The important thing of course
is to find, to know and to walk with God. If that were not possible, the
important thing would be to find the truth; but since that is impossible
without God, there is no other important thing. Without God, there IS no
absolute standard, and all is relegated to an unknowable
fudge, with rules of working, but no assignable meaning, purpose or point.
If that were so, it COULD not be known; for if there were no God, that self-declaring
actuality, this being the discoverable truth, and truth being evacuated without
source, it would be mere self-contradiction to make such a negative affirmation
in the first place.
Man's mind is mere
calamity of word and desire without God, and man without God is no different.
He wanders with deeds as witless as mis-taught
minds, ludicrous but for the tragedy, often surging and childish in the extreme,
except for the sophistication of device, tangled except for the visible constructions.
Almost daily they blow each other up in the Arab invasion of Israel, the
Moslem proxy war going on from many sources via the Palestinians, that ultimate
of the phoney, that mismatched, cross-hatched
scramble of symbols and blood, teeming as if it were mistaken for water.
And that ? It is merely in this setting, a prime
example. Others seem to want to follow it with ardent zeal, thundering, threatening,
harrying and violating anything human as in the Sudan, where the colossal
magnitude of Moslems trying to make CAPTIVES and serfs of Christian children
cries to heaven for results. They DO come, but not before the face of the
foe is exposed (cf. Genesis 15:15-16, Acts 17:24-26). Of this, we shall consider
further, DV, in News in Ch. 1 to follow.
Wisdom is afar
off. The Creator is conveniently forgotten in endless ludicrous substitutes
for thought
(cf. Spiritual Refreshings
4, 13,
Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Chs.
9, 13,
Little Things
Ch. 5,
Wake Up World! ... Chs. 4-6, and Epilogue,
TMR Chs.
1, 5, 7, 8,
Stepping Out for Christ ... Chs. 2, 7-10 ),
which affect man's
mind, as a wealthy upbringing may turn the mind of an airy youth. Excluded
in logic, they nevertheless explore the possibilities, as if a mouse were
to examine endless traps, to find which was ineffectual. They all work and
he is always caught, but endless in the miasma of his mistaken theses, the
alogisms of his tireless tedium of misplaced
ideation - you can scarcely call it 'thought', for it is wrought in vanity,
pursued in the face of fact, and executed in the relish of unreality.
Man refuses to
know God. Hence the wisdom of God is missing from the globe; it is NOT that
it is the mad-house for Mars, though at the international level at least,
there is some excuse for the roguish concept of Shaw. In fact, millions are
deemed mentally unsound even in the USA, and the world-wide difference is
possibly in the main, the smaller number of psychiatrists to give the verdict.
And that verdict ? See SMR Ch. 4 for a review of the assessment of man
by man without God (which it usually is), and the validity of truthless bases in estimating the truth about man!
If wisdom is lost,
so too is power. The power of God is a beautiful thing. A small child relishes
the father's power to know, to do, to achieve, to perform; and it is fine
because daddy is fine. God is wonderful, so that His power is delightful.
The power which HAS to be behind all manifestations of its performance (there
is nothing to manifest when nothing is there, and when something is manifested
something is there to be made manifest), whether in the force of gravity,
or the securing of the ceaseless seeming motion within the atoms, in the
maintenance of form, the preservation of kinds in life, the inscription of
orders for its manufacture over and over again, the zestful thrust of thought,
the surveying responsibilities of spirit in man: this does not fail. It all
requires power and it is all given it, has been given it.
In a great house,
you may have multitudes of devices from computers to vacuum cleaners, from
reticulated air-conditioned (reverse cycle to boot), and structural solidity;
but it all requires power of one sort or another, power to achieve and power
to resist, to be what the thing is in the midst of what is potentially more
or less powerful to the CONTRARY. So in the universe is power, and it requires
like all power, its source. The source in this case must be sufficient to
course into each channel, in the past, in the present, in continuity, in
diversification, in correlation, in synthesis of mind, matter and spirit
in that delightful little package called man (delightful from an engineering
and cogitative point of view, but amazing in liberty of thought and action,
despite all the jaded cries of the cynics); and its sufficiency for all of
this is found only in God as we have seen often enough (cf. SMR, TMR).
- The
tragedy and the DISTRESS for man is the DEFAULT from personal relationship
TO THAT SOURCE, who
- in making
matter with its endless seeming laws and scenarios under these, under
those circumstances, whether the putative provisions 'unearthed' by
Einstein or any other, Newtonian, or that wide variety of efforts to
grasp which has characterised true, as distinct
from pseudo-science over the last few hundred years in particular,
- constructed
likewise mind in its machinations and created spirit in its volitions:
- without
failing to make an avenue to Himself.
Some seem mesmerised by the material with its extreme and extraordinary
seeming limits; some by the mental, with its wonderful facilities of correlating
event and idea, ideology and practice; and some by the spiritual, with its
zoom-in lens on the structure of ideology, the ferment of desire, the realisation of truth and the splendour
of man's inheritance from the Lord. In all these cases, the avenue to God
Himself is lost in furious pre-occupation or spurious religion. it is necessary
to go to God Himself. Necessary ? It is needful if you want to know what
you are for! What is permanently misplaced is often known as garbage (cf.
Mark 9:45 where 'Gehenna' the smouldering
dump is the term used, as in Matthew 5:29-30).
This avenue to
God, carefully constructed by Himself: It is not
tree-lined, though it is Cross-governed. How is this so ? In this, it is
so, that without the Cross man would have been a useless creation, best consigned
to the dust-bin (of thought) before his creation. A mismatch of fraud and
ambition, selfishness and sectional interests, proud ideologies and surging
violence, gentleness and sweetness, unselfishness and cardinal sacrifice,
patience and impenitence, resignation and endless feuding, his sickness speaks
like a loudspeaker on a sports afternoon for some large school. Where gross
immorality lapses, pride often enters; where serviceability is found, also
befriending it how often is self-acclaim, that humble self-assurance based
on the acclaim of merit, inwardly disposed! And what IS this merit ? was
the desire invented ? or is God given the glory.
And if He IS given
the glory, in what is a glory which consists in alienation, ignorance or
dismissal ? If later is soon enough to 'meet one's Maker', is life then not
a trial, a test and a discovery ? And what is this discovery, which refuses
to discover till the test is past.
What is it like
? It is like a footballer of talent, who does not discover this power because
he is waiting to find after death on this earth, what the actual facts were,
and disdains putting things to the open test of reality. To find the wisdom
of God, it is necessary to find God, and without Him, there is divorce already.
The wisdom of the
Creator, so vastly magnified in the very interstices both of matter and mind
and spirit, is however not astray. It knows no limit and finds no rebuff.
Instead of worshipping this One with such wisdom and power, over all systems
and their cause, and FINDING His wisdom and EXPERIENCING His power,
man naturally tends to seek power for himself, his nation, his class, his
category, his professional group, his future, his past, his ideals, his lust,
his licence, his enjoyment, his show, whatever
appeals; and as all this varies and often conflicts in the short-sighted
short-circuiting of mutual assault, it is a sort of may-day world, madly
whirling like some dervish at times, twirled like a Sergeant Major's moustache,
very short and bristly, its point coming to nothing.
Man in preferring
the insalubrious uncertainties of life apart from the Owner of his house,
has made an ass of himself. Imagine now if the whole world in its international
power groupings and war makings and God tauntings
(the Cross merely made the process the more obvious) were to able to be characterised at once, in one grading ... To be sure,
we must not forget the noble characters, the wonderfully loving minority,
the God glorifying, Christ loving millions who, though little as a percentage,
have the work of salt in the stew (and it IS a stew!). It is not to that
which we now refer, but the whole farce of force trampling on the globe.
The Greens are not wrong in this, that a limited environment is being trodden
on without wisdom or much restraint. They do not however go far enough.
The environment
is not only physical and biological, but physiological, cranial, volitional,
moral, spiritual and above all, that of the divine. This is, certainly, ultra-environmental
in any ordinary sense; but for all that, it is THERE, and if neglected, the
result is marring of man himself, which in turn leads to a real mission
for marring, which is what much of current international history is about,
and has long been about, with ever more powerful ingenuities of hatred and
contempt for mankind. Christ, we read in Isaiah 52 and Psalm 22, was marred
beyond the form of man, smashed out of shape, deformed in agonies and assaults.
That is what man did to God when given the opportunity. Ever since he has
been doing it in millions, each to the other.
God however, though
offered as a sacrifice for sin in the person of His eternal Word become flesh,
is not deformable. Only the form of His human exterior could be touched;
the dazzling purity of His inward Being, merely made its point, paid the
price for those who would receive Him (like cashing a cheque in one sound analogy), so that His output became
their input, and they are saved from the disease called sin, that author
of pandemonium, source of devilry, grand-stand seat of Satan, himself the
personal adversary which is sometimes almost visible in some, leering in
unloveliness, acrid in hatred, seeking what
is forbidden, stopping at nothing, and worth less than nothing.
In this volume,
then, we shall be considering Christ Jesus, the wisdom of God and the power
of God, the only rationally attested, scientifically confirmed word from
God, and at that, the very wisdom and the power of God, available to mankind.
Of this, in conclusion, let us read in I Corinthians 1:22-31 -
For
Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified,
to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those
who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ
the power of God and the wisdom of God.
Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God
is stronger than men.
"For
you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh,
not many mighty, not many noble, are called.
"But
God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise,
and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things
which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are
despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing
the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. But of
Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God - and righteousness
and sanctification and redemption - that, as it is written, 'He who glories,
let him glory in the Lord.' "
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Steady
on there brother! WHOSE Church is it ? and who is its LORD ? and what does
He say! and what is that which does other ?
Chapter 2
Spirituality
and the Knowledge of God
Necessities,
personalities and profundities
Practicalities
and joys
Chapter 3
Purity
and Power without Presumption
Majestic
Message from Psalm 19
Chapter 4
SEQUENCE
AND FLOW IN ISAIAH
AS IN
THE CASE OF THE OVERFLOW OF A RESERVOIR
especially
IN ISAIAH
59-66
Chapter 5
Freedom
and Its Assault: SA August 2002
CHAPTER 6
JUDGMENT,
LAMENTATION AND THE LOVE THAT LIVES
(for earlier
treatments of the two ancient and valorous prophets, and the relevant apologetic
significance, see
Earth Spasm, Conscience Chasm ... Ch. 3)
CHAPTER 7
The Versatility
and Architectural Liberties
of the Spirit
of Man
CHAPTER 8
THE PURPOSE, THE
PARODY and the PURITY
Concerning Jesus Christ, the
Lord and His Life, Ways, and Witness:
And the prevention of parody
by the intervention of original purity
From the Lord of originality
APPENDIX
On
Biblical History
Proceeding
on from our times with Elijah and Elisha, and then the later
development of Israel and Judah