BULLETIN SIX

WHY SHORT-CIRCUITS ARE NOT ENOUGH ?

A short-circuit involves a loss of power through an unintended leakage from the intended path to earth or some alternative.

As such it cannot help.

When this concept is applied to human history, it does of course require a readily assimilable explanation.

It is this. Why, some might ask, did God not simply institute a divine rule and leave free will to inherit shame if and as it rose an ugly head in this and that area of the grand domain, while Himself being quite simply authoritarian, so that liberty was circumscribed to be sure, but at least not subject to the scorching blights of dictatorially inclined souls or nations ?

The answer is simply that then the powers of liberty (present or absent without verbal palaver) to dream, daze, conceive, implement would be so limited as to permit no actual TRIAL of power and precept, idea and theory, way of life to the contrary as an option. Then to eternity love would not be the ultimate criterion of life, along with truth, without which one merely pretends and so establishes nothing.

Then what ? Then the ultimate would be simple power, with a kingdom of virtual cogs, enlightened a little, at liberty a small amount, but without power to try, to test other things, to have demonstration one way or the other concerning what life is, can be and being personalised, can FREELY be without mere conformity as the victory in conquest.

Then cringers and slingers, the verbal production units of propaganda might, unless simply repressed, carry on during eternity saying, This is someone else's will and has nothing to do with my superior ideas! God would rather be mocked outright, as happened as predicted precisely (see Psalms in Joyful Jottings), than move in a kingdom of lying hatred and subversive squalor; and acted accordingly (Ephesians 1:11).

Being the truth, He faces things, tries them and encourages us to try them (I Thessalonians 5:21). Knowing the end as He does, does not prevent His showing the way! This is not encouragement to lie or be fraudulent or silly, but to check out and not merely dream, when assessing. This can be done in the mind.

It may also be done in history. Thus things are checked out for all to see. Applicable principles are found for example in Ezekiel 21:26, Ephesians 3:8-21,  Luke 23:34, John 3:16-18, Proverbs 1, the last three showing the depth and reality of the test and the greater height of the provision to meet it, and its divine motivation! With this said, and in order,  this implies:

1) that there is an inherent and testable worthiness in the Lord to Shepherd man, not simply to run His program, but to freely govern by grace as if fitting, despite the cost of such liberty in love (as in  Romans 5 and II Corinthians 5:21). All history will acclaim this in the end, and however long it takes, it will be sure.

2) Now to Ephesians 3. The Church or body of Christ, that is, freely incorporated disciples of desire, who work with Him voluntarily and with heart according to His provisions for peace and therefore purification and pardon, has this as one of its functions. It is this. It will make clear to all powers, authorities and regions of rule that the Gospel grace works, is illimitable in purity, indissoluble in dynamic, willing to endure not in order to invent itself, but to be applied as in the first, like both an antiseptic and a healing to sin and its devastations, which observably do not work and logically cannot (cf. SMR and TMR).

They are anti-vital. In so showing, the church teaches through terrestrial trials to the audience of the powers in eternity, effecting through enormous trials of all but incredible depth and searching scrutiny, the teaching which is experimental (it has to pass), instructive (it does so as in Revelation 12:11) and inspiring (it is glorious that grace so prevails amid corrupt destructive forces, ranging from sheer inflated madness to cunning probes).

Currently, the arch-enemy of souls knowing  his time is short (Revelation 12:12), is very angry, and this has been most obvious for centuries in various types of tyranny from that of Romanism (the RC body) against the Waldensians, the Jews, as also many earnest Christians who rightly refused to believe  those who claimed as in the Mass, that Christ was to be located in some place other than heaven (a view forbidden in Matthew 24:24-27), or that man can become a god. Many are the other forms of evasion of redemption found in Psalm 49, Ephesians 2, Romans 3, Galatians 5,  where in redemption grace is its ground, and faith its reception Many more are the delinquent departures from the Gospel and the grace of God, using His name, that

	1) clinically fulfils Matthew 24:24 to the utmost; and
	2) shows the roaring force of the test that is freely to be met by Christians (such as Paul illustrates in himself, in I Corinthians 4:9-16 and II Corinthians 4:7ff.).

These, with various political, ecclesiastical and other wolves-as-sheep sorts of works (cf. Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 7:15ff.) are tests, some subtle, some glaring; and they illustrate the nature of those with big claims and popularity (normal for false prophets and false christs, such as Christ predicts to be coming in large numbers). They DO indeed test, just as when children with money in their pockets pass forbidden picture theatres or entertainments that lurk amid vice, not understanding but knowing it is unwise.

Why then does this world find ways of such atrocities as aggregate into forcible political or false ecclesiastical sanctions and misrules, such as currently are coming into some Australian schools under the false concept of SAFETY! safety if so be, to be eaten by earthy throats who query captiously who has what gender.  This however is already normally seen in the very DNA of each person, not once but billions of times!

Why then does God not simply sum the thing up and leave out this phase of history, allowing nicely conforming spiritual citizens to avoid the rough stuff, mentally, politically, culturally and physically, as in a very epitome of horror, in the trenches of World War I (a fascinating booklet on which has appeared recently in The Australian newspaper, July 23-24, 2016). Why not clean it out and not even permit it to arrive at all!

The answer is as before. This scope for testing allows man, made in the image of God, to show through that image that though he may be duped, deceived, become dysfunctional like a detached retina, he is not merely condemned by authority without trial. Instead, finding it out in practice is more convincing, a demonstration, a clip to pride, a terminus both for pretence and pretension, and the God of liberty does nothing to annul what He has made. Rather, knowing all from the first, He has enabled the function of this same liberty towards Himself to the last. He is available to be found, right to the end as seen in Revelation 22:17.

Thus pathology does not rule before God, who before our time and creation even existed (Ephesians 1:4), being the same God as the  Christ who wept over the coming destruction of a wilful Jerusalem (Matthew 23:37ff., Luke 19:42ff.), forged salvation and prepared for its impact then to come. He has KNOWN who are His before sin struck, and as in Colossians 1:19, would have all to be reconciled to Himself.

Nevertheless, love does not tyrannise though man readily does so; and what sheer and absolute delight resides in this divine restraint. What serves God amid mankind does so in genuine liberty enabled by God, applied by Him in power and enabled in the functions of His unction.

A kingdom of love is infinitely preferable to one of force, illusion, pretension, false glory, as in the case when a man of  North Korea dares to take the name of the Lord and seek to make it apply to himself, when obviously he came into existence as born, did not exist endlessly, and forces what he wants; and many have done much the same in different modes. Such by illusion cheat, and by fables mock. In answer, as in Psalm 2, the Lord laughs and grace smiles, while life is cheated no more.

That consummation comes - after test. Not only in word, but in experimental illustration in the laboratory of history, the Lord is the One to whom glory is due, as in Revelation 5. It cost life. Life in turn triumphed over death (I Corinthians 15:1-4,55, Hosea 13:14, Psalm 16, Isaiah 25:8, Acts 2), the Lord Himself taking the penalty and offering redemption to man, in Christ. For believing and receiving man,  it leads to regeneration of life (Titus 3) and bodily resurrection at length. It is all made free (Romans 6:23).

What then as is reported, if funds intended for help of the persecuted as is claimed by some concerning one of the largest charities in the world, with the name of Christ included in it, ends up in terrorist hands ?

Why not simply prevent as claimed by many, certain moneys from this source being misapplied to some of the most rampant persecutors of all time, who even try to make Israel appear guilty, in defending the tiny residue of land left over from the promised Palestine homeland given by the victorious powers after 1918, and affirmed on behalf of Britain before that in 1917 ?

Why not simply cancel out such outrageous distortions in advance ? Why not instead make a universe which is basically programmed ?

Not least, it is because the rancorous abuses illustrate both the subtlety and the nature of evil intent and dictatorial dynamic in this world, while proving the power of God to accomplish His objectives of grace (cf. Romans 11) in this world, in utter detail. Thus, the more fury and force the nations mount to reinforce the invasion or removal of the little bit of land still left to Israel, despite all the depredations suffered and the  hand-overs made for peace, by Israel, the more the Lord makes the survival of Israel, a flamboyant fact in the face of this world. Israel itself is not yet back at peace with Him as a nation, yet His keeping of their existence sure upon their return is quite staggering and utterly instructive (Ezekiel 36 esp. 36:22, Luke 21:24). It was to be and it is so.

It shows the divine reliability once again, that all that man says is on one side, to the most invidious caricatures, as in the Koran concerning its demolition of a demobbed Saviour, even Jesus Christ; and what God does is on the other. The one says; God does. What He says stays, and is not overturned though this world fret its heart out. This enables tests to be acute and obvious.

Testability is something truth shows naturally, even amid the most ruinous forces. It is one of the elements of good government which, given great power, yet never misuses it, what it says being what it does.

Glory then be to God, and praise to the Lord Jesus Christ, beautiful in grace, dutiful in redemption, loving in nature, the only Saviour for any man, and praise for His free salvation for freed souls who freely rejoice in Him, as a bride in the bridegroom (Isaiah 61:10).

It is far better and well shown, not as a mere claim amid the clamorous, but as truth beyond all torment (as in SMR, esp. Ch. 6, The magnificence of the Messiah and many other volumes).

Such  reality is what involves worship, which was true from the beginning and endures to the end; and this, amidst its own multiple and accurate predictions, including its prognosis for this world. In this without Christ's return, human life could not even continue (Matthew 24:22), a fact made more obvious as power lowers, hatreds fester and rancorous rushes of folly multiply.

Without His action, flesh could not here last! That prediction, like the rest, becomes clearer as the days pass, and as evil dynamics signified in Revelation and other books in the Bible, teem tumultuously in increasing team-work of mutiny against the Master, before our very eyes, even against the Immutable God (cf. Revelation19:19), who so far from tyranny, cried in the incarnate Christ,

 'Father, forgive them,

for they do not know what they are doing!'

 (Luke 23:24).