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CHAPTER THREE

THE RELIGIOUS POSTURING AND PRAGMATICS OF RUDD

News 449,

The Australian July 28, 2011

INTRODUCTION

In The Australian, July 28, 2011 we find report of ex-PM Rudd that there is a new way for religion, in particular the three, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, based on a supposed common relationship to Abraham, so that this can "lift the scales" from the eyes as people realise this common heritage and apparently change from being fundamentalistic fidgets, exponents of singularity, into pluralists, so helping overcome dangers by compromise, qualifications and new synthetics. Thus a sort of sin athletics program is considered a small price to pay for the deliverance of the people from "faith-based hate."

To be sure, he is not at all the first in this vast thrust to unify religions (cf. News 121, 122, Dastardly Dynamics and Immovable Faith Ch. 10), nor even notable, but his timing in Australia is notable.

At a time when

	many are cultivating fear of dreadful events, such as jihadists appear to find heart-warming amid their storming,
	others want just to be left alone in the eat and drink, for tomorrow we die, syndrome,
	others again wonder if God, the Christian expression in Jesus Christ as definitively incarnate deity, could be traded in, perhaps a little here and some there, to form a more convenient deity, less likely to arouse antagonism from the lovers of force in religion; at a season when
	years of virtual apostasy in what were formerly strong churches, are bearing fruit in a social confusion that clings to some of the past, but wonders about the value of all of it, as far as Christ is concerned:

then comes the forceful pursuit of an idea that some allegation of a common background
in Abraham may have a not so limited appeal.

It might be enlarged by propaganda, and expanded by desire for its by-products. From where, then, is it given a select attention ? It is from the field of politics.

Could Australia be subverted at the heart level entirely ? Could a new Jesus be made, or adopted, such as Muhammad contrived, centuries after the One who made the fame and aroused the desire of the nations, in actual practice, His claim at least outwardly taking over the Roman Empire in Constantine, however that Emperor be personally assessed ? Could He have shorn from Him, the deity, the Salvation, the Regeneration, the Redemption, the Resurrection and a few little matters like these, and so become acceptable more generally, or put into some pantheon of convenience so that Mahomet or Government or the UN or really, something, anything at all else could make the peace between warring insurrections, debaters and the like ?

Could not some meeting, such as Rudd forwards, bring an understanding between major religionists such as the Christian, the Judaistic and the Islamic ? Such is the brokerage. Rudd likes the idea, it seems, of having some kind of better understanding so that some might 'lift the scales' from the eyes of the people.

The idea of Rudd is of course not at all original, for various syncretisms, joinings of alien views to each other, by some potentate,principal or presumptuous prince have been thrust forward again and again.

After all, "fundamentalist religious militancy" (Rudd's term) is something which might appear to
some, to be needful to obliterate. Fancy indeed actually putting value on some book, any book, which TELLS you who God is and what He wants! The scales then, it appears, still condition the eyes. Lift them off, then, á la Rudd, and let us have Ruddites, who know, who understand, men minus scales no less, in other words, those who like Paul of old, are suddenly freed from prejudice and face the objective facts.

Facts ? such as having a new Jesus with a new understanding of those who reject the biblical Christ, of the Church of the first centuries, and want to elevate some philosophic model fresh from the minds of whoever has the most winsome, expedient and practically, politically useful kind, as it might appear. Why not parody Paul, who in revelation found the biblically predicted Christ in Jesus, and saw HIS truth based on objective evidence^*1 . Why not talk of having a departure from the biblical Christ, indeed, lovely thought, make faith in Him to be ... yes, fundamentalist, and militant, yes wholly unacceptable. Then the Rudd conception can replace the innovative conception in the womb of the virgin ?

Not so ? Then in what way is an understanding of some alleged way back relationship of Islam, Judaism and Christianity in Abraham, other than the documented Old Testament one (must be mutual, you know) going to make any scales to be lifted off the eyes of the participants in Ruddistic Religion^*1A ? In context, the use of such language can only appeal, in one way or another, to the concept that Christ is to be mutated; for removing of a modicum or indeed any of His closely allied credentials of deity, salvation, redemption, resurrection, or these in one unamalgamated whole, is at least mutation, but in fact defamation, based on no reason or ground as shown in the noted references^*1, but desire only. It comes to biblical divergence or cultural convergence, as if students who do not have a logical or operational basis for their mathematics all clubbed together to find what would satisfy the desires of all, and abandoning what works and is rationally indicated, fostered a fever of agreeable pleasantness.

You can have scales drop as you have a new understanding of a major accommodation and relationship of convergence with religions which DENY the ONLY foundation (I Corinthians 3:10-11), to be Christ Jesus ?

Let us keep to biblical terms: this would be to INHERIT new scales, to re-scale, not de-scale, rendering eyes inflamed, which had seen what now they distance, and had begun to apprehend what now they disjoin (cf. Hebrews 6 and Matthew 13:18-21).

They tried to make a difference to God when they squashed Jesus to the point He was scarcely recognisable as human (cf. Isaiah 52:12ff.^*1B); but His resurrection aborted that plan, one of convenience then as now (cf. John 11:47ff.). Then it led to the destruction of conniving Jerusalem powers, in the removal of Jerusalem within one generation. In His love, even when faced with His known crucifixion, often referred to, He lamented for them since in removing Him they lost their own mercy. Their city was ruined; but He remained, author of an epoch, consummation of the teaching of millenia, as always, the only as also the necessary Saviour of man (John 5:39-40, 14:6, Acts 4:11-12).

Truth (John 14:6) is not so easily executed. Any further efforts are abortive and defeasible, mere retrogression to unreality, even using language specific and famous for Christ, to minister to a basic lift of understanding, from blindness no less, to a new sharing of something acceptable to both, or more appealing. This it is which is done, when the difference is

between God and NOT GOD in biblical terms^*1C,

salvation in only ONE name given UNDER HEAVEN to mankind (Acts 4:11-12),

and an assemblage of deity concepts instead,
to be moulded or machinated or in some way distilled,
indeed subjected to dilatory dilution or mandatory obfuscation. It is vain in aspiration and pragmatic multiplication: for opposites do not mix.

This ? why ? for reason ? indeed no. For truth ? far from it. Why then ? It is because it may be MORE acceptable, for the merely adventitious and meretricious rumbling of desire. So might a fortress of fiction replace the Saviour of the world (John 4:42, II Peter 2:20, I John 4:14)! Of this Peter warns as Paul denounces (II Corinthians 11). Betrayal is always far worse than mere rejection, since it is based on a preliminary awareness of what is then dumped.

Is it, however, militant to believe in Jesus of Nazareth,

	the prophecy-fulfilling Messiah,
	whose death date was predicted centuries in advance (cf. Christ the Citadel... Ch. 2),
	whose works and whose power,
	whose birthplace and
	whose sacrificial death and its mode,
	whose treatment and
	whose rejection by Israel with countless other indexes,

are all in public view (cf. SMR pp. 973A, 931-943), just as are in our own generation are

	His foretold restoration of Israel (cf. SMR Chs. 8 - 9) and
	the events of amazingly victorious wars amid long labours of international assault

in preference to other religions ?

even to those which lack Him, His fame and name, either by rejection of His role (Judaism) or mutation of the One having it, so that in this likewise, He is removed (as in Islam^*2), and this even before we look more deeply into the matter (cf. SMR Chs.1, 3, 5, 6,10).

Is this fundamentalism ? biblical fundamentalism^*3, often implied by incoherent speakers to be pugnacious if not malicious, disruptive and of evil dynamic ? or is it faith ?

Is faith in itself to be deemed militant ? Is refusal to prefer anything this world offers in its various bouts of unverified, unvalidated innovations to Jesus Christ a social scandal, an intemperate trifling with the dignity of the human race in its singular solemnity, that would so often found itself on nothing or mere assertion or asssertiveness, and make of itself everything ?

Is the focus of the biblical Christ to be a verboten thing for faith ?

Is its refusal to have 'scales' lifted from its eyes in this recidivist way, a martial act, either socially or emotively ?

Must it be resisted with laws just as contrary teaching is insisted on in the exclusivistic propaganda of schools and colleges in this land, already ?^*3A Is it a matter needlessly upsetting some, or politically one to be repressed, perhaps at length even in terms of laws with severe teeth, or of arms ? Is there nothing different about a biblical Christianity which in and with Christ REFUSES to use force in the realm of faith, and what has used it, or does use it, either on Him or on the world or both ? Can you castigate a belief in the Bible as fundamentalism, with the overtone of irrationalist, wayward, unyielding boorishness or bucolic unsophistication, when in fact it is the path of peace which brings reconciliation to God and man (II Corinthians 5:17ff.) and ABHORS force and violence, both socially, politically and militarily in its cause; and is indeed FORBIDDEN it ? Is assault by critics and detractors to become peace, and peace with no use of force in faith, to become assault! Is black white, are contradictories equated, or is observation inverted ?

Is it not time to put blame where it belongs, and to avoid such useless generalisations as Rudd was guilty of concerning aborigines^*4 , not distinguishing those who helped in all liberty, answering due call, and those who hindered them with unfeeling disregard! just as he now seems ready to plunge into a new pool, this time in terms of 'fundamentalist' excoriation, blame, assault ?

If some have a book prescribing force in religion, is this reason to make it that ANY who have ANY religious book purporting to come from God, are of the SAME type, have God of the SAME king with SIMILAR instructions NOW^*5 ? and this, even if the contrary is the case ? Is Alice in Wonderland's Tea Party to be surpassed in inane querulous comparisons of plus and minus, as if they were in fact mere identities! Manipulation, whether intended directly or not, and Satan can deceive on all sides, is not to be accepted. FACTS must be FACED!

It is gossamer or God, the reasoned, validated, verified, personalised, indeed PERSONAL presentation of God in Jesus the Christ^*1, or

the gossamer of dreams (Jeremiah 23:16-28, which insists on the end of the Age as the bonanza for such things),

the tissue of the unwarranted, untried, failing in their ambit,

declarations without the confirmation of the ages, sentence by sentence, statement by statement.

It is a cloud of contradiction, as when Christ was on earth, death the answer to His truth, or just One, Jesus Christ, the sacrifice, not the predator, the predicted Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6ff.), with His identikit from prophecy, His performance in power, never missing (or His Messiahship would be missing before His inveterate and inexorable foes), His word the draft for coming history and judgment.

His worst enemies had no way out: He was simply unanswerable in power and in proposition, in healing and in argument, in raising the dead, in biblical knowledge, in things small and things great; and all were unable to dissever Him from the vast array of predictions which He had to fulfil^*6, or find fault or failure in anything in His Person, program or power, which would have been deadly (cf. Mark 2, Matthew 14, John 11). Accordingly, they decided to murder Him, feeling there was no choice, lest the whole world should follow Him, and they should lose power and possible privilege (John 11:47ff.). Indeed, they feared His greatness might compromise their subject status before the Roman Caesar, and thus in the fury of follow, stooping to subjective morals, they killed their peace.

Their city was gone in a generation. They saved their lives and THEREFORE lost them (Matthew 16:24-27). Warned by Christ with tears (Luke 19:42ff.), they had no heart to open the ears. Instead of being exhibits of sanctity before their God and Employer, God come as man and Saviour (cf. Isaiah 43:10-11, 42, 49,50-55), they became an exhibition of deranged dealings and deadly dynamic, as if one were to kill the doctor and avoid the antibiotic, while yet being surprised when one's life was thus lost.

A VIRTUAL APOSTLE ?

Kevin Rudd, then, seems so very like an pseudo-apostolic ambassador to Australia in his fostering and furthering and congratulating the movement towards a broad religious amalgam or loss of crucial distinctiveness AS TRUTH. He has arrived in Australia. Surely he was here before, but these are words after he has come back from his journeyings. Is there a flare of such ambassadorship ? It is so, in that there is to be a lifting of the scales otherwise drawn over the eyes. It is ostensibly to be obtained, this removal and enlightenment, as more knowledge comes to the exponents of Islam, Christianity and Judaism, and this by his own dictum, spoken by him who has come in his role.

Indeed, he would appear to be acting as a virtual apostle of what might justly be called syncretistic dissolutionism.

SYNCRETISM

Syncretistic ? he acts towards conjoining

by alleged common background in Abraham,

	Islam famous for requiring submission,
	Judaism, famous for not receiving Jesus Christ as the promised Messiah, and
	Christianity, famous for receiving Jesus Christ as the opposite, namely the promised Messiah.

Jesus Christ is the criterion of Christianity, source of its name, foundation (I Corinthians 3:10-11, Acts 4:11-12), basis (Galatians 6:14), belief (I Corinthians 15), power and authority (Matthew 28:19-20), Gospel (Galatians 1-3) and hope (I Peter 1:3, Titus 2:13), immortality ( I Cor. 15:47-58) and permanent, assured personal access to God who sent Him, God as man, from the eternity of heaven (John 17:1-3, 1:1-14, Philippians 2:5-11, John 8:29, Micah 5:1-3) to be ransom for sin on earth (Matthew 20:28, Galatians 3, Hebrews 9:12). God does not shave, and none who attempts the barber on Him will endure (Malachi 3:6, Zephaniah 3:5, Romans 11:26-33). The difference between these three religions is thus infinite, concerning who God is, what He has done to deliver man, how it is shown, and in whom He has made His defined and definitive exhibit of Himself.

For only one of these is Christ Jesus the Lord and criterion; the others thus have an infinite gulf between themselves and the people of Jesus Christ, that special people, spiritual house, royal priesthood and holy nation, to cite I Peter 2. These bear His name, and while some are this and that in particular as relating to the three religions in view, there are certainly three types, those who, whatever name they bear (and those ashamed of Jesus Christ as presented will find Him ashamed of them - Luke 9:23-26), so receive Christ as God has seen fit to present him in history and documentation amid His people, and those who do not.

To invent a new christ, as Muhammad did, over half a millenium after the living one whose name is one, or as many do now, some two millenia after Him, using a name already defined and treasured in favour of a new presentation which lacks the data which first caused it to become great (cf. SMR and in particular Appendices C and D): this is not to make any difference to the deposit of Christianity. It is to offer an alternative bearing the same name, but a different content. As such, it is a misdirective packaging, precisely as if to call the well-known and long-established Queen of England, an Arabian Princess. Other christs are sin-bred substitutes or social inventions for convenience or artful collaboration, things of convenience, of enforcement or wizened diminution. To use HIS name for such productions is all that Paul declares it to be in II Corinthians 10-11.

Nothing of this sort can cover up the infinite difference therefore, as made by Christ and for Him and in Him, and in the Bible in particular, between the version of onset and that inset in the reconstruction mode of Muhammad or anyone else for that matter. Indeed, some part of the testimony concerning Jesus Christ is retained by some in Judaism, but not the part on Jesus Christ as sole Saviour, Redeemer, Messiah, raised bodily from the dead and coming as Judge of mankind in His time.

To seek to forward, therefore a better understanding between these three religions, which would reduce the infinite difference is trivial, is unsound in kind, unsavoury in direction and misled in character. It is, to commence, to fuse the ultimate, confuse the basic and to lose the light of this world, as in Christ (John 8:12, 9:4).

It is as if to compare space and time because they live together, as if possessed of the same basic characteristics; but it is worse, in that each of those is merely created and of specifiable kind, whereas in biblical fact, Christ is as the eternal God incarnate, the First and the Last (Revelation 2:9, Isaiah 44:6), this, a signature term of God as God. He is One who does what He does in the same way as the Father does (John 5:19ff.), being in all His splendour before Abraham existed (John 8:58, 17:1-3), who being in the form of God did not think it a thing to be snatched at to be equal with God (Philippians 2, John 16:15), being the ineradicable Messiah (Mark 14:60--62, John 1:29, Matthew 25).

It is He who will judge all mankind, Himself the criterion (John 3:15-19,36, 5:19-23, Acts 17:31, Micah 5:1-3, Isaiah 42:6,18-19, 49:6-9, 59:19-20, 61:1-3, Psalm 2, 110, Psalm 22^*7), as God who became man that man through Him might find God (I Peter 3:18), Himself available even to the death for life, in Him life eternal! Disjunction at this level is disruption and rejection, so that non-disjunction is an infinite distance away from such departure (cf. I John 4:1-4 with I John 1:1-4).

Indeed, biblically, it is He who is sole Creator and sole Saviour for mankind (Isaiah 43:10-11, 45:18,23 with Colossians 1:15 and Philippians 2:10-11) who is God, who alone is both Creator and Saviour so that as the Father is this, so is the Son, as the Father is God, so is the One who became incarnate as Jesus Christ with the same unique, specifically divine characteristics.

Indeed, it is He no less who as Jesus the Christ was sent in His Father's name as THE TRUTH (John 12:48-50, 14:6, 5:43, 10:25) and THE WAY as well as THE LIFE, indivisible in power, unalterable in mission, commission and salvation (Galatians 1:8ff., 3:1ff., Hebrews 1:1-12-14, Isaiah 13:8). It is as God the Sent from God the Sender, with the Holy Spirit, that He has come (Isaiah 48:16 in Isaiah 48:1-18, John 6:50, 7:29,10:30-33, 8:29,42, 12:44-45,13:20, 14:1-10, Matthew 11:27, I John 4:13-14), in whom dwells the fulness of the godhead in bodily form (Colossians 2:9).

It is He who came to BE the Saviour, the Redeemer who did the payment (Matthew 20:28), whereas the only God makes it very clear in Isaiah 44-46, that HE ONLY is Saviour and Redeemer, so that Christ is the heart of the heartland embodied in flesh as God declares in Isaiah, as we have already seen. The Father sent, the Son was sent, only begotten through incarnation, and the Spirit came: love propelled, love impelled and love constrained in the hearts of men, as it moves in God Himself who thus incarnated for this very basic reason, His eternal Word (John 3:16-18), always present (John 1, 17, 8:58). Of God, He is the equal, the expression and manifestation (Hebrews 1, Isaiah 48:12-19). Such is the testimony of the Bible.

An invitation therefore to have scales removed from the spiritual eyes in drawing near to Islam and Judaism is like issuing an invitation to destruction, devastation, incineration, treachery, of incalculable proportions, or else to the other two to forsake their forsaking of Christ, or else merely a desultory confusion of infinite peril, though its utterance, from a political point of view, may be merely inept. As in science, mathematics and religion, there is no middle ground. The truth is what matters, and the method of obtaining it by due thought, observation, examination and testing (cf. I Thessalonians 5), whether it be by revelation or notation as base, this needs to be followed. Source be what it may, it must be tested.

When God is concerned, all fields must be examined scrupulously, and where, as in the two millenia of Christianity, it is found coherent and conclusive, correct and uniquely verified, validated and confirmed in Jesus Christ according to the Bible, invitation to have scales removed concerning truth, is invitation to a faithless fickleness, as if it were not clear for centuries, confirmed to the present and dependent on One, Jesus Christ, according to His tested word. The notation of scales from the eyes in terms of this synthetic religious approach, let us be clear, in terms of this 'better understanding' involves the total inadequacy of the individual religions. It levels light and darkness, rationality with claim and sets conviction against evidence, apparently using some new light, which is hard to distinguish from inflammation.

Invitation to dalliance is useless. One such demonstration, it has been the work of this site to provide^*1. Myriads of others have been found in the lives and hearts of many, who compare operationally, His word, works and continuing operations among men, as His word, whether in promise or premiss, is fulfilled continually among men, like the rising and setting of the sun. Absurdities of contradiction become a form of inanity, derogation and defiance alike (cf. SMR, esp. Chs. 3-5, 10, Deity and Design, Designation and Destiny 8, Highway to Hell and *2 below). Defy whom you will, but do not take God on; for infallibly, the result in its time is always unseasonable, high though the mighty reach.

It is merely to betray; and assertion that scales drop off by such conjunction in this field with two other religions is in itself, implying rejection. How could such scales leave the inflamed eyes, to pursue it to the original, of the curser of Christians, Saul who became Paul, unless they were utterly astray. To begin on such a course at the outset, is to accept correction and to embrace dissolution. It is to use the terminology of Paul's finding Christ with reference to an alien and unfounded designation, a cultural conversation, an implicit conversion, this time to some unknown god or godlet, entity of thought or contrivance of culture. It STARTS with a re-engendered Christ, and from what womb is that!

Not from synthetic religion but from God the author of truth and its repository, its origin and original and sole possible source for man, must light come, and being found, be received. For millenia it has been tested experimentally in history (cf. *1 below, esp. 3)), and its logical payload, always vulnerable to reality found, continues insurmountable, bountiful and without flaw. To mix His word with any other word is to reject Him from the outset, making a papier-mâché god instead of receiving what the true God has sent. If He had not spoken, make up what you will, and worship if dalliance is your delight; but when one finds what He HAS spoken, not an absentee God, but one who commingled with humanity, open to test, subject to arrest, foretelling both His plan and its results, then to mingle meaningfully with what speaks against this, is mere trivialisation of truth.

THE DESIRABLE DIFFERENTIATION

Moreover, though Lord, such is His nature and name, this same Jesus Christ, that He forbade, prohibited the use of arms even for His own personal defence, and this as a matter of principle since, He declared, His kingdom is not of this world, of this type. Far different is HIS kingdom (cf. Matthew 20:25-28), with its rulers; in His rule, it is service which is seen in its central role, in line with His own, which was in spirit, meeting need, and in His particular, personal method, meeting sin by ransoming lives marred by it - and no man does not sin - from its ruinous regime and spiritual squandering.

It makes men slaves; He makes them free (John 8:31-36); HE pays for the difference and the change and the debt for the evil occasioned, liberating thus to life with God, in reconciliation and regeneration. By His Spirit He applies; for the sin He died (Romans 8).

If, He proceeded in talking to Pilate, keen to hear Him, His kingdom WERE of this world - were the sort that uses force, grabs lands, makes its dominion apparent, makes others submit by power, then HIS servants would fight for His liberty; but they do not! In fact, He had forbidden them so to do (Matthew 27, John 18:36). He said this; and He had also done it (cf. John 6:15ff.).

You cannot join opposites, the one religion with Christ as the definitive revelation of God, God in flesh, fulfilling unique predictions in vast account; and the others WITHOUT Him. They are opposites to the heart, in the mind, in the realm of truth. It is a difference at the level of the infinite, the practical, the methodical, the life and the heart.

The sort of submission He desires is free, personal and inwardly constrained, and not achieved either by social duress or armies.

Thus the difference between Islam and Christianity is operational. Christ's desire in seeking souls disdains the outward intimidation, and even aspiration to rule the world. He does not kill to rule, or send an army to Mecca, against the Waldensians or anywhere else, to rule. He is not even interested in solemn religious rites if the heart is not right with God (Isaiah 1 cf. Isaiah 29), freely and really; and human power has nothing to do with His kingdom of heaven. While judgment ends all, when He acts definitively, whether towards alliance and its unruly approach or more subtle indoctrination (Revelation 19:19ff.), liberty is both crucial and mandatory before the Lord God, as the soul approaches Him; for truth is never dependent on force, though reality will operate whether man like it or not.

Though divine power may be used to expose folly, rebuke evil, expose judgment, God has not revoked the place of liberty for those made in His image (II Corinthians 3:17 cf. Ch. 1 above); and force where faith lies is never His way (cf. SMR Appendix D). Not from cacophony is harmony to be found, nor from force does freedom emanate.

But what of the use of force where faith is the issue ? It is verboten, scorchingly rejected (Matthew 26:52ff., John 18:36) as here irrelevant. Whether it is in the killing of Christ or of His people (John 16:2-3), or their subjugation in some other religious name, it is not to the point at all. You can gain no more regard for other religions by sacrificing this fact, thus adding ineffectually to Christ's own sacrifice, severing it AS truth, by making it appear as if FRAUD, temptable with force. However, force is not divinely used in the arena of faith. Marry that to other views if you will; but this is to debase the truth wantonly and irrationally, which stands with no help from man's puny arms. You may gain some earthy ground by sacrificing the judgment on Muhammad as impostor and false prophet such as Christ predicted (Matthew 24:24), and accepting him, instead of such a biblical view, or the State likewise; or else, by joining Judaism in plain, initial disregard of the claims of Christ, except to seek to counter them. This is an option; but in Christ, simply a seduction.

Yet all of this counterfeit spiritual currency here exposed, represents mere verbal mangling, intellectual tangling, the pragmatic in pitiable disarray, arranging things for this world to promote peace: but not with reason, not with truth, not with ground, except as with Caiaphas, the High Priest of Christ's day, as a survival technique.

Be very sure, however, that when survival surpasses truth, and convenience seems comely, then in all truth, the end is near, the moral is bankrupt, the association with God is null and void, and we move merely towards the realm of such things as normally relate to the coward or the cur, the betrayer or the cynical, the aspirant for power, for himself or herself, or for a nation (cf. II Thessalonians 2, John 14:30); and such betrayal is always costly. Britain and the USA have in the last few decades managed a vast dilution of the faith which in different ways had been vitally important both in their founding and in their development as nations: now both are growing weaker to the point that one is in vast debt mostly to an atheistic nation, and the other is in collaboration with France, of an entirely different religious configuration, for some of the power of its Navy, as it seeks by economies to remove itself from crippling debt.

To be sure, Christ will rule the world, as God incarnate; but this awaits the time when God directly acts in judgment, and He as God Himself does this. He uses no proxy, and none can escape this final work which God will, as God, direct. Its impact is clear in Revelation 19, Psalm 2, 96, 98, 110, 72, Micah 7, Isaiah 11, 59, 65, and there is neither excuse offered nor apology. Having given the race of His love (as in Titus 2 and 3), of His gift for eternal life, two millenia to find Him on an appointed meeting place, the Cross of Calvary, and the attendant resurrection of the unrotting body, paraded before many, God will in His own time, for which many indicia now point, proceed to judgment in His own way. It is categorical and final at the end.

While reason impels^*1, it is for faith to receive Him, what He has done: concerning suffering, salvation and the triumph in His own removal of the body before it could rot, and this with His own personal labour force, as the Trinity moved with Him, so that He could arise, give the Gospel time to invade the earth, not with panzers or power, commissars or control agencies, but with truth and love and liberty (which some demeaned by dilutions and additions such as now appear on the agenda again).

Yet man declines but the more in endless provocations, insurrections, wayward wanderings, insolent innovations and even misuses of Christ's own name in sects as separate from His word as the sun from the earth (cf. Errors). That this is precisely what Jesus Christ foretold is merely typical of His wisdom and deity; but it does in nothing reduce the guilt of the dismissal, rather increasing it.

No man can, in the ultimate, escape the work which God will as Judge perform, and it is a grand mercy that He has appointed Christ the Eternal Word of God, made flesh (cf. Micah 5:1-3), AS that Judge (cf. John 5:19ff., Acts 17:31, Hebrews 4:15-16). This is not mere power, but truth and wisdom in the beauty of holiness judging after centuries of the Gospel, what insists on being alien to the end, having been foreknown as such from the beginning.

There it ends as there it began (Colossians 1:15ff.). Islam however, here also, denies Christ definitively. It is not He, it claims, who is central and final and judge, for it follows an unknown God, without documentation from the first, without redemption from the first, proclaimed from 600 A.D. plus and forced on whole nations. As in the other roles, it excludes Jesus Christ in this one also, making another christ, another Jesus, another gospel, as Paul denounced concerning false apostles of deceit, in II Corinthians 11, as to type. Some roll-out of a new synthetic spirituality. is this the desire ? It is often thought, sometimes bought^*7A , but with tragedy fraught; because by its very nature, the Gospel of God in His grace in the face of Christ Jesus cannot bend. It is what it is; and indeed, God's very name is I AM THAT I AM.

Islam denies this for Christ Jesus, just as Judaism does; so that same applies in this respect, to both. One, a nation by its authorities, crucified the Lord; and the other has created a new christ in defiance of history and documentation; and many of its exponents have come near to approaching crucifixion of Israel, were they able, in various meetings, as in its endless array of jihads, as whether men or nations, they have sought to grab back even more bits of the slender residue of the promised Palestine which Israel now has^*7B. Meanwhile, the Islamic side has been refusing time and again, major concessions from Israel, who has been giving and offering them more and more, if only they will stop their internecine assaults of word and deed; but never satisfied, the Islamic forces merely menace. If there are those within Islam, who deplore this, it would be good to hear it from such bodies more often and more pointedly; but the affair has been multiply supported by many an Islamic nation and body.

Yet the offers made in the face of their opposition to Israel, these, they will not hear.

Thus there was

	the UN in1947, and the Arab rejection of enormous gains for them, at that time, and the same vast generosity in
	Clinton's Camp David offer of July 2000 - rejected by Arafat.

The chant is DESTROY them, whether from Nasser or Hamas or whatever other body, Pan-Islamic (1991) or differently named: and the earth receives the cry, along with Jewish blood. Does Israel rant that it will take over Iran, or Jordan, since much of Palestine was usurped in favour of Jordan, from the offer first made by Britain and the League of Nations, on which the powers-that-be reneged; or does it decide to take over Syria, or declare that Teheran must be destroyed ? It is not noticed.

This in no way makes the fault of Judaism the less, concerning the rejection of Jesus Christ (cf. Zechariah 11); but it does, for all the difference, illustrate yet further the ludicrous folly of seeking some sort of mutuality between categorical opposites, instead of what is demonstrably, uniquely based on history and logic and truth and God Himself, not on mere emotion, however much this may be used.

It is Christ or not Christ; it is as Elijah put it -

	"How long will you halt between two opinions ?
	If the Lord be God, follow Him;
	but if Baal, then follow him!"

(I Kings 18:21-39).

The opposites are, always have been, and always will be distinguishable as firstly, loyalty and love to God as categorically commanded for life, and to His prevailing power in sacrifice and resurrection in Christ Jesus; and secondly, assault and hatred, that of what will not follow the Lord and what thus will be forlorn and futile, by its own desire, and this by HIS OWN DEFINITION OF HISTORY AND TRUTH (John 3:15-19, Matthew 23:37ff., Luke19:42ff., Proverbs 1). Such is the biblical depiction (John 3:15-19,36). So vast is His love, commitment and care, that it came to the point of the weeping of the Messiah, who did all things just as the Father did (John 5:19ff.), because from His heart, He would that they had heeded the opportunity, the day of it, which He had given them. But they would NOT!

Weeping ? yes, in the acuity of concern, He wept, but He also endured to and through the Cross in the perspicuity of cancellation of sin's guilt in Himself, for every one who should ever come to Him in faith! Yes, and not satisfied with that, BEING GOD and HENCE INCAPABLE OF BEING HELD BY DEATH (Acts 2:24), as well as innocent of sin and unrelated personally to it, He rose bodily from the dead, rejecting rot just as He resisted decay as foretold (Psalm 16 cf. Acts 2).Thus He brought to life its day, its second day, its day and way of escape for all in heaven and in earth in the heart of His kindness (cf. Titus 2:11-14, 3:4-7), and to those receiving Him in performance.

Such is love, that does not force, but takes its course, providing all, breaking none for the taking by mere force. It is the nature of the case, and can no more be changed than the laws of physics; indeed, less so, for these related to creation as He made it, but this to man in His own image, the special created derivative from deity, personally. Creations are as God makes them, and who knows the scope of His power; and He will make a new heaven and a new earth (II Peter 3,Revelation 20). But for man being recipient of His own image, though a creation, there is no way but one, nor is there any alternative. It is yes or no, come or go! Having made so prodigious a presentation, He has nothing more to say on this Gospel of divine goodness; and shearing away parts of it or sheering away from it alike, merely mirrors the rebellion which called for the Gospel in the first place. Were it otherwise, it would be strange indeed; but having done all, He has no intention of having false substitutes or paring procedures have any place!

To saving faith in Him, comes eternal life, since this is where the prodigy of His personal sacrifice reaches and what it provides; and to the rejection comes what guilt required so that mercy might be received. Without it, accordingly, there is merely the influx of death, which His own death precluded, where faith received it: even eternal separation from God, the Source, Author, Creator and Redeemer who in nothing held back, but gave all that some might find Him, and in Him receive all things as Paul declared it (Romans 8:32ff.).

This savoury truth, it is the word of God as biblically attested. It is as sure as the creation of the universe, then; and more so, as shown.

It withstands all, and being unique, gives this world an offer. Treachery for truth is possible by the animus of man, if so be; but it is not recommended, as truth is unalterable, and it is mercy only which intervenes, by making new data which in a new way can remove the old dilemma, death in vain, or death with regret. No more is this so, and always God had this in reserve for all, over all, forcing none, functional for any.

Ignoring this is doing less than nothing for a resolution which cannot come politically, but only from the heart. Man is not putty, even for politicians; and though such an invidious movement of confusion and resistance is to gain ground for a little, in the day of the antichrist (cf. Revelation 13, 17, II Thessalonians 2), and use force, it will be a flitting matter, giving the horse its head till its direction is too clear for any to doubt! and its account is most readily assessed.

Thus just as Islam rejects the Christ who came and worked and became famous world-wide, whose word confirmed the Old Testament and whose works illustrated it, so does Judaism^*8. The division in this crucial regard is ONE AND ONLY ONE. We regret the vast error made by many concerning Jesus Christ, in view all the more of His infinite compassion and efficacious action, and can weep for those who use force, politically, socially or militarily to avoid Him, whom the Father loved, and in so loving the world, would have all, through this same Jesus Christ, to be reconciled. Alas, for all that, those who being insistent on loss, and persistent in rejection, are not by tears alone to be found. It is where God has appointed as in Galatians 6:14ff., where He may be met as also in Isaiah 55 with its prelude in Isaiah 50,52-54.

With those who thus reject Christ, each one individually, goes the entire secular world, in this, rejecting this same Jesus, just as Caiaphas did, with the same basis, that it is expedient; for truth is in one court only, His, who rules in Spirit, who has provided a grandeur of liberty, and will judge in truth. Neither Muhammad nor Caiaphas received Him, and in this there is a commonality. The answer is NO! and one even made a new christ with new ingredients.

There is one basic issue for one and for all (Jude 1-3, Galatians 1,3), be it in the form of religion or not, and it is individual; JESUS CHRIST

	1) as sole Redeemer
	2) as Ransom for believers
	3) as Saviour
	4) as bodily resurrected from the dead,
	5) as Judge because also Creator,

or something else, be it man or method, natural or supernatural.

You have infinite ways of departing; one way of coming. It is as simple as that.

FROM SYNCRETISM TO DISSOLUTIONISM

This is one aspect of the misled folly of Rudd's political religion, where there is talk of increasing understanding where only misunderstanding can grope in the face of the severity of the facts, which as in lung cancer, suffer no distortion. Ignoring for the moment, the documented, factual, verified grounds concerning Abraham, his life and works, in the Bible^*1: What has talk of some alleged common relationship to Abraham on the part of the three, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, to do with rapprochement ? even forgetting that in Surah 4:165ff., Muhammad accepts the Jewish prophets and affirms that God spoke through Moses!

What has this to do with the fact that Islam rejects the basic offices of the predicted, biblical Messiah, to reside and residing in Jesus Christ, in His salvation which is necessary in HIS NAME ONLY (Acts 4:11-12, John 3:36, 14:6), and not available in any other name at all: for His is a sublime novelty so divine and utterly unique, that there is neither room nor scope to invent now. It was so from the first (Genesis 3:15, Deuteronomy 18:15ff., Psalm 72, as God showed more, and so to the last (Isaiah 2, 7, 9, 11, 22, 32, 40-55, 60-61,Micah 4, Malachi 3-4), and it Him alone, as to God is every knee to bow (Philippians 2, Isaiah 45). On this, see Barbs, Arrows and Balms 17.

Nothing not present from the first can last to the last, whether in the 7th century or now; for God, who is the first and the last, and sin never agree, and never does He allow sin to stand unchallenged, its conditions unmet, as He moves from the first exposure of Gospel in Genesis 3:15 to the last in John 3:16, that centres in the Cross, resurrection and time before judgment (Galatians 6:14, John 10:9, II Peter 3:9).

What of syncretism ? This engineered sort of religion is but mirage, and at that, not of water, but of desert even more scorching. Who wants to see people det to be lost in a desert, even if it be of their own making: but force in faith's arena is out, irrelevant, whether political or social or military, a mere object of disgust because of breach of reality, and import of what has no affair here! Desperation may use it; but it will nevertheless lose it for which it seeks. Neither army nor invasion, pretension of protection (even from truth) or any other gimmick, lurch, guise or trick, will alter the reality of what God has to offer; and the words of men are as flowers in the inferno of a vast drought, before the word of God validated and verified, insistent and unrelenting, now, then, and always empirically (cf. Light Dwells with the Lord's Christ, and Where He is, Darkness Departs, ).

This then is the syncretistic aspect of the error of Rudd, whether it be push, or the sort of thing which, irrespective of any, develops as it so often does, into putsch.

The base, basis, height and the depth of Christianity, its centre, God, truth and focus as presented, Islam not only rejects but acts to recast in Muhammad's name, to make some new Christ, stripped as at the crucifixion, as there of clothes, so here spiritually rather than physically.

In Christ it is all or nothing, not an option for a re-cast christ, without works, to cover the infinite differences and the uttermost divergence between religions.

Indeed, to point this out, with its bases, is no more a matter of hate than is the warning of doctor that pneumonia is dangerous and that steps should be taken to avoid infection by it. So to mischaracterise the love and truth of God, in its setting of appeal, seems itself typical of the religions of hate. So to condemn contrary to truth, in this case those following the Bible, and its teaching and challenge, is exactly to do what it is alleged others do, and to become the hater while defaming those who in love seek better things. This inversion of roles is part of the attack on Jesus Christ and His people often made. Truth however is its own attestation, and how many wish to quiet it, whether by means devious or duplicitous, subtle or streamlined. When you HAVE to lose, subtlety, as the serpent knows, is the only way left for deception; that is, when force is not available, for a time!

That brings out the second reason why Rudd is wrong. It is the dissolution part of his type of enterprise which of course, is a political betrayal of the past foundation of this so attractive country, just as there has been financial blood-letting on what may be a quite unexampled scale, any ground for which, apart from the vast and documented waste in it, is hotly disputed as to its very basis, need and applicability.

There can be nothing loose in these areas. IN the effort to syncretise, meld, mould these centrally disparate religions, infinitely apart in the basic core in Christ, there is also a dispersal of character, a revisionism of nature, an inventiveness of spirit (as in II Corinthians 10:12-11:15), which without ground or works, would appear to like to make at any cost, what will fit the current fever and fervour of man, for a time. It is a matter of dissolving away what is there, and vainly imagining that the insoluble with yield. Even in the imagination, however, this innovative, synthetic thing bears a character and this is it: syncretistic dissolutionism, a type of approach, destructive in kind, whatever its innermost thought may be. Dismantling, it builds, and in building, it dismantles. So did the religions of old in the days of ancient Israel, their cultural dispositions and inward desires mounting guard, with vanities or idols as they were named.

God has long acted, decisively in Christ, and the world in on notice. Will man heed ?

When however God is against you, time is not so much help! To serve time is to lose truth, and truth has no relapses, nor any variation (cf. James 1:17ff.). One world could never atone for its loss, even if the planets were added! One God has one mind and does mind when people take it upon themselves, with neither sustainable ground nor evidence, to supplant what He has to say (Jeremiah 23:23-32), secured and fulfilled (Isaiah 48:3-8,41:21-24), and challenges to find the One whose word either stands against His, or is comparable in power, testability and precision.

REVERTING TO REALITY

If then, any type of principial, substantial rapprochement with Islam and Christianity were to be desired, or such with Judaism, then the basis of the infinite, all-central and consuming difference would have to be ignored. Such move is to reject the veracity of central claim concerning who is God, of one or more probably both or all, in favour of the religion of Rudd which as here exhibited, appears to regard some imagined or joint affinity with Abraham as comparable with the outcome: Jesus the Christ, the only begotten Son of God as the only foundation, or else no foundation at all. Islam has one of the same name, but lacking this nature, feature and focus, so abusing the basis of the name of Jesus Christ, by using it for its own purposes. In so doing, they of course lose any credibility to be gained by the appearance of that name, but lose it through such adoption for such purposes.

As for the One who is God, Muhammad chose something else, and brought in the name but not the reality of the founder of Christianity as an aide! This addition is a fatal failure. You might in parallel with this, point out that sometimes Jewish Rabbis and Christian ministers both wear black, so that we should seek to extend their mutual religious recognition. The peripheral, the marginal, the arguable, it does not in any degree, overcome the basic, central and core question.

Omitted in such contrivances is the point that the ONLY foundation of Christianity is what both the other religions reject.

Judaism more directly, but in the end, similarly rejects just this role for Jesus Christ; and while the Jewish people show no desire to rule this world or to invade even the Middle East, but rather to have their small portion of the promised Palestine, left intact, yet the essence of Judaism does still reject this same foundation, this only one, basic to Christianity, just as Islam does. To be sure, the great latter-day (equals now cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5) spiritual restoration of a vast multitude in Israel (as in Zechariah 12:10-13:1, Romans 11:25ff., Ezekiel 36-37) is to come, and its criterion as noted above for Christianity, is precisely the crucified Messiah, the One whom this nation pierced, as foretold some half-millenium before it happened, in Zechariah, just as in Isaiah even more extensively, while in Daniel 9 (cf. Christ the Citadel ... Ch. 2),there was given the date of this occurrence, approximately what is now designated A.D. 30. Yet while the crucifixion part is precisely fulfilled and long past, the restoration of heart to a mass of persons in Israel, suddenly, this has yet to come, and indeed, in its coming is the closing stage of this very Age (cf. Zechariah 14, Ezekiel 3;7, Micah 7).

The Rudd proposition thus ignores central evidence and moves in the direction of abusive language, as if presenting the God of love in Jesus Christ, divinely given, and warning of the danger of remaking or forsaking this freely, were hate: such indeed as Rudd seems to exhibit towards such people, to the extent of so distorting and mis-depicting what they are doing, and making a virtual caricature of their position.

It is no accident that this is done, while this country moves further and further away from freedom into the abuse of power in speech dictation by authorities^*9, who would disable freedom on a confused basis of their knowing the truth about what is what, while pretending a model which has none available, none at all, in the final account. So does disdain direct, ignorance defile and authority over years, move towards suffocation of Christian mouths in particular, as if what stirs people against it, as Christ did in the hearts of many, were in some way unworthy of publication! Sin is always more popular then salvation (cf. Matthew 7:15ff.).

When such a muzzling as that comes, as it has already been near to coming, then intolerance of toleration, of the present mode of free speech to enable evidence to be evaluated, claims to be considered, argumentation to be assessed, ideologies to be ruthlessly exposed, to awaken people as in Isaiah, fast asleep, will rule. Should this be, then the due use of liberty concerning the foundational faith in terms of which this country was founded as colony, may become a legal offence. Such would be the kin of Lord Hate-Good of Pilgrim's Progress. May he be long delayed in ever coming here, whether the coming be contrived or unintended: it is the arrival which matters.

It is good that in biblical terms, any such drastic action on a world-scale action will be short, and severed abruptly (as in II Thessalonians 2), so that the warning now, is also an invitation to be where the Lord of glory is, when He comes (Revelation 13, I Corinthians 2:8 cf. Philippians 2).

Beware of the mutilation of motive in this move against Bible-believing Christians, per fundamentalism, one which tends to be confusing opposites as love and hate, and accusing many of the very thing of which such abusive intolerances seem themselves, to stand more justly accused. The extent to which there is realisation on the part of Rudd is a separate and not the major question: it is the character of what is given, whether it be in some political vacuum, or other, which matters and must be measured.

Hence this article.

NOTES

This is as shown in the demonstration of

1) SMR,

2) TMR and

3) Light Dwells with the Lord's Christ, and Where He is, Darkness Departs,

for example, with

4) Deity and Design, Designation and Destiny.

Within this demonstration of the Bible, in particular on the bodily resurrection of this identical Jesus Christ (cf. Acts 2:23-28), see such sites as The Magnificence of the Messiah, SMR Ch. 6.

On this, see also:

Great Execrations ... Greater Grace Ch.    7;

Barbs, Arrows and Balms Appendix 3,

Biblical Blessings Ch. 15, Extended Endnote 2,

BIBLE TRANSLATIONS 33, Acme, Alpha and Omega: Jesus Christ Ch. 11,

With Heart ... 3,

Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 5, 6,

The Magnificence of the Messiah, Endnote 1,

Dastardly Dynamics ... and Immovable Faith Ch. 11,

SMR Ch. 6 and Index,

The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 9, Section 14,

Joyful Jottings 25,

A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 15, 16,

Stepping Out for Christ Ch. 5,

Things Old and New Ch. 2, Excursion 2A;

Light of Dawn Ch. 3,

Beyond the Crypt ... Ch. 2;

Dizzy Dashes ... and the Brilliant Harmony of Inevitable Truth Ch. 2;

Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 8 (on resurrection and Lazarus, yes and both with Jerusalem);
contrasting Greek bodily terms - Let God Be God Ch. 2 ;

and in the case of New Zealand:
Dizzy Dashes ... and the Brilliant Harmony of Inevitable Truth    6,
The Frantic Millenium ... Ch. 4;

Bewilderment ... or the Beauty of Christ's Holiness Ch.    1.

*1A

THE RUDD IR-RATIONALE

From Dastardly Dynamics ... and Immovable Faith Ch. 10, we see some more of the developing preparations for the pragmatic, twisted, depraved departure from truth for convenience, or fear and sheer extravagance of human power, as God is made into something like a cough mixture. The newly arranged god is to be used as prescribed, born of numerous fragments. An excerpt will site many elements of this move in the predicted direction, really as old as hell from the Edenic episode, when Satan wanted man to abandon divine authority, as Maker, and to enlist him on the side of sly invention. On this, see II Peter 2, II Timothy 3-4, I Timothy 4, II Thessalonians 2, Revelation 13,17,19, Jeremiah 23.

Thus, disdaining objectivity, inventing mistrust and imagining or pretending God to be as desirous of fame and name as his own satanic mind, voracious BECAUSE created and power-mad, the devil led man astray as he still seeks to do. He is of course not always direct, and has his own programs, often duping those who are snared.

Ignore reason, banish reality, just invent some idea that can unify man in opposition to God, or instead of the self-revealing God, and make God into whatever you please for the sake of gain of some sort of another, and the game is on. It is to be hoped that this disaster for convenience or departure for ambition, pollution for pragmatism, will not serve Australia as a help into that giant swerve which makes of a land of Christian foundation, an idiot-doll or idol-doll of human desire, dancing to the tune of expediency, with increasing expedition. Many diseases start almost undiscerned, but left alone, can multiply their breed hugely.

Moves in this direction, in whatever part, whether consciously so or other, realised or not, are of course not original to Rudd, and indeed in the 1970s in Victoria, a vast sale of goods was on, amalgamating religious tastes as by a chef, and making all things subjective, linked with a sort of naturalistic niceness to other people's so important ideas. It was an hilarious enterprise, except for the tragic fact that there is no fun in working on God, since He is holy, just and pure, knowledgeable and Almighty, and taunting truth is a vapid past-time; for that is what it came to be. Comedy belongs elsewhere and should not be permitted to appear in this State-managed, stage-craft with 'religious ideas', beginning with subjectivisation and repudiation of absolute truth there or for that matter, anywhere else EXCEPT ...

Except ? There is then absolute truth even in this magical enterprise of State religious views made heir apparent to a faith which is not allowed to be faith, but is mixed up in a contrariety of confusion ? Yes, there is in practice, such an assumption, for the State knows it all, and without basis but authority, tells it, putting all in its place. In this, we find the absolutist relativists, the Statists - that is those vaunting their so special knowledge and assignments to one and all, while disdaining any concept of absolute truth at one and the same time. It resembles not a little tht amazing creature, the chameleon.

Yet it is not admitted. It lies with other lies, that is, unverified contradictions and impositions, with the State which evaluating all, from a basis excluding absolute truth, TELLS you the absolute truth about absolute truth, and anything else you may have in mind in the field. To be sure, it lacks reasons, is contrary to reason, is a fake and surrogate affair, minus the glory of what impels to belief through reason and evidence, and truth itself in its various enterprises in its own name. Nevertheless, though an antinomian expedition, IT KNOWS! It TELLS YOU. Are you happy now ?

On this, see also former efforts as in Victoria, in the Melbourne University thesis, Lead Us Not into Educational Temptation, where it is detailed, and exhibited in its savage farce, and negative militancy.

However, the mediation of religions by various biblically defined, false prophets, has long proceeded, as even the excerpt from Dastardly Dynamics ... and Immovable Faith Ch. 10 below attests. This is slightly revised for the present purpose.

Meanwhile with the Bishop Swing Unification of Religions, and the USA’s involvement in its new threefold religious engagement, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, as indicated in the famous prayer breakfast after September 11, and subsequent very busy remarks of an inclusivist character from various government officials (cf. News 121, 122, Cascade of Truth Ch. 10, Trust God … Ch. 7, Lord of Life Ch. 8 and Ch. 1^*2 above), there is increasing unification from the American side.

Not only do we find the Secretary of State visiting places like Morocco, but seeking considerable liaison with Europe. After all, since Churchill talked of the United States of Europe, much has happened, from the Common Market, to the proliferation of agencies whether in iron and steel, or atomic contrivances, courts of Justice located in the Hague, or international control units for what then became the European Union, in Belgium, and with more and more nations joining, the Biblical Portrait of the times approaching the return of Christ is rushing into reality: prophecy first, then practice afterwards, the line of action.

Then the developing ‘vision’ has cultural appeal to many (cf. SMR pp. 923ff.), and a religious inclusivism is likewise hoping for fulfilment by this international combination, which like the developing roundness which may develop on hips after middle age, could slowly repose by circulatory accretions…

Further, there is … glory, for some, in the very concept of size, power, importance, clout and significance. Again, there is a kind of historical romanticism which seizes many more aware of the nice things of Europe’s past, than of those gross and frequent grabbings for glory to which many fell prey, who then preyed on the means thereto: Empire building for gain (one of the motives for many, at least), religious oppression which even the Communists with their unwieldly and ill-defined religion of mankind and absolute certainties in an allegedly relativistic world, can do little to outdo.

However, in Communism’s favour in the race for the prize of most outrageous, there is the latest Laogai Report (Vol. 10, No. 3, 2002) from Harry Wu on China, and the use of prisoners’ body parts, as well as the terms and methods of excluding organs from those who must die, for this or that reason. These include ‘grounds’ for the theft of organs (at the time of death, or by one report, in the case of kidneys, before it!), such as withstanding the State, that great convulsion of power and vainglory which, trusting in itself, has as much wisdom as is normally found in those who do likewise. Further, it is reported in that place, that the trade in these parts, indicated in appalling detail, is brisk, profitable, helps hospitals, and within these, not least, Communist Party officials.

Such things must give one pause before awarding the palm for horror to Romanism’s exploits (cf. Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 14). On the other side, however, we must realise that Romanism, for its part, pursued its designs and their power-hungry horrors (cf. Unam Sanctam SMR pp. 1062-1071), in the Inquisition and sundry papally stirred wars, for many centuries, in MANY lands, so that it still wins, though it has been quite an instructor for many, such as Hitler, who also was advanced by it (cf. SMR pp. 968-969, 807ff. at *10).

Both are components of that Biblically described ‘Babylon’ and its ‘mystery’ which allows a considerable accretion of parallel exploits in the past (Revelation 17-18, SMR pp. 946ff.). This it is which is formed by the artful composition of State and religion, the former taking the leading role, in a mixture of divine debasement, human self-exaltation and rampant self-realisation with glory imported from above in name, and below in fact, where it fades, like any glowing ember abstracted from its fire (cf. Biblical Blessings Ch. 2).

With a ‘mystery Babylon’ past, going back to Babel (Revelation 17:1-5), and a Romanist face in the present yielding to final deadly face of the thing yet to come in its own name (Revelation 17:1-6,17-18), it is clearly portrayed (SMR pp. 946): this religious riot that distorts righteousness in doctrine and in practice with such ardour and address (cf. SMR pp. 1032-1088H). There it sits in Europe without seeming to realise what is coming (Revelation 17:1-6,16, SMR p. 947), and the new spirit of experimentation with man which is gripping this adventitious New Age, continues close and clammy, whether in clones or drones, in visions of rocketry and supervision from the skies, or in psychiatry and supervision from the human control division. This queen, but not of hearts, is to be dethroned from her delicious combinations with royal pride and power, and the final princes will deal, conveniently and freely, without her at the reins. The sky is NOT the limit, for these ‘beastly’ (cf. the beast motif for nations in their religious rioting and grandiose patterns in Daniel 2, 7, and in Revelation 13) bodies aim higher than that, though they are to fall lower than the earth.

So does glory begin to make its hoardings anew in Europe. It is rather like a self-propelled gun.

Terror on the one side,

Ø     and internationalisation

o     from convenience,

o     from technological advance,

o     from markets to provide greater base for greater research and development,

o     from debasement of Christianity in many subversive organs, like the WCC, which has been all but taken over by this or that political or theological slant from time to time (q.v.),

o     from trade utilisation of technical advance,

o     from sudden upgrading of markets such as Europe to and for itself, especially with Russian having such aspirations for Euro-participation, as also China and their immense economic potential (but for whom ? since politics may control more than a little of the economic phenomena by simple nationsalisation),

together with

Ø     Islam’s upsurge in immorality and strength as in the worst of former times, making cohesion more cosy (hence doubts about Turkey’s possible future admission…)

Ø     the Middle East and its confrontation platform in Jerusalem (where Europe is conspicuous for its Arab loyalties and hence less likely to suffer from jihad, and a most convenient shelter shed),

Ø     the apparently intractable character of militant dream-zeal cladding for various cultural passions:

all these things are pushing, pushing, for more European power.

They look for an issue in more extended European aggrandisement, greater integration with the USA, and of course, less scope for Israel, since apart from all else, they are small and unoily, whereas Islam is large and most oily.

The dastardly dynamics drive to convenience, survival, pragmatism, collaborations to overcome, control to subvert subverters, and principles to make it palatable, with various religious and cultural payments to these ends, proceeds. It moves, so that before long, why look, there is to be the attempted removal of the meta-religion^*3, of the only one valid and rational and reasonable and intractable because of the truth, because it alone meets scientific method, because it alone stands when all else falls, and presents an interface with fact of monumental proportions.

If not ? Trouble. Was it not the same with Caiaphas when he actually set about having Christ killed, for all the world (John 11), like a religious Mafia specialist before his time ?

Will not the world follow the day when Christ’s literal death was decided upon (and permitted since it was God’s long announced plan to have Him as a judicial sacrifice to enable mercy to operate in truth, and not against it - Romans 3:23ff) ?

Will it not sell the official, the national parts that remain in order to … survive, or be safe, or secure, or pleasant, or have some way of keeping a world to some extent intact, which is all but destroyable with an atomic power now in the hands where bleary theories and the dastardly dynamics of pseudo-spiritual insurgency can have a force, purely destructive, of their own!

Pay the piper for another tune ? It is just that the asking price is mortal. Many will pay; and be paid out for it. It is ever so: sublimate spirituality, prostitute truth for a supine peace which knows only survival, put it in whatever grandiose terms you like, and agreeing to the idea of ceasing to be human, you find inhumanity on the throne, dispensing evils as now in China yet, in Russia for long, in various Empires when the price was similar, in aspirant false churches and in Islamic lust, more bloody but not more passionate that that in many another sect (cf. Highway to Hell, Things Old and New Appendix).

The truth remains; the immovable faith remains; and soon you will be seeing them overcome by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of their testimony and loving not their lives to the death. Indeed, in the last century you have seen such things in a scale of vast proportions in Russia, in China, in Sudan, in Indonesia, and elsewhere the brew develops, And what is the valium for political victory, but surrendering absolute truth, with relative ease, in order to be relatively sure that absolutely nothing will destroy the human race. It is like the doctors capitulating to the inmates of an asylum, and following their bidding, because, you see, they all have guns.

Guns and the gutless do not make for nice reading; and they both require judgment. It is coming. First man was coming, as God implemented His creation; then sin was coming as man expedited his powers of liberty; then salvation was coming as God exhibited like the sonorous drone of an incoming aircraft, His intentions; then the Gospel was going, until its gracious work was complete, as Christ ordered it to be (Matthew 28:18ff.); then the End was coming, and now is like a large vessel docking, now fussing with this, now operating on that, for quite some time, before finally still and at its appointed birth.

Thus have we been, and are liberally warned, just as Christ, in the same analogy, indicated was the case with the world of Noah’s day (the ark was not built in a day). It did not however heed, despite its manifest depravity.

All this is so; but it is not what we are really waiting for, who follow the word of God and who savour the testimony of validity, logic, reason and that to which they infallibly point: the Bible foretelling Christ, and Christ authenticating the Bible.

We are waiting for Christ.

No father ever waited with more expectation and inward joy for his son back from war, then does the alive Christian for his, for her Lord, nor did any bride with more delicious anticipation, look for the approaching form of him with whom she had elected to spend the rest of her life (in the days when faithfulness was realised to be a part of love). This, it is why John says in Revelation 22:20, in this way:

§    “He who testifies to these things says,
'Surely I am coming quickly. Amen.'
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!”

Certainly, there had to be a whole bevy of international events, and developmental syndromes of sin in the world, assuredly the Gospel had to go entirely throughout it, as Christ declared FIRST (Matthew 24); but then, a couple of thousand years, maybe, some 50 generations, it is not a lot. When the END comes, it will seem quite short. However, on the other side, there will be absolutely NO excuse, for the whole gamut of religious and ostensibly irreligious extravanganzas of unreason and irreligion will have been tried, and found to founder. The time, it is short, but sufficient.

One may say, But I am a Christian, and I do not experience such a sense of anticipation as you indicate. If so, either you are mistaken, and are not a Christian (though the door is open wide and see Ch. 2 above, SMR pp. 524ff., 582ff.); or else your love is in real danger of growing cold (cf. Revelation 3:14ff.). If the latter, repent and seek Him afresh as there shown, in Rev. 3. He is always gracious, and never wearies of His own children. It is easy to go on semi-automatic pilot, and to allow the cares and troubles of this world to be like undergrowth, preventing progress. It may be necessary in some cases, to cut loose and forsake all, this perhaps for the first time. When you are sitting in heavenly places in Christ (Ephesians 2:6), it is not something you forget!

In our next chapter, we shall plan DV to look at I Corinthians 15, in order, as an application in Apologetics, to see the coherence and meaning of the phases and aspects of the thing which is in view.

*1B

See for example on this very opposite side to the transfiguration, that is, the disfiguration of Christ, with reference to Isaiah 53, Psalm 22 and 16, prediction and performance, and meaning of performance: The Bountiful, the Accountable, the Surmountable Ch. 6.

*1C

This is just what Deuteronomy 32:17-21 exhibits with suitable exposure and a divine disrelish for such romancing. Thus we find the parallel in II Corinthians 13:5, as Paul labours for the defence and confirmation of the Gospel (Philippians 1:7) and the removal of opportunistic or alien pollution (II Corinthians 10:13-11:15), as of innovative adventurism that as so often, would make of the sovereign actions of God, the site of ostensible concord, that neither lasts nor can last, be not founded on the truth (cf. *1 above). .

On Islam, see:

Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed ... Ch. 5, Highway to Hell, More Marvels ... Ch. 4,
Divine Agenda ... Ch. 6, SMR pp. 50ff., 62ff., Celestial Harmony ... Ch. 10 B, SMR pp.1078ff.

Acme ... Ch. 9 , Great Execrations ... Ch. 3, SMR pp. 1O88D - three major religions in some ways in concert, astray.

See also:

Beauty for Ashes Chs. 4, 7,

SMR pp. 1074ff., esp. 1079, 1081ff..

*3 See TBW Appendix 3.

*3A

See *9 below, and TMR Ch. 8 with Beauty for Ashes Ch. 3.

The term 'fundamentalism' is one of those captured by antithetical powers of culture. It has been made to have a negative, detestable, inane, dangerous if not perilous connotation, and to relate to having a book claiming its source or origin directly in God. It may at times be used yet more loosely.

Since imaginary gods have been a human invention parade since Eden, when Eve first doubted the veracity or reliability of the actual Maker of man and the universe, and vary enormously, even into devilry, the book of any such invented being may be vastly different from the uniquely attested and confirmed Bible. Fundamentalisms are like numbers, before you put in the plus or minus signs: at that level, they do not mean very much.

Thus though the Bible preaches love and refuses force in the realm of faith to the uttermost degree, some have books of religion, or ideas about them which proceed in precisely the opposite direction. Bundling them together is like bundling all bacteria together, to use a negative example, so that those necessary for good bowel operation are linked with those of dangerous impact.

Simple and foolish as this is, it has a tendency to effect confused religious thought, which the devil loves to forward. It is necessary in this and in other things, to think clearly.

Confusion has a grasping payment pattern and program. It is undesired.

The idea therefore of "fundamentalist religious militancy" and "faith-based hate" presents a duo of some interest. If insistence on truth, such as Christ made without physical force or even protection, is 'fundamentalist religious militancy', that is, unconducive to accepting State-based duress and militancy in religious affairs, as it in fact was, and is even distantly to be related to "faith-based hate" , say in view of the purgative principles in Matthew 23, then we have the new method in due contrast with the old, where God was permitted to speak His mind and to MEAN it.

It is normal first and foremost to have Christians in the Bible-accepting group, as fundamentalists, since the term gained great currency during various debates and divisions. The concept of hatred because various sexual diversions are not exempted from biblical condemnation, is rather rampant in relation to some biblical morals, and by extension with many, to the Bible and its proponents, and the use of such concepts is widespread to the point that using them without qualification invites such popular impressions. If other is intended, then any exceptions should be noted, as a work of precision, since the practice is so widespread.

Where synthesis and mutuality between heavily contrasting and even contradictory religions is in view, the terminology stands in the setting of the alternative: NOT being militant, NOT being unaccepting, and in normal parlance, if taken to the point of sore points, NOT being hate-based faith.

If then in the synthetic parlour where scales are to fall off opaque eyes with new understanding, there is this vast change in view, then the option discarded, namely sticking to the point and to the basis, as to the Bible, becomes the standard for contrast with the new-look, which is to stand grandly above the militance, the fundamentalism, the teemingly hate-based as distinct from the willowy co-working felicity. It is from such things the new method seeks deliverance, and for avoidance of this that it is evidently proposed in the get-together concept.

In short, the faith-based hate and the fundamentalistic militancy are contrasted with the new method, which is distinctive in its seeking for new understanding and its expectation of finding in this, over the three religions in view, a scale-dropping from the eyes. It is not only touted as an improvement, but a vast and categorical one, leaving for dead the odium of the alternative, a scaly thing.

In this, there appears an odium, a judgment, a dismissal, a characterisation to the uttermost degree, attributed to the other option, left for dead by the soaring shaft of innovative splendour. We have dream number n, in a long list, touted for triumph but unable to produce, despite this type of thing at least, in various ways carrying on for centuries, as man assaults the Bible and the word of God, in order to make things more agreeable. Only the facts remain disagreeable then; but they are so hard to conquer that wars erupt without any regard to the valour of the enlightened among the agnostics, the adventurers and the space travellers in religious atmospherics, who seem to commission themselves to tell any god what he really ought to be saying.

On this, see 1491, 1502

*5 On force in this sphere, see also SMR pp. 50ff., 62ff., 1175ff.,
and The Divine Agenda ... Ch. 6.

See The Magnificence of the Messiah, Christ the Wisdom ... Ch. 8, Repent or Perish Ch. 2 for example, with Joyful Jottings 23-25.

See for example The Bountiful, the Accountable and the Surmountable Ch. 6, Joyful Jottings 23-25.

*7A

See the character of the prediction in II Peter 2:1ff..

*7B

On this and related topics see:

Cascade of Truth ... Ch. 4 (Jewish solution)
Galloping Events Ch.    3 (Jews, gibes and the like: broad biblical survey, including Romans 11, which may be used with survey aspects in ALERT 10, GGEPI,
Three Anzas, One Answer Ch. 2 (Swedish frankness on anti-Jewish European feeling, Zionism and racism, US decline),

Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed ... Ch. 4.
Grand Biblical Perspectives Appendix,
It Bubbles,It Shrieks, He Calls Ch. 10, Ch. 11,
Regal Rays of Revelation Ch. 1 (% distribution of Palestine in some detail);, Galloping Events Ch. 4,
The Open Door, the Closed Mind and the Call of Christ Ch. 8, Appendix,

Israel I.

SEE also Glory, Vainglory and Goodness Ch. 7, *2
(for further exposition, of 'Israel' in biblical terminology, and implications)
with The Open Door, the Closed Mind and the Call of Christ Ch. 8;

The Pitter-Patter ... Ch. 9 in conjunction with Lord of Life Ch.   3 re perspective in modern history, seen from the Biblical forecasts, including basis for concern one month before the Twin Tower disaster as recorded here;

For a large overview of this with many contextual issues: see

The Bay of Retractable Islands Chs. 18 and 19.

With this, see Grand Biblical Perspectives Chs.   3 and   4.

Rudd in his reported speech refers simply to the Jewish side, as distinct from the Christian and the Islamic, as the Jews. However Jews were used, on the basis of Jesus Christ, in founding the Christian Church; so it is assumed that the meaning is the part for which they have been world famous for centuries, namely that religion which does not receive Jesus Christ as Messiah, though accepting much or all of the Old Testament. For this, the name used here is Judaism, and that is the meaning in this context, what has this basis and background. This it has, but not Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, Messiah and King to come. To avoid issues of nomenclature, then, this essence of Judaism is in view, as in the loose use of the term ' the Jews' in the Rudd news items - the point here in view is those with notable Old Testament background and basis, and without Jesus Christ in the place of God manifest in the flesh.

See FREEDOM, THE NATION, THE INTERNET AND THE NEXT GENERATION.