the Bible, and the Jesus Christ whom from the first it has declared, whether in prospect from Genesis 3:15 or later in prophecies, or in the New Testament in fulfilments in detail, the term Christian has specifiable meaning, clear and composed, differentiable from all other meanings. You  may believe or disbelieve in Him to whom it refers, but this is certainly highly diverse from confusing the items.

Having considered the terms of reference, in this case in the phrase, 'Christian country,' we may look again.

Because of the educational apparatus, tilted as shown, and thus exclusivist in its matrix and core ingredients,  as well as  some of its detailed insurgencies of propaganda, made binding for exams and for speech, this is quite simply an anti-Christian country^*3.  Briefly, the reasoning is this: IF children are an invaluable resource to be protected and enabled without violence or insult to their liberty by mere preferred mandates and exclusion, to be educated in this assigned manner and with such a curriculum,  then the WAY in which this is being done and has in this State been very clearly done since 1988,  for example is anti-Christian. The essence of this has been pointed out to several central  political figures, not excluding the Office of the Premier by appointment, and demonstrated to those in relevant authority or place, several times. It has been adorned by offer and request for public debate. This has never been granted: either the change or the debate.

Some of the horrors to those  concerned  for the  due education of children are exhibited in practice in TMR Ch. 8.

It is necessary to  face issues, and not fudge them. If you WANT to  do this,  then it is necessary not to smooth over your preference with confusing definitions, but to face the facts, as Churchill did for his nation, when he saw and foresaw something of what was coming and WHY! If Germany then in its Nazi dress was a menace to the very mode of life of Britain, how much more is anti-christian force, as now professionally in place in the ways noted in this country, an invitation to disaster, not only from force, but from psychic sickness in lives felt to be meaningless, because of misinstruction and its baneful results, growing children enveloped in concepts of mere strife and irrationality, asserting brutality or self-assertion as base, while suggesting civility as mode: this a volcanic situation asking for what it is increasingly getting - deservedly.

If the opposite of the illusory evolutionary process is suggested by any, then it is mere self-contradiction on the part of those who so suggest in that system of thought, and adds confusion to life afresh, with secondary abrasions of the heart, stiflings of thought. The truth of creation and situation, morals and mutual kindness, wisdom and discretion, the need of transformation before any system can work, and of the word of the God who explains all things without disharmony of thought, this is the forbidden option. Its very components are hated^*4.

If this is so in the  State, how much more in many large Churches. Similar tactics or task forces of confusion work in the name of culture,  there as in the State. They want a new Jesus,  an  altered Bible, new commandments and yet prefer to keep the title Christian, this becoming whatever they think from time to time, quite apart  from the primary testimonials. It would be like having a capitalist Marx, or a poetic  Saddam Hussein, or a genteel Hitler. Use the names ?  why bother. They are shown evidentially in marked ways, not to be so.

If you want to invent an historical novel, fine, but do not make confusion  as intended or secured, a new pseudo-actuality,  your point, or you deserve the critiques you get. Inventing God has got things the wrong way around. We are the invention and a fascinating, indeed intriguing one we are, with exquisite linguistic bases, clearly displayed, attesting our formation from formulation in the DNA, by intelligence as normal for information input, which requires thought for its structuring in coded collations, doing and being done. Inventing our God is a masterful piece of apotheosis which would be excluded were it not desired past all law and logic.

Clarity is always essential  as a  first  step, and methods that are explicit  bases of confusion are always logically illicit.

Thus in the Churches (cf. News  121,  122,  Great Execrations ... Ch. 5, Lively Lessons ... Ch. 6), and other bodies seeking or envisaging or promoting unities of the disparate, even as far apart  as 1 plus 1 equals either 2 or else infinity, you have this disregard for logical definition,  clear calls and accurate definitions, used as a tool by various anti-biblical bodies who gain place by diverse means,  so that UNITY becomes almost a synonym for two things.

One is for defiance of definitional clarity. The other is change from the nature of Christ as historically known and attested, to something else, presently preferred, but bearing the same name, and provided with some degree of similar apparatus in the surrounds, omitting however what is central. This was to be (II Peter 2:1ff., I Timothy 4, II Timothy 3, 4, Acts 20), and  it is, bearing the title given by Christ, for its workers, and Revelation and Jeremiah.

These become in this way false prophets (Jeremiah 23 - to be most manifest as the end of the Age comes, as is the case),  or even wolves in sheep's clothing (Matthew 7:15), false prophets,  signifying the treachery to truth as He proclaimed it, as a matter of spiritual murder, to be guarded against, just as Paul also admonished most severely to the Ephesians elders. There he foretold the coming of ravenous wolves, even from their own midst, those who would consume the flock, being intimate with it on false grounds. In Revelation 16:13, you see THE FALSE PROPHET, a noxious repository of evil, from whose mouth come devils to do the anti-therapeutic rounds!

We have been warned, and II Peter 2 confirms, that these false teachers come from within the fold, and the part played by the attraction of money. Indeed, so great is this that the souls that should be cared for, become "merchandise" in their fangs, saleable items as those misled. So we move to the modern field.

Accordingly we come  to a particular issue. It is that of Christianity and sexuality. Romans 1 tells us of the diagnosis of man's rebellion  interface with God: "pretending to be wise, it indicates,  "they became fools," and as to the ultimate results, one  in prime focus (Romans 1:24-28) is what the Bible deems unnatural sex,  contrary to nature, and thus perverted sex, sex in antagonism to the purpose of the Creator. It indicates likewise (Romans 1:29ff.),  the break-down of social relationships to be found in this milieu, as that Chapter  ends amid those who are

"backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters,

inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,

undiscerning, untrustworthy,

unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful."

All this, in that sequence in the biblical prognosis, has happened.

Now this  topic has been broached before (e.g. Overflight in Christ Ch. 3), but we here come to a related text in I Thessalonians 4, which requires understanding. Let us therefore consider it.

I THESSALONIANS 4

Paul  has spoken of holiness (I Thessalonians 3:13), in terms of a fruit of godly love, in parallel  to  I John 5, where you show and have the love of the brethren  according AS you  keep the commandments.

ABOUND more and more, he counsels, exhorts, urges. He  specifies  commandments that he wishes to  stress. One is to  "abstain from  sexual immorality," a broad term for misuse of sex between persons. Its definition is of course as in the inspired (I Corinthians 2:9-13) scriptures, and indeed as elsewhere in the inspired  writings of the  apostle, such as I Cor. 5 and 6, and I  Timothy 1, which are particularly severe on  all perversion from the natural  order as is  Romans 1.

The NATURE of the divinely legislated NURTURE is thus  eminently clear.

Each in particular is to know how to  "possess  his own  vessel in sanctification and honour." It is the same in the economic realm,  where covetousness is deemed nothing less than idolatry (Ephesians 5:3, Colossians 3:5). These things, unrepented, unmoved,  interlock in  locking out from the kingdom as in I Cor. 5-6.

Idolators, indeed, are excluded  from the kingdom of heaven (Ephesians 5:5), just as are the covetous (idolatry in type) and the sexual abusers of others, in what God has provided. Indeed, sanctification in  all things is the objective in spirit.  God, says Paul, "did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness," (I Thess. 4:7).

Suppose now someone rejects this teaching,  this orientation, this legislation, this arrangement concerning the spirit of  man and what is to be his sincerely sought conduct concerning the equipment given to him ? This  negativing could be either concerning its principles or its practice: for when GOD SAYS and you disagree, it  little matters  whether what you will to do or approve or tolerate  by will,  is in body or spirit or mind or any combination. He SAYS, and in any of many ways, YOU reject it.

There, of course, is a distinction between acceptance and rejection, and being trained. If like a bruised reed, you fall on  occasion, He  can  raise. If  in  some  circumstance, you smoulder in weakness, He can lift  from your  slippage; and  sad can be the failure, as with David and Bath-Sheba, for which he  paid in  disciplines  for the rest of his life. It is not  sinlessness which is in mind (I John  1:7ff.), but the  entire acceptance by faith of what  God presents, in heart and mind, for with ALL the heart  and soul and mind and  strength, He  must be sought AND LOVED. This is the only biblical perspective.

You are under  His discipline (Hebrews 12), and though He chasten indeed as a good father, here the  Father of  spirits,  with those willingly and by faith under  His tutelage and truth,  waiting upon Him, yet with this, they also are  shown  that  mercy in which He  delights (Micah 7:19ff., Hebrews 13:5-6). With Him is strength (Ephesians 3:16), though for a time heaviness may bring  down pride, penetrate self-sufficiency or activate keenness when tests are searching (I Peter 1:6, 4:13-18).

THE PRONOUNCED PHENOMENON

OF GOD REJECTION

Thus we are dealing in this passage in I Thessalonians 4, with acceptance or rejection as such,  not perfection or otherwise in performance, as such. You share the ideal, have the  commandment, honour and follow it, seek to conform to it, as a pearl of the heart, as with all His directions: you make decisions in  accord with it, apply rules as it requires. But what if you do not do so, reject  the rule or its relevance or its applicability or its  force, and plan, act, legislate or accommodate matters on other grounds or a different  schedule, living willingly and voluntarily under diverse  directives ? What if you reject the commandment, its nature, its application, admit its violation, collaborate with its church decease ? It IS not a commandment, is not a RELEVANT commandment or DOES NOT MATTER, if violated.

If th is occurs, the  apostle is inspired  to write, it is not man whom you reject but God (cf. Psalm 51).

THEN YOU REJECT  GOD.

 It is the commandment,  the orientation,  the configuration, the law and the order and  the authority which is in point. GOD HAS  SAID. You  agree or differ, seek with honest  zeal to conform.  You  eagerly adopt what God commands or  else you teach, preach, enact or are in communion with what is otherwise.  Do you renounce, denounce ? That is a good prelude to departure (Romans 16:17).  

You confront or  evade and so  do  not accept, or you embrace and adopt what God has said, and here in this area of sexuality in particular. That is what we are facing in the text. You receive this as divine authority and to be followed, or DO NOT RECEIVE IT, annulling or bypassing it. Instead, you may recognise it as you  even recognise air in the atmosphere, and so  act in all  realism,  in accord with that.

In short, you take it as binding or you don't. IF you  do not, then you are  rejecting God Himself.

That is the teaching. It is not a matter of any other kind than that of the  acceptance or rejection of  God, the  Creator, the maIntainer, the One wholly loved, so that though we  may limp in this or that battle, our  way is  recognisable; for a good tree bears  good fruit: that is the general nature of its performance (Matthew 7:17). it is not a paragon nor yet apparently a  different breed!). Nor is it a matter of our qualities in this and in that: when it comes to the divine commandment, the quality involved is obedience, rebellion being worse than witchcraft.

Rejection then is one  option; and it is the alternative  to  acceptance. The message is simple:  if you do not do the second, then you do the first. There is no room for compromise or being creative with the commandments of God. That is not liberty: it is the uttermost arrogance of presumption. Can not even His mouth be left unsmitten!

In  what ways, then, could you reject this command, evaluation, teaching,  command relative to sexuality (which as seen above is in parallel to  covetousness) ?

You COULD do the  opposite; you could APPROVE the  opposite; you could TOLERATE  the  opposite  as  acceptable in the kingdom of heaven and suitable for the Church of Jesus Christ. In that case, you reject the COMMAND - MENT.

You could take  its dismissal or dismissability,  or willing compromise,  as bearable as a  course of  characterisable action. You could approve or enact the opposite, or allow it openly and willingly to parade itself, or declare itself as a rule or desideratum in  the Church or the home. You could consent to this, or be disposed  to belong where it is so negatived.

In fact, you COULD continue to attend a  Church which rejects this in any of these or other ways. In that way, you endorse as  acceptable what finds the command of God unacceptable. Membership is of a body, in the case of a Church (I Corinthians 12, Romans 12, Ephesians 2), and IF a matter arises,  as merely one of opinion,  well. God leaves  some things open.

If however the issue as here,   is authoritatively and directly declared by the  apostolic authority in the Bible: and if what is done with it is a matter of demonstrable and obvious contradiction, violation or non-acceptance, then that membership is with what here  statedly is involved in REJECTING GOD. That is not a subtle conclusion, but simply an  applied fact. There is no middle  ground. Have it, apply it and accept,  or do not have it, do not apply it,  and  reject. Accept or reject what precisely ?

God precisely.  To equivocate is not to  extenuate, but simply to  aggravate.

The issue is whether or not GOD IS REJECTED. If rejected, He is not accepted  and He is not present where He is not received. IF you receive  Him,  you are in the way of becoming a new creation  (John 1, 3), and if you reject Him, then of  course you reject what is His.

This is the whole paraphernalia of adoption, which applies to those receiving Him by faith, and regeneration,  a matter resulting from so receiving Him, whatever the prelude, one of pardon and peace. It may seem difficult, but so is training for the Olympics if you are chosen. There is a certain difficulty in rejecting the approved  counsel  of the coach, if he is appointed to train you. It  is not too hard to understand! You believe and receive, or you reject and exclude. Rejection is not inclusion and faith is not another name for disbelief, or disjunction in principle, but for the ways of conjunction.

Now Paul is at spiritual pains to  show in  II Corinthians 6:14ff., that unequal yoking with unbelievers is forbidden. It is ludicrous if two horses  pull in opposite directions, or move in  ways not apposite; or you join disparate objects such  as a  lion with a  mouse. It does not work out that way; moreover it is forbidden.  If God matters, so do His words (Luke 6:46),  and Christ is more than crisp about saying LORD, LORD,  and yet not doing what He says. Seeking pardon for failure, is from the same Christ who commands, being not only Saviour but Lord; and indeed "for this purpose Christ died and rose and lived again, that He might be Lord of both the dead and the living," Romans 14:9. This is always different from a situation where there is a seeking of scope for rebellion, to impose or to suffer it. It does not cease to be worse than  witchcraft,  and certainly is not to be confused with faith (I Samuel 15:23).

REJECTING God relates explicitly here, and courageous indeed is the one who toys with truth in this way, and expects it all not to matter. God is merciful, but in the end, knowing the heart, He expects not another commandment, another approach, a wilful alternative, an option for immersion in membership where the church is immersed in rebellion.

Teaching or denying the word of God does not change it, any more than changing your  clothing in Summer changes the sun. It stays. It abides, more significant than the laws of nature, which are merely created for a schema; the word of God is given for what has been created,  mankind in His image,  and it applies  to man, as man is made from God, so in what is FOR man.

If then  someone  REJECTS GOD, not merely  man, as in I Thessalonians 4:8, trifling with matters of Creator's mandate, that means God is not received; but it was  to as many as  received  Him, that the Lord Jesus Christ gave  the  authority to have eternal  life. If they do not receive in that they REJECT GOD,  then the case is the opposite; it is  rejection. You cannot receive whom you reject, a flat contradiction. Nor is there any other way or name to get in (Acts 4:11-12, Galatians 1), and indeed, forced entry is forbidden (John 10) in terms of thieves.

In rejecting a commandment, you have options: you may deny its truth or validity, you may deny its applicability or you may renounce its necessity, that is, make it optional. This is to un-command it, just as a man in some act of cowardice, may be said to be unmanned. You deny it the status of commandment. You are willing to live where it is renounced and its opposite authorised. It is nullified, and hence rejected. Remain in a gang which thieves, knowing what it does, and how are you not implicated, willingly tolerant of their ways, so tht honesty is either unnecessary or equivocal, certainly not a commandment!

Life in Christ is as  prescribed and ONLY as prescribed, by faith in Him AS Saviour (who saves, but does not become the servant of sin as if on another wave length, and captured) and Lord (who rules, and is not shared out with other concepts, ideas or classifications of sin and righteousness). He  RULES. If He does not, then sin does (John 8:24) and is the actual  master. Rejection is  not  subjection  to  Him as Lord, but lording it over Him and if it involves misuse of His name in the practice of such rejection, then so  much the worse, as in Isaiah 29!

This is the acme of the negative: the omission of Jesus the Christ as  Lord  and  Saviour, the One saving from sin in pardon and with power,  and acting as Lord of one's  life in acceptance and fealty, His commands yours, this received in faith and in admiring acceptance and holy awe. Hence this negative is simply the  correlative of unbelief. Option one: DO this because you do not reject  Christ.  Option two:  DO NOT do this and  ipso facto, you are rejecting God. When Christ said Why do you call Me, Lord, Lord and not do the things that I say. The WILL of God is the criterion not of perfection for the falling, but of aspiration and application in heart and in spirit (Matthew 7:21).

What then ? the meaning was not that it really did not matter, but that this was a form of treachery. It is not question of weakness but of witness, mode of life. Matthew 7:21ff. puts the matter further in terms of people expecting acceptance but who, not having done the will of God, do not get it. It is not misplaced zeal on His part, but stark reality. It is not mere weak points on their part, but a failure to take in sincerity the realities of His Lordship, His and His only (Matthew 23:8-10).

This,  as we have already seen,   does not presuppose  perfection, since that assumption is contrary to the Bible  also (I John  1;7ff.); but it does mean FAITH, BELIEF, ACCEPTANCE, in the will and  for the  will  of God. It means a characterisability in  your conformity! Deformity is not sought! There is an obvious difference between tongue-talk and heart-reality. God's attitude to the former is noted in Isaiah 29, and indeed  Isaiah 1, the case of near with lips and far with heart. It is an abomination before Him.

Hence continuance in a church which directly rejects what is apostolically given in the Bible is merely adding to the breaches of commandments; for it not only tolerates  this negation, but is bound  to those who mandate  to  the contrary. Paul defines it as rejection  not of man but of  God. Do not miss the sun in the sky because of  cloudy conditions.

It  is  intolerable to tolerate what God finds intolerable and excludes from the kingdom of heaven (I  Corinthians 5-6, I Timothy 1). Paul speaks of wolves, Christ of wolves in sheep's clothing. The  Ephesian elders were taught that t hey should protect the flock from  such. The shepherd not only attacks the wolves, to  drive them  away, but ensures that they get nowhere near the flock, and that  their deceptions are made apparent, as of an  enemy. You are not to stroke wolves, because this fails to acknowledge  their stated  character. Nor do you try to polish their teeth, as you would not do  for a shark likewise. If you want other laws, perhaps you should invent another universe; but do not expect God to be with you. In this one: this is the command of God.

It is He who has the power and  also has given the precept. Do NOT give heed to  doctrines of devils (I Timothy 4:1), but FLEE all such things - I Timothy 6:3-12, and where they are, do not be found. This was most dramatically shown, like a physics experiment, in the case of the sons of Korah, who tilted at the authority then vested in Moses through inspiration of God, and preferred to add their own ways and ideas. First came the command: SEPARATE from these people. Then came the meeting time, as for an athletics event. When that came there was seen good reason for the separation, for those who we re dissatisfied with the authority and power of God, His exclusivistic word, were simply swallowed up with an earthquake. To have stayed with them in their diligent departure from the word of God, making a party of this very thing, would have meant placement in a group of rebels (Numbers 16).

It is not cowardice to flee from the atomic bomb, but prudence. You do no good by simply inhabiting its path. It is ruthless, destructive, designed to kill. In I Timothy 6, while a special case is in view, the CRITERION cited for determination of the evil is

"teaching contrary to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ,"

and

"the doctrine which accords with godliness."

"Teaching otherwise" is a single Greek word and signifies a divergence from this type of content. You can teach either in conformity to the doctrine of Christ, or quite simply "otherwise".

God is not mocked, and whether you mock outright or by knowing and willing submersion in alien squalor of unprincipled contradiction of His word, as if false prophets were your fathers, and rebels your  comrades in arms, you are asking for categorisation among the rejecters ... of God.

He is patient and longsuffering, but in the end the spirit of man either consents to or rejects Him, His word, which is His expression, and His Word, who endorses His words, the latter sent by His Holy Spirit (Matthew 5:127-20, I Peter 1:10ff.^*5, II Peter 1:19ff.^*6), and the former by His Father to redeem from all  lawlessness and folly (Titus 2:13-14, Hebrews 1:9, II Thessalonians 2:7, II Cor. 6:14, Matthew 23:28, 13:41, 7:23.

You do not join with your enemies of your team in your team-work. That is treachery, hypocrisy and untruth. It  may not be meant  so, but the Bible is giving you warning  so that you  keep from such errors. Flee from folly, and when you do not find the words of wisdom, depart (Proverbs 14:7,16 cf. Separation).

ACCEPT what violates this, in whatever  way, and you REJECT GOD.

This, it is an afterburner to all that is said elsewhere by Paul in his inspired writings, epistles given from  God  in such depth of detail as propounded in I Corinthians 2:9-13 and 14:37, on exclusions from the kingdom of heaven. The theme is clear:  a life which is led in any form of lust as its centre, or ground, or governing rule, or toleration facility, is  alien to the kingdom of heaven. God is  against  this form of  acceptance or acknowledgement or announcement or orientation;  and if you do not join Him in this, then the point  is that you are following some other God. In so doing, THIS GOD says I Thessalonians 4:8, you  reject.

When the Titanic was  sinking^*7, a certain realism seemed obvious, and the song reflected it.  When this world is sinking in its finale upheavals (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5), then dreams are more than ever (Jude 6-8), not the answer, but in a strictly literal sense, painfully and sheerly impertinent in the situation, and before the face of God.  God is not like that. He does not mix with things like that. He is grand in pardon for repentance, but exclusivistic for two-timers, double-takers, denizens of another dynamic, another spiritual world, one of dreams as theme or authority, master-morals hand-made by schizoid spiritual subversion, calling the one thing, but not doing the same, but its very abhorrent contradiction! 

Jude adds depth to the dimensions in his burning denunciation of this style of thing, but God is both height and depth,  and to reject Him, it is like rejecting your own identity,  to become whatever! The prescribed straight and narrow path (Matthew 7:21ff., 7:21ff.) is to accept Him, endorse His sayings, believe in His salvation, trust in His commandments, rely by faith in His name,  and rejoice in that to which He gives you access IN salvation: not a matter of slummocking in double-minded ambivalence, as if religion is never too worried about reality, only feeling, which is FAR OTHERWISE. HIS way is followed in single-mindedness and clarity of heart, not mistaking charity for disobedience, or forbidden fellowship for fields open to fancy ( I Timothy 1:5).

NOTES

*1

See for example:

The gods of naturalism have no go,  SMR pp. 140ff.,

Not only is God great, but Glorious Ch. 5.

*2

The Christian era is not so named because of the statistics, but because of the place in the succession of revelation drawn from the Bible. There is the Old Testament era, and that of the New Testament, based in Christ Jesus, Lord and Saviour, who won the divine Olympics against all comers, and showed categorically where truth lies,  affirming the while the Old Testament to the uttermost (Matthew 5:17-20), so that God has not at all left us without a witness (cf. Barbs ... 17, The Original and Eventual Magnificence Ch. 1). 

Actually, various forms or formulations relating in some ways to it have been notable since Christ finished His work on this earth (Hebrews 7:27, 9:12-28), including the Roman  Empire, the Holy Roman Empire and various nations at various phases, including the British Empire for several centuries. As some of these have become but sad reflections of the Gospel, compounding it with national glory or control, or confounding it (cf. SMR pp. 1032-1088A), this is more show than reality; yet it happened.

It is the exposure of the Gospel, based on the finished work of Christ, incarnation, sacrificial death and bodily resurrection in a time pregnant with His foretold return at the predicted series of events (Acts 1:7, 17, Matthew 24, Luke 21 cf. Answers to  Questions Ch. 5, SMR Ch. 8), relayed, taught and preached in terms of the commission of Christ (Matthew 28:19-20), where the international thrust is so remorseless and now the worldly rejection is so intense and increasingly forceful, that is the basis of calling this the Christian era.

*3

The biblical definition of Christianity includes the entire teaching of the Old Testament concerning truth, and the features of Christ's deposition as correct and authoritative, indeed from God by a process of inspiration back of the revelation so intense, that to the very jot and tittle,  as Christ declaimed (Matthew 5:17-20), predictions would be fulfilled (cf. The Pitter-Patter ... Ch. 4). EVERY item would be held in its bounds and associations (Isaiah 34), the testimony unyielding to history (Isaiah 59:21, a specific case of the general above), and this moreover at the express statement of Jesus Christ (Matthew 24:35). The intensity and the immensity of this rule is marked by the divine dimensions of its assertion.

Thus  in a word of august majesty, Christ indicates the significance of His words (AS THE word of God - John 1). Heaven and earth WILL pass away, He stated. There is no fixity to the flippant godlessness which thinks you flip a coin (which is not there) and note the way it comes down (down not being there, or coming), and get a universe of law investigable by man in his own mind, finding out what has been set down and mandated to the universe. That is not so much childish as delusive, whether in the image given, or in the underlying assumptions. Constantly we hear of how this and that comes in a bang,  with pressure and matter or its correlates and time and many other niceties, like logic, all ready to operate so that we can investigate and find its modes by logic with those in parallel donated to us..

It does not even work, at that

(cf.  The Defining Drama Ch.   3,
Christ, the Cumulative and the Culmination Ch.     9,
Cascade of Truth, Torrent of Mercy Ch.   6,
Lively Lessons in Spiritual Service Ch.   5,
Dig Deeper,  Soar Higher ... Ch.   1),

and the  initial imaginary set-up only makes it harder to have the lot,  as if insisting that to explain a painting, you MUST first of all have it hidden on a page by astute means,  and then by water have it appear.  Much harder than simply painting it; much harder to invent a generative system of extraordinary difficulty and have it  explode without destruction, but instead imparting order, than just having it put there.

That is not an explanation at all, but a piece of imagination which assumes  what is required. WHERE it ALL came from. It is begging the question and small  wonder that even given its imaginary and irrational ignoring of the basic and underlying question, it fails to work, and that on a massive scale. You cannot duplicate reality, O mere man, by industrious ignoring of issues. You need something with the necessary qualities to get quality.

Heaven, then, and earth, unaccountable except by divine action, an eternal presence (since nothing comes from, nothing, which hence can NEVER have been the ultimate case) of what is adequate to make law and import and disport it, bind it and make it work in a milieu that accepts it and so forth, is going to  pass away. Why not ? It came. If God makes a creation and puts it there, there it is (First Law of Conservation of Mass and Energy). If its specifications are not per se eternal, it will run down (Second Law of Thermodynamics), and if people in the system have material facilities as part of the design (cf. Deity and Design ... 2 and 8), then these may confidently be expected  to decrease in their specialisation or specificity over time (verified dramatically as to our defiled genomes, by Professor Sanford of Cornell University - Waiting for Wonder Appendix).

That  passing away future is for heaven and earth at the statement of Christ. From the same person comes an addition. HIS words by contrast, He indicates, will NOT  pass away. The turmoil of the end of the Christian Age, the Gospel Age, the age of trial and test, promulgation of peace and proclamation of remedy to all nations, this will end and lead on to judgment of  all, in due course, and  with that comes its dismissal, the entire creation of heaven and earth as in II Peter 3 and Isaiah 51:6 likewise. As the prophet declares, it will wear like an old coat and be gone, but the salvation and righteousness of God will not pass away. THIS Author is divine,  as required for the results, and when a book is finished, like an old text book or a piece of clothing, like an old coat, then it goes, and there is little ULTIMATE drama in that. It is just one of those things which, at that level, can happen.

You buy a book; you toss it away when its job is done. It is nothing so very special; though in the case of the heaven and the earth, their scope and scale is so vast and so significant that to mere mortals, sinners at that, like ourselves, it is staggering. Yet it is perfectly logical: make it, dump it, at any level ? What is the problem! It is  clear where that lies: it is in the growingly frantic failure in a matey (and devastatingly dire) Age,  where majesty is  often mocked, and deluded and dictatorial powers are understandably hated, but even reasonable rules are adventurously disregarded, where corruption is like Spring, sure to come it might seem, in  almost any government.

In the spirit of the Age, there appear drifts increasingly forceful, and turning into gusts and then threatening typhoons. It does not WANT to admire, far less worship, unless perhaps it be things, or ideas, or made-up moral ideas, based on nothing but desire or appeal. It is not used to worshipping the decisive divinity, the dynamic deity, the God of infinite power and vast clarity whose ways never change (Psalm 102, Hebrews 1, Malachi 3:6, James 1:17), whose redemption is consummated and on offer, nor obeying anything particularly, unless it be so vague that you can make it conform to what you really want, in one way or another. That is the TREND.

The word of the book owner, the old coat owner, that is far more consequential than the book or coat. If he wants, he may buy a new one, or contrive or create a different one. That is how personality moves amidst objects, purpose performs amid products. The coat is not of magical origin but based on tasks well done. It ageing is not staggering, but in line with law. Its replacement is not astounding, but both reasonable, and if it be too torn, to be expected. If it is not meant to be eternal, then that is the way of it.

In a world where in its own and present ways one would not WANT it to be eternal, because better things are available and to be found in the Maker, and little worse can disgrace the globe than what is to be found in it, its coming despatch, removal, termination is a very understandable thing. However, that is the end of the Olympics of test; the 'village' of this world comes in order to go. The program is personal and the point is spiritual; and it all has both beginning and end,  except for what by grace relates savingly to the Maker, and so continues as His guest. Since He is eternal and justly described as "love", having done all  for  all, this too is eternal, and it applies  to those  made in the first place in His image, now restored (Titus 2-3).

What then of the situation ?

The Christian depiction of the power and nature and nurture of the God of creation is not that it came, holus-bolus from nowhere,  where nothing was, or by question begging small-talk for the blogged brain, but that God made us and our universe. The Greek term is categorical: it is not a matter of means but action to make what was not there, to be there (Colossians 1:15ff.), just as the Hebrew term deals not with instrumentality bur impartation of what was not there.

In the beginning, there was God, and He made the heavens and the earth, indeed created them. It shows how He assembled them, the progression in the unique type of ordinal numbers in a list, and the finish in the specified times, each the same in length, each related to what is called 'day' in a created work (called  Genesis) which goes on in a vocabulary perspicuously clear, not to double-define terms, but to use them aptly and as appropriate to what is being imparted

(cf. The Defining Drama Ch.   3, Dayspring,

Let God be God ... Ch. 12,

The Biblical  Workman Ch. 7,

The Pride of Life ... Ch. 1,

Tedious Torturers ... Ch. 11,

Possess Your Possessions (PP) Ch. 3, Epilogue and

PP Volume 8, Ch. 5). 

Similarly, the living things are in kinds, evidently from the things cited, large categories. It is clear that KIND creation is not fudged format  in ambling wander creation (cf. The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 4 - The Catechism of Creation and the Excision of Evolution, The Defining Drama Ch. 10 as marked).

There is a TYPE,  a PROTOTYPE if you will, an ARCHETYPE, if you prefer that notation, and that is the way it is going to be (cf. . In fact, this is precisely what is now found as is made so  clear in works such as Dr Michael Denton's EVOLUTION: A THEORY IN CRISIS, things so momentously confirmed in micro-biology as in plain sight (cf. Deity and Design ... Ch. 6, Wake Up World! ... Ch. 6, Deliverance from Disorientation Ch. 7).

As Denton points out, hierarchical, mathematical and precise are the dimensions of the vital complexes at the material level, and while we can go some distance toward the remarkable,  as in ligers and the like, yet there is a very clear-cut and definable LIMIT in inter-breeding as in type.  That is what makes Stephen Jay Gould's pronouncement about 90% of basic designs having been LOST since the "Cambrian Age" (to use their terminology), the more significant. Even more so is Dr Sanford's indication that so far from there being an incremental feature in our own genome, it is deteriorating.

This is the nature of the creation as it is present: or to put it differently, INFORMATION is not to be found except from intelligence. THAT is the empirical point stressed by Professor Werner Gitt, in charge of a Berlin research institution (Not Only is God Great, but Glorious Ch. 5).

What would you ? that work is done by nothing and nobody, to institute language, provide determinative definitional consequences in one language, and provide with this a cache of considerations or commands (putting things into practice) about HOW information is to be used, concepts and captions, facilities for programmatic reactions, and you scientifically imagine that the closest available concept to explain is what is NEVER known to provide such things, with NO explanation of how it could it it did! Such delusive departure from scientific and  logical norms is able to be explained,  as noted elsewhere (cf. Romans 1, John 3), but explains nothing for its own part.

The Bible avoids all this, with distinctive and clear indication that the Eternal Personal Being, God, is of unlimited intelligence, creative power,  was always there, is not growing up, has no conferred nature for such a process, being the ultimate that replaces nothing in any rational and non-self-contradictory thought, and the Eternal whose  advent likewise  was not from nothing, because in all  adequacy and cover of all that was to be, He existed in His own being, deferring to nothing, self-sufficient. To reject this is a work of irrational unbelief. To believe in Him in nevertheless faith, but reason requires it (cf. SMR, TMR). As to growing up, that being the prerogative of created things with young, which grow up, it is then simply inapplicable.

However humbling it may be to human pride, it is we who grow up, and if willing, learn.

To be sure, this creation bears with it certain no-nos and rules, precepts and morals, in terms of which it is is to be managed by those who have it, and can respond not only to information, but with will.

What teaches in multi-point, and irrational profusion, the opposite of this could be called Christian only if words had no meaning. If that were so, why bother to call  anything anything.

*4

See Jesus Christ, the Creator and Courier.

*5

On I Peter  1:10ff., note the following:

The theme is salvation of your souls.

On this, the Old Testament prophets enquired from the Lord, carefully seeking His mind. This done, they prophesied concerning the grace in this field, ready to come.

In this, they sought not only the entire character of the salvation, but the kind of time in which it would come direct and in its own fulness (in fact as in Daniel 9:24-27 cf.  Christ the Citadel Ch. 2 ).

It was the Spirit of Christ in particular who, in them, who gave the  replies, and so made the testimony that would focus on the sufferings of the Messiah, the Christ, and the glories that would result.

They learned in these ways that it was not a matter of merely adjacent times that was in view, but to what in fact are now those of the Age of the Gospel, the time of the apostles, the era of Christ Himself, who came. Indeed, what He did and they said, these are things now reported  to the contemporaries of the apostles, who preached this very Gospel now at last unfurled like a flashing flag over the faith in God.

So  vast is this entire world of prophecy and fulfilment, salvation wrought and taught, grace foreseen and now shown, that the very angels are attracted to such a scene and scenario.

*6

See Massifs of Pure Splendour Ch. 11,concerning II Peter 1. 

*7

SLITHER ON BOARD, AMID SLIPPAGE INTO REEF-FILLED WATERS

While some may be blue-faced in the cold, almost frantic in their haste, realising that their foundation is sinking fast into the ocean, others might resent, in their beds of luxury and pampering, the very thought of anything actually daring to be wrong in such a vessel. They might, to transfer the imagery to the fact, resent bitterly anyone even imagining that staying in a style of living or a church which is strictly antithetical to what the Bible requires and commands in the name of Jesus Christ. Though He may be their ostensible Lord, whose words will not pass away (Matthew 24:35), yet they may even denounce the one who warns, the watchman, as a traitor to the true cause and so on. We MUST not be this and that dictatorial, bull-headed and the like, as if being faithful to the God who made us and sent out His salvation into a withering world, were something other than normal, unhypocritical allegiance. If so with men, how much more with God!

However, this kind of vexed duplicity, and calling good evil and evil good, was just what was met by Jeremiah, not least when he was put in stocks by Pashur, son of a priest and the chief governor.

This atrocity was performed right near to the temple, whose ways had been subverted by spiritual entrepreneurs, rotten in deed, unruly in life and unreasonable in religion. This is seen in Jeremiah 7:1-16, words from which are cited by Christ and applied in His own day of  spiritual renegacy on the part of those in high and innovative religious orbits in the land. Their trust as in Jeremiah 7:1ff., was in "lying words,"  exalting the temple without due regard  to what it stood for, precisely as now they exalt the name of some Christ whom  they invent,  apart from  the Bible, defiling His name by what they create as its new face.

They do not rely on the God of creation and salvation whom He declared Himself to be (John 8:58, 14:1ff.), or on His word, but on some specious substitute, making travesties of the word of God, and invasions of its text, mopping up here and there, as they proceed, unimpeded, from folly to folly, and false attribution by their own minds, to the word of God. They coalesce with evil, on this side or on that, lapse and surge, and become  something else ... alien to the word, concurrent with culture, whether religious or political or whatever else has real a peal to the constituency.

Thus moved,  and without moving in such ecclesiastical bodies, readily to you participate in an effectual divorce and dabble in doctrines of devils precisely as forecast (I Timothy 4:1ff., II Timothy 3-4, II Peter 2:1ff.). The leaders in this, as in Acts 20 and II Peter 2, are FROM YOUR OWN MIDST. Is there a hearing difficulty here! (cf. Matthew 13:15ff.)!

Indeed, you see Christ's reference to the  condemnation given through Jeremiah,  in Luke 19:46. Moreover, so great was the defected conduct and procedure in vogue in His own day, that He even over-turned tables of commercial enterprises in the temple precincts. Matthew 23 shows basic beliefs to be distorted, self-importance cavorting in lordly breasts like Spring lambs.

It was so in the day of Jeremiah, with false prophets abounding and in power. It was so in the day of Christ, with crucifying false ecclesiastical authorities at work in worse physical violence than Jeremiah suffered, and that not on the prophet, but upon the King of the Jews; and you see it now as foretold equally, in our own contemporary scene. It proceeds precisely as in the prophesied scenario, till all-containing demagoguery of proud all-inclusive, dominating Babylon as in  Revelation 17 with its Revelation 13 prelude, instead of being miles away, arrives like a wind. Did they warn ? Did not anyone speak ? Yes many have spoken and paid; but they were not heeded. Is it then useless to speak ? Love is not like that, and if any one be delivered, it is all worth while. The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.

If then one warns of this condition and result, before the end comes,

is it an offence to note

	that the ship is sinking.
	that  it has been smitten by the icy substitute for the warm and living heart of the God of creation and redemption, for His written word interpreted by itself, or for fidelity to the changeless Jesus Christ.
	that this lapse is as foretold.
	that immersion in 'churches' which assault biblical morals, creation, free justification through faith by His grace, without works except His own, the way of life as He gave it and stated it - and Jesus IS the way, and does not alter as in Hebrews 13 - is but a form of drowning ?

Should one quietly leave  those who sleep in the midst of this calamity as if  such neglect were some work of noble selflessness and concern, leaving many to die, slumbering under hypnosis or dreaming diligently in their beds! If one is slandered,  as has been a devil's masterpiece in my own case, for one's pains in warning and working, as people object and distort or invent and resent such mission, is it  any wonder when you consider what they first did to Jeremiah when  he pointed out their errors and failures ? Is that any reason to be subdued by such  evil  enterprise ? I think not.

Besides God has given  infinite assurance that those who invent weapons against one in the work of Christ, of the Lord, will find these not to prosper, and their mouths are to be condemned (Isaiah 54:17, a promise to the servants of the Lord). Such has often happened to  those who act to alert the sleeping before the weeping, such as Tyndale for example, involved in his case in magnificent enterprise, then caught like criminals and formally subdued with false charges.

Nor is this all. The warning for cowardice, or collapse, or withdrawal from the work of the Lord, and all that goes with it, is not merely individual, but in terms of the ultimate resultant for many - as when apparently mall O-rings, not adequately checked, accounted for the Challenger rocket's demise. That cost many millions;  even more important and indeed vital, is the loss in the end, of millions of life, surging about the squalor of misled  captaincies, settling amid the rocks as if they were friends.

All this has a beginning, and is now well under way,  as former churches become either hotbeds of slander as in II Corinthians where gossips did not TEST assertions using 2 or 3 witnesses and were roundly rebuked for this spiritual crime, and seed-beds for sedition, either with neo-evangelical collusion with enemies of the faith, or stark contradictions of the word of God: and the people still love to have it so (as in Jeremiah 5:30-31).Again, it surely leads on to more ample rebellions, though less subtle, as they begin to condemn outright, first in this and in that, then more extravagantly, the testimony that does not sink all in the thrall of spiritual unifications of various kinds. For long the myth is is  kept  up, as if it is all in the name of Christ, or a pseudo-Christ (cf. II Timothy 4:1ff.), or even a clear supplanting principle, flamboyantly held aloft, as an idol.

AS this kind of collusion with contradiction is tolerated, and spreads, and increasingly resistance is overthrown,  since the conscience of those immersed in this vainglory has long since learned to live with the contradiction or compromise of Christ, even when  in things still  termed 'churches', what then ?It is then that the movement towards ignoring ancient and modern sects in the interests of unity, becomes more dynamic. Those who dare like Daniel become more intolerable; the 'Church' in its massif form, becomes increasingly a tool of the State, or the kingdom of culture, as when Church independent schools consent to  curricular requirements concerning the hegemony of evolutionism in science, even with some, to the point of losing credibility to their course acceptance if they do conform, or fail to  so. With such manipulation, while the money pours out to help sustain them from the State, it becomes a neo-Christianity, a bifurcation of imagery, a terrestrial diverticulitis, swelling where it ought not, and disrupting digestion.

The word of God becomes a matter of direct disregard, the term fundamentalism confusedly or abusively or both, made a signal of extremism or terrorism (The Biblical Workman Appendix 3, cf. The Time is Coming ...Ch  5, esp. *2A,  and Dancers ... and Answers Ch.    3),

Indeed, it is confusedly wrought because the opposite of Christianity, Islam, holds to the work of another false prophet whose followers have often sent forth troops to  physical victory in the name of Allah, and this religion is one tolerating no compromise, subjugating and terrorising or subordinating from time to time, in this century or that, with these sub-groups or those, with some of the incitements coming from the Koran.

On this, see The Divine Agenda ... Ch. 6, More Marvels ... Ch. 4 , and more broadly the list below, concerning these matters.

More Marvels ... Ch.     4, esp.  *4, 

SMR   pp. 50ff., 62ff., 829ff. , 1080

Dancers, Prancers, Lancers and Answers Ch. 3,
 *1A misconceptions about the Cross, variable and mutually conflicting,
on the part of the Koran

Lord of Life Ch.  3 (and force), 1081ff. (and faith),
Outrageous Outages  ... Ch.   5; 

His Wounds Opened Eternity Ch.    4;     3

Stepping Out for Christ Ch.    9,  

Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch.    8 (in perspective), see also *1,

Divine Agenda Chs.    6
with  3 (an overview of religious truancies, including Marx, Darwin and Koran)
and Highway to Hell - (Koran citations in both,
with ideational parallels in perspective,  in the latter two; 
and in the former,  futile depravities in endless ideologies
such as Sudan has shown so significantly, Islam ablaze without glory),
cf. Overflight in Christ Ch.   1 (and the Koran's musings);
 

1493 (esp. Britain and sharia);
News 138,  Beauty for Ashes Chs.    4,   7

Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed ... Ch.   5, Acme ... Ch.  9 , Great Execrations ... Ch.    3,  SMR p. 1O88D - three major religions in some ways in concert, astray.
 

News 138,  Beauty for Ashes Chs.    4,   7,   SMR pp. 1074ff., esp. 1079, 1081ff.
(These latter show this religion, with the other three major conspiracies  towards the ultimate - why conspiracies ? It is because men conspire, or breathe plans together for a control, rule or oversight not ordained by God: these are breaths of man, and the breath that matters is that of God, in and by which all scripture is inspired by Him - II Timothy 3:16, Isaiah 8:20, in the Book of the Lord - Isaiah 34:16, the Bible, and sustained and implemented by Him -Matthew 26:54ff..

Other ideas for rule are always unruly, since they always tend to use power
for what neither reason nor truth compels.).

 Possess Your Possessions (PP) Ch.  8, app.,  PP 11,  4,   11,   5 (national character and character of Islam).

See also SMR pp. 822ff., 986ff., 1O88D.

Thus what many Moslems do, illicitly becomes a mode of description of what others who have no part in Islam are deemed to do.

All but incredibly this is made to apply even to those who believe the very opposite of  core teachings,  in the Bible which vastly preceded Muhammad. Though they hold to no ways, to  beliefs as thus practised, having faith without change over the millenia, in a God attested from the first as in  Genesis, yet just as the Nazis bundled Jews together and sent them in  cattle-trucks to oblivion, so these would act not far from that figure, on the names and works of those who accept what Christ said of the Bible no less than His word on other topics. They do so, not this time, by the word 'Jew', but 'fundamentalist', crushing opposites into the trucks of dismissal. Moreover, even the term needs attention, as shown above.

It is true that Christianity from the Bible is not in all things opposite to the Koran,  since Muhammad chose some things from the Old Testament;  but in the basics of belief, the foundations of the faith and in the nature of God in His declared love and sending of His Son into the world, not to condemn it but that it might be saved, it is  entirely contrary.  Indeed, it is VERY opposite to attest Christ as the Son of God, incarnate, the truth, physically slain, bodily resurrected, the only and always necessary  redeemer, and to make another Jesus who is but a prelude to Muhammad, who affirms the Old Testament prophets which foretold Christ and the Christian Gospel, and yet denies in his own doctrines,  just what they teach! (cf. SMR pp. 1080ff.).

That is the way with false prophets: UNLESS they take over some things, they merely honestly or confusedly or perhaps in writhing seeking of fortune, seek to start a religion. The false prophet USES the  existing fame and name of another, just as mistletoe uses the gum tree parasitically for its nurture, and adapts it to his will, though as Jeremiah 23 points out, the Lord did not send him, and therefore he but destroys his listeners who heed him.

Thus comes the slitherly and scandalous slander of having 'fundamentalists' first of all mis-defined as if some fundamentals were all of the word of God, and plenary inspirationism were identical with partial requirements,  and then conformed in a blasé carelessness, or wicked depravity as if fidelity is always to the same thing.  WHAT it is to which one gives  fidelity, its nature and character and ways, this is not important. Was there ever a more prodigious  case of rash generalisation! Indeed, this is woeful betrayal of categorisation, truth and even due care, a witless extravaganza of meaningless jibing, separation and sedition.

If  anyone loyal to something MUST be of the same kind as anyone loyal to anything else, then is someone in love with someone in love with everyone else ?  Thus Nazis are really Communists ? Is there no end to the witless confusions which do not come from brain failure on the part of pedants, whatever else be their source!

Again, some refuse to believe in the God of glory, and imagine He  does not know how to  communicate formally and authoritatively with man, whether in written form or incarnate format: what then ? Then of course, what you believe in, it is not the God who sent His only begotten Son into the world, who works all things after the counsel of His own will (Ephesians 1:11), for whom nothing shall be called impossible. In that case, you do not relate to Christ at all, except as an rejecting unbeliever in the God Almighty of creation, redemption and information, hence moving sharply towards becoming one on whom the wrath of God comes to rest (John 3:36).

You directly disbelieve His testimony ? Very well, in that case, whatever you may call yourself, even perhaps using Christ's very name in some reconstruction, you collide with the One who said: I am the way, the life and the truth, and that He spoke just what His Father commanded (John 12:48-50, 14:6), and that he who had seen Him had seen God, as He revealed His nature. These are positions available when reason is rejected and faith is not found; but hijacking names and mischievously misusing terminology and condemning what is faithful as if it were co-ordinate with violence by such means, this is a moral menace and a capitulation to caricature, even at its lighter moments... Violence comes,  first in suppression, as of free speech, then in fines and imprisonment, because of articulated and defended testimony annoying to King Culture, and late in killing, not just as now, by many elements of murderous religious enterprise, but in terms of the unified synagogue of Satan (Revelation 2:9,  3:9), to use an earlier illustration,  demanding conformity or departure! (cf. Revelation 17).

In fact,  the shared model is forbidden as we have seen. Sharing Christ  with any idolatry, with the advent of new-fashioned gods, which of course in due course grow older, of whatever ostensible dignity or type, with or without faces (cf. Deuteronomy 32:15ff., II Corinthians 10-11) is excluded by the word of God. It is forbidden, being unequal yokage (II Corinthians 6:14ff.), and amounting to acknowledgement of false prophets (Jeremiah 23:17-33). One example occurs in the sharing of the model of Christ with the STATE in its educational, cultural and forbidden morals, or with false churches or religious constructions, in defiance of the doctrine of Christ and the Bible (Matthew 23:8-10, Ephesians 4:4). Such is now so common as in itself to be nothing to write home about; but it is something to avoid.

Faithful to Christ, one should never as with Daniel, for one moment spiritually be prodded into making oneself subject to such submergence,  combinations, generalisations;  for God is One and Christ is He who has revealed Him, full of grace and truth as of the only begotten of the Father (cf. John 8:58, Hebrews 1). What then is it like to share and lay bare again the wounds of Christ in contrariety from His word, will and way ? drawing so near as to name Him, moving so  far as virtually to mock Him, recarving the truth in His name! He, remaining constantly where He always has been in nature and power,  is thus paraded in ignominy, His Lordship or face or grace,  assaulted. In terms of continuing amongst such religious ruffianism (II Corinthians 4:4-6, 10-11),  It resembles willingly ignoring a life-boat offered as the ship sinks, a ship which one should never have boarded in the first place, or long since have left.

Warning! if one did not warn, one  would be on the way to assisting by silence, the gradual submergence, till the overcrowded  vessel,  to adjust the maritime image, slowly sinks amid its own rottenness. FLEE FROM BABYLON is a message from Jeremiah to John (Jeremiah 51:6,  Revelation18:ff.). This name (cf. The Time is Coming ... Ch. 5),  whether literally then, or metaphorically thereafter (as in Revelation 17), it is the very type of facile religion, holding all, believing none, fickle in faith, heartless in treachery, manifold in follies,  enticing,  devising, chameleon-like in flexibility, and then dominant in dealings.

IF then the antichrist is to come (as in I John 4:3, II Thessalonians 2), why should he be helped ? If one is faithful, what if the world be faithless! one has already been shown not to pray for it (John 17:9), just as Jeremiah was told at the last not to pray for those then appointed to ruin (Jeremiah 7:1-6) in view of their consolidated compromises and violations of morality and spirituality, unrepentant, mordant, determined in spirit!

What then of Ezekiel 33:7ff. ? Is this duty to warn the same as silence ? Is immersion in immorality, call it by a different name, conformity ? Is allowance of what is forbidden, obedience, is acceptance of company amid rebellion, a mode of its very opposite, namely congregation with Christ who denounced these very things! Is this to befriend those who by such slippage approach doom as a vessel a hidden reef! and this ruinous reef is not so hidden. Indeed they have rejected the truth (cf. Jeremiah 18:1-12, 44:15-26). Therefore they do not hear even when it comes to the very grinding on the bows.

They do not hear the rasping amid the dancing instead of duty, and because of the trumpets of anti-truth, which blare at the ears of those who take no action!

	Is conformity neutrality ?
	Is acquiescence acknowledgement ?
	Is consent by continuance to persist, that acknowledgement in practice that the ecclesiastical authority which one chooses may do this if it wills, and yet one will not divorce from the effrontery and affront to Christ involved ?
	is this to be allowed, as if one stayed in a band of robbers, here the pillaging of the commandments of Christ, not money, the issue ?
	Is defilement of the lambs amid lupine lordship, a  courageous act ? or even a responsible one!
	Is a new Christ  with new  morals and an offloading from the wisdom of culture to be created and then suffered in the pulpits, assemblies and decision making of the Church ? It  would not be for the first time, Paul depicting such leaders as false apostles, certainly not agents of Christ (II Corinthians 11:1-15), rather related  to the great transformationist, the  Satan himself, unhallowed, deceptive and deadly.

There is nothing neutral about massaging commands into their opposites, moulding perspectives into  alien themes, taking over from the Bible, using it for other purposes,  composing it with new gods, newly come up (just as in Deuteronomy 32:15-18), the product of the culture of a corrupted generation, staggering on the precipice of eternity, with weapons ready to ruin its world already poised in the style of things predicted (Matthew 24:12-14, 21-22)!

Again, is quiescence with submergence, regrettable or ruinous! Is it an evil thing to believe that He who created all is indifferent to what He died for in Christ! Is His dying and being raised that He might be Lord of all (Romans 14) the same as doing so in order to be enmembered in anything at all and joined to images and ideas, gods or people acting as if they were! Thus  man invents  the contrary of His word, His work and His way, making 'superior steel' by slipping in additives, superior cocktails by adding spirituous fumes for a new bouquet and superior beings who need no god but the one they create, in bits, in syntheses, in propagandising and empty pomp, but  always in entire forgetfulness, that God is He who has given a basis for anything, not a repository for everything!

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