W W W W  World Wide Web Witness Inc.  Home Page   Contents Page for Volume  What is New

Of course they are precious, but why ?

Take ruby, sapphires, crystal ware with its delicacy and auditory purity,  and the various inimitable beauties the natural products display. As to the latter, in molecular structure they have their ways, but in beauty they stand secure, dashing with illumination, not too intense, but unrelieved, gleaming with sheer contentment, unalloyed with irrelevant intrusion, stable and born to be borne in the eye, alerting attention and rewarding it.

These are the stones of light of which Isaiah speaks in 54:11-12. After the revelation of redemption in Chs. 52-53, with the brutal ugliness of desecration of the Messiah, according to plan, so that "His visage was marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men", at the hands of that inhuman surgery of misapplied justice, envy and hate (Mark 15:10, Psalm 69:4) that spoiled the body of Him who could raise bodies from the dead, heal them, purify spirits, cover trespasses: after that,  there comes this message of hope.

There is to be a tabernacle of huge dimensions (54:1-6), and exultation will be linked with the exaltation of mercy, and though "for a mere moment I have forsaken you," yet there is redress, for "with great mercies I will gather you." To be sure, "with a little wrath I hid My face from you for a moment," yet this is not the end of the matter. Why ? It is for this reason, that " 'with everlasting kindness I will have mercy on you,' says your LORD and your Redeemer.' "

But why ?

It is apparent from Isaiah 65:13-15 that there can now only be ONE PLACE for the Israelite who is an Israelite indeed (Romans 2:29, John 1:47), and has faith in God, the living and unchangeable God (Malachi 3:16, Psalm 90, Hosea 1:10 cf. 13:14, Psalm 16, 22 cf. Joyful Jottings Chs.  22, 25). And that ? It is in the Messiah (Isaiah 48:16, 52-53 cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms  17 and That Magnificent Rock Ch. 3). The very One they killed is the ONLY ONE by whom they are to be thrilled, past the grim gallows of Hitler, original in kind, garlanded with horror for flowers, with cyanide in atmosphere, slaughterous as of cattle with disease, in mathematical mounds (cf. Jeremiah 30:6-7 with which we have made explorations before).

However, with the Messiah dead, as Daniel forecast so precisely in time (Daniel 9:24-27, Biblical BlessingsCh. 6,  SMR pp. 886ff.), to die around A.D. 30, as He did, there was not to be the vindictive vituperation of an angry God.

Certainly they would suffer realistically for what they did. Without divine protection past non-annihilation, they yet had the covenant though it lay broken (Zechariah 11:7-17), its shards a testimony! That is the factual side of the thing. If you toss wilfully the ship's supply of antibiotics into the ocean, naturally you will suffer when the fevers which require them arrive in your body. That is simply the realism of rebellion. It is not that the surgeon will chase you with a scalpel - for that would be vindictive, rather than just. It is the disease which chases you, though the ship's surgeon you disdain and his treatment despise, its cost disregard and its availability breach. If medicine haunts you, it is because you have hunted it! It is most grievous and in Jeremiah in particular, you find the anguish of the Lord, whose mercy is so rejected and whose kindness avoided, yet who, as in Hosea, will bring back His believing remnant for all that.

Again, they would find the result of the breach of their covenant just precisely as Moses prescribed, for that was part of the agreement in Leviticus 26. God is just and does what He foretells. Joshua warned them carefully about that sort of thing (Joshua 24:14-24), making such a point about the danger of being linked to the LORD, for there is no way for sin to reign when you are His (John 8:34-36). If you want life in its lusty self-embracement, have NOTHING to do with the Lord, if you want with your eyes open, aggressive, secular humanism, as in the Commonwealth and S.A. governmental actions we have discussed in Ch. 1 and 3, then do not mix with the things of the Lord.

HE is not mocked by this sort of pollution, which is like asking a pure bride to become a prostitute for the first night! It is obnoxious, unfeeling, far worse than thoughtless. What is it like ?  it is looking for some exquisite stone crusher if by any means you might crush the truth, mix the word of God with the word of men, and RULE them. If ignorance is any excuse, it must be dispersed.

But is Israel alone ? What of the Gentiles ? It is now coming to be like the idolatries of old, when they actually physically PUT their children in the fire, a folly which the Lord viewed with a distaste amounting to virtual execration (II Kings 21:6-18), a thing performed in company with the other evil effronteries against His commands and His people (cf. Jeremiah 5:32), in concert, all brought to bear by the misled rulers and prophets of the day, and not without substantial following from the people, so that when Josiah acted to purge, it was like the first Spring in many Winters.

Indeed, what does the Lord say, but this of such ruin of loveliness and reckless refusal to care for His people, as could reach that insult to His creation of man, that acute repugnance of burning their sons in the fire, as they do now in parts of our own education system, with theories of wild effrontery and prodigious confusion, in profusion, as if they can no more think nor see nor consider, but follow blindly the multitude on the idol excursion (cf. That Magnificent Rock TMR -  Ch. 1). This, says authority, is what is being said! In logic, appeal to authority is a FALLACY, yet this from the government servant involved!

It is now as then, a spiritual disease (cf. Jeremiah 2:11-13, 27), saying to a stone, You are our father! So do the children suffer (cf. TMR Ch. 8), and none will alter it, though the stones cry out, and books mount in denunciation: books given to the government, are ignored like rain on the thick tiled roof of a mansion.

• But what did He say of such a thing ?

 
• "... they have also built the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offering to Baal, which I did not command or speak - nor did it come into My mind ... Therefore behold, the days are coming ... that this place shall ....be called  the Valley of Slaughter" - Jeremiah 19:5-6.

 
• Useless to urge that the physical is worse than the spiritual, the intellectual. It was a physical burning to idols, then, and it is a a spiritual, intellectual burning to an idol now, a thing indefensible and irresistible to many, like a plague, an educational plague, an ideological tombstone visited as a shrine (cf. That Magnificent Rock Chs. 1, 5, 8). Naturalism in its various guises continues its spurious effrontery, in biology as in physics, the former  from the most tender of ages (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9).
• It was Christ Himself who made it clear that the chief offence is one of spirit within, so that if you look on a woman to lust after her, you have ALREADY committed adultery (should you be married) with her! -Matthew 5:28-29. And what do you do about this sort of thing ? Cut out the means of it! Again, be filled with light, and as to that, as we shall see in a moment, be converted so that you may be in the palace of jewels, where the light is shining with the beauty of holiness. Converted to what ? To a form of religion as in I Timothy 3, a mere shell with the living interior gone ? or to the word of God, to the Christ of God who is Lord, and who declares not a jot will depart from the law and the prophets till all is fulfilled Matthew 5:17-20, cf. Appendix I, That Magnificent Rock).

But what does this have in common with the MENTAL adultery of which Christ speaks ?

Now it is the SAME principle, ignoring the offence, declaring with confidence enormities of spirit, and sacrificing truth for convenience for ADULTS!

In one way, it is fitting, and only element need one at the first behold. It is this: if the CHILDREN have for so long been sacrificed, making private schools for many a necessary and expensive option, is it not perhaps fitting that the parents should now suffer in concert ?

What! you say, is this then the connection between the Classification Bill which would make adults juvenile in composition on the Internet, on possible pain of composite and crushing governmental blows, one which moves to religion as well as other things, and our government education
system ? But of course.

Is one generation to be sacrificed, and the offerors not themselves afflicted ? Is youth to be indoctrinated, uncompetitively, with a monopoly of teachers' time, in naturalism, while the parent's escape ? Is there no thought to the principle of the thing, the force, what is sending forward such abominable intrusions into the young mind, such irrational dogmatism ? Is it for no reason that competition of ideas, ideology and teaching is excluded ? Nothing comes from nothing, but what does come, has a reason. It is always dangerous to ignore the reason.

Now therefore, on the internet, the affliction is BEGINNING to spread, from that same invasive, ignorant, logically unsustainable secular humanism, that exalts man in his manners, moods, modes and preferences, as in biology in such a swathe of the schools,  to some sort of statistical sovereignty, for the adults, some sort of culture that commands even on the Internet, one with a power that bites, that cuts, that spits out what it does not like (together as we noted, with various fines which could help cover expenses, for it all costs). We are growing up in one thing: what the children had to suffer , now the adults may receive as a bill in their own affairs. The spirit is not dissimilar. It commands, it rules, not with rational necessity, but with cultural desire.

The going thing goes.

If therefore it can operate in ONE field, why not in another ? If truth in its sacredness can be aborted for this or that reason, then why not for other reasons again! If blindness occurs, will sight still continue ?
 
 

But to return to the jewels. That is the better option, because there is more light, more stability, more endurance, and no blood. It is a kingdom founded on blood, but on that provided by God, a message clear from the days of Abraham, when God interposed as the patriarch was about to sacrifice his (very special) son. All sons are very special ? Of course, but this one had peculiar features, for it was and was to be predicted that through him was to come the line which would be the format for the Christ, who would crush the diabolical head, the Messiah, who is the eternal expression and word of the living God. It was He who was to be presented as a sin offering for the crazy crimes to which flesh is heir, and to which so many even of the great succumb - as did David, with Bath Sheba. David ? What a man of delight was that, the Psalmist: but he too succumbed for a little.

Here is the wonder of God. Be you Jew or Gentile, let your ancestors have done what they may, there is for you an escape from the whole unseemly sovereignty of culture (cf. Isaiah 66:19-21), the entire absurdity of Sovereign Statistics posing as God, as if what you do, as a people becomes what you ought to do, so that it is apparent there is NO guidance. You just follow your own noses, and at sea, you can see the folly of that, for a ship's captain, even if you find it more difficult on land. The principle is the same.

What is this escape ? It is to be found in Hebrews 2, where we are told this: "HOW shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation," itemising the power of God, the performance of Christ, the trustworthiness to reason and the impact of revelation on the world, in Jesus Christ. It is to HIM that people, each one singly as in Zechariah 12, must come, and look on the One who was pierced, and follow Him (John 10:9,27-28), for that is what His sheep in fact do: being redeemed, they realise and respect, loving obedience to the Master who alone rules (Matthew 23:8-10), while all of us our just "brethren". That is infinitely better than piercing Him again, in hardness of heart and profligacy of law, as if man was a mere piece of equipment to be serviced by his sponsors, who cannot even make him, and God were to be mocked with a dreadful, a terrible, a bitter mockery, while fantasy, indulged, smiles its hollow-cheeked grimace, and the ship ploughs where it will, in an ocean not bereft of rocks. "Other lords besdies You have had dominion over us," it is written in Isaiah 26, "but by You only will we make mention of Your name!"

But how are they to come to Him ? It is in such a way as to receive MERCY (Isaiah 54 tells us this, of the people who are to receive Him, of whom of course the Jewish believing remnant is part, and such a part in view of their historical career as a people, so seduced, so transgressing, so ancient, so foretold in their journeyings now almost complete). Here is the wonder of mercy, that it lets go the past and pays for the damage bill, whatever its height, and then builds its children, those who repent, with precious stones. It builds them, Jew or Gentile, in one building as Ephesians 3 so carefully and pervasively expounds.

In what way with precious stones ?

• "Behold, I will lay you stones with colourful gems,

And lay your foundations with sapphires,
I will make your pinnacles of rubies,
 Your gates of crystal,
And all your walls of precious stones" - from Isaiah 54:11-12.

• the mountains shall depart,
• And the hills be removed,
• But My kindness shall not depart form you,
• Nor shall My covenant of peace be removed,
• Says the LORD, who has mercy on you" (Isaiah 54:10).


But what is this ? "All your children shall be taught by the LORD,
And great shall be the peace of your children" - Isaiah 54:13.

THAT is what follows the account of the crystalline structure of the palaces of placement for His people. It is an architecture of excellence, of light, of beauty, but of a beauty of holiness which we have seen here (Psalm 96:9). The chemical architecture is but a symbol, in this illustration, of the spiritual one.

• But what IS the basis ? Peter does not delay to expose it:
  
  

"Therefore it is also contained in the Scripture:
 
• "Behold I lay in Zion,
• A chief cornerstone, elect, precious,

And he who believes on Him will by no means be put to shame" - I Peter 2:6.

As we have seen in SMR Chs. 1-3,6,8-9, this is the word which never alters, never falters, is logically required, commands history which like a little child, always follows, is far more empirically accurate basis than science, which varies as if it were quicksilver: for this the word of God, never is altered, no not in 150 years, or in 1500, for it is never wrong.

As Peter cites,

"All flesh is as grass.
And all the glory of man as the flower of the grass.
The grass withers,
And its flower falls away,
But the word of the LORD endures forever" - I Peter 1:24.

"The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron;
With the point of a diamond it is engraved
On the tablet of their heart..."

Here you see that other use of a diamond, to cut, to engrave, to place permanently on record what is desired. Sin ? it is not desired, perhaps, as a record, though it may for itself be by many desired! But as a record it is inscribed, and as guilt it remains, being etched not merely in records without, but within, on "the tablet of their heart" (cf. Proverbs 20:9, Romans 6:23). It is for one, for all, for there is, as it is written,  no man who has not sinned.

What then is needed is another stone, most precious, a stone which is implacable in purpose, impenetrable in composition, indeed, celestial in certainty, perfect in purity, a stone on which in place of the heart, which cannot stand before God (Psalm 130:3), the sins may be inscribed, being cleared in pardon on the sinners themselves (as in Zechariah 3:9). That is Christ (Isaiah 53:6, I Peter 2:24).

It is this One who is the stone on which what is to be redeemed is built, for though He was broken in bearing sin, He was resurrected, and though according to the predestinate and predicted plan of God (Acts 2:23), He was wounded for our transgressions, offered freely for all, yet He is given a priesthood nothing can pollute (cf. Hebrews 7:26ff., 8:6), and it is for One who is "higher than the heavens", and "holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners." Nor can this Kingdom, this King perish: for His kingdom is the one which shall endure (Daniel 7:14,27, Hebrews 7:17-21), it shall "not be destroyed", and it is "an everlasting kingdom". In it shall the Lamb and the Father be forever praised and glorified (Revelation 5:12-13), and His children "shall reign for ever and ever", one family, one faith, one Lord (Ephesians 4:4, Revelation 22;3).

and what did He do to make available the payment for the transgressions, of Jew or Gentile,

• of toadishly inflated man of pride or woman,
• whether from science falsely so-called (I Timothy 6:20),
• or from the love of money,
• or prestige,
• or power,
• or charm,

 

• for the ways of weaklings unwilling to pay the price of truth, who glimpse it,
• or on the other hand, of the arrogant, the deluded, the blinded, who put their own pipe-dreams besides the empirically verified and rationally necessary truth of the Bible,
• one which has been demonstrated repeated on this site, exposed in certainty for the Age,
• and declared over the centuries,

• which millenia have not sufficed to rebut ?

"... Who when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously: who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the free, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness - by whose stripes you were healed," says I Peter 2:23-24.

Again, he declares: "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God," I Peter 3:18. (Emphasis added.)

You will note "WERE" healed, for this is addressed to the saints, that is the Christians, the church of the living God. It is not to the church of the dead god who can be moved about, or of the figurative god, who can be thought about, and transformed at the mental whim. It is the church of the God who made the earth by creation, and can create a clean heart in His children who are purged as well as paid for (cf. Ephesians 3:9-21, 2:1-12, 4:22-24), re-created as well as redeemed, who find alive in themselves, Christ, the living Christ, unchangeable, the hope of glory as Paul is inspired to write in Colossians 1:27, the God by whose every word man must live (Matthew 4:4), whose gospel is immutable (Galatians 1) and whose ways are beautiful to those who find Him.

Do you pay for someone to accompany you to a concert, who does not come ? Not if you are well organised! He HAS paid for those who have come, do come, and who WILL come, who are known to Him, and indeed predestinated from the first, in love (Ephesians 1:4), since He would have ALL men come to a knowledge of the truth (I Timothy 2, Clossians 1:19ff.), but pays for those who receive it (Romans 8:32). Therefore it is that the ones for whom HE is delivered up are precisely those who inherit all things, as it is written. HIS is the offer to all, and it is sufficient; but HIS also is the foreknowledge of all, and His payment gives to those who so receive Him, ALL THINGS. Yes and this includes the family crystal, the rubies, the sapphires, and as we shall now see, something of the sapphire, its brilliant blue giving artistic voice as in a symphony that speaks, to the vastness and purity of God ...
 

• If you turn to Ezekiel 1, you find the vision of God with vast space below Him (it is simply His creation), and as to His throne ?

 
• "And above the firmament over their heads was the likeness of a throne, in appearance like a sapphire stone: on the likeness of the throne was a likeness with the appearance of a man high above it. Also from the appearance of His waist and upward, I saw, as it were, the colour of amber with the appearance of fire all around within it; and from the appearance of His waist and downward I saw, as it were, the appearance of fire with brightness all around. Like the appearance of a rainbow in a cloud on a rainy day, so was the appearance of the brightness all around it. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD" - Ezekiel 1:26ff..


The rainbow from Genesis 6ff., is the token of terrestrial mercy from flood. It is fire which is in store (II Peter 3 is eloquent on this topic!). But first - is the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, the ONLY King this earth can safely folow with all its heart, the truth and the Creator, in the flesh, now glorified. But let us return to Ezekiel 1, and the appearance He notes in the vision of the divine splendour.

The "appearance" is the term Ezekiel employs.  There are two obvious reasons for this. First, as to God in His own form, He is "dwelling in unapproachable light: whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honour and everlasting power" - I Timothy 6:16. The second ? God chose to present Himself to man in the format of man, as Jesus Christ, so that "the word became flesh and dwelt among us", that word which was there from the beginning, who is God, for there is NO OTHER (Isaiah 43:11-12, 45:21-22), who is the One who says, "Before Abraham was, I am", so using the direct, definitive title of the Lord from Exodus 3:14, where Moses met Him. GOD is a SPIRIT (John 4:23), but He became flesh in this format (Micah 5:13) to declare Himself to man, to redeem many (as in Matthew 26:28), to produce the path to the crystalline structure of holy housing, the presentation for the population in light. Of this we further read in Revelation 21:19ff.

But why a single pearl ? Is not Christ a single pearl, and did His own parable not make it plain ?
What but this: that for Him you must sell all (not commercially, or there would be a mere merciless merry-go-round, but in heart, so that nothing DOES nor CAN compete with Him, as in Luke 14:26, Matthew 6:24, Matthew 13:45-46). Of the city of God, it is He who is the FOUNDATION irreplaceable and secure (I Cor. 3:11), not popes, not priests, not prelates, not masses, not scimitars, not holy wars, not ceremonies, not human pretension or law, not substitute gods, not secular seductions, their head not in sublime glory but in the naturalist pit, not in such things as those, whether they be called this or not, whether "the people" or the idols of yore.

You need two things, GOD and the one who IS, not the many who are not, give them labels as you will. You want your son at a good school ? the school blazer, proudly borne on your son's shoulders will not make it so. IT will not educate him. The school hat will not adorn your daughter with knowledge.

But reality ? It is. The name ? asked Moses. "Tell them  'I am,' has sent you to them", the prophet was directed, and "I am who I am" was the divine reply in Exodus 3:14. As Christ put it, "Before Abraham was, I am" : Succinct, sovereign and filled with light. It shines undimmed, incapable of diminution, and dim is the destiny without it (John 3:36); for without truth, there is only unreality, and when this is aggravated by truth's rejection, it becomes what Paul defines as "the lie" - II Thessalonians 2:11. As to the Lord Jesus Christ, HE was testable, HE was predicted, HE made predictions, all come to pass, to Him and from Him: HE lived it, and redemption is an inescapable necessity as we have shown (SMR Ch. 1, Repent or PerishCh.2 and other sites - see remedy). It is HIS ONLY. There is no other. The world does not possess it. Hell cannot provide it. There is but one. It is of God, it is BY GOD. THIS is the artist. There is no other such painting. Of what does it speak in the end ?

This is the city of light, in Revelation 21, and this crystalline structure is the symbolic expression of the resurrection realities, the certain reality, glorious splendour, majestic perfection of the kingdom of heaven, where His saints will "rule for ever and ever"; and these are its testimonies in precious stones, each stone as a person, most precious (I Peter 2:5). It is these, His people, who have His blood, led to His enduring contradiction of sinners (Luke 53), who cost the life of the eternal Son of God, using human format (Micah 5:1-3), who occasioned His bodily resurrection, for whom He comes (Mathew 24:30-31), and that coming is near as shown in the preceding volumes on this site.

It is He who is the One there before anything else could be, as Creator the One God, for the Creator is ONE ONLY (Isaiah 45:18) - "there is no other," as He says, He who appeared to Abraham as three persons (Genesis 18:2ff.), in whose threefold name all are baptised (Mathew 28:19); and it is the Lord sent, as we see in Isaiah 48:16, who from the triune presence, has come to bring into a man whom we can see, the things invisible, into a heart in human form, to which we may readily relate, the things intangible, into a life which we can watch, the things invincible, into a death we can behold, the love unquenchable, and into this world the testimony which is its own doom when it is neglected (cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 2).
 

Now CHAPTER FIVE