A WITNESS TO WANDERING

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CHAPTER TWO

WITNESS TO WANDERING II

Dear Correspondent,

Thank you for your second letter. You have now been exposed to biblical reality twice, and I hope that you may awaken to your position. It is my desire to help you, so I am replying once more, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, in which alone I work.

Alas, you declare it strange that one should think that you attack the Bible,
a well-known book of contents not vague, which declares repeatedly that God is immutable:
yet you have approached our organisation with some talk of this not being so, and now speak of not attacking the Bible.

What is it like ? It is like two children told to wash the dishes, and one says, Let’s do it! and the other says, How strange you are, to imagine that a parental nod to wash the dishes does not mean that we should NOT wash the dishes. Let me take you to my psychology. Deep in the heart of the misled parent, there is a desire to help us. This, when you add my epistemology, means that since they cannot really know themselves, poor dears, it is a mere extraneous reaction, quite impossible to reconcile with their psychology really. I go for the psychology.

In the end, one does it all by himself.

Now when the Bible declares in I Cor. 2:9-13, that the Spirit of God reveals the DEEP things of God, even these, and provides the verbalisation for it – God is not really inferior even to the most gifted of His products – I do not imagine that He fails, since HE NEVER FAILS (Zephaniah 3:4-5):

“Her prophets are insolent, treacherous people;

Her priests have polluted the sanctuary,

They have done violence to the law.

The Lord is righteous in her midst,

He will do no unrighteousness.

Every morning He brings His justice to light;

He never fails,

But the unjust knows no shame.”

You see here that He does not like a light approach to His word. It is the human heart which is wicked beyond conception, not God who is inarticulate or ungifted, or unwilling to reveal the truth to man. Christ was being put to death because He was a man who told the truth to them, and that included WHO He was, WHY He came, in WHAT WAY He was related to His Father, HOW the Holy Spirit was sent, HOW the scripture related to coming fulfilment to every jot and tittle, WHAT He would do in the judgment, HOW He would come, WHERE He was before He came, WHAT were the underlying causes of pain and disease; and with this, in explicit POWER He did whatever He wanted, even as this was the Father’s will, this too being explained. You see all of these things in such passages as Mark 2, John 5, 8, 15, 17, Matthew 5, 25.

When therefore the Bible indicates that all God’s words, each one of them, will be fulfilled, that they are truth, and when as with Christ, people are rebuked for knowing neither the power of God nor the scriptures (Matthew 22:29), and told they knew neither Him nor His Father (John 8:19), and they did not know what kind of Spirit they were from (Luke 9:55), and presented abundance of material on His base and nature (as in John 8:23, 17:1ff.), and what He intended to do (John 14), indeed on the entire correlation of infinite intimacy between Himself and His Father (Matthew 11:27ff.): one has to believe you or God.

Christ said this: “You are from beneath; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.” Here one finds that it is not Christ, the Truth, a man who told them the truth, who is supine in superficiality, or unversed in the deep things of God, who lacks a refined understanding of the nature of God, who IS Spirit as He declared (John 4:24).

When it says that HE understands God and that those differing from His words do not, that HE is the truth and the others are not, that HE was with His Father before the world was founded and they were not (John 17), He is obviously not saying that He is a bit of a duffer and does not actually know as sharply as someone in the twenty first century will do by means of some sort of verbal manipulation or philosophic intimation called metaphysics or epistemology. The more is this so, when the said contemporary material as presented, is fraught with error and ultimately based on nothing, as will be shown more fully later.

When I wish to know the truth, I will consult God, who searches and reveals even the deep things and places them in the language which is His own, the truth (as He says in I Cor. 2:9-13, Jeremiah 23, John 8), which can bear the most fastidious invasions of insult and assault, and stand like rock. Exclusions on truth are merely inclusions of presumption. The Bible permits, and reason allows no such intrusions from man in his natural state; and the Bible is attested as no other literature, no other prophecy, no other depiction of past or future, no other focus on personality, in Christ, no other prelude to performance, no other fulfilment, no other validity from its consistent claims, and no other authority, in its irrefutable statements, unfallen for millenia: and that, not because of any lack of effort on the part of rebellious man!

I have already shown you some of the almost incredible errors in the apparatus for instructing God on God (i.e. divergencies from the Bible) which you make, and shall give a moment’s attention further here.

Let us attend now to immutability, which you again mention in your second (or was it much later ?) letter.

In your presentation on Malachi 3:6, you omit one of the parts of the discourse in the middle of what you relate. It does not say, “I, the Lord, change not,” and then proceed to say, “Return to Me and I will return to you!” There is something in between. It actually says, BEFORE this, and after this, before what you cite, quite a lot. It is best to see what is in the sandwich as well as the bread, when a sandwich is presented, don’t you think!

It says more in between.

God in Malachi 3:5 indicates that He will come NEAR IN JUDGMENT, that He will be a SWIFT WITNESS against a number of categories of people, noting such as sorcerers, adulterers, false swearers, and with these, oppressors of the hireling, the widows and the fatherless, and those who turn from helping the alien. He will so act because THEY DO NOT FEAR ME! He declares.

It is apparent that failure to follow His instructions in ethics, in judgment, in righteousness, in purity, in spiritual truth, in following WHAT HE SAYS and not what others say to the contrary, or in addition (such as from the epistemology of idolatry and the metaphysics of philosophy), being in opposition to reality, will not prosper, like any other fiction out of place. This of course is precisely what Romans 1:17ff. is saying, amongst other things!

Indeed all this commotion of activity to resolve all things by the mind of man or on its bases in themselves (cf. Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 13, With Heart and Soul ... Ch. 10, SMR Chs. 3, 5, TMR Chs. 5, 7), to do so from any other source than God Himself, philosophy in all its components, is divinely undesired. He prefers to write His own autobiography, and His own instructions, without tuition (cf. Isaiah 40:12-13): "Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or as His counsellor has taught Him!"

The tuition clubs for God and those who seek to avoid Him, and hence fast put distance between themselves and truth, both in principle and in practice, these long endeavours through futile ages in this regard, being entirely bankrupt in finding God (as Paul openly declares, and that emphatically in I Corinthians 1:29-35 cf. Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 13, SMR Ch. 3, Predestination and Freewill Section 4), being futile in method, so are they in result. This, not without reason, both for its fruitlessness and its presumption, is occasion for divine displeasure. It is indeed ground for action of a vast kind!

There is a divine dissatisfaction with man's performance, not at all strange since He elected to make freedom; and a divine presentation, even less strange, since man is His property, and loves love to give. Such is the position here as often in other contexts, more generally.

Thus are we left in Malachi 3:5, for this is the nature of the divine charge, as to kind.

Further, and immediately before 3:6, God sums up this wilful wandering, by saying that it is done “because they do not fear Me.”

SO far we have come, and now we proceed to the text in the next verse, 3:6.

Why is this litany of sins and this advent of judgment combined as above ? in Malachi 3:6, God gives His reason: “For I am the Lord, I do not change. Therefore you are not consumed, you sons of Jacob.”

Thus far we have

	1) a litany of sins, including playing about with His words by means of adding or intruding one’s own, as in philosophy or other source for delusion on the topic of who God is and what He wants and what He REALLY says and the like,
	2) a declaration of swift and sure judgment because of it, and
	3) a summary that such liberties are being taken because they do not fear Him.

He then contrasts His actuality with their verbal and moral declivities and presumption, and notes with this, that He does not change. They may change their ethics from His, their words from His, and even have the impudence to attribute to Him what He has not said (and as we see, in Jeremiah 23, can go to the length of using His very name in the process), and hence show they do not fear Him; but He does not change. They ‘change’ Him or His words, witness or ways, but He will be a SWIFT WITNESS. He does not change. That much is perspicuously clear. Do what you want to His words, revelation and ways, but HE DOES NOT CHANGE. YOU may. HE does not. That is the message.

There is no change out of that. His word, on this judgment is founded; violate it in presumptuous change, and you will soon find that HE does not change, indeed will act as a SWIFT witness of His unaltered word (as in Matthew 5:17-19). Hence Christ used precisely the word of God in Matthew 4:4 against the devil, and so dismissed the pretender.

It is because He does not change, indeed, that they are not all slain already, or as in the text – “are not consumed”. God immediately adds. Indeed, this is to be found in Malachi 3:6 itself! As shown to Moses in terms of His nature, He is longsuffering, merciful, but as shown here (and in Moses as in Deuteronomy 4,12), His words STAY PUT, and indeed HE DOES NOT CHANGE.

He does not mean that they are not consumed because HE DOES change! The reason for this view is that HE DECLARES the opposite. He proceeds to indicate that there is a way for their measuring up to the situation without utter devastation. It is this. They just return to the unchanging (as just stated, we do not forget so soon, do we ?) God; it is only then that He will return to them. Why ever would this be ? It is because, as just stated, HE does not change.

If I have an overdraft, and violate its interest conditions, and am called to the financial base for a talk, and he lists the failures of contract, and then says, I DO NOT CHANGE, and when in addition he has already told me in the preamble to the contract that he is merciful and good, and then proceeds to state that SINCE HE DOES NOT CHANGE, I AM NOT ALREADY IN PRISON: it is not hard to understand. In particular, he is not declaring that it is NOT because he does not change that I am in prison, or that it is since he actually, to the contrary of his allegation, his assertion, DOES change that I am not in prison. No, he must be allowed to say what he means, and I had better believe it.

Much more is this so with God. BECAUSE He does not change, that the breaches noted are not already accorded condign judgment. That is what HE SAYS. It is necessary to RETURN to Him, who as just stated, DOES NOT CHANGE, THEREFORE, if they want access to mercy, not judgment.

To construe this to mean the contrary is wrong for three reasons. It omits the text IN the verse, BEFORE the verse and AFTER the verse. Secondly, it omits part of the text. Thirdly, it CONTRADICTS the text.

The little parallel of two children considering whether or not to wash up, in my last letter, is to the point now as before. YOU can CHANGE what God says to the opposite, using a declaration as a basis for the deferment of judgment quite explicitly, to mean the opposite of what it says if you like; but you do not even dint the word of God. The GROUND of His action is that He DOES NOT CHANGE, and the ENTAILMENT is that THEY will have to change if there is to be any accord, so they will HAVE TO RETURN to Him. It is only then that HE will return to them, SINCE HE as stated, DOES NOT CHANGE.

When therefore God gives a ground for action in terms of a principle, I do not reject the principle, but accept it, and duly seek wisely to consider the implications, as should you; and if you do, it will radically change your intrusions of ideas contrary to the word of God, statement in express contradiction to the word of God, making nonsense of the meaning of the word of God, and violation of the context to boot. Thus when in Hebrews 13:8, we likewise learn that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, it does not mean that in some secret or Gnostic way He is to be understood to be affirming that the opposite is really the case.

When again, in Psalm 102, God contrasts the temporal and temporary nature of creation with His own unchanging nature, and in terms of this, just as He used the principle before, makes conclusions, we are not to imagine that really, in some secret and philosophic way, where we can discern reality beyond the word of God and contradict it for our pleasure, carried away by baseless imaginations, He does not so contrast. We are not, likewise, to assume that the conclusion from this base is to be falsified by our changing the base.

WHO is writing this book, you or God! I find no evidence for your superiority to God, but the whole proposition is ludicrous, lacking any shred of evidence, philosophical or otherwise, but is mere intrusion of irrelevancy without ACCEPTING or even addressing all of the text, context or even statement itself, except airily to dismiss it.

Now in Psalm 102, it is BECAUSE God does not change that we are to see that the things not God, the mere material creation, by contrast is to GO. Indeed, they will be CHANGED, “BUT YOU ARE THE SAME.” As to their change (Isaiah 51:6, Matthew 23:35), actually it comes to this, that they will depart. That is some change, is it not! The contrast of this CREATION with the CREATOR, this present creation, comes in this Psalm to this, that it changes, but He does not, for HE IS THE SAME. When it says, YOU ARE THE SAME, in the face of the different nature of the made things, and the different end to the material creation, it does not mean, YOU ARE NOT THE SAME. It is necessary to get elementary English back into place, or words will cease to be a means of discourse, and thus, reason will be denied, which is merely another way of acknowledging defeat, in a matter where reason is invoked, concerning the word of God.

To interpret this, then, to mean that actually, He is part of His creation, the only spiritual creator ever to be so, and hence will go Himself with the rest when it is blown away, or to make Him in ANY way comparable to creation, when it is HIS and He is HIMSELF, is more than mere confusion. It is assault on the word of God; and it implies nothing as the underlying source. Things come and go, run down and exit, energy is worn away in its usefulness. It comes from nothing or magic if you prefer; it goes to nothing or to magic if you like. But there is no reason: rationality dies, and it is reason that would here make it so, this being a further contradiction in terms. It is all a matter of nothing, one big nothing. From that, however, nothing comes; but we are here. Why think if you remove the validity of thought! Why reason if you remove reason! If you so act, none other need act, for it is a mutual destruction of model and application.

Further, you have ideas such as that dismissed last time, that love implies to derive part of your being from the loved objects. This is first of all incorrect. That was shown too rash a generalisation in the case of friends last time; and again, if a tiny child in danger of being crushed in a traffic accident, to which a man by human love for humans rushes to secure deliverance for it, and so dies himself, this has no scope for the idea of his being derived from the child.

How much more is this the case when the ABSOLUTE I AM WHAT I AM, who declares that He created all things so that the MADE is one category and HE ONLY is the other (John 1:3, Colossians 1:15ff.), to be conjoined as if the infinite God, the SOLE Creator, were to have to DERIVE from what is WHOLLY derived from Himself, something or other in order for there to be love. This is mere talk, and it is anti-creation talk, and hence anti-biblical. As such it is an assault on the scripture which states ENTIRE creation of all that is not God, by God. This includes the freedom to sin, which enables the scope for love, and personality at all.

The concept that the universe creates God is just a verbal jumble. SINCE ALL of its nature is derived from Him, there is no component unavailable to His exhaustive knowledge as creator, so that even the saints are all known and chosen by Him BEFORE the creation (Ephesians 1:4) itself, in which they are to participate. NOTHING is their value in such a weird distortion. It is in such a case that He declares, as in Isaiah 41:28-29:

“For I looked, and there was no man;

I looked among them, but there was no counselor,

Who, when I asked of them, could answer a word.

Indeed they are all worthless;

Their works are nothing;

Their molded images are wind and confusion.”

NOTHING is the contribution of creation to the knowledge, power and wisdom of God. It is obviously very hard for you to realise that as He declares, so it is: HIS UNDERSTANDING IS INFINITE (Psalm 147:5), and He knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:9-10). Yet is it really so very hard to learn from that! Will a man teach God ? That sort of thing is the very pre-requisite of false prophecy, which is another book, not the Bible as Jeremiah 23 makes very clear.

I prefer God since His credentials evidentially and indeed in all ways, are infinitely superior to those of any man, let alone one whose claim is merely in terms of opinions on metaphysics, which concur neither with the scripture nor with all of observable reality. Thus, merely for example, you are apparently a Heracleitan in disposition, trying in some way to make all change, dismissing self as a myth, and imaging that someone become a different person when angry.

That draws nearer to the norm in mental cases, to be sure, where split personality or intemperate behaviour makes the difference from the norm; but it is not so of the race when sober and sound. If I become angry (and as a sinner, I am not perfect, but I speak in principle), then I do not change. I do not lose self-control. I do not change my ideas. It means simply that the action before me and the principles and spirit within me differ (ideally, if I were perfect, in terms of the word of God which is my basis written), so jar that I exhibit an emotion to accompany my words (if any) and my other actions.

This signifies a certain inclination of the heart, with a paraphernalia of response to the viewer, who duly takes note, and his or her spirit is impacted in this way. How strange to imagine that this MEANS a change in the person so acting, which may in fact be an application of a structure, a spirit and principles, with perception and intention! You get that sort of pre-occupation with an aspect, in an allied field with Freud, who made a particular form of pathology a norm in his mind, a position ably exposed by Jung (cf. Marvels of Predestination and the Ways of Will, Ch. 7, End-note 1).

There is no ground for such thought, and it does of course go with your concern that self is mythical. If so, you are mythical, your thought is meaningless, a mere congeries of changing configurations, and hence unworthy of serious response. If you were consistent, indeed, one would not bother to reply at all. If you are thus, as one of your mythical selves, then as with Hume precisely, you have no basis for rational assertion, no being for coherent discourse, no status, as a myth indeed for reality. Myths are not real.

Further, your misconception here, amplified from the partially relevant finite to the infinite, for some strange reason extrapolated as if it were a three course rather than one course dinner, without reference to the God with whom you have to do, or His nature, leads of course to your false allegation that an immutable God could not love.

Coldness is your term, immutable is the Bible's. You put them together, it divorces them. A wind on the face of the waters does not change their chemical composition, and a movement of personality through various emotions is no more a sign of change of the being than is a change of expression in a person's face an index to character change. This is partly due to your other irrational concept of self as myth, which certainly, if it were so, would demolish any ground or basis for any coherent remarks, or basis for anything. This in turn would remove anyone to speak to in reply. It is therefore only as a courtesy that there is any reply at all to this mythical being, this self as myth.

That is how your combination of the Biblical immutable God and your ideas of mythical selves and changes wrought in nature by emotions, put together in the vitamiser, seem to result in the assault on the God of the Bible. There appears a whole dimension lacking in your approach to man and to God, as if settled character and decisive nature were impossible, and not merely a contrast to the pathological plurality of personality of some, and unreliable mutations of others, capitulating now to this now to that culture, ideology, emotion, desire, influence and the like.

There are some who are more like that; and some who are not at all like that, being formed on divine and unchanging principles, propositions and truths, applied by the Holy Spirit, who transforms the character continually, as one waits on the Lord, to His likeness, as the scripture says and experience confirms for the Christian (II Corinthians 3:18).

It is indeed only because God is immutable that truth can be known, including any concept of mutability or the opposite, which then on such a model, becomes a mere contradiction in terms. Where the basis is fickle, deranged or flickering, the results are unobtainable; for there is nothing, in that case, actually there as a standard, all being in the wash of circumstances.

Circumstances cannot create truth, nor can process present it: for it merely does what it is doing, in the interstices of its environment and the alterability of its occasions. For knowledge of the truth, what is the case, you need a person to have it so that it might be known, and a will to present it, so that it might be passed on, and an absolute position for the person to be it, unlimited, undimmed and undiminished, uncontained and free, so that it is truth indeed, and not reaction.

It is amusing that the concepts of series and change, when left to themselves, leave

	no SELF to do the knowing,
	no BASIS for knowledge,
	no PERSPECTIVE to be the truth as distinct from activistic embroilments, nothing absolute and hence no absolute truth.

Only the privileged philosopher, contrary to his own model, can SAY it; but by his model, he cannot KNOW it, so all his surmisings are excluded at the outset, by himself.

All becomes mere interaction, response. Thus it could not be known that this was so, since this would involve the very features just dismissed to fit the model. Hence such a position is at the outset self-contradictory.

Self-contradiction requires no further contradiction.

What then ? Knowledge of the lack of truth would not then be possible, as it would derive from a truth which was not there. One casualty accordingly is the truth; and one result of that is the loss of its articulation, so that all thought would become a casualty, as do all views of all who work on such a model, which therefore are an irrational amalgam of unthinkable thoughts and speakable words. As noted, abandoning reason, means abandoning any presentation of any position or its defence; so that there is really nothing left to do. The ring is deserted.

It is therefore interesting, but sad to see you treading onto this anti-biblical path, against God and reason. Let us see more of your thoughts for response.

Your “God ... a society of perishing occasions” is merely a verbal sort of Wild-ism. God as a society of perishing occasions ? It means nothing even sustainable to thought. The LORD OUR GOD, THE LORD IS ONE, Deuteronomy 6:4, and as to His relation to creation in the end, “they shall be changed, but you are the same,” Psalm 102:26-27, and again, in Isaiah 51:6, “The earth will grow old as a garment, and those who dwell in it will die in like manner; but My salvation will be forever, and My righteousness will not be abolished.” Again, of the earth and the heaven, the Bible affirms, “They will perish but You remain.” There is a certain disjunction, infinite in character, precise in kind between the Creator and what He produces by His own power, into being. He stays; it can go. If anything stays, it is at His option and by His request.

He will accordingly implement to the end every last tiny feature of what HE HAS ALREADY SAID (Matthew 5:17-19). This then, firstly, is the flattest possible contradiction of scripture, which declares that with God “there is no variation” (James 1:17). YOU have some irrationally conceived being to which you dare to ascribe the word “God”, who is a society of perishing occasions, who changes, a component therefore in a system to which things go, and a participant in what perishes, whereas the Bible asserts NO VARIATION. There is in perfect harmony with this in the prophet Isaiah in this same Bible, which has NOWHERE for such things to come from, or go to.

Such is seen in Isaiah 45:18-19:

"For thus says the Lord,

Who created the heavens,

Who is God,

Who formed the earth and made it,

Who has established it,

Who did not create it in vain,

Who formed it to be inhabited:

"I am the Lord, and there is no other.

I have not spoken in secret,

In a dark place of the earth;

I did not say to the seed of Jacob,

                           ‘Seek Me in vain' ;

                           I the LORD speak righteousness,

                           I declare things that are right" ...

                        with Isaiah 45:21 -

"Tell and bring forth your case;

Yes, let them take counsel together.

Who has declared this from ancient time?

Who has told it from that time?

Have not I, the Lord?

And there is no other God besides Me,

A just God and a Savior;

There is none besides Me.

"Look to Me, and be saved,

All you ends of the earth!

For I am God, and there is no other.

I have sworn by Myself;

The word has gone out of My mouth in righteousness,

And shall not return,

That to Me every knee shall bow,

                           Every tongue shall swear."

His word is sure because He does not change, His work is sure because none can change it either, and His prediction is certain, since the unchanging God, not being subject to alteration, will fulfil through all time what He has in mind (cf. Isaiah 46:8-15), and repeatedly He so affirms this of Himself, in contradistinction from ALL others. His mind not changing, not subject to change. What He resolves is therefore, when categorically asserted, categorically done: as seen in Luke 19:42ff., Matthew 24:1ff., Isaiah 44-46. There are provisional propositions, and there are absolute ones, and the latter are many. When this occurs, the result is guaranteed by God, and it is found in endless fidelity to His word, in simple empirical fact. This is biblical revelation; and not something else!

You have something entirely other in mind, not susceptible to such diction or direction or assurance or prediction, since you have limited God, who, if limited would merely be an item in someone else's creation as explained, the term a mere misnomer. In such cases as these, a word is used, but the slippery slide has moved the discussion to elsewhere. Potentially confusing, it is actually unprofitable; but it needs to be observed.

The uncomposed Creator before time (Psalm 90:1-2), immaterial and without outside constraints such as matter exhibits, a necessity of reason before time, so that time could be, is thus turned into part of time, and so becomes a creature itself logically demanding a sufficient cause, which is then beyond all this, the actual God. What then of the other invented in passing ? Thus, in these terms, you turn this “God” of your creation into an idol, as in Romans 1:17ff.. Such derogations and dislocations, God does not find appealing as an action on His name. It also bypasses with mere words, the logical necessities of what is the cause of the changing, the structured, the physically formatted, the inscribed and the directed so that it might have a basis not in magic but in logic; just as it trifles with reason.

How vastly far from your philosophy is not only reason, but James in 1:17. In God, he declares, there is No shadow of turning. This is far removed from what is movable, perishable, mutable. You construct the precise opposite, in this way, to biblical truth and rational necessity.

Space and time are needed for turning, and a system in and out of which bits can pop for a changing God: that system, not being God, and being beyond Him, as a structural basis, is the attestation that you are not dealing with God at all, but some system outside Him: and in these things have no truck with the God of the Bible, instead being pre-occupied in terms of making something wholly other.

In fact, for anything to be ever, something has to be always, since nothing is no mother; and that something must be adequate for all that will come. Space and time in their manifold occasions, are a structure without self-creation powers, by ANY observation, and the result is that one must find God as the Creator, as the Bible attests; and not try to make what you have to explain, part of the explanation. The logical explanation explains all else, for it leads to the God whose word applied to reality, interprets it without confusion or contradiction, alone covering all in perfect composition. (Cf. Spiritual Refreshings ... Chs. 13, 16, SMR Chs. 3, 5). Putting some of the data to be explained, into its cause merely leaves it without cause, and so involves yet more irrationality. Causality is thus bypassed, not satisfied, in a turmoil of words.

Let us pursue it a little further ... Indeed, putting God in a system puts the system beyond God, contradicts the Bible, makes a necessity for its cause to be found, without conditioning, corrigibility or control – which would merely require us to go back one step further – and hence lands us back where we began, the cause of all that is structured without its own consent, or by its own will. Any PART of it which was like the creation in this, would require its own creation, and so indicate that what was in view was not the rational necessity, not God. It would instead be at best a mere foible of thought.

Marvellously, this is precisely what the Bible teaches, refusing ANY PART of creation in ANY WAY to be part of God, and making the most intensive declamations of judgment in Old and New Testaments against such confusion and delusions. Space and time structure themselves are His creation (Romans 8:38-39), giving physical room to move! And in any such situation, limitation to past and present in itself, is indicative of a system beyond the one so limited; and so once again, logically requires God beyond it, directed by none (from where ?), required by none to do anything (by whom ?), illimitable, to be found only by His own revelation, immune to philosophical intrusion (I Timothy 6:16), but attested in His divine nature and eternity by reason (Romans 1:17ff.). It is of the mercies of God that this leads inevitably to the Bible (SMR Ch. 1), and this verifies itself endlessly, unique, assured in word as in deed.

Indeed, If God changed, He would be in a system where such anthropomorphisms could be, where the total could contain Him and move about with Him, requiring in essence, something to change INTO and FROM, a repository beyond Him; and hence He would not be God.

You may profit from reading Acme, Alpha and Omega: Jesus Christ, Ch. 9 with Ch. 8, here, and SMR Chs. 1, 10. With this, might be put, Let God be God! Ch. 2.

These things being so, and in the most direct of terms moreover: To tell God what He does not talk about, contrary to what He does, is presumptuous limitation, and ALL limitation is expressly condemned in Psalm 79:41, just as it is a case of creature telling Creator that is worse than ludicrous:

“Yes, again and again they tempted God,

And limited the Holy One of Israel.

They did not remember His power.”

Imagine telling God that there are some subjects to which He is not really able or willing to express Himself accurately to man, so that adjustments need to be made to some of His words BY man! Metaphysics and epistemology alike appear prominently in Romans 1, for example. Who is to be His teacher, whom He made!

Yet to do this in the name of the One who declared, I AM the truth! this would constitute an even more remarkable procedure. Imagine even contradicting both reason and revelation in the Bible by contradicting HIS VERY OFTEN REPEATED WORDS that He does not change, and it is notable, illogical and unappealing, to be sure.

One can imagine this, as it is common, for what does not occur these days ? But imagine then using HIS NAME to do this.

Were it not that one has met it before; and for the fact that precisely this happened often in the Old Testament, to receive divine denunciation and mockery form above, it might be hard to imagine this;
but since it has been wrought so often, one can contain one’s amazement at such alien dealings in the name of the Lord.

The word of the Lord breaks rock, and is wholly incomparable to all other words, is the assertion of scripture (Jeremiah 23:28-29).

What is the chaff to the wheat! is the biblical comparison between God’s word and the words of all who seek or evidently act to make it differ from what it in fact is!

What then is the case ? His word is proved; your philosophy is readily dismissed, point on point, as simply unwarranted, unfactual, or both. It normally does not touch the issue, seeking to control God into something other than the ONLY Creator of ALL that is not Himself (Romans 11:33-36, John 1:3, Colossians 1:15ff., Isaiah 45:18,12), at whose word heavens and earth come, and will go (Isaiah 51:6).

Rationally, as biblically,

ALL THINGS is the comprehensive terminology (John 1:3),

without LIMIT for what is not God,

where creation is the method of its institution, and God the atuhor of it.

He who imposes limit, ADDS to God’s word, and is warned in Proverbs 30:6, against such presumption. Such is the condemned eccentricity of ancient Israel as it came close to judgment as seen in Psalm 78:41: Limit God! It was an offensive foray of unreason and rebellion. Its judgment scripturally is most clear in that Psalm.

Yet you express yourself in terms of considering:
NOT all things ? NOT the truth, then!

What then, some implication that despite His affirmation, the words of Christ CANNOT judge because some of them need alteration in terms of philosophy, because it all alters, who knows where ? (John 12:48-50, Colossians 2:8, I Cor. 1 to the explicit contrary ?). What is this: unreasoned and irreverent persiflage ?

The word of God tells us to the contrary that He who IS the truth has TOLD us the truth, and that ALL His words will act not only in supervision of ‘reality’ but in judgment of that part of it known as man (John 8, 14, 5, 12:48-50), and that all His words are in heaven, and shall endure for ever (Psalm 119), and that heaven and earth will pass away, but His words will not (Matthew 23:35). It tells likewise that HE who MADE becomes for us WISDOM (I Cor. 1:30), which does not mean that He lacks it compared with you or other philosophers of your class, or fails unlike such teachers, to provide it in His word. From such unsupported premises, at war even with themselves, His word becomes so defective in this department that it needs entire contradiction to correct it.

No, it is clear from His word that He is not wishing to defer to any of your school, to you, or to your egregious appearance of mixed up thinking, asserting now materialistic premises (against which, see the refutation of Repent or Perish Ch. 7, SMR), now monistic principles, despite the entire bifurcation of the Bible, on GOD on the one hand and MAN and UNIVERSE on the other (Colossians 1, John 1). Such moves appear to be seeking to confine God to barracks – the very ones HE made, which could not exist without Him!

You speak as if to want God to be part of some all-inclusive whole which includes Him and us, but this is merely in logic, to bypass the issue, ignoring the causative necessity (cf. SMR, Causes) and returning to metaphysical magic, irrationalistic irruption of thought, without warrant. This is to cease rational discourse, and hence here irrelevant, and as before explained, a removal of one contestant from the ring, yourself. I do not wish to speak, then, to air, as noted earlier. The cause of this total thing ?

We come back to God as in SMR; and then to the necessity of the truth of His word, as there shown. This is what is called ignoratio elenchi, avoiding the question. WHERE is the source and cause ? In God. Now, you say, put God in something else and make Him part. Where is the cause of this new total thing ? It is mere wastage of time and words.

Back to where you began, you come, and then to the creation of the contrived, the limited at the deployment of the power of the unlimited, the eternal.

{On all this, one would have hoped it known to you, but some of these references have to be repeated. See SMR, Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch. 7, TMR esp. Ch. 7; and please observe the latter deals at length in terms of various disciplines, including physics, with predestination, which some of these articles develop with care.}

In doing such things as these, you contradict scriptures almost without limit. The BIBLE: Romans 11:34-36, contrary to all your vain imaginings, declares:

“For who has known the mind of the Lord?

Or who has become His counselor?

“Or who has first given to Him

And it shall be repaid to him?”

“For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things,

to whom be glory forever. Amen.”

GOD is the ONE BEYOND ALL THINGS, and says so. You surmise and suggest otherwise and so contradict the Bible, and waste time to boot, by appealing to what is without evidence, from what is incomparably attested for millennia, seeking therefore past Jesus Christ, who declared that HE IS THE TRUTH, so that when His word makes it so you would have something beyond all this, of which the God of the Bible is part, and as if to make Him quite untrue when He claims, as shown above, to the contrary.

The Father, said Christ in His voluntary humiliation as a servant, is GREATER THAN ALL, and ALL is from God, says Paul, and IN THE BEGINNING there was God, says John, yes with His word, there being one God: His word with Him, THE GOD (Greek) of whom Thomas spoke (John 20:28). Revealing and revelatory, they are one. As to Him, then, ALL things (the all embracive, all inclusive panta) were made by Him, and such is the teaching whether from John and Paul, of Isaiah. All things are from this Eternal One, maker of time, of space, of all things limited, containing all things in His power, and holding them at His will: which is a good will (Ephesians 1:5, Hebrews 1). That is clear teaching. God is from the first, the rest is from Him.

As to that rest, there is only one category and that is in creation terms, for it is ALL by His word. That is what John declares. "By Him were all things created," says Paul. What things ? Those "that in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. ALL things were created through Him and for Him, and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist."

You want something else ? You contradict God and with Him, the reason He gave.

God is SPIRIT, so that FOR THAT REASON flesh and bones are excluded in His eternal form (Philippians 2, Luke 24:39). Created things are not he, in whole or in part, SINCE HE instituted them by His word, not a self-multiplication or mutilation. That 'creation, it is in the Greek, a term indicative in Colossians of having no basis prior to the action in view; and He condemns those who worship the creation, or treat any part of it in terms of God, or as if it were God, since NO PART of it is so; nor can ANY part be so treated without intense blasphemy and confusion of thought (Romans 1:17-25, Exodus 20:3ff.).

God is the One Eternal Being, and God the Bible intensively declares, is Spirit (John 4), NOT to be confused in ANY way with His creation: indeed, of Christ, the “I AM” of John 8:58, we read that “He is before all things, and by Him all things consist” (Colossians 1:17). All things: one category. HE is before them all. When their very structure is removed, except for those appointed to various destinies, it is God who remains (Isaiah 51:6). These then are mutuallly exclusive, as are my books and myself, though in some ways intimately related.

This of Christ, the word of God become flesh, is parallel to Micah 5:1-3, concerning His eternity. Something before what is before all things, logically cannot exist. There is nothing before Him.

This then declares of the nature of everything,

that Christ is before it,

and is ground for its existence

and maintenance as in Hebrews 1:3.

ALL THINGS likewise are to be gathered finally together in one, in Him, just as they derived from Him (Ephesians 1:10). He is not they; they are not He: they are gathered to Him, assessed by Him, who in judging them is not judging Himself, but those to whom the message goes out: REPENT! (Matthew 4:17, Luke 13:1-3). For that HE is the judge (John 5:19-23), and without sin (I Peter 2:22). What the creation is, then, God is not; and treating as God any part of it, accordingly, is abomination before God (Romans 1). If it's made, HE made it (John 1:3); if it's not, it is He (Psalm 90).

That is what the Bible clearly says. Moreover, God can count. He does not miss anything (Psalm 147:5). Trying to put Him into some sort of philosophic prison, made in imagination, vested with airy qualities by imagination, girded with earthy creation matters, or any such thing, is merely making an anti-biblical model and then, in application, noting the differences that result when you apply it in some fatal mixture, with biblical facts. God has not authorised any co-writer of scripture, however; and the case is just the same now as in the days of ancient Israel. He does not really LIKE such people using His name and His word for their thoughts (cf. Isaiah 55:11-13). It is rather an incompetent exercise from the start. If someone says, I am against the teaching of the Bible, systematically, and have nothing to gain from it, merely opposing it: well, it is irrational, but straightforward. To speak against it categorically, and not seem to oppose it, however, reminds one rather of the temptation of Christ.

Even this little author, myself, does not like it when people act as if they were with me when they are against me, or as if my words were endorsed by them, when they assault them; how much less does God, and He SAYS SO (Jeremiah 23:16,28-29).

Therefore I have to warn you concerning all these imaginary theses the ones which you have articulated, without base, rational warrant or coherence with reality or scripture, and contrary in the extreme to the latter, and your use of the Bible with it.

This I do in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ as my duty, and rest assured it is not cold (Ezekiel 33, Proverbs 24:11, II Timothy 4:2). Sometimes gravity may make for an appearance of coldness; but even a doctor looking at a cancer, can be both warm in concern and cold in understanding its danger.

I take this step in hope, for it is my intense desire that you might be delivered. Nevertheless, having twice admonished you, I must now leave it to the Lord.

Incidentally, a word to some of your new departures. You suggest one is merging love with some sort of affectionless duty ? Evidence zero. If you read my works in Spiritual Refreshings … Chs. 9-12, you will see that this is a grave distortion; and if you read SMR Appendix B, you will find it is a comic parody of what I acclaim. Your point is that when you love someone, you are enriched by them. This is sometimes so for the creation (not when you grab for love an unseen kid from a coming car which kills you), but to apply this to what is CONTRADISTINCT in mode of operation from man, that is, in form (Philippians 2:1ff., I Timothy 6:16), so that He dwells in light unapproachable to intrusive imaginations which would predicate of the Creator the limits of the creation: it is mere vapidity.

It assumes, as you do far too often, as a MODEL that the Creator is not infinite and special in that infinitude, and does proceed on the strictly limited and limiting bases that we do (when without Him), and hence the application is merely a philosophic alien model being placed where it does not belong. The results are confused in the outset, diffuse in the result, meaningless of God.

That is how you make your ‘inference’ to what in fact is the DIRECT OPPOSITE of what is presented here on the love of God. The verification of your point ? It is intensively negative.

Your concept of ‘synthesis of what the subject feels’ as a ground for the concept that per se, for anyone and everyone on every occasion, the emotion brings change, is wrong even in our world, let alone apt for intrusion into the limitless divine, with omniscience, which at once contradicts the very basis of your limitation conception. There may, with limited beings, be an ingress of this and that with anger, or there may not be: it may be a mere application from the heart with the principles of what is due. When a personal Being knows all, however, there is no room for shadow of turning or variation.

Logically, KNOWING something in advance gives no ground for the idle imagination that you do not acutely FEEL it; and knowing it in advance, allows likewise no ground for the intrusive conception that you are changed by what YOU ALREADY KNEW. That is mere contradiction, as you exhibit multiply, and then multiply again, of the subject of discourse. You apply the natural with its limits and created conditions, to the supernatural, and His uncreated and unlimited conditions, and guess what ? It does not fit. Even in mathematics, one is not two; and in any field, infinity is not finitude. Again, even in the field of finitude, you merely generalise beyond the evidence, and assert what you will in this field, as presented to me.

You do well to refer to 'God in the abstract', for certainly this is precisely what you do. God however is NOT in the abstract. Your conceptions of cold beings, and materialistically contained created type beings, in terms of God, either for a reaction basis or a direct assertion, is indeed abstract. God is God, just as you are you, with this difference, that you are a creation of His, and He is your Creator. Your philosophical postulate that although His character may be fixed, yet when He actually does something, this automatically adds to His knowledge or personality or something or other, and so changes Him, confuses two things.

Firstly, it is not a change per se, to apply an emotion, principle or other facet of being, to a situation. It is possible it will merely confirm what was there before.

Secondly, with God, the change is in any case impossible, contrary to His emphatically and repeatedly revealed nature, to the nature of such a Being and to reason itself (cf. Romans 1:17), as shown above. It would pre-suppose a different model for Him, without acknowledgement, as if one were discussing first a triangle, and then a parallelogram. That has been exhibited above and you could consult Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 9. This is what is known as a slide, and one sees such things repeatedly in your presented work. God is mentioned; a philosophy without warrant, slight and superficial, a generalisation not even sustainable with man, is mentioned; then it is applied to ‘God', on the basis that He is not what the Bible depicts.

This is, however, as a matter of fact, what I have shown, concerning His eternal nature and power (as in Romans 1:17ff. cf. SMR), what reason finds, and that without which it cannot be met. This sort of slide, denying the conditions of our discourse, merely shows the results of what you think, does not touch the model in view, and hence is formally irrelevant.

Were you openly to attack the Bible, it would be relevant, but still irrational.

You state that God is always emphatic. Is this to be seen in Hosea 11:1-ff. ? Was He emphatic when He was patiently teaching Israel to walk, drawing him with cords of love ? It is merely specious to make such generalizations, which do not meet all the facts. It makes discourse worthless: rigour is required in reason, no less than in other fields of importance. Imaginations without discipline are for fairy stories and the like. When one wants these, it is not well to confuse them with God. God experiences new emotions, you declare. How odd since, indeed reasonably necessarily, He knows all things.

If something were beyond His knowledge when He is the comprehensive creator of all, He would have miffed it, foozled it, it would have got beyond His control and power, rendering Him impotent. If so, He would be inadequate to meet His own conditions, and would have surpassed in action the power of will, so negating its effectiveness, giving to Him a series of compulsions requiring their cause in turn. (On this, you may wish to read Acme, Alpha and Omega Ch. 8, which deals with such things in some detail.)

Moreover, In that case, He would be deficient, and so not God, provided with a limited nature, merely a component in a system with constraints, invented by God, not this imaginary idol. Idol ? For such an anti-scriptural and irrational postulation as you propose, this being not God, its worship would involve idolatry, yes.

You opine that God is restricted, putting Him in your generalisation basket as NOT ABLE to know what is to come. Things in freedom, you conceive, CANNOT be known until they happen. On two scores, this fails. Score one: you apparently marvel that one should conceive you attack scripture. What does it say, He knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:9-10). Moreover He majors in this in Isaiah 41, 43, 48, declaiming against those would-be gods and divinities, objects of worship, and philosophic substitutes for Himself, which CANNOT foretell the future, whereas HIS RECORD proves the contrary. He mocks this, their inability, because of their presumption and God-hostile pride. Listen to these words from the Bible (Isaiah 44:7-8), where God glories in His unique power to predict, based on His unique Being, in this unlike all other contenders for divine honours:

"Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel,

And his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts:

‘I am the First and I am the Last;

Besides Me there is no God.

And who can proclaim as I do?

"Then let him declare it and set it in order for Me,

Since I appointed the ancient people.

And the things that are coming and shall come,

Let them show these to them.

"Do not fear, nor be afraid;

Have I not told you from that time, and declared it?

You are My witnesses.

Is there a God besides Me?

Indeed there is no other Rock;

                           I know not one.’ "

Again, mark the parallel in Isaiah 45:11-12:

"Thus says the Lord,

The Holy One of Israel, and his Maker:

'Ask Me of things to come concerning My sons;

And concerning the work of My hands, you command Me.

I have made the earth,

And created man on it.

I—My hands— stretched out the heavens,

And all their host I have commanded.

'I have raised him up in righteousness,

And I will direct all his ways;

He shall build My city

And let My exiles go free,

Not for price nor reward,'

                          Says the Lord of hosts."

Similarly, consider the empirical challenge about future prediction in Isaiah 48:3-8:

"I have declared the former things from the beginning;

They went forth from My mouth, and I caused them to hear it.

Suddenly I did them, and they came to pass.

Because I knew that you were obstinate,

And your neck was an iron sinew,

And your brow bronze,

Even from the beginning I have declared it to you;

Before it came to pass I proclaimed it to you,

Lest you should say, ‘My idol has done them,

And my carved image and my molded image

Have commanded them.’

"You have heard;

See all this.

And will you not declare it?

"I have made you hear new things from this time,

Even hidden things, and you did not know them.

They are created now and not from the beginning;

And before this day you have not heard them,

Lest you should say, ‘Of course I knew them.’

"Surely you did not hear,

Surely you did not know;

Surely from long ago your ear was not opened.

For I knew that you would deal very treacherously,

                          And were called a transgressor from the womb."

Here the problem most clearly is not some irrational sense of divine inadequacy, but of human depravity, refusing to believe in God in a practical way, despite a constant and even amazing supply of fulfilments of divine predictions which practically made up some of the very texture of their history and life. Therefore God is very careful to make them mark what He has done, and what idols have NOT done, and to become observant, if not believing, if by any means their dulled hearts might awaken, and they might live spiritually, and know God. This is the biblical teaching, the divine protestation and the celestial performance laboratory, the history of man, jutted into their unbelieving faces.

As shown in SMR Chs. 8-9, Highway of Holiness Ch. 4, and other places as previously listed, God foretells the future systematically, in detail and this included the date of Christ’s death. HE CLAIMS He does it, that HE ALONE CAN do it, and that it is DEMONSTRABLE that He has done it. I show that to be so in considerable detail.

Hence you flatly contradict

the DIVINE EXPRESSION OF INFINITE DIFFERENCE IN POWER from man.

You imagine that your type of knowledge is the limit. This is the same old thing, hoary by now. You set the limit in yourself, your race, or your universe, and then apply it to God, so making it irrelevant since the subject of discourse is the God of the Bible (do I IMAGINE you are attacking it ? that contradiction in system and substance, in detail and principle is not contradiction ? then words have no meaning and reason is dismissed, so ending rational discourse by your option. You can do that: and assuredly it seems that you have done it.) Then you develop this finite divinity and place constraints and restrictions on Him, and do not in what I have seen, even acknowledge your deity-creative powers. Of course, men often DO create gods; it is just that when they do this, their protégés are their very own, idiosyncrasies of their imagination, weaker than water, more fatal than death.

A novelist can SEE what a character will do, sometimes, because of the intense empathy or hostility, and the perspective beyond all this, which is operative. God can see the nature of all things as they unfold, and indeed goes further, since from His perspective, the created is exhaustively so, and exhaustively known, for there is NOTHING HIDDEN FROM HIM with whom we have to do (Hebrews 4:13). Indeed, “all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.” As so often, you differ. God not only DOES not, you claim, but CANNOT know the result of free actions.

Reason here is missing.

God on the other hand in the Bible, does and by nature entirely knows, to the point that He forecasts things for millennia ahead, involving persons and interactions in kingdoms not then even in existence.

Reason: evidence to show it (see two prophecy indexes on our Website). There is a further reason which resembles a point made earlier, but for convenience it is here applied again, as it is applicable broadly.

Further reason: If God did not comprehend what He made, it would be beyond His ability, and hence He would abandon what He is to the unknown, which would mean that He did not exist as He would, since the future would be high seas of the unknown, if there were any seas, or height around then, with divine desire surpassing wisdom, divine wit inferior to reality. Hence He would be limited, hence in a system of some kind, hence not God: hence this is a contrary model being worked out in entire irrelevance to the God of the Bible; as to the necessities of logic.

This balking of divinity’s power and knowledge is to put a limit there, and if there is a limit, someone not God must have put it there, and if so, we are not talking of that Creator, shown by logical necessity to be God, or the biblical person called God, who “does whatever He pleases in heaven and on the earth” (Psalm 115, Ephesians 1:11), but of some imaginary, to be pitied demi-urge of your creation. (On this, you may find value in TMR Ch. 7, which deal with such matters at some length.)

Demiurges do not really go, for if they are God, where is the demi- ? and if they are, where is the plurality ? and if there is a system for them all, why call one of these things God at all ? You must rationally go in search of the actual God, following the evidence ruthlessly till you find what He attests as His word, and not imagine that you can make God philosophically or in any other way, in your own limited little image, for that is to make a new model for discourse, and to make creation the topic, not its cause and basis.

You propose that the ONLY way (such knowledge is too wonderful!) for God (He is listening, you know) to know something in advance, is to determine it ? The reason for this, as usual, is missing. You imagine Him in our limits, and actually limit Him even more, since God’s children DO have access to Him, whereas this quiddity you create, has no one, poor lostling. You then postulate for Him this and that, apparently entirely unaware of the most grotesque and gratuitous anthropomorphism in the worst sense.

To survey a scene of wholly known beings doing what they choose is by no means a self-contradiction. YOU do not wholly know, and seem to put your imagination as God’s limit, for some unknown reason. When, like an author but more so, comprehensively, God knows what He has made, its entire personality nature (if you were a myth, your words would be meaningless echo, face it, you ARE you and HOLD your positions and so on, and that is why you continue with it: be not so self-forgetful, like Hume, in that sense – cf. SMR pp. 257ff. in his hapless failure concerning ‘self’): then to foresee what is to occur, that is mere consistency on the basis of the power of the Creator, as already shown.

This matter is developed in various places on this site, but one that may help your understanding of it, is to be found in That Magnificent Rock, Section D on predestination and the Predestinator, the nature of the same and the spirit of man in all of this. It is seen further in Predestination and Freewill, in model terms, in Chs.   1 and   3 especially.

Can He NOT see a will for all it is worth, see like a doctor, its developments, but not limited by system, having made personality and being wholly aware of it, in its entirety, in a way that man is not ? Why not ? Having made it, He does not abort it; and not aborting it, He DOES understand it. Indeed, if He did not, He would again be limited, subjected to imposed constraints, and enveloped in a world beyond His knowledge, power or management, His wit once more inferior to reality, constrained by powers beyond Him, imposed upon Him, His desires surging in dulled drabness against the rocks of frustration, dooming Himself to any breach of His principles, of His power, being and hopes, desires or plans. Such is not God - but a creation. A being so limited is thus irrelevant to the issue and need not concern us further.

What then ? He is unable to comprehend His creation ? If so, He is not God, so your argument is merely a slide once more. Freedom is not inscrutability, and the operation of your will is not compromised by divine knowledge of its passions, desires, motivations and outcomes. That is mere word. There is nothing in the one contrary to the other.

Your freedom of course is not ABSOLUTE, for you are a creature, involving that distinction you seem in passing at least, continually to forget. You are thus in disparity in infinite degree from the knowledgeable power and powerful knowledge of your Creator. God can know what YOU will determine as part of what you are, foresee all your developments without problem, as your type of thing, man, is first of all in His own image, giving infinite access, and secondly, under His entire constructive parameters.

Determinism is one way to see material things act in advance (to the extent God does not intervene, and the things are fully programmed), and freedom of personality is another way; and liberty is not removed by perception. There is simply no case, but that of a confused anthropomorphic model, the application of which is entirely irrelevant, and that, in this case, to an infinite degree.

You do not, as so often, show cause for your philosophy. One thing is in fact denied in this freedom. It is autonomy.

In fact, autonomy in the creation is what is impossible to freedom, since God being God, HE IS and constitutes limits to what one can do, first of all by being there, secondly by acting as He will and thirdly in terms of what He is pleased enunciate, and as He so often stresses, then DO: and this, both to show that He CAN forecast, that He is THERE and that it is pure folly to re-invent Him or dismiss Him. This is seen in Isaiah 48's mockery of false wisdom and its demonstrable impotence compared with His demonstrable ability - it is never wise to ignore facts!

Autonomy, that godlike ability to be and do what you will, however, being absent from all but God, of necessity by definition, liberty for man is not therefore removed. It is restricted. I am not free to become a frog, or to talk Russian, which I do not happen to know, or to grow muscles of steel at whim, since I am limited.

This in no way compromises the reality of my liberty to do certain other things, such as write this second time to you, in the love of Christ and in compassion for you and others, and concern.

My will, in my case, COULD have been subject to all sorts of social and political, psychological and cultural processes, powers that work in a system, and have been influenced in such a way that it was manipulated, and partially irrelevant.

However, since it has THE LORD, absolute and knowable in terms of His Gospel of dying for sin, arising in demonstration of divine physical power even over death, cancelling guilt through faith by His blood, sending His Holy Spirit to enable wisdom and link as Helper to the divine mind, I am not so limited. Any such augmentation is of course limited by God's will; but by that same will, as with Daniel, God is able to give to a man what the man's power in no way is able to produce. One finds this continually a one writes before, and for Him.

God then is my Helper not for any alien pursuit, but just as in LIBERTY I DESIRE, in doing HIS will (Ephesians 1:19, Luke 21:15), which I prefer to my own, since it is far better. It is as with a Father, and His wisdom is delicious, for it covers all, answers all problems, overcomes all obstruction, resolves all and has no failure in answer ever: it IS the answer, in all nations and times. This one finds, in one's own life according to His promises; and before by literary attestation and historical fulfilment of His stated plans, just as He professes.

God KNEW that Abraham would bring up his household in His name; but this did not make Abraham do it; rather God KNEW as He declares that it would be so. What amazingly little sort of a goddy thing is this which does not know what He has done, or understand the ways what is to be, will express itself, as if He were in some school not yet up to it (Genesis 18:19). God KNEW the name of Cyrus to come and DECLARED IT and noted this declaration as showing His deity - Isaiah 44:25-45:5).

He does such things "for I am the Lord and there is no other." Your desire to reduce him to limited parameters clashes with every whit of His word; and with His power and creation. KNOWING is not COMPELLING: it is as simple as that. He may indeed, actually go further, and in view of someone's sinful desire, decide HOW it will have results. In this way, He enables all events to be contained; but does not frustrate, merely limits from autonomy, the reality called freedom. To be free, you do not need to be God; you do not need to be autonomous, which is indeed a myth, outside the deity Himself.

Thus what you assert is contrary to reason, to scripture and to evidence: a fair trio.

In my Predestination and Freewill, esp Ch. 1, in Tender Times for Timely Truths Ch. 11, as in the other two works in the predestination trilogy I have on the web (PRETRIL, in Search), and in Little Things Ch. 5, the nature of freedom is explored, and the way freedom can work is addressed in substantial detail.

No, then, I have not missed the point about consistency being always part of the changing process: the evidence, reason and revelation are all against such a postulate. I have missed the infection, that is all.

Process, as God, could not even be known, since then there would be no ABSOLUTE TRUTH to know, and you in particular could not know it, so that all your words are vain and vapid in advance, whoever you are, who so maintain; and so it is for all in this self-contradictory philosophic camp. If consistency is merely PART of this changing process, then the process contains some measure of consistency, without ceasing to be process, for how could PART of something not be contained by it ?

If then the changing process is the abstraction which you are positing for God, as here, then by definition you could not know it. It is not the wisdom and knowledge of God which is in question, but yours, you see.

It is always so with man, when he disputes with the Almighty.

Concerning this affair, then, this philosophy, what is being said ? This is entirely SYSTEMATIC logically, and psychology has nothing at all to do with it. In its field, it applies to one, it applies to all. It is principial, and part of the model. It does not work. No model putting God here or there ever works, since it can never have what is not there, and God is not available to be put-able; for a submissive, contained God is not God but some kind of element in the changing process, which then needs its Creator logically, as this universe in fact does always; and you move not at all, but backwards into verbalised mismatch of word and need.

You have not, unfortunately, addressed the material already sent, to any significant degree, and having answered your misconceptions, and noted your many contradictions of the Bible, as far as necessary, I must now leave you in hope, to the Lord. Many have been changed, and it may be, in time, you will realise where you are, and make haste to be elsewhere. I hope so. If yes means no, and DO NOT CHANGE, THE SAME, NO VARIATION means variation, change, not the same, then words being without meaning, as noted above, this constitutes a denial of rational discourse, and is a self-defeating position, which therefore needs no further answer.

All your basic theses as presented then, being without logical foundation, often without rational evidence, or against evidence; your protestation about not attacking the Bible being shown wholly in error; and your concept of subjecting God to your instruction as to His word, which He indicates is to endure and be fulfilled to the jot and tittle, and your mercurial model-change method having been detached from the necessities of coherent thought, in the realm of God and creation: the matter concludes.

You have called me to account on immutability, and I have answered you. I have given you much material to consider, and you have not considered it to any significant extent at all, but have answered. Your admittedly unready answers, are now answered, and you have had a 'fair go'.

Yes, I have very strong reason to note your contradiction of the Bible in word and concept on various matters, and could do more, but satisfied this will best serve, I terminate this correspondence for the reasons above noted (cf. Titus 3:10). Since with your name, for whatever reason, I have now quite a number of messages, let this suffice.

In the love of Christ,

Robert Donaldson

For World Wide Web Witness.

EPILOGUE

Casting the Gaze from Behind ...

This series of communications has been interested for several reasons. To the point of our present work, it illustrates, rather dramatically perhaps, how very worn-out is this world, with zealous mistreatment of the word of God going as in conformity with it, or not against it. The true is called false and the false true, as in a junior mathematics class with no teacher.

How bold is the false prophecy of today, that it dares so much.

Yet you might ask, Did not the sects do PRECISELY this ? Yes, but this is more audacious, in that the very boldness of the assault on the word of God made by many, with smiling feeling reminds one of the kiss of Judas. No assault ? no, only a kiss for the Christ.

Again, this sort of materialistic religion, in its philosophic clothes, is a commentary on the rise of this attitude through long years of mis-instruction in schools, in South Australia for example by government FIAT (TMR Ch. 8), so that the feeling for reckless adventure with divine things grows, as does excitable lustiness in the over-fed child, bursting with fearless bravado.

It nicely prepares the way for the return of Christ, false prophecy being in just that sort of multiplicity, that it is rather like being in a crowd (predicted in Matthew 24:24), pushing and shoving, to get FAR from the gate which is Jesus Christ to another painted image of philosophy, the religious poseur.

It is similarly noteworthy, that CHRISTIAN statues, or as in the Grand Canyon parklands, PLAQUES, or for that matter, the use of Sunday in cities: these are all tending to go, so that only Moslem or some such exotic flavour (far from the formal Christian past for this land) is likely to be allowed in terms of multi-culturalism, while our historical basis is shrouded like some Arab lady, not allowed to be seen. While some churches have erred before this, into the sort of corruption portrayed in some of the cases in Revelation 2-3, now in the debasing international scene, there is a return to the days of Romanism’s frightful misuse of force, when there was erected a whole structure of wicked departure from the NO FORCE for the faith rule of Christ (John 18:36).

This time the corruption starts as more voluntary, with psychological whips, addictions, cultural corrosions, inherent corruptions as with Demas, cunning compromises, inveterate unbelief wearing formal clothes of faith, political intrigue, carnal co-operations with arrant ideologies and the like, while many former ecclesiastical bastions fall as if it were a physical necessity. It continues with force more manifest, as a weaker Moslem band of those led by false prophecy, or a portion of them, seek to impose belief by blast, or rule by power, neither constructive nor productive. It is not the power of such dismal debasement that is to be a source of much concern, as it will pass with all the other implements of abusive power of which the world is increasingly heartily sick: it is rather the reaction that it will assuredly help to bring, into a world government to prevent it. Since this is already well under way both politically in the EU, and religiously in the swing to unsanctified unity of whatever with whatever (cf. News 121, 122), this new impetus but accelerates it.

One is reminded of the challenge of Isaiah in 59, where ‘truth is fallen in the street’, but also as there, of this, that when the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will raise a standard, and the Lord will act. The following verse (Isaiah 59:20) is cited by Paul in Romans 11:26-27, in terms of the final features of our Age. How the Lord so acts: for when darkness is the light of man, the light of God penetrates with the persistent, and sometimes highly dramatic action needed. It never goes out, and it comes with a power and plenary beauty when the time is ripe, the drama has developed to that place in the Act, which prevents void and makes virtue ring like bells.

It comes. His return is near; and all the symptoms, signs, signals and suggestions for it, wave like a forest of flags on a vast armada of shipping, called to celebrate His coming (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5).

Meanwhile, added to all the rest of the blessed indices of His coming, we find in many places, like marsh vapours, swelling words of vanity, strange conflicts of concept and derogations of deity. These blend with highly religious attitudes as in II Peter 2:18, the lusts not being at all sexual alone in such matters, but prodigiously often directed to some other thing, almost at times ANY other thing than God, while using His name or book or word or reputation in some more or less indirect way, to secure attention.

These things abundantly meet the criteria for the return of Christ. It must be remembered that when Romanism was taken for the final evil, it was forgotten that this particular spiritual fornication has to become DETACHED from the beast before his final rule, so that this COULD not have been the case, however evil the Inquisition was, and however gross the misuse of the Crucified Christ’s name undoubtedly was, when abominably used for the virtual crucifixion of His followers, in a reign of violence as far from John 18:36, as is the East from the West (cf. Revelation 17:5-6,16-17ff., SMR pp. 946ff.). The final flowers of evil are now coming to bloom, all things in order. Or what is it like ? It is like an operating theatre, with the nurses, equipment, solutions, materials, lights, heat, anaesthetist all ready for the surgeon to come.

With us, however it is not the surgeon but the Saviour who comes, and the operation is according to truth, for those in His place of grace in Christ, deliverance; for those despising His kindness in salvation, then to just judgment that dares to bring its pollution into the purlieus of perfection, wearing its own clothes, and not those transferring the very righteousness of God to us, of His provision (Matthew 22:1-10, Isaiah 61:10, II Corinthians 5:17-21).

Thus as the nations charge increasingly in their secular humanism or engorged idolatries, the West accumulates its debits, and the East its vengeance, using violence to secure ground as so often before, in the Moslem era. False religion stalks like hunters with guns; and violence leaves its rotted fetidity as a testimony to the obliteration of good, in the name of evil, itself meanwhile, dressed in pure white robes, made of reddened artificial cloth, not white linen (Revelation 19:8,13).

The nations wrest and wrestle. The power of the British Empire no longer, even ostensibly, supports Christianity, and in England as in the USA, sects having long fretted the framework and secularism the foundations, the Islamic horrors grow, not only for their threats of violence, but in domestic multiplication. Atheism rises like a mist, agnosticism grows like a wind, indifference arises as if it were a fetish, while others reel in passions delusive to the mind, barking like dogs, gabbling meaningless prayers in tongues in unison, as if precisely to contradict Paul by any means. The good is perverted, sexually, religiously, politically; and lying becomes a trade-mark of many governments, as if survival were the only option, and what survives did not matter at all.

Worn-out, this world is getting ready, like the unwise virgins (Matthew 25:1-13), for the Lord’s coming by spiritual prostration, sleep and recidivism. It is like someone at 3 a.m. fascinated by television, unwilling to live in the day at all.

Yet the day of Christ will come, as have all the other scriptural prescriptions; and the world will be as unready for this coming, yes, more unready than it was before. The crucifixion of Christ will be missing on the opera card this time; and the devastation of the destroyer will be in focus (II Thessalonians 1:6-8). His rise has been phenomenal since 1914, and his methods of doing trade staggering. Soon, stricken with fear of terrorism, and turning increasingly to a receptive agnosticism, the world will open shop for international government, not only in Europe, not only in the Americas, but wherever it is needed for … safety! Truth will be too dangerous, and divergence will increasingly be regarded as an evil dynamic for the idolators of survival.

Yet nothing will be safe, as Isaiah 2:10ff. shows so dramatically. Indeed, as the pressure and tension mount (cf. Revelation 8), asteroid or similar breaches are predicted to come to this earth of order, which tilts its nose at God, and blocks its ears, as if its ordered way were a feature in some Olympic Games dance: to show what it means to be left to its own devices (cf. Psalm 1). Thus is demonstrated the divine restraint for so long, of the Lord. Then, these features in train, the time of Christ’s coming will be nearer. Nearer, nearer it comes, like a swaying monster of a wave, about to break, the sun lighting up its outer edges with white foam. Beautiful it is to those who surf in it; but devastating to those who know Him not.

... To Focus on the Thrust to Matters Impending,

as the Immutable God deals with
Perverse Mutations that
Erupt by Will

for the Thrill

This epilogue has a second section, but it has so grown, that it has become a new Chapter on its own. It refers to Matters Impending