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It is quite fascinating, but like watching a pit of vipers. Some European organic political development, that is. it is coming along. We shall return to this in a little. But snakes ?

Personally, my love of snakes is akin to that for potassium cyanide. These things are not pleasant. Nor is death. Why pretend ? As to that, it can be pleasant only if you know to what it is a transition, and to whom! How many of the martyrs were radiant. However, for most,divorced from God,  it is not so.
 
 

The death of a nation, as John Stormer so eloquently entitled his once wildly famous book about US internal treachery, and the love of greater things OF this world, and so, of another kind of political power, this too is not pretty. It can however happen in many ways. The political, the schematic, the secret or not so secret societies which have the grand plan for this world, in which the US is to take its part, if not servile, then certainly as assigned, are by no means limited to the nations outside the USA! Nor are they merely a matter of the puny nostrums of Marx, Darwin and co., the latter certainly not political in its origin, but very much so in its outcome. Ask Nietzsche, ask Hitler and ask Lenin.

If you cannot do this, read what they wrote; and it is far safer. Dealing with the dead, it is scripturally forbidden, and where you would have to go to find the ideologians of iniquity and irrationality would only make it worse  - except of course any of them repented while there was still time. Of one Babylonian potentate, the prophet wrote this: "Hell from beneath is excited about you, to meet you at your coming. It stirs up the dead for you ... They all speak and say to you,
'Have you become like us ? Your pomp is brought down to hell... worms cover you."

It is not very nice, this is admitted; neither is cancer. It is best to avoid the ways of death when this is in your power. It is in the power of man to avoid the eternal death which is the just conclusion of irrevocable detestation or dismissal of the Gospel of Christ. After all, this is the ONE cancer, that of the soul, which has a remedy both potent and practical. It is just that it is despised, as was Christ in His day; but it is still the only way for this world, and He is still the light of it, nor is any other to be supplied. Its ways are correspondingly dark, and except for those who like to play hide-and-seek in the dark, this is increasingly obvious.

No, no other but Christ is to come, though nations grovel and gavel ineffectually  in their war on terror, and the USA itself, that once brighter nation, grovels on hands and knees with MOSLEM alliance, with a false god who is not there, whose ways are not attested by prophecy or power, by word from God or verification in life. Yes, this once great nation in this respect allies itself not a little with an invalid and counter-productive movement. Further, that Moslem movement is one not for peace when, as so often and not without underlying cause to be found in the Koran, it is in the hands of terrorists (cf. More Marvels Ch. 4). By what means then did Muhammad seize power in city after city ? And with what rationally attestable or reasonably verified appeal ?

Let what is from God show itself to be so, or how do you avoid participation with the devil, with wild dreams and fantasied bombs made of flesh, with set and dead faces, men blowing themselves up in the hope of adding victims in a land grab.

You say it is more than that ? In what way is it more ? Is there any evidence from history to confirm this Allah, any ground from the Koran, any prediction to verify, any total exclusion of using force where faith is concerned (cf. SMR pp. 50ff., 65ff.), that is consistent and sure, and so executed, instead of having people executed, or their rights executed ? Anyone can write a book, anyone can move a people (ask Hitler), anyone can run an army (ask Napoleon), anyone can infest and invest the minds of men with totally irrational lustrous words (ask Darwin - but again, one speaks metaphorically of this!), that now so many leaders, both Christian and other, regard as ludicrous, though once many followed them like other hollow things, such as army drums when the spirit is roused and not doused.

Anyone can do this, that is, without having to be God, or to be from Him (contrastRepent or Perish Ch. 2, Biblical Blessings Appendix IV,SMR Ch. 6)!

You do not even need to be true, or slightly reasonable. It is rather like surfing, get a big one, have moderate skill and it is surprising how far you can go, and with what excitement or even passion - it IS fun - but then, when it is over, it was only a movement of waters. Certainly it had panache and was expressive in its own way, and in this case the ocean has depths of beauty and wildness, but that is aesthetic. The political waves often have less than this, for they are fictitious except in blood and frequently arise on its illicit emotions.

Well then, Revelation 6 is being fulfilled before our eyes most marvellously is it not ? Blood and death are coming as if authorised for the purpose  - as they there statedly are! and man's madness for squalid powers and rules, whether in Africa's Zimbabwe (add some revenge, tincture to taste), or in Kashmir, which excites so many breasts, and tears others, whether in China, the land of Christian oppression, so that you can live if you do it the way the atheists want, or can suffer if you do not, or in the Philippines where some people want higher Marx content, though this is demonstrably no way to get good marks; and whether in South Africa, where the help from Aids makes all but a mockery of the "freedom", which however desirable, is not after all from God, but from man, or in Afghanistan^*1, which seems a little reluctant to dismiss the spectre of war.
 
 

Why ? Lust can be sexual, political, ideological, physical, social, financial. It is an endemic disease to man without God. Some simply lust to be themselves, as much as they want to be, how they want to be and so on. It is like the seed of wheat of which Christ spoke, which failing to fall into the ground, rots (John 12:24-25). Lust kills. Loving your own life kills it. Nations too can play that game.

Japan lusted for its OWN version of a Greater Pacific Rule did it ? Too bad it meant destroying some of the US naval power without declaring war. A trifle perhaps, in view of the need to help the Asian region ? Germany lusted for its version of a Greater Europe, reaching even to Russia, where true Aryan greatness expressed, would bring blessing to this world ? Fine. It did not however do so. Spain some centuries back lusted for Protestant blood with Torequemada a chief surgeon, and such things as this went on for hundreds of years; and it lusted for gold from the Americas, and took a lot coloured red with the blood of Aztec or Inca;  and so it was they exported verbally only, poverty of spirit,  while seizing riches of hand. Portugal had its fair share of it. Romanism lusted for blood, not only Protestant but Jewish, and Hitler capped it, that great admirer of Jesuitical discipline and organisation. Europe under such leadership as that rubbed out some 6 million Jews, making a fitting end to the centuries that proceeded.

Unpleasant thing death ? Yes, when it is merely for human purposes which are philosophically absurd, logically impossible, politically naive and recklessly ruthless. That is the norm now for a very long time.

Now Europe, as we noted at the first, has some intriguing development to exhibit. This comes while Bush is moving in full force into his misconstrued war on terrorism. Alas, it is not only a war on evil, but with it, since terrorism by no means specifies all evil. This is an envelope too large for that counter.  Calling it EVIL which is for terrorism and getting the GOOD GUYS to act against it, he is violating fundamental Biblical principles about what is good and bad. You do not have to be violent to be bad! however bad violence may be, under the captious hand of invasive man; and goodness is not to be found in mere conformity to a canon, however valid. Even the first and greatest Biblical commandment involves loving the LORD GOD with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and this involves first finding Him, and then acknowledging Him, not another.

Not entirely surprisingly, Europe is having second thoughts about coming involvement in the War on Terror; but of what kind are these thoughts ?

First, the News Radio in an excellent presentation yesterday, March 26, 2002, showed some tension in Great Britain. Was it true that there was some sort of threat to the existing leadership of the Labour Party by Tony Blair ? How would such a thought even arise ? Apparently, there are many in that party who are not fully inclined to be such ardent supporters of the Bush initiative in the war on terrorism. There are questions about how far such an extending war might go, what it is really all about, or rather perhaps, what it is COMING to be all about! Certainly weapons of mass destruction are a desideratum for Bush, and presumably cause Europe no euphoria, but Europe has many irons, many ploys and plays, it would seem. It is not that same old Europe for nothing!

Of all the more interest in view of that, we then heard on the same program from a Brussels bureaucrat who spoke with what appeared considerable candour.

France was indeed thinking about the election of a President, but this did not exclude concern about the dimensions that are gradually being found in the expanding war on terrorism. IRAQ ? Is this indeed to be invaded ? Yes, in Europe, the bureaucrat divulged, there is significant tension with the power across the Atlantic {a power of course which helped so markedly to put Europe back on the map itself, after the ideological and territorial, the structural and populous devastations of World War II}.

Not often, indeed, in years it appeared, had there been such a degree of division in Europe from the thrust of the USA. Indeed, a war on terrorism had its points, and September 11 was not a thing to be minimised; but when it comes to a more or less wholesale matter, a question indeed of Islamic nations and their peculiar sensibilities (that is, those which are their very own), to whole populaces of such nations, to questions of possible alienation of the same, then answers have to be well considered. Such was the presentation.

WILL the war on terrorism, he mused, create more harm than good ? IF Iraq is given the treatment, invasion or whatever, HOW will Islamic nations react ? Whatever the rulers may say, will the peoples be deeply stirred ? Will there in fact come to be a real division between "East" and "West" ?

As such musings went on, and go on, one is moved to consider the Battle of Tours in 732 A.D., when the division between "East" and "West" if you want to put it that way, very nearly lost some of its force. In that battle, as in some others, the Islamic powers were defeated. If that had not been so, the division might have been so significant, for Europe in some measure might have been INVADED by the Moslem Menace, as it then appeared, and its peoples subjected to ruinous violence, utter intolerance and devastating impositions of vile rules, discriminatory and desolatory,not least for women^*1.  Many in fact suffered such things in those days. It was not only Hitler who had the grand ideas for Europe. It is quite a human failing to have grandeur without greatness, and not least in Europe.

When Constantinople fell in 1453 A.D., there was no little rustle of escaping scholars, bringing their scholarly wares to the "West". When World War I was over, much of Moslem power was lost, Turkey in particular having come to defeat. But ideas often continue.

However, with the less than inspired hand of allocating nations and boundaries after the war, there came to be little nations, and some who had long been were there as well, who given the oil, would become rich, and given the need of this world as it uses it, would become powerful to bargain. Do not fulfil our wishes and watch your oil! they can now say. Be too high-priced and watch your sales! is the reply. The cartel is part of the response to that.

A certain sensitivity, then, is to be found in Europe concerning possible alienation of the populaces of Islamic nations, some of which have much oil. But is it only oil ? What of the idea of 'populaces' as distinct from rulers ? One reason for this emphasis may simply have been that people in Europe do not in general lack eyes. It can be seen that if people having a jihad, or other murderous invasive thrust, want to blow themselves up in crowded places, then life will not be safe, and the rate of exchange, blood for blood, if it comes to that is most unfavourable.

Ask Israel, whom the world in the form of the UN and some others, is currently trying to intimidate into being a captive more and more, by yielding ever more and more of its grossly reduced inheritance, compared with the allocation of 1919.

Yet imagine if there were some talk of reducing Jordan or Iraq ? Did Jordan, for example, continue to trouble itself with displaced persons, to give them a place in that part of Palestine which once went to themselves, a Moslem nation in no small measure ? Why not ? Is it perhaps with Israel, more convenient ... ? Must it now not merely sustain them, but sustain multiplied murder from Palestinian bands with their aggressive hands ? and obloquy to boot ?

Is that however justice ? or truth ? It is, further, as has often been noted, not in accord with the divine plan. God has given Israel to Israel, and Israel has given murder to the Son of God, their own Messiah, and the only One assigned, being God as man; and now God has given Israel its restoration, as so long predicted, and Jerusalem, a mark of the time of the end of the Age (Luke 21:24).

It is all simple and straightforward (SMR Appendix A, Galloping Events and other works, see Index on Israel); and it has of course happened. That is one thing about the Bible; what it says ALWAYS happens. It is so convenient to know it; and it is utterly amazing (or it would be if it were not for human sin and rebelliousness against the only God who has attested Himself to be there) how man so customarily

• ignores it,
• or baulks at it,
• or seeks to overthrow it.

Are its persecutors to innocent of the blood of Christ ? Have not millions had masses, in which they purport to sacrifice Christ afresh, though HE said that HE lay down His life of Himself, and no one took it from Him, and it is written that NO MORE SACRIFICE is tolerated! (Hebrews 9:24-28). Sacrifice without death is not sacrifice, and as to death, HE did it, HE did it ONCE, and HE did it with SUFFERING. In all this Rome offends (cf.  SMR pp. 1032-1088H). Further, it was for religious reasons, one the chief persecutors of the Jews, though itself in some ways paralleling their error! How ? Not least in that other and equally forbidden sacrifice, the 'mass'. It was all wrong, the one and the other, and the difference is this, that Romanism has even added to all else, this, that it has been a murderer wholesale, of Jews.

Again, it gained in money and notoriety, both by so doing. This, it relates to Christ ? Heaven forbid. He came to save, to heal, not to kill, to maim. Judgment will  come soon enough, and the judges who used fire, while He used a Cross of HIS OWN, their judgment does not linger (cf. Revelation 18, SMR pp. 946-959, Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 14, esp. *1, News 34).

What a to-do, to make it appear that He having done it all, can be processed in this disastrously unscriptural way, to the desolation of His deity (in principle). It is to be 'unbloody', but without blood there is no remission (Heb. 9:22). It is to be without suffering, but just as a second offering is precluded, suffering in INCLUDED (Heb. 24-26). Hence mass has nothing to do with the actualities of the sacrifice of Christ.

However, since HE IS deity, the desolation is only of His name, and mocking Him is unwise, most unwise! GOD IS NOT MOCKED (Galatians 5:7). The Bible makes clear that more than one mockery will be repaid (Revelation 13, 17-18 cf. Sparkling Life Ch. 10, pp. 165ff.). This is in that book of the Lord, shown to be one of the chief recipients of wrath to come.
 
 

Our point here is this. Yes, Israel crucified its King, but Europe in the form of Rome, and the Roman Empire persisted in the Holy Roman Empire for centuries of appalling blasphemy and persecution to the death, as if crucifying the people, and not praising God for the crucifixion of Christ were de rigueur: Europe in the form of Romanism has done something quite as blasphemous, and appallingly blood filled! If the mass has no blood, and hence is useless, then the blood has certainly flowed from Protestants and Jews. Nothing papally said in the last degree atones for that, or even removes the principle (cf. The Frantic Millenium and the Peace of Faith Chs. 10 and  6).

Yet this is not all. Many Protestant movements, right in excluding Mass, Mary as Queen of Heaven and Papacy, justly because the Bible has nothing to commend such innovations, and much to condemn them, have gone further and starting excluding the Bible, in bits, in sections, in aspects, or in action! There is more than Rome in error (cf. SMR pp. 699-706, 861ff.).

Then there are the sects and cults (cf. Things Old and New Ch. 2, Appendix and Epilogue), with various political intonations or innovations, and syncretisms and other deplorable impurities. So the name of Christ is ignored, suppressed, reformulated, refashioned, concluded, diffused, subjected to distillation, inhalation and every kind of folly and abuse. They did it in Israel of old, certainly, do they do it less in the multitudes of modern contrivances - OUTSIDE ISRAEL! It is a fascinating study to see the pathologies; but a devastating reality to have them operate, to delude the estranged and deceive the languid. It is as II Thessalonians 2:4ff. has said it would be.

• BECAUSE they did not receive the love of the truth, they are GIVEN (like bacteria after a viral infection) an active delusion. They follow it to ruin.

Thus as EUROPEAN interests sagely consider, WILL IT COST TOO MUCH ? this war on terror, and will the price of its real or attempted removal be worse than the price of some ... moderate terrorism ?^*2 and Bush considers the danger to the USA so great that it CANNOT cost too much, perhaps, there is this relatively new and growing tension. Europe is NEARER the Muslim multitudes than is the US. Again, there are millions of Muslims in France. USA itself  is by no means without them, itself, but the Bush policy is apparently, DIVIDE AND CONQUER. He does not mind, in his role of President, provided the Islamic people can live peaceably: it is the terrorist who concerns him.  And politically, this is not without some real sense. It is just that PRAYER combination with Moslems, of which he stands so acutely and publicly guilty, as leader of the nation, has debased the name of the Lord, broken the commandment of Christ (cf. II Cor. 6:14 and The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 7), and given provocation to God.

Note how the Lord detests this in II Kings 17:24ff.. Here northern Israel was conquered by Assyria and resettled. It was then determined that it would be safer to have there a priest of the Lord to cover the case of the new peoples put into the land, so that they could understand what was required religiously. However, they ADDED various godlets of their own (cf. Psalm 96:5), according to taste and culture. What was God's comment ? (bold added):

"They feared the LORD, yet served their own gods - according to the rituals of the nations from among whom they were carried away. To this day the continue practising the former rituals: they do not fear the LORD, nor do they follow their statues or their ordinances or their law and commandment which the LORD had commanded..."

Fearing the Lord involves knowing His will, His word and following it, and of course, as Paul says in Colossians 3:17, DO EVERYTHING IN THE NAME of the Lord Jesus Christ, whether in word or deed.

But how could a President do this, or follow such a command as this of Paul ? Easily. You give justice to all, welfare to all, the rule of law to all equally, but personally, all YOU do is done as a Christian, you do NOT violate the rules, ignore the law or mince your words. If they do not like that, they need not elect you. You are not forcing it on others, but evincing it for yourself.

You do not cease to be salt, if you ARE salt, because of the appetite of the people, or your own ambition. To be President is wholly inconsequential in such a case. Indeed, in the case of Pilate, you can see what can happen when you are NOT in charge of the Lord, and doing what He wants, but following your own personal strategies, for political reasons, or your own devices, or in the interests of safety, for you or anyone else!

It is not however the case that the action of George Bush is to be seen as worse than that of Europe. They are diverse. Europe is having strategic fear, and Bush strategic alliance; and both are astray. Fear is right only when it is first, of God. It is a clean and cleansing 'fear', reverence and awe (Psalm 19). What is right... this is the issue.

As to that, God has said and has not unsaid since the serpent first questioned, on his early devilish mission ! (Revelation 20:2, Genesis 3), yes not since Satan first insinuated his insidious speech: for it is he whom the Bible identifies him to be.
 
 

Where then is Europe going ? Not into a world fray with mere power, not even against terrorism, it seems. There are terrorisms and terrorisms, carried out this way and that. Where then ? The rule BY Europe, as an invasive force in its own right lacks appeal. Many want comfort and security. Thus an interesting SBS TV presentation showed how many Germans, better off than some of the landed Portuguese, are buying many delightful retreats for affordable prices, and settling there. Europe is becoming more and more like one country.

But for what ?

Some sort of World Order was mentioned in the time where the Brussels bureaucrat spoke on News Radio. Bush's father also spoke of this at the time of the Iraq invasion of Kuwait, and the multi-national response.

WHAT sort of order ? Now in order, you need a principle, a design, for which and by which and toward which the order is secured.

Do you want Nazi order, based on a superior race, and evolutionary myth (which like all myth, ends in ruins, as this world is ever more closely doing as it turns up the volume on the vanity of the evolutionary myth cf. Stepping out for Christ, Wake Up World ..), or a Communist one, following the same myth with various other falsifications and errors (cf. SMR pp. 127ff., 925ff.), or an August Comte one, with various assumptions (cf. Lead Us Not into Educational Temptation!), so that everyone can happily have some sort of invested amalgam of religion ? Amalgam ? But how keep out the mercury, which speaking of amalgams, was once so 'good' and now is so 'bad' that some have it taken out of their dental fillings at considerable cost ? Amalgams on what principle ? with what components ?

Is 'good' to be being nice and kind and unselfish and noble, and ...doing this for ... an unspecified purpose ? Very good. Then BE noble by looking after the weak, and helping society to become more ... WHAT! Nietzsche did not think it good to look after the weak. Why should you ? If you have no God and no principles but ones you make up, why do it ? What does it achieve ?

Without love for THEM, it is meaningless. Why love ? You just DO ? Then love what ? Do you love yourself just the same as the weak ? Why ? Are you worth anything ? Where are you both
moving ? and why ? What is your purpose ? To make everyone comfortable ? yet in what and as what!

But what of truth ? Various illusory 'truths' are forever being impounded and compounded and propounded by man, but only one stands rigorous logical analysis, historical survey or predictive application, attesting scientifically that it is so: the Bible (as shown in SMR).

If then you do not want the truth which exhibits itself to be so, and alone to be valid, why are you concocting your own morals, and seeking your own purposes ? Is this wise ? It is unwise to be untrue. If you are untrue, what truth is in your propositions, preferences ? Even when you are right, your 'answers' may simply be derivatives of what you reject, hollowly if not hauntingly held, and subject to preferential change at will, a thing of caprice, and because unfounded, mere psychic fragments from here and there, unstable.

Instability has ever been the lot of man without Christ, just as is mathematics when you REFUSE JUST ONE THING, the right answer. It then becomes a mixture of nightmare and mess; and the more the brilliance put into the thing, the worse the result, since it is only a greater and then even greater concoction of foolishness, vacuity and vanity.

The ULTIMATE VANITY, both in the sense of pride,  and in the other quite as valid sense of futile emptiness through lack of reality, it is to be without God. That is Solomon's conclusion at the end of Ecclesiastes (cf. Barbs,  Arrows and Balms 31). Without God, your intrinsic DESIGN is lost, although its form remains. This means that your religion if any (and there will be one, however much you deny it, because if not insane, you have your moral priorities and your spiritual goals, even if so low as to be to be respected as right, or to do as you jolly-well please, making yourself an irrational and vain god), it is a mere form. It may be fashionable or noble in your own eyes, but lacking the life of God, it is self-generated and hence tending to be idolatrous in essence.

This is to be a speciality of the part of the Age before the Lord personally returns, as Paul so expressly states in II Timothy 3. It is quite so now (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5). That fits. The end of the Age is now by the constraints of many Biblical criteria, though you cannot specify the end to the year because this is not part of the Lord's own strategy (Acts 1:7ff., Matthew 24:36ff.).

When He comes it will still surprise. That is His intention, and the world seems charmingly ready to be surprised in this way! It is heavily asleep, in Matthew's terms! As to God, He is very deep and knowledge is His, wisdom also. He will do, as He always does, what He undertakes solemnly that He will do. Often He intervenes with mercy, but when judgment is pronounced, it occurs. Israel was judged; and it suffered; this world is judged, and it awaits with sleepy cries, the time of His coming (Matthew 25:31ff.,  John 5:19-23, Acts 17:31, 1:7ff.)

There is more.

• Not only is it an insufferable instability and dynamic dither, to avoid the eternal God who has revealed His will in His word, the Bible;
• not alone is it a vanity which makes things up as it goes, because it is going without the truth:
• that emptiness itself,  the result of ignoring the God who is there and stable and able,
• just cause and site for worship,
• not illusory or ephemeral or evanescent as are all options without Him,
• or beside Him.

In man, it is readily historically shown, there is a continuing impulsion, thrust and desire for something glorious, something worthy, something above the common continuance, decisively above the mere act of survival, for something to live for and by. To be sure, this yen, desire or disposition is customarily consumed in political power, specious propaganda, convenient coercions or dispersions, in imperial mandates, dictatorial directives, jaded jaundice of spirit, or self-awarding comforts, procurable pastimes in peace pursued perhaps until war comes, when someone else has ideas: but it is there.

It is only what is being asked for, however diverting and however divertingly, and however diverse the desire (cf. Haggai 2:7, Isaiah 11:10). Ignore the truth, to take just one case, in order to enjoy your socialistic sedateness, and then what, then what O England rejoining the Europe which so sought to molest you in the 16th century, so sought to take you in the 20th ? then what ? Then of course there is the COLD WAR. Then what ? then there is the War on Terrorism. Then what ? Then there is Europe and tensions with the US. Then what ?

Then it is time to repent and return to the Lord, who once made you great, and "make us mightier yet" used to be your cry! Then it is time to realise that humanity is not God, but a MERE PRODUCT of Him who is; and that to trust in it, its words, wit, ways or wisdom, whether via European Union or in any other way, socialist or another, is mere madness. It is trusting in the rail of your ship, when there is a submarine underneath it!

It is time to repent of revulsion from reality, from preoccupation with rich and poor (though there is need to be just), and consider the ultimate division, lovers of God, the One whose word stands, and those who do not. It is time to realise that it is not Europe which is the mighty (though it will become much more so as we have seen cf. SMR pp. 720ff., 886ff.  ), but the Eternal God.  Without Him, your fascination with ways and means, political, diplomatic, religious, is mere insult and acrimony, parallel to the crucifixion of Christ by the Jews, for you KNOW of Him, now, as they did, then!

The TRUTH was crucified (John 14:6), but YOU do not need to add to it, in crucifying Him afresh (Hebrews 10), whether in masses or in heart in some other way. You need to ACCEPT that crucifixion, not seek to resurrect it, by slamming Him down in your heart all over again, or to recast it it as if the Son of God were the plaything of priests or the making of man. It is given to man ONCE to die and HE did that ONCE as Hebrews repeatedly declares (Hebrews 9:12ff.). Doing it for Him or with Him is mere apostasy and irreligious activism, blasphemous and belittling to God.

HE did it; YOU receive it (John 1:12, Colossians 2:13-3:1, Romans 5:1, Galatians 3:13).

If the Jew needed to learn that sacrifices were over, such as those of animals in a priestly caste, then the Gentile needs to learn that ONE sacrifice is NOT to be dismissed, though it is finished, and that is the one of Jesus the Christ, not some other Christ, transportable by man, made by his mentality or surmised by his philosophies.

You fool with Him or find Him. If you do the former, you merely fool with mist, for you deceive none but yourself. When you find Him, you know Him, of whom with all Christians you can then say this: CHRIST has redeemed me from the curse of the law, having become a curse for me! HE has been set forth as a propitiation for sin, the just for the unjust, and so justifying me, of him I say, with Paul, Having been justified by faith, I have peace with God. (Romans 3:23ff., Galatians 3:1-13, I Peter 3:18).

Without that, the world is not merely uninsured, like a little vessel gaily swirling along on top of 1000 submarines, all busily focussing on its hull;  but it is certified for destruction (II Peter 3). JESUS CHRIST SAID that it is to go, likewise (Matthew 24:35), and He said something more.
 
 

That ? HIS WORDS WILL NOT PASS AWAY. There, it is the contrast. The stage goes, the Director stays.

The world will whirl no more; but His word will operate to the end, since HE IS the word of God, incarnate (Hebrews 1). In Him, you find neither dictator, nor political dreamer, neither happy nut making a nut-cracker's use anything but sweet, in disposing of mere obstacles to his desire, or casually tossing contempt as he passes, as if men were paper darts to be thrown away. Nor is He like some exalted academic, though the whole frame of knowledge is His, and as to the world, He made it.

Like none of these is He. Not for Him is some fiddling fiasco, as man working witless with what he does not understand, some braggart pretence with superficiality naturalistically posing as knowledge, elevating itself where it does not and cannot belong, unfounded, ungrounded, unbased in reality, endlessly changing, rescinding, amending, bending, failing, citing the many and ignoring the truth, as is done so often and so wantonly in these affairs. (Cf. Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 13, That Magnificent Rock Chs. 1  , 5, 7 and  8, A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9, Barbs, Arrows and Balms 29, Wake Up World ...! and Stepping out for Christ.)

In Him, the eternal God, and in Him, the definitive Jesus Christ (John 14:9, 8:58, 5:19-23, Hebrews 1), is what stands, does not alter, has never altered, does not need to alter; in Him is the truth, the peace for man and the pleasantness that is godly, and not merely a wearisome and arduous pursuit of maximum pleasure, happiness, self-fulfilment or some other dotage of dispirited mankind.

He DOES make for a wonderful happiness; but the irony is this: seek self-centred or self-generated happiness and you do not have it. Complacent content perhaps, but not happiness.

It is the truth which is essential, it is the worship of the true God which is indispensable, and the definitive expression which is incalculably vital. Become fuzzy and you do not see. Find Him and sight is given. Mere happiness ? It is with Him a blessedness, for you are where you belong, with Him who made and loves you, where all true unity alone can have peace, since there are now no pieces left to agitate or scorn. His is the only comprehensive umbrella, making anti-nuclear umbrellas per se merely a waste of time, as if you were to wear heavy rubber boots to keep your feet dry, while taking a shower. (Cf. Isaiah 22:8-14^*3.)

The spiritual shower which is acutely needed by one and by all, is the same one^*4 prescribed for thousands of years, by the very same means (cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 17). It is the one prescribed for Israel (Zechariah 13:1, Isaiah 52-53) by their very own prophets; no less is it for the Gentiles (Acts 17:31), for all. It is the pardon from the payment of price; it is the cleansing which cost more than the world, the life of Jesus the Christ, the sent Saviour and just sacrificial victim, who alone could pay justice for pardon (Romans 3:23ff.). Accept that, and follow Him as Lord. He is better at it than all the lords of creation that ever were or could be; and there is no limit to His power (cf. Matthew 28:19ff.), in healing, in resurrection or in judgment. Nor is there to His wisdom (Colossians 2:3), nor to His knowledge, who in His own time, will come.

Coming ? Ready or not!^*5
 
 

*1
The Advertiser, March 27, 2002, records the visit of an Afghan lady, forward in a movement in that country to liberalise the treatment of women. She asserted from first-hand involvement, that women are still afraid to dress without the coverage ensemble, and to go to school or such things, because in her declaration, the Taliban has been replaced by another Moslem fundamentalist body and there is in this area, little change. Change seems to require a different religion or one not 'established' with dominion over all people's lives, amounting to febrile dictatorship. There is blood shed, and blood spilled within! Internal bleeding, moreover, need not appear ... as haemorrhage.

*2
The world is not on stand-by, awaiting the delicious possibility of peace. Its tortured heart and unquieted soul still hungers for more and war, for this and that,  and is not by Christ brought back to God. Hence not only are their more and potent terrorist sources, but treacheries, especially in view of the nature of the Koran (More Marvels Ch. 4), are not at all out of the question. Success could lower the guard for a loss to make the first one look small, because of complacency. Sin is not a nice bed fellow.

This world, in itself, apart from the sins of its peoples, is a very nice place. It is however God's, He made it, and to seek to make it nice for yourself, singular, or nation, is rather futile. To do good in Christ for it, is so far more to the point, that via the Gospel, it is even COMMANDED. The Gospel is indeed TO all nations, but does not embrace a sharing of 'faiths' WITH all nations! (Matthew 28:19-20).

*3
Isaiah 22:8-14, is evocative; and towards God, provocative is the display it reveals! It should be convocative, calling the people together to repent and not to trust in themselves, their weapons or their works, let alone religious constructions, built demeaningly to God, for their policy and diplomacy. This was precisely what Israel, trusting but little, did; and how often was the rebuke found for that (cf. Isaiah 30:1-2, 31:1-3). Consider now the actual source of strength, which as with many a medical product, comes with purity! in YOU ONLY have I put my trust (Psalm 71, Isaiah 26:13, Jeremiah 17:5-7, Psalm 118:5-10, 96:4-7, 72:18, Colossians 3:17, Proverbs 3:4-6).

"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.

"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."

*4
Hear Jeremiah here (2:11-13, NAB):

"Does any other nation change its gods?—
yet they are not gods at all!
But my people have changed their glory
for useless things.
Be amazed at this, O heavens,
and shudder with sheer horror, says the LORD.
Two evils have my people done:
they have forsaken me, the source of living waters;
They have dug themselves cisterns,
broken cisterns, that hold no water."

*5
Revelation 22:11:

“He who is unjust, let him be unjust still;
he who is filthy, let him be filthy still;
he who is righteous, let him be righteous still;
he who is holy, let him be holy still.”