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CHAPTER ONE

TIME AND ETERNITY

There is time and then there is eternity.  Eternity was the start for the rest, so that there was something to invest, and not nothing. With nothing you get nothing. It was always there, because the Initiating Cause took the initiative and so the universe and all things limited and not eternal took their course from this. They find decay or decision or dereliction or arrival or sustenance, depending on the case, the conditions and the situation invented for them.

The Initiating Cause (IC like OC in an Army) is not limited by anything, since if this were the case, it would already be itself an initiated cause in a control situation, and hence it is not in a system of causal kind, of causality. Causality is merely one of the attributes of the IC, since it is an avenue for desire to become fact, thought to become fixture and plan to become act. It issues like light from the sun, as an exhibit of the power to act of the One who so acts. There is no First Cause in the sense that of all the causes, this was the initiator for our causal system. God is never WITHIN the compass of our causal system. He MADE it, as the way in which things operate once created in His own systematic manner. When the IC causes something, our type of causation is one possible result.

In creation, it simply became actual. Thus in acting as its cause, God is not a part of some causal sequence, hanging in the heavens, to which He must relate, or as part or proponent in which, He acts. In causing anything, He simply acts as its basis and ground, so that as He wishes, so it is,  whether to create or remedy desecration or anything else He may have in mind. God is not the First Cause but the Cause of Causality. That is just one issue of His determinations and resolutions, no more containing Him than does a book contain an author. It may reflect Him closely (or not), but it does not limit him. It is his expression for a purpose, not integral to his being. It relates but it does not rule. It expresses but it does not determine.

This is important to realise, though it may seem merely terminological. Without this realisation, one is left with endless confusion.

Having caused our type of wait-for-it causality, from His own midst where waiting is not an imposition but a decision, God intervenes as much and as often as He did in making it in the material and visible realm so created, at will. It is His will that laws operate, so instead of things milling about, they do. It is His will that form exist, so that instead of fragmentation being all, they do. It is His will that formulation exists, and functions of designable kind follow this, and so scientific laws may be found which mirror what He did. It is His decision that man may decide to ignore, travesty, traduce or trifle with His name; or not.

Opportunity lies in the NOT.

Accordingly, in time, one of the limits set up by the Initiating Cause, whose word can cause anything desired, there is opportunity. You may kill yourself or your neighbour, or in exalted cases, a few million, increasingly popular among those with maximal opportunity; or you may maim them or imprison them or capture them, as Daniel was captured when young, by the imperial  might of Babylon, when it paid an earlier call on Jerusalem, before the finale!

This may lead to other events in time, such as in that case,  to the eventual humiliation of Babylon, the exaltation of Daniel to high office in it, and the test of the testimony of his word about the word of God, in dire challenges, against other options. His words as sent from God, for he was a prophet,  took effect. They did not leave any ambiguity,  as Nebuchadnezzar repeatedly acknowledged,  especially when recovering from a downfall of his psyche, but not his kingdom, when this flurry of worry ended.

Thus it is, both in dealings with the invisible God, whose results were there most visible,  as they were in the beginning, when the universe was made and so became visible (Hebrews 11:1-3), because when God speaks, it is done. An author can write, and it is done; God can speak and the powers that create act accordingly. Entrepreneurs have that ability,  according to their placement. God has that ability, without material placement, with all its limits in time, but with the power  to create any TYPE of thing. Men may envisage and then act so that invisible vision becomes visible resultant, where mind manipulates matter and injects it with the formulation on which it must now operate, exhibiting what has been foreseen for the purposes held in mind, before any action. When God acts, it is not even the sky which is the limit; for He made that too. It is His will alone which is the limit. Thus He created the universe and all in it; and that was profound, creative, masterful, as  Genesis 1 implicitly exhibits in its impact.

He may again, remove it (as in Isaiah 51:6, Matthew 24:35, II Peter 3, Revelation 20), in the last of which we learn that there is found no place for it, for God has then no more time for it. When we act in our tininess, vast things may occur within our bounds. When God acts, there are no bounds. Universe, become, go! It is like a message to a dog to lie down; but when it comes to the mere structure for things visible, it goes without more ado!

Many are the types of things which God created. Between the coming and going of the universe, there are many marvels. It is a vast undertaking to make a universe, so much is bred for its history.

One type of thing is opportunity. It is a marvellous thing. It is not a matter of chance in fact, since God works all things after His own counsel (Ephesians 1:11), needing nothing, and accepting nothing in the process. True, He created freedom, but this is relative to His word. For instance, in the case of man, it is limited to the link or otherwise with Himself and His word, as for children with earthly fathers, within their posts. If that link with God is not there, that link, then the result is a breach, so that man is left, as in Psalm 1, without a site, situation and power, a perspective and an opportunity, such as children have because of their parents.

They thus become orphans, and in this respect, subject without parental control, if not to law, where option to breach exists, then to its workings and those of the liberty of what has been given this facility. In that case, what happens they may regard as by chance. It is like chaff blown, says Psalm 1. Purposeful intervention for the child is then not predicable on the connection with the Father, since it is broken. Nor is it possible to determine what may be permitted, since with God there is no searching out. If He TELLS you, you know; if you do not listen, or do not come where the family home is, then there is no possible way to find the result, and philosophy founders accordingly, like someone newly in a foreign country, where their speech has all the meaning for that person, of twittering birds.

It is not by any means that there is no meaning; it is just that it is not discerned.

Thus it is not controlled with consideration as with children, but subject to environmental pressures, though the Lord is not far from any one, and may intervene at will: yet it is not the same as with children.

Does this mean that the children of God, born of the Spirit and the word of God (I Peter 1-2, John 3) may not suffer ? It does not follow. Some children went to Afghanistan for England BECAUSE, at the national level, they were its children! God being without limits, HE determines the case for His children; but since these must take up their Cross and follow Christ, it is scarcely without warning that they become His! (Luke 14).

Following a crucified leader who declared that His children must serve, rather than be served, just as He did, in providing a just ransom from the control, repulsion and cover of ruinous sin (Matthew 20:28), is scarcely a road to realisation of prosperity and power in this world. It gives liberty, since lesser and peripheral things do not now rule; but it does not give ambassadorial status as with the nations, since God is love, and in showing love, many suffer for it. It is always like that with love; you readily suffer for it. It does not seem so extraordinary then, but rather a case of a certain relished and responsible sense of necessity. Liberty to ignore it merely makes it all the more necessary, since its status is then all the more imposing.

Thus as He died, so in a spiritual sense, to evil and flesh and environment as lord, does the Christian die (cf. Galatians 5:24). It may involve many a battle, but the outcome is certain.

Death ? To be sure, death on the part of the Captain, Jesus Christ, was merely a prelude to the resurrection of that same body, in a culmination of the miracles of Christ, just as He had predicted repeatedly (John 2, Matthew 16:21,17:22-23,Mark 9:12,10:33-34). Life is not about achieving position. Many said Jesus, that are first will be last; and the last first. Life for sinners even on conversion, requires the shedding of the skin of sin, and the constant renewal in the form of the new man, the new being, the blessed and sustained spiritual life that lives in, from and for God. The physical death of Christ therefore becomes a signal to Christians as Paul shows in Romans 6:5, of the spiritual death to 'necessities' of flesh and environment, as so deemed by those during their time of being orphans without God.

Moreover this physical death was no figure, there was no poetic fancy; for instead,  quantification entered in for testing purposes. It would occur in three days, not four or 4000, or two seconds, this resurrection of what had walked and talked, without ever rotting (Acts 2). It would occur after His being spat on and reviled (Mark 10:33-34). What happened to the most lively Person ever found on this earth, who could summon or distance death and disease, and comfort without limit within His mission, was a matter of profound interest. What would the disciples do when it happened ? Philip voiced this concern, which was at once turned back to the fact that the mere dying was a passing, not a terminus, so that Christ resurrected as so often stated, would be preparing for company, the companionship of the saints of God, who are simply His children (cf. Ch. 6 of The Christian Prescription).

His death! It was a tableau to be witnessed, followed as in a lab experiment, by an event without human agency, to produce a result unique in world history. Some one would die, as stated, in the conditions stated, and be tormented, tortured, reviled, as stated, and then rise from the dead at a pre-specified time, for a stipulated purpose, namely redemption.  But by the same token, it would not be effectually for ALL, that this opportunity would arrive.

It would be ENOUGH for all, it would be RELEVANT for all, SUITABLE for all, DESIRED for  all (Colossians 1:19ff.), but it would NOT be taken by all. Certainly,  this is their own fault, and it is a self-molestation, since such was not the divine desire. But God created freedom, and even when it is mauled by sin, HE knows how to make it operative (cf. Tedious Torturers ... Ch. 6 and Ch. 1).

HE insists, for the realm of eternity,  that the opportunity, in one form or another, be there (John 15:22ff.). In fact, He has it all, as Initiator of all that is not God, from the first before the creation began its career, worked out for each soul. Computers make short work of those who cannot imagine how on earth God COULD know all about all and so act. When you can have thousands of operations per second in what man makes, it is obvious that the One whose power invented that of man, is not to be limited by man's lack of imagination. Even in the creativity of man, such things are now confirmed. In his powers to create there is mere moon to the sun which  made those powers, before they could create, by supreme creation! Just so, it is one thing to USE an aeroplane; it is another to make it. It is one thing to fly it; it is another to invent the air and the machine and the laws which enable such construction, ab initio.

The opportunity is there. Whether in eternity or in time, it is known by God. Its time comes, like a tide, or a ship nearing a rock in a storm. Then it goes. What happens in the interim can be all-important before God. If a cry comes up, in faith on the recording channel, then rescue can be launched. Some vessels live by such rocks, wondering when they must hit. But they never make the SOS, or SMS, save my soul. The equipment is there with which to call, the knowledge is there how to call, but they neither call nor cry. Or again, they may burble or gurgle but not cry. It is the cry that is heard (Psalm 145, 107). Mystic moments in surreal wonder are not a cry (Hosea 7:14-16).

Miserable moments in realisation of sin, massive moments in casting it aside onto Christ, masterful moments in His coming once more as Lord, as at the creation, but now without probation, in consummation: these are in store. Repentance is never easy; nor it is ever wise to ignore it. Making sin one's preferred culture is never sound. It is mere prolongation of absence from the household of faith, from the presence of the living God, from His restoration which is free, and which liberates.

How is the opportunity going with you ? Are you going with it ? Or will you NEVER give in, and NEVER give out the grace of the God who made you, as one of His people, born for the love of God, borne with His power into restoration, or as Colossians 1:13 puts it: as one among those whom He has conveyed into His kingdom. Thus He

"has delivered us from the power of darkness,
and has translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son."

It is an opportunity. It is better missed than misused, for trifling with it can be worse than the disease. In this, it resembles some antibiotics, where fiddling about with them can lead to their losing their power. While the power of God will never be lost, the opportunity of man may be, either by summary rejection of His delivering power, in salvation, or for some in searing their consciences as with a hot iron (I Timothy 4:1-2), as if eternity as a result meant eternity for fiddling before acting!