NO THANKS FOR ANGST

PREFACE

If you want to read the book, do ensure that you read this first!

How could truth be dead ? Only if the lie ruled forever.

How could a lie rule at all ? Only if hearts were astray, not merely disinclined, but misinclined, under mischievous control.

Who then would control such hearts ? Forces of alienation.

How long could it last ? As long as misused equipment can last. How long can THIS misused equipment last ? God says He will not always strive with disaffected man, for the spirit would fail! (Isaiah 57). Thus, a youth smashing through the gears must in the end have no gears, or continual restoration. There are limits in creation, of man or machine. What are the limits in man ? It depends on the disease. If it is chronic, then in time it could become irreformable, like cancer, the answer being death. However with man, the eternity of his source, the image he bears and the cloisters of time lead to an eternity of his damnation. While this can often be misconceived, it is quite final, fatal and hopeless.

But why should he be damned ? It is by coincidence that this is so like damaged and damned are near look alikes ? The words indicate respectively doom and condemnation, and harm, loss. Doubtless the concepts relate; but the damage that is doom is different. It means that the assessment is divine and the result irremediable. It is not a lack of love, but a limit to the powers and prowess of man. It is not that God’s grace would fail, but man’s place is finally forsaken whether in the folly of pride, the conceit of self-sufficiency, the love of being lord without know-how or right, or some such spiritual eccentricity, ignoring that God is in the heart of it all, and needs to be in the heart of man as well.

Look at Isaiah 57:15-16 and see, and to this, DV we will attend during the progress of this volume – the truth will not always strive, “will not contend forever” in the breached heart. Meanwhile, the day of opportunity is not a game (Isaiah 55); it is not some ludicrous cat and mouse play with the destruction of the world’s order in view, and the arising of a new World Order, to KEEP ORDER, in quest. Not at all; rather is it sober reality in motion, even if through the mystery of iniquity, it often includes intoxicated folly in notion. That sort of sale is only one type, though they all have one source and one end.

v Yet this one, it is the very epitome of the sale of the soul for security, because the sale of the soul for autonomy which precedes it goes on.

Al Qaeda and its numerous violent look alikes are playing a distinguished part in the laying of the path to Babel II, that re-erection of the human dream of ruling the world without God. They are mere appetisers and excuses for the Age-old fiction of mesmerised man, taking the reins from ‘chaos’ and ruling in contempt of God.

Yet his ‘chaos’ is but the chatter of his alienated heart, mounting disease, disorder and violence, the emblems of the vile. Instead of moving back to truth, however, man is proceeding to seek to control of the forces of destruction. The new element: man to become god by his own will, while manufacturing world government. The New World Order however will be but another phase of the same basis as brought the violence that is tattooed heavily now on this Age, one godless passion replacing another: the governmental to replace the intemperate lusts and thrusts of the engines of violence, so becoming merely one more precipitating factor in the end result of devilry.

The “Beast” is putting on weight, though his words as always, lack any weight at all.

What does hell haveworse than this, but the irredeemable quality of its denizens, infested and having refused to be divested: what they will is no thrill then, but rather the deadly portrayal of their portraits.

God however is love and love simply does not dictate. It is ironic indeed that man seems bent on flying to his own aspired for autonomy, only to be the butt and victim of oppression from what is not at all love or even loving. In so doing, he avoids the source, course and essence of all love, in God, to find his alienated dream a ditch.

As to love, it may orate, plead, protest, even judge when the time is ripe and ruin without truth makes its final corrosion, though it may do so with tears (cf. Luke 19:42ff., Ezekiel 33:11ff.). It may give, yield and pay; but it never dictates to the soul it made. If you want doom, it is available. It is not however all loss.

While the world for its part is in love with its doom, thinks it spectacular, and careers to its disastrous destiny, yet much will be redeemed from it, before it goes. Will you be part of this ? It is heaven to be in heaven, and even now the children of God are in “heavenly places” (Ephesians 2:6), tasting that the Lord is good; for quite simply, the truth lives and is written, and one both may and should abide in Him (cf. Questions and Answers Ch. 6); and furthermore, He – for the truth is personal and Jesus Christ, is holy and humble. It does not parade; it presents; it is (John 8:58) without depending on anyone or anything; and it is made explicit on earth definitively as Jesus Christ, the Lord: eternal in heaven as the Word of God, incarnate on earth as its donor and deed.

It is He who is its criterion and word. Its identity is His. His work though it was heavy, is light, for God is light and Christ His eternal word has come to earth to express Him, being manifest on earth with evocative brilliance and intensive care, gracious and yet still, the Lord. It guns down lies without artillery, and is possessed of eternal life, which it gives. HE, the Christ, gives HIMSELF, for it is His (I John 1:1-4). Such is the loveliness of the truth. You need no angst; for that is mere symptom of negation, the soul strangulation of deprivation of truth.

It is He. Nothing else lives, lasts and loves; and it is so because all comes from Him, God express, just as man needs to receive the expression! Man without Christ is like a headless rooster, cut and yet active; man without truth is like an engineless car, stolen by witless thieves with cunning, defaced and dysfunctional: an empty mockery not of machine, but flesh.

Small wonder the LORD once said that the end of all flesh was before Him (Genesis 6); and great wonder is it that in love He then acted, acted in Abraham, in the Gospel to come (cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 17, TMR Chs. 2-3), in the price paid, in the resurrection accomplished, His own body, by the indomitable power and intractable will of His Father, not only raised from the tomb without corruption, but garnished with brilliance, exhibiting on this earth for 40 days before He left it, more of the wonder of the divine power of God, just as Elijah did, in his departure. It was with Moses and Elijah He spoke in the transfiguration; with His disciples after His resurrection; and it is to each of us who know Him that He speaks now, words of comfort, wonder and grace. Neither does He put skids on scripture, but as on earth, so now, His zeal is in its fulfillment, nothing to be left undone; nor does He leave His people to the mere operation of this world’s wit and the coverage of our own personalities. Not for nothing is it that He is “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).

All this He has done, and does, His work accomplished but His fragrant presence filling the lives of His own, by His Holy Spirit, who does not speak of Himself, but shows the things of Christ, just as Christ reveals the very nature of His Father, His perfect, eternal and gracious word and expression (Hebrews 1). He rose; and in the teaching thereafter, in the apostolic foundations built on Christ, in history, in heart and now in the coming finale, as in an opera, He is personally once more coming: according to the program, entirely.

Because truth is alive, it liberates where it comes, like a mighty stream, sweeping away the dross, the mud and the muddle, where it enters (cf. Ezekiel 47, John 8:29-36, 4:14, 7:37). Marshes ? these remain in their place, isolated, lordly and muck (Ezekiel 47, cf. Biblical Blessings Ch. 5).