Chapter 7

Conspiracies, Principalities and Prophecies

 

THE ARCH-CONSPIRATOR AND HIS PAWNS ...
ARROGANT, PATHETIC ? BUT DELUDED

There a lot of talk, and has long been, about conspiracies. Some are literally movements of minds towards some considerable undertaking, to disrupt, disperse, disjoin, disintegrate, compromise, crush or qualify some body or bodies not to the taste, heart or spirit of the activists.

It could be one to overturn a government, using secrecy to circumvent the use of police or army, as the case might require, so enabling the toppling of power. It can be more overt, in which it is simply a combination of souls to seek redress by removing power, in order to restore order, righteousness, or wrong, as the case may be!

It is literally, a 'breathing together', and the flavour of the term implies, either that it is for no good purpose, or that it is for no good relative to the ruling authorities' desires.

It DOES NOT however imply that the agents are ONLY human, or for that matter, that they FULLY realise what they are about. In other words, spiritual forces are not limited to the human, and the human are not automatically granted clarity of mind or heart. Some are simply confused.

In that case, there could be - and often is, no doubt - a movement from hell, from the principalities and powers, the princes of this world, in order to secure a victory over God. The pawns may be, for example,  passionate and perceptive, passionate but not perceptive, perceptive but not comprehending. Thus, they could sense the passion, know some of the objectives, but not realise the final intent, the spiritual significance or the destiny of the thing, yes, they may be obscure on the reason why the fire is raging, but merely be thrilled, gripped or overpowered by its ... heat!

Thus in communism, it is a conspiracy in this last sense.

• It is devilish in its efforts to denude God of His creation, man of his Rock (Psalm 62:1-3), and the world of its liberty.
• It may be dressed in words implying it is getting rid of powers that crush man, in order to liberate him, and many is the country which has felt the lash of such liberation! Its practitioners, as now appears may have been the case with Lenin, may be rather hypocritical in their attribution of truth to various doctrines, but nevertheless have their own reasons and thoughts, and proceed.
• They may be jaded and jaundiced in doctrines now seen to be lack lustre, as began to be the case in USSR before it fell.
• They may hang on from fear, or from personal gain.

It is still a conspiracy, first to take over their own country, though merely a minority at first; and then the world: with whatever degree of clarity of their purposes, confusion or cynicism.

So in the Islamic case, it is a little less obvious than is Communism as to intention, but far less so in its performance. It nearly took over Europe in the eighth century A.D., and now its al-Qaeda would statedly like to recover the former dominions ... and dominion is the word! Not less absolutist than communism is the series of directives, the degree of discipline and the penalties of dissidence. Even in Sydney, one former Moslem confided in us, there was a death 'sentence' on her, because of her 'apostasy' to Christianity. She does not now live in Sydney.

The plethora of points which involve removing all opposition to Allah is considerable^*1 in the Koran as has been attested frequently before (cf. More Marvels ... Ch. 4). The ruinous treatment of women has also been attested often enough (not merely as in Women, Koran 4:1ff., 55:1ff, with its polygamy, but in practice cf. News 100, News 82), with the unilateral male domination, requisitioning, even to the point of multiple ministering women may be envisaged for the warriors in paradise, while those who give or go into the wars for the 'faith' are to be abundantly rewarded.

How ? Of Allah it is said that he  "has prepared for them gardens watered by running streams, where they shall dwell for ever. That is the supreme triumph" (Repentance   9:87-101). Koran 38:44 tells us that the righteous shall return to the gardens of Eden, and that they will be found 'Reclining there with bashful virgins for companions' while calling for abundant fruit and drink (cf. Koran 55:52ff.). In view of the polygamy attested by the prophet, this capsule includes the same demeaning of woman (v. Proverbs 5:17-19, Ephesians 5, Galatians 3:28).

Of the unbelievers however, the Koran declares,  they are to be warned, and reminded of what happened to their fathers, while war on them is to be made, as the prophet deigns to declare it when ready, "until idolatry cease and God's religion shall reign supreme"^*1.  Again, if there is dislike for the developing works of the 'faith', what then ? "Believers, make war on the infidels who dwell round about you. Deal firmly with them. Know that God is with the righteous" (Koran 9:121ff.).

The Allah allegation has been remarkably quiescent, then, since for a long period (despite Koran 48:17ff.), it is found bowing in practice before the God of the Jews - Jehovah - though they themselves have not yet nationally returned to Him, to the Messiah. It is not merely the continual triumphs of Israel over multiplied and massed enemies from many nations, since its birth, as if an army assaulted an infant, and the infant won; it is not only this, but the fact that this is what God predicted in the Bible around 2600 years ago, in a context ending with the return of many of Israel to "Me, whom they pierced" (Zech. 12). It is God who is speaking here.

It is He who prophesied both the exile for long years of the Jew from his land, and his bountiful and blessed, remarkably triumphant return as we have often seen (cf. SMR Ch. 9).

With God, all is clarity, precision, power and performance, but NOT for the point of power, but rather for the love which is His. Outside Him, the confusion of spirit and force in alien religions is often clear, and it is so here, just as is the misuse of women apparent, bashful even in paradise, where their serviceable demeanour, virgins aplenty, does little to redress the secondary character of their lives (contra Ephesians 5, John 20, Esther, Ruth, Deborah, in the Bible).

Thus breathing together, citing Allah, the Moslem 'faith' conspires: in some there is clarity about its mandate. With some, it is perhaps attenuated by common-sense, which thus shares the throne with the word of 'Allah', so that they would reduce the violence. Thus the real powers that animate it all are indeed supernatural, though it is demonstrably not of God that the thing is come! False prophets, their wares invalid, their testimony unverified, their demands not supported by reason, their faith mere affirmation and force, without the strength to attest it is indeed from God, these things are merely the fulfilment of Christ's warning (Matthew 24:24). They do not stand up to investigation, and the available word of God, excels all interrogation with endless resources of wisdom, just as did Christ, His interrogators!

Our present point however is this: the CONSPIRACY element is not dependent on how many of the followers of such a religion intend to take the world by force. Rather it is a matter of spiritual principalities (Ephesians 6^*1A, Revelation 12), who are the real power as Paul makes so very clear. Some follow them perhaps clearly knowing the form of rebellion against God that it constitutes; some may suspect it; some may hope it is godly; some may even think it is, being astray; some may use it for paranoid efforts to become a world power.

The mixture is great, since where earthly power is in view, the entourage is always likely to be considerable, and the more so when numbers give hope that gain is present.

This does NOT mean, however, that the thing is a matter of various religionists working out a scheme to conquer the world. It is supervised far beyond all that. Being spiritual, having the name of God in its hands, as it thinks, it is a spiritual matter, whatever its earthly means. The conspiracy is beyond man (cf. Rev. 12), but it is not beyond God. Many men, we now see clearly, are indeed conspirators, such as occurs in al Qaeda, and we have noted in past news, that there are other bodies with some such flavour, and such a favour to donate to this (relatively) small globe, to the regime of murder, thrust and ruin as they go, in the search of world rule. They come, they go; they relent; some repent; some realise the folly of it; some die in it; some die for it: life is smitten.

Spiritual conspiracies are spiritually led, and when God is not indicated, it is an anti-God force which comes (cf. SMR pp. 916ff., Ch. 4 above), whether it be in

• the bread-idolatry of Romanism (cf. SMR pp. 1032-1088H),
• an Allah idolatry, worship of an absence^*1B (which so acts, cf. SMR pp. 829ff.), or
• a Communist one (cf. SMR pp. 925ff.), in which a god of forces is invoked,
• smuggled into the scene beyond matter, and directing all its operations (cf. SMR pp. 422Eff.).

In ALL such cases, the god concerned does not work; the plans, words, schemas, programs or whatever, do not happen: and scientifically, the matter is dead. There is however beyond the illusion and the dream, "the god of this world" as Paul cites it, addressing those who misuse His word (some denounce it, some ally their words with His, some twiddle the dials, add their own styles, twisting and turning like snapping turtles, slow but mordant), as having minds whom this evil spirit and propagandist has blinded (II Corinthians 4:2-4). Christ Jesus referred also this the "prince of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me" (John 14:30).

Humanism as noted earlier, the fourth conspiracy, is similarly not always actively seeking world dominion: of course not. Some are artistic in their aesthetic love of mankind, as if god; some are ruthless, seeking to make the thing go, and to make this world a lovely place in which to play truant from the Maker of it (though they do not put it that way!), and their ways are all but innumerable. Some are conspirators in the most direct human sense; some are not. All however are being moved in the way, to whatever degree they may or may not understand the dynamic, the purpose and the thrust, the end of the matter and the intention.

Pawn or prince in the matter, they conspire, being used. The spiritual powers and principalities, the chief that adversary whose work in deceiving the world is so immense, intense and tragic, these have their own plans (cf. Revelation 20:3, Genesis 3, Ephesians 6). Thus is the biblical depiction, and thus is the testimony of the evidence as it mounts, not to the skies as judgment approaches ever nearer, but to the pit.
 
 

RESISTING TREASON TO TRUTH,
TRUCULENCE TOWARDS GOD AND THE INCLINATION TO DOOM

One and all, immediately or mediately, as spiritual insurgents or as misled leaders, knowingly or as pawns, they are moved in the conspiracy.

They conspire ? to doom ? To doom whom ? themselves or their targets ... or both ?

Some targets are protected. God has His eye on His own people, and though you scarify their flesh (Christ died to save sinners, but others may die expressing His love), condemn their lives, fraudulently falsify their works, nothing is accomplished. In the end, like each soiling sin, it will be made manifest. Christ's servants have a better city to find, a larger vision to impart, than the senseless strife over this world (cf. John 18:36, Matthew 10:23-30).

You often see this in practice. Some poor Arab of 19 confesses that he was without life, without hope and without future, that he was desolate, so why care ? life could be forfeited without much loss, and if it made some feel it was accomplishing something, well then, do it!

Thus a bomber-boy in the making, speaks after the event, before the bomb which did not in this case (rather obviously) ... happen!

It may be revenge; it may be boredom; it may be some kind of vision; it may be social hope; it may be political advance; it may be world rule. In the end in the 4 conspiracies noted, however, there is ample and abundant evidence of the purpose behind them. They WANT to rule mankind. The UN itself is precisely in this business, in the order of HUMANISM (cf. Appendix, The Other News). Not all may know it, not all the flies in the spider's web; but the spider knows it, and he, he is not at the level of flies, except where they are caught.

The various bodies concerned in such conspiracies may in detail be pursued in our indexes, but our present point is the nature of spiritual conspiracy: its ultimate bosses are invisible, its ultimate aims is not always clear to all involved in its turmoils and aims, though they are usually reasonably clear to many; and its ultimate dynamic is from that Adversary (Revelation 20:2, I Peter 5:8-9, Job 1, Matthew 4),  whose aims are to use guile and deception, lies and fraud, if by any means he may induce, seduce and reproduce warriors of his kind, followers of his hand.

As the father of lies, who speaks lies as his very own mission and mind (John 8:44), the evil one, the Satan,  is both adept and practised in the art of deception and fancies his place for which he works, has worked, and yet a little, will work. As Revelation 12 shows, he knows that his time is short; and it is this not least which incites him to special fury. That fury is spewing now across the earth, as prophetically specified.

Thus the judgments of God, the passion of the intemperates, the conspiracies of the spiritual conspirators, some more, some less aware of what they are doing, the vast effort to possess real estate, and control the spirits of man, to evict the actual God and rule without Him; and if necessary, with some other, a concoction, it proceeds. It is a grim and a grimy business, and this grime tends to be red!

Unwise are those who are deceived by the blandishments of the ultimate conspirator, whose force is his preferred weapon, whose guile is his chief method, and whose inflation is not monetary. Christ was not deceived, though the conspiracy sought by the devil, was never a conspiracy wrought, with Christ: for the purity of the Lamb of God (John 1:29), it preserved Him, and no promised reward could capture Him! (Luke 4).

Would immediate carnal gratification move Him ? No, despite His extreme hunger after fasting, bread to the famished could not move Him. Would exhilarating glamour move Him ? Not at all. Could worship be induced, the soul seduced, just for a little worship of the wrong god, not really god at all, just a once splendid creation, the whole world the prize ? Far from it. God is one God, and Christ's mission was not betrayal of the only rationally attested God, the only God whose revelation has stood, and unchanged, has directed the world to its word, with whom from eternity to eternity as the word of God He had held and would hold communion. Quite the contrary, it was in concert with Him, as His only begotten Son to fulfil the specifications for His redemptive action, on the Cross, being pure, so that sinless, He could rightly pay.

Love does not condescend to mere power as its accomplice. Power is available for the will of God; but the desire for it is not the desire of the people who are God's. They have it already for what matters to them (Ephesians 1:19, II Peter 1). There is nothing to seduce with, in order to make them captives. It is only blindness which is subdued; and alas, that failure to see, that rejection of the reception of sight from Christ, a gift which He  so often physically illustrated, from the direct power of God, is tragic. It is more costly, yes and infinitely more so, than is any other blindness.

If, being unwilling to receive sight,  you cannot see what you are for, whose you are, why you are, whence you are and where you are to go, as a human being, then your lot is pitiable now, and wrathful later (John 3:17-19, 36).
 
 

UNREASONABLE TREASON

Why conspire against God ? He is wonderful, His word is marvellous, His ways are ways of peace and His willingness is for your salvation (Colossians 1:19-22). Even if you are not yet His, this is the word He affirms (I Timothy 2); and if you are now His, then your will is for Him, your life is of Him and your desire is to Him as Lord.

Respire from God, be filled with His Spirit. No conspiracy is needed; only repentance, faith in Him and His finished work (Romans 3:23ff., 5:1-12, Galatians 3, 5), and love, godliness and peaceableness: leaving to God the things of God, and to man his part, to receive them. If he will not, there is no point in trying to make force replace faith.

• 1) It cannot. What force does is not to convince but to propel. You can blow the brains out, but not put the faith in, by carnal power!

 

• 2) It changes nothing. Miserable conformists are not men of faith. You merely blow the trumpet, do not induce the love, let alone the faith.

 

• 3) It is presumptuous. If God wants to use force, He can do it. No verified word of God induces force for faith, but He calls as in Luke 13:34-35:

o       "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather you children together, as a hen gathers her  brood under her wings, but you were not willing!

• "See! Your house is left to you desolate; and assuredly I tell you, you shall not see Me, until the time comes when you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!' "

It is not a conspiracy with force as the mentor, but a conversion with love as the girding and faith as the focus, in the God who speaks, acts and does both publicly, openly and with unique validity on the one hand, and total verification on the other, so that there is simply no excuse (cf. Repent or Perish Chs. 2, 7, SMR Chs. 1,3).

Earlier in Luke 13, we find Christ advising people to ENTER AT THE NARROW GATE ... not thinking of maidens, of pleasures and the like: thinking of God for His own sake (cf. Matthew 22:37, Luke 14:27ff.), and following despite all the adversities imaginable, saving one thing only, the treasure which is God Himself, and His own word.

ENTER, He says, for there is an end. Christ depicted it once in this way: "once the Master of the house has risen up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock at the door, saying , 'Lord, Lord, open for us,' and He will answer and say to you, 'I do not know you, where you are from... ' " : there will be sorrow. This end is only just. What is despised, is no more available, then. Truth reigns; not lies. What is, is; and where love is, so it is.

SOME, says He, who are first will be last; and SOME who are last will be first. God is a Spirit: things are not always what appears. As for this world, its program is this, in the end, that it disappears (Isaiah 51:6); but not so is it with the God who made it, and not with the people in whom is His salvation. Linked to the Maker, theirs is no undue concern with what is made, whether it be shaken, as it will be (Hebrews 12:25-29),  or dismissed (as comes later, II Peter 3).

We read, as Luke 13 proceeds, that on that very day, some of the religionists of the times, decided it would be a good idea to kill Christ (people are so often having such ideas, and implementing them, as if killing a few people will alter the design and purpose of history, for it will merely make them murderers, filled with presumption and gall). Christ however had a most precise program for implementation, of which foreseen and predicted death, and its purpose, was but a part.

Accordingly, He gave to some a message for Herod, the Idumean King, shrewdly seeking power, both to retain and augment it, who later in vain sought for miracles from Christ, as if He were some manacled Samson!

“Go, tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I shall be perfected. Nevertheless I must journey today, tomorrow, and the day following; for it cannot be that a prophet should perish outside of Jerusalem.' "

 

These words are of the God who is a Spirit (John 4, 12:48-50), and who became incarnate to remove all problems, all uncertainties, all judgment on sin, bearing it for all who believe, Himself (Isaiah 53, I Peter 2, Galatians 3, 5), to show the love, illustrate the healing and give Himself as the quintessential sacrifice, reconciling man to God by redemption, with promise as with Himself, of resurrection when the historical work on earth, is done (John 11).

It is as if Herod could almost be the very ear of Satan. Tell that fox! Christ meant that there was still a little time before He would be sacrificed for sin, not this as the program of man, but of God. In the meantime^*2, He would be doing what He came to do, showing love, healing bodies, declaring truth, seeking not His own will or life, but the will of His Father in heaven, from whom He came, having always been with Him (John 1:1, 5:19ff., 8:58), while now here to serve as Saviour, and Lord.

He came not to conspire with flesh for the world; but to breathe life into the dead, for eternity.

His followers seek to bring people to Him, not to this world, or its empires or vile violences, and puny powers. God is God and man is man, and this world is a theatre, like an operating theatre, not for OWNERSHIP but obedience; not for auction,  but for action.

What you do, you do, and where you are, you remain (Revelation 22:11). If you reject God, then indeed this world, by capital, by politics, by manipulation, may appeal to you. It is so very poor a thing, smashable by an asteroid at any time, for OWNERSHIP. It is wonderful, but only under God, and in His presence who as Creator knows and has produced its beauty, its curse and its cure (cf. Biblical Blessings Ch. 7, TMR Ch. 1).

Thus to Herod the word went; and now to this world goes a message parallel. What is this message ?

It is this. By all means conspire to kill: but the work of God goes on till it is perfected. It is already perfected in terms of redemption (Luke 13:33, Matthew 26:28,55-56, 20:28, John 5:24, 20:27-29), but in terms of the gospel outreach, the word of God to the confused word, the opportunities for what is good, and for evil for those attracted thereto, this is not yet over. The swelling vanities of unbelief (cf. II Peter 2:18, 2;1), with or without idols; and the captious charm of conspiracies to rule, for many: these continue until, divested of all pretence, clear as cancer when at last it is X-rayed in its tumorous form, they are incapable of being hidden.

Then the vile arrogance of the ungodly is to reach the corrupt climax of a man, invested with humanity's 'warrant', declaring that he is God, in the temple! Vain show has been the name of the game, and this is its epitome, and its epitaph, almost simultaneously (II Thessalonians 2, cf. Daniel 9:27 cf. Ch. 3 above, The Other News   5).

Christ's message to Herod also contained vigorous satire. His use of the word  'perfection' in strong contrast to the mode and manner of the ambitious Herod (apparently storing in his own time, arms for 70,000 troops and pursuing a compact with Parthia, in order to achieve some independence from Rome, or some such worldly ambition), was one of sacrifice. Thus Jesus immediately went on, following this announcement in 13:32, to declare in 13:33:

"Nevertheless I must journey today, tomorrow and the day following: for it cannot be that a prophet should perish outside of Jerusalem."

The perfection was one of perishing in the flesh first, in order to be resurrected in the flesh second (Luke 24), so that He actively invited them to HANDLE ME AND SEE (Luke 24:39). It was one of victory over pain, over the anguish of being regarded as evil (as predicted in Isaiah 53:4,9), when securing to Himself the sins of all who should ever come to Him in faith, and worst of all, of feeling severed from His eternal Father, since sin severs (Isaiah 59:1), so that He called out on the Cross, as predicted in spirit (Psalm 22:1), "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me!"

This showed that it was no mere performance. To be sure, He as God became man; but equally sure, He as man suffered as man, in man and for man, covering and receiving the sin of as many as received Him (John 1:12ff., TItus 2:4-3:7). Though it was forecast what would be, it still HURT! (cf. Hebrews 5:7). It still cost. It is not a simple matter of power, though you need pure power for pure purposes. It was a matter of truth, of love, of sacrifice, of achieving for His people, reconciliation with God, the personal God, so providing for all of them a personal forgiveness, eternal acceptance (I John 5:12ff.), the authority for the sealing with the Spirit of God, the privilege of having audience with God personally (Psalm 84), and knowing His mind for you as an individual, and of doing it, by His might!

This is the beauty, and how great is its majesty; and the other, the ashes of conspiracy, blown by the vapid winds of whirling deception, are but scattered afar.

Empty surrogates, ruined replacements of these steadfast wonders with the works of false prophets, and false ideologies, which in the end have little difference, for each involves implicit spiritual power, whether it be imagined to be seized by man, or be acknowledging some other source: these things are an abomination in the earth. Their conspiracies do not begin on earth, but for many, their climax is reached here.

After that, the judgment.
 
 

END-NOTES

*1 Cf. Koran 9:73 - "Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites, and deal rigorously with them. Hell shall be their home: an evil fate".

In Koran 8:36-41 we find similarly:

"Tell the unbelievers if they mend their ways their past shall be forgiven; but if they persist in sin, let them reflect upon the fate of their forefathers.

"Make war on them until idolatry shall cease, and God's religon shall reign supreme."

The menace is not for nothing; and in 9:3 we begin to read as follows:

"When the sacred months are over, slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them and lie in ambush for them..."

In Koran 9:27-31, we find the collaborative words to the theme: "Fight against such of those to whom the scriptures were given as believe neither in God nor the Last Day, who do not forbid what God and His apostle have forbidden, and do not embrace the true Faith, until they pay tribute out of hand, and are utterly subdued."

If such people after a time do not appreciate the violent thrust of the religionists, then the fate for them is not pleasant, as may be seen in the More Marvels ...Ch. 4 coverage (cf. Koran 9:6-16). In the end, "Make war on them: God will chastise them at your hands,  and humble them."

Repeatedly force is the anodyne to unbelief in the pronouncements of this Muhammad; subjugation and subjection are keywords; while woman may await the pleasure of the man in no uncertain manner or certain number, though there are some provisions for the afflicted, left, orphans and the like.

See the provisions of Ephesians 5 for an insight into specialisation with equality, the beauty of love in marriage, and the normative singularity of the relationship between man and wife.
 

*1A
In Ephesians 6, Paul discloses something of the panorama, the topography of the spiritual entities engaged in the struggle for death, in the midst of God's provision for life. The delusions of man are fully his own responsibility, but the agencies at work are no more limited to man himself, than is the world limited to his body. It all has environment. Thus Paul declares:

"Put on the whole armour of God that  you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

"For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

"Stand, therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shoed your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God, praying always..."

(bold is added).
 
 

*1B
See Deuteronomy 32's devastating critique (a) , the Biblical explosion of myths, and compare with the challenge: identify and perform, given by God in Isaiah 41 (b).

a)

"They have provoked Me to jealousy by what is not God:
They have moved Me to anger by their foolish idols,
But I will provoke them to jealousy by those who are not a nation;
I will move them to anger by a foolish nation.
For a fire is kindled in My anger,
And shall burn to the lowest hell;
It shall consume the earth with her increase
And set on fire the foundations of the mountains..." (32:21-22).

The problems are many, but note just two. What is NOT GOD is presented as if it were God. Can you even begin to imagine how vast and sublime an effrontery this is. It makes mere lèse-majesté a joke, a bauble between friends, by comparison. The God of the entire universe is changed ? Are they mad ? (Psalm 115, Hosea 9:7).

"They sacrificed to demons, not to God,
To gods they did not know,
To new gods, new arrivals ..." (32:17).

Drug addicts confound and abuse their own bodies; industrialists may pollute our physical environment, and there is no other friendly world in the universe for man (Psalm 115:16 cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-3), despite the billions spent on Mars and other prospective confectionary of the imagination, which steadfastly refuse to co-operate with the insult to God offered by doubting His always verified word.

These things are hard to conceive in their folly; but to directly abuse GOD by having some NOT GOD as an item of worship, direct or effectual, this is an abomination compared with which mere suicide seems almost a clean affair. This, it is assault on the SOURCE of life, the SOVEREIGN of man and the SENSE of reality. (Cf. Red Alert...
Ch. 6, esp. *5, Lord of Life Ch. 8.)

Social conformism for selfish survival purposes, the anti-this and anti-that crusade to remove freedom of speech, in which God is treated as a pawn for convenience as man seeks to steal the earth and live as he will in what is made as God has willed: this is neither moral nor wise. It is a profanity uttered in the divine ear. It will not work, and it will bring no peace, for there IS no peace when its Prince, costly in His expedition to bring it, is rejected and His word arrogantly disdained, while new words, untested, ineffectual, unkempt in their origin, invalid in their source, imprecise in their propositions are thrown into the ring, as if it were some kind of game.

God-invention is if possible even worse: for it not only abuses God by making speech concerning Him to be bound to man's debased motives, it also produces delusion and confusion, so that the prince of this world, back of it, whether in his ultimate source, the devil, or in his face to come, or his novelties, all too many which divide the earth, is expressing himself in the long since fading Eden that was earth, in all manner of vile violations and vices. Call them religious: what does it matter! They defile the very source, basis and glory for man, and drag in the dust the flowers of His beauty, if it were possible; but what is very possible, they drag the flower of man in the dust, by awarding prices to art pieces of detestable contortion, wild dreams that transmit only fraud.

"The gods of the nations are idols" says Psalm 96:5. Yes but it says even more than this: "all the gods of the (other) nations are idols." There are no exceptions.

That is the position biblically, and in this world to this hour, precisely as God has predicted it (Matthew 24, II Timothy 3, II Peter 1, I Timothy 4), and it will proceed precisely as He has said, as it always does (cf. The Other News 5), until the end comes. We have now the beginning of sorrows; they will mount (Matthew 24:8,22-24). But He will come (Matthew 24:29ff., I Thess. 4, II Thess. 1), both to deliver His people and to deliver judgment in the time which follows (cf. SMR pp. 502ff.).

b)

Our second reference cited was to Isaiah 41, the challenge from God, to perform, to be comparable, or quit: this is visited by us in verses 21-24.

" 'Present your case,' says the LORD.
'Bring forth your strong reasons,' says the King of Jacob.
'Let them bring forth and who us what will happen;
Let them show the former things, what they were,
That we may consider them, and know the latter end of them'
{their eventual outcome};
Or declare to us things to come.

" 'Show the things that are to come hereafter,
That we may know that you are gods;
Yes, do good or do evil,
That we may be dismayed and see it together.
Indeed you are nothing,
And your work is nothing.
He who chooses you is an abomination."

The Biblical denunciation of pretension and gods that know not, neither demonstrate their reality, is intense. It is wholly anti-Christian to pretend that the case is ever otherwise with God;  the same shame is shown in John 14:30 by Christ, by Paul in II Corinthians 4, and the same contrast is always maintained. Man in his contemporary (spiritual) madness, is merely doing what Israel did long ago, only on a universal stage, at the end of the Age, like a naughty boy with his tongue FIXED OUT, on hold, and his hands to his ears, even as he leaves the teacher's outraged presence, on his way to see the Principal.

The case is presumably growing more interesting to the devil, as now this group, now this spiritual conspiracy with the arch-fiend's blessing (if the infernal CAN bless at all!), now some concoction, some development, comes into the view of the Zoom-Lens of Time, and presents its anti-credentials, new gods, new arrivals.

The world quivers like a dog being forcibly addressed by someone other than his master, and hounded by another. It seeks some result. Its eyes move, its tongue pants. Will it follow this other leader ? Decidedly yes, for a time; but his end is short (Revelation 12:12, 17:12-13 cf. SMR pp. 683ff.). It will not be a very satisfactory hunt. It is always a mistake to follow mysterious masters whose credentials are dust. WHY WILL YOU DIE! is as evocative and fit for the human ear, now, the ear that is run on fickle feet to another god or schema of the silent sod, invented by man. I HAVE NO PLEASURE IN THE DEATH OF THE WICKED! (Ezekiel 33:11).

What then ? "But that the wicked turn from his evil way and live.  Turn, turn from your evil ways, for why should you die ..."
 

*2

The three days is really an intense play. It serves three purposes, at least.

Thus 1) it is a play on the often noted fact (as in Matthew 16:21, 17:22-23) that Christ was as predicted (cf. SMR Ch. 6), to rise in a precise time sequence, from the dead.

·       It was not abstract; it was programmed.

·       It was not ad hoc. On the contrary, it was ordained, ordered, prophesied and to be accomplished, in some ways like the case of Elijah who, emphasising the power from GOD ALONE, had them put water in a trench around the sacrifices, before calling in the contention with Baal's prophets, for fire from heaven in attestation of where the actual power for this earth, lay.

Thus Christ would not only rise; His flesh would not only not rot (as in Psalm 16, cf. Acts 2); He would not only overcome the smashing of a ruinous crucifixion plus play from the unscrupulous flesh smashers and bashers who tortured Him : He would also come after three days EXACTLY, bodily resurrected. Not four; not two.

Thus, this being the very thing Herod wanted (miracles, for his purposes, perhaps for fun, diversion cf. Luke 23:6ff.), it could be provided; only it could be so, with this difference, that it was to be for a pure purpose. Herod was wanting something wonderful ? In a very little while, he would have it, not understand it; in the end, not want it in its brightness, yet have it before his very eyes. It would be far more than he hoped; and far other than he would take!

So Christ died, as He foretold, and as the prophets for a millenium had foretold. He died in the way foretold (cf. TMR Ch. 3, SMR Ch. 9). No corpse, however,  could they produce; no doomed human could they control: no power could contrive to keep Him. On the third day, the tomb was empty and Christ commenced his 40 day testimony.

Thus in the word, the message sent, as reported in Luke 13, to Herod, we have this reference to the three days.

On the third day at first is a matter of mere sequence for Herod, stages in Christ's work to occur before the announced death,  which Christ was here also freely predicting (Luke 13:33, 9:44). This message to the king was, however, a bearer of a second meaning: in terms of the coming fact that it would be after just THREE days that Christ would rise.  How those THREE days would impact on Herod later, when it was just this time that led to the deliverance of the Lord from the grip of man!

Herod for his own part, was exposed later as plotting, and stripped of his money and place by Caligula, Emperor, being sent into exile, and by report, committing suicide, remorseful but unrepentant, driven, doomed.

Christ then was providing a message to the imperious king.

It was also freely attested that it would be three days that would see this event, his actual 3 day death plus resurrection program (Luke 9:44, Matthew 17). Christ thus both worked aspects in stages until the death, where He would find Herod as a kind of auxiliary judge, and then  in the death, in its three days. The former meaning was His scheduled progression towards the time of killing. The second was the progress within the regicide, showing both His total power even over matter, mind and spirit, which the kings of this earth lack, and the meaning of majesty which they never fully comprehend. Thus would come the interment day, the lying day, and the rising day, three phases on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday first light.

In this way, the play is found in the three days on the WAY TO death, developing into that of  the three days in the WAY OF death. The perfection spoken of, then, was not only that of the sin-covering death, but of the death breaking resurrection, in its own three day capsule!

Why however could it not be that a prophet would perish but in Jerusalem ? What was the meaning of this statement of Christ, in the message to Herod ?

In fact, the satire is profound. Here was Jerusalem, hub of religion, place of the temple where all the symbolism of the coming sacrifice had been expressed and the outcome in Christ for centuries predicted, indeed for a millenium; and here was its Lord. HE had come as predicted so poignantly in Ezekiel 34, so magnificently in Hosea 13:14, so compassionately as shown in Isaiah 40:10, and the rest had to come with Him! There was a program, the plan of salvation itself, to be fulfilled.

Could He perish outside the precincts which depicted His own only sufficient sacrifice, by which all animal oblations would cease to have any significance, just as grade 1 Primary School fades in the day of post-graduate work, ceasing to count for anything ? It is only an index, a preliminary, a preparation (cf. Hebrews 8:13).

Could Christ fail to be treated to the very 'dignity' of  DEATH in the very place where there abounded priestly and scribal hands greedy for gain, social, religious or financial, or hearts heady with arrogance, deceivers, swift to seek power, conspirators indeed against the true and only
God, even using His temple 'office' for their unhallowed work ? Would it be FITTING for Him to be divorced from this parody, when the princes of this earth set themselves against Him (Psalm 2 predicting just that) ? Could He be apart from the premises that depicted Him, the temple that attested Him, or the traitors who would seek to keep it for themselves, their religion for their own rule, their land for their pleasure, and work out their own salvation ex-God, with spurious, furious hearts!

Of course not. It could not be that such a prophet as He, the last of the line to the Cross,  could now perish outside Jerusalem. This is one of the main things it was providentially FOR: to be the place, that ONE place (SMR pp. 823, Deuteronomy 12:5-11) chosen to depict, that one place shown to fulfil, that one place, Jerusalem, where He must die, in order to be intimate with the replaced temple gear, casting it away as youth casts off childhood, and to be explicit testimony against those so treacherous as to dare to use His name for their own works.

He purged their works (John 2), repelled their assaults (Luke 11:53-54), exposed their treachery (Luke 11:47-52, Matthew 23), replaced their fallen efforts with the true work of God as He said He would do in Ezekiel 34, coming both to seek and to save that which was lost, and then He paid for the admission of as many as would come through Him, there being no other way (John 14:6), for God is ONE (Exodus 20, Ephesians 4:4), even persistently praying: "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing!"