Laying the Blame and Blaming the Play

Chapter 10

News 240

The Advertiser, October 16, 2002

The Bali affair has led to a significant number of dead and injured Australians, presumably with intent on the part of their mass murderers. The question of blame is raised under “Issues” in the newspaper noted above. There is however far more to it than that.

BLAME AND VOICES

Mentioned as possibly recipients of blame, in this article are the following: Some politicians, we are told, blame Indonesia “for failing to act on warnings about terror cells operating in that country.” Some, it asserts, blame our own Government for making the land a terror target, through a supposed pro-US stance. Some take another line, blaming as peaceniks those too non-confrontational in our land, making us vulnerable in the opposite direction. The article implies that John Howard is blamed by some for the leading role this nation took in Afghanistan, presumably on the basis that saving our necks is the main criterion, not ideology, not protection, not the price of peace.

Their position reminds one of Neville Chamberlain (one can still ‘see’ the figure of this august statesman, in the late thirties before the war, standing at or near the top of a stairway attached to his aircraft, as he returned from Munich, declaring “Peace in our Time” and holding some paper which supposedly would secure it.

One can be blamed for blindly adopted a delusive peace, when facts point otherwise; for failing to take a peaceful opportunity, when a change of heart may be arising; for being opaque to the light of developments, to the litany of the past, to the call of change, to the need of continuity, to the light of reason, to the lust of security, to the need for it; as no less, for disbanding long associations, for retaining them, for failing to act on principle, for doing it: there is scarcely any end to blame, when the mouths are open.

BLAME AND TRUTH

But what of the truth ?

1. In Principles

In fact, ideologies are numerous, and their application will be expected to have different outcomes. If a wild dog attacks a woman in the street, you may act on any of a number of principles. You may look at the canine terrorist, if you see it that way, impelling fear and inducing blood alike on the body of the victim. You may elect to avoid it in the interests of your own ‘security’. The principle: “Me first!”, selfish continuance without respect to others.

You may however instead, deal distantly and ineffectually, carefully reducing your risk, without actually abandoning the lady. Principle: Prudence first, doing a little, sparing a lot, similar to the first case, but not as derelict.

Again, you may call the police on your mobile phone, and depart the scene: principle ? a good citizen and a sound thinker. About what ? Safety for yourself, help for another. Or you may even grasp a nearby stick and sally to the fray. You may pray, if you trust in the Lord, and seeking wisdom look for a way to help effectually and intelligently.

There is not so much a difficulty in all this, about what to do: for once given your principles, the results are to a reasonable degree all but predictable. It is your principles which bring about the crucial difference. If you believe in a personal God, indeed in Christ, as rationally one must (SMR), then you will not only be inclined to act, for you should love your neighbour as yourself, but to expect spiritual aid in the process. If of course you are disabled or decrepit, this will be a consideration, but to the power, not to the will.

In this case of Australia and Bali, therefore, to group with the USA and be strong, or to wait withered, and hope, is it not simple ? No, it is not! It is not for a reason: it is that there are as yet no clear principles operative, as expressed above, with which to invest the case. It is because in fact the options are far more numerous, since the USA has wrongly allied itself with many people of a vehement religion, relative to the use of force and power, both in history and in the contemporary scene. This is not to say that all who follow it are so, or even wish to be so; but it is to say that the Koran and the history alike, lend enormous weight to such actions in varied circumstances (cf. More Marvels… Ch. 4); and that the religious book concerned, is not validated, verified or credible (cf. SMR Chs. 1 , 10), so that this is a misalliance. The fact that the religious element has been directly addressed by President Bush (cf. Red Alert … Ch. 6), with some favour, is what makes it a religious issue, not merely incidentally, but primarily.

What then are the options ?

To fight with the USA simply, WHILE and IF it is to continue with this sort of misalliance, which very possibly led to the escape of bin Laden (cf. The Impregnable Tower Ch. 1) on the field, is not to be desired. To let it go it alone, seems churlish. It therefore seems best to avoid mere bilateralism in this case, and to seek a broader venue, one in which a Moslem religious element is not invoked, and in which Moslem interests are not specifically part of the action. That this would not be easy, is not to the point. Doing a University course is not necessarily easy; having a tooth pulled is not always pleasant. Following any pure and sound plan can challenge integrity, energy and perseverance. This is not new. If of course a principle again arises, that one must never tackle anything particularly hard, then of course on such a principle one might avoid the issue. This does not mean that it will avoid you personally, or your nation.

The writer of the article noted above makes an interesting conclusion. It is this: “Australia has become a player now, and one which is inextricably intertwined in the spiraling cycle of violence sweeping the world. It is not the time to turn on each other but to remember and condemn …” the culprits in the terror, the dog, in our illustration, to the point.

What has stirred - to speak purely by analogy - the dog ? Why is it so savage ?

2. In THREATS

Here it is interesting to note the Moslem speaker, from memory in Lebanon, or possibly further Northward on that shore, after September 11, 2001. The USA, he intimated – one might almost say of the tone, intimidated! – should realise that there was an educational matter here, and that the USA should seek to discern what the feeling in the Middle East really is, how things are moving, what is afoot.

Put directly, the point seemd to be simple. You are hurt. Somebody hurt you. It was not an accident. There was intent. What then are you doing to induce some people to hurt you ? Think, now think. It seems, from memory, that the resultant suggestion was that the USA would suffer less if it thought more. But about what!

About Israel. Bin Laden has made it eminently clear that the USA’s help to Israel is counter-productive to his plans and its safety^*1A. In other words, the September 11 attack was to be tutelary, with the message: STOP HELPING ISRAEL. The exquisitely sociable and civilised, the monumentally morally sensitive ways of Al Qaeda, in that case, might even allow it to stop mass murder: and for what might it restrict its violence, then ? why, just for the pittance of the USA abandoning Israel to the howling assailants who whirl their words into the air, and children into physical oblivion with moral bombs, and religious blood. What a message they have for the world! How enthralling!

Another principle is thus at once relevant. Do you say: Safety first, our nation first, national self-interest first! We will gently and with delicate tread, reduce our help to Israel, in order to let this moral mountain, this microscopically moral mountain, the more readily feast on the remains that Hitler left: those of the Jewish people.

Is that the imagined or even recommended response ?

3. In History

What is the tenor of the thought ? Is it not like this ? Let us amplify this perspective.

v We will let the horrors of Word War II retreat from the mind,

v discipline the imagination,

v erase the holocaust,

v dim our ears to those distant cries in that prior round of atrocities, to which so many Moslem jihad modes merely add, and

v let the multitude of Moslem nations arise to the slaughter of Israel, yes those who are near, and perhaps such as Morocco, Algeria, and in part Egypt, Syria, in part Lebanon and Jordan, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, why yes and Iraq and Iran, we must not forget them, occupying such a brilliant and lavish littoral in the Mediterranean, and such looming nearness to its North-East, yes and West, and somewhat South. They occupy the lands about minute Israel, like a surrounding mist, having equipped themselves with thousands and thousands of square miles of territory, yet lamenting the inadequacy WITHIN Israel, of the provisions for more of them there!

What a principle is here! If the canine assailant, to follow our analogy, is in the form of a pack. What then ? we retreat on the tutelary ground of their barking, and decide that the lady is after all in a case not only dangerous to her, but to ourselves, or in the singular, to oneself; and then, retreating tactfully and with many words of wit and diplomacy, we are to leave the saddening scene of her slaughter, knowing this one thing, that none of OUR blood is shed, and none of our skin is serrated by such violence.

THE TRUTH IN BLAME

But we are discussing blame, are we not ? at least this was the issue in the article concerned. Does history not enter into this consideration ?

What principle was demolished in practice when Britain did NOT pursue Palestine for Israel, as in the Balfour Declaration, later internationally ratified by the League of Nations ?

What principle was distorted when the British Navy was used to deter Jews who escaped Hitler, arriving by sea to the DONATED land, in 1948 and that era ? What principle was not well applied when, prior to September 11, 2001, as noted in The Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet Ch. 4^*1, the USA appeared strangely insensitive to the terrorism inflicted on Israel by surrounding nations, who were using both their own people and resident Arabs. Such citizens and residents would not appear to have minimal reliability in such a case, nor appear an asset to any nation!

But what is this ? The implacable internal insurgence of Arabs in the interests of the imperious denunciations from Moslems not a few, abroad, pouring in money and propaganda, it is not a ground for assimilation, or a recipe for prosperity. Few nations would tolerate such systematic and indiscriminate murder! Containment, in the ways of the nations, would be more likely to give way something rather more than a cautious if sustained crusade … What principle has the UN broken in its harrying of Israel, its desire to prosecute for defence, for endeavours which appear well short of those of the USA in the case which eventually came to it, at the lurching of terrorism, in its response!

Or what principle is aborted in operation in President Bush’s post-September 11 strong words of praise for the teaching of the Koran in his peace for all citizens crusade, which went well beyond good will, and far short of praise or even acknowledgment of the place of the Lord Jesus Christ, unbecomingly providing an undiscriminating praise for wrong words ?

WHOM is the USA serving at this level then ? It is certainly not the Lord (cf. Separation, Ch. 7).

IF religion is invoked, and IF prayer is jointly made, with various religions with diverse gods, whatever the names (cf. SMR Chs. 1, and 10), there is fallen the principle of purity and trusting in the LORD ONLY, one of the most incisive and persistent in the entire Bible. It is this which is aborted when the alliance explicitly concerns what does NOT recognise Christ. If Jesus Christ be true, you cannot reach God without Him, His eternal word; and were He deemed false, you would be alien to Him and His purposes. You cannot have it both ways; for the principle of common allegiance to uncommonly dissimilar things, so long as they are called ‘religious’ has approached the level of the inane. It is however not the mind, but the spirit, the heart which strays in this, for it is not merely irrational, but forbidden (Romans 16:17, II Corinthians 6:14).

We are finding in all this, MANY principles which have been invoked, and many of them are so strenuously anti-biblical that one MUST in the long run EXPECT payment. It is now being made. It is like a queue lining up at an anti-bank in order to receive invoices!

Let us not be deluded. God is not mocked. It is NOT that He does not in patience show mercy. How ENORMOUS has been the mercy, for example to the USA, while numerous churches have dramatically left their biblical basis (cf. News 121, 122, Biblical Blessings Ch. 11), and secular wisdom has led to the construction of enormously fallacious combinations of diverse and divergent things in the hollow name of unity. Unity of God and the devil, however, has only one result: first, it is impossible, and second, if it were, it would lead to instant death of the latter. In fact, God has allowed and developed a plan which allows the devil to test, as in Job, and to try; but it is, as in Job, kept within bounds. The end of this inveterate enemy and decrier of the Lord comes only when his usefulness is over. History moves with relish to that moment (cf. Revelation 19-20).

Assuredly, much that is beautiful still lives in the USA; but there is appalling shrinkage at the church level, and the church, it is the body of Christ, invaded as predicted in II Peter 2, I Timothy 4, II Timothy 3, at this time; but still living. WHAT LIVES however is not to be confused with those large (not all, but many) denominations which now in this way, now in that (cf. A Question of Gifts Section VI, Cascade of Truth, Torrent of Mercy Ch. 9, Answers to Questions Ch. 8, News 88) lurch away from the word of God. It is a capital symptom of our Age.

Some have long postponed decisions on issues, but then, for convenience or some kind of survival, start AUTHORISING teaching which once may have been quietly tolerated in hope of improvement, but now is bound as correct! In New Zealand’s Presbyterian Church, even the bodily resurrection of Christ was put in the grave, and the whole structure at that time, according to the faith, disintegrated (cf. Biblical Blessings Ch. 11). In Australia (cf. Biblical Blessings loc. cit. ), there was even a continual harassment and assault on the Bible teaching, in places for the ministerial training, leading directly to the international journeyings of this writer! In the WCC, vast departures from the Bible have been sanctified, or pseudo-sanctified by numbers, and various Marxist and other overtones have come (cf. Liberation theology) as in a whirling tornado, a wind but of destruction, not truth.

Is the world itself then not to blame ? Are not all humans ? The one God does not lavish praise on betrayal on the part of those individuals or nations which have made sounds of grace! The doom of Judas is exemplary. Truth cannot be obliterated without obliteration, in the end, of the would-be obliterator. Put your body in boiling water, even with ordinary clothes, and no genius is needed to discern the coming result.

Afflict yourself with sales at the spiritual level of the purity of the name of the merciful God and the only Saviour, Jesus Christ (Titus 2:13-14), who went to the trouble of doing what it took in order to provide it freely, validly and with continual verification, and what do you expect ? Assent either directly or indirectly through strategic ploys, to the further humiliations of Christ, in your balances of power and babels of convenience, and do not expect the Prince of Peace to respond by abiding in your straying soul.

You cannot, once again, have it both ways. If YOUR PROUD THOUGHTS and YOUR SAFETY by human devices, at any spiritual cost (be the ostensible words what they may, from your own mind) are what is in view, then Christ’s sale is the other side of it.

The world is to blame because of inveterate, unrepented sin. Nations are to blame which, having seen in many parts and with much dynamic, and many wonderful outworkings at the national level, the blessings of Christ, now turn. And to what do they turn ? It is to the secularity of sin, the spectacular immoralities of those enlightened with darkness, desire and a sort of liberty which ignores the nature of man, reconstructing with pathetic ineffectuality, what God has made. If these are principles, many crowd to follow THESE.

Much of Europe is in this position, and not least and increasingly, Great Britain, once somewhat of a bastion, now appearing rather as a lion tamed. The treatment of Israel is also to blame, and it is not the help which is given to it, against the undemocratic milling warriors with their warlike expressions of jihad religion, which is at fault; but rather the insensitivity of vast lapses, in many almost amounting to political paranoia.

Israel has suffered justly for its past follies (cf. Deuteronomy 32), but its time has already partly come, and is to come as prescribed (Deuteronomy 32:36-42, Romans 11:25ff., Ezekiel 36-39 cf. SMR Appendix A); and now it seems, Gentile nations are determined that in their own infamies, they too will suffer for doing the same sort of betrayal, but differently as to the fashion of it. Their time, too, will come (cf. Revelation 19, Matthew 24, Habakkuk 3, Micah 7). There is no insurance, simply for being a Gentile, whether Arab or other. Even the specialised anti-Semitism on the part of many Arabs, towards half-brothers, becomes simply hatred of the Jew.

That which the nations are in fact inextricably intertwined is sin, licence, lust for blood, for selfishly construed safety, for self-advantage, like many of their citizens. In unhallowed horror, the Communists for a time appealed to many as a sort of baseless moral bastion, floating happily in the clouds, yet it was one without the POSSIBILITY of morals, because of their materialism and determinism^*2. While presenting talk as if there were some sort of synthetic, imaginary morals (cf. The Other News 19), the morals were merely bureaucratically construed needs, with none appointed to personality, man immersed in a muddle of inefficiency, lust and lovelessness, governed by gods without heart, geared to a reckless, feckless power source, with all immersed in a cavernous labyrinth of all but inconceivable dictatorial corruption from the very and even outrageously personal ideas and life of the ‘Leader’!

What Stalin made in mass murder of millions, others continued as the sheer folly of it grew more abundantly apparent to many, With moments of partial illumination as in Krushchev in some relaxations, until just prior to the Gorbachev era, you see analyses of journalists, as in The Games War of Christopher Booker (1981), showing the sheer disillusion of multitudes in the abandoned land, towards the machined dream for man, which could not come into life^*3. The sale of the soul is merely to man, and man knows nothing without God, no truth^*4, far less how to handle mankind! His inflated ideas and babel-presumptions litter history, like a park where larrikins have held a rock concert.

The Communist fallacy took a little time to show to an infected world, especially to frustrated humanists, that in fact, here has been one of the most infamous grindings away of morals ever devised, ever observed, ever implemented. Here cruelty reached its depths, and drilled for more. This ironic historic display, tellingly exposed in the intense wranglings in Dostoevsky’s The Possessed, for example, has apparently even now not alerted many in the West to their own failures, their own feckless wanderings from God, and their own quite equally feckless movements back to complicity with evil in their own new syntheses, based on nothing, effectual for nothing, convenient new conventions, new UN devisings (cf. The Other News Appendix 1), WCC airs and froths of deviant thought (cf. Stepping Out for Christ Ch. 1, SMR pp. 743ff.), leaving the Bible as relevant as a maiden Aunt to a dissipated rake, pending his final death throes, dilapidated and derelict.

In religion, the Bible takes no mean view of such departures from revealed truth, such convenient or appealing combinations with ways which are popular, not pure, statistically admired, not spiritually established. Is it really likely that because the Gentile nations are not Jews, that they are immune ? Rather do they not show that they cannot learn (cf. Romans 11:19-21)!

THE PRICE OF ATTACK ON THE IMPREGNABLE TOWER

(cf. The Impregnable Tower)

The savoir-faire, the secure embalmment in obliterative disregard of the Bible, or ludicrous manipulations of its teaching, not by any means limited to the sects, which are specialists in this thing, this merely adds to the REQUEST FOR DISCIPLINE. The affair is deep, and gathering force at an enormous level. In this milieu, naturally, the Bible haw shown the nature of the developments both at the physical and spiritual level. In Revelation 6, we see the LUST TO KILL, the mad involvement in the decimation of the race, descending from the sovereign of history.

THIS IS NOW: it is here. It has arrived. It is visible, audible: terrorism is merely its most modern name. Communism for long was the repository of the first class fashion marks for this inane indifference to the significance of truth, of human personality, and with it, of human life. Millions fled the orb because some rulers thought they would help if they were removed, not least the Kulaks in Russia, to Siberia, with few return tickets, except for the bodies, to the dust. Different names appear ... Jihads ? As a type, another Koran outcome, they too are one of the repositories of this lust to kill. It is composite, but it proceeds to program with the biblically directed result, earned in delusion (II Thessalonians 2:4-10), as the Age hastens to the return of Christ (cf. Revelation 7, 14, 19). With effortless seeming ease, the Almighty characterised with brilliant simplicity, in advance, this anti-idealism disease making of many of mankind something not far from murder machines, the human ‘machinery’ being characterised in some cases as martyrs, rather than marrers.

There are thus many levels of blame, and the uttermost one ? It is the departure from the living God, the diversion and perversion of spiritual life from Him, the combinations of His word with alien deities, mental devices not equipped with actual existence, except as thoughts: though these in many cases are empowered by the devil, who loves rebellion against God and is prone to assist it. From these things come wrong principles that do not work with, suit or ally themselves with the human race, which is not only the property of God, but MADE by Him for co-operative communion with Himself, in His image. For this reason, the departures from Him, His precepts and His ways leave wreckage, of necessity. It is like trying to plug a new TV set into an atomic power plant, direct.

On the one hand, it is rather ludicrous; on the other, it readily becomes an actively destructive contamination, if not explosive, through improper propinquity. In any case, no good will come of it, and those who play at it are ALL to blame.

You cannot get flower seed from weeds. Sowing the stuff with fertilizer will only accentuate the error.

THE DREAM THAT IS MACHINED TO VANISHING

As the dreams of innocence, the complaint against society, injustice, wealth, aggression, nature, one’s own nature, and so forth, continues, for blame is becoming increasingly unpopular, in philosophy as in politics, unless of course it be that of those others who do this and that. THEY, or perhaps IT, is the real culprit, we find. The assassin was sad because he had tooth ache; the murderer was troubled by bad dreams of his unhappy youth, when he found drugs far more important that duty; the rapist was disquieted by a passion which, had it only been channeled in better paths by wiser ways on the part of this or that party or such and such parties, would never have arisen in his pure and untainted breast.

Accordingly, people are now at times almost persecuted by law and laws, for being the victims, and many attempt to draw the attention of erring judges to the fact that being the recipient of wrong is less wrong than the one who is its occasion. Ears are not always legally attuned to such thoughts. Minimal sentences can come to the reckless, while those afflicted may even be penalised for self-defence. A burglar might even sue because something on your invaded property led to harm to his or her person!

The perpetual dream of BLAME somewhere else, never in myself, my nation, or tribe, my ways or thoughts, is quite in accord with scripture. It is just that the scripture concerned is one of lavish irony and detestation of presumptuous self-will, shown by the Lord against the propounders. Listen then to Jeremiah 2:

v “O generation, see the word of the Lord!

Have I been a wilderness to Israel,

Or a land of darkness?

Why do My people say, ‘We are lords;

We will come no more to You’?

v “Can a virgin forget her ornaments,

Or a bride her attire?

Yet My people have forgotten Me days without number.

v “Why do you beautify your way to seek love?

Therefore you have also taught

The wicked women your ways.

v “Also on your skirts is found

The blood of the lives of the poor innocents.

I have not found it by secret search,

But plainly on all these things.

v “Yet you say, ‘Because I am innocent,

Surely His anger shall turn from me.’

Behold, I will plead My case against you,

Because you say, ‘I have not sinned.’

v “Why do you gad about so much to change your way?

Also you shall be ashamed of Egypt as you were ashamed of Assyria.

v “Indeed you will go forth from him

With your hands on your head;

For the Lord has rejected your trusted allies,

And you will not prosper by them.”

Innocent ? what a ridiculous assertion for those who ignoring their Creator, and not heeding His word, substitute their own wills for His, relying on themselves or their trusted allies, invented gods or philosophies of irrationality, ceasing even to have interest in His dispositions. Many even arbitrate without ground but preference, on all things, while theoretically making themselves of no meaning or significance, except what they invent, and that on a base so evanescent that clouds are veritable rocks by comparison. Fake innocence is an alternative to redemption, for the redeemed are delivered at cost from sin, and where people would make themselves already miraculously sinless, they do not feel any need, or at last admit it!

Thus the dream of inveterate guiltlessness, innocence, continues to be just that, and its proportions are being machined away by every variant of folly, lust, murder, abomination, prejudice, arrogation of the deity’s prerogatives, religious vacuity, obsession with creating gods instead of obeying the One who is, inadequacy, sanctified selfishness, self-centred blindness, passion for consumption, for direction, for dictation, for mass graves in the midst of plenty from those whose ways are already a grave-yard, surges for independence seemingly without restraint or limit, dumping of duty, responsive to the concept of irresponsibility as a right. The riot continues to the point of no-return for many, who like some satellite-in-the-making, reaching escape velocity, they become their own ground for dumping in the ditches of discard. From truth, there is no escape, irrespective of velocity, and speed and destination are not alternatives, but correlatives. It is a question of WHERE they go, not merely how fast.

A little heap of pretence is all that remains for this so marvellous race, which seeks in multitudes to evacuate itself from guilt, from God and from reality, dreaming like some braying ass, as it is moved by the breeze from the ocean, to kick in its sideways manner, until it is over the cliff; which is only right, it would seem, in its own eyes, which incidentally, it does not really own; for they were made.

WHAT TO DO …

1. The first thing is not to demean the gift of human life which you have. Fulfil it. Thus DO NOT fear the enemy, and do NOT bask in the sunshine of shallow hope, either.

2. What is needed is TRUST in your Maker; the RECEIPT of His remission of sin, that divine RECIPE for salvation, written in Himself who bore sin to free the captives from its oppression (Isaiah 61:1-3, 52-55, Luke 4:18-21); REPENTANCE for past misuse of His donations of revelation and reality, including yourself (Psalm 1, Luke 13:1ff.), and REALISATION that history has programs just as surely, and far more so, as enemies of the Jews have had pogroms, and those of the free world, now have jihads. All these things, violent and inveterate, are predicted, programmed: not in such a style as deny to man his liberty, nor in such a way as to enable him with any amount of flair, to do more than make sad farce while he plays God.

They settle like a squadron landing at the appointed base:

Ø the misused power (Revelation 6) with passion and a robust delight in death;

Ø the misused truth, with false prophets (Matthew 24:24);

Ø the fallen world (James 4:4, John 16:33),

toiling in the heats of iniquity abounding, like grasshoppers (Luke 21:10ff., 25ff., Revelation 16:13ff.), till anxiety becomes a way of life for the many, and confusion a way of death (Luke 21:26,16, 13:6-13).

3. Therefore it is important to heed the Lord of life, as pointed out by Martin Lloyd Jones, the famous English preacher of a generation ago, in terms of Isaiah 22’s message. In this, the Lord says to a people more used to His NAME than His reality, this jarring message in verses 8-14 (a jar is better to receive than a box):

v “He removed the protection of Judah.

You looked in that day to the armor of the House of the Forest;

You also saw the damage to the city of David,

That it was great;

And you gathered together the waters of the lower pool.

You numbered the houses of Jerusalem,

And the houses you broke down

To fortify the wall.

You also made a reservoir between the two walls

For the water of the old pool.

“But you did not look to its Maker,

Nor did you have respect for Him who fashioned it long ago.

v “And in that day the Lord God of hosts

Called for weeping and for mourning,

For baldness and for girding with sackcloth.

But instead, joy and gladness,

Slaying oxen and killing sheep,

Eating meat and drinking wine:

‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!’

“Then it was revealed in my hearing by the Lord of hosts,

‘Surely for this iniquity there will be no atonement for you,

Even to your death,” says the Lord God of hosts.’ ”

It is necessary to hear the call.

There needs to be a relish of realism, as ALL trust implies.

You need to look where the truth and the power of God is, and stay there, immovable in the immovable God, who is able to deliver you from every evil work (II Timothy 4:17-18).

4. Next you need to COMMIT your way to the Lord, trusting in Him, and HE WILL bring it to pass, whatever His plan for you as a child of God (as you become, through faith in Christ Jesus, who came to earth, died, rose and directs His people, as well as history, the former intimately, the latter ultimately). That, it is in Proverbs 3:4-6. This is an actual commitment of a living person (the saved creature) to THE LIVING GOD (the saving Creator), in terms of His offering of His Son as the avenue of access, power and continuing purity. Indeed, if you so proceed in heart and spirit, then of you will it prove true, that “He shall direct your steps,” and as Psalm 37 adds,

Ø “Delight yourself also in the LORD, and He shall give you the desires of your heart.”

NOTES

*1A

See bin Laden’s reported communication cf. Lord of Life Ch. 8, *1, and Red Alert Ch. 8

*1 In this volume, Ch. 4, *2, in August 2001, weeks before September 11 of horrific fame, the following expression of concern was made concerning the apparent insensitivity of the USA towards Israel, and apprehension lest she should be taught a salutary but severe lesson.

It soon came to pass. Here is a copy of that note.

Just as Great Britain did wonders for the Jews in 1917 in the Balfour Declaration (q.v.), but grew worse and worse, in 1948 handing things to the Arab Legion and not allowing many Jewish vessels to come into Israel to land after World War II’s holocaust for the Jewish people, and has considerably declined: one cannot help wondering what is in store for the US. This nation, despite the prodigies and performances under Nixon, in the 1973 war, has in the last two administrations seemed unable or unwilling to understand the Biblical position, the interests of equity for all, and the interplay of passions on the part of an aggressive and international Islam, self-declared in its hostilities to Israel and its appointed destiny for it. The brokerage of hate and destruction is a volatile and unrewarding act. It is the root which is wrong; spraying the leaves helps but little.

As the U.S. looks more and more for further yieldings from Israel of the already all but incredibly reduced ‘Palestine’ originally guaranteed to Israel, it becomes increasingly the subject of the Biblical burdens which adverse conceptions and actions towards the restored Jerusalem, will assuredly bring.

One hopes better things; but if the process continues, the results may accrue (Genesis 12:3, 15:14, 28:4,13ff., Numbers 24:9, Genesis 27:29, Zechariah 12:2-3 cf. Beauty of Holiness Ch. 8.)

(Green emphasis added.)

See The Other News 19 and Repent or Perish Ch. 7.

China, at the governmental level, of course does it differently by exploiting vast Western know-how, capital and ideas, whether by purchase or other means, to make her ceaselessly directed milling multitudes, spiritually committed to servitude, more of a threat in due time (cf. Revelation 16:12). Meanwhile, in that sense of power, parasitically. Many have bravely resisted these spiritual destitutions, from this cause or approach or that, but the Party machine continues to oppress.

The reference in Revelation to “kings of the east” does not necessarily mean Asia, but it would most aptly do so. The coming is to the end, however, and the movement is but to Armageddon. Russia has in its own slightly different way relied on the powers of the free nations, in its short course of Communism, 1917 to 1991, or so, and this sort of symbiosis with those to whose destruction you are by ideology committed, in your totalitarian parade, bodes only evil, reminding one of the divine characterization of the period just before the flood (Genesis 6:3, 5).

This time, the flood is not watery (II Peter 3:4-7, Genesis 9:12-16), but wearisome to many, in their ceaseless apprehensions and their predicted fears amidst the predicted slaughter, of man by man (Revelation 6), while the environment shows its own impacts on the rubbishing of the divine by the human. This inveterate desire of the paganised, secular mind, expressed like boils, repeatedly on the surface of the bodies politic, has been epitomized in the crucifixion of Christ, an event not only known to God beforehand but precisely and extensively predicted (cf. Joyful Jottings 21-25); and indeed, in that case, it was the very MEANS of providing salvation as a door to man (cf. Acts 2:23,30-31).

Now the Age progresses in its savage regress (cf. Matthew 24:9-14,45ff.).

The predicted column of vapour (Joel 2:30, Acts 2:19 cf. SMR pp. 794, 789) has already made its appearance, and the Jews are back in Jerusalem (Luke 21:24 cf. SMR 647ff., cf. 822ff.), as the Age before Christ’s return, rushes to its terminus, and a sort of spiritual insanity is coming to the fore in a time so pressing with pollution of mind in philosophy, of body in drugs, of environment in industrial expulsions and outflows, and of heart in self-will and arbitrary contention, that it appears as if bent to comment systematically on the ruin that a roving spirit has brought to the vast portions of the race.

When you rove, it is unwise, always, to rove from reality. To escape from God has long been the catch cry; now it is becoming to many more apparent, that the escape to be desired, is TO HIM (as in Isaiah 2:12, 66:19), whose we are, with or without acknowledgment.

Meanwhile the end of the Age proceeds towards the pagan culmination in the efforts to induce some apotheosis for man (II Thessalonians 2:4ff.), as if from below he might achieve the infinite glory of God. Yet he has started too late, is merely derivative, and although wonderfully made (cf. Joyful Jottings 16 cf. 22), for all that he IS made and not at all self-made at that! Not being eternal, man as such is ill-equipped to end as well, being subject to death, in this case, a salutary reminder of his derivative and creaturely status, and not of this only, but worse, of guilt before God.

The mercy is this, that it is expungeable, by the relief of ransom (Matthew 20:28, Galatians 1-3, Romans 3:23ff.); the wonder is more, that “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow” (Isaiah 1). What is if possible even better, is this, that God having paid for all who will come to Him in faith and repentance, according to His word, decrees that He is “faithful and JUST to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (I John 1:9).

The start of that verse involves confession, but not to man, for it is to God Himself that this is necessary (Jeremiah 2:13,22,35). “If,” the First Epistle of John continues, “we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.” It is to GOD whose word it is, that the reference is, and must be made! There IS no other (cf. Matthew 23:8-10). ONE is your Master, even Christ; but it is this which He needs to be! (Luke 13:27ff.).

His payment is for His own (Isaiah 53:3-6, the “us” who are healed; and those who reject His words are not His own (cf. Matthew 7:21ff.). The way is narrow (Matthew 7:15ff.). Truth is like that: it cannot be bended, amended or superintended. As to God, His name, I AM, says it! (John 8:58).

*4 See Barbs, Arrows and Balms 6, 7, 18, TMR Chs. 5, 7, Repent or Perish Chs. 2, 7, SMR Ch. 3, pp. 99ff., 999 footnote.