which had no accounts of its
own to settle,
being free to make man free,
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CHAPTER 1
Inflammation of the Ruling Passion to Rule
Consummation of the Divine Passion to Deliver
News 351
ABC TV May 19, 2005
RUFFIANS OF YORE ? BUT NO, NOT SO LONG BEFORE NOW
On the maps, in the camps, in the air that droned, in the panzer divisions that lapped up their food, in the millions of Russians slain and the concentration camps of Europe, there was doom written large with the hand of man. It is however the hand of God which matters. Belshazzar's kingdom was doomed when GOD WROTE to this effect as in Daniel 5. While not all divine communications are so inscribed, their results in history are no less sure.
Hitler's mad rush for racially religious and religiously racial glory was moving to its end, and its beginnings were as throbbing with superficial hope as were those of Darwin et al., who have populated the earth with myths so dear to the human heart that even when evidences not only refute them, but mock them openly with loud-mouthed guffaws, people like our own DECS, a sort of education department, continue without giving so much as a pertinent answer to any consideration made*1A. They continue immovable in their devotion to such treatises of vanity*1, and refuted theories of yore. It is one thing to be old-fashioned, but to be mis-fashioned and to refuse debate, discussion or any answer to anything of substance, this becomes government IN democracy but scarcely of it. Responsible government in many countries in this world has ceased in this arena, just as in Germany it ceased because it was so obvious that the hatred and 'scientific' genetic ideas of Hitler MUST work.
It did not matter that they COULD not since removal is not arrival, when it comes to genes; it did not matter that mere philosophy supported by NOTHING was back of it, as in the present case noted. It was in and the 'unfit' were out. They could not be recalled, any more than can the minds or spirits of the children, virtual slaves in many a nation to the ranting irrationalities of organic evolution, here with no permission even for consideration of the realities of creation in science, or rationally, of it anywhere else. It would take something near a miracle to thwart Hitler's misuse of government and it WILL take a miracle to deliver children from such slavery*1.
When however the focussed deficiencies of the Hitleresque philosophy were revealed, as painfully as have been those of organic evolution which lay steadily in the midst of his own vanities, another proponent of this same survival makes arrival confusion, Stalin, was now ready to use the resources of the free world to institute a second tyranny in and for Europe.
As he greedily snatched all the industrial might of Germany that he could, and General Marshall refused to let the Allies into Berlin or Prague as soon as they could, allowing thus for the rape of Berlin and vast horrors for many, Montgomery being kept in the wings whereas he could have flown in hours, Stalin was preparing for the totalitarian replacement of one irrational manipulation of mankind by another. He would use German industrial equipment and even scientists, and with much help from the West on the way to his own deliverance, enslave by proxy.
Too late they realised the folly of all this godless or god-making heathenism, raising what is not to compete with the Creator and His ways *2, as it rationally might! With such historical data as some included here, the interesting TV presentation from ABVC TV has given an enthralling if deplorable account of some of the last days and hours of the forsaken regime, and the commencement of its immediate successor, for part of Europe.
Thus the raw inhumanity, resulting from divorce from God, was again instituted, and Eastern Europe had a second dose, this time for a half century, and one might have hoped this would be enough. Alas it is too evident that soon there will be a third dose (cf. Highway of Holiness Ch. 10, The Moon Soon, and Grating Grandeur ... Ch. 2, Three Anzas ... Ch. 5).
Accordingly, in the last half of the twentieth century, the USSR in its equally naked clothing, the Emperor's folly of old, showed the world the power of mystic irrationalism (cf. Communism) in yet another form, built similarly on a foundation of fancy, which however fancied, does not replace granite, or substitute for God. It too - after imparting appalling horrors on millions in ways almost beyond the scope of sanctified imagination to consider without fainting, for each soul suffers, each family, each psyche is in danger of shrinking - itself shrank, to became a very model of inefficient sublimity, built on air, and crashing into the pit.
This lust for regality, for rule, for taking over the creation on the part of one member of the creation, man, this inane if not insane rush into regality, abusing processes instead of what made them, and at that, using instead of being serviceable for the actual sovereign who invented it all, has become the very model of a modern Major-General, in our latest form. Gilbert and Sullivan could have invented yet more stunning derisions to celebrate it.
As the world in general, with some exceptions, and Europe in particular, as seen in the references above, moves and lurches, still seeking something other than God, or some god of their own making to solace their rebellion and seduce the spirits of mankind, insatiable, indomitable, chained into servitude in its very abyss of glory to be slain yet again, there is in a very literal sense, hell to pay.
More accurately, for the present, however, it is God who must be paid, since mercy is mocked and truth is derided, relativity ruling whilst its own mouth speaks 'No truth' so that it also CANNOT be true. Payment comes like the bill that must be settled at the end of the month. It is man who is to pay, and first of all he pays his neighbours who are allowed insane satisfaction for insatiable greed for regality, for rule, for dominion and glory and power, such as Hitler had for race, and Stalin for invisible principles which somehow had to be right, though there was no right, and had to continue, though they did not verify themselves; nor could they.
While we turn from the THIRD OCCUPATION to come this time of Europe by Europe, as its culmination comes to place, to this Europe with its ever so NEW constitution, this Europe explicitly trying to re-invent itself, this Europe biblically to be centre for the UNIVERSAL rule, which is to top the achievements of both Stalin and Hitler, and throw in Mao too, we must not forget to mourn in advance for all the suffering to come, and come rather soon.
There is another way. It is a way where glory is placed where it is due.
RUTHLESSNESS RENEGACY IS LONG IN
HISTORY,
BUT HAS A SHORT TIME
Before however we move back to this reality, which has always been present (cf. TMR Ch. 3, Barbs ... 17), and which always will be, in order to capture and present the drama of its own war and triumph, it is necessary to examine more broadly the ways of lust and fuss, to which this world is addicted, to see in fuller scope and broader, the contrast.
This we do, for there is another kingdom, where the flush of lust, naturalism's gods have the respect they deserve, a plain zero, whether these be personalised or not, gods of convenience, differential in powers, never verified, never actualised, always surmised, sunken, surreptitious, flittingly evanescent, hoped for but not arriving, like the performances of that other Baal in the days of Elijah (cf. I Kings 17ff.). They are to show their force, their worshipfulness, but they never achieve it; they are to make time their matrix, but it never shows itself; they are to make man, but they never move him; they are to make hay, but the harvest is never present (cf. Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch. 3, Ch. 7, Beauty for Ashes Ch. 3, Secular Myths and Sacred Truth Ch. 7).
Its priests, as in the days of ancient Israel, shriek for results (Hosea 10:4-5), but they do not come, and endless talk disparages truth while truth asserts itself in evidence which the world ceaselessly attempts to muzzle, but it mocks their mockery and laughs at their folly and pride (cf. Wake Up World! ... Chs. 4-6). Their idols fail, but frippery and foppery cannot stand their demise, and try to make pretty the coffin! (cf. Delusive Drift ... Ch. 4).
For its people mourn for it,
And its priests shriek for it—
Because its glory has departed from it."
Let us consider what is expressed in this domain of thought, in The Bright Light and the Uncomprehending Darkness Ch. 5 (with addition).
Fantastic is the realm of man's ego-centric, anthropo-centric, humanistically*3 concentric misconceptions.
If all men were so bound, none could know it, for there would be neither basis for thought nor standard for truth. Yet the epidemic is now pandemic, and the pollution is now not only over cities, but tops the mountains and bottoms the seas. It is surprising to many that their conduct is accountable; and in many ways, man is becoming theologically and even logically autistic. He cannot respond, he cannot realise, he reads not at all the faces of events, the features of the countenance of God, the realities of his world or the condition of his life.
It is abominable to him, when he can still feel, and it is distasteful if there is a little life left; it is irrelevant to many, whose word is go, go, go! Where they go, why they go, how they go (in the sense of the design differentials which make man man, his spirit's significance for his own contact with its Creator), this is not to his taste. He wars and worries, spends and earns two incomes in order to have more to spend, and spends it feverishly, lest he fail to have the maximal satisfaction, the minimal jolt, in many lands.
He esteems nothing his source, and in his estimation, he does well for a product of what is not there. He considers matter his source, and does well to estimate the significance of what does not think with the thought it does not produce, with a realm of being thus detached from basis, and so of meaning. He does well to know what he means, whether nothing or anything, when for his dream, there IS no meaning, for it is baseless fiction. He achieves the remarkable in knowing just how meaningless he is, from a basis which is filled with meaning, illicitly imported, though void of the power to express it or know it. It means, his materialist basis, that his mind can rightly discern what is not mind, and so has validity; and that its validity is because it has access to the truth, which is not present in motion merely, nor in thoughtlessness at all. (Cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 7.) He lives by contradiction and writhes in seditious suicide, oblivious of life.
He rises, like the sun, but without basis, to shed light on darkness; but where there is no light, there is no relief from darkness. HE IS the light, but his light is made of stone, the energies that come from nowhere, uncaused, the violation of logic, mixed with forms which come from nothing, the violation the second of logic, mixed with the energies, the mind to estimate them, also from nothing, the violation the third of logic, the spirit's power to will and analyse with purposive input, also from nothing, the violation the fourth of logic; and he continues in this mesmeric, logically autistic manner without power to do other than invent the myths that dissolve his power to know, to be and to realise.
In this way, he comes to the end of his tether, as H.G. Wells' book title expressed it (Mind at the End of its Tether!), and then he decides to become mentally sick in various numbers of millions of persons, and seeks to have his spirit healed by scientists who often do not know of his spirit's existence, and using their own spirits, declare what is the trouble; as if they cut off a leg, and did not know there were legs.
In this way, a muddied, muddled world, loves to talk logic, and defile it; to have everything 'arise' from nothing much, or at all, in that way which is the precise antithesis of all scientific method, or all reason and hence of all peace, since reality charges high for oblivion. It is so whether the drug be physical or psychological, logical or ontological. It is one. Ignore what you use and what you are, and you end where you would rather not be. What could you expect!
The world is busily doing this, at high speed, and is fittingly arriving not at oblivion, but at anguish, distraught in panic attacks, violence-mongering, affrights, affronts, viciousness, vileness, pre-occupation with disgusting comics on TV, which are reductionist, blasphemous, debased and debasing, man laughing at himself, mocking himself and enjoying his debauch and his sorrows.
These naturalistic gods of nullity, then, differential in imaginary powers in the whole scheme of things, their genesis obscure, their basis irrational, mere modern left-overs of the idols of old, mere parasitic gods and principles*4, made in ignorance, 'arise' in oblivion of the logical necessity for eternal base for the temporary. This, it is not one already contrived as if thoughtlessly moulded by nothing, but needing and receiving no contrivance, being causatively sufficient, one preceding and explaining all, needing no arising from nothing, because it is always there.
In this eternal basis for confined
and construed creation, the kingdom of truth, the kingdom of Christ which
is not of this world but understands it very well, where vexatious and futile
abstractions have no place, what acts shows itself by
what it does (cf. SMR pp. 140-150, TMR
Ch. 1, Repent or Perish
Ch.
7, Ch. 2), being priceless in power and in performance, and is affirmed. He who
affirms it is the truth; for since what time has the product mastery over the
producer, or the ink spot over the pen! It is for this cause that modern man
moans and bemourns his 'meaninglessness', for when an ink spot reviles the pen,
there is only a blot.
He, however, has told it, affirmed and confirmed it, verified it and validated it (cf. TMR Ch. 5, Repent or Perish Ch. 7, TMR Ch. 3, Barbs ... 6 -7), who starting as the truth, where no competition exists, for nothing else either does or can (cf. SMR Ch. 5), confirms what He says as the ages roll and the souls come and go. He, starting as the Truth, has no danger of losing it, or for any to swallow it up, though man in lusting droves and drives, gulps in continual aspiration of this very thing.
Just as, to get the truth, you must have a willing and absolute God, who having made personality knows how to instruct it, and being the truth has no problem in obtaining it - for obtaining what is not there is futile; so being the Truth, it is simplicity itself for Him who is it, both to know it and to show it. This God has done through the script of the Bible, and through His foretold Christ. Of this, history is the canvas, irrefutability the paint, freedom the design and destiny the consequence.
Where worldly plan, program and philosophy want to gain this world, He by contrast has provided it for purposes of nobility and joy, grace and mercy, peace and purity. Thus, in His own life on earth, not seeking the latest property or popularity rise, rather He envisaged and fulfilled at will and by design, the greatest property fall in value, His own to the Cross, as His own untouchable eminence in power over body and mind, in word and deed, became the subject of envy and power play by those whose sins lassoed them into baseness, whose religion became futility. Where actual power was concerned, linked to grace, they had no place.
Where corruption lurked, He did not seek to use it to His own profit, but provided for its cure, revealed its nature and inherited hate from the abusers of power, love from the people who saw at last, here in Him, integrity and mercy, power and authenticity and a high road to God. Indeed, they came to realise, they now saw the Messiah Himself and some seeing, understood (John 6:40, 14:1-10, Matthew 17:1-13). Many now knew the time foretold by Isaiah, had come, the time to say to the cities of Judah - "Behold your God!" (Isaiah 40:9-10), that our God who took the lambs in His bosom and blessed them was manifest as man to man.
Man had not ascended; HE had descended (John 1, 3, Philippians 2). He was here, and it was at that current critical period. Thus does history unfold at the hand of God, and foolish the one whose nose in the trough, does not look up, and see.
This divided the nation, but He did not resist, preferring according to the divine program, to rise from the dead. Rather than frustrate their evil ideas (Matthew 26:48-56), He put them on display!
As there is no substitute for the sublime portrayal of God as man, in presentation of events, let us hear what occurred:
"Now His betrayer had given them a sign, saying,
'Whomever I kiss, He is the One; seize Him.'
"Immediately he went up to Jesus and said,
'Greetings, Rabbi!'
and kissed Him.
"But Jesus said to him,
'Friend, why have you come?'
"Then they came and laid hands on Jesus and took Him.
"And suddenly, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword, struck the servant of the high priest, and cut off his ear.
"But Jesus said to him,
'Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.
'Or do you think that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He will provide Me with more than twelve legions of angels? How then could the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must happen thus?'
"In that hour Jesus said to the multitudes,
'Have you come out, as against a robber, with swords and clubs to take Me? I sat daily with you, teaching in the temple, and you did not seize Me.'
"But all this was done that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled." Then all the disciples forsook Him and fled."
If this world whines and weasels, grabs and intemperately or speciously seeks its selfish or self-motivated interests, the kingdom of heaven seeks the good of all, provides for it but does not force it, being the site where the rays of reality bring home the depth of compassion on condition of truth. Here light requires repentance from dark designs and movement to the grace and the place of power in God who made all, and gave freedom to man, not for the fiascos of artless but cunning power, but for the love which is the condition of all that is together in triumph, occupied in wisdom and proceeding in purity.
There is an environmental purge indeed; but it is first in the heart of man, and to this the kingdom gives due place, for ALL of its members are those who having forsaken all, take up their crosses, leave their domains, dominions and wilful arbitrariness, to walk with God. These, who shall see His face and know Him now, are as far from this world as are the depths of the ocean, from the arid desert, and this ocean, it is the Lord in whom all glory, and not in their power or possessions, their philosophies or their strength (Jeremiah 9:22-23).
Christ's desire was liberation for the lost and finding for the wanderers, deliverance for the oppressed; but this world creates what He heals, and mutters, stutters and utters in many wiles and works, the philosophies of damnation, the codes of condemnation and the witless ways which do not work since they deny reality in order to seek its control, possession or mischaracterisation.
Lost, they lose, and abusing their own souls, they abuse others.
Just as grasping lusts desire what they do not and cannot deserve, so both their pains and their pangs are open to all: the world their unwilling hostage and its sickness, the track of their feet (cf. SMR Chs. 3, 10). Meanwhile, strong-minded pragmatism from 'advanced civilisation' has plundered and ruined Africa, and intelligent Europe has twice destroyed itself, being at last not least rebuilt by America, now in a debt which Europe, in its various intransigences, does little to reduce (cf. Worn-Out World and Coming King Ch. 6).
SUPPLANTING THE SUPPLANTERS
Democracy is a new god, constituting often - but not always - a divorce from God so that those who are not God, or surrendered to Him, may rule. In the great British Empire, from whose Christian basis much good flowed, and from whose democratic vagaries, much evil, there was a hybrid, and vast were its results; but unwisdom harnessed to failing belief has led to its demise.
This democracy, this other god (and Greece was hardly democratic, though it showed signs of the principles, with its vast multitude of slaves) is not worse than those which preceded it, and in some things it is better. Yet if the vices of impotent irrationalism (cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 7, SMR Chs. 1-3), at work as Europe seeks a new (and not specifically religious) face, and dumps the earlier religious tyrannies of Rome as foretold by Revelation (17:13ff.): if these possess the people, then for whom and for what will they vote ?
So the script of the Bible is remorselessly followed as in Revelation (cf. SMR pp. 886ff., 955-956), as in Revelation 17, where Rome is ingloriously dumped, that hub of the Treaty of Rome instituting the firstlings of modern Europe in its collectivism, and more relevantly, that base and basis of Romanism, the false tiara and the renegade revelation that continues with another head than Christ in direct defiance of His word - Matthew 23:8-10, cf. SMR pp. 1032-1088H). Just as it is dumped, then so later we find this is merely prior to its burning (Revelation 18-19), while Europe begins its ascent - the USA wallowing in debt and harassments - to that awe-ful throne to be occupied. Occupied ? Europe occupied once again ? Oh certainly, it nearly was by Stalin, and it is assuredly coming.
Occupied after all the rigors of the World War II ? oh assuredly, but occupied by its own vehement dynamic or sacrilegious religion, amorphous, not tending to acknowledge any god but that of its own making - a new face, as it has been expressed in the recent turmoil over Constitution, or a new look, a new countenance for the place weary of the wallowings of Romanism. The 'free' and freed Europe seems now to be aiming to be freed specifically from God; and throwing off idols of human invention in Romanism, it now bids for the place of autonomy from all, including even its Maker! So does this spiritually illiterate spirit in man move him, when on the rampage of rule, from disaster to disaster, and in the end, to the final spiral of ultimate, inveterate and ruinous sedition against the Almighty, in His love, power and grace, Himself.
By what precisely then, is the throne so vacant, to be occupied ? Is it to be unlike the cases of the murderous Mao, the man-hunting Stalin, the race -hewing Hitler ? Is it to be by freedom and vast access to God ? Not at all, and quite to the contrary. There is no devastation such as man can inflict on himself, short of hell itself that is to bad: for not new in intent, it is to be new in extent.
The throne ? It is to be occupied, this virtual throne, suitable for the day of virtual imagery, by the centre of the mystic and vaporous humanism, the God-debasing and man-glorifying 'man of sin' of II Thessalonians 2, the 'mouth' speaking great things, your modern Hitler-plus-Goebbels-plus-Mao-plus-Stalin, super-charged ultimate of folly (cf. Daniel 7). As Churchill succinctly called Hitler 'that bad man', so the Bible calls this foretold impostor, 'the man of sin'.
There is in this same biblical script (for God has NEVER left man without a witness, the producer for the product, the Creator for the creation, the Maker for the made), also to come, that other Site, the other way, the other aspiration, long present in spirit for many, now suffusing the whole earth in its time, for all has its time, and eternity itself when this earth like dumped rubbish, splendid in its day, lost for the final and better way, is gone (Isaiah 51:6, II Peter 3, Matthew 24:35). It is that hallowed day, that of reality in gift, and truth in presentation. It is the time of the rule on this earth of the Messiah who, having come once and on time as foretold (Highway of Holiness Ch. 4), is coming again at a time specifically NOT told, though one where the criteria of its nearness are spelt out very carefully (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5).
As to those, they are here now, though none can tell HOW near is the result, since this is by design precluded by the Almighty (Acts 1). The Maker of man knows exactly what He is doing. This then is that Messiah, Jesus Christ, who has done all things according to the script that se might have both word and deed, both proposition and Person from that personal God who made us persons so that we MIGHT know (Luke 24:25-26,39, Matthew 25, Revelation 20). Just as
"by deceit, they refuse to know Me" (Jeremiah 9:6),
so by all means man must know God, in order to live (John 5:39-40ff.), at first abundantly (John 10:10), and at last, outside the gloom of doom, at all. Folly, caused by such ignorance as this, is not rewarded. What would you expect! The fashions of being in God's image lend enormous power and potential, which many would use to make cinders of us all, who stand in the way of rule, the passion of power and the pretexts of deceit. It is not so with God.
God has no need of the petty petulances and profitless perturbations of man, the acrid antics of His creation in order to make him, as if a book should dictate to the author, or a sentence to the pen! Man's whole design has preceded all of his discursive thought, and God has presented to man the universe, and the universe to man, implanting in him not only the incredibly brilliant and complex design of which man has no even slightly near product of his own to imitate, far less emulate, but the spirit by which to utilise that design, so that he might become an ogre or angelic, loving or odious, with will to match.
The kingdom of heaven has power where the mess called godless mankind now is, and its deliverance is available to all (Hebrews 2:1-4, Acts 2:37ff., Luke 14:22, Matthew 11:28-30), but not for this world. As to that, its number is up, though it lusts for its heyday; and though a time of release on Christ's return precedes its removal as of trash (II Peter 3), in a work of power comparable to that of its creation, yet in a little it will be no more*5. It has been here for millenia, just as the power of God in Israel, in its moments of glory and seasons of shame, has preceded it, clear in its depiction of the Messiah to come for those millenia (cf. Barbs... 17).
As for this kingdom of heaven, its criterion is its King: yes it is no surprise that man in badness invents kings who misrule; for man being personal, looks to personal leadership. Man being made for the personal God, when he seeks to rule without Him, makes rulers who routinely go astray, though some for some time have done rather better than most.
Just as the man of sin seeks in vacuous and inane vanity to parallel, or indeed in the insanity of urbanity, to replace God, so God in His majesty is the personal head for man, by virtue both of creation and salvation, wrought with pain and labour by the Messiah.
Yet, like creation itself, it was not wrought in some endlessly winding process, except you call death a process, but in one staccato rush of power. Just as in creation, there was command and consequence, where composite marvels co-operating in all their parts could live, and did so*6 , so here there was command long announced and then done simply, sharply, sufficiently in the death of the One consigned by and through love and mercy, to bear sin.
It is here that is found the criterion and acme, of grace and love, of nobility and majesty, in the purity of His life allied to the horror of His vicarious bearing of sin for those who repent of it and leave it with Him by faith in His mercy, truth and grace. It is done, finished and complete, this eternal redemption, requiring believing acceptance for admission to His kingdom. It is the ultimate in visas, freely available, Christ crucified, not bread, not idol, not personal contributions of a mankind, but He Himself, yes rather risen, in the same staccato fashion as both the creation and the crucifixion, and the general resurrection to come (cf. Ch. 2 infra and Dayspring, in Spiritual Potpourri.)
Its command, this kingdom of heaven, is love (cf. I John pervasively). This is so, for God is love and made freedom, without which mankind could not love, either Him or each other, or even understand it; but the abuses of this priceless gift are as horrid as splendid is the use of it, when He is received at His own call.
As to Him and the principles of His kingdom, He does not change*7 (Malachi 3:6, Haggai 3:6, Habakkuk 3:6, Hebrews 12:26-29, Psalm 102, Hebrews 1) and its force destroys the illusionism which is the curious pandemic of this human race (cf. Calibrating Myths... Ch. 6, News 122, SMR pp. 502ff.).
Where dictatorial attempts to crush its principles, crush the earth, as with intemperate violence they endlessly seek to crush the spirit of man and make him mere model to their own invented patterns, one succeeds the last, regimes changing like the clothes in a pantomime. It is He, however, who endures; it is He who triumphs over popularity and unpopularity, praise and obloquy, pain and death alike, sent to ransom, and paying, sent to redeem and risen to confer eternal life (Matthew 20:28, John 10, Matthew 16, 26, Galatians 3, I John 1:1-4, Romans 1:1-4, 10:9), freely (Romans 5:15, 3:23ff.). Even freedom does not confer righteousness, but it may lead where it is to be found (Isaiah 55), and it is in Him that it may be found as a gift, anointed, appointed, product of His own cursed condition on the Cross, of Him who knows how to reach the blasted heath of man's soul, and without violence or force, to bring beauty for ashes (Isaiah 61).
The parade of pollution complete, the rulers of this world and Age having terminated their performances, it is He who remains (Zechariah 9:7, Daniel 7:22-25).
Like a stone, this same Jesus Christ (Acts 1, Matthew 24, Mark 14:61-62), Messiah whose death date and all of whose ways were foretold in the script divine (cf. Highway of Holiness Ch. 4, Joyful Jottings 22-25 and With Heart ... Chs. 4ff.), , will grow to mountainous proportions, filling the very earth with His holy wonder and gracious power (Daniel Chs. 2, 7). He also will judge in particular, all men (Acts 17:31), and institute in glory infinitely beyond any felt to reside in Nuremberg, the assizes of truth. This time it is not for war criminals in some one or more belligerent nations, but for crimes against God called sin, where these have no atonement because that has been rejected (John 3:19).
The war of which this is the climax and culmination (Ephesians 6), is centred on sin - those violations of truth, design, felicity, faithfulness which are contrary to His love and way, fiascos of flesh - and turns on its payment, found not by borrowing from a sheltered Japan, but by His own death, a focus for sin and the passion of triumphant love, where they meet as in one turmoiled whirl-pool, sin by appointment dragging Him down, only to arise, but which will draw its own to its depths in due time.
This death is enshrined in a pure life
|
|
which had no accounts of its
own to settle, |
|
|
being free to make man free, |
but only, despite the
passionate breadth of His love (Colossians 1),
in those selections which
exclude the wayward,
|
|
foreknown by God (Romans
8:28ff., I Peter 2:8-9), |
|
|
those whose desire is to reject His atonement, and do violence even to His grace (John 3:19,36) ... |
In the end, its results are shown in the open manifestation of pardon for and ownership of His sheep (Matthew 25, John 6:50ff.).
It is time now, to study its drama in history, predicted, fulfilled and its outcome which borders closely to this, our time (SMR Ch. 8, Answers to Questions Ch. 5); for the history of this our world is terminating in its present form, as it nears the precipice of the precipitous, resolution in the light of what has long passed for many in darkness. Here comes first that calling out of His people, those who have received Him in truth by faith through His grace, as Saviour and Lord, not in mere name but in actual reality.
Moreover, this call, one of triumphant deliverance at His return, it is not as in the case of Israel, merely from some nation, as in former times in the Egyptian Exodus, though this was a vast divine event; nor is the coming which follows only for Europe, as in the D-day landings. This time, it is for those of all nations who are His, and the coming is to a reign over this entire world (Isaiah 11, 65, Revelation 19-20); for the world shall be covered with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14).
This divine call, in its time which is near, it is on behalf of the lovers of Jesus Christ, whose lives He has taken and whose sins pardoned, whose place is at His hand and whose lives are for His kingdom. It is in Him, Saviour by grace through faith, that destiny lies (John 5:19ff.). It is then that destiny unfolds, not in the lusting hands of terrestrial power models of man, but in the gracious hands of the mercy mode of the everlasting God and King.
In our next Chapter, we shall see the wonders of this theme, the coherence of its concepts, the massif which it demonstrates and the conclusions that God has set to such beginnings as those accorded to man.
NOTES
Some readers may be interested in this saga between reality and education in this State, in this field.
Following the latest rejection of request for scientific instruction within evidential bounds rather than dogmatic religious convictions, albeit the religion is none of the major ones, but one constructed by the government, and used as a preface to its approach to Creation/Education teaching in their schools, it is now a good time to review the state of the case. First note that something, not limited to creation/evolution by any means, but with a similar construction of religion basis, was brought up in Victoria some time ago, and its refutation was a subject in this author's Diploma of Education Thesis.
The material is available on this subject at Lead Us Not into Educational Temptation.
Let us however return to this current South Australian version of something very similar in its a priori religious approach, as irrational as that in Victoria earlier, a theme part of the spirit of our Age, and its delusions.
The situation in South Australia can no more be left like this, than could physical slavery be left in England, a matter to which the Christian Wilberforce devoted much money, time and energy, resulting in colossal consequences in happiness for thousands and tens of thousands, for the slavery rate had grow high. Here it is a mental subjection, a scientific intrusion of science falsely so-called, one of the branches of misused knowledge, and a spiritual assault. At such time as these youngsters are delivered from this monumental imposture and imposition, albeit done in ignorance, there will be thousands with far greater opportunities to seek the truth where it lies, instead of being merely an educational fiefdom, in this respect, of government.
These aspects are seen on this site, from some years back, at
remodelling.html and its sequel. The Departmental assault on religion, whatever may have been the intention, this being the consequence, and the approach to these affairs is seen at this site,
which is Ch. 8 of That Magnificent Rock.
Further aspects and comparisons with other governmental actions in this age, in parallel fields, may be found in
JOURNEY TO GOD OR FANTASY'S FLIGHT TO THE INFERNAL,
The Dynamics of Disintegration and
the Delights of Restoration Ch. 7, which is proving a popular site at the present.
There follows a summary of governmental failure/trespass in the Religion and Science Field in South Australia. Some may for various reasons, parallel cases or even this one, find this of value for use.
The issue is being pressed by the Evangelical Presbyterian Alliance, involving churches of more than one national background.
Evangelical Christians in particular are requested to make this issue a matter of prayer, since the deliverance of the children is at stake, and nothing is too hard for the Lord. It appears that not wrong intention is our trouble here, but failure in government, to perceive.
Enclosure A
I
BREACH
1) In attacking all religions by a generalisation, the DECS document, Circular to Principals, January 1988, attacks Biblical Christianity in particular as one of these. (This is the Department of Education and Children's Services.)
2) In affirming a set of theological dogmas, as a base for the educational attitude to Creationism/Evolutionism, those responsible and who endorse and require this approach, have asserted and scripted a presuppositional religion of their own, with no trace of support provided; and their continued refusal to face what they have done in any written reply constitutes an avoidance/evasion/negligence on a matter of the highest import, since it involves ultimate perspectives and motives.
3) In subsuming all religions under their own created religious criteria, they have not only set their authority behind one world view, but done so irresponsibly as an aside or commencement exercise for creation/evolution teaching, derogating all revelatory sources by implication, through what they require and stipulate to be so. Hence it also derogates the Bible, and confronts its claim to evidential and objectively testable data, indeed, uniquely so (Isaiah 41,43,48, Luke 1, John 20, Luke 24, Acts 2).
It is not the fact that this is effrontery which is so much in view, or even that it is a calamitous and gratuitous perversion of the objective criteria, that while scientific theories change radically in a few years, sometimes leaving one amazed at the earlier errors, biblical pronouncements in testable areas never change and are never falsified over millennia (cf. The gods of naturalism … op. cit).
Rather is it the point that this is usurpation by cultural authority, whereas taching requires exposure to reality without a distortion such as usurpataion contributes, whether in method, or in result: or in both! Other aspects ADD to this.
4) By so doing, they have violated the federally adopted UN document:
"THE DECLARATION ON THE ELIMINATION OF ALL FORMS OF INTOLERANCE
AND OF DISCRIMINATION BASED ON RELIGION OR BELIEF,"
which requires no discrimination in what is available to persons, based on religion or belief. In particular, Article 5, 3 indicates that “the child shall be protected from any form of discrimination on the ground of religion or belief.” He is to be brought in an atmosphere of understanding, whereas the current approach precludes and prejudices, predetermines and applies the direct opposite of the same for the schools of this government.
5) Likewise, they appear to have violated the Commonwealth Constitution which forbids the governmental establishment of a religion: relevant to the extent that the Commonwealth is involved in any of the State educational enterprises in its schools, or affairs.
6) Moreover, by these means they have violated SCIENTIFIC METHOD by limiting it to the domain of their pre-determined religious and world philosophy, rather than approaching the matter by openly and without prejudice, considering available hypotheses in terms of experimental verification and inter-locking finesse with all scientific theory and laws.
7) Indeed, in excluding creation views from relevance for enquiry, research or rational evaluation, and with these, developments from the hundreds of Ph.D. scientists indisputably (and listably) of the Biblical Creationist approach, not to mention the much larger number who are creationists of a wider domain, which must include all their notable professional results, work, verifications and perspectives: they are in a secondary way violating this same UN Declaration on discrimination.
In particular they fail to meet its Article 2,2 concerning discriminatory impairments suffered either from a purpose or result of action taken by a State. Not only are students of such a creationist persuasion limited socially, as to their place in the scientific aspect of the curriculum, but in their information on its aspects and materiél for enquiry as in the resources supplied to supplement what should be authorised teaching and the skill of available teaching covering such domains in logical manner. This has thus a secondary element of breach, a third and a fourth, in that there is a social as well as a directly educational omission, exclusion and abstraction of data, together with skill and resource.
8) Further, those responsible for enforcing this approach (the term used by the DECS upon enquiry as to its current application), by these means, exclude from government schools those teachers who insist on honest coverage of science, not pre-determined by indoctrinative media and principles but determined by experimental results: since this discriminatory authority mode of control constitutes an abuse of science, schools and students, choosing for students what they should choose for themselves, when being educated, not indoctrinated.
It is germane that it was this last point which was strenuously affirmed by Dr Dmitri Kouznetsov when he gave a Lecture on this topic at the University of Adelaide. Relevant is the fact that he asserted that he became convinced of creationism years before his conversion to Christianity, while researching in Russia, where he received the Lenin Prize for Science along with three bio-science doctorates.
This exclusivistic result for such teachers, constitutes the fifth breach of the UN Declaration.
9) This governmental approach also violates the equitable availability of resources, teaching skills and practical media not only for students, but to the extent of their due professional address to syllabi, that also for teachers. If these are lost for the student in their reception, they are lost for the teacher in their deployment. It is therefore not only the inequitable atmosphere, set of presuppositions, preliminary understanding, exclusivistic approach, but the discriminatory approach to skill and access of all kinds, for student or teacher, which is of concern. What is excluded, does not have support in time.
This is the sixth breach of this Declaration to which Australia is bound by governmental declaration and efforts at compliance, monitored by the UN ...
As noted in Mystery of Iniquity:
Yes, a simple Gazetting, or announcement by the Commonwealth AttorneyGeneral, Michael Duffy on that date in the Commonwealth Gazette declared that this Declaration "being a declaration that has been adopted by Australia, is an international instrument relating to human rights and freedoms for the purposes of that Act " that is, the 1986 Act. Its name: The HUMAN RIGHTS AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES COMMISSION ACT 1986. Thus the Human Rights Commission and its Commissioner can investigate alleged cases of religious discrimination, and over all this is spread yet another international instrument now installed as proper and due counsel.
Whatever may be thought of the UN Declaration, and whatever criticism*8 may be made of its provisions, its counsel is now in place in terms of an Act on discrimination. It would seem strange if a State Government were, as part of the Federal commitment to follow this Declaration, to violate it multiply, grossly, without account, and indeed, even in terms which offend not only some international ideas in the Declaration, but liberty of religion in senses so gross as to require no Declaration.
Justice must always precede mere human law, as this is its ostensible purpose; but where there is apparent, failure in both law and justice, we are confronted by what we now find in this misuse of children's liberty, not to say, that of parents whose offspring they are.
In such a case, action is patently called for, and a delay in the longer term, of some 15 years, is rather too long.
We have been considered for a little, the area of application of some of the erroneous religious specifications for universal judgments. Now we return to the religious matters DIRECT.
II
ADMINISTRATIVE FAILURE
Thus, there has also been an administrative failure of large dimensions in that even in the present instance, over some 15 months, the basic issues directly and indirectly concerned, in this erroneous governmental characterisation of all religions, have never once been faced in correspondence, or granted any relevant written acknowledgement. This is despite the fact that the nature of this failure to meet the issues was succinctly pointed out to the Premier, after delays of months from his office, before that same error was simply repeated.
Further, the Department of Education and Children's Services (DECS) not only did not address this primary issue in the first reply, when the matter was directed to that Department from the Premier, but after a letter noting that failure to the Premier was received by him, as responsible, since the matter both devolved on and had been addressed to himself, what happened ? It was this. At the Premier’s instance, the matter was referred back to that same body. And its response to the Evangelical Presbyterian Alliance which raised the issues?
The second letter from the DECS not merely omitted this same primary point of defilement of 'religion' by spurious and gratuitous definition in a universal proclamation on its 'nature', but it did so in a manner in principle identical to the earlier omission.
Since this omission was of the crucial religious point that was made, it was what could only be characterised to the Premier, as a failure, when it was first done. Its repetition, however, make the matter the more flagrant.
Moreover, while this was omitted starkly, at the same time, there was no relevant address to any of the substantive issues. Indeed, the letter from the DECS was expressly written ON BEHALF of the Premier, so that thus it is received. This therefore is the net result in written response, of the matter referred to him as time slowly passes on, and student year succeeds student year.
This may or may not be avoidance of the issue as a purpose; but whatever the motive, the result is the same. Cultural conditioning may be one cause, but the results cannot be content with its continuance, for the State cannot so move to breach fact, student welfare and the divine name so liberally, as if in the silence of acquiescence, or so injure itself without the utmost challenge.
One most intense result is this: that the children continue to suffer from this confinement, this virtual slavery of omission, commission and containment, visited on them in lieu of an education where judiciousness and information mix with exposure to something better than a predetermined, presuppositional presentation, of authoritarian intrusion both into science and religion. It is this, not least, which motivates and activates our endeavours, and must do so. Moreover, the curricular emphasis, once so based, becomes an exclusion by something resembling a pre-emptive putsch, in which many will not desire to participate.
As pointed out, what schools may provide under different auspices, or modes outside the rational, logical or empirical, ONCE the criteria of religion and science are defined in this way, or defiled, a priori, is not relevant to our purpose or our request. It is the definitions and designations in religion, and the application of these odd statements, relative to science, themselves, which together constitute the error, imposition and authoritarian assault with pervasive results.
Provisions made for religious activity on that basis do nothing to remove it or rectify the authoritarian, derogatory perspective, set up over all religion as basic to Curriculum. Indeed, to operate where the CURRICULUM makes such derogation of religion and hence of Christianity, might well appear to be submissive to this gross and unscholarly offence.
While this is a primary matter, it is not alone. It is indeed not only this presumption - one not merely gratuitous and almost comic, in that dealing in this peremptory, prescriptive and unscholarly manner with such issues is almost past scholarly belief - which is of the utmost concern. Rather, and secondarily, the point is that in the Circular concerned, it expressly forms a basis for dealing with the creation/evolution issues and the way in which religion is to be treated in the Class-room. This is readily seen on survey of the Circular for Principals itself and its critique (TMR Ch. 8). This governmental approach doubly confuses things, first mischaracterising religions, all being made the same in this field, and then mischaracterising creationism, all being made religious. As noted, detailed critique of the Circular to Principals is made at the URL noted above on p. 3.
Failure in writing, even to address this basic consideration and primary concern over 15 months, is one thing; refusal of interview with the Premier, WHILE this failure recurs is the next. Reference unresolved to the DECS, when the issue is specifically religious in its basic concern, is third; but the finale is the REPETITION of avoidance of this basic issue, by the Minister for Education after this very failure had been noted to the Premier, steadfastly refusing interview.
As there is no minister for religion, he himself appeared most relevant, the more so in that, as noted to him, he had on TV expressed himself in favour of a free-thinking South Australia. How could this be justified when a major scientific area was pre-focussed by preference, not performance, and education itself, in fields formative as well as functional, was so harassed from outside itself, through politically desired means!
The net result is failure to meet the issues, profound loss of time and repetitious error with months passing between the first and second action, together with the bypassing of issues, even if such be primary.
Moreover, both in interview with two senior advisers to the Premier and in writing,
we have sought to have this issue of teaching and religion and its outcomes, as addressed in this field by the government, to be openly addressed.
We have likewise both proposed and sought a multi-disciplinary debate. This too has simply been ignored. The way to address such practical matters, however, is not to ignore them, a procedure just as fateful as to ignore the issues themselves, in their crucial and emphasised features. It is not to continue to do little more than mouth phrases stating the governmental
attitude, without attention to the problems as stated. This resembles, in part at least, hearing complaints about slavery in the old days, its conditions, its aims, its results, and replying that the government position is to have slaves.
It is desirable
¨ that the explicit abuse of religion by means of generalisation should be removed as presumptuous, and the more so in view of its unsupported nature, in the field of Education;
¨ that the misuse of this definition should cease to be used as a basis for an approach to the teaching of religious matters in general, and evolution/creation in schools in particular;
¨ that the free place in science - itself deeply divided even within evolutionary circles, which attack and counter-attack with extreme vigour within that domain - of all forms of qualified research should return to schools, as an example that is edifying, and consistent with scientific method; and
¨ that students and teachers alike should cease to be subjects of a discrimination so intense that it appears not only as miseducation and indoctrination, but a close approach to victimisation.
*1 See The gods of naturalism have no go! - naturalism being not merely the concept that nature is its own mother, but that God is to be defined from the curse in 'nature', not distinguished through the power that instituted the creation. It is rather like trying to define a school Principal from the cane, rather than his teaching. You need something to build the school in the first place. See also Beyond the Curse.
*2 See on the confusions in the realm of validity and verification, in Celestial Harmony for the Terrestrial Host Preface, *2 and *3.
In Dastardly
Dynamics, Delirious Daubs, Wandering Woes, Bleary Theories and
Immovable Faith
Ch. 10, we have this survey of some of the
slithering slightness of humanism and its allied delusions.
After the citing this extended segment from this earlier work, inset, the subject will be pursued afresh.
Many might object.
MAKING CULTURAL GODS IN DIFFERENT WAYS
