CHAPTER ELEVEN
CARNAGE, CALAMITY, and SPIRITUAL DRUGS
are sour substitutes for
the PRINCE OF PEACE
THE NOT SO POIGNANT RAVENING LIONS
The fact is that while in the Middle East, appalling dismemberments, defacements, defilements and depravities occur, as one or another blows up some children and their teachers, or some highly enlightened ray of hope tells us that it is not now really POLITICAL, for Hezbollah, but RELIGIOUS: there are indeed OTHER PLACES to consider.
However, what do we learn
from a Hezbollah zealot (Time,
The main aim, says the
Secretary General of this Iran-supported organisation, is now religious jihad
to free
As noted earlier, however,
the issue is simple. Ultimately it is religious. A large group of persons,
involving by the estimate given earlier, 99% of relatively close surrounds of
As peace is used for war, as it appears, we see also the transparent honesty of the proceedings. Peace is wanted; hence there is bargaining. In this, land is traded for peace. The more peace is wanted, more land. Then land becomes explosive in ‘forcing’ peace. However it seems SO transparent that there is nothing at all to be seen in it, of peace.
But all this is not the
end. The end is
from the One whom sin has
offended), as in Isaiah 65:13-15, Zechariah 11-13. However, as seen earlier,
God is on record on His intentions to restore them in two phases, the secular
or territorial, and then the spiritual. While the latter waits,
until the time of repentance for so many
in Israel, as directed by the Lord, should come (Romans 11:25), there is a huge
turmoil in Israel, in the Middle East, with many a hyena awaiting the blood.
THE REST OF THE WORLD
The rest of the world
however is not lying down. While it is not by any means everywhere in the
tragic turmoil of the
Its own RELIGION thrust
is not small.
Hezbollah is not the only group deluded and in direct confrontation with the
Lord. The Gentile world is brimming with its own versions and varieties of this
brilliant feat, to confront your own Maker with dreams of your own. It is
inventing its empty causes, its flimsy but fulminating casus belli against the
Almighty with its own type of assiduity.
- With the Jew-Muslim conflict in full operations
(as in Hezbollah and the fervours of Hamas no doubt, and many more,
looking from oily regions beyond),
- bodies flying and babies battered for strictly religious purposes,
- to do with getting some land (more of it),
- so that it is DIRECT and INTENTIONAL,
- not a matter incidental to essentially military operations, and seen as regrettable
- (as in shopping centres, not
strictly military targets):
- there are other kinds of fervour afoot.
Let us take the not so succulent news in FOUNDATION, July-August 2000. The trend found there is not at all august.
It is loaded with inclusivism in religion, indifferentism in doctrine, post-Christian punting into unknown realms, breach of truth in the interests of new organisations or meetings proliferating for or even into unification of what is as near as Baal and Elijah, as light and darkness, since Elijahs seem particularly hard to find in the often well-paid milieu. Old bastions become new chameleons, and wisdom takes leave of absence from the spiritual parlours which become increasingly spiritistic.
Such provocations are precisely as in Israel's northern kingdom of old, before its lamentable fall (cf. II Kings 17). This continual insubordination to scripture, deviation into disobedience, indifference to dire divine directives, collaboration with iniquity and impudent misuse of the name of the Lord in the process, is so close in this day to that in its own, that it is almost boring to see it; yet death is never boring.
The thrust is indeed anti-imperial
and contra-regal, relative to God: directed direly against the Prince of Peace, as with the
others. That is why there IS no peace. Its PRINCE is dismissed by all parties,
so that increasingly you get such a situation as predicted in Revelation 13ff.,
and in England, that gracious land of antiquity, there is the iniquity of calling
Biblical Christians a 'deviant minority'. God does not change, but
When truth is deviance, what is the norm ? Unknown increasingly, it is despatched as by an axe, as commitments abound and Christ is impoverished by the mass defections of the too willingly defiled, whose ears fulfil to a wonder the prophetic prescription for our period to be found in II Timothy 4:2-3. Truth in the heart, frequently comes to be in subservience, all but explicitly, to survival, to getting along, to what will last. A stolen world, however, cannot last; and it will not.
It is ALWAYS a supreme
irony that trying to save your own life, loses it, and losing it for the Prince
of Peace, Jesus Christ, saves it. But here! Abandoning the chief power and resource
of Britain these centuries, for the follies of Europe with its papacy
(increasingly 'acceptable' in Britain, whose PM goes to Mass from time to time,
and is married, it appears, to one who goes yet more), the nation reels
into its new region, stripped and peeled. But it is by no means
The
Since there is no room at the top with the Prince, who has the advantage of being God when the number (Ephesians 4) in this category is ONE (John 8:58), so that Christ was BEFORE John the Baptist, even though He was born into this world later (John 1:40): there is the grotesque move to re-stamp the prince. It is necessary that the top spot be filled by a carnal, secular, yet vaguely religious being with a power which will be the opposite, most concrete, and whose tolerance, as with the Communists, will be the opposite in deed to what it is to presented to be, in word.
It is necessary for humanism to have this. God must be used as to name, but excluded as to fact.
After all, this is what the Moslem position is exposed to be (see Other Religions). The sects have done just the same inventing contra-scriptural novelties while trying very hard indeed, to make them seem in some way or other legitimate. Mormons even have gods-in-the-making in one of the most profoundly absurd pretences to relate to the One God (Isaiah 43:10-11).
But the Muslim and the other varieties of Sect are not alone. Now the drift becomes a drenching, the rough seas a carnage. The slackness of centuries on the part of many denominationalists (alas, in many cases growing too well aware of their culture and too little of the Lord) has had its fruit. Now there is hardly any pretence at all. There is to be a unity of Pentecostal with all the thrills and spills and frills and presumably growlings to boot, at their discretion, of the Roman, of the so-called Evangelical (now like 'born again' an empty word, because it has been seized by word-thieves, and being kidnapped, is used at their discretion, so making it a meaningless verbal fragment, subjected to duress!).
This
movement ? It comes from one source, it speeds from another.
NO REST FOR THE REST
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1) There is of course
Bishop Swing with his swinging vote. It is astonishing that there is quite simply and factually a huge swing away from the Bible to any sort of spiritual synthesis that looks or feels or seems to portend some kind of good. President still of the URI (United Religions initiative), Swing has the recent action of the URI to look upon. On a 6-day URI Global Summit. At this august assemblage, a CHARTER was signed. |
The purpose of course tallies with the URI intention which is "bring religions and spiritual traditions to a common table, a permanent, daily, global assembly."
They want, says an Associated Press report, "to establish a global group that could speak for the religions of the world." That of course, as we saw in an earlier chapter, is PRECISELY the sort of the thing the United Nations is seeking, allowing for religions to become subservient to its ends.
Such things as this HAVE TO BE, because it is so written. When the Second Beast has all the authority of the first (purely secular) one, in Rev. 13, we cannot fail to notice that it is DRESSED as a lamb, but speaks as a dragon. In Revelation the Lamb is always Christ, except here, where it is a religious fashion parade, using the form but dismissing the formula (of actual, predicted and verified incarnation).
As always, the supreme irony in this matter is simple: GOD tells His enemies JUST what and often just HOW they are doing to do it. It looks so cheap, like shiny pants, then simply to DO it, like a religious robot.
That however, is how it is! Members of this whole contrary and often quite contradictory assemblage of spiritual stooges to be, if they shall fall for it, are numerous: they are said to include, in prospect, Jews, Christians (of some unknown or developing viral variety ?), Buddhists, Muslims, Taoists, Indigenous Peoples, Sikhs and so on. People without God, people who make one of their founder who declines for his part to have one, people with one innovative one, with many, with world rule in the eye, who think the world stinks ... all are there, swinging along.
How impressive! It is like having the louts, the bullies, the delinquents and the scholars in a school, all assembled in the prefect's room, to make daily decisions. If it were done solemnly enough, the school might even last several weeks.
This is done solemnly, with any sense of charade or cartoon, it seems; whereas logically it is a farce of opposites, spiritually a betrayal of claims and socially a prostitution campaign in effect.
It is marvellous what man does for two things, power and survival. Of course, just round the corner, there is always the king, emperor, Secretary, Secretary General, General and so forth, whose word becomes law, whose illegalities constitute the safety of the State, and there comes over and again, the State which is SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED. It is a senile representation of the same old thing, different only in this, in the blasphemy with which it BEGINS. It is for those soundly asleep, but then, THIS too is predicted in Matthew 25:1-10. MANY, and it would seem a majority, will be carried away with dead forms and meaningless without power, without God, without reason and without hope.
The PROCESS is old (as in Romans 1:17 to chapter end, and the moral attributes are outstandingly fulfilled in the present case), the MORALS are true to type; but the MANNER OF IT is so ambitious, sacrilegious, hypocritical in conception, that those professing to believe this and that are to join with those vehemently denying it, as if words are MEANT to mean NOTHING, this is new.
Time would fail to cover all the covert and overt operations of this type. Let us however note a few in overview.
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2) Thus The Roman Catholic body was united with the Canadian Council of Churches in June, 1997. |
Now the CCC has an RC President. Of
course, servitude to the Pope spiritually is a mandate for the consistent RC,
who with
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3) The Billy Graham
Amsterdam 2000 meeting looked for speakers including passionate RC-Protestant unionists like Colsen, and various religious transvestites in the sense given. Change is the name of the game, and the Bible is the changing room where new clothes, being not found, the use is simply that as a base. With George Carey, Anglican Archbishop of biblically defined, like a desert wind. |
At the World Exposition held in Hanover, Germany, according to Ecumenical News International, the Expo 2000"s "Pentecost - Day of Christian Churches" included Margot Kassmann, bishop of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Hanover, and Josef Homeyer, Catholic (RC) bishop of Hildesheim. It is noted that "they told those gathered in the pavilion that the day of churches should demonstrate that Christians all over the world were united in the Church of Christ and in the ecumenical movement" (ENI, 6-15-00).
Now someone reading this might be rather inclined to stare vacantly at the air, and reflect this way: Well, what does that show... They are all saying that nowadays.
THAT is in fact the first point!
The second is this. By
inference,
Numbness to it, as to an arm in inflamed condition, is dangerous to future operations.
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4) Again we read on p. 46
of Foundation, that over two dozen Anglican and RC leaders met
near |
Common ground of Christ and
the Pharisees, this too could be found by those reading Matthew 23, but ONLY
when they repented and came unreserved to Christ in repentance to their
fearfully arrogant and misconceived self-regard, making of their 'church' or
sect or party, as later was the fate with Rome, a very beacon of darkness, with
tradition making what of the word of God ? With such TLC, it becomes an
excised remnant, virtually a NULLITY. As Christ put it, "teaching as
doctrines, the commandments of men" (Mark 7:7). Even Pharisaism of that day had a long way to
go before they could find such a thing as the triple idolatry of
"You
reject the commandment of God," He said,
"that you
may keep your traditions."
- But what do we see,
- while we are looking at the Gentile folies,
- to match the somewhat specialised
- as the
- in seething revolt against the Lord whose word does not change,
- proceed in such ways to placard their implacable revulsion from the word of God ?
What we do find as the Age moves, or shambles on to its appointed ruin, is this: that, though many millions change in their ways, and forsake the clarity of the faith so clearly
re-affirmed in the Reformation from the Bible,with the Bible-only principle for doctrine trumpeted for hundreds of years before this,
the near-to-end season,the word itself does not change, nor does it change its deadly accuracy with symptoms and sequence.
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5) Not unnaturally in such an
inferno, we see the earth-shattering Earth Charter. Now it may seem that this is an over-statement. Admittedly it involves thought; but it is correct. This sort of presumption and arrogant misuse of the name of God, involves precisely that stimulus to the agenda, that development of the dynamics leading to the end, which is intimately associated with earth shattering events in the most literal fashion, such as the (presumed) asteroid case in Revelation 8:11. Indeed when one third of the inhabitants at one phase are to find death in the developments, the term 'shattering' does not seem undue in emphasis (Revelation 9:15). Certainly men will co-operate in the judgments and facilitate them; but this is scarcely commendable. They do not come because of faithfulness and obedience, and to seethe in hate is merely to seek more seething in judgment (as in Revelation |
But let us look at this ambitiously named Earth Charter with its pompously pretentious phrasing (because it, as if God, is telling the earth which it neither made nor could, nor could those who write, what is to be, as if the Maker were not in view at all - a form of theft of hollow voidance, avoidance and hypnotic amnesia). Perhaps someone will one day tell YOU what to do with your car, and for what it is to be used. If so, do not forget the parable.
The developments of this
Earth Charter concept, we see on p. 16 of the noted edition of Foundation.
Recently released in
It is so cosily community-conscious that it is reported some "100,000 individuals from 51 countries" have contributed, though whether it was a full stop or voice, or what, at that level, is a question. With Gorbachev, UN Under Secretary, the special UN envoy to Africa and such luminaries of this earth, favouring it, and the last named declaring it "a third pillar after the International Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations charter", the former a disaster of blind, intrusive presumption (cf. The Other News, Appendix !), it is apparent it has the humanistic lodestar in its sights. Thus Gorbachev's Green Cross International declares that this Earth Charter "embodies fundamental values and principles and is intended to serve as a universal code of conduct to guide people and nations towards a sustainable future."
Let us translate the apparent meaning in this. It declares what man thinks
- 1) from man, and
- 2) for man,
and that this is most important.
Hence it is hoped it will help man survive, provided he is willing to become its serf.
Between that and bowing down to the Beast (Revelation 13), there would be - to use Howard's language on quite another topic, scarcely room for a cigarette paper to fit.
They are always doing it,
from Confucius to
In this case, that means starting by ACKNOWLEDGING GOD, and not some recent cultural inventions encapsulating all the latest forms of human blindness and inveterate autonomy; continuing by capitulating to the Almighty, proceeding by receiving His redemption and completing it by starkly submitting in praise to Christ and Him crucified, yes, rather risen: people can find the power of God for the purposes of God, for which man was created.
Since this is not desired,
what it is not desirable tends to rule until what it portends, happens;
and this is called the next
CRISIS. It goes on. The world does not however go on for ever. Its scenario is
definitely of the limited variety, in energy, in form, in information and in
destiny.
Thus the earth
charter has such gloriously agnostic creativity, such burgeoning ethics
from nowhere in particular, such oughts derived from what simply is;
such mandates taken from nothing, that we have such insights as these as
directors in waiting:
- "We must deepen and expand
the global dialogue that generated the Earth Charter, for we have much to
learn from the ongoing collaborative search for truth and wisdom.
- "Life often involves tensions
between important values. This can mean difficult choices. However, we
must find ways to harmonize diversity with unity, the exercise of freedom
with the common good The arts, science, religions, educational
institutions.... are all called to offer creative leadership... the
nations of the world must renew their commitment to the United Nations,
fulfill their obligations..."
So is this second beast arising to have all the authority of the first beast, precisely as in Revelation 13; and it has, likewise, the appearance of a lamb, and the nature of a dragon. This is simply one more triumph of prophecy.
To be logical for one
moment, in an environment so alien to such toils: IF there were no God, THEN
there COULD BE no objective moral values. IF survival is one major design, then
this is purely subjective, and hence an arrogant directive from some to others,
possessing no authority.
If it is good for people to
vote, this does not enshrine in their voting power, the capacity to formulate
objectively true morals. This is mere dictatorship with a sheep's clothing.
SINCE there is one God (as shown in SMR, 1-3,10), and since He is, as in the Bible He reveals Himself to be, with no contestants to any degree to compare with the precision and profundity of prophecy alone, and since Jesus Christ has a performance criterion not even vaguely matched by any other figure in history, relative to objective power in and over this world, therefore these charters and allied proposals are rebellion, and constitute rejection wedded to the irrational.
You CANNOT prescribe from
what is, to form what ought to be. Only supernatural, all knowing reality can
do that, since it possesses the reality back of it. The gulf between this world
and its wisdom, or wisdoms, for they contradict like insanely rambustious
siblings, as shown in its performance, and actual wisdom, objective and
self-fulfilling, makes a chasm opening at your feet, as happened so much in
Let
us then look at some chasms.
OVERALL THE COMPANIONSHIP
OF DAMNATION
IS NOT
DESIRABLE
This proposition might be contested. It is not beyond conception that some might PREFER to find desirable the lot of those who are in OBJECTIVE REBELLION against the Maker of the Universe, who despise conscientiously His OFFER OF REDEMPTION, who hate goodness and love pretence to the point that autonomy, vastly beyond man. Such life in active despite of the Lord, might seem to them to possess charms. Nevertheless, the lingering lampoons of damnation, when you 'eat the fruits of your own doings', and the ironies of getting what you want shown for what it is worth, and perhaps even exemplifying JUST of what it is worthy in objective disclosure; and in general, the nature of fraud and pretence, mixed with pretension: these things make it exceedingly hard to justify any desire for it.
Still, some people want to risk all on a flutter, or even to suffer stoically for dignity and so forth; so that it cannot be excluded that some people may actually desire this. So be it, but this would not at all alter the nature of the case. A slow exposure of the intrinsic fraud of a tilt against the Maker by what is made, in terms of an arrogant insistence on running the show, which is both impossible and delusive, may indeed attract; but it is at least doubtful that any would find it attractive if certainly assured that this was the quite certain end. It is really a matter of faith in unreason, in man (quite explicitly), though he neither drafted his beginning nor can oversee his end, does not even understand his own nature; and this irrational religion is pathetic because it lacks ALL that it needs to fulfil what it esteems. Hence it is fraudulent.
Now it is NOT being said that lying is impossible to WANT; for many want it. It IS being said that it is impossible rationally to DEFEND such a position. If what is the case is verbally denied, the only possibilities are these:
1) you deceive yourself or
2) you plan to deceive others.
In either case, reality is going to hit hard, and not necessarily therapeutically. Deception is of course a great favourite with dictators like Hitler and Lenin, as we saw in the Gorbachev liberation of data on the latter topic. It often appeals all but irresistibly to manipulators and aspiring hearts of ambition. However, since the aim is merely going to make it hard for many, who plan falsely, it is simply an anti-life, anti-truth fortress built in the middle of a raging sea. Life is not well treated when it is treated to that!
Thus
- in the muddled, muddied Midlands of Man, in the Gentile world
- as in the festering fields of the Middle East,
- in the invasive lust of jihad mores
- and in the sickening pathologies of autonomy and man worship,
- there is an IMAGE indeed, which is
pure deception.
Indeed,
there is a certain parallel. The major parties are deceived, and some deceive
others. Thus Revelation
Its procedures are obligingly outlined millenia in advance!
Cheer up, however, for it does not have long to go. It has come a long way already in the tramping belligerencies of false religions, including not least those who, denying all religion, make their own selves or their ideas ruling moral mandates, as shown in the UN case above and the Earth Charter. Hence there is not much further to go. The last stages of the pathology of puniness are at hand. The return of Christ is near. The capabilities of man are stretched to the uttermost with impudent face, like that of a harlot (and Rome with its inveterate, integumental Romanism, in this regard, is not spared in Revelation 13, 17, cf. SMR pp. 946ff., 1031Cff., Biblical Blessings Ch. 2, pp. 21ff.).
Two short swift strokes in
the
The powers of this world,
justly meeting for its final concourses in the
the participants themselves
now more filtered when the end comes, and with the various beginnings are
over - are being lured as by harpies. By for what are they congregating ?
Whatever their intention, as
with so much, it is not the plan but the performance which will be crucial. NO
even plausible performance can embark again from this! It is soon the return to
the Lord of much of
The birds of prey become prey to the wild. It would appear fitting. It is however carnage. SO it unfolds.
Judgment is NOT, after all, a matter of opening your mouth and saying whatever occurs to your human mind. It is what is apt for our construction, design and opportunities, as wrought in the power of God, and rebellion in the face of liberties and capacities almost intimidating in their effusion, kindnesses like geysers and avalanches of goodness, this is cancerous in its abnormality and like ghettos of badlands, given a city status.
There is no rest, for the wicked, declares Isaiah (57:20-21):
"But the
wicked are like the troubled sea,
When it cannot
rest,
Whose waters
cast up mire and dirt.
‘There is no
rest,’
Says my God,
‘for the wicked.’ "
But the LORD ?
"I
create the fruit of the lips:
Peace, peace to
him who is far off and to him who is near" - Isaiah 57:19.
The ACME of wickedness is to try to improve on your Maker, instead of seeking to find Him and finding out that He is good.
THAT is where the world is, is rapidly consolidating itself to be, and where scripture, as is perfectly normal, is telling us, as it happens, the nature and character of such a thing.
It
is rather like a medical text-book, declaring the case, as the disease opens
before our eyes. Unhappily for many, the end of the disease is a form of
spiritual putrescence which declares outwardly what it is inwardly. Unwise are
those who covet it, gambling their souls on their incapacities.
WHILE IT IS DAY
Daytime is far easier than night-time for arrangements to be made. When the financial, medical, domestic, social night comes, it is hard to align and arrange. The time to act is before the culmination. The time to act THEREFORE is now. The world is acting. The first and second beasts are acting. The scenario of Matthew 24 is acting. The final fling of folly is being hurled like a discus or hammer, to seek the record. The record for the record being a record-breaking ruin, it is better far to find rest in Christ, the objective source of morals, in the Lord, the objective creator, where the evidence lies, where logic leads, where truth speaks, where doubts are immiscible.
Let us hear from the book of Revelation itself, amazingly providing these words, in the very last chapter, as if an encouragement to faith at ANY time, even as now, the very last dregs of time:
- "I Jesus have sent My angel
to testify to you these things in the churches.
- "I am the Root and the
Offspring of David, the Bright and Morning Star.
- "And the Spirit and the bride say, 'Come!' And let him who hears say, 'Come!'
And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires,
let him take the water of life freely."
EPILOGUE
Now let us consider a thing, vast in scope, intense in meaning, crucial in kind.
The CREATION we have often reflected upon, and to this given meditation; in this we have rejoiced, on this site. The creation is so wise, profound, so disparate from our own works, yet like a father's brilliance, it has some kind of companionship with our own childishly lesser efforts. These are simply facts, often thought and wrought out, as in Wake up World, your Creator is Coming, Stepping out for Christ, That Magnificent Rock, A Spiritual Potpourri and SMR.
Creation ? We can do it, but like a moon to His sun. Its grandeur and majesty are not allayed by the rebukes incorporated in His subjection of the creation to vanity (Romans 8), in view of its own subjection through its rational head, man, to sin. Its source is merely emphasised, by this His liberty with it. Creation ? Its beauty still alarms the soul with pleasurable amazement and astonishes the mind with thrilling thoughts.
However, creation, for all its profundity and wisdom, intricacies to leave a jeweller like a novice and a pastry cook of delicacies like an oaf by comparison, it is itself surpassed.
In God's provision for REDEMPTION, there is a soaring wonder, a gripping glory, a sadness that still rejoices, a rapture which is yet contained in comprehension, but with all that, a fulfilment of the uttermost yearning - for who does not relish perfection with goodness, in the last analysis! - and an extravanganza of compassion and tenderness which both suffers no comparison and leaves many limping comparisons at their task.
What is it like ? It is to creation like a lake to a puddle, like an ocean to a stream, like the heavens to the room space. This is NOT to diminish the wonder of creation, which staggers the soul and refreshes the heart. It is to speak of the glory which excels.
This redemption is not a mere paradigm, model, theological
proposition, though it has all these components (an eye structure is not
a mere optic nerve, pupil, retina, gel - aqueous
humour ?, series
of rods and cones and so on). An eye goes much further, when it is
understood and its scope is realised and considered. It is a glorious
compilation of comprehensible intelligence that acts in delicacies and delights
to the point of endearment to the Maker. It adapts, adopts and refreshes with
its intimate inter-actions with the brain, allowing the spirit of a man to have
a virtual ecstasy of vision.
An eye is a dear, and a great thing. Designed as a pair, the eyes are yet more prodigious in their mutuality and joint operations. The delight is intensified.
The eye has a being beyond its components, just as a car is not mere steel and plastic, pieces of metal and glass, but a construction of mind, a fabrication of might, a model of marvels, a functionality of conception, a transport phenomenon.
REDEMPTION then is paradigm, model and does hold like a portmanteau, an enormous number of true, valid and amazingly important theological propositions, each one of which is a prize in itself. But for all this wonder, just as it soars above creation, and creation above its componentry, so soaring above all this, is the ONE WHO DID IT.
Producing such a result by a person is prodigious. That there should BE such a person is still more profound. That there should be the definitive and exact presentation of God the Father by His Expression, His word and indeed, His Son, only begotten, is relish to the soul, amazement to the heart, delight to the mind, rest to the entire being. If creation is the work of art and wonder, then redemption is the work of witness and glory.
Creation is like a boy, compared to a man, when you come to redemption. Redemption is like a paper, a monograph compared to a sentence, when you look at the grandeur which it indeed is, of creation. The AUTHOR here ENTERS the scheme of things which HE created and then adjusts things on a selective basis for the parties within, the agents, the characters.
Still more wonderful, if it were possible, is this. The selection is not disparaging but the very voice of love, and truth. He REFUSES and REJECTS NONE who come to Him. He DELIGHTS to have done such a task. His gore met our gall. His love met our littleness, and in His gentleness man who comes, woman and child, is made personal and meaningful, rather than merely relating to meaning and personality! THAT is precisely why psychology is endlessly messing about with the mesmerisms of thought, not understanding outside Christ at all, always seeking, never finding, always unstable. There IS the potential, and there IS the actual, and the gulf is absolute. What they unmeritoriously seek to suggest in terms of nature, is not and cannot be found. It does not work. The panoply of personality is not deducible from it. It is other. (Cf. Predestination and Freewill.)
On the other hand, there IS personality, and all this sphere IS operational, always with distortion outside Christ for the very simple reason that this is outside its MEANING and POWER, so that it is then simply a question, if you will, of which side of the road the car of personality and thought is veering toward. It does not, because it cannot in this deprived environment, outside the harness and caress of its Maker, go straight.
Thus arise the stimulus to understand something great, and the disappointment or scepticism which mars the marvel. This latter becomes a rasping barb to dismay, so that almost any sort of conceptions arise, each in its way and day, none adequate, all distempered. Personality ? ONLY when the sin which afflicts, erodes and abases it, is seen in the light of the redemption which culminates, cures and elevates it to its height as a creation (cf. Ephesians 4:24), can it be understood. Then it is (comparatively) readily discerned.
GOD is personal (SMR Chs.
1,3,5,10), hence the depth even in our derived personalities, creations one and
all. In HIS person, as the Word, expressive, expressed, eternal in the heavens
(for there is NONE LIKE GOD, NONE TO BE COMPARED, as Psalm 89 instructs us, and
it could not be otherwise), GOD has acted. He did not appoint an agent.
He did not send a mission, nor did He fabricate a commission. He came Himself,
and He to whom every knee will bow, came to bring His regality to our humanity,
that we might worship and know and glow, and go and do His bidding, rejoicing
in His adoption, which is eternal (Ephesians 1:5,11). THAT is WHY we are all
brothers IN CHRIST, siblings in spirit (Galatians
And THAT ? It is precisely that which is missing in the
Here, indeed in
Here in JERUSALEM therefore is the turmoil concentrated, the contest as at Mount Carmel intense, and here the drama of devotion which was and is redemption (but it, like the creation is FINISHED, for He did it ONCE and to those who look eagerly for Him, He shall appear for the consummation of their redemption, that of the BODY - Hebrews 9, Romans 8). Here the symbols are fought over; and here the reality is, as elsewhere, available. It is good that you do not need the city to find the pity, you need no army to find Christ, but there are quite literal armies of pedants and misled scribes who would stand in the way, now as in the days of Christ, those who neither enter into the kingdom themselves, nor suffer or allow (as far as lies in them) others who would, to do so (Luke 11:52) - and then as now, they can be and often are VEHEMENT (Luke 11:53).
But these are mere watch-dogs of Satan. ENTER THEN, for Christ is risen, and you do not need Jerusalem in order to find Him who has long finished IN JERUSALEM what it took to make it available OUTSIDE IT, and consummate this provision, so long present, now paid out in full.
This, it is available to Jew and Arab, to Syrian and to Egyptian (Isaiah 26:19ff.), without prejudice or preference, for the love of God is such as Paul declares it to be in Colossians 1:19ff.. It pleased the Father that in Christ should all the fulness dwell, and having made peace through the blood of the Cross, to RECONCILE ALL THINGS, yes in heaven or on earth, to Himself. Such is His good pleasure. Damnation, though not a mere matter of a battle of wills, for God is beyond all and knows all and foreknows in truth and in reality, is not readily obtained. You really need to tread on the accelerator of the flesh, avoid redemption and sulk in your own spiritual corner to achieve it, whether your location is the Middle East or not.
Love is free and present. If you reject it, rest assured, in the last and ultimate resource, YOU are responsible; and alas to have to say it, irresponsible as well.
Instead, look at this Middle East, look at the dawn, consider
the dayspring from on high, the light of this world (John 8:12) and FOLLOW HIM.
First however jettison like a bomb stuck in your bomb hatch, the sin which
bedevils, onto Him. Since you cannot do this in the flesh, simply trust Him to
have it away. Receive the REDEMPTION, for this is the inalienable necessity,
the brilliant opportunity and the delightful inevitability of life, of
personality, of love, of mercy. Its oceans are all full, but never hurtful.
There grandeur and safety conspire ( I Thessalonians 5:9-10, II Cor.