THE BRIGHT LIGHT AND THE UNCOMPREHENDING DARKNESS

As we watch the world developing its final 'birth' pangs, as New Age might think, but its actual death signature on mortality, assigned to the paths written for the godless, it becomes clear on every side that drastically desired darkness, as in a womb which is long past its due date, is merely a cradle of death. If the actual rattle is delayed, the signals are tempestuous, continual and mounting.

The ease with which the bright light solves all things placed in its beam has its obverse. There is no light found shining out of human consciousness, a mere reciprocal of the reality of man's invisible spirit which laughs at law (sometimes in general, hence becoming lawless, with the due results of its misdeeds), construes as it will and wonders at its own baselessness while carefully turning its back on its base, like the wilfully blind, having shut their eyes, marvelling that they cannot see. This light is equally not human knowledge, always baffled at its place since without its source it has none, settling for mere manipulation, nor yet human aspiration, which can be for doom or dictatorship, ease or indifference.

This bright light of which Isaiah spoke (Isaiah 8:22-9:7, Isaiah 42:6, 49:6), which would dispel the darkness of anguish, it is as he declared, the Messiah.

He who came on time (cf. Highway of Holiness Ch. 4), Paul's "due time" in Galatians 4, an intensely mathematical point in history, who did the trial course, not to see if He could but to show that He would, it is He who depicted the scenario to come before He would return in judgment, when having confirmed the Gospel, indeed make it work by His Cross and resurrection, He is to terminate trials in triumph. It is this which Isaiah had shown, centuries before, as had others (cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 17), centring around Him who revealed to man in visible form, the actual presence of God in incarnation once made for all time, who is as changeless as the tide of human error.

The difference ? His word works, and man's does not; His word is love, the world's is itself; His way is wisdom, the world's is folly. His is an opening in the clouds; the world's ? it is a descent to the pit.

In this volume, with special reference to news and developments, but with such references as become fitting, often from former work to aid brevity, we shall keep a finger on the pulse of our times, use the stethoscope of scripture to cover the condition of man's inhalations, exhalations and condition andand moreover see how our times compare with the predictive cardiograph of our Age (cf. SMR Ch. 8). It will not be pleasant in all things, but it holds always something beyond mere pleasure, power and prestige, performance and manipulative capacity in the instrumentation panel of this world's construction, which is in much available to man. It will continue to expose the sheer wonder of the word of God at work in the world, astride it like a giant Colossus, providing for it like the Great Physician which the Lord in fact is.

It presents health, wholeness, truth and mercy, peace and joy, reality and that rest which comes from reality, since His is the heart that cherishes. If the Lord of glory whom man gashed, according to the divinely announced plan (Isaiah 50-55, Zechariah 12, Psalm 22 cf. Joyful Jottings 22-25) does not cherish the restless godlessness of the renegade, yet He cherishes the call to repent, and has cherished even to the point of a cursed death, the cost of restoration of people to Himself, as many as receive Him (John 1:12). Before all time, which is a mere invention of the deity, there is He whose constructive mantle is seen over all His words (cf. The Defining Drama Ch. 10), and there being no other God (cf. Ephesians 4:4, Isaiah 44-45), it is He who in the beginning was the Word and was God. It is He who has come from the eternities of blessedness to bring eternal life to the otherwise irremediable confines of corruption.

In answer to some remonstration and concern,
it is necessary to relieve the minds of some,
through the grace of God, concerning the due place of reason,
both in giving 'a reason for the faith' as required,
and in contradistinction to any imagined insanity in the race!

Chapter 8

DARKNESS OF SPIRIT IS NOT OF THE LORD

AND WILL MEET HIS SWORD:

UNCOMPREHENDING
AND COMPREHENSIVELY STRICKEN

Habakkuk 2:13-14 and the message of the word of God.