CHAPTER EIGHT
THE PROFUSION OF CONFUSION,
ILLICIT
FUSION,
and the
GRANDEUR OF TRUTH
News 158
Genomes, Grace and Guidance
It is not just that it is wrong. It is ingloriously, vaingloriously and confusedly wrong. There is a profusion of confusion, unspeakable in its desolation, glooming like a day of foreboding, with the angry clouds pierced by the lightnings of lurid flashes of iniquity.
We have on several occasions, one in Ancient Words : Modern Deeds Ch. 14, had occasion to refer to the confusion of Roman Catholicism. In the case of the buoyant enthusiasms, the political conformity, the priestly ascriptions of obedience and so forth, made to Hitler as the famous Concordat with Rome developed, and he was helped to power, there was a foul background. It has been noted that the incredibly unchristian power lust of the prison book of Hitler, Mein Kampf had long been known in Germany, being a best seller.
Years later this enthusiasm for Hitler came and some sorts of ecclesiastical conformity to his wishes, political forwarding of his ambitions and euphoria at his entry were exhibited, in ways both high ranking and pervasive among the hierarchical echelons of Rome.
This was not only an enormous body called a church, making such a fuss and furore, such obeisances, but one gifted, if it chose to use it, allegedly … with infallibility!
How could it err in such an enormous project, involving spiritual issues like Autumn leaves, falling to the ground in battalions of unkempt discard ? or how ignore the patently obvious, the spate of things crucially contrary to the things of Christ in so doing*1A ? Or was there an underlying affinity which made for all the aid given by Rome to the rise of Hitler to power!
- Was not, after all, Rome as totalitarian as Hitler ? Did its word not carry the same sort of authority as the night of the long knives, or the slaughter of the Jews by Hitler ? Was there not an accord in the following matters: that the Jews were apt for expropriation of life and property, as heretics, without rights, as the Inquisition had demonstrated in thousands of cases in practice, itself the work of papal commission!
- Was not Hitler, as he claims according to the book of Peter de Rosa, The Vicars of Christ: Dark Side of the Papacy (1988, p.5, Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany 1964, pp. 300ff., cited by Hunt, "A Woman Rides the Beast" p. 82).
- "only doing what the church has done for 1500 years, only more effectively."
It is a matter
of having things the right side up. In the kingdom of heaven, there is power,
there is majesty, there is life, there is glory and there is the very
propulsion for and destiny of life for man (cf. The Kingdom of Heaven
Ch. 2).
However it is not only a question of MAN taking the life of man, MAN having the majesty of God, whether as a race, a body or nation. It is not only a matter of using money, or might, or weapons, or authority or any other implement aggressively and rapaciously able to be rifled temporarily by man, or for that matter by mankind, and then putting this philosophical fat, popping, pushing it into a skirt or trousers, where it will not readily fit, and so overhangs, in order to make some sort of a fit.
Fat does not fit.
The point is even worse than all this dislocation and distemper. The first things simply do not and cannot fit into the small spaces left by the second and third and last things. They remain first. You do not build a skyscraper with its foundations in the skies, and its base in the air, while its pinnacle rests in the dust. YOU do not ? One hopes so, dear reader; but MANY DO.
Hitler was one and the Roman Catholic organisation has been another. This is not a comment on people. They are judgable one by one, by the Lord. It is a simple and accurate statement concerning the published doctrines of a body (cf. SMR pp. 1032-1088H), and as has been shown they are as doctrines, in flamboyant and wholehearted multiple contradiction of the Bible. Our present point however is a consequence of this, an historical expression of it, and a consideration of one phase of the issuances.
IF Hitler, or any nation, past or present or future, any Party, any 'church' or religious organisation or society, in fact ANYTHING puts effectual priority for the pursuit of some principle of his mind or desire of his heart, into the power out of a gun, or out of money, or out of physical violence, the murder and robbery of Rome practised on the Jews being merely one example, but a primary one and one calling forth the specific curse of God (Genesis 12:3, 15:14, 28:4,13ff., Numbers 24:9, Genesis 27:29) : there is prostitution of life for other things. All such things, whether from Communist or Nazi, Arab or oriental, are upside down.
The top is on the bottom, the bottom on the top.
It is so in particular, regarding the persecution of the Jews, in that it is not for man to oppress what God has disciplined (Jeremiah 50:17-20); and it is so in general, for it is not for man to rob and murder for his pretensions of power, racial or ecclesiastical, political or philosophical. THIS kingdom, the kingdom of heaven, is for the poor in spirit and the pure in heart, for the merciful and for the meek. Murder and torture is not meek; and expropriation is not poor in spirit.
The judgments of God are not for man to oppress man. If He turns an event to judgment, it is one thing; if man turns things to subjugation of the human spirit with murder and robbery, it is another (SMR pp. 1175ff.). The vileness of violence in order to INDUCE man to be what he is not, a flittery piece of floating rubbish, apt for constraint, and in order to pretend to ‘believe’ what force does not make true, is almost past all comprehension. It is as deep as sin itself, allied to its truly bottomless pit; for it has no foundation.
If man wants a reductionist
version of man, so that the spirit of man is ignored (cf. SMR pp. 348ff., Little Things Ch. 5, It
Bubbles, It Howls, He Calls Ch. 9, Tender
Times for Timely Truths
Ch. 10),
or the means of life are made its matrix, or the inflections of sin in the mind
are made its basis, or the biological platform is made its meaning, so be it.
It has no meaning and CAN have no meaning, since event does not create
conformity, and description is not prescription; and it does not. It attests
what does mean, but as to Him, He must be found.
With such a cut-down version of man, man will act accordingly. Naturally he will then tend, according to the model, to put money before life, and lateral machinations of mind before truth, and in its miry clay, abound in confusion, protesting without possible truth on his own system, that this is the truth of the system, and many such things as often noted on this site (cf. SMR Chs. 3 and 4, Repent or Perish Ch. 7). Naturally he will likewise tend to degrade his treatment of the degraded relic of man which he has so mentally constructed, irrationally conceived; and if torture and rapine, ravaging and seizures of bodies and properties, freedom of thought and the like, are then to be found in the submerged depths of a dark history, as with Rome or Hitler, Mao or Stalin, the Inquisition or some of the Crusades, is this not to be expected!
Certainly, it follows as darkness follows night in a pit. It is all submerged, and the heights have become the depths, and the gloom has become the day.
In fact, in the Kingdom of Heaven, it is salvation in sanctity (II Peter 1:2ff., I Peter 1:2), one in which the good tree has good fruit because that is what it is, and it is that because it has been planted by the Father in the name of the Son (Matthew 15:13, Isaiah 61:3, I John 3:9). The practice of sin is not the attestation of salvation; the contradiction of Christ is not the authority testimony of HIS Church and the arrogation of His powers, by ADDING freely to His word (forbidden in Proverbs 30:6, Deuteronomy 4, and 12, Revelation 22:18-19), just as the THINGS concerned may be given NO INCREMENT, having no mandate, provides none. The words are fixed, and as John shows in Rev. 22 also, the coverage is complete: add NOTHING. Indeed, God is highly specific (Matthew 5:17ff.) about what He says, to the point that teaching and doing it raises the least in HIS kingdom, and doing the opposite brings to earth the greatest!
What are these kingdoms of the earth that they strive so… What mockery to kill for the One who was crucified for peace; by robbing His children, to rob from the One who forsook the illimitable riches of heaven, so that He became poor that we might be made rich in Him and in His grace! To invade the hearts of mankind for such faith-demanding exploits, it is folly itself. Moreover, it is exceedingly grievous so to afflict those in His kingdom and in His destiny which He has prepared, having been not inert in moral and spiritual beauty, but active, and doing and furnishings these things by His own incarnation, reconciliation and redemption, resurrection and return to PREPARE A PLACE for each of His.
He has provided; but human assailants, these would deprive. The two are contrary for any man; and doubly so for those specifically now His. It was the work of scimitar, of Inquisition, of the wild discrimination of terrorising secret police, putting pressure on those who remain by their tortures of those seized, to ‘guide’ the human spirit by mere power, blatant, mindless manipulation.
However, HE is individual; each of us is individual. There is not even such a thing as a corporate person, except in words, on this earth. Neither race nor nation is saveable; only each one is saveable (Zechariah 12:11ff., John 3:16, John 10:9). You cannot go in by the group. The Church*1 is a grouping of saved sinners, by administrative procedure and by functional co-operation under one LIVING Lord and one ALL POWERFUL God whose word is clear, sharp as midday sun, and anoints the mind with clarity (Proverbs 8:8).
ETHICS are not LOST because some redeemed sinners get together. Poverty of spirit is not lost because some people call themselves a church, be it true or false. What is the spirit required is not contradicted because of an aggregation of souls. Peter's advice remains operative: that one should not LORD IT over the flock (I Peter 5), but rather be an example. This is not to be contradicted because opportunities may exist from time to time, to RAM it and DAMN people because they do not do what YOU want, or your organisation, which has added so freely to the word of God that it is indistinguishable in multiplied and astonishing ways from the work of a this worldly, deluded dictator, even if he does receive blessing and honour and place from papal authority.
This is not the way or the work of God.
Consider the parallel in this astonishing display of what happens when priorities are wrong and the bottom is on top, the top on bottom. Did not Hitler have the following facets and features to his system:
- 1) expropriation of wealth from the Jews
- 2) removal of physical life from the Jews
- 3) torture in the process
- 4) degradation in the process
- 5) expression of contempt in the process
- 6) total inhumanity in the process;
- 7) self-exaltation in the bodies of the slain, by acquired power and removed 'enemies' 8) seeking unashamedly for TOTALITARIAN POWER;
- 9) appeal to PRINCIPLES beyond himself for the authority of such a proceeding;
- 10) use of various agreements with various parties to secure such results, even when they were not kept (as was the case with Huss, when the SAFE CONDUCT promised by the Roman Catholic Emperor was dishonoured on the pretext that to heretics, agreements do not need to be honoured). It appears that the Emperor was ecclesiastically over-ruled in this matter! What a moral example and what a paradigm from what a source! The world is out-worlded by this ecclesiastical pretender!
In this way, the sheer
provocation of this hideous distortion of the Gospel's SPIRIT and its GIFT and
its GRACE (Roman 5:15), in terms of force, grabbing and power hunger for rule
of this world (John 18:36, Matthew 4:9-10 to the contrary), is in the sharpest
distinction and differentiation from the work of dying (as Christ did precisely
ONCE - Hebrews 9), and dying daily (Romans 8:31ff., I Cor. 4:8ff., II Cor.
4:8ff., I Cor. 15;31-34). Such is the Christian duty in Him as filling up
what remains of the sufferings of Christ by DISPLAYING the spirit of grace and
giving to the world, with the Gospel, as an ethical attestation and a spiritual
exhibition of the ways of Him who has completed already all the works for
salvation in giving Himself a ransom on behalf of all, if by any means any
might receive Him, and so receive that ransom (Titus 3:5-7, Romans 3:23ff.,
8:32 cf. SMR pp. 520-532).
To GIVE a ransom and to
HOLD people to ransom, in terror, perhaps even executing them so that others
might beware (cf. SMR p. 953),
removing their possessions, impoverishing their dependents: the thing blares
like an amplified trumpet in a small room. It is discordant to the uttermost!
THE BEAUTIFUL CONTRAST
Rather, then, is there to
be courted, found, shown, imbibed and expressed salvation leading to sanctity,
beauty of holiness, purity in personality (Colossians 3:10-17, Ephesians
4:29-5:11). ALL uncleanness whether in covetousness or idolatry of power,
majesty, glory, ideology, it is all not only PROSCRIBED, but DISSOCIATION from
such as practice such things is PRESCRIBED (Ephesians 5). How then should a
'church' do the opposite, but by separation from ITSELF! Its people teem far
from it, its organisation flees from it, its manpower is gone from it, like
destroyed
But what of the end of the
thing, for the case of
While it is true that this particular one, Romanism, has a special place in the wrath of God as predicted specifically in Revelation, having become the death mask (cf. Ancient Words : Modern Deeds Ch. 14 and Biblical Blessings Ch. 2) of
- that synthesis of religion,
- that surfeit of unfaithfulness:
- yet the same is applicable to all and any who divorce themselves from the truth, remain alone, or with their idols. As to Romanism, for what John in Rev. 17 calls 'Mystery Babylon', this is her final setting before the Secular+Spiritual double beast displacing her, wreaks ruin on poor, multiply afflicted mankind, whose rising debts come from outrageous delinquencies of spirit and mind and body (Rev. 13:1,11 cf. Biblical Blessings Ch. 6).
Thus instead of Eternal
Life, there is inherited by such declivities from the very heart of the
word of God, Everlasting Emptiness. To escape such delusion in its
profusion, its contusions in the spirit of suffering man*2,
it is essential to leave the errors in one's mind, in one's pew, in one's
profession, and at whatever cost, FOLLOW CHRIST in word, in spirit and as redeemed
by His blood, freely given and in repentance accepted, relish His ways, not
twist them, delight in His truth, not deviate from it. God is a SPIRIT and it
is not in reckless fecklessness, contradicting His specifications for some
lust, philosophy or opportunity to FORCE THE ISSUE, that one is to proceed. It
is instead, in His tenderness and grace. Judgment is for God to perform, and He
has performed it on Christ, His own incarnate and only begotten Son (Matthew
27:46, Galatians 3).
To seek to be implements of
this by ways contrary to truth and mercy is as far from truth and life as the
THE PERSONAL AND THE PROGRAMMATIC
Nothing personal is in the end merely programmatic. Man is personal, and HAS programmatic provisions aplenty in his genes, chromosomes, neural synapses, electrical, electro-chemical, bio-chemical and coded contrivances for the construction of cells and the production of endurance over the years. He is NOT these however, but the recipient of their hard-working provisions.
Thus we are all but inundated, like some latter day flood, with news of our genome. Here is a map, here a designation, here you can see some of the organisation involved in the automatic production of your body. OH but how shall I be individual! they cry. DO this to me for much money, or that, and perhaps I shall BE marvellous or a genius or great sportsman, or able to make much profit or some other thing which others have done! How terrible to think it all depends on just that; but how wonderful to consider the scope for the FUTURE! In mind ? why that BHF, the bright and happy future which man has proposed for himself since Eden, and tried to build since Babel, by thoughts of the skies, while it is really the pinnacle of truth which he puts in the ground, and the basement of the visible which he puts in the air.
The truth as truth is the basement, and the result as the pinnacle is to find fellowship in the heavenly places, with God (Ephesians 2), and to have access by His Spirit in the name of Christ, even to Him who MADE the heavens, and does not need our airy constructions aspiringly setting ourselves on high, stuck up ornamentally in order to exalt us.
In The Advertiser, July 14, p. 49, we find that some are heaving some sort of a confused sigh of relief. Why there IS some room for individuality, they say, some variation in the genome. There are, we are told, as a result of "studying 313 genes - out of the 30,000 identified by human genome scientists", for each one, an "average 14 versions that can be inherited".
The variability of man is provided for as part of that munificence of architecture and equipment which makes for our wonderful assortment, so often misused in racial detestation or aspiration for imperial glory. This however does not even touch what matters most. The fact that pianos can come in 4 crown or 5 crown varieties of elegance, with this case or that, with this sort of damping or that, does not alter their instrumental type. When the master pianist sits down, the result from these is far beyond the efforts of the beginner on the most dazzling production.
Far from reality, man NOT ONLY in his philosophy, his religious extravanganzas, often delusively in the name of Christ, and often profusely in any other name he happens to think of; NOT MERELY in his political putsches, of which he never seems to grow weary, though the new thing grows weary in its sin and sordidness, like the old: but in his very person, falls victim to instrumentalism.
It is all in the stars, or in his body, or in his State, or in his environment, or in his genes or whatever other piece of terrestrial, cultural, educational or astronomical equipment comes his way. In himself he looks, as with Freud, only to find (rightly) how sinful he is, but (wrongly) that it is all this or that thing. It is all that and more; but not in that way. It is the sin of his spirit which is crucial not some obsessive aspect or component; and the particular exudations of evil from a deluded mind, or a misused body intemperately miscuing for his mind, or invading it with wrong patterns, these are but consequential.
Constantly, man is trying to TELL his fellows, THIS is the way it is, when his very theories about the way it is, can function ONLY if that is NOT the way he is. IF his mind is a captive to unconscious drives, his life to economic insistences, his life to survival thrusts, and his is a mere derivation from mindless nature, then there IS no truth with which to know, there is no clarity with which to abstract from this alleged base and cover for man. If you are down, there is no place to get up. If you are relative, there is no way to get the absolute; and the impossibility is merely doubled if you assume it does not exist. (Cf. SMR Ch. 3.)
Yet man continues to live upside down, and wonders why there is such pressure. But what would you EXPECT if you are standing on your head!
Nothing of man is IN ESSENCE programmatic. These are implements of scarcity which need thought; or of miscarriage of thought which need correction; or threats of life which need prudence. It is not however that any of these things are either mandatory or final. They constitute challenges. They drive to God. If you WILL not go, then you are stuck, and the world in its subversions in the spirit of our Age, to pander to such things, is STUCK. Like a car stuck in the mud, it roars, its tyres are shredded, its needs new ones, it pays for them, these are being shredded, its resources drift away, its varieties die, its young die in the uttermost pits of folly, following this or that deadly flag of confusion, to gain what it not thereby attainable, seeking for the sun in the pit, and looking for foundations in the air.
The programmatic, the utilitarian, these are matters of futility, and perhaps one should coin the term futiliarian to cover it all. It is the case of the myriad-formatted futilitarian philosophies of fancy. It is assured in advance of failure; but with such glory and glamour it is sought that one wonders at the ten millionth failure, seeking for something in nothing, and for nothing that matters, where it is to be found, that it continues. Such however is the rebellion of the spirit of man (as in Ephesians 4:17ff.), and such his rejection of the grace of God (as in Romans 1:17ff., with Ephesians 2), that the awful upside-down pudding of human racism, its elevation, inspiration, excitation, continues to stress its elegance, knowledge and power, and to be at the same time mere stick-jaw.
Some would FORCE you to be
'nice', and imprison you if you upset someone by saying things not found, by
contemporary moral codes (shifting sands with every wind, vainglorious judges
of ephemeral inconstancy), to be conducive to their contentment. Try that with
medicine and see how your body goes. When, as in
LOVE cannot be COMMANDED into being. A command can indicate its need; but it cannot provide its presence! It is not the lordliness of love but the Love who is Lord, and in His trinity, that love is shown. It is shown in word (His), and given in deed (His), so that the salvation is given (by Him - Romans 6:23, 5:15); and for men to try to make some sort of humanistic substitute for divine reality is as puny as it is impotent; and it is a prescription to distance the source of the actual love by which the actual results, in purity not pretence, in truth not carnal confusion, are to be found.
Now is the final day of the outrageously oppressive and oppressively outrageous efforts of man, in this or that system of delusion, where power, propaganda, secularity, with its two coats added - that of religious secularity and secular religiosity, contrived creations of the dust, that merely clothe pretence - with his money first, control first, his primary aim of this world as the target, his power first, his (self-) worshipful scenarios using program, psychology and power: where all this multiplies like the locust. It is far more destructive.
These
dreams, alas like locusts far from dreamy: they spawn in myriads, in place of
wonder, worship and wisdom, love, life and reality, truth and humility before
truth. Man as Lord is a failure and the featuring of it is a fulcrum for
pitching him to the crevasse.
KNOWING THE PRODUCER
When this profusion of delusion is voided, there is time to consider the wonders of the Producer of man, of his environment, of that wonderful liberty, which intoxicating in its misuse, has entranced him with visions, not merely vulgar variations from the beauty of holiness, but feckless substitutes for the truth.
It is not that freedom is BAD, but the most exquisite creation, the parallel to personality, the ground-work for love, the staging for peace, the matrix for meaning, the avenue to eternity, from the King of which, it has come. It not a matter of humans trying to STOP the thing (as in desperation being misdirected from the first fall, they most understandably but quite foolishly try to do). It is not in fact, as one pope asserted (Pius IX, Quanta Cura, in 1864), "most pernicious ...to the salvation of souls" that there should be "liberty of conscience" (cited by Hunt op.cit. p. 129), but on the contrary, an essential ingredient of man by which he has even in principle, access to God at all.
Man does not invent truth.
Man does not make a lordship, papal or otherwise, for himself (cf. SMR pp. 1053ff.). These are divine
prerogatives. But when man seeks to direct man, in secular or religious
hideousness, acting as if God (cf. SMR pp. 914ff.), then there is a
secondary infection. The sin which is endemic is then empowered by a sin which
is corporate, and the mangy substitutes for the beautiful coat of righteousness
in Christ (Isaiah 61:10, Colossians 3-1-3, Ephesians 1:6, II Cor. 5:19-21),
received by personal faith, is made the required provision of mandate, as if
Christ had not died for sinners, but stood ready to KILL them into conformity.
To be sure, there IS a death
to the slavery of sin and the unsanctity of mere wilfulness, but this comes by
no FORCE; Christ's kingdom is not of this world of FORCE, and His people are
volunteers, albeit given sight by God (Psalm 110). People who WOULD not come to
Him (Matthew 23:37 cf. SMR Appendix B, Isaiah
5, Ezekiel 33:11, Jeremiah 9, 17) are found all throughout scripture. Psalm 106
is a litany of such ways, in cumulative sum.
THIS death of Christ is the
precise opposite of murder; His gifts are the opposite of theft; His coming is
the opposite of mere programmatic force; His thrust is to the heart, His speech
to the spirit of man, and that spirit, being in the image of God, is not a
programmatic unit, accessible to mere power and force. It is GOD who has power;
but He does not use it to abuse what He has created. IF you deem yourself
unworthy of eternal life, as Paul put it (Acts 13:46ff.), that is YOUR AFFAIR,
and not that of some well-meaning or lustful, listless or intrusive, subtle or
scheming person or body or power. If you are to inhabit hell, you choose that
address (John
If you are to live in heaven, you freely come. If it is not your autonomy, in your stricken and sinful estate, which allows you to choose, yet it is not God who forces you contrary to reality. He is on record that He WOULD have all to be saved, but yet He does not save all. His love, like love which is in created beings of rational cast, like man, is not disposable and dispersible by program or power. It is personal in persons, and persons being what He has made, it is, in His own image, persons who act it out. In His sheer majesty HE does not abrogate what He has made by force; He consummates it in a love which knows where to stop, and at what to proceed no further, even if His efforts were FREQUENT and FERVENT and even if, indeed, they went as far as DEATH to bring life. (Cf. Predestination and Freewill.)
WHEN you have come, and WHEN you have seen the Lord's truth (John 6:40) and when you have repented of sin and come in rags, not riches, to His presence, having realised the realities and having no more pretence left in you, and have received pardon and have come to follow on to know the Lord (as in Hosea 6:3ff.), then you find that His going forth is indeed prepared like the morning, and you find the REST in Him which comes from acting in what really is there, with what really is operational and not depending on switches any more, programs and passions of man.
What then ? It is just as
Psalm 84 puts it: "Each one appears before God in
Life is MOST challenging and it is this BECAUSE it is free. His solicitous care is not smothering, but evocative, provocative of growth, enticing in its deep charges and most wonderful challenges. It is then that this silly and egregious philosophy of REPLACING God, lying in ruins of the millenia, comes to terms with the fact that there simply IS no replacement for God, and the efforts to use ever more abundant KNOWLEDGE of man's finding, of the programs and platforms for performance which God has provided, as if these could substitute for the human spirit in its need for God and the wonders then available, is merely one more in the smothering crowd of death dashing lemmings.
It is not to become God but
to become man which is to the point. It is necessary to BE what one IS, not to BECOME
what is the place of another, that is the issue. But on what paradigm ? in what
form ? With what perspective ?
It is all given by God, because it is THERE ALREADY. You do not make it. You do
not invent it. It is not hypothesis you need, but reality. It is demonstrable,
to be sure, as shown in SMR and elsewhere on this site; but that is not enough,
useful as it is.
It is necessary to KNOW GOD, to FIND God in your own person, by His approach provisions. These are personal and for persons; their provision is BY that sublime, divine and eternal Person, Jesus the Christ (John 8:58), and it is for persons to do personal things in coming, like repenting to life, sharing with NONE the power to save, and being SAVED BY NO OTHER in part or in whole; for there is NO OTHER Name given to men. That is not all; for there is no other name given to them by which THEY MUST BE SAVED. It is necessary; but no man can enforce it. It is REQUIRED, but no fine or prison sentence can exact it. Man is like that, in the image of God, able to hold out and back out and entangle himself like a drunken kitten till the situation is grotesquely horrible; and still hold on, as if this were courageous, and still continue in strife, as if this were manly, when it is quite unmanned, a mere parody of creation, downside up, courage for character being abused as capacity to resist.
As Stephen put it,
- · "You stiff-necked and
uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit: as
your fathers did, so do you" - Acts
It is so beautiful that it is so simple. If you WANT Christ, who WOULD HAVE ALL to be saved, then you take Him, simply accepting His finished work in the atonement, the reconciliation provision in His death for sin on the Cross, the just for the unjust to bring us to God. You put your trust in Him as God, who came to display God, and to meet the conditions of mercy in the grind of justice, so dying. You live your life from Him, who made it in the first place, the word of God eternal and you rejoice in His resurrection from the dead, in Him who is unfathomable in power, unconquerable in prediction, never embarrassed but always in control, even as man (Romans 10:9, I Peter 2:22-24). Then you acknowledge freely whose you are and get on with it.
That way, your foundation is below and your aspirations are above; your base is Christ and Him Crucified, yes rather resurrected (Romans 8:34), His body the attestation of the life which nothing can quench (Acts 2:24,26-31); your aspirations are based in truth, and your seekings are in truth, and this is what you find continually (Phil. 3:10,21). Well-based, you are well-placed, and your spirit has found God, and you know God, which, in fact, is the basis of eternal life: for as Christ declared (John 17:1-3, I John 1:1-4):
- "This is eternal life that you should know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent" (cf. John 10:9,27-28)
The kingdom
of heaven here is the preliminary, but its integrity is wholesome.
It is the precursor in this
world to the new heavens and the new earth - just another of the great Lord's
creation. It is foolish to be obsessed with this one; we can travel and He can
take - to eternity in the undying presence of Christ (Rev. 22). Then,
past
pilgrimage
post pollution
sin exempt
runs this world
of favour:
with truth its
foundation
mercy its
windows,
peace its
atmosphere,
preciousness it
proverb,
glory its
nature,
Christ its
declaration,
Christians its
denizens,
wisdom its way,
liberty in its
fountains, and
grace in its
paths.
Here each
counts, all matter,
one is
embroidered with grace,
each sees his
face.
Meanwhile, persons matter. Treat them as such, with love. Help them to find the patience of God who has provided, does provide and will provide. If you have not come to your Maker in His word, the Christ whom He sent to display the way and provide it, indeed pay for it, then come. If you do not want to, then we sorrow for you; but if you must go, then go. There is nowhere to go, but you have company in the path to nullity, and judgment for it.
There is no other provision. Any comparison is ludicrous. Any effort to make another is useless. Effort has its place: it is His, shown in the work of grace; it was made by Him, and this done, brings the gift of life to the co-ordination with the Lord of creation, where it then belongs for man as redeemed, as a child of God. Here, after this application of divine grace wrought in salvation (Ephesians 2:8), vigour is the voice of it, joy the sound of it, life the liveliness of it, for it is purified and sure, founded, and right way up. Then in the presence of glory and assured grace, there is wonder; now our efforts can work with modesty and composure, in the friendship of the Maker, the presence, the personal presence of the Redeemer (John 14:21-23, Colossians 1:27).
No
more is there illicit fusion, but the grandeur of the truth.
NOTES
- The total contradiction of Christ
- involved in making the domain of Romanism THIS WORLD, as in Unam Sanctam (q.v.), and her ruler, ruler of the princes of this world as therein provided, of using force for assault on unbelief, real or merely falsely alleged in the fallibilities of the flesh, too well exhibited in the many heresies of Rome (SMR pp. 1042ff.-1088H),
- leads to a sure conclusion in this realm.
If instead of BEING crucified
with Christ (Galatians 2:20) and dying daily (I Cor. 15:31), instead of
following Paul in his many afflictions, being stoned and whipped (as in I Cor.
4 and II Cor. 4), Rome wishes to violate with violence the sanctity (even if it
is be polluted in pathology) of a life made in the image of God, to prostitute
power for the provision of defamation of human reality (cf. SMR pp. 950ff.., 1033ff.), to contradict Christ in
this, as Paul, and all the apostles, overthrowing thus the word of God, and
making not merely vehement protest but pugnacious torment in the ways of this
world: then there is one sure result.
It is this. What it does is not merely a defilement and degradation of the name above every name, that of Christ, which it uses and places in another, himself a mere sinner, called the pope, but it is an abuse of that name. If one contradicts the written principles of any party, and indeed teaches in this way, then this is misuse of that name: it is irrelevant to its integrity, and one acts on one's own. How much more is this a defilement when one exalts another (cf. SMR pp. 913ff., 809), as if this were the name he could have in its power and glory; and then has him outrageously abuse the fraudulent privileges by the arrogation of that which belongs to another, and even indeed affect to deploy these in violence against those whose adherence to that name involves nothing such as this, but rather obedience to Him as to One glorious, and to no other in this realm of glory!
It is not a question of HOW MUCH force; it is not even a question of ERRORS in its use. It is the use of it at all in such intrusive and abusive defilement of the word of the One whose name is used, against the persons of those who claim Him for their own, and are a creation of HIS, not of any religion which arises to assert itself, contrary to Him, whose name it so abases.
This point is quite crucial to Biblical Apologetics, since the entire gamut of the outrages of Romanism are not in the least, in the most ephemeral degree attributable to Christ or to His Church, but rather in such violence and violation, to wolves in sheep's clothing (Matthew 7:15, Acts 20:29), whose actions by many of their number, including the decrees of popes, have sanctified murder, theft and outrage in the name of Him who expressly declared:
- "MY KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD. IF MY KINGDOM WERE OF THIS WORLD, MY SERVANTS WOULD FIGHT, SO THAT I SHOULD NOT BE DELIVERED TO THE JEWS; BUT NOW MY KINGDOM IS NOT FROM HERE."
The servant is not greater than his Master!
The beauty of holiness is in Christ and in His word, in His ways and in His grace; not in its defilement; and not Rome only, and not in physical violence only, but in all and any species of error, there is nothing concerning the Christian Church, Biblically defined, as that against which the gates of hell will not prevail (Matthew 16), to be discerned. Hence, and again of great importance in Biblical Christian Apologetics, when Rome is overthrown as expressly provided (cf. Biblical Blessings Ch. 2, SMR pp. 922, 946ff., 729ff.), in this mistaken and misbegotten religious rule which it has affected and claimed and often implemented violently, it is according to the word of God.
So far from being a
contradiction of the same, it is rather a very specific fulfilment. Both the
coming and the going of Romanism, that specific outcropping and fatal, final
feature of
"mystery
- Failure to observe these principles not merely leads to extreme confusion, but to scholarly inaccuracy and departure from Biblical principles. As to what it has to say, it is written.
Christianity has NOTHING to do
with the violations and violences of
This she is clearly not about to do, either in fact, or in Biblical prophecy. THAT, it is merely one more fulfilment of what IS written, by the word of God of truth, whose word never fails, whose work continues, and who is to come to judge in a time which presses upon us, like an express train, for many, on those walking on the tracks (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5).
NOTES
*1 See Barbs, Arrows and Balms 25. Cf. 20. op.cit, and The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 2.
*2
For some practical perceptions and events in this field, see Benevolent
Brightness or Brothy Bane 15 (News 82), 14, News, Facts and Forecasts 14 (News 122).
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