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Now there is more news of war. India and Pakistan are not met any more in peace. Kashmir stirs them. The assault on the Indian Parliament, attributed to Pakistani terrorists, has not met satisfaction in the Indian Government, for the zeal of response to the outrage, in Pakistan. One of these nations now assures us that she is ready for trouble, that the relevant (presumably atomic) hardware is pointing towards the proper sites; the other notes with satisfaction that India is not any threat, for they are ready, most capably ready for anything she may do.

It goes on.  Afghanistan has incursions from Pakistan, with the US accepted as needing help in locations available, for this purpose. Now on the other side, there is India, highly disturbed, the fiddle with the function of her Parilament by such gross means, something requiring to her view, the uttermost response, and fast, and at the highest level.

Tibet remains under Chinese domination, with all the crass materialism which is dead and seeks to kill the spirit of man in its tentacular grip, non-materially directed by the spirit of the government in its various passions and errors, on the basis of thoughts which no matter has told it, and for which matters of Tibetan conscience and inner peace seem as leaves dropping. Kashmir is vexed with the interplay of hostile powers. Not too far away, the remnants of Chechnya smoulder from Russian invasion, while travelling a little further, the Georgian double independence problems, from Russia, and of one section from another makes company for the Turkish  'problem' with the Kurds, so that she may have on both sides, on that and with Greece, profound disturbance. Yugoslavia has not fully recovered from her classic combination of racial and religious hatreds, while moving  back to the Middle East, Syria is relentless, Lebanon partly occupied, Iraq intransigeant, Iran equipped with the capacity for instant jihads, having slain in millions in recent wars with Iraq, and performed who knows what atrocities in the name of religion, on the character, conscience and persons of those within.

Arab powers continue to harass Israel, like an unruly dog, killing, attacking, assailing, lamenting, appealing, murdering, in a few, in masses, afflicting, as if religious life were war and war were death.

It goes on, as if ENDLESS. But it is not endless. There is an end.
 
 

WILL IT EVER END ?
THIS IS THE CRY OF SOME IN BATTLE SEARED SOULS SEARCHING IN ACRID CONFLICTS, FOR PEACE, RELIEF, REST.
Yes, there is an end. Just as there was a beginning, so an end.

As one reads a work like "The Killing Ground" from Elleston Trevor in 1956, a sad but even more death-staring book than that remarkable production, "All Quiet on the Western Front" after World War I, to which it has been compared, there is a persistent theme. WILL it end ? WHEN it will
end ? Oh that it might end! How can the endless continue as if it were life, in death's wedding clothes, awaiting the groom!

In "All Quiet...", the end for the hero comes as his artistic licence, so scorned by his triumphalist German teacher before he left for the front, erupts in desire for beauty and peace, once again. Before his school time ended, he dared while in class, quietly, looking out the window, to sketch a bird. How outrageous! was the teacher's militant response. The fatherland required more discipline than that, and its glorious armies would need better perspective, not in art, but in military arts. Time passes. Long years spent in gaunt agony have come to the former student. It is now November 1918. As the last gasps of rasping war are drawing to a close, in a sudden burst of spontaneous longing for beauty and freedom, the young soldier quickly darts from cover to sketch a ... bird. He gets the bird and the Germans delete his sketch - his protoplasmic sketch, and , despite the report that all is quiet on the Western Front, it is too quiet for him.

Or is it ?  He is dead.

If "All Quiet..." had a longing intensity, in a mood of awed horror and poignant wonder at the brutality of pride in war, "The Killing Ground" shows advance in desperation and desiccation. The mood has swung more to the pragmatics of survival, the disorientation of physical dynamics, the relics of humanity seen in materialistic mode very often, as striving with their forces to force what they want to force, and being what they are, becoming what they must be. Gone is the sense of wonder worth-while, and the repressed realisation of beauty in the former, in the more recent book becomes rather the expressed realisation of macro-madness, suitable for man. Strife and war are taken in the stride, a few shed like leaves, the rest clinging on.

In both, there is the sense of the endless, that it cannot but does go on, and on. In the former, the gaunt denial of beauty and peace in the midst of desperation is focussed; in the latter, the new orientation to force and survival in the midst of vast bellowing forces, as one learns to tame the angry bull, leave the reader aware of the shift. A generation of false teaching has cut away even more of the residue of spiritual understanding, and a violent emptiness tends to replace the haunting sadness that went before. It progresses.

There IS an end! The madness of philosophy is still unchanged, but rather the more aggressive as its total fiasco in logic and life, laboratory and law, is demonstrated in ever widening circles. The continued desperation, the denial of God, logically impossible, experimentally anti-verified, is philosophically pushed into the ruins of the race, like atomic blasts added to earlier ones, to dessicate the wasted and agonise the residue. The devil indeed is maddened in temper, for he knows his time is short. The end approaches, and it hurtles without restraint, through its distance to the present, appearing like a star on collision course with the earth. There is more to come, and indeed asteroid collision or something of that kind is part of it (cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 6). But there is an end.

In Elleston's work, the action begins on the channel crossing in troubled waters to the Second Front, in the days of Normanby. As we read, we find from the start there is the theme, CAN it go on like this, the wallowing of the barge-like troop ships, the sea and the sickness, the thrust and the unworldly, unnatural private grounds of life, sitting on a hostile and unaccommodating sea, an ocean seemingly little concerned about the invasion of Europe, and decidedly making the onset inglorious as men wallowed. The rough seas and vomiting become a mere minor sibilance in the shipping scenario, advancing, always advancing, now halted for a time, but now moving, always advancing, with many thoughts, but eventual conclusion, as the beaches are reached. .

On they come to the beaches of France, and the noise of the guns is endless, the roar of the bombers seems interminable, the end of all sanity seems near as weakened men prepare to bring heavy armour to soft beaches while others snipe at them. The beaching seems interminable, the blocks of traffic, the wounded, the noise, the bellowing and the shrieking, the poignancy and the pathos as calamitous events spatter amidst the chatter and the orders, for better or for worse, as men see their own perspectives but must yield to one above. Above ? in the higher echelons of the military pang-makers, with endless seeming objectives and cries to do this or that, as they seek to make the enduring move to Germany.

So it was in World War II's depiction; and earlier in that of World War I.

So in our own day, let us summarily come to see the development. Now, the insurrection, the uprisings small and great, the clamour of disamour, the thrusts of hatred, the vying for superiority, the insistence on never yielding, the distaste for morals, the realism of ruin, it proceeds from India and Pakistan, nuclear-armed, not wanting war by general statement, near it by endless seeming armies and arms, words and upsets, insults, dangers, threats real and threats imagined. China still grips the natives, as they seem to regard the Tibetans, tightly to its directive arm. Moslems continue to suggest how nice world rule would be for Allah, and perhaps for themselves, and to mount unholy alliances with hatred and inhumanity, daring to ascribe to the Maker, the fiascos of flesh.

They have their love affair with death - for Christians - in Ambon; they swell in the Philippines, in Indonesia, they militate in Iran, they mouth in Iraq, finding even havens in England, where a now famous mosque has some interesting exhibits for world export. They love not at all our little Israel, and their god is by many alleged to make some sort of an alliance with them for its extermination, as almost interminable Moslem statements have told us. But if he does, he is as absent as Elijah's Baal, who perhaps was asleep, perhaps out hunting or having a conversation, as the prophet suggested. He could not act, for what is nothing is not available for action.

Let us hear of it in I Kings 18:25ff.(emphasis added for ease of perception):

Now Elijah said to the prophets of Baal,

“Choose one bull for yourselves and prepare it first, for you are many; and call on the name of your god, but put no fire under it.”

So they took the bull which was given them, and they prepared it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even till noon, saying,

“O Baal, hear us!”

But there was no voice; no one answered. Then they leaped about the altar which they had made. And so it was, at noon, that Elijah mocked them and said,

“Cry aloud, for he is a god; either he is meditating, or he is busy, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is sleeping and must be awakened.”

So they cried aloud, and cut themselves, as was their custom, with knives and lances, until the blood gushed out on them. And when midday was past, they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice. But there was no voice; no one answered, no one paid attention.

Look now at Jeremiah 3:1-5:

“They say, ‘If a man divorces his wife,
And she goes from him
And becomes another man’s,
May he return to her again?’
Would not that land be greatly polluted?
But you have played the harlot with many lovers;
Yet return to Me,” says the Lord.

"Lift up your eyes to the desolate heights and see:
Where have you not lain with men?
By the road you have sat for them
Like an Arabian in the wilderness;
And you have polluted the land
With your harlotries and your wickedness.

"Therefore the showers have been withheld,
And there has been no latter rain.
You have had a harlot’s forehead;
You refuse to be ashamed.

"Will you not from this time cry to Me,
‘My father, You are the guide of my youth?
Will He remain angry forever?
Will He keep it to the end?’
Behold, you have spoken and done evil things,
As you were able.”
 

Consider with this, 3:8-14a

“Then I saw that for all the causes for which backsliding Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away and given her a certificate of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but went and played the harlot also. So it came to pass, through her casual harlotry, that she defiled the land and committed adultery with stones and trees. And yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah has not turned to Me with her whole heart, but in pretence,” says the Lord.

"Then the Lord said to me, 'Backsliding Israel has shown herself more righteous than treacherous Judah. Go and proclaim these words toward the north, and say:
 

'Return, backsliding Israel, says the Lord;
I will not cause My anger to fall on you.
For I am merciful,’ says the Lord;
I will not remain angry forever.
Only acknowledge your iniquity,
That you have transgressed against the Lord your God,
And have scattered your charms
To alien deities under every green tree,
And you have not obeyed My voice, says the Lord.

'Return, O backsliding children, says the Lord; “for I am married to you.' "

But alas see now 2:27-29:

"Saying to a tree, ‘You are my father,’
And to a stone, ‘You gave birth to me.’
For they have turned their back to Me, and not their face.
But in the time of their trouble
They will say, ‘Arise and save us.’

"But where are your gods that you have made for yourselves?
Let them arise,
If they can save you in the time of your trouble;
For according to the number of your cities
Are your gods, O Judah.
Why will you plead with Me?
You all have transgressed against Me, says the Lord."

As if all this endless seeming litter of false gods and preferred gods, gods of other nations and varfied gods, were not enough, yet they proclaim themselves well pleased with themselves (2:32-35):

"Can a virgin forget her ornaments,
Or a bride her attire?
Yet My people have forgotten Me days without number.

"Why do you beautify your way to seek love?
Therefore you have also taught
The wicked women your ways.
Also on your skirts is found
The blood of the lives of the poor innocents.

"I have not found it by secret search,
But plainly on all these things.
Yet you say, ‘Because I am innocent,
Surely His anger shall turn from me.’
Behold, I will plead My case against you,
Because you say, ‘I have not sinned.’
Why do you gad about so much to change your way? "

The problem is seen simply in 3:20ff:

"Surely, as a wife treacherously departs from her husband,
So have you dealt treacherously with Me,
O house of Israel, says the Lord.

"A voice was heard on the desolate heights,
Weeping and supplications of the children of Israel.
For they have perverted their way;
They have forgotten the Lord their God.

“ Return, you backsliding children,
And I will heal your backslidings.'

" Indeed we do come to You,
For You are the Lord our God."

BUT DID THEY!

Alas NO!! The nation of Israel failed and paid, then; the nations which are not Israel are now flush in their innings, batting with ardour, with wicked bowling, determined to make a match of it, while the betting and the guile extend on all sides. The Gentile time sits at its end, Jerusalem now back in Jewish hands, the nation ? Israel (Luke 21:24).

The innings is about over. Israel did it. Now the  Gentiles are doing it, and doing it in equally spectacular style! They are really hitting out; there is little space left to go. Extremes of irreligion in the name of religion are putting hands together, while other extremes are blowing hands off.

There it very simply is, complex affections, religious affectations, new recipes for gods and their combinations, introductions, a sort of vague recollection of God, for use as a recipe disaster, while all the time it is like adultery of the spirit, intensely odious to God, intensively pursued as if without end, once monumentally with payment to the uttermost, by Israel, now in a spectacular and odious spectacle, by the nations at large. THAT ? it went on to end the era of Israel, as the Gospel surged to the nations, after its own national denial. THIS ? It will go on to end the era of the Gentiles, and serve to introduce ... THE END of the Age.

The world has no more ears to listen, than had Judah to heed what happend to Israel to her north, in her own day (cf. Ezekiel 20's parable). It proceeds to its end for the whole world, as Israel once before did, for her whole nation. Israel has yet a coming summons to the Gospel, which many in it  will heed; the world minus the Christians, whether from Israel or the other nations, has another summons. It is to doom. It does not listen. Listening is not the mode.

But is it only doom ? The call is clear to Christ (II Cor. 5:17-21) and has been for millenia. When He returns WITH HIS PEOPLE (Zech. 14:5, I Thess. 3:13), His rule will not facilitate evil, but expose its folly, rebuke its calamities and bring peace (Isaiah 11, Zechariah 14, Micah 4, Isaiah 2, 65, Revelation 20). It will not exempt (Psalm 2), but smash the godless evils, which, without the devil (as in Rev. 20), will look as witless as in the end, they really are. The very earth then is removed (Rev. 20:11, Isaiah 51:6), and there is nothing left of the wickedness, but the lovers of God are covered, kept and a new heavens and earth end this laboratory to expose sin, and enable salvation from sight (II Peter 3).

The end ? It comes.
 
 

Let us then review this comparison of Israel of old and the Gentile world of today.

In Israel's day, the provocation went on for some centuries, the prophets spoke, pled, appealed, remonstrated, demonstrated, declared; but the nation went on, now up and now down, but in a downward spiral of increasing guilt and godlessness, mingled with multiple empty divinities, scorning reality.

Then the end came. It always comes. In 586 B.C., the end of Jerusalem did not fail to hasten to its time. The 70 years of exile to follow were precise in forecast, and in fulfilment. Then they returned... until they sacrificed Christ, and thus themselves, for He is their King. Then they had 1900 years of exile, known for its contemporaneously being our history, that of our Gentile Age. Paul warns us! (Romans 11:17-23).

So now in the Gentile world, there is but ONE CHRIST, and if the nation of Israel has scorned Him, then is the Gentile any better ? Do the nations flock to Him ? Do the governments live by Him ?
Is self interest, national interest, popular interest, in Him ? Do His laws activate the governments ? But no! Just as the northern kingdom of Israel was carried off by Assyria when by intercession and mercy, Judah was spared in the days of Sennacherib (Isaiah 36ff.), and Judah then descended with speed to the END, like lemmings to the sides of the cliff and the sea, so now the Gentile world, as oblivious of what happened to Israel as was Judah in her own day, hastens to the cliff edge.

It is near. It falls.

Then the end comes. There is always an end.

To the interminable travesty makers it may seem it cannot come, that the world MUST go on,

• that their manipulations of deity, or ignorings, or inventions of deities or substitutes in nature making those who but serve, to be lords^*1,
• cannot stop;
• that the World Council of Churches,
• and the Bush prayer meetings,
• and the words of one official reported earlier, who made it appear that Moslems and Christians were all "people of the book"^*2 - WHICH book! -
• that these are but movements in life, without end.

The variations may seem endless, but the consummation comes. There are the inventions and inventories of false gods and substitute gods, non-gods who are to become virtual gods, like virtual images, combination gods, some like combination locks, to act only in the right sequence, plagiaristic gods which raid sacred premises and use the results in new syntheses of ignominy: but always it is a multiplication of  irreverent gods who do not know when to stop, when the end comes.
 

But the end does come, and then they stop. Without fail it has come, will come, does come.

The end is disenabled from not coming. To every impudence in religion, there is an end; to every fantasy of invention, there is an end; to every cocktail of combination, whether in freemasrony (cf. SMR p. 701, Beauty of Holiness Ch. 5), false ecumenism (cf. *1 below),  just like that of Israel of old, in the sects and their toleration by some called Christian, whether in Romanism or any other, there is an end.

It has been told so simply by Christ for our generation, as it was by Jeremiah for his!

Was it not written, and indeed IS it not written ?

"Then many false prophets  will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come"
- Matthew 24:11-14.

Yes, it is so written, did come from the lips of the Lord some 2 millenia ago, and will come from the work of the Lord, very shortly. We do not profess to know when, since it is the Lord's pleasure to keep this secret (Acts 1:1-7). However this same Jesus WILL return in a fashion just like that in which He went. He will come with an accompaniment of crucial attestations, the identikit this time for THE END of the Age, and these are now not only present in almost all points, but prominent, and becoming DOMINANT! (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5).

THEN, said HE, shall the end come.

It is notable from Christ's lips,  that he who endures to the end will be saved, and that the end shall come. There is a balance here: the ones who, geared, governed and guaranteed by God, are His, will be caused to endure to the end; and those who are not His, will not be able to do so, their mockeries and pretences becoming more and more unwholesome, unholy and obvious in their rebellion. (Cf. I Peter 1:1-5, I Thessalonians 5:9-10, John 10:9,27-28, Romans 8:29ff., 5:1-11, II Timothy 3, I Peter 4, II Peter 3.)

The carnage seems endless; the witless  wars seem like an excitement game, or series, invented for profit; but who profits ? Some do temporarily (cf. the spiritual squalor of II Peter 2:1ff., attributed to many in OUR Age). However, this is merely material, exploitative and temporary! There is payment to come for that unfaithfulness and hypocrisy.

This merely adds to the evils. So do the scenarios of unspirituality teem like heavy rain when it seems to have lost all notion of stopping; but like rain, it does stop, and when does rain stop ? sometimes not before all is sodden.

Spiritually, the thing is becoming sodden, in sexual licence, in martial extravanganzas, in hatred and contempt, in impatience and impenitence, in gross caricatures of God and gross betrayals, in false prophets in high places, and low places in high prophets. It will end.

The wars and rumours of wars, the house-building which seems never to stop, with thousands and thousands of houses arising in Adelaide alone, as if there were no failure in view, but only construction amidst destruction: it is PRECISELY as forecast (Luke 17:28-29, Matthew 24:6,21). And then ?

Then the end comes. There are limits, even for the spirit of man as before the flood came, for man is not god to endure in his own ways for ever (cf. Genesis 6:3, I Timothy 4:2 in contrast to I Peter 3:4). Moral squalor and spiritual fornications are the excitements of a moment. Payment is the ledger that is left. The fibre of man fails; the character of man is degenerating; the doctrines of man are becoming imperious. He flares like a catherine wheel! Meanwhile, the universe runs down, being so made; and further, it is ruined by the evil ways of man (cf. Isaiah 51:6, Matthew 24:22). It is all intensely and immensely clear in the Bible, in the world, and in the total parallel of word and history to follow. It is following... like an excited dog, off the leash. It is so predicted even in its most ghastly and ghoulish ways (cf. Revelation 6!). These are now raging in that intemperate flash of fateful energy which helps the end, but is no help to those coming, godless, to it.
 
 

There was a beginning, for the very degradation of energy and form attests it (cf. TMR Chs. 7, 1 , SMR Ch. 1). There was a capital for creation before the misuse of it helped to bring it down. It was in any case, not without limit. Its limitations are now being felt. The magnetic field reduces, the heat energy is less available, the pollutions increase, the material is being expended, the misuses minimise the limits. The Cambrian Age as we have often seen, as attested in the Burgess shale (cf. TMR loc. cit, SMR pp. 226-235, Spiritual Refreshings... Ch. 13), is filled with designs far in excess of the current ones. Even without the strangely indefensible geological ramblings of those who make trees, seen erect as fossils through many strata,  to be allowed as the things enduring through millions of years as strata accumulate around them, and haemoglobin to last millions of years (as found in fossils) contrary to all science, there is one lesson indeed in this.

There is a DECREASE of a vast percentage of what is HERE NOW compared with what was HERE ONCE.

Decrease in biota has been well attested and is much realised (cf. SMR pp. 252Hff.). It is not increase that we see in designs in nature, but decrease.

We move to the end.

We started at the beginning (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Chs.  7,  9, The Biblical WorkmanCh. 7, SMR Chs. 1 and 2), and we approach the end. What begins ends unless it is God, or guaranteed by God.

There is a sieve and much passes through it (cf. Luke 22:31-34); but some things stay.

What stays is not pride and arrogance, martial arts and artful marches, propaganda and such lapses of scientific method as should make the remaining hair stand on end, for those who embrace them (cf. TMR Chs.  1,  8, SMR pp. 140ff.), things which then ally themselves with force instead of intelligence, nonsense instead of imagination, chance instead of law, and what mischance makes chance create ? It is but the name for the actions without consultation with our own purposes, which occur about us (cf. News 80, SMR Ch. 3, Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 13, Beauty of Holiness Ch. 8, SMR pp. 999ff.^*3). It does not create. It is what is SUFFICIENT for the RESULT which creates. Otherwise, it would not, being insufficient, get the job done.

Phrases do not create, unless havoc or impressions; but impressions are not the Creator, and havoc is not the precision equipment which is man's. Chaos is not even distinguishable from nothing (cf. SMR loc. cit., chapters  1 and  7 above), and is still worse, being merely less sufficient still.

Sufficient for the beginning, is God; sufficient also for the end.

The end is justice; it is judgment; it is coming, fast. He has not made man witless, and His witty inventions (cf. Proverbs 8:12) are from a source in wit, knowledge and sagacity (cf. SMR pp. 100-101, Ch. 10, Little Things Ch. 5, Repent or Perish Ch. 7).

Its siren is sounding like that of an express train, changing tone as it gets nearer (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5). Not nothing but necessity is back of what is. And that necessity is free, for its necessity is merely the minimal functions needed to make the actual results^*4; in the end, it is without beginning, for this merely bypasses the necessity for the creation. Nothing will not do. What is sufficient is ALREADY THERE. To GET IT THERE, requires the same God back of it, always there. There is no beginning for Him, in order that there might be a beginning for us.

Now it is near the end, and many are as oblivious as was Israel, though the symptoms mount to the skies, just as the book says, mentally, spiritually, economically, martially and in death! (Revelation 6) - this strange, mad preoccupation with death, as if it were a virtue, this denial of life, this amputation of the arm of life.

The death that counts, ONE ONLY, is the death that counted, counted those who were His own, and took them and covered them, as it is written, God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world is crucified to me, and I to the world (Gal. 6:14). If YOU are one of His, have received, believed and come to HIM ONLY, as His word shows, by faith, repentant and in realism returning to your God, then well: the end is endless, merely an end of kindergarten. Heaven awaits, the end prepared is then the end of the beginning, and the continuation of the eternal life you already in that case know, and experience in Christ (John 17:1-3).

IF, however, you are not one of His, then the case is so simple, for God is good and has not hidden these things (Isaiah 45:18-19). It is like (Matthew 22) a king who called for those who would attend the wedding of His Son. All was ready. Many refused, often rudely, roughly, some trenchantly, to come. In the end, they were merely the objects of just wrath from the good king, those who so despised his governance and ignored his goodness, assuming his lands, using his privileges, abusing his ways.

One man came to the wedding, we read, but was not covered with the covering required. As to that, of course, it is the cover of the blood of Christ (cf. Titus 3:5-7), which cleanses from all sin (I John 1-2:2). It is not limited in availability, though the Lord KNOWS who are His own. It covers them. Are you one of these ? It is again so desperately simple.

CALL ON HIS NAME, and COME to the wedding, if you like the expression format in the parable. Come to Him to receive His death in your place, in any case, His life in your heart, His call to repentance in your life (Luke 13:1-3), His word in your plans and programs, ways and works, and entirely in reliance on His grace (Ephesians 2:1-10), be saved from wrath (cf. Romans 5:1-11), and rejoice, as it is written, and found!

THEN, when the end comes, it is merely like the end of the page. The next page is heaven, with Him (Philippians 1:19-21, 3:20-21), and then the fate that awaits the contrariness that seeks endlessly to defy all ends (Philippians 3:18-19, Matthew 22:13), will not be yours.

WHY should these things be regarded without the gravity of skin cancer! That impels people to action, for melanoma often does not wait too long! It spreads, it covers, its moves into the system which awaits action in heart, or lung or brain, and that multiple - if the way to the end is distant enough, before IT COMES. This, to which we look, however, it is an affair not of the skin but of the heart. You say, Is it not self-interest ? If it is, then it is not repentance (Luke 13:1-3). You do NOT repent of being punishable, but of being WRONG.

Otherwise, it is as someone said of Rupert Brooks, that he was "magnificently unprepared for all the long littleness of life." That was said of its first phase only on earth; it is much more significant when you see it in its full scope and total intent.
 

It is love which is back of the GIFT of eternal life (John 3:16) and love which is to be fore in its acceptance, for who would not love^*5 the GOD WHO IS, whose word is truth, whose mercy has no bounds for those who receive Him (Micah 7:18-20), whose sacrificial spirit of service released definitively in Christ let NOTHING daunt it (Isaiah 50, Psalm 40, Luke 9:53, Matthew 26:52-53, Hebrews 5:7), and whose expression, Christ the Lord, God incarnate, both exposed His majesty (II Peter 1:16-21 cf. Ch. 9 above) and called His people (Luke 19:10 cf. Ezekiel 34, Isaiah 40,  where it is predicted He would so act). This is the PERSPECTIVE. It is not to save the self that  you die daily (I Cor. 15:31, 11:1), are crucified with Christ (cf. Tender Times for Timely Truths
Ch. 3); but it is to find your God. It is HE who saves; but the one who seeks to save his life will lose it. It is the one who loses it for Christ's sake who KEEPS IT WITHOUT END (cf. Matthew 16:25).

It is when your self ends, as a personally conducted tour, and His salvation begins, as a divinely co-ordinated walk of friendship with your Creator and Redeemer, that your life is endless. His is; He gives it to you (cf. I John 1:1-4, John 10:10, Romans 5:1-11, Titus 3:5-7).

There is an end to what begins, and having begun, is not to be found in the ONLY ONE who is ENDLESS, the King of Eternity, who IS the beginning and the end (Revelation 1, Isaiah 44). That end is everlasting destruction for the spirits which being in His image, remain outlaws from His love (II Thessalonians 1); just as the life once given from Him is everlasting fulness in His presence with the joy which is natural to Him (Psalm 17), who adorns His creation redeemed, with the flavour and the savour of the Saviour.

HE WILL PERFORM THIS TO THE DAY OF JESUS CHRIST (Philippians 1:6), which HE begins in the life of the converted sinner, continues in the consecrated, the dedicated, the disciples who are His indeed; He makes no mistakes; and indeed His predestination since before all time, has seen to that (Ephesians 1:4).

It is wonderful to know how simple is the ending of the end; and how wonderful, to begin in Him who is the beginning, and who in the beginning made man, and to the end will keep the one who is His. TO KNOW GOD! (John 6:47, John 17:3) is a privilege without end, a beginning which ends all privilege in comparison.

The Christian will rejoice as the end of this our present beginning draws near, because it has been a trial, a pilgrimage, often arduous, challenging, with much like a battle, to fight, and more to grow in, so that to come to the END of this, it is a delight! It is not merely rest from labours, it is the culmination of refreshing in the presence of the LORD, whom one has for so long served though He is invisible (Hebrews 11:27): of Him who is now to evacuate invisibility once more and to become visible, glorious and manifest as He was when on earth, yet without the limits of vulnerable format, though with the beauty of His holiness released and realised like spiritual Spring.

Further delight comes from this, that evil will receive its just end, and mercy will be shown in its multitudes of receivers, those who came where it WAS to be found (Isaiah 55), and who sought it in good time, while the gate was open (as in Revelation 7, 21-22).

Again, it is not just that THIS sort of end is the completion of a wonderful but intensive opportunity to serve the Lord, a privilege almost overwhelming to consider, and that it is rest from such labours; it is this also, that it is the BEGINNING of life where the invisible challenge is no more unseen, but we shall see  God face to face (Revelation 22:4). It will be rather like growing up and going to some vast new school, college, campus - but this, it is where pain is no more, and where the consummation of eternity has within it, the resurrected beings of godly people, where kindness is not an episode but the book, and grace not an insertion, but the way.
 
 

The Frantic Millenium and the Peace of Faith - FM - Ch. 2 (actual and commonly suggested ... antidotes);

Acme, Alpha and Omega: Jesus ChristCh.  9  (glamour, stammer, hammer  ... flitter and glitter);
Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium - REF-  Ch.   3 (the soporific self, and the unity glide, under the sedation of sin),
FM 11 - twigs and towers;

News, Facts and Forecasts - NFF 8 - sham, shame and co.;
NFF 13 - symphony and seditions - two heady heads,

NFF  14 - deadly d's;

Repent or Perish Ch.  5 (inventions in mind, gender, politics ...)

(spiritual - political - economic surrealism, and reality,and various modes of escape from efficacious unity, where it belongs), and with this,

It Bubbles, It Boils, He Calls - CALL - Chs.  10,  11,  5,  4,
Pall of Smoke and Diamond of Joy Ch.   1,
With Heart and Soul, Mind and Strength - HEART - Ch.  11,
Beauty of Holiness Ch.   5,
Scoop of the Universe  42, DIAMOND  1,
Things Old and New  - TOAN - 10 and Epilogue,
Red Alert ... 10, Appendix, Biblical Blessings Ch.   2,
REF 8, Questions and Answers   6 , NFF13,  More Marvels ... Ch.  10  (spiritual);

earth charter, religious summits and UN - CALL 11, NFF 13, TOAN Epilogue,
Joyful Jottings   1 , Red Alert ... Chs.  5,  6,  8,  16 (Statism and neo-evangelicalism);

REF 13 , HEART 10 (incl. ref. to early Greek thought),Galloping Events Ch.   7,
Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch.   9, Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming ...  Epilogue, Divine Agenda Chs.   1, 4 (and would-be unities in or for nature, and creation);

Tender Times for Timely Truths Ch.   2;

TMR 7 , AWME  9 (noting and leaving the mish-mash of  many dynamic disunities and frustrated fabrications of unity,  to find the actual unity), SMR pp. 396ff;

TTT 8 (diabolical plan to mess the code);
NFF  9 ; 8 ; WAKE Epilogue.

As you see, these are very numerous, like multiple cancers when the disease is spreading and not treated adequately.
 

*2
See Red Alert ... Ch. 15, for this instance.
 

*3 The last reads at one interesting point, as follows:
 

EAST WEST, GOD'S BEST At this point, there are undoubted similarities between this Eastern religion, and the Western dreamtime of evolutionism. On the latter philosophy, questions not dissimiliar to those used here, may be asked. (Cf. pp. 88, , 252AB supra.)
Thus, we enquire of it:

Shall ''Chance'' give birth to cytological OR intellectual language,
will Chance form concepts,
grant comprehension,
conceive perspectives
or ascertain its own 'Nature'!

Such an idea is merely a mystic miasma of smuggled and unnamed spirituality,
if not indeed the very heart of a baudy seraglio of illicit mental lust,
an imbroglio of the mind!

And all of this, what does it rest on ?
On Mr Matter, we may call him in such a construction, for 'he' then has all of the habiliments of personality: Matter! which itself is only a theory of mind...

It is remarkable what can be done when logic is captive to language and language to lust.

Children of consciousness, including man, are the spawn of this dream; but daydreams do not account for the birth of the earth and all that is in it. They merely emphasize the gap between raving and reality.

Designers know the value of imagination, indeed, the wonder of moving in a world of thought; but they also know that the translation into the world of reality, of that dream, involves labour, effort, understanding of operations outside the mind: a hard task that requires a very sufficient cause to fulfil! It is time people ceased worshipping the 'paper' on which the language of life is written, and addressed themselves to its writer.

West and East, each in its own way, turn to myths, fables as was predicted for it all (cf. p. 1025 infra).

It is such a lapse - one both ignominous and unconscionable - to avoid such a brilliant star: yes He made the stars, though men in billions prefer for themselves, a certain dimness! That God in His brilliance has suffered this to be so is part of His immeasurable depth, the creation of personality.

That He has provided freely for escape from this dimness is profound love.
Man has been created with labour, in a real world; and in reality he must repent of his unrealism and his misuse of all that has been divinely accorded him.

For internal references in this see SMR.
 

*4 See TMR Ch. 7, Part D, 5.
 

*5 See Acme, Alpha and Omega Ch. 3, esp. as below:

In another sense, although His demeanour and purity made the victory assured even before death came, that liberation of death which was merely the anteroom to life that broke death (Acts 2:24), because it simply could not hold the perfectly pure creator of life, it held promise for far more than His own triumphant overthrow of death, like a cloud before a whirl-wind, in His own person^*1.

It provided life unsurpassable, with a present deposit and lively continuance, by passport as a donation to all who should ever come in faith to Him as Lord and Saviour, in repentance and reality: and far more was to follow. When He arose from the dead on the Sunday (hence the worship day for all Christian peoples), then the greatest work of all time was done.

No dam, no space probe, no war, no triumph is even a button hole to the shirt of this work. The creation of the universe itself, magnificent, exuberant and munificent though it was before the curse, and robed with splendour and furnished with beauty as it still is as judgment obtrudes, this yes even this pales into the shadows of things past, compared with this PERSONAL outlay on our behalf, from and in the One who created us. In an analogy, to be born is one thing; to be loved is another.
 

To be loved is one thing, to be ransomed is another.

To be ransomed is one thing, to be ransomed by your Creator is another.

To be so ransomed is one thing, to be ransomed by your Creator out of pure love and tenderness of heart, is yet another (Romans 5).

 

To be so tenderly ransomed is one thing, to have this done by personal sacrifice is another (Romans 8).

To be so delivered by sacrifice is one thing, but to be snatched from the powers of sin that deludes and destroys and MERITS death, by a sacrifice which involves death for the Lord in His human format, is quite another (I Timothy 3:16).

Yet all this is preparation. The final point is this: it is that He was sacrificed, not merely providing a help AT the bar of sacrifice, or by means of it: no, there is far more.

HE WAS THE SACRIFICE.

It was He Himself who constituted the sacrifice.

This involved mockery, contempt, the personal experience of the guilt of sin vicariously, the aweful separation in that time of war, when the powers of condemnation and shame were lethally arrayed on Him, like giant lasers, to reach to His soul (Isaiah 53:6), while the crowd was full of false glorying and deadly desire for His doom, lampooning (Matthew 27:39-42), mocking, ridiculing with vast knowledgeability and immovable sarcasm, like shafts into the abyss, lit with dark light. It involved slow death.

It reached into the hinterland of consciousness with agonising love in the environment of unhallowed hostility, like doctors trying to kill the patient; like sabotage against a country at war with a dictator. And that sabotage was monumentally from the denizens of the 'church', the temple crew, the religious crowd, just as today He is betrayed afresh by many of those who calling themselves ministers (cf. prediction in II Peter 2) and churches (cf. likewise Acts 20:29-30, II Timothy 3, II Thessalonians 2), depart from His word and make peace, all over again, with the cultures of this world, in order to shanghai the name 'church' and hollow out a safe, suitable or salubrious spot for themselves, in the religious climate of the times!

HIS sacrifice, however, that occurred but ONCE (Hebrews 7:26, 9:1-10:14). In Hebrews 9 that is OFTEN said.

IF it is sacrifice, it is willing (John 10:17-19, Hebrews 9:14), and done by Himself, done once, done with suffering (Hebrews 9:26) and done with blood (9:22). Not as with Rome, which breaches all these things did He act. His betrayal, not just in one but in multiplied multiples,  reaches now new heights of inglorious contempt, both in its attitude to Him and His word (though the name is spoken often enough, and sometimes with overtones of endearment, like the kiss of Judas, even chanted!) and in the register of all that is contemptible in history.
 

For internal references, see the chapter itself, from the hyperlink provided, above.