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BENEVOLENCE OR BROTHY BANE ?
Published September-October
1999
by World Wide Web
Witness Inc.
ISBN 0 9577461
3 X
Rev. Dr. Robert E. Donaldson
Preface
The essential ingredient of the situation which is often neglected is this. God is benevolent. Not from nowhere come the charitable urges, the pitiful shades in the human soul; not for nothing is man given to courage and brotherliness, IF ONLY his vital interests (pride, money, ambition, prestige, fame, power or existential ecstasies -whatever he concocts in his malodorous malady of sin) are not crossed!
The lust that kills, the lust unsatisfied except with new and cheaper thrills, commercial, political, legal, psychological, physical, social, domestic, ultra-marital, ultra-legal, this it is which is man’s nemesis. Even the lust for a quiet and undisturbed life can quite as much a passion in the end, irrational, thoughtless and insatiable. It is not that there is anything wrong in that, per se: it is just that when honesty, or honour or grace or kindness is satisfied at the expense of these things that their essential idolatry is clearly defined!
God however does not lust (cf. SMR pp. 29ff., 580ff.). He is satisfied already. He made us and our system without the slightest need of it, but in the expansiveness of true love, He would share: on His terms of course. His are loving: He is love. One has to WANT Him, to be with Him. It is as simple as that: except that it must be with the WHOLE heart and mind and soul and strength (consult first commandment from the lips of Jesus the Christ). One has also, naturally to FIND Him, to be with Him, and as a sinner, one has to recognise the malady to appreciate the cure, which is that Christ died for sinners, cursed for their malady, the physician who not merely RISKED his life to provide a cure, but gave the LIFE AS THE CURE, satisfying justice, rejoicing mercy, fulfilling love.
It must of course be received, this cure. It is a gift by grace which is shrouded in it, filled with it, like a sky with a vast arching rainbow that glows with a thrusting brilliance over the whole surface, backed by the sun. When one realises one is a sinner, then equally naturally, one must repent: if one does not, then one feels free to do it again, and if so, that is one’s life, which knows nothing of the way, and rejects the will of God.
But GOD, HE is BENEVOLENT. The world is frothy, in turmoil, tumult, a soggy, boggy place of stumbling, bumbling, tumbling, mumbling half-believed creeds (such as "no creed but Christ", when clearly the name requires the historical reality to give it meaning, and what happened and was said by HIM THERE, that is doctrine)! Embracing half-satisfied needs, indulging bloated greeds, man careers like a speed-boat with the driver drowning some distance back. Amidst poisoned crops, he continues sowing evil seeds of malice, as in Communism, Nazism and all the totalitarian cancers that pass as seeds, which would replace, quite simply, the infallible God with the rumbling, fumbling follies of philosophic man, graced with military or legal might, asserting his sinful soul as if it were an oil painting!
As we look through some of recent history
in overview, and its place amidst the divine news, so that the one may be
read in terms of the other, and all seen in the plane of light that illuminates
and interprets, we find that MAN per se is NOT benevolent, though he has
many fine impulses, and in Christ these find power, fulfilment, fruition,
consummation. We see that the necessary terminus is coming for our Age, and
that the criterion of Christ moves, according to prophetic plan, and the
consummate artistry of God, who reveals all other ‘options’ as patently fraudulent;
it approaches. It has come so near that one could almost touch it. The return
of Israel to nation status in its own historic land, and the capture of Jerusalem,
so that it might be attacked as predicted, so that the Lord might deliver
it, as also prophesied, these are the great hinges of history which turn
once in 2000 years, and have just finished their turning now. (Cf. SMR
It is well
to ponder the place of man now; and to ensure that one is in the place of
God, by His side in His Saviour from His eternal place, His living
word, Jesus the Christ. GOD ? He is benevolent, delightful, impossible not
to know without qualifying in mind, spirit and heart, in the end, for hell
as a suitable environment for what is left … of the rebel who would not KNOW
God, His Creator, lurking in the dark fastnesses of frothy philosophy, which
never made man, and cannot save him. Christ is His calling card, the Captain
who takes you in. Call on Him. When in faith you come to HIM, He is committed
to act (John
CONTENTS
1. News 68 -
NOT A MAD-HOUSE FOR MARS,
BUT A MARRED CREATION
CREATION, Technical Journal, Vol. 13,
No1
1999
2. News 69 -
DOLLARS ARE GREEN,
BLOOD IS RED
Time Magazine,
3. News 70 -
THE SECOND MILLENIUM IS
PAST ALREADY,
AND THE PRINCE IS SOON TO RETURN
4. News 71
THE EYES HAVE IT,
AND THE NEIGHS HAVE LOST IT …
Creation, Technical Journal
No.1, 1999
5. News 72
ABORTING THE ANTI-ABORTIONISTS ?
6. News 73
GRIT AND GUMPTION ARE GREAT: HIS GRACE
IS GREATER
Overview of some of this century
7. News 74
Animals, Insects, Microbes, Curse, Blessing,
Pain, Purity,
THERE IS ALWAYS A REASON
The Australian
8.News 75
EITHER OR ... FROM SKIN TO CORE
More on life and death in multi-dimensional
focus
Radio news -
9.News 76
THE CYCLOTRON OR THE TRANSFER
SCENES IN
TV News, SBS,
10.News 77
REPUBLIC, REALITY, GRACE, GRATITUDE
August 21-22, TV News
11.News 78
THE BIG THREE
the Third Dimension
TV News
12.News 79
An Evangelistic Platoon in
the Works Righteousness Company ?
Contemporary
Review,
The Advertiser,
AN ASTRONOMICAL
REASON EVEN FOR A SLOW WEEK
MAN IN
MUDDLE, THIS ALSO HAS A REASON
14. NEWS 81
Time
Magazine,
THE
ANXIOUS ADVOCATE
BEREFT
OF FACT BUT NOT OF FURY
TIME,
GENTLEMEN ...
There
might not be much of it left, before status and results must be handed in
!
15. NEWS 82
TV
News and Advertiser, last week of Winter, & Time Magazine August 23
Scrap
Heap for an Unfinished Symphony
or
Consummate Artistry:
His
coming to the Cross and Yours to Him
Where does the glory go ? A Swimming Champion Episode
Part
II
on
creation and recalcitrance: mankind and mess,
or
man and divine kindness
16 NEWS 83
Want
to have a date with dates ?
Creation
Ex-Nihilo,
Sept.-Nov. 1999, has some interesting material in this respect.
It
is noted in an updating of one of our presentations on this topic, in
That
Magnificent Rock - TMR,
Ch. 7, pp. 174ff..
Is
this a date you can bear to miss ?
Try
it at the hyperlink above.
You
may then care to look back to the beginning of this section of TMR,
and
read it in context.
Then
try the next end-note with much factually informative data ?
17. NEWS 84
The
Flood of Blood, the Theme of Death
and
the Tang of Truth
Time Magazine September
13, 1999,
The Advertiser,
even date
18. NEWS 86
HUMAN BRILLIANCE
AND LITTLE THINGS
LIKE THAT
The pre-natal
brilliance of man
The Advertiser,
19. NEWS 87
THE DIVINE
SYMPHONY
History
from Start to Finish,
Commencement
to Destiny
The Berean
Call, September 1999
THE TITLE
reminds
us of the passage from Isaiah 65:4 - in 65:2-7:
"I
have stretched out My hands all day long to a rebellious people,
Who
walk in a way that is not good,
According
to their own thoughts;
A
people who provoke Me to anger continually to My face;
Who
sacrifice in gardens,
And
burn incense on altars of brick;
Who
sit among the graves,
And
spend the night in the tombs;
Who
eat swine's flesh,
And
the broth of abominable things is in their vessels;
Who
say, 'Keep to yourself,
Do
not come near me,
For
I am holier than you!'
These
are smoke in My nostrils,
A
fire that burns all the day.
Behold,
it is written before Me,
I
will not keep silence, but will repay -
Even
repay into their bosoms,
Your
iniquities and the iniquities of your fathers together."
On the other hand, in the
first verse of this same chapter, immediately preceding, the longsuffering
kindness of the Lord, the love that initiates is found:
"I
was sought of those who did not ask for Me;
I
was found by those who did not seek
I
said, 'Here I am, here I am,'
To
a nation that was not called by My name."
This
can be read in the context of Isaiah 62:1-4, 63:7-9, 66:5, 65:1-19.