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The Tranquillity of the Light-Lit Child, Awake to the Truth
from The Lame Man and the Children,
Allegory 7, TMR Ch. 4
Allegory No. 7
The Lame Man and the Children
I met a man limping, and asked him how this came to be. His eyes seemed to scour inwardly through his being, before he replied. "The lame", said he, "shall take the prey." That is Isaiah 33:23, and as it came from those resolute lips, it seemed as if the deficiency he had and the proficiency of which he spoke, somehow merged.
"I beg your pardon!" I replied politely. "Listen," he whispered, for there was about him an atmosphere almost of communicating a secret, as if he were afraid swine might enter into something precious.
"It is better to enter into the kingdom of heaven lame than to laugh your way to hell in all idiocy of useless health and self-reliant strength, as if the mortal gave to itself immortality or finality. THAT," he added, "is living the lie!"
"But how does this apply?", I asked, now thoroughly engrossed.
Suddenly a flame soared out from his eyes, which temporarily had been saddened, and he stated with a peaceful kind of brilliant clarity:
"The Earth Shall be Filled with the Glory of the Lord asthe Waters Cover the Sea!"
His whole being seemed to relax, and a stream of pure waters appeared beside us, which led back to a spring welling up with such bountiful determination and such a sense of flush joy that I temporarily ceased breathing. He however continued.
"This IS going to happen. In Habakkuk you find that the prophet is exceedingly upset by the sheer immensity of cruelty, violence and craft by which unscrupulous people slime the earth, slitheringly, bickering, netting others, netting gain, smirking with success.
"The Lord tells him that JUDGMENT is to come; that in the interim the JUST will live by HIS FAITH, in that the aim of self-aggrandisement is one way of handling things, and faith in that which is to be, and in the One who will make it happen, and in His ways and provisions and plans: this is another."
These things he declared before swimming quietly in the streams which had earlier come beside us, and there his lameness did not seem to count. Pausing on a rock nearby, which seemed specially shaped to allow him ease and comfort on it, he continued.
"In that happy time, a sort of celestial invasion of the earth, nevertheless the completion of the picture of the pageantry for this our world, and the purity is not yet: therefore it must be waited for: and since the waiting is for that which the eyes do not yet see, it must be done by faith."
His eyes seemed to take on the deep and shimmering blue of the stream as he added:
"Though it
tarry, wait for it;
because it will
surely come" ..."
This I knew came from that delicious book, Habakkuk - 2:3.
"When," he added, "when it comes, then my heart now tested by this body, will be in flower, and the scent of His beauty will be overwhelmingly like a flower garden in Spring. You know," he continued, "what Habakkuk was told:
'The earth shall be covered with the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.' "
He paused with a look of such utter expectation on his face that it shone. "This," he resumed, pursing his lips with a sort of savour as if he were eating some tropical fruit, "is the Millenial Transmutation. The sort of transmutation, radical change, which really happens is the one to come. It WILL come, and its extent will be UNIVERSAL, its cover to the earth of the magnitude, dimension and obviousness which meets the eye when one surveys a scene at sea."
"MILLENIAL TRANSMUTATION", I mused.
"Now we Christians have transmutation within, then it will be revealed in the external world. Certainly there is no advanced transmutation of any other design revealed in the past - only designs which incorporate multiple features. Then we shall see the features of the face of the Lord who made us, translated into more obvious lines upon this earth."
He proceeded, with a kindly pity in his eye, for his condition so far from dulling his perception, seemed if anything, to heighten it.
"The waters COVER the sea: it is not a hill there, a dale there, in terms of water, but hill and dale OF water WITHIN the water. It COVERS things. It will be like the flood, but not water that destroys: rather beauty that ennobles. THAT is how complete the wonder is to be."
"But where does it talk of these things!," I challenged him, for it was of interest to see if his base was stable.
"Oh, Isaiah 65," he said dreamily, "where the sinner being one hundred years old shall be accursed, and no more shall an infant from there live only a few days, where the voice of weeping shall no longer be heard in Jerusalem, nor the voice of crying, where they shall not build and another inhabit... where the Messiah will reign on the earth just as Psalms 72:2-12 and 67:3-7 show He will." Suddenly he seemed as if he could not contain himself longer, and he spoke like one in authority.
"In Isaiah 11," he declared with an all but inimitable combination of tenderness and grave justice, "where this phenomenon to be is dealt with, we find that the matter extends to the animal kingdom, so that deadly enemies of nature, or extreme vulnerabilities as of the child by the asp, will vanish. Those elements of the curse will be redeemed for this earth... then."
His face now relaxed, and he continued meditatively:
" 'They will not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain,' says theLord. The reason is this: that 'the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.' There, then,it is again, written.
"Now does this mean that no one will actually achieve any enduring any wrong ? ," he asked. "It does not seem so: for 'with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity forthe meek of the earth'. True, that might apply to the overall result and not cover individual reproofs, but it also states, "He shall not judge after the sight of his eyes neither reprove after thehearing of His ears" in verse 3. This does give the glow of a continual constancy in maintaining the right. That implies that there is still something to put right. It also indicates that right it will be made, and then!
"Hence when in Psalm 72 we read of the king whose name is to endure in wonder and praise while sun endures, and of the righteous flourishing in His days and abundance of peace until the moon is no more, which is way past Solomon, we find also more. We are indeed led to the King of whom it says, 'Prayer also shall be made for Him continually', and 'His name shall endure for ever.. and men shall be blessed in Him: all nations shall call Him blessed'; but there also we find this - 'He shall deliver the needy when he cries; the poor also, and him who has no helper. He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy: He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence: and precious shall their blood be in His sight'.
"This suggests that the situation is not mere perfection - and the 'mere' does not diminish it, but rather allows for ACTION in securing it."
"What sort of figure or image occurs to you, to describe such things!" I exclaimed with enthusiasm, for as he spoke, these words seem to be written on the clouds above as if by an invisible machine soaring aloft. To this he responded:
"It appears rather like a coffee grinder. However rough and individually tough the beans may be, the coffee grinder gets into them and they are DEALT WITH, until beans are no more and only coffee remains. The grinding prevails, if one may so say, over the beans as the waters cover the sea, and if any bean should seek to prosper in individual tyranny, mocking others and seeking to elevate itself at their expense, it will have nothing left of which to boast. It will be ground."
At this, he rested a little, and suddenly seemed to be bathing his crippled leg in pink waters which spilled over blue terraces that looked like ice, but which were warm with a strange feeling of penetrating vitality. Gratefully, I bathed in these as he spoke. When the pain of his leg subsided, in these waters of life, he continued.
"In other words, there is a RIGOUR of RIGHTEOUSNESS coming in which unlike the present, the subtle and the sly, the silly and the striving will not make it into the Hall of Fame. For there will be intervention, deliverance, action and rectification. It will be FAST."
"Will this last for long, before heaven itself, and the place of posting for the refuse-niks comes?" I asked.
"How long is this period in which righteousness will prosper and deliverance will be as automatic as is the justification in word-processing, when one sets the button to call for it ?", I pursued, warmed by the waters to his theme.
"How long?", he asked meditatively in return, his eyes on the strange lights dappling the skies as if to remind that this is a phenomenon of light, which has its own ways.
"Since a thousand years is EXPRESSLY in this terminal period set as being 'as a day', brave indeed would be the one who would seek to quantify here. It could be three months; it could be less. Children can be born making a new generation at any time; symbols must be allowed for; the final analysis of NOT KNOWING is jealously guarded in the words of Peter just quoted from II Peter 3:8-10. It will be LONG ENOUGH for these NEW CHARACTERISTICS to be apparent.
"No MORE will the HUNGRY be left, the RAPACIOUS be enlarged, the curse be confused with justice rather than judgment, and the survival of the fittest be the immoral madness of a spiritually exhausted race, where to be just is to be exceptional."
"But what will be the focus, the crucial features," I pursued.
"The aspect to emphasise there is this: THIS will be through ONE CAUSE. The Messiah, Jesus Christ, will personally be present, not as an offer of salvation as a selective emphasis, but as the King, as He whom so many for so long in so many places and in so much weariness of spirit have rejected that they might rule within to their own doom.
"NOW HE WILL RULE whether chosen or not: not, it is true, within the hearts of the obstinate, but over the dealings of men, not only in that invisible and wonderful deliverance all Christians know, but in the macro, in the gross and outward forms also. The non-prosperity of sin will be skywritten over the earth; it will be inscribed and apparent everywhere. In this way, the configuration, emphasis, exhibition, tableau: it will change.
"True to form, many will lie low, unimpressed by righteousness, undrawn by truth, uncomforted by peace, with hearts like granite, and morals like tar, they will outwardly conform but inwardly writhe. Their anguish however will not mould the earth, nor their fingers fashion it in any way.
"Then His righteousness will be vindicated in external rule, as now it is in inward peace for those who heeded His words, 'Let him take hold of My strength, that he may make peace with Me; and heshall make peace with Me', and 'The work of righteousness will be peace, and the effect of righteousness,quietness and assurance forever', and again, 'Mercy and truthhave met together; righteousness and peace have kissed', in Isaiah 27:5, 32:17 and Psalm 85:10."
"His wonderful compassion allows the feeling of weakness at the present time, in the face of this world's gallivanting to horror, showing by experiment the utter folly of its ways," I offered.
"It is in a more depraved dimension than even this," he resumed. "In fact, it appears in this light. For long, the Lord bore mockery in two stages. Firstly, it was in this: that He did not come down from the Cross, or use His power for Himself, when derided for His sacrifice, without which none of His mockers had any hope at all. It was secondly in this: that when He left, He did not make His servants rich and oppressive, as the world admires, but allowed them to be not greater than their Master.
"When however He returns, and has taken His own people, and comes like a conquering General to the place of His sacrifice as one gathers from Revelation 19 and Zechariah 14, then He will show the face of sovereignty to the rebellious in heart. Like mountains appearing on the horizon, righteousness will dominate the scene. The trial and testimony are all but past. Now is the time to manifest outwardly to the outward.
"There will simply be nothing to mock," he pondered musing. Yet his words now seemed to thunder, and his eyes projected two shafts of light which seemed to reduce all history to a small size, like trees put back to the nuts from which they grew; and there were people old and young, men and women, boys and girls, hurrying and flurrying, with notices tied to their necks; but I could not read what was on them, though the handwriting seemed similar for all.
"After all," he continued with a more gentle smile, "a couple of thousand years of intellectualistic illusions, metaphysical mimicries, of grandeur and chest-thumping delusion on the part of the self-righteous...it is a fair time for testing purposes. These things have been while the Gospel travels to the end of the earth, and the splendour of the Lord is in Spirit, while oppressors continue to make their billions and trillions by chicanery. Not that wealth MEANS oppression, but the two are not rarely in consort like husband and wife, the one feeding the other.
"Thus the wonder of this glory of the Lord covering the earth as the waters cover the sea is not that heavenly magnificence where sin has no place, and efforts at wrong no chance. That is for heaven itself. It is only then that all hearts are as pure as the dew on a Winter's morning and the beauty of holiness is hallowed in the heavenly air.
"Rather the millenial fact is a RULING in the midst of mankind which PUNISHES evil quickly, effectively and continuously, DELIVERS righteousness and sets it in authority, and MAINTAINS a peace and a tang and savour which is never penetrated..." At this, he mused with a sort of quietus, as if the whole earth were still.
"The Lord's power now is amidst suffering," he declared; "for as Paul says, we are like sheep to the slaughter. It demonstrates His love and His gospel; and He does deliver His people with this purpose in view. Then however it will show itself in a sheer wonder of righteousness, for the vast test is then past."
"Doesn't Isaiah say still more on this topic," I queried, stimulated by the shrinkage of history his words had begun to portray.
"It is as Isaiah says in 26:10. EVEN IN SUCH A SITUATION, when favour is shown to the wicked, yet :
'... he will not learn righteousness: in the land of uprightness will he deal unjustly, and will not behold the majesty of the Lord. Lord, when Thy hand is lifted up, they will not see: but they will see and be ashamed for their envy at the people'.
"The fire indeed is going to devour them, we read. Here we see the reality displayed in its impactive fulness, 'This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men have loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.'
"As to the fire of judgment, that does happen at the end of the millenium when, despite this majesty, so little valued, and this power, so incapable of overthrow, and this justice, maintained with rigour, there is an epochal uprising of jealous hearts. Of this John speaks in Revelation 20.
"That is the end of this Phase 2: implemented righteousness. In Phase 1 which is now, righteousness does abide and bless, and is imputed righteousness to the saints. In Phase 2 however, it is implemented in the scene itself, and visible to the external eyes, covering the world like waters, as well as springing up in the heart of the righteous with joy."
"But what more will happen then?", I asked, "to the people".
At this, he seemed to ponder, with a strange musing, as if his whole being were drawn into the scene to which he went on to speak.
"In the beginning of mankind's world," he reflected, "man was equipped with the wonder of the glory of God as a present reality. Through tests did follow, man had a great power through resource, though recourse to God.
"In accord with this scenario, the engineer specialist in evil, Satan was free to put his pitiful case, his appeal to innocence in man, to achieve its guilt, to desire in woman to achieve its pollution, and so to infiltrate and intrigue the mind of man. Man fell.
"In this latter time, however, in the millenium..."
"How?", I asked fascinated, "how does it differ?"
"It differs in
this," he resumed. "In this millenial period, the devil is
effectively hobbled, indeed he is disabled for its entire duration. You see, by
then man's power of spirit is - unless he is redeemed - far less than it was in
the beginning; for at the first he had not yet fallen."
"So man is weaker, the
devil is weaker?"
"Precisely," he continued. "His chief adversary is in pains, and man in general is in chains to sin. The situation is now very different, but there is now possible a new test," he mused, and as it seemed to me, more poignantly.
"The question then is this: Will human nature by itself, surrounded with mercy, environmentally new-charged, manage to do well this time? Will a kind of celestially enabled humanism secure a place and triumph in blessedness in the millenium?
"Far from it. The nature of man fallen, though freed from the environmentally crippled scene he developed for himself, the sad scene which he has created or called for or both, and even though freed from that potent adversary, the devil ... it has no intrinsic good. The form, the image of God in man is defiled, and no unrenovated relic of man can save himself. The testimony to those in heavenly places is complete then," he mused. I noted his Bible open at Ephesians 3:10, and marked at Revelation 20:8-9.
"What else happens in this twilight that precedes the everlasting dawn?" I asked.
"What more the Lord does in the Millenial Lesson Time is His business. It is hard to deduce all possible matters with certainty; we do not know what some will do, but of this be sure - NO ONE WILL CALL UPON THE NAME OF THE LORD IN VAIN, with faith.
"We do not know what
some may be permitted to do, or every square inch of the sequence in the
scenario. Yet Biblically, till the moon is blood and the sun darkness, the arm
of the Lord is open and beckoning (Acts
"To what do you refer?" I asked.
"It comes when "Too late!" thunders through the riven air, when no more the doors will open, when faith no more enters the injured heart of fallen man. Already rejection of the Lord spells doom at His own return, and there is no exception to that! Do you not recall we spoke a little time ago about imputed and implemented righteousness, of the current offer that changes one's state and status within, and then of the external display of righteousness in the millenium? These were phases 1 and 2 of righteousness on display, on line if you like. Few took the first and many will make light of the second.
"When indeed all this is over, Phase 1 and Phase 2, THEN the book TELLS us this - "they went up on the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them...and I saw a great white throne, and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away: and there was found no place for them" - Revelation 20:9,11.
"It is THEN that "the books are opened" and "another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works... and whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire."
"That is the end to the consummation. THEN you see that those WRITTEN in the Redeemer's book of life - for eternal life is available ONLY as a gift, as Romans 6:23, 3:20-31 indicate decisively - are given life (John 5:24 outwardly verified); and for the damned, the criterion is what they have done. That is also found in Matthew 25 where the sheep ARE sheep and are rewarded for good actions; while the goats ARE goats, and their sins are expressly remembered against them.
"Sheep of course KNOW THEIR SHEPHERD (John 10:9,27-28). Millenium or not, the heavens departing and the old earth thrown away like an old garment, or new heavens and new earth: in this, it is all one (Isaiah 51:6, 65:17). HE is always the same, His faithfulness greater than the sun, His life with a splendour of magnificence that requires no show."
As he spoke, some children came cavorting like magpies, in a very ecstasy of voyaging and darting and exploring, and waters flowed from the heart of a large tree which clapped its branches, though I noted it had been nailed on some of the main ones, and scarred; and these branches were like hands, while the children bathed in the waters, and climbed in it.
Suddenly they glowed white as if lit up by the sun, and I saw on their foreheads the name 'Jesus is Lord'; and I looked and beheld the form of the man who was lame, who seemed to join them, as they vanished, for sheer brilliance of the light.