W W W W World Wide Web Witness Inc. Home Page Contents Page for Volume What is New
CHAPTER 3
The Devil and His Devices,
The Creator and His Vitality,
Victory and Virtue
PONDERING PROFITABLE ENTERPRISE: DEVIL INC.
As the devil ponders his path, having ceased in turmoiled humiliation his crusade into heaven (cf. Revelation 12, Luke 10:18), where many were lost who had been in the angelic host (Revelation 12:9), there are numerous lairs, lurks and quirks which one would expect to pass through his perfervid mind. After all, it is he who is the one "who deceives the whole world."
Had not Christ, having sent out the 70, who found the power to heal, to cast out devils and who returned from their adventure and advance while Christ stayed to pray for his learning team, prepared for His absence by such training! It was then that He declared that He saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven (Luke 10:19).
This power from His word to them prevailed even in His physical absence, and even his disciples could disrupt the dynamic of the devil, using Christ's own name. The power of the devil could be overthrown even by proxy, as Christ prayed, and the power of the kingdom of God was shown to be paramount. Satan fell in a combat which could not hold, for he lacked the dynamic to defeat deity, but not the wit to make it very hard for those who lack faith. That is the point. So much is attractive as hypocrisy to man, USING God or religion for peace of mind or happiness of heart, as if to admire a girl's corsets (old days) or finger nails, and forget to LOVE her. Thus what purports to be FAITH in Him, for many is a mere name for assent, not a reality to which the soul is bent. You have to love God with ALL your heart and soul and mind and strength, not mixing it with benefits received as the basis or goal or goad, like a salary machine who works, but has no heart, narrowing considering the rewards! The greatest reward of God is God Himself (Genesis 15:1).
What then, what enterprise might be expected to a devil filled with lying (John 8:44), empty of truth and skilful in deceit, a manipulator, fraud and factitious, meretricious snare and seducer ? If only he could contrive to make people desire to be Christians in order to have happiness, wealth, peace, power or something like that, making use of God as if He were a gas-station or a bank, forgetting the point in the products: if only this could be done, then despite his relative poverty and utter defeat by God, yet he might contrive to set up some kind of a kingdom for some time, one of his own dissavour, of his own desire.
As to the devil, he is a spirit, clammy, calamitous, brash and brittle certainly, as pride has such charms to donate to the ambitious; but he has many weapons. While the Christian has merely to chase him, resist in the name of the Lord (I John 4:4, I Peter 5:9), that he may go, and what Christ saw is the way it is, his incapacity before Him and His word (cf. Matthew 4), nevertheless there are devilish advances and devices, some apt. Thus the apostle Paul had this to say of the devil, "we are not ignorant of his devices," and again, from Paul we have this: that you put on the whole armour of God that you may be able "to stand against the wiles of the devil," (Ephesians 6).
As a spirit (man HAS a spirit, ruminative, imaginative, deliberative, assessive, determinative, devisive, originative, able to be moved like water before wind by the Spirit of the Lord or invaded by other spirits, which like dominating persons, may assert their lordliness in the unwary and unprotected cf. Luke 11:24ff.), the devil has certain potencies and potential.
Thus he can invest thought into a mind, contest intentions in a soul, seek to divest beauty from a thought, menace with unseen atmosphere. He can even seek to disorient or create a sense of calamity, to those whose spirits are not protected by the Lord; or an absurd sense of urbane self-sufficiency, as before a ruinous act or accident. He can close the eyes to greatness (as with Judas), immure the heart against a sense of guilt or responsibility, and cause such rumblings, such incitements to stumble, such a sense of undue fecklessness, as resembles very much an expert bowler probing for the weakness of a batsman; and then, having found something, trying to create through this, a spirit of non-enterprise and retraction in the team.
As a spirit, as we know from our own spirits, he is not a mere atmosphere or feeling; though he can produce both. However he may create the equivalent of a storm, or a static, through the sheer antagonism in his intensity, on which he is based, as a peculiar form of created wonder, like cream gone sour, like bread gone mouldy and like leaves fallen in Autumn only to dissipate. While he does not in this way depart, yet he gives the odour of unsanctity. Acts 13:9-10 gives, as does Psalm 109, the sense of an evil presence of such an intensity that it reminds one of the hind-quarter capacities of a skunk. Masquering in its black and white coat, this handsome animal is yet near to deadly if you do not face him!
Thus many are the faces, the facades, the facts cunningly distorted, the plans astutely devised by the devil, and many are those doped with wrong motives, whom he scours after charming, and seeks to crush after deluding.
At the world level, he finds it far easier to subvert a church, over a generation, than to overthrow it when it is faithful; for the power of God is too great. Hence he has misled many in what were once churches, now mere huts in a cucumber patch as Isaiah puts it (Isaiah 1:8), and completed the wreckage that John in Revelation 2-3, showed to be close to some religious bodies on the road to becoming virtual synagogues of Satan. He warned; but some have scorning, mute or verbal, in reply. Scorning warning is one of the ways of being audacious, deliciously intriguing and doomed.
Thus as liberalism, and various branches of later neologies formed and were forged to disrupt, corrupt, corrode and implode some very large churches, a magnificent return for Satan on his investment in the mixed motive plan for professing Christians, so the idea of an ecclesiastical NORM arose. Why if most of the churches can be persuaded to think more of their appearance before the world, and what they can get even by religious means from it, then there comes the point of the paradigm. THIS, says he, this is what Christianity REALLY is and this is the standard. The world nods amid its nostrums, and says, Yes, it's so: that after all, is all the Christian Church really is! We need give no respect to those oddities who insist on the Bible as absolute truth from the absolute God who has absolutely nothing to do with a joint rule with man! Let's divide and conquer: great story!
PURSUING DEVIOUS DEVICES
Thus raising the fiery standards of hell, the devil attaches these to the Cross, they of fine silks, that of wood, and overcoating it with them, surges ahead as he seeks to damn the churches that remain faithful, by enticing those who will do its will, if they are to be permitted to teach religious classes. There are many ways. One is this. People are told this: You are not to assure people that the BIBLE is truth, that this is the word of God and is sustainable. No, that is not the point, for it is Christ who matters, With this false dichotomy, this delusive division, they seek if it were possible, to deceive the very elect. The 'Christ' who without the Bible, or with just bits of it, is to be manufactured, is then set up as an idol, as changed as if by another crucifixion, and people may believe in that spurious substitute. It is religion as THEY perceive it, Christ as they remodel Him; and those who are dead to the truth, look so very concessive.
They stumble and seem to cause to stumble myriads of children mistaught through their offices; for assuredly as soon as you leave the only authorised word of Almighty God for another or a mixture or some kind of synthesis in which YOU are the arbiter, then you make void that same word by such action, and such traditions trample on truth, as Christ declared (Mark 7:7ff.). Indeed, HE showed the Bible to be what it is, a work of precision and pronouncement, not from pope or man, but from God and to have His own, unique, uncluttered divine authority (cf. Matthew 23:8-10). So also spoke Paul as to the Thessalonians (2:13):
"... when you received the word of God which you heard from us,
you welcomed it not as the word of men,
but as it is in truth, the word of God,
which also effectively works in you who believe."
Adding to it is a vast deep, and an invitation to death (Proverbs 30:6), an exercise in presumption, a doctoral dissertation on deception, an acme of arrogance and a default line between God and man.
Thus the term 'fundamentalist' is indeed dangerous, since it suggests a keeping to certain major points as the elemental necessity, and while there are such points, the point is that to point only to these is disappointing. The WHOLE COUNSEL OF GOD and ALL SCRIPTURE (Acts 20:27, II Timothy 3:16, Revelation 22:18-19) is the word in view, and highlighting does not alter this, while it may even detract from its precision and allow conflict and confusion.
This, it is dangerous*1; but far more so is the use of this danger to pillory the CONCEPT of the infallibility of the entire word of God as originally given to man, on which Christ placed so much practical and principial emphasis, while at the same time INSISTING that it is to be DONE, not merely admired (cf. John 6:39ff.,Matthew 5:17ff., 4:1ff.).
The devil thus makes people love to have the world placated, and to have christs to SOME extent divorcible from the Bible by cunning devices and cultural shrugs, so that what stands on the word of God is then assailed by the ingeniously confusing term 'fundamentalist', which is then conjoined to the approach of others, such as followers of false prophets who have used force in the arena of faith and have not conjoined evidential support. Mixing these miscalled fundamentalists, with others deemed the same in other religions, where force is used to make false faith, irrelevant to faith as it is, they condemn all. Anything more spurious, subtle and seductive of truth it would be difficult to imagine.
Thus, to be LIKE THAT (say militant Moslem 'fundamentalists') becomes by a contorted, specious and wickedly delusive trick, a trap for the biblical Christian. By this you make the population of peaceableness to become by a verbal splash, parallel to or categorisable with terrorists! How cute!
Thus, if ardent followers of a false prophet stick to a book, you can call them, well why not fundamentalists ? (cf. The Biblical Workman, Appendix 3).
THEN, you see, snarls the devil, you can make it look as if Christians who stick to the word of God as their doctrinal ground are LIKE THAT, you know, hideous, violent, trading life for their crass delusions and with as much heart as a stone. Why, then and therefore, such Christians, they are practically terrorists. Indeed, to enlarge on this macabre humour, we even had one highly placed Britain come so close to saying this that it is hard to find the difference*1.
By such devices, the devil can both persecute the truth on the very grounds of false prophecy, and subvert ostensible churches by having them PLACATE people, by saying, as has one Archbishop, WE ARE NOT FUNDAMENTALISTS*2. If it had been made clear that nevertheless they DO believe ALL of the Bible and do not depart for any from any part of it (such as the requirement to correct false teaching or depart from it as shown in Separation), that might have cleared the obstruction to the light. Alas to be friends with this world is to become an enemy of God (James 4:4), and it is very easy in a well-intended effort to be diplomatic to be deceived by the devices of the devil, with huge results for many who, staying where truth is not hallowed, give ground to the confusion in which the devil thrives as does mould in dank places.
Using means to muffle the upright, to mislead the weak and to deceive the devious, the devil thus is able more and more to make a NEW STANDARD, what most 'churches' do and say. As large churches are more and more subverted (cf. II Timothy 3, 4, I Timothy 4, II Peter 2, Matthew 24:24, Luke 18:8), you come nearer to the impact of what Christ declared in the last verse cited: When the Son of man comes, "will He find faith on earth!"
CORRUPTING AND CONNIVING WITH GOVERNMENTS
Then the government can insist (as it has done), that those who teach Christian things in schools at their behest and with their political authority (the second beast often at work, as in Revelation 13:11 - the one with horns as a lamb, but which speaks as a dragon), MUST belong to groups of ministers which can include those both of ancient heresies like Romanism (cf. SMR pp. 911ff., 1032-1088H), and more recent ones which are legion. In one case, in Victoria some years ago, it was even specified that as a Minister in Government Schools, one should NOT teach an infallible Bible since this might offend some of the churches involved. I told them that I, for my part, would teach that to which my ordination commitment directed me, and heard no more. It was precisely that which I had been obliged to point out to the General Assembly of the PC of Australia in 1964, in reminding them of their subordinate standard, in which all doctrine is based on what is demonstrable from the Bible only, an infallible work in its original donation to man.
Spiritual sleaziness perhaps, rather than sarcasm, is the lowest form of wit. If you say it, do it; if it is wrong, repent of it. If God says it, do not wander and ponder, but leave no room for the rebuke, "Why do you call Me Lord, Lord and not do the things I say!" - Luke 6:46. Abide in the living Lord, let His words abide in you (John 15:7), and proceed with joy, that is the royal recipe. Hence I did not conform to such nebulous nonsense, nor undertake to do so.
Nevertheless, while exceptions occur, the process and the procedure is to make a false faith and then insist that this be taught, or that what is necessary be omitted, or (as in S.A.) that what is given should not offend the curriculum (which is involved in naturalistic obsessiveness that denies even liberty to argue the truth of creation in schools*3).
Meanwhile, outside academia, political laws come into play, to inhibit speaking the truth (quite maladjusted to reality and subversive of what actually is) because someone's feelings might be hurt if you do, and to make fines or prison the premiss and perhaps the premises for those who simply insist on being non-conformist to the STANDARDS of society, politically grabbed from the air, or with more cunning, from alleged religious norms: 'Why, 'MOST churches believe this or that now! they say', as they flit with their wit. SO non-conformist are these 'renegades' that they believe that what God has given in the multiply attested verified and demonstrable truth of the Bible*4 over the 3500 years or so of its history, in preference to the last craze that passes in decades! How intolerable it is to the political pedant, the popularist contractor! On the other hand, this subterfuge, this governmental lapse from democracy, how intolerant of truth it is, how subversive of enquiry, how corrupt in content! How ludicrous is the hypocrisy of alleging tolerance as the very BASIS for this intolerance! Is it not enough to persecute and pillory, without rational ground, that it must be characterised in its dictatorial absolutism, as if it were tolerance! Must a lie masquerade with an image of holiness!
Corrupt, constrain, punish, propel, and when all is nearly gone, then standardise on the basis of the wreckage of what were once churches, those now refusing to repent as in Revelation 2-3, bodies left in the lurch. Make these then to become standards for more subversion, courtesy of political-speak. Such is the diabolical device, the witty wile of the devil, and many are they who so co-operate, wearing social haloes of tar, that there is a crowd to conform, like those at stations when the work of the day is done.
Thus love of his world subverts many, then political amplification subverts more, till truth lies dead in the street (cf. Isaiah 59:13-15), though not in the heart or where reason rules! Thus does Satan roar like a requited lion, but not for long. Love of this world is fine, provided you do not mind hating God! and that is fine so long as you disregard Him as the only source of truth, and are willing to believe in what contradicts itself, that is: that we do not and cannot KNOW the truth, which nevertheless is proposed as THE TRUTH to which man must conform! If you cannot know it because it is not there, how propound it, and if telling it as the reality, then this automatically becomes a lie, and in this setting, what the Bible calls THE LIE (Romans 1:25, II Thessalonians 2:10-11).
Thus not only is prescription and compulsion based on such world views presumption, it is impossibility, contradiction in terms. On the other hand, to require conformity to such belief patterns are in place in such governmental fraud, it is merely a use of force in matters of faith, in defiance both of God and reason.
Such madness invites a nation to calamity, families to corruption, and those who reject it, to those happy days as in Revelation 13, when we who are His are tried indeed.
The devil has many devices, and it is best NEVER to deal in any of them! He likes to produce
 |
lassitude, so that you
do not work well, |
|
|
brashness, so that your labours are ill-conceived,
|
|
|
rashness so
that you wander instead of ponder, |
|
|
militancy about what does not matter and
apathy about what does, |
|
|
blindness to foundations and light in attics,
|
|
|
resentment
and envy in place of health and help, |
|
|
starvation in the midst of food, |
|
|
lies that limp instead of vitality which loves life and rejoices in the truth. |
His diabolical nature appears bathetic, a constant derogation except of himself, his pride like an airy palace among the slums he produces, while his mind entertains malice as a hostess her guests, his ambitions live in darkness, since they can never be maintained, and his attainments are broody, since their eventual capitulation is the more certain as he deviously delves in darkness, that even resents the light.
His patrons, disciples and puppets abound, while governments often lie prostrate in his palaces, drunk with his secret intimations, and nations lie in death because of their seduction, and his eyes lift to sedition against spiritual reality as a raging hound lifts his head to the jugular with an agile enterprise appalling in its grossness.
PURSUING BIBLICAL PORTRAITS
OF HIS TAINTED PSEUDO-MAJESTY
You see biblical portraits of him or his ways, directly or indirectly through his disciples and his dupes, in parts of the Bible such as Ezekiel 29, Job 1, Revelation 12, I Peter 5, Genesis 3, Isaiah 14,Matthe 4, Luke 22, Acts 5, I Corinthians 7, II Corinthians 2:11, 11:14. II Thessalonians notes his coming power throb and lying wonders; Revelation 2:24 talks of his 'depths', while of his destiny we read in Revelation 20:2, 20:7, 20:10. Corrupted 'by reason of his brightness', he is the standing exemplar of wasted talent, inventive ghoulishness, the cancer of grace and the epitome of torment for truth, which refusing to be incarcerated, stirs him to inveigh the more, and kill more abundantly.
Thus as the world trips lightly to seduce churches, the devil its captain (the "prince of this world who has nothing" in Christ - John 14:30), to normalise relationships with corrupted religions while misled false prophets propel, in life or even after their death, by their demented spirits, the grandeur that could be man in true relationship to the Prince of Peace. Into what then do these propel ? It is, alas, into its writhing toils of torment, leading to mutual and often asinine destruction, as many are motivated to seek out 'good' bits in false inspiration, and attach themselves to loitering parts of spiritual seduction, lest in any way the devil or his disciples should inadvertently serve God. So the cauldron grows hotter, and men wonder as they plunder the truth, and mix fats with its athletic leanness and vigour.
Such spiritual radioactivity makes of man more and more, a victim of a spiritual cancer, and in his philosophic cups, he tends to love his carcinoma, like a deliverer, though it simply slays him.
Such a world cannot work, and it does not. It declines, it rapes, murders, slanders, has court action, mouths ideals, demotes them in practice, is confused, truth in abeyance, lordliness on the move, mistaking direction, finding the pit bottomless and the tasks insuperable. It is ever such when truth is not the tutor, and reality the propeller, when God is mocked and His words mulched with the cut grass of human desire.
Small wonder then that in the midst of this spiritually malodorous malady, this malapropos spiritual malfeasance, like people half dead in a swamp of spiritual mosquitoes, the human race grows more and more intolerant not only of the truth, but each one of the other; and hatred mounts like the lava from earthquake, lifting only to ruin. People writhe as tyrants roar, and when one evil is gone, its neighbour obliges, as when relatively kindly princes in Iran and Russia (that is, compared with what followed!), gave way to what was close to incarnation of the devil in the works of imparting misery, dictating what to believe, disfiguring bodies and interring, raping or plundering victims.
Such things, common like mice in a plague, in the USSR and in Iran, with Zimbabwe far from exempt, and Iraq teetering on its next available slide after Hussein, while more tyrants invest the Middle East with their lordly presences and wilful ways, become a sort of theme song for the hit parade of current cultures. These, more and more embracive, glorifying the grisly, sanctifying the brutal, are actively giving dreams of air with torture the staircase to delusive futures, which somehow routinely fail to arrive. The lie, of which Satan is lord (John 8:42-45), in spirit and in dynamic, which seeks to cut off God from creation, sinner from pardon, Christ from history, redemption from application, peace from this earth, the grace of God from humanity (Romans 1:18-25), so soars for view, like a vast sky-message from a lingering airship. Meanwhile, each gender abuses the other as if child-birth has nothing to do with sexuality, design with moral paradigms or man with responsibility.
Thus people increasingly have "exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever..." - Romans 1:26. That is the paradigm of naturalism, just as perversion in sexuality is the biblically STATED and predicted accompaniment of such lapses (Romans 1:25-27), a grisly fulfilment of what God has to say, abortive of pro-creation and against the divine rule for creation (cf. I Timothy 1:10, I Corinthians 5-6). Indeed, as in II Thessalonians 2, BECAUSE they did not "receive the love of the truth," so that they might "be saved," God has given up many to a strong or active delusion
 |
"so that
they should believe the lie, |
There is not merely one nor are there two ingredients of this consummation as traced in Romans 1; there is a syndrome for sin of this character and for this race, and it is being followed, as written in the Bible, as if it were an opera program: the works of man in defiance of the word of God. THIS is how it proceeds, what it means and where it goes. It is time to listen to the confirmed testimony of millenia. To ignore it is neither acute nor astute.
CONSUMMATION OF THE EVIL AND THE PRICE OF ITS ABOLITION
FROM THE HEART OF GOD,
INVITING ALL,
DESIRING THE RECONCILIATION OF ALL,
FORCING NONE
This consummation of evil, in the day of the devil's messiah (II Thessalonians 2:8), of the "lawless one," of the "man of sin" is to be in this finale, accompanied by "all power, signs and lying wonders," so that those who rest on the factitious, ignoring its base, basis and trend, as on hatred of truth, impressed with the brash, the brutal and the brittle, conquered by the glamour of the seductive trade for the spirits of men, show themselves like metallic vapours in the laboratory. It is like those shown in the bunsen flames, when one tests a chemical for its nature, that it might be revealed.
The power to impugn, rot, ruin, deceive, disport in woeful dynamics and hoist man like a dummy, while he yet lives, into the unsanctified air, is not small, a routine for the devil; and while the power of God is far greater, the evil one puts on his own displays, irresistible to those devoted to creation, not Creator. His is the offering for those who favour imaginary results from nowhere, and not actual ones from the originating cause, even of our system of causation, from its own rational, reticulated and real basis in celestial and eternal infinitude, even the power of the Creator. Satanic is the charter for seduction not sanctification for those who tend to rely on their own works in whole or in part for their truth, deliverance, future, salvation and wisdom, looking to this, rather than to the works of God, whose salvation is by grace and not of works.
Why therefore are works of man excluded in this sphere ? It is not least "lest any man should boast." In heaven, there is neither grace nor place for boasting.
If you are saved entirely by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:5-8), and the salvation cost the death of the incarnate God, in Christ Jesus, what IS there to boast about! Nor for that matter is there room for boasting in hell, since the greatest and most enthralling of false dreams, foolish ideals based on nothing, illusory plans without power, pomp without virtue, however long they lasted and with whatever measure of crudity and cruelty they were implemented in this world, being shown as lie, as fraud, as non-events, can be accorded no praise, any more than a crushed corpse that before death, drugged, fell from a window. As lashing waves that die when the torrent against truth has passed, are mere steps to doom, as past delusions, illustrations of illusion, cracks in the depths, long without light, are the place of abasement, so is the evil reward of ineluctable and defiant sin. Boasting ? of that! Nowhere. When its end is viewed, its beginning is rued, and its hugging to the heart, a sight appalling.
But God is the light, pellucid in truth, inimitable in power, grand in glory, gracious in heart, delighting in mercy, immovable, immutable, holy and helpful, pardoning and pitiful, though ever unstirred by the testimonies of spiritual seduction, mental machinations to mislead and bending of truth, that it might be crucified in this or that new myth.
In His will is wisdom, in His company is glory, in His work is splendour for man to meditate (Psalm 145:5-7, 111:2), labour with, for or through Him is a privilege so great, that it passes way beyond the escape velocity of the things of this earth, so that one with the other is indeed "sitting together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus," (Ephesians 2:6). Death here has no more thrall, since truth lasts and the children of its own kingdom last with it, being secured by salvation and their sentence already borne by the Lord Himself who has given the message, "O Israel, it hurls you to destruction that you are against My help" (Keil's rendering), in one word to Israel (Hosea 13:9), and in another, this time to all, "the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life," Romans 6:23.
How ? This way is it given to one and to all, to those seduced, to those spiritually squandering, to those seeking, to those forlorn:
"I will ransom them from the power of the grace;
I will redeem them from death."O Death, I will be our plagues!
O Hell, I will be your destruction!
Pity is hidden from My eyes."
What pity ? Pity for Himself and for His beloved Son, only begotten, Author of creation (Colossians 1:15), the eternal word of God made flesh to rescue from among those who are in it, what may be saved, that all in one family might behold the face of God. Such is the destiny for His children (Psalm 17:15, Revelation 7:13ff., I Corinthians 15), adopted (Ephesians 1:13), free, dwelling in a love that made them, without the sin which ruined them (Revelation 21:4, 8, 22-27). His love reaches through all clouds of sin to any within them (Colossians 1:19ff.), His knowledge recognises His own and He in Christ has wept for the lost (Matthew 23:37), whose loss is what they themselves gain by inveterate, reckless and wanton despising of the beauty of His holiness (John 3:19, Hebrews 1:1ff.), the effectuality of His redemption and the glory of His gift.
Yet, like God, in this Age the offer remains, the invitation calls (Revelation 3:20ff.) and its inveterate dynamic continues (Luke 14:23), its vitality undiminished in time, its wisdom insuperable, its depths pellucid and very beautiful through the sun of righteousness which arises to bless the high and the low, through the lowness of His delving and the height of His mercy..
NOTES
On this, see Ch. 6 of Deserts and Desserts, Delicacies and Dissertations. The following reveals what has ALREADY been said at the highest level, even in Merry Olde England!
News 357
TIMES ON LINE, September 14, 2005, ABC News Radio September 15, 2005
The MILLENIAL COMMISSION - UN Type
The UN Millenial Commission meeting in New York in September 2005 has received a very due rebuke from George Bush in terms of removal of corruption, restoration of proper action and deed to relate to the objectives of dealing with such things as world poverty, helping secure human rights and human dignity, providing hope of liberty. Citing the actual make-up of the Human Rights Commission of this non-august body, the President indicated that this was a particularly unhappy example of UN hypocrisy. Its members include countries such as Cuba, Sudan and Zimbabwe. "When this great institution's member states choose notorious abusers of human rights to sit on the UN Human Rights Commission, they discredit a noble effort and undermine the credibility of the whole organisation."
"If," he proceeded, "member countries want the United Nations to be respected and effective, they should begin by making sure it is worthy for respect."
However they have not, according to a ABC News Radio BBC report, September 15, 2005, even been able to agree on a definition of terrorism. The UK's Blair has indicated that there must be a movement internationally to find the basis of it all and to deal with it. With the work of Britain's Blunkett on record, in which he slandered extreme evangelicals in that land in terms adjacent to those for terrorism, it is apparent that the misuse of the concept of "extremism" and "fanaticism" is not merely an abstract possibility, but a current danger. This was outlined in News 323. Mr Blunkett in his official role as Home Secretary in 2004, was reported as making the following pronouncement.
"We need to be able to take on these extremists and say, I'm afraid our society, pluralism and openness, the ability to accept differences without being subsumed, is crucial to our survival, it's what distinguishes all of us, from every faith, from those who would take our lives because they reject our faith, and it applies equally from far right evangelical Christians, to extremists in the Islamic faith."
(Reported July 2004 and taken from Ecumenical Insanity,
under the heading "Defining the Culture Wars". )Since an "evangelical", if the term is to retain any vestige of its essential meaning, is someone who stresses the significance of the evangel, the Gospel of Jesus Christ as set forth in the Bible, and that Gospel stresses the necessity of NOT engaging in any form of violence in order to protect Christians from the evil attentions of the State apparatus, as shown in John 18:36 with Matthew 26:52-54, and moreover, the imaginary spectacle of people with biblical portfolios and faith setting about the destruction of law and order by violence would be even for this hypocritical world, a fascinating innovation, the British official's words were clearly an intimidatory assault on people who DARED, like DANIEL, to be DIFFERENT.
Christians always HAVE been different, and for that reason, were the frequent recipients of the honour of being set before lions in stadia, for the better pleasure of onlookers, as they fought and were torn to pieces by the wrathful beasts in the arena, as vicarious participants on the one hand, and the lions on the other. The Roman Empire of course fell. It deserved it, and was humiliated justly. They were different too when the Romanist body, wrongly called the Roman Catholic Church (how CAN you be 'catholic' when ordered from the non-catholic and highly particular centre of 'Rome'! - in fact Protestants who hold to the Bible alone have the privilege of being catholic, since they do not centre themselves in location, but in the Christ who is beyond all pride, race, pomp, and teacher, and alone is to be called Master - Matthew 23:8-10) ... when this body, of such ecclesiastical pretension, attended to them.
In what way did it do this ? For data, consult Inquisition, in Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 14. It was in the painful centuries of rampant hypocrisy, fitting too well with that of the current UN, that this page of evil was written by the Romanist body, which instead of being 'crucified with Christ' like Paul (Galatians 2:20), tortured and stole funds from countless thousands of Christians, leaving children destitute and sacking the riches of their parents. It was in this evil, never to be forgotten any more than the Jewish holocaust of the 20th century, that were to be found some of the enormities of history: for a sort of pre-Hitler attack not only on Judaism in the form of harassed and tormented Jews, but on Christianity in the form of orthodox biblical Christians, was launched.
THE PERENNIAL OMISSION - WORLD SPECIES
If you ignore history, you may indeed repeat it; and the fact that some, in private or public, unduly dwell on the evils, and need to be more constructive, does not obliterate the parallel fact that many fail to heed the warning signals of the past, by forgetting its enormities, and so become vulnerable to their repetition. No lover of the human race could possibly consent to forget such things, until Christ come and rule is guaranteed to be godly (cf. I Thessalonians 3:13, Acts 1:7ff.). To do so is to invite that mind-set which in vast hypocrisy, tormented what was a light, while in darkness, it claimed for itself as it gobbled up its victims and much of their wealth, the very name of 'light'!
How readily this world agrees when mighty power evacuates all wisdom and restraint, assailing godliness in this or that age or format, through tyrants, whether in black robes or with swastikas, whether black or white, whether in Zimbabwe or in Rhodesia, depending on the time of day ... It is time to face such issues, not ostrich-like, in a sort of avine-bestial combination with the asinine, to obscure vision by its solemn burial in the grit of the sand. It is not enough for some Pope to say 'sorry' for 'Christians' who 'in pursuit of the truth', did such things.
The biblical truth is that such action is a malignant assault on the work of Jesus Christ and His directives! It is a cardinal rebellion in blood, torture and recrimination against His orders, as near to 'truth' and Christianity, which declares that Christ IS the truth, as would be an operating table equipped with slaughter yard remnants. It is contrary with a vast contrariety in spirit, word and deed.
In fact, the whole point of this multiple murder involving massive numbers and resembling in its multi- pronged attack over time, the work of bin Laden, is nothing less, the pith of this horrendous miscreancy against brotherly love is nothing other, than anti-Christian in its pomp, claims and actions.
There is no vestige of Christianity or faith or thus truth, in that which abhors what Christ taught, and does so in the interests of a papal domination and self-exaltation forbidden to the faith, while murdering masses and stealing untold wealth, frequently leaving orphaned or derelict children destitute!
Such statements therefore about things done by Christians in pursuit of the truth, have small or no reference to the thing done. If CHRIST does not define Christianity, what is the point of using the name at all, and why not start a religion with inquisitions, along with the Communists, or onslaught with the militant Moslem militias, and be done with it!*1A
When you steal, it is also normal to seek to restore the matrix of your theft; and if you make a welter of stealing for decades, there is little point in talking of your Christian aims in doing so, or your pursuit of the truth, in such masquerades! That is virtually hypocrisy incarnate. Such 'sorrow', then, does not cover the issue or the point at all. There has been all but incredible presumption, voiding the fulness of Christ with the emptiness of theft both of life and of wealth*1B.
We have seen enough to watch closely the Blunkett type of junket, now in danger of extension into the UN, and being given more talk which could lead to similar developments elsewhere, and to ponder ideological words that could rapidly drew into the same realm, from the Prime Minister of the same government which HAD Blunkett in power in its very midst.
Thus the UN's reported inability to define TERRORISM is not surprising. If you define this terrorism as what is seeking by physical violence to intimidate and overthrow those who differ from you, at a national or quasi-national or even world level, then the term might be deployed to attack someone who is seeking to prevent an invasion! After all, in such an event, it may be said that efforts might be made to use physical means to frighten them off! Then the defenders of their land would anomalously called 'terrorists'!
The point however is this, as from Christ's lips: Are you trying to IMPOSE an ideology and indeed, a religion, or some equivalent concept, condition, or way of life, by FORCE. MY kingdom, said the Lord, is not of this world; otherwise My servant would fight! After all, in this world's ways, people might well fight to protect their King!
There might be still ,pre trouble in using that definition of terrorism as the measuring concept. What if you are trying with the use of UN forces, for example, to stop Zimbabwe becoming the 21st century version of racism in reverse ? Would that not meet the definition, so that this could not be done without the label of 'terrorist', when in fact the effort is to remove the thing ?
Now in the matter of Christ, it is simple because pure. You do not use violence to deal with violence at the intimidatory or deadly level, for His sake. His kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36). If then you do, that is wrong. But here the question for this world's rulers is broader. They WANT to be able to use force to deal with what does not serve their concepts of survival and comfort: so which is terrorism, and which is not when you try to DISCIPLINE this or that by force, at the international and ideological level ?
News 323 is cited above, and excerpt from this will expand the coverage and point further elements.
THE BLUNKETT JUNKET IS NOT ALL PLEASANT ADVENTURE
While these things are catastrophic (imagine being ONE of the two million, and wondering when it is safe to return to your hobbled or gobbled home! imagine it with children...), there is far worse in view.
Which is worse, caning or hatred ? Which is more atrocious, the use of 'survival' as a guide to sink life, or of waves to sink a ship or destroy a home ? To this author's mind, the survival sentence on life, to make mini-men the agents that society tolerates, licences or permits, is far worse.
It is not ultimately a question of how much pain or suffering is borne, but of how far man will go to subjugate, subordinate and control others, in defiance of God and His ways, himself personally governmentally taking the platform as if divine, while merely human.
It is not always by any means intended; and the conscious aim may even, at its own level, be almost laudable; but the results of blindness and false values can be profound. Here, not those who are wounded, or killed, or impoverished (and the State may help some of the last group), it is not these who are the focus; it is SOCIETY ITSELF!
How often have American "do-gooders" been pilloried for their good intentions by a cynical world! They sacrifice and act and work and seek to alleviate suffering. Some feel it is too obtrusive or too this or that for the subtle needs of sensitive man. However when the do-gooding comes from the Home Secretary in the British Government, the case bears examination, the more when it is a matter of stating this, that
"We need to be able to take on these extremists and say, I'm afraid our society, pluralism and openness, the ability to accept differences without being subsumed, is crucial to our survival, it's what distinguishes all of us, from every faith, from those who would take our lives because they reject our faith, and it applies equally from far right evangelical Christians, to extremists in the Islamic faith."
(Reported July 2004 and taken from Ecumenical Insanity,
under the heading "Defining the Culture Wars". )Now the use of the old-fashioned term 'subsume' is just possibly not sheer idiosyncrasy, since it is convenient. What does it MEAN ? It means to place under, to make subordinate. Now what have evangelical Christians to do with 'subsuming' people ? What has their preaching of the Gospel of grace, the love of God and the necessity to respond one way or the other, to do with putting people under ? and what has any of it to do with extremists, whether in "the Islamic faith" or elsewhere ? What has hatred for that matter to do with love, and slander to do with fact ?
Firstly, there is as one writer puts it, "guilt by association" (News and Christian Comment, July 2004). This has been dealt with at some length earlier on this site at The Biblical Workman, Appendix 3. There it was shown just how ludicrous it was to allow the term 'fundamentalism' (abusive in part at this epoch, because of muddy lack of clarity in its designation), to be used as a link between
those who believe the Bible to be the word of God
(correctly called 'plenary inspirationists'
if you want to be both accurate and non-discriminatory),
and those who believe it a good idea to murder.
There IS, you see, quite a difference, since murder is forbidden in the Bible, and in John 18:36 we find this of Christ - who gave His name to the term 'Christian' which therefore is vitally relevant, even for those who would like to abolish Christians or their mouths, which seems in part at least the present issue - that He had other ideas. It is WRONG to fight for Him, UNDESIRED to use force for Him; for His KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD. That is the view of Him whose word is law to the evangelical Christian.
How long does it take people to realise that these words from the One who told Peter to put up his sword, and so not defend Him against arrest, mean what they say! Romanists have had their atrocities in the Inquisition, Islamicists*3A have their atrocities in their own pressure groups, like al Qaeda, which cites the Koran (cf. Divine Agenda Ch. 6 for what may be cited), while Communists with their god in the ground type of magical laws from no cause, in a model of a chance universe, these too have had their blood-curdling passions and wealth-removing desires indulged to the uttermost, as Solzhenitsyn has pointed out in historical perspective, nor has he been alone in such 'revelations' (SMR pp. 971-972, 926ff., cf. 721ff., 659ff.).
What however has that to do with evangelical Christians, which by any ordinary definition must mean those who believe the Bible, and consider it important to do so, so that they seek to inform others to enable their believing it too, if they should so desire. Is information to become murder ? Is 'subsuming' to become a convenient term to mean, embarrassment at hearing of the words of Jesus Christ, even if you choose to reject them, and ask the speaker not to tell you more ?
In other words, this convenient term appears to hide, if the words of this Home Secretary, as reported, are to have any sort of appreciable relation to reality, the difference between non-violence (to which evangelical Christians are committed), and mass murder; between telling information*4 to those who are willing to hear it, and bombing those who are non-conformist. Moreover, it is directed, if words are to have normal meaning, at those who act with the required methods of love, from a book called the Bible which is supposedly still the wisdom which the sovereign accepts on coronation in that now rather strange-seeming land of England.
Is it really to be so ? One must hope not, but Britain seems in vast danger of just such a thing, in its new EU compilation and religious indifferentism, with this new law of its own in the offing; it appears to be growing more changeable now than any chameleon, and to risk subjugating life into some kind of control through compulsion, while blaming those harmless in the same, as they themselves forcibly perform what their own intrusive law should exclude!
Against all of this, the evangelical Christian is by faith and principle, divine precept and usage, excluded. The word of his Christ, whom he follows, and which he presents, does not impose; it presents; it does not bomb, it entreats (cf. I Corinthians 4:13).
How then is he or is she, the evangelical Christian, call thing what else you will, to be included in what is by PRINCIPLE and DOCTRINE in the word of God, EXCLUDED ?
Do facts not matter ?
Is a doctor an extremist misuser of violence because he may tell
you that you have cancer ? Is this 'subsuming' you ? It might almost appear so.
Is the Bible suddenly now to become calumniated as so rotten
that its words have no force whatever,
even that very Bible which in law still apparently holds sway over the sovereign ?
Is prejudice to become a ground for rejecting what scientifically
is the most honoured book in the world,
in terms of NEVER being shown wrong in ANY scientific claim over millenia
(cf. Victory Ch. 5, Importunity ... Ch. 4) - and despatching it
as groundless ? those who serve Christ according to its word, as worthy of
imprisonment ? Is this putsch or just push!That this same Bible may be proved to be the word of God (cf. SMR), is not the present point.
It had rather better be shown to be an obnoxious folly before its presentation, the declaration of its teaching, should become a matter for prison sentence. Millenia have not sufficed to tarnish its truth, nor has any study been able to shame it, while it shames shams by continuing unmoved, with time not a problem.Nor is evil implication alone the problem with this law looming.
The EXPLICIT conjoining of Islamic extremists and violence agents with evangelical Christians in a speech by Mr Blunkett is not just shameless confusion, misuse of terminology, factual error in gigantic proportions, slanderous and offensive, ludicrous and shameful, illogical and linguistically null: it is a misuse of government power to control, subsume and subvert, or imprison or penalise, harass or hound people with whom your faith does not agree. It is indeed, to enact such a law, PRECISELY to do what Mr Blunkett claims he desires to prevent people from doing; and it is to do it to those who PRECISELY are in their own religion forbidden to do what he is proceeding by every appearance, to intend to do. If he is confused, it is time he clarified.
If this procedure is not one of confusion, then the word has changed its meaning: it is a very prodigy of confusion, it is a contusion of confusion in the system of life of political man. Indeed, it is reported that Colin Hart, Director of The Christian Institute, made this relevant statement:
"David Blunkett today has showed the danger of giving politicians
the power to censor religious belief.
The confidence of evangelicals in this new law has been shattered
by the Home Secretary's intemperate comments."As he is reported to have declared in The Telegraph, Sept. 23, 2004:
"To equate evangelicals with terrorists is an outrage."
It is of course far worse, it is a contra-definitional slander of inelegant proportions. But what did he state on this ?
As reported in WorldWide Religious News, again Sept. 23, 2004, Blunkett "is to make inciting religious hatred a criminal offence. The new crime is likely to be closely modelled on the existing one of inciting racial hatred which carries a maximum penalty of seven years' imprisonment south of the border."
It proceeds thus:" Mr Blunkett said that it would be a "two-way street", adding:
"It applies equally to far-right evangelical Christians as to extremists in the Islamic faith."
How 'far-right' is to apply to 'evangelical Christians' is unclear, since 'far-right' tends to suggest the use of physical power and duress to control, force or overthrow, to which evangelical Christians are inveterately and by Christ's command, opposed. How does 'evangelical Christian' involve hatred, when this is the band of those who are to sacrifice in love to find for mercy its deliverance and whose God IS love ? (I John 4:7ff); and how is political force an answer, by condemning violence, to non-violence, which for its own part avoids it, while the State proceeds to use its own violence to intrude where violence is excluded ? Does Alice in Wonderland have something of a 21st century venue in this ? The question must be asked, and it is time a rational answer was obtained to the point underlying it.
If however Blunkett 'means' far-right people who use the name Christian, then he should say so, and not make this unpalatable and insulting confusion of terminology. He should do this, even if only for the sake of delivering elsewhere, where it belongs, the threat of seven year's imprisonment, and avoiding the distemper of political confusion in calling Christian love, hatred, Christian concern, subsumption, and Christian testimony, force.
It is of course a slander and an ignorance which is one way of confusing the masses; and though this is presumably far from the intention, when there are seven years' prison to think of, it is best to think first, and not make terminological monstrosities and vagueness into an art form.
That it is even possible to make such a contradiction in terms as this, and to make it as a Minister of the Crown in Great Britain is significant for Apologetics.
For interesting and illuminating data on the words of this Archbishop, see Light of Dawn, Chapter 2.
See TMR Ch. 8.
See for example,
DEITY AND DESIGN, DESIGNATION AND DESTINY,
LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST,
SMR, TMR, Religion, Religiosity and the Reception of Christ as Lord.