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CHAPTER 6

UNITY AND DIVISION: THE GREAT DIVIDING RANGE

THE NATURE OF THE RANGE
Its basis and depiction

An Introduction

Unity is grand in design: the smoothly streamlined car, unified for going readily, reliably, thriftily for the result desired, aesthetically coherent, in mobilisation a message: how MUCH is there to represent in the 'simple' production of a good automobile^*1A. So too in marriage: there is sensitivity and functionality together for a purpose which is ideally one, since two hands at odds are liable to become tangled, and there is love, for the unity is not for clash and clangour but charity and intimacy of thought and word, yet this with a diversity which adorns the unity and enriches it.

In fact, diversity of an utter kind within unity, as in the spirit of people in the human race, whether utterly wicked and intensively malign or delightfully gracious, is accounted for readily in the reality of creation, where will is part of the equipment, and meaning is the result of the Creator who made it; and will as an enduement within kind,  makes objective clash and clash about overall objectives both explicable and readily so. Indeed, it explains; all else merely notes and is without basis for such a thing, where uttermost struggles occur about this very thing, meaning of life, purpose, thrust and method of procedure for those in it, its reality and its source, its portent and its intent! This of course has scourged the earth often enough, and now the Islamic thrust of many of this religion, is tainting the earth with a flood of blood and maimed bodies left to their own devices once made objects of internal or external torture. 

How frequently, uttermost struggles occur within this very thing, as contrary principles, aims and desiderata mock the streamlined equipment of man, and make it the result of being for or against will's highest relationship, that for or against the One who made and wrote in a book with testing available as nothing else has; and then, they scout and tout and seek bout on the subsidiary points of human relationships, fight about that, and then sour it so that it has an adopted problem for them, as well as an initial one, hatred seething, jealousy soaring and revenge penetrating like penetrating oil, to the will.

Thus the very smooth brilliance of man's equipment, whether in DNA or in mind or body, in the billions of elemental units of data involved, is so far from mocked in inexplicable clangours of this kind threatening his extermination, that it is merely confirmed and consummated in this. What is it like ? It resembles an automobile of a kind scarcely to be imagined, thousands and millions of times better than any we know, in which the driver's seat is the site of continual struggles, internecine disputes, rough-housing that smashes the housing and injures the care, and then mighty lunges as one driver seeks to take the thing somewhere, while others who do not particularly like being passengers, seek to direct otherwise, even while the vehicle is in motion, and even on curves and downhill slopes, such as currently mar this earth.

What a thrill to have will, and to seek to smash it about like a drunkard, because you do not care to acknowledge your Creator, His redemption and cure, or His salvation and acts in history, from the first predictions to the last, all coming into force like a fleet of siren-equipped police car, claxons rending the air, even including His own coming! Such it appears

The construction of will, and power to love and hate, with or without reason, as an element of personality, and a gift of spirit, this means that just such results are PREDICTABLE, as have come. If they had not come, there would be no explanation. So does every other option of thought fail, fail in rationality, in validity, in the matters of morals, in empirical reality, as in the domain and field of creation itself (cf. The gods of naturalism have no go! Ch. 5), specifically in scientific method beyond all rational argument; and lacking this last, it fails again to explain the division among men, its nature and its vehemence, its point and its meaning, outside an insanity which is not otherwise found to any such extent as this.

Rather is it a spiritual misdeployment, disorientation following from the denial of the living, speaking and categorically challenging source, their Lord and their God.

Thus as always, does the truth, the existence of which absolutely is the rational prelude to any power to proclaim it, confirm itself on all sides; and this, without coherent opposition or power to explain.

How easily this is said, but in how many millions of cases is the diversity, either a dragooning by one, often but by no means always the male, or a dynamic of divergence, or even a tedium of contrary interplay! It is as if a car were partly streamlined but partly ludicrous in its lines, partly mobile, but inherently unstable and so forth.

Let us hear Isaiah 29:9ff. on this (red added for special relevance to our current point).

"The whole vision has become to you like the words of a book that is sealed,
which men deliver to one who is literate, saying,

'Read this, please.' And he says,

'I cannot, for it is sealed.'

Then the book is delivered to one who is illiterate, saying,

'Read this, please.'

And he says, '

I am not literate.'

 

        ^"Therefore the Lord said:

                          'He has no understanding' "?

So too in philosophy, there continually came the wild spree of excitable rashnesses such as those of the fuming or spuming

 Hume, surging like a wave, clamorous in self-identification but ludicrous in omissions, like a car designed for four wheels, glorying in having three (cf. SMR Ch. 3); or those of

Kant, delighted in the obscurities of his noumenal and finally real realm, which he carefully obfuscates into inconceptual status, while conceiving it and many of its qualities in order to differentiate it into verbalisability and functionality in his system; or those of

Plato who, though at times showing chinks of light as in parts of the Timaeus, where he can even speak of the righteousness of God, is yet foiled in his system by forms which become ideas and ideals mixed, at the height of it all, his form of the good in his Republic becoming the good of anything and everything (a kind of plastic abstraction easily enough converted by Aristotle into the end or definitive completion of a thing from an aloof source too abstracted to operate). Plato's 'form' lacks basis either for the existence of what it supposedly interprets, the gulf of evil or the subsistence of all things; while set in a system giving no place of origin for the wiles of will, with a political desideratum constructed to be almost childishly oblivious of evil minds surging in non-notional places with intelligent corruption. Brilliant was Plato; but his failure to know God, though at times he seemed to reach toward Him, obfuscates his depiction.

(Cf. SMR pp. 422Eff. On Great Funerals.)

Thus, there is a dividing line; and there is a unity; and indeed, in this approach we are looking at the Great Dividing Range which separates what is metaphysically one, such as the human race, not into a bifurcation as if it were an ultimate two by nature, but into a diversity based on divergence. In other words, there is a moral absolute because there is a divine absolute and what is good from God becomes the good of a thing because He made it, and made it in a plan which is one, because it is not fragmented as if from the demented. Rather is man recipient of coherence from the source of the human mind, the sole sufficient source of its validity, by which it even acts rationally and coherently in the domain of thought, and hence of the coherence by which it even operates cohesively and rationally at all (cf. SMR Chs. 1, 3, 10, Repent or Perish Ch. 7, Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 16).

Thus, where absolute truth is deemed absent in a model, and/or there is no access to it, persons are without truth, and so cannot consistently present it or argue for it. Incidental reactions, happenings, happen, but the truth is not known, the nature of the system, the character of it; for only reactor responses are available in such a situation, which have no meaning, merely eventuation, unknowns giving empirical data which admit of no evaluation, interpretation or schema of actuality, this precisely being deemed absent. There IS no actual truth on such a schema, for there is no holding place, actualising place, standard or criterion, merely interaction. Thus its self-depiction cannot be true, for this uses what it affirms to be absent! It is involved in a writhing mass of self-contradiction.

What then ? What is absent, it is fatal to present; for it is, by definition, nothing, which gets you nowhere, whether in argument, dissertation or dogma. Indeed, it cannot consistently be presented at all.

Accordingly,  mankind in intelligence, one, in wit, one, in capacity, one, in construction, one, on capacity to co-operate (disease apart) one, is nevertheless most obviously two; for the construction called man can hate and fight for sheer wilfulness and pugnacity, egotistic,  self-affirmatory, delusive, elusive, without understanding and  without any ground for the same. Gifted with created will, man can in fact use it to deny/defy reality.

Indeed, as to reality, when this is known (cf. SMR Chs. 1-3, 10), so far from being unable to give any reasonable account of the elemental dissension among men (cf. SMR Ch. 5), the self-destructive warring of ideas and weapons often based on this, concerning ultimate reality, this provides a prediction basis for it! Equipped with capacity to imagine, hate, love, desire, man becomes a dissident or a recipient, a lover or a hater, of the truth, of the reality to which it refers, of the Creator who gave him will, which could adjoin to itself or adjourn from it. SO far from being surprising that he uses such powers, creating another hole in the model of emptiness, it would be amazing if he did NOT!

It would be like a young man with his dream Ferrari, who left it in the garage. Truth speaks and has much to say, at EACH and EVERY point of what faces man, explaining all, and demanding a response, which incoherent destabilised mental roamings demarcate as merely a negative! (cf. Proverbs 1!).

Without Creator however, will becomes meaningless desire, oriented for no reason, an aberration of type, and its aggregation in direly opposing camps become an eccentricity of folly, a form of mania, an ordering and organisation without warrant.

Then, making the gulf of separation, or the Ridge as in our own illustration, on the other hand, on the basis of creation and Creator, the delusive and confused passion so often in man is natural to the presence of man in God's image, able to think, reason, determine and will. It is then that it becomes merely an operation within the created function,  where the parent is derided, the creator cavilled at and the reality dismissed; and an inveterate, deliberate, determined division is certain to occur; as it has occurred, does occur and will occur until the time comes for judgment BY the same Creator, which of course He has declared in the Bible categorically is to come, as in II Peter 3, Matthew 24, Isaiah 24, Daniel 12, II Thessalonians 1-2, and so on. He has even given the criteria by which to assess how near it is! (cf. Luke 21 and see Answers to Questions Ch. 5).

Here then we see the two sides of reality, a derivative from its ground of existence in ONE MOULD, in terms of the liberty occasioned for its participants, in their original construction, where will acts in constriction and contradiction. Indeed, more, it may act within the stringencies, either consciously or not, of separation, sedition and conspiracy, actually designing to segregate the design called 'man', from his source, to grasp the power and run with it! Where however can he run, since the course for his feet, this too is constructed. Thus the mob of violence runs each into the other, and much of the blood-soaked mud of history is so created.

What on any naturalistic or monistic ground

	in metaphysics is mere discord (cf. SMR Chs.   3,   10),
	in aesthetics mere mumble (cf. SMR Ch. 5,
	in ethics platitude without meaning (News 19),
	in epistemology mere vacuity (cf. TMR Ch. 5),
	in politics defeatism (cf. Questions and Answers Ch. 7), or else towers built on invisible clouds,
	all reductionist, irrational or both (cf. What is the Chaff to the Wheat Chs.   3 and 4  ),

now on the supernatural origin of the regimented and volitional natural,  becomes

	meaningful,
	in essence predictable,
	and assuredly verifiable on the ground of the creator, whose verified word is without inhibition
	exhibiting the fitting conclusion, like a thunder-clap to a murder.

In all things on such a basis, it leaves nothing in the least difficult, whereas on the other model, there is nothing but failure, for there is never explanation for knowledge, existence, division, beauty or morals, but only tired reductionisms, without power, without ground and without the necessary result . It is simple fact that creationism in general, but more specifically biblical creationism with the creator who has acted and declared Himself verifiably in the Bible (cf. SMR Chs. 1-3, 10, 8-9, 5), accounts for everything as nothing else either does or can (cf. Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer).

Thus created man, in one mould but with spirit in an actual universe of knowable kind with a Creator who made him, rather than some glorified incapacity, can believe in culturally sanctified myths (cf. Secular Myths and Sacred Truth, Delusive Drift or DIvine Dynamic    7,   3, SMR p. 252I)) without too much trouble. This phenomenon can come from the consequences of will in his mind and in his spirit, so that he can readily believe the deluded and childish concept of organic evolution, by which he affirms whatever it is that he thinks he is in order to become more of it, whatever that is, though he never finds it making the substance of what-is, that great experimental absentee in any naturalistic viewing, nor does he discover the grounds of it, nor the way of it, but rather explores delusion in battling camps^*1B. He may even talk of principles^*1 as if they were powers to do, not mental conceptions to cover with words what actually happens - which, sadly for naturalistic man, this does not manage to do^*1.

The Bible however speaks of diversification within kinds only, from the Creator in His initial impact, formation and formulation; and as to creation, it is over, as the evidence continually attests while man tries to prod, curse, bless or induce it to do some more, to which it responds rather like a dog having its toe-nails cut by someone with aspirations to be a surgeon. (Cf. The Defining Drama Ch. 10, TMR Appendix I, Ch. 1.)

Thus it is mere routine exemplification of the supernatural schema when we find that naturalistic man wills to be what his position voids in operation, both in its very statement and in its performance criteria, as well as performance exhibits; and this, by sheer exuberance of imagination, in one of the choicest pieces of ludicrous cant this world has ever produced; this while he is born and dies and is given his genes and is faced by his God, whom he ignores as if his very life depended on it. That is what will is about in a creation which has it, and is placed in a natural climate with supernatural access.

It is moreover, precisely what Romans 1:17ff., tells us about, a further verification in the specific milieu of the Bible. Further, it is precisely there that the remedy for this consequence of such a creation is presented, with its own verificatory testimonials

(cf. The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy, It Bubbles ...
Ch. 9, Repent or Perish Chs.   2,   7).

Accordingly, the ensuing centuries depict in history the developing dynamic, what Romans 1:17ff. shows as a systematic prognosis. Moreover, time in our Age thus fulfils the specifics of Romans 1 in detail, just as the thrust nears its consummation (Romans 1:28-32). Let us see this so that our eyes may rest in this ancient word, as if written yesterday; and it is so, because this is the end of such things, apt, accurate and acrid, divine in depiction, just in outcome: and to this we proceed.

"And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge,
God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting;
being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness;

they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful;

who, knowing the righteous judgment of God,
that those who practice such things are deserving of death,
not only do the same
but also approve of those who practice them."

This line of development, either in its secured base or in its final outcome, obviously it is not all; for all have not fallen for irrationalism and myth (cf. Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Chs.   7,   3) instead of rising to receive divine mercy; but it is the signal of the times, the sluice gate open for the day. It is the culturally popular way and the intelligentsia's burden. Here you see the two sides of the one reality, the evil fantasising and the truth; and of the latter, you discover its basis accounting for whatever is and happens, with nothing unaccountable or even impregnable in all thought. Moreover, it is found with the divinely given and single perspective and of the Bible, that testable book of the Lord, as it is applied to the dimensions, dynamic and detail of all creation, with its whirring worlds of thought and deed.

(Cf. Above references, together with
Earth Spasm ... Chs.    1,   7,
Secular Myths ... Ch.  8,
Wake Up World ... Ch. 5,
Spiritual Refreshings Chs. 13, 16;
Secular Myths ... Ch.  5,
The gods of naturalism have no go! Appendix 2.)

But where is the line to be drawn ?

Is one to be as above displayed, in the passion of irrationality,

and to know whatever it is in a conscious,
merely mesmeric obtrusion into this world,

while another, being more Buddhistic (cf. SMR pp. 995 -1026), may perhaps aim to be it,

aspiring to have modes of deployment to avoid needless clash

while the car of life goes on the highway of pragmatic convenience,
morals resolute in their vagueness with a possible ally in opportunism
for some kind of quiescence, as various syntheses may be tried,
like a synthesis of dead eyes or blind visions
(cf. Isaiah 8:20, Jeremiah 10:11, Matthew 13) ?

and are these and many more objectives in the ones who do not know God, the Creator,

to be made into one in some way ?

 

No, they are not, for their dissonance and disparity is complete; but they are to be conceived from the God of creation as diverse ways of doing ONE THING in this respect, and that, it is what is contrary to Him, a substitute for Him, and hence rebellion against Him, thus creating a TYPE of duality. All of this is but one packet, slant, slide, or quasi-dominion; and it is to be found on one side of The Mountain of Separation, where the light of the Creator-Redeemer is seen only in the distance, as in another land, yet look, it is but on the other side, disfiguring the features of its base.

What then is this duality ? Let us be exceedingly clear. It is the diversity, just one pair, between conformity to the concepts of God and deformity from them, conformity to the will of the wise God and deformation of it in the mind and heart, between surrender to the salvation of this perfect God, and severance from it, desertion from the call of this one God and assertion of His goodness, between knowing Him and doing His will and blowing Him and seeking to have Him disperse. In a word ? it is the cleavage between God's way, and man's, God's life given, and man's life seized, the mind of God and the mutabilities of the will of man.

In this alone, is validity, rationality, empirical fact covered, met and embraced, diversity in unity explained; and it is explained absolutely and in detail. Let us therefore regard it well.

This is The Great Dividing Range. When this is crossed to the sunny side, then is man, one in creation, at one with his fellows, for though there may be much diversity yet there is charity, and though there be difference, yet there is desire for understanding, and though there be stages of understanding, yet there is a desire to find from the one source the clear comprehension of His word, way and will; for though wolves masquerade as sheep (Matthew 7:15), yet there is the Shepherd alive and active. It is like children in one school with one curriculum and one text book series, with one set of Staff and one objective who from time to time have upsets, but who are ruled by the Principal and the principles.

Where is the limit to such diversity in unity as distinct from such divergence from deity ? It is found in the text book, the Bible which alone provides the entire conceptual apparatus which explains every facet, the interaction of the parts, the scope of the whole and the meaning and ground of every aspect (as noted in Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer), but this ?.

This indicates that

	love is patient, but truth is firm;
	that kindness is continentally, continually and reliably of one kind where the sun shines, found from the Sun of Righteousness with healing in His wings (Malachi 4); but
	that it does not indulge hatred as if that were to be kind; or desecration as if this were a option within creation; and attests
	that sacrifice is needed in a world of sin, but not that of the truth.

It teaches

	that growth is part of spiritual life, and
	that neither should lordliness (condemned in I Peter 5, Matthew 23:8-10) such as that of Romanism (SMR pp. 1032-1088H), and of many plastic popes in sects (q.v. index), or amorphous papacies in their additives to the Bible or subtractions, nor should laxity, neither any nor all of them, disadorn the unity.

In this Age, the sheer diversity of ways of adding to the foothills on the far side of The Great Dividing Range becomes for many a source of confusion; and the shouting and pushing, not to say putsching of the plastic surgeons of spirituality, seeking to operate now on the very brain of man, to subdue and to seduce him: this becomes a great chasm into which love may be poured, leaving but hatred and deflation behind, cynicism or sourness, with the occasional little peak of pique.

That is precisely what Jesus the Christ foretold, saying this:

"And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and hate one another.  Then many false prophets will arise and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold..."

Spiritual lawlessness is seen in the many false prophets, mouths referring to the reality who God is, but divorced from Him, like so many forgers of cheques where no funds lie, trying to use the book of One who has funds, their frauds costly to the disappointed and cheeky to the One who has appointed salvation where it may be found (Isaiah 55, II Corinthians 4-6, I Corinthians 15, Galatians 1-3; Jeremiah 23! Ezekiel 14), and victory in His own way where it is to be gained (I John 5, Romans 7-8, Isaiah 25:8, Ephesians 1:17-19 cf. Victory: Heritage of Christians, Exile from the World).

And this ? He has provided it with the simplicity that can meet a child (cf. Matthew 19, Isaiah 40), and the profundity that makes man's philosophy look like the little ripples that make tiny bars on the vast expanse of the sand.

Now, the tempo increases, the forces of darkness, confusion of mind and spirit, proliferate in their false prophets, false christs, false hopes and vapid imaginings, while lusty battle becomes misnamed courage and blood an attestation of greatness, though it be obliterative of good, and the mere mental mirage of the obsessed who can neither give a reason nor deliver themselves from the charge of treason to truth.

All this produces grief or grudge or both, and this produces for many a spiritual dyspepsia which allied with self-will, leads on to cold hearts and calculating conditions which lack vision of truth and desire for it. Hence all over again, many such become prey for further foragers, who find among the muck, the things they desire to pluck: spiritual entrepreneurs, requiring a profit, as far from self-sacrifice for the truth, the Lord of Creation and the God of all comfort as the East is from the West. This too is foretold as a plague of these last days (II Peter 2:1), and its stench is apparent.

This had to be; it is part of the "dry tree" of which Christ spoke at the time of His crucifixion, when on the way He told the "daughters of Jerusalem" not to weep for Him, but for themselves and their kin, since if they did this in the green tree, what would they do in the dry ? (Luke 23:28ff.). In Jerusalem they found out something of the meaning of His words 40 years later when the Romans performed in their own imperial way a work of devastating horror and climacteric crushing which disadorns history to this day.

This symbolises for ever^*2 the price of liberty from love, from the mercy of God and the Messiah He has sent. It is however biblically merely the Jewish section of the impending pounding of the waves of history on the default of man, which will heighten its scope as the era of the Gentiles as designated by Christ and Paul (Matthew 24, Romans 11), draws to its splenetic close (cf. Revelation 6-8,19).

As to what has happened already, in the Jewish sector, indeed in the Jerusalem of AD 70 and the following years of devastation, exclusion and persecution of the Jews in their land, and from their land, this, it is the temporal preliminary to Gehenna (cf. Mark 9 with Matthew 5:22, 18:9), and the illustration of hell for those who like the pictorial and find it hard, as they put it, to think 'in abstract terms'. There is nothing abstract about the pain of guilt, the anguish of moral depravity and failure; and in all earnestness, what CAN be more depraved than bypassing your Creator, ignoring His redemption, despising His mercy, set up in your own thoughts because they are yours and this without ground in reality, only in desire, and seeking to use for such arrogant and arid deployment, the equipment given for your own thoughts, be they this or that!

Is it not then small wonder that Jesus Christ delivered one of the most vehement denunciations this world has ever known (as in Matthew 23), on those who not only fouled the faith and foiled the mercy of God in its sublime outreach, to their own devastation, but acted as if they were at the same time, morally admirable and religiously outstanding, leaders for the blind and teachers for babes, or at least studies in the statuesque in the realm of spirituality!

This then is the nature of the case as reason points to it, as it does to the Bible as the revelation of the one and only God; and this is the approach God makes to what He has made in the Bible, when its revelation teems down from the mountains of eternity, through the channels of His written word, for the instruction of man.

There is then The Great Dividing Range not on the East coast of Australia, this time, but in the history of man, demarcated so markedly on biblical maps: on the one side is the light of the countenance of God, and the abundant rain of His Spirit in showers of a blessing which is both personal, individual and corporate for His people, the word of His heart and the instruction of His wisdom, set in a book, which is "the book of the Lord" (Isaiah 34, Matthew 5:17ff., II Timothy 3:16); and on the other ? There is found what is really just the same mountain, for it is metaphysically still only one; but it is dark, scarcely recognisable, often flooded but with an acid rain, and a site of scrubby dwarf trees, exalting their names to the heavens, while they shroud the earth in yet more darkness, obscuring the little light with their little
branches.

 Our Task

Our task then is to find what the Bible says about handling this two-sided but one range, how to arrange one's ways on the range, and how to understand its nature. On the second point, there has already been consideration given; but what of the practical ?

Where does the Christian act in this unity which thought demands and God attests, so that the bifurcation of FUNCTION merges without confusion in the unity of actuality, the light like a shaft penetrates all darkness, so that indeed, the way in the light rather the way in the dark, being seen different, may be followed aright ?

How could it be followed aright ? Why first one must find the right way, and then follow it. Following is not too difficult, the highway of holiness is not obscure, when once you are on it, watching the pointers, programs and requirements, an eye to your Guide. The way is not hard to find as we have often seen as in SMR, being the Bible in propositional presentation, and Jesus Christ in saving operation (II Cor. 5:17ff.), made available by the Holy Spirit applying this redemption with transformative power and grace (Titus 2-3, II Corinthians 3:17ff.): but how is it to be followed as the different sides of the ridge show their features ?

As to the realities concerned, these, they agree in all things, and that with passion and compassion in the impact (cf. Matthew 5:17-20, SMR Appendix   C and   D, Matthew 26:53-56, Isaiah 40, 42,49), the word of God exalting in written form the Messiah of God in human format, and the latter exalting the book of the Lord, each sent from the Lord (Isaiah 48:16), the one in words to endure visible and unimpugnable testimony at all times, the other as the Word of eternity, to continue victor over death itself, light everlasting.

This agreement is only one of the agreements which are pervasive and on occasion invasive, in the ways of God, never changing His message (cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 17, TMR Ch. 3), and always operating on His speech; for as He says, so He does. History, it is the book in which you see it, the laboratory of life where the principles and the propositions inhere and visibly operate for all to see, who care but to open their eyes (cf. Matthew 13:14-15). This is ONE AGREEMENT of the ONE GOD who in ONE WAY makes His word clear in our day.

Yet as the Age progresses, and false faith regresses, how do you treat the two sides of The Mountain of Separation ?

What is the ridge recipe for godliness ?

How does the one who receives the Redeemer operate in such a diversity on the one side of the Great Dividing Range, and distinguish its darkness, as they are building more powerful neon lights of sheer confusion, to imitate if they can - though they fail ignominiously - the eternal light ?

THE WAY AND THE DAY AT THE END OF THE AGE

This is not really so very difficult, but it is challenging, for life involves challenge because of the two sides of the Range.

Let us then attend to the written word of God and see (and for those who want much more detail, rather than basic orientation, see Separation 1997). We shall therefore from the Bible, take 5 spiritual seductions and dissecting their charms, their disarming deviousness, see the 5 responses to be but one!

THE CASES

There is firstly

	the case of SPIRITUAL DISSONANCE (II Timothy 3), and then
	the case of SOCIAL GREED (I Timothy 6) , next
	the case of DOCTRINAL DRIFT (Romans 16:17) followed by
	the cases of MORAL and SPIRITUAL INVENTION (I Timothy 4 and Ephesians 4-5),

these last being wedded or melded into one, but differentiable to thought.

THE CRITERION

If we look at I Timothy 6 (cf. The Christian Pilgrimage Ch. 5), we find two criteria for judgment. One is "the words of our Lord Jesus Christ", which are seen in the style of "wholesome words" and their pivot and place. The other is "the doctrine according to godliness".

As to the latter, II Timothy 3:16 makes it clear that "ALL scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness so that the man of God may be complete ..." (capitals added), not as an index for obfuscation but as a prescription for performance, designate and determined; while Christ makes yet clearer the point by declaring that man shall live by every particulate word which proceeds from the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4), and again,  that many were making void the word of God by their traditions, teaching for doctrine the commandments of men (Mark 7). This He did,  just as Proverbs 30:6 limits even the most robust, declaring that one should not add to the words of God, lest one be shown a liar! ALL and ONLY scripture is the criterion; and what is wholesome as so judged by it, and with it, is sound.

To the point in view comes Isaiah 8:20: "To the law and the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." As to that, not a jot of it or tittle will fail, declared Christ, and as to His own words, though the very heavens and the earth DO PASS, as things temporal, and will, yet His words, being divine in wisdom, eternal and nature and from the lips of the Lord of all, they do not. Indeed in Greek, we learn that they shall certainly not pass away: the contrast is complete, the verity indelible, the utterance decisive.

 Here then is both permanence and precision, and here is the criterion. You might see heaven and earth disappearing with great noise and becoming obsolete, a departed norm and form as in II Peter 3, and this will be, it will go, for it was made for its time; but the departing of the words of Jesus Christ is not to be seen, not rarely, not eventually, not at all; for His words stay.

What then do we find from the word of God, the book of the Lord (Isaiah 34), the propositional speech of the Almighty awaiting total fulfilment and consummation in heaven, that constrains the earth and controls history as demonstrable from its testable characater ? What do we then find ? It is this: that word covered with control, supervised with spiritual dynamic and presented to man with precision being derived from deity, must be applied faithfully to humanity (cf. Matthew 5:17ff., I Corinthians 2:9ff., Matthew 4:4).

THE CONSEQUENCE

The consequence ? what to do in this field, and when to do it, that is the result.

Let us take first

1) the case of SPIRITUAL DISSONANCE (II Timothy 3).

Here Paul lists what on a menu would perhaps be called a special. Firstly, it is in the last days, which makes it special to us, who live in them (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5). That is the period for this description in Timothy, and this is the chronological site for its performance.

These days are described as PERILOUS! This means that one is advised to be especially careful. And how could it be otherwise, when many seem especially careless, even all but negligent in this field, staying in churches where homosexuals are EXPLICITLY suffered to occupy pastoral positions, places of leadership, though these are BY NAME excluded from the kingdom of heaven in I Corinthians 5:11 with 6:9-10, and the thing is denounced as lawless in I Timothy 1:10. Indeed, there it is associated in list with such as the unholy, the profane, and murderers of fathers and so on. It is not pretty: neither is cancer. It does not help to put a bow on it.

What then of other phases of the predicted condition, which has this definitively evil sort of flower prescribed for the end time, from so far back,   in II Timothy 3 ?

We find there is to be rash of self-love (HOW OFTEN do you hear in sporting matters of self-esteem, self-belief, believing in yourself, your powers, your touch, your prowess, your competitive savvy and so forth, as also in often ranted in the field of education!). With this, we find pre-occupation with money-love - and more and more in many societies people forget the moral law, the social graces, and find only WHAT WORKS, what produces income for now and 'security' for old age, together with the sense of having what you want and being dependent on no one: and this blind belittling of design and destiny, it proceeds though the person may die in a second or two at any time, which makes the whole concept preposterously shallow.

With these two frauds, go other things for the end-time period of ripening evils.

One is blasphemy ('God! I ... is always just a form of speech nowadays, on the air). Another is disobedience to parents - and here society is becoming so reckless that children because of  the other sin of brutality becoming more obvious, are advised of their rights in schools, and may seek to have their parents legally dealt with, at whatever loss, being young and with little understanding while they so dishonour them. This often is associated with ludicrous limits on discipline, as if anything other than a tap were assault.

The fact however is that while brutality and force-reliance are alike monstrous, meaningful discipline is not, and on occasion, perhaps quite rarely, a corporal discipline  may indeed be useful to help by its sharpness (FAR from injury) to bring a foolish temper to book before it becomes so ingrained as to constitute a character defect. It is unwise to throw away means of goodness, in a fit of philosophic fantasy, making gods out of children, just as others in their day, may have tended to make them mere out of sight, out of mind objects to which one did one's duty. Such of course was never the way of all; but trends change, as do extremes, like mini- and maxi- skirts, rather than clothing for beauty, function and convenience. Indeed, now to one's horror, there are to be seen ragged jeans, pre-faded, pre-worn, in some degree of tatters, to be bought for money, as if life were a party, and a sour one at that. Such is the gentility of waste, and such are the clothes of contempt.

All this is in principle dealt with in one aspect or another, in such sites as  Joyful Jottings  13, Beauty for Ashes Ch.   9, Divine Agenda Ch.   2.

Thus society is joining with inherent sin in the individual to make an appalling mess, a fiasco where some dangers of illicit brutality on the one side, become on the other an undisciplined folly, so that children are to become elements in a growing tide of undisciplined folly, truth debased, direction masked, platitudes invested,  because of the unseemly restraint put on disciplined parents. So does the philosophy of gods become the doctrine of devils most readily.

Readily now does one find shrill shrieking and gabbling grumpiness vie with deliberate disregard and the pretence of equality, as if infancy were wise, or adolescence the very acme of understanding. The opposite is not to the point, as the only way to change; for if you do not go too fast, the other option is not too slow. There is the right speed, which meets the case. This speed is often not noticed, as in the case, the appalling case, the literal case of giving driving licences as in this State, to children of 16 years of age. Whatever facility of speed and capacity for technical oddities they may have, the balance of maturity even of the initial kind, the control of any kind of sagacity in terms of realised wisdom, these things would only by some magic be likely to appear in those so young, in any great percentage, thus putting at risk through their grave immaturity the lives both of themselves and of others. Gods alas, without glory, they are being sacrificed to shame.

The basic and underlying case here is that parents are not gods, but neither are children; that parents may be brutal, but that is not met by brutalising their due procedures, when with love in force, with grace in action and with self-discipline in control, they are seeking to prevent the short-circuit of wisdom by the dogmatisms of philosophy, whose children readily are aided to become mini-adults, traitors and unfeeling little robots, when they live to tell the tale. It is easy to die in many dimensions through ill-advised leaps into dark places which appeal to untutored minds, filled with the fantasies of their generation, seeking to arrive, to survive and being submitted to strangulation in class-rooms innumerable as the myths are mouthed, often enough as an unadmitted philosophic injection into the science class-room (cf. Beauty for Ashes Ch. 3, . Earth Spasm Chs.   1 and   7, Secular Myths Chs.    7 and 8 with SMR pp. 149ff.).

Of or through what are they so helped to become robots, if it were possible, or to approximate them more and more ? It is of this: they participate as pseudo-robots of the delirious dynamic of dissidence from God and righteousness, which lies underneath much of such things. The reasoning appears to be something like this: if there is no truth, how can parents be so right; and if there is no right, how can discipline be more than slightly  tendential!

Yet if there were no truth it could not even be validly asserted that this was so. Contradicting themselves, they duly contradict righteousness with immoderation and fantasy, awash in the storms of philosophic self-will.

So does blasphemy join hands with corruption, and so is love replaced by the methods of the sightless, who not knowing God, act on that basis and seek to constrain others to do so, often starting with the young, as if determined that the ruin might become irremediable, the remedy available unsightable in the mist and smog of corruption.

Thus juvenile madness become an epidemic, such as seen in the throwing of rocks from a car in one direction, at one in moving in another, since presumably life does not matter, and the asininities of organic evolution are applied; for what new form is coming which so acts, and what new originality is to be found in the erratic! Where no morals have place (apart from irrational add-ons), why morals can be disgrace! The young ? they wonder and try now this, now that, in erratic adventures: seeking to intuit where the rules may be which seem so erratic, or so despotic as may appear so often to their mistaught minds, or else seeking to escape the confusion by at least adding their own.

Our immediate present point is this, that the last times as in the above reference, are defined; and that they are here, while their symptoms are present with a vengeance, a literal vengeance; for who is not suffering from surfeit of these estrangements from design, on the part of those who are chased in schools from such criteria into the benumbing void which is neither their due inheritance nor their need! Thus does inherited sin join with inculcated sinning, that the cyclotron of unreason and the acceleration of spiritual blindness should cover, if possible, the earth.

Fear not! good Christian, for it is all planned, and its prognosis though foul, is limited in time. It displays what needs to be seen, and is a lesson in time which lasts to eternity! God has not invented history in order that it should be mute, or its lessons less than eloquent, and so they testify for ever.

Thus we find that with these symptoms of the last times, in the prophecy in Timothy,  go such things as a proclivity for being unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers (the law courts groan with endless and often greedy-seeming litigation, so that it is almost a profession or life's work), without self-control, despisers of good (and how the educational authorities so often love to demean religion in universal propositions of disdain for their content, as if all doctors were to be packed off with quacks! and how the children suffer - cf. TMR Ch. 8), traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power.

Such 'form of godliness' is precisely what is to be found when churches decline to affirm the bodily resurrection of the Saviour whose work in life on death is pivotal to the universe, to man and to destiny, decline to practice even basic sexual self-control, and congratulate perversion by inducting it into pulpits, who ignore the magnificent courage of the Reformation and revert to the idolatries of Rome, and all those other testimonies which mount to the skies, like green-brown smog.

It is fitting that we see the exact nature of this review of Paul for our times then far distant but now with us. It is not an episode in an item; it is a texture and a veritable tartan, a composite, a jewel of facets, and a slice of complexity of unique kind. This is the more obvious in view of the testimony of Jesus the Christ, concerning the restoration of Israel to its historical site (Luke 21:24 shows it, just as Ezekiel foretells it in detail cf. SMR Appendix A). No rising for ever, but a decline is foretold; no perfect browning of the scones in the over of time is predicted, but a charring stench as you see in Matthew 24 (cf. SMR Ch. 8).

Moreover, it is like a reporter of  yesterday in style, as if only then provided; but it is exact and it is the divine prognosis for our defined day (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5). Now it has come.

What then is the way to go ? The emphasis is on the last word in that sentence!

Where this is the way, stay away, is the order concerning CHURCHES of this calibre. You cannot leave the world, but you can and must, if a Christian, leave as you are freely able such churches or fellowship as this (and you ARE freely able to leave churches which any such things continue). You are apostolically directed to quit such places where such things as these are practised, and how much more, where any of them are touted; for ALL of them are contrary to scripture, to the canons of righteousness, to the words of godliness, to the Bible.

WITH SUCH ... where SUCH things are found,

be not found!

This is the order of II Timothy 3:5.

How readily do some cite 'doctor's orders', and then do what they are told, for they value their lives! How less readily do we find men and women and children, obey what God tells them, who is as far greater than any doctor, as the universe is than an atom, and much more so, for that contrast is disproportionate in the extreme, but this one is without proportion at all, is absolute.

THIS, this is the outcome. If then you have homosexuals permitted in the pulpit, in the pastorate in a church, and such by name, then that church has violated its mandate, left the godly, is at war with the word of God, and ONLY if you wish to join with it in this, do you stay. The issue is not preference, but the word of God, not a matter of viewpoint or culture, but viewpoint and culture in frank rebellion against God.

If you stay under a captain who is attacking the Army Headquarters, do not imagine that because he has put you in charge of the luggage, that, being yet part of the whole, you will escape. In fact, you would normally be expected to have such a horror at the outrageous madness of the captain in warring on base, that you would not even give your refusal to join with him in such an escapade,  a moment's thought, apart from that required for immediate negative response to such a denial. Yet in one church we find talk of networking, as if under one ecclesiastical roof, one Church which defined itself as such when it came into being, you can be named; while in one room there is the mansion's permission to do what is unseemly, condemned, abhorrent.

To dwell where there is such a front, is divine affront; and is this then the desire ? If so, this is one way to do it.

Such participation is not excusable, and such rebellion against the scriptural prohibition on being associated, which is not obeyed when you are with such a body - whatever its name or pretensions, or identifiable in any way as of it, or with it - cannot hope to escape the impact of the One whose word is so despised as not to be implemented.

The other side of The Great Divide is available for you to walk on; and if you choose so to do, talk about names and the like will do nothing. The thing, be it identifiable as this or that, which declares what may be done within it, so that networks of it are participant in it as being authorised by it, so giving it coherence and meaning: the thing you are in becomes the name of your game. If you call TURNING AWAY, continuing to stay, then as a scribe of our times you excel; but as a rebel you continue.

You do not turn away from what you continue to adhere to, participate in or recognise as having power to speak about networks or anything else. If you did, you would not 'hear' the words, or be affected by the dictates at all, nor organised through them: you would have turned where this is not so.

Slackness here is simply one more commandment broken, and if this our time is one of PERIL, as Paul declares, then to disobey your walking orders is to act as one who is not a soldier at all, and must examine himself or herself to see if sound in the faith; for believing ? what does James say ? Faith without works is dead, and if you want to show your faith by your words, James prefers to see the deeds, and declares this, "Whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all" - James 2:10.

Thus there is no exemption or exception, and while God in mercy is ready to forgive the repentant, what sort of repentance continues in its own way ? or as John the Baptist had it, BRING FORTH FRUITS WORTHY OF REPENTANCE.  

 

2) Next comes the case of SOCIAL GREED (I Timothy 6).

Here a social case arises, that of gracious service, even to brothers in Christ, on the part of bondservants,  rather than such devices as social revolution. If anyone teaches-otherwise  - no, this is not a misprint but a method of alerting the reader to the fact that the Greek term is a compound one - if anyone, then, presents a contrary doctrine, and does not consent to the teaching of godliness and the words of Christ (criteria already considered), Paul here declares, then what ? Then there are spiritual matters to be held in view. What are these spiritual matters revealed through the apostle Paul ?

In such a case, the person heterodox,misaligned, in error , as the New American Standard Version has its translation (I Tim. 6:4-5),

"is conceited, understanding nothing,
and has a morbid disposition for arguments and verbal disputes.
From these come envy, rivalry, insults, evil suspicions, and mutual friction among people
with corrupted minds, who are deprived of the truth, supposing religion to be a means of gain."

One rendering has, "among people of depraved minds and deprived of the truth."

Paul proceeds, "Indeed, religion with contentment is a great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, just as we shall not be able to take anything out of it." Godliness with contentment is indeed great gain.

The text then itemises those who desire to be rich and the readiness with which they fall "into many foolish and harmful lusts" which "drown men in destruction and perdition": the pollution of the present and the dire destiny of the lost. In 6:10, he further characterises the love of money, noting that some having strayed from the faith here, with greediness, are pierced with many sorrows.

Next, there is a challenge to Timothy in the most general terms, just as the terms immediately above were becoming more and more general. He is instructed to FLEE these things and to pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love and patience, gentleness; to fight the good fight of faith, to lay hold on eternal life, as called, and to keep this commandment without spot, blameless till the day of Christ. Then comes His appearing (I Timothy 6:14),  wrought anew by the government of God, Himself inviolate, eternal, unapproachable except in Christ.

This is the terminus to which we look, and it is the beginning of eternity beyond the current testing times, the return of Christ, "the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Did not Christ make it most apparent that He is like a nobleman leaving for a time His property, but who will return and act as the case requires on those who have misused and abused it! (Luke 19:12ff.), or a householder who let his vineyard and then returned to apportion results to those who had misused those seeking the fruits for the owner,  year by year! (Matthew 21:33ff., cf. Mark 12). Indeed Christ directly asserted that many would be surprised at His restoration, when He comes unexpectedly,  their guilt exposed who had disregarded Him, His advent sudden,  like that of a thief by night! (Matthew 24:32ff.). As to the manner of it,  at the time of His departure, the angel informed the disciples that this same Jesus would return in a similar manner to that of His departure (Acts 1:7ff.), and the glory to be is parallel to the wonder of His surrender as a sin-offering on the cross (cf. Luke 24:26, Mark 14:62, Philippians 2:1-12).

Thus there is a special problem faced in I Timothy 6:1-2, a mode of test by the criterion of I Tim. 6:3, and a delineation of the characteristics of those who reject such teaching, teaching otherwise, and rejecting the criteria of Christ and godly teaching. This condemnation is linked to one of increasingly broad kind, as we see in the succeeding verses,  since the criteria cover all deviation from  divinely revealed doctrine; and then there is presented a challenge in the most cardinal terms of righteousness and Christ.

From this, we see that a special question arises, a statement of the criteria by which to judge questions is given, and then those who reject the specific answer to the question, and do not consent to Christ's words and godliness are shown condemned. The criteria then expand in their coverage, and Timothy is exhorted to keep the criteria, the faith, the word of God in general and in faith.

In the midst of the condemnation and characterisation of those rejecting the divine criteria and the teaching given, CONTRARY-TEACHERS, Paul tells Timothy WITHDRAW HIMSELF.

While then some of the characterisation of the rebels may include a specific feature drawn from the bondservant issue, the criteria in terms of which it is all to be assessed are made the basis for the exhortation to Timothy. They are presented in their entire breadth and scope, while the breach of the authority involved becomes the basis for the condemnation.

It is from "such" - from people like that - that Timothy is to withdraw. This is a complete parallel to the case of II Tim.  3. In our last chapter, we were seeing much in the way of parallels in doctrine; and here we find it in practice. To believe and to do, these are as brothers in Christ; and what is pure is to be practised, what is corrupt in teaching, to be severed, its practitioners avoided.

Thus the decree nisi is read where this authority of Christ and His word is denied, where contrary teaching is involved: for there is to be no fellowship where such things as this occur. The denunciation is specific, but part of a generic. It is from this type of error that Timothy is to subtract himself; and the type is that which is adverse to Christ's verbal authority, Christ whose word in Matthew 5:17-19 is so utterly categorical concerning all the scripture, so intimate to each in Matthew 4:4, and in Mark 7:7ff. is no less concerning addition.

3) Following comes the case of DOCTRINAL DRIFT -
Romans 16:17f.).

In this, Paul having outlined fundamentals of the Christian faith in the preceding chapters and verses, makes a declaration of a practical kind. What happens, then, if someone or some party or group or sect should preach contrary to the doctrine of Paul and the apostles, should actually seek to be involved in the church but adverse to the doctrine so clearly formulated and so forcibly presented, so reasonably made manifest and so graciously delivered by these leaders sent by Christ for just such an office (cf. John 13:1-14:26) ?

There is in reply to this question, not merely the answer, but a moral and spiritual deed of witness delivered concerning those guilty of such teaching. This is scarcely surprising in view of the treatment of the Gospel, defined and made unalterable in the Epistle to the Galatians, where so stringent is its purity, that even if Paul himself, the apostle, should have erred by preaching otherwise, a different gospel, he too would be accursed (Galatians 1:6-9).

It is important to realise this, for in the grand sweep of comprehensive truth, in terms of which all things become comprehensible and meaningful, if what God says of an injurious creation, one misusing liberty for lapses in love, indeed for active hatred and the follies of a pretended autonomy, for indifference towards their Creator or worse, active slander of His great name: if THIS also should be ignored, or diverted or perverted, then only calamity remains.

	Christ did not send a telex, email or letter; He came.
	He did not speak in romantic terms as a verbaliser in air, but acted.
	He did not call Himself the Good Shepherd as an exercise in speech, but died for sinners. He did not come to die in order to be thwarted, but to witness the eternal life which is His, in breach of death, the work of love and mercy in overcoming judgment the costly way, for sinners.

If it had been indifferent whether those who also PERSONALLY WERE CALLED, having been His witnesses in life, death and resurrection, should teach, or others like Muhammad some 600 years too late to know, should present the truth He promised them, then it would be astounding.

How could the ONLY GOD there is, bring the ONLY WAY He has for those whose ONLY OTHER OPTION is a deserved hell without the One they did not desire or know or cherish in the very face of His light, love and Gospel (John 3:19), make it indifferent as to communication!

How on earth or in heaven could He, having done all that and having shown His glory in the face of Christ Jesus, in the very axes of eternity, being brought to man, permit the matter to be dissociable, derelict, the road train of some other truck, which had packed some other word from some other source for some other reason!

Thus, not surprisingly, but as part of the brilliant harmony of inevitable truth,

in contrast to those dizzy dashes of those who think they can ventriloquise for God,
or make gods like little dolls, that speak, the heady clashes of those who want to show
how to find the god they invent, or the collection of words they admire:

Paul makes a clear prohibition.

Today, to say that this apostolic prohibition is more honoured in the breach than in the observance would be a ludicrous under-statement. There is, indeed, today a passion for its defilement, an adoration of its breach, as if to breach this one apostolic commandment were a ground for the highest praise and the most rewarding social commendation. To obey it, on the other hand, becomes like a testimony that leprosy is good, and all should have it. One does not exaggerate, for this is the Age of concord in every presumptuous, sumptuous substitute for God, or if not God then His Christ, or if not His Christ, then His written word, that could be imagined.

Paul however speaks quite simply about the case where his and the apostles' teaching is not followed (and we remember the basic ground for the group in witness of Christ from the first, who He was, what He did in history, having come from heaven for this express purpose).

Having, then, in Romans 15-16, first asked us to pay attention to the needs of the Gospel messengers to be faithful and sustained, and to the people who as teachers presented doctrine which they had learned (and Paul makes clear that his doctrine is of this kind in I Cor. 14:37, 2:9ff., being from the very mind of God, who sent Jesus, the Lord's Christ - Luke 2:26), the apostle deals with the contrary case.

Indeed, those who called division and offence by contrary doctrine to that given, were subject to one single command here, and that of two words.

Now one should think that a two word command, each word 5 letters or 4, would not be excessively hard to comprehend. It is this: AVOID THEM! That is Romans 16:17.

Then Paul gives an approach to such, which is most like that of I Timothy 6 in 2) above. "For," the apostle proceeds, "those who are such do not serve our Lord Jesus Christ." That is a sufficient indictment. If you do not honour the mouth of the Lord, how can you honour the man, Christ Jesus ? If you do not honour the name of the Master, who is boss ? and how is He Lord ? “Why,” queried Christ, “do you call me Lord, Lord and not do the things that I say!” (Luke 6:46). If your boss directs the manner and shape for your company, and asserts principles, procedures and aims, is it some kind of fantasy which would make others think you a fraud if you said you served him, but denied his words ?

How could they serve Christ if they de-specify His mouth, ignore His word, decry or disparage His requirements, fall foul of His directives or shamelessly invent their own doctrines in HIS name!

What they serve, declares Paul, is their own bellies. Now there is here obviously a figure of speech; but it is a common one, and has a name, such is its frequency in language among men. It could be called metonymy, which means the use of one thing to speak about something else, which is associated with it. If it were a criminal of stout countenance, then you might perhaps be moved to say this, 'As the violent work of the gang proceeded, the face appeared.' Thus, 'he was the best English bat' similarly, does not suggest that the person concerned was fashioned out of willow.

Here the 'belly' has many overtones. It is part of the viscera, where feeling is thought of, as in this, 'his bowels were moved', which suggests emotional distress, feeling of a high order, of great disquietude. Thus the gastronomic per se is certainly not the meaning here, in the context of such breadth; but it is a symbol of what is. They serve, in other words, their own desires, personal and selfish, and not the realities of truth. That is the meaning.

By smooth words, the apostolic denunciation continues in Romans 16, "and flattering speech" they "deceive the hearts of the simple." In other words, Christ was it, said it and did it, as the Truth; but these do not do it, are not it, but yet in His name dare to proclaim what is the product of their own internal ramblings, with a presumption so preposterous, as they abuse His name to help their own vile ends, that deception is their ware, smoothness their mode and flattery their arrow.

Paul's exposure of such continues in II Corinthians 11, where the dissemination of another gospel, or their having another spirit, or presenting another Christ, when there IS no other, shows them as false apostles; for, Paul declares, Satan is able to disguise himself as an angel of light.

It is forbidden to be in any kind of spiritual fellowship, where such light that is darkness is being given scope for its exhibition. Indeed, the word concerning such people is this: AVOID! Let it be as a void in your life; and this, it is not done by sharing communion with it, now, is it ?

4) - 5) The cases of MORAL and SPIRITUAL INVENTION
(I Timothy 4 and Ephesians 4-5), now arrive.

In the former of these two, I Timothy 4, we find another reference to the phenomena towards the end of the Age to which Christ came, and coming, commenced. Paul declares that there is a special revelation that as this time comes, there will be notable 'doctrines of devils', and in the train of these dynamics some will depart from the faith, listening to 'deceiving spirits'. Lies will become a trade mark, hypocrisy a condition of heart in such cases, as might be expected where devil in reality and God in appearance are mixed!

Indeed, declares the apostle, such have "their own conscience seared with a hot iron." This is clear if you have ever left a hot iron inadvertently on some sheeting. The scorching, perhaps first detected by the nose, is seen in its clouded byproducts by the eye and soon felt by the hand as the disaster unfolds. There is no remedy, unless of course, the scorching is minor in area, and a patch can be sewn on. The tissue of the sheet at the point concerned is unserviceable thereafter.

In the case given by this special revelation from the Lord, Paul indicates, there are some specific signals. Consciences such as this are derelict, diving anywhere, like ashes.

 This will, as in all signals, help identification of what is in view. What are these then ?

	A) in force, there will be some prohibition on marriage.
	B) a food fad will arise, in the form of a command NOT TO EAT certain foods.

So important is this revelation, that contrary to the unwise ways of these now openly flouting the word of God in an agonising world, there is a need to WARN. Paul knew the need, and did not hold back in meeting it! Timothy would be a faithful minister if he alerted the brethren to this declivity, this debasement, this coming fraud (I Timothy 4:6).

The world now is delighted NOT TO WARN, except against those who believe the Bible or kill; and in England, the former Home Secretary has been noted as joining the two, in a way which appears to constitute one the most barefaced attacks on the Gospel of love without force, perhaps ever made! (cf. What is the Chaff to the Wheat ? Ch. 5). Terrorism and evangelical Christianity were actually by a ludicrous, contradictory and exceedingly slanderous assault, conjoined; as if the cross and the scimitar had some comparison, or even the cross and the airliner bombs, or the cross and the fires of Rome!  Small wonder protests of force were forthcoming at this gross and hideous slander concerning any evangelical Christians. Next perhaps Nazis will be called Communists, or Falun Gong terrorists, or Marx a capitalist!

Such is the intemperate and ludicrous reaction maturing towards the Gospel of the love of the God who so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son in death, to bring life, and in contemptuous exposure of contemptible folly, to bring back some. How true it is that there is a departing, and that the doctrines of devils have come in such a season as this. Here we see the fulfilment, incidentally, of the "despisers of those who are good" as one of the final flavours of culture in this world, in II Timothy 3:3. Where such is the flow, much may go; and this double food and marriage doctrine of devils, it is one which Paul announces for this late phase of the time for the Gospel to circumnavigate and be instilled into this passing world (cf. I Cor. 7:31).

In passing, it should be realised that this "good" in this verse is variously translated as "the good" or "good", meaning the people or else, even what goodness is ... or of course, BOTH! The Greek here is just one word, and it involves a negative adjoined to loving and good, in a triple alliance, a threefold unit, together with the ending signifying many or plural. This word readily lends itself to such a translation as "despisers of the good"; but as a complex noun, it can refer to the other also, despisers of goodness! Such is its assignation in Thayer's Greek dictionary.

There is a NO to goodness and those who love it! That is part of the pathology of this end-time case, and as noted, this is the period of its domain. Watch for it, and be encouraged, then, you who are Christians, for it is but one of the many signs that His coming is near, and so lift up your hearts as Christ told you! (Luke 21). If you mourn for those so misled, and seek them spiritually, yet do not let your joy be diminished, as you go. His coming is near!

Paul, for his part, assuredly does warn, and it is well as time has now advanced, to consider applications of his words. There is only one case where deception, abstention from certain foods and prohibition of marriage can be discerned; and this is one which has come about over the centuries, as the Bishop of Rome became pope, and doctrine, not only not to found within the Bible, but contrary to what is in the Bible, became common for a body which grew massively in scale. This it did,  as likewise it did in the use of force to crush those who, naming Christ, did not share its contradiction of the Bible (cf. SMR pp. 1032 - 1088H as above). This ghoulish phenomenon is indeed found where such teachings were found.

Thus it can be seen, not merely that this was a most important warning from the apostle Paul, since there are computations which suggest many millions of death in Inquisition and long before it,  from this scandalous conduct at the behest or sanction of the Bishop of Rome, called then 'pope', father, as if further to scandalise the word of God which prohibits by name any such title to man, at the spiritual level (Matthew 23:8-10). It can also be realised, and this even more importantly, that these errors are historically joined to the deception of having Christ's expressly stated memorial supper (I Cor. 11:24) turned into a sacrifice. How appalling it is, that someone who as genuine man, had one body and could die therefore only once as Hebrews 2 and 9 emphasise and require, is made to appear as if He broke His actual body unnoticeably in the Last Supper, as MUST have occurred if He MEANT that the bit of bread to be used in memory of Him, was in fact His body and not a symbol for it! as John 6:60 makes even clearer, if possible.

To imply such things, intentionally or not, it makes no difference here, and then to act as if having had this poetic and bloodless death, in terms of juice being called it, and bread given its own name, He resumed the work, with an implicit resurrection or some other magic not noted in scripture occurring invisibly and untestable in time, in order to be ready for Calvary: it is to breach all reality and every word of God to the point. To die at Supper in order to bring a memorial for a death to be wrought on the Cross by divine prescription over a thousand years in duration, this is a mockery not to be masked!

To KILL others because they would not inter the word of God in order to obey such traditions of man, nor go contrary to it, nor beyond it, as the depths are  beyond the mountain peaks: this becomes an ultra-murder and is indeed in line with the apostolic characterisation of the case, not only in terms of forbidding marriage and certain food, but in calling the schism, "doctrines of devils". 

Faith is not another name for confusion and addition to the words of the founding Christ, or contradiction of them or both, relative to those whom He actually  authorised, is not a form of obedience, but a spurious supplement, a spiritual invasion and a corrosive influx. Against such things,  Proverbs rightly speaks , warning as one must in the Lord's name,  those who add to His words, in this or other ways, as if HE SAID THEM; so advising not to do so lest one be found a liar (30:6, cf. SMR Appendix D).

It is clear that if one is to warn the brethren about this sort of thing, stylised in Paul in terms of doctrines of devils and deceiving spirits, that the warning is NOT to engage in such practices or to accompany those who commit them. The Great Dividing Range has the side of light and that of darkness, and we are advised to WALK IN THE LIGHT (Isaiah 2:5, Ephesians 5:8). In the latter, the advice is this, and to this we shall return: "For you were once in darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light ..."

Thus the realm of darkness is diverse and contrary to the realm of light, but those who know the light of the Lord, who is the light of the world (John 8, 9), are to walk as children of light do, and in a way wholly contrary to what is contrary - that is, that of darkness.

This of course means that not only the Roman Catholic body, but those who now insist on 'walking' with them, such as the Uniting Church, increasingly the Lutheran body in Australia, and the World Council of Churches are not for calling, for fellowship, for spiritual involvement of any kind. Let us be clear: it is not to say that once a great body like the Lutheran Church begins to slip, it is forthwith,  to be left. It IS however to say that once it is duly tested, checked, confronted, and refuses to turn from such wilful disobedience, then it MUST be left, as all the above scriptures indicate, as well as the general principles of Isaiah 8:20. The time for such testings is now long past, years having flowed past this lachrymose default.

This word in Isaiah, one may recall, advises us that if they do not speak according to the book of the Lord, the case is that there is no light in them. That is a profound statement, and it is to be heeded.

God is very zealous to love, to die, to be resurrected in human format, to donate eternal life, and if it is felt that it is more important to have medical hygiene in a hospital, dealing with a few years of mortal life, than in the church, which deals with the eternity which comes from the heart of the God who first made us, and judges all things, then this is to make the endless less than the ending! the eternal a minor to the temporary, the divine subordinate to the passing, and the sublime inferior to the supine.

It is also to defy God.

Let us then turn now to Ephesians 4-5, the 5th of our illustrations of the results of light and darkness before the Lord, the one FROM Him, the other CONTRARY to Him.

Here we find in Ephesians 4:30-32 that one must avoid GRIEVING the Holy Spirit. You must, as Christians, says Paul, not show bitterness of spirit, or surge up with anger, with all sorts of upset and bad words and evil ideas about other people, but instead be kind, tender-hearted, forgiving, just as Christ forgave you.

This relates to personal desires, insults and all the things men do to one another, as if to hurt, destroy and ruin; it is to do with man against man, in matters of dual concern, for their own sakes.

Instead, in Ephesians 5, Paul continues, be imitators of God as dear children, and walk in love just as Christ loved us and gave Himself an offering and sacrifice for us ...

Then turning to the dark side morally, he adds, that fornication, coarse language should stop; because those whose lives are of this kind, including those who are covetous and idolators, have no inheritance from Christ, and do not therefore have eternal life. Do not, he directs, be deceived as empty words may act to mislead you; the fact is, the apostle makes clear, that the wrath of God comes because of just such things.

First, then, remember the words in Ephesians 4:30-32, which showed the sort of spiritual errors walking in darkness can mean. Avoid this, and act in the opposite way, he said. In view of this, he adds the word 'therefore'. THEREFORE be imitators of God, he proceeded to state, in 5:1, and walk in love; while avoiding those evil things such as idolatry, covetousness and ALL UNCLEANNESS. Thus the carnal, bodily sins and the cluttering spiritual sins alike are in view, and ALL of them are to be avoided, so long as they qualify as unclean.

This is in perfect parallel with II Corinthians 7:1, which speaks of cleansing oneself from all uncleanness of flesh and spirit, completing holiness in the fear of the Lord.

What however is one to do when uncleanness of body or spirit, persistent conduct to the contrary of the love and holiness of God is pressured in and accepted ? In view of the nature of such things, the apostle makes a declaration in Ephesians 5:7: "THEREFORE DO NOT BE PARTAKERS WITH THEM."

These commands are always reasonable, based in principles and the very revelation of God, applied to cases; and they have one result, whether the special emphasis, as here, be on moral and spiritual invention and deviation, or as before and above, on doctrinal deviation, or social greed or spiritual dissonance, where a strange contrariness enters in.

More than once Paul warns that there will be culmination of these things as the Age comes near its end, and always the step to be taken is clear: AVOID, do NOT PARTAKE. If now a billion people do this or that, then that, so far from being a ground for joining them, is a ground for caution, for narrow is the way, and in this part of the Age, the end part, such popularity is precisely what deviation from truth and goodness is to enjoy! a specious enjoyment and a delusive thrill.

THE CONTRAST

Thus there is one design for man, who inhabits the Continental Divide which was made by one God, who shines His light on one side, where also the rains loom and cascade down, where the eternal waters being imbibed, flow up in so many springs to eternal life, where healing in His wings makes of the place a torrent of grace and a triumph of kindness; but it is a place where the invaders from the other side seek constantly to use the missiles of madness and the coruscations of dark light to create trouble, pain and persecution.

Nevertheless, the light and the rain are so abundant, and the peace of the hills and sward on this side is so great, that those who live on it are replete with joy, so that in longsuffering with joyfulness they endure and delight in the light, walk through the waters for pure abundance of felicity and look to the clouds of majesty which protect them (Isaiah 4:5, John 4:14).

On the other side, those of the same original design as these on the near and sunlit side, in darkness continually try to create artificial light, which has a baleful and flickering orangish hue, suggestive of its origins, and enables the bare discernment of darkness to be made more palpable, so that odd shapes and sizes now come, now go, and nobody actually knows what is what, and what is not.

They seek also to manufacture water, but their night is so vile and baneful, that it merely leads to a slow seepage which unlooses the binding in the hills, which tend to fail and fall; while the cold is often so intense, that glaciers form, the moraine of which with the other disturbances, moves slowly, but occasionally in great heavings, to the dark netherlands below.

For mankind on either side, there is one destiny, and one way to the one Designer, who as Creator is also Redeemer; and when one is swept by strange winds to the near side (John 3), there is much rejoicing on that side (Luke 15:10), and much strengthening is given, and help, that the very clothing (Jude 22-23) which was on the body, can be rapidly replaced; and such is the wonder of this, that those who come declare they are new creations (II Cor. 5:17ff.), as in fact they are.

Although indeed their form is one with that of the others, its state made them unrecognisable, and with the removal of the chemical coverings which were present in the air of the other side, and with the impact of light, with that remarkable change which seems to liberate, loosen and make more lovely their most interior parts, they grow and find the rock under their feet; for all the houses here are built on rock (Matthew 7:24ff.), the most delightful stability they have ever known or could even imagine (Isaiah 33:6).

The division between the two sides of the Mountain is a ridge, called the lines of demarcation, for it is so high that no one can pass it, except with the aid of the wind; and those on the far side, they find the darkness seems to be unable to be penetrated by the light from the near side, so that there is a sense of specious confusion, which with the height of the ridge, the sharpness of its edges, makes it appear a towering height which proceeds into the uttermost parts of the heavens; for in blindness there is no relief (Matthew 13:14ff.) and for wilful blindness, no cure of human invention.

The name of the ridge is the Reality of Truth, and from the near side, it is better understood, for there is more light there, and it is also called the Exclusion of Unbelief; for though faith is needed, and lost on the other side from any reality for any, yet it is to the same original design of man that it comes. It is in accord with the facts that it works, the fact of the one God and one Designer who having made man, brought to be the Range when man fell, so that though the two sorts seem like two races, yet this is because the darkness makes dimness of anguish on the far side, and the darkness also within makes of them such a confusion that the coruscation seems incredible on the other side, of which they gain indirect record and reports, even sometimes blazing ones, though they do not believe them.

Those who have been caught up at times, on the near side, they gain a perspective which the others readily recognise, because it confirms all their own intimations, and they call the ridge The Great Dividing Range, since there is no pass through it, and only the wind can bring those on the nether side, to the light by acting from above (John 3:6,8). The children of light love this, but the children of darkness who live on the other side, they regard it as unattractive; for despite their gloom and doom - which some of them do not like to face, but others grow morbid about, blaming God, while others deride them, not believing anything but themselves, and knowing so little because of the darkness - they prefer to think of something which will happen.

They never know what it is, and sometimes they make up little gods who inhabit the hills, like organic evolution, and sometimes gods like the destiny for man, and sometimes gods like the dance of progress, as into the current malodorous pit of selfish scheming, pompous mouthing and unutterable cruelty, amid falling standards, contempt for truth and  a plague of injustice. At other times, they seek to make  organising gods who never work, but whom they like to pat on the head fondly, though the head is not there, so they invent little pats called philosophy, and pat the words on the site for the head anyway; for there is a theory that it is good to pat, so they get it all pat, and pat and pat and pat. Some think this is patronising to man in particular, since little gods take away from the glory within, though no one on that side ever quite knows what this glory is; so they agree to have a feeling that something will happen, as it will, when the mountains being removed, and those on the near side taken to the common Designer of the entire race, find the One who restored them to their original design and light and the love of His creative heart.

These who stay in the dark at this time however, they inherit what darkness portends, not what they themselves pretended.

There is beyond it all, this profound harmony; for though the two sides differ so much, there is a continual call to those on the far side to look above, from where the wind comes, and to call on the name of the common Creator and man's only Redeemer, which some do, and then they find themselves amazingly changed both in location and vocation, and proceed to send messages to those in the dark side, which they for their part grind under foot, though sometimes one will come upon it, and believe and leave.

There is therefore a profound sense of an overarching, all-sufficient One who is active and not belligerent where faith looks for Him to find Him where He is, but whose hatred of the shameless name of sham is so intense that like dazzling lightning, ever now and again, it penetrates even to the heart of the nether side (Romans 1:16ff.), leaving them upset and turbulent, looking somewhere other than above; for though they know, many of them, within that there is a site where both unity and the end of division lies, they prefer to be confounded to finding it. But lies love them like fleas, and hide in the crevices of their hearts.

Many in this far side love to talk of the things of the messages, and some form Dark Churches, which are really not churches at all, but spiritual cases of playing the fool, or else being fooled by the play; and they continue with those who love the little gods they pat, and they try to combine it all, and the darkness there is incomprehensible, for there is no sense it in at all, but the sense of reality, which is not seen, which announces the end of it all, which is an interminable exclusion (Mark 9, Matthew 13:42-43). Some indeed form something called the church of Roam, and they do roam, for you never know where they will go next, for their leader they empower to tell them where it is.

Some even make an altar (SMR pp.1032-1088H), where it is said everything is altered, but you never see what it is, and they use words about Christ, whom everybody could see, who said His words were spirit and life (John 6:60ff.), who did not die at the Last Supper, but once as is given to those who take the place assigned to the form of man, and that on the Cross (Hebrews 9:25-28, 2:14-17); for He did not take the form of angels, but of man and was in all points in this regard like man (Romans 8:1-3, Hebrews 2:14), except that He did not sin; and He as God, so took this form (Philippians 2). so that He could in all points be tempted like man (Hebrews 4:15),

Others prefer a different altar, and it is called the Uro-Paean, and they do not accept the altar of Roam, but sing praises to themselves, for whom they declare a 'common destiny' though it is not in their power to secure it, being on the nether side, where there is nothing left to secure, except an insecurity which itself is not secure, since its end is everlasting night; while others again, form pacts and let words become parasites on thoughts, so that they eat them up, and you never know how much is eaten, and how much is left, for it is continual; and they like the ambiguity, saying we don't know much, but this much we know, we move. The sense of direction does not help them, and they are like busy traffic which is too pre-occupied to find out where the streets go, or even their names or the points of the compass. Thus they are encompassed with confusion.

Even here on this dark side, some realising that the messages do not allow for such unholy synthesis, and such ungodly alliance, find a thrust within, and call on the name of the Lord, and gain the other side, declaring it a gift of glorious magnitude that from such a near approach to the moraine of mud and reeking boulders, coldness and melting icy slush, they could ever have been lifted high enough to pass over the seemingly impenetrable Ridge. It is indeed impenetrable, unless the wind blows; but it is the word of the practical love and divine saving passion  of God which they pick up, it is this in the power of the Common Creator which leads to the thing called faith, which on the dark side they all dread, until they have it, when of course they are not there anymore.

The glorious harmony of the inevitable truth thus displays itself in the mountain, which high enough above it, you can see to be one, in the light which shows the truth clearly and coherently on the near side, exposing anew the wonder of  the transition from one side to the other, in the power of the Common Creator who with power, pathos and pardon brings some from the far side of the Common Mountain, to the other, which in sum, though uncommon in any one time, yet mounts to a very large and sizable number.

These are called the elect, and though some try to say it was their own election, the Book says to the contrary, for they are not born of their own will but of His who is above (John 1:12-14, 3:27, 6:65, Matthew 11:27), whose the wind is and whose the word it is which liberates; and the Book has a name, the Bible. Yet it is He who acts, He whose love reaches past all the scar tissues which polluted hearts exhibit; and He ceases not with any because love fails, but because it is pure, and will not stoop to shame itself into sham force (Luke 19:42ff.). Over all the disparity, His love and power loom like a burning fire; though some feel its heat a