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WHY NOT BELIEVE THE LORD'S CHRIST!

It is faith or fiddle-sticks.

Rev. Dr. Robert E. Donaldson

Published by World Wide Web Witness Inc.

September 2013

ISBN 978-0-9875948-4-6

PREFACE

WHY NOT BELIEVE THE LORD'S CHRIST!

It is faith or fiddle-sticks.

CREATION STARTING IN POWER, MOVING IN POLLUTION

Salvation, arising in need,

Spanning the Age

Australia is in touring mode. It started with a solid foundation in principles of driving, outlining some features of the road, in the name of Him who made it and said why. It went on with bounding triumphs through difficult days, involving much patriotism, many grounded in fundamentals of the Christian faith, the moorings to which, in its setting, are implied in the Constitution. Then the pathological promptings of liberalism (dabbling in doubt and giving naturalistic fancies some clout) worked their insistent way through the clouded concepts of many theologians into the midst of betrayed churches, while many evanescent philosophies strove for success in capturing churches for their abattoirs.

A few have revisited the biblical faith; many have sought to negate, transform, adjust or subjugate it to this or that preferred alliance, often merely a voluntary submission, some combining it with its opposites in barefaced audacity, that makes blasphemy almost a side-issue, since this is not only renovation but transformation - imagine it! transforming what transforms, like a beautician becoming a major surgeon with predictable results.

Now allegedly Christian sources want to turn decriminalisation of homosexual behaviour from a starting post to a gallop, to make it equal with any other sort; and ignoring design components of the most exquisite complexity and practicality, they appear to behave rather like a son of a rich house, who thinking all his dad has is his own, takes as a right, the sports car to smash it up: and yet is bewildered when rebuked, if not by the cost or the injury.

But where is the rebuke now! Marriage is now sought to be the term for what is in itself, unable to produce children, not merely because of some defect, but by using pepper for salt, salt for pepper, or a fork for a spoon. It is not however demeaning to be specific. Being something of a given character is not unbearable, unless you either want to be God or to usurp His powers, by which alone as one of mankind, you stand, the visible design paragon and paradigm indeed, on this whole earth - if results relate to causes^*1, and terms to definitions!

Certainly Sodom may have been worse than what now beckons Australia in this area; but it may likewise have been better. It is in that specified territory biblically as you note in Jude 7, the generic being mentioned in II Peter 2:19 and 10, where despising (divine) authority becomes a sort of mandate. It is liberty ? yes, but it is unlicensed licence. It is man's word against God's work, and since God HAS worked it as He decided, so man's decision to rework it becomes a muddle from legislating members of a race, indeed what may be a parliamentary majority, who without having the power to produce such beings as man, reduce the products to the work of their limited knowledge, on a basis by comparison twiddled, with insecure foundations.

That is merely typical, where truth becomes servant to pragmatism, equity to desire, words wait upon statistics, leadership ponders programs, love in many directions is swapped for lust, increasingly, and this abused power becomes common in politics as in business, in love of power as in means of oversight, till Isaiah 59 comes to look more and more, as though it were levelled not only at ancient Israel at one phase, but as a cover for the present! Biblically, lawlessness where law abounds, is lust (Jude 15-19, II Peter 2:9-16, 3:1-5, James 4:1-8).

Just as freedom is good, enabling God-given powers to be exercised without abortion through seizure by aliens, so its misuse is horrid, making an inward maladjustment the basis of ruin. This does not warrant its removal, for without it, love is impossible and truth becomes almost meaningless. What bound, in will, in mind, can even appreciate truth ? Indeed, it is for that reason that God, who knows the soul of man past the pathology of a sin-run government of the soul (as in Ephesians 4:17-19 and seen in John Bunyan's Holy War), having foreknown all, and discerned all things, has made sure of those who before all sin, even creation, were apparent as His own (Ephesians 1:4, Romans 8:29ff.), where love lives and truth is unsuppressed.

Fiddle-sticks, things lying on top of each other in the game by that name, and readily dislodged so that the whole structure may easily fall in a shambles of no attractiveness, a mere desolation of order: that is an apt name for the current state of the art of making man in the image of ... his own will. In fact, as you forsake the God of creation, design, love, truth, faith and destiny, as in Romans 1:17ff., and substitute paradigms of imagination without power, as is now the case (and HOW the mighty have fallen in Europe and the USA, and how the littler body of Australia is poised a little above an abyss of rashly obtained international, not to say State and personal debt), then it becomes like a yacht leaving anchor in a stormy sea, with billowing waves way atop its mast, and chasms of depth laughing at life.

You cannot mock God and get away with it (cf. Hosea 8:7, Proverbs 26:2). Much of history is simply an illustration of that fact. IF you like mockery, then in this case it assuredly rebounds, in the psyche, the wallet, the bondage of heart, the sourness of soul, the dimming of mind or the isolation of spirit that fits.

In this volume, then, the ways of righteousness and the will of God, the wisdom of creation and the point of the word of God as it is written, are prominent. In this present world, they need to be so, continually. The fact that faith in the founder, saviour, wisdom, power, personal nature of God, through His confirmed channel, the incarnate Messiah Jesus Christ, is necessary for any resolution (there is no other effective, reliable, authorised or realistic surgeon of the soul) is necessary, is here designedly kept unclouded.

This also needs to be. Why not ? Assuredly reason insists on it (cf. SMR, TMR for example); order demands it, its negation in the world of history, reads rather like a lab test; love offers it, mercy insists on it. Repentance toward God, salvation through HIS actions and willingness, the gift of eternal life by His magnificent advance on ordinary life, even for sinners, this continues irreparable, detestable to slanted desire, but undeterrable in impact, like a cancer operation for a dying man.

Wilfulness hates it. It is a costly program, as little children used to find, to their benefit. Better one sparing smack^*2than a fairy story of 'human rights' in which our responsibilities to the God who made us are turned on their heads, and made void by things lovely to the ear, and horrible to the heart. Such is found as we look at the rights offered by the now gone USSR, and often asserted in the most horrible of dictatorships, as if words could replace deeds.

There is no right to be wrong. The contrary assertion is merely self-righteousness, which is like the type of folly in which a firm acting as its own auditor, to impress the world, might indulge.

Mercy is the divine mandate, but turn it into rights and it is mere hollow wind, emanating from desire, impotent for realisation and frequently found to founder in interpretations, abuses and misuses that meander off into a land of make-believe, where someone or something makes a fatuous claim for THIS right (his) over yours (written), to the detriment of the latter, and so you founder in his foundry, remade by his legalities, a serf, subject to his precocious whim and distortive desire.

Back to reality, this is the way. Back to righteousness, to the God who matters, made matter (cf. The gods of naturalism have no go!) and life and the rules for both, made liberty and its penalties of misuse, is merciful and knows how to show it, is not corruptible and does not forsake judgment; has predicted the course of the world with all but innumerable confirmations through prophecy over millenia, and has it now on a set course to the Judgment to come, preceded by the return of the Regality, Jesus Christ, "the Lord's Christ" (Luke 2:26), in His second role, that of King and Judge (Acts 1:7ff., 17:31), both roles as predicted, as seen in the last volume (Opus 221).

NOTES

See Causes, SMR Ch. 5, and Ch. 3, Predestination and Freewill Section 4.

Causality is implicit in characterisation, definition, explanation, and without its functioning, argument is automatically invalid, irrelevant and unbased or self-contradictory.

A remarkably sound article appeared in The Australian, August 5, 2013, from Adam Shand. The heading: Parents under pressure over challenge to the right to smack. Such words as there appeared bring hope that Australia has not yet been totally educated by the imperium of naturalism, to bring liberty into shame, and folly into a burning ascendency, till all restraint gone, there are mere embers left in the social scene.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

THE SPIRITUAL SUITE

ISAIAH 7-9

Our chief interest here is in seeing the grandeur of the journey,
forecast, and already largely fulfilled,
but especially that through the window of Isaiah 9.

To Isaiah 9:6-7, much attention is given in the setting Isaiah 7-9.

CHAPTER 2

WALLS, WISDOM AND WITNESS

3 Texts. 3 Walls, 1 Wisdom

Walls of water at Exodus, as a basic element in Daniel's prediction of the death date of the Messiah, intriguing, intricate, accurate beyond measure, and the current wall being built once again in Israel, this time of epic proportions: all have a message to be learnt, and the sooner the better. Even this last one has a signal in prophecy, mentioning and indeed focussing the event.

CHAPTER 3

WALLS, WISDOM AND WITNESS

Looking Over the Wall

The Content, Compass and Challenge of Prophecy

CHAPTER 4

THE WESTMINSTER CONFESSION OF FAITH

REVISED

CHAPTER 5

DEPOSSESSING THE EVIL DYNAMIC

IN THE SCHEDULE

OF THE DIVINE SOVEREIGN

TO THE FIELD OF ETERNAL LIFE