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CHAPTER 9
THE DIADEM ... THE FOOT AND MOUTH
AND
THE IRONY OF THE CONTRAST
WHOSE FOOT ? WHOSE MOUTH ?
To the Argentine, to
Ireland, to France it goes, and smiles at "science" in its prodigious
self-importance, swollen for many with pride, though it is merely man at work
with the strictly limited powers which God has given him, in that decisively
ordered, magnificently organised and brilliantly
conceived entity of code, control and management, spheres and collations of
activity, magnitudes and minimalities, called the
universe. When God is forgotten, and we shall see for
What then is happening so broadly throughout the world, and in Europe in particular, where such heights of commitment were so often reached, individually and even to substantial extent, in Christian terms, but which now so languishes that hundreds of missionaries from parts of the globe are now congregating on England's pastures and cities, to seek to bring back the erring nation, while for decades past, Europe has been recognised as a MISSION FIELD! and one great mission has been so named...
As the foot has wandered, as the mouth so much now talks folly, with increasing wildness in wilful ignorance of the Lord, in festering philosophies of pride, folly and oblivion of the truth, among men, now there is a parable among the beasts. Now the foot and mouth of his cattle mimicks him. It wanders astray to its death.
It is disease that strikes
when resistance is low. Spiritual disease has already stricken, and has indeed
increased its velocity, and mounted with wings like vultures, like hawks.
This is being considered, it appears from report, despite the fact that England has known for so long, and so deeply since the Spanish Armada and the other papal domineering of the past, never repented of, that Romanism is a world conspiracy, with Rome simply its centre, and world dominion its stated aim and claimed authority. That this is a humorous seeming joust at Christ, who said MY KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD, and added, to Pilate, that if it were, then His servants would fight: this is something that may occur to some. But there is little humour in its results over the centuries, and as we have attested, right into the last war (cf. SMR pp. 920, 951ff., 1032ff., The Frantic Millenium and the Peace of Faith Ch. 10). What would you expect when Christ's own name is so misused by someone in another country, demanding absolute allegiance to himself.
But this is only one of the miscarriages.
Indeed, in this case, it is
appearing increasingly a longing or lust for something international and
non-British, a sort of alienation from that manifest and all but incredible honour and power that this once great nation had, from
around 1550 to 1950. Its ways are multiple, but the end of that way is one.
These were the 4 notable centuries of highly imperfect, and in much
at the national level, rather formalistic, yet quite declarative
Protestantism. The power of the little
That was then, but now it is in acute peril.
While however it operated, in this way, the liberties allowed soaring energies and the degree of fixity preventing many an invasion, of thought in its sinister graspings for power, and of spirit. It was far from Biblically perfect, but similarly, far from mere pap for take-over. People could vary, but not operate with such variations, the main levers of national power.
Yet now brave indeed would
he be who would call her Protestant, or Biblical, or founded in reality, in
verity. The weakness towards the international junta of
In fact, rather surprising,
though alas not entirely amazing, statistics speak not a little for themselves.
Thus in CREATION Ex Nihilo, from Ken Ham, we read in
the March-May 2001 issue (p. 17), this datum based Independent News, of
<www.independent.co.UK/news, as follows.
SO, as the Bible says of
What does it take ? When will sleep depart!
How perfect is the
Israel-Gentile parallel, from those vastly distant times to these stunningly
contemporary parades of power and vainglory! Revelation
By tens of thousands of
consumed corpses, the plague of animal foot and mouth disease brings smoking
corruption to the rural peace of
So Christ becomes, as noted earlier on this site for one English approach, the way for what is deemed a "deviant minority": oh! not the christ of idols, or the christ of blasphemy, or the christ of an ecumenism which demeans him to the pantheon without His nature, denatured now in derision as formerly on the cross in much the same way. NO it is not this christ who is derided, for he, unlike the original, is readily manageable, manipulable, a construction of thought, a shrine of religion, not the Son of God who purged the temple of the powers of man, intrusive and exploitative.
So have they loved to wander in foot and mouth ... and not they alone. The world is not too far behind, but in this, Europe has much to answer for, that in many famous sallies, sorties and advances, she has proclaimed what is now harder and harder to find, and stood fast in many of her fortresses, for what is now swallowed up increasingly, in sickly substitutes, emotional, ecclesiastical, governmental, popular and populous. It was always wrong and never according to Christ to force people in this matter, as the this worldly-church did; and the Church of Christ, spiritual and actual, has suffered multitudes of murders and robberies from ecclesiastical as well as regal power, as for this pretext or that, power has sought to force religion.
But God, He is not limited, as in the rebellious heart of dependent man. Force it in fraud, or ignore it in folly, it is one thing: it fails, it is a mere pretext for precepts, a piety for truth, a vile violence for virtue, a toy doll for living reality. His word continues, His way does not alter, He is the same, and His word indicates that history is rocketing to a landing in judgment, like some super-fast space vehicle. Alas for man, for it is not speed that he needs, but direction. His limits increase as his lords increase, and the Lord is not followed.
No, God, He is not at all limited, as is the rebellious heart of dependent man, with its increasing noises, attuned not only in music and art, but in life and spirit, increasingly to meaningless discord, which however has one direction, militant secular humanism, allied with symbolisms and spiritual stealth, leading to crass incredible idolatry.
It
comes like winter in December in
THE BRILLIANCE OF THE DIADEM IS NOT MADE OF
CLAY
CANNOT DECAY, IS
NOT EARTHY, BUT HEAVENLY
Indeed, as to God Himself, of HIS UNDERSTANDING THERE IS NO NUMBER.
That is the beginning of the difference. HE is not dependent on cardinals or soccer matches with their most religious sounding chanting of glory and great things, attached to the foot of man! The greatest thing any human foot ever did was to be crucified, in the work of Christ, not in a statue of clay to be kissed, not in a work of art, but in a work of salvation when He died, the just for the unjust to bring us to God (II Peter 3:18). It was not a priest's foot, for He was not even of the tribe of Levi at all. It was not a pope's foot, with an osculatory toe attached, for the pope like all men other than Christ, is a sinner, mortal in his own self, needing redemption the same as any other. The ONLY ones who do not need redemption are those who already have it, and they have it from ONLY ONE, and that is Christ Himself, who is defined as
Of humans like that, there has only ever been one, for all others are categorically different, not merely divergent, but separated in kind by something which makes infinity look small: the everlasting status of the increate Creator, relative to what He made, to whom He came (John 1:1-14, 8:58). Preposterous pretension is only a sign and signal of the sin which made the crucifixion necessary, and anyone to crucify Him to himself again, appears beyond all folly, for it is the black card of judgment irreparable (Hebrews Chs. 6, 10).
But let us revert to the verse with which we began: HIS UNDERSTANDING IS INFINITE, reads the AV in Psalm 147:5. Actually, it is "of His understanding there is no number".
It is time to look where the real action is, where mimicry and mockery, madness and insanitation of spirit is not to be found, to the glory of the only One who can make great things for man, merely one of His works, His creations which tarnish like super-active silver, when pretending to be gold. With God, nothing tarnishes, and what is kept safe in Him, has His own protection, for though the body be destroyed, and riches be taken by the enemies of the Lord, as booty for their insolence, comfort or both, it remains true that His is the power and the glory, not the tinsel and the shame:
And under His
wings you shall take refuge,
His truth shall
be your shield and buckler.
You shall not be
afraid of the terror by night,
Nor
of the arrow that flies in the day,
Nor of the
pestilence that walks in darkness,
Nor of the destruction
that lays waste at noonday..." - Ps. 91:4-5.
The body is going in any case; its mode is not the point, but rather as with David, this, "When I awake, I shall be satisfied with Your likeness" - Ps. 17. That is the end of the matter for those who know Him, as to destiny.
We are not globe trotters - leave trotting for pigs! but pilgrims; and consider the end, the matrix, the quality, the point, the purpose, and hence find in the Prince of Peace, the truth, which He is.
As to the other claimants, the products, the things of men, they are as helpless as the Middle East attests, and as futile as the vanity of giving Russia billions in her due bankruptcy, exhibits: so that she might make express arrangements with US enemies in North Korea and Iran, and help them with arms. This world is as reliable as the little ripples of the sea, and means as much in its integrity without God.
But what of God Himself ? HE is beyond infinity. That is what Psalm 147 shows and what we have demonstrated in SMR and elsewhere. Infinitude is His creation - that is, something perceptible in terms merely of numbers that do not end. He is beyond the concept of limit, since limits are something that He has made, constitutive of creation with its confines, crevices, crevasses, teeming in multitude, whether of atoms, cells or the stars. The very concept of number, not being met because it continues, in infinity, is limit-oriented. With Him, no such conception applies: He is what He is, and continues as He is, with no constitutive character imposed on Him, for there is neither anyone nor anything which could do it, for all depends on Him, all things being from Him, to Him and for Him (Romans 11:33). Even sin has its resolution in Him, that abuse of liberty, in pardon or pollution, finding either its deliverance or its appointed pit.
As to our living creation, and their very multiplicity of kind, as well as number - Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard maintained that the Burgess shale deposits and such aggregates, deposits, were indicative of structural design so vast, that only a SMALL percentage is NOW left of what once populated the earth. NOT MERE NUMBERS, but ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN MODES: this was the point. We have treated of these things in detail before (e.g. Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium Ch. 13, News 68 etc. - see Index Evolution - Naturalism, Gould) , but notice them in the current context.
It is difficult, in the
face of such attestation of the extravanganzas of
multiplicity in creation, to resist the temptation to call organic evolution, in
its numbed confusion of thought, a nightmarish aberration, or a drunken orgy of
mental twilight, as well, of course, as simply a fiasco in violent collision
with the facts. Design POURED, creation was exuberant, not even a distant
relative to gradual extrusions from conceptual nullity. That of course is
precisely what the Bible said in detail, in the beginning (Genesis
Yet though numbers show the fascinating, the intriguing magnitude of the power, it is far beneath God. Does one man say, Look, I have written 10 books, and the number speaks ? No, it is the CONTENT, the contrivances, the plots, the artistry of word, the design, which speaks, in each one; and only then, do we consider them all, the continuity which reinforces and abounds in evidence of the powers it took to do, from whatever place they came, human or divine.
Not in limping gradualism, as a matter of fact, but in brilliant profusion, creation has come, like the thoughts of man, in their limited but still significant flashes. THAT is its nature as we all find out by experience, our own and that of the race. That is the way it goes in creativity, creation.
It is this which is one of the remarkable characteristics of this facility of mind, as humans endlessly attest in their own derivative creativities, of thought, word and design, in buildings political, economic, architectural, artistic, thrusting, arriving, enveloping, departing, continuing.
God is beyond all that mere number, though number can speak of what is beyond it. Multitudes are an offspring of His singularity, a crowd from His internal power, an army form His headquarters, a creation from His creativity.
He is ONE, creation is many.
In His unity, is strength - for as we have often seen, His is not at tripartite reality - there are no parts. In His totality, spiritual not particulate, there is an eternal three of persons, not spatially or temporarlly separable, since our space and time are themselves His creation, like books to an author (Romans 8:38ff., Hebrews 11:1ff.): they are not the author Himself.
Nor are they phases, these three, since He does not change; nor composition, since there is none to compound: in nature One, in function, correlative, they are eternally an integrity. Put simply, He is ONE as to BEING, and three as to PERSONS. And that, it IS simple! Moreover, it is also the basis of our own lives, mind, matter and spirit, another trilogy, but this being or our own, it is compounded by the uncompounded, and reached by the One unreachable, except by His own free revelation, which, by His great mercy He has also poured out on us in magnitude and number, depth and precision almost unspeakable, in the Bible, and in perfection itself of life, in His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ.
Thus is to be found this
One (on earth, as Jesus Christ) who is attesting One (in heaven, from whom He
came - John
But as to Him: I and My Father are One, He declared, and hence as in John 10:30, 5:29ff., not only is His the same honour as that of His Father, but He does the same works in the SAME way. Thus it is written. That is the nature of the divine self-revelation. "If GOD were your Father, He challenged, you would love Me, for I proceeded and came forth from Him!" (John 8:42).
Accordingly, our separable, itemisable numbers do not apply, even there, as to entities apart. In time-space terms, He has no number. No spatial-kind, no creation-type number applies, but number is applicable in a way illimitable in unity, indissoluble without merger, individualisable without compounding, a way that none but God could have, for all others are DE-limited, while He defines: for it is a matter which is of Him who is as and who He is, in a way which creation does not have ability to perform, but can realise, though it be apart from its own constructions. This arises simply from His being the ONLY non-created Being, whose ways are correlative to this reality, not to our own limitations.
God is a Spirit. In understanding, He has no number, it declares in Psalm 147, no limit, no processive cap, no kinetic block, no altitudinous barrier. Knowledge of our sort is a mere creation of His. Summarily all is seen and lies open before Him with whom we have to do.
Infinitude, a mental concept that touches the idea of no end, is beneath Him, for whom no limit is conceivable. True, He DOES have no end, but this is not as a mere negation of His continuation being voided: it is irrelevant to His nature.
This is the God with whom we have to do.
"Who has
directed the Spirit of the LORD,
Or as His counsellor has taught Him ?
With whom did He
take counsel and who instructed Him,
And taught Him
in the path of justice ?
Who taught Him
knowledge
And showed Him
the way of understanding ? " - Isaiah 40:13-14.
"His understanding is unsearchable" - Isaiah 40:28.
The confused capers of finite man, with his finite understanding, his finite powers, social, economic, political and personal, are as dust, a pall of smoke.
It is noxious because
disordered and distempered; but the brilliance of the glory of God is as
crystal (Ezekiel
Just as foot and mouth is like an ironic comment on the wilful straying of man from the glory of God, seeking as Jeremiah put it to those of his own time, cracked cisterns which they MADE, instead of the pure waters from the snow (Jeremiah 2:13, 18:14): so is man exposed even by the vulnerability of the animals beneath him, like a sudden deadening of so much potential. He has strayed in foot and mouth, and his disease mean only death, unless the cure be taken, which is from God only, for man.
These rubbishes - such as organic evolution and the whole strife of pride, war and vainglory to which it has so ministered through philosophers and dictators following them - they are like worshipping a stone and saying, YOU are our father! (Jeremiah 2:27), a comment as witless as the wits would be if they had been so begotten, but since they are wits indeed and not so begotten, a shame so inglorious, an unwisdom so wilful that all that happens is merely a comment, where judgment strives with mercy, and only slowly does the wrath of God reach the point where this earth would, unless Christ returned, become uninhabitable, as predicted (Matthew 24:21-22). The earth, it is moving quite sharply towards that situation, observably, now.
Is science (but not really science - cf. That Magnificent Rock Chs. 1, 8 and SMR pp. 140ff.), just the popular quasi-science that scurries about in philosophies that deny scientific method:
Is then this sort of science,
the popular variety, in chains and servitude to fictional fantasy that is itself impossible (cf. SMR Chs. 3, 10),
is this, merely an aspect of HUMAN knowledge,
to vaunt its midget powers,
till foot and mouth disease humbles it
to a sense of its our mortal and moral puniness...
It is as if the PALL OF SMOKE
the PILLAR OF VAPOUR of Joel, so disgruntling the earth since 1945 with its
poisons, is not enough to stir the imagination of deadened man, sodden in
the sins of the flesh and spirit, to awake. More plagues are now needed. There
is no more time for mere leisure to squander in the romances of unrealism, and
the mental plagues of irrationalism, not at all romantic for those who slowly
die, or more quickly from the godless hatchet: time is going, its number is
nearly up!
Only in the presence of God our Maker, who endues us with derivative powers, is there meaning for magnitudes, conception correlative to creation, perspective for thought, or power for a godly life imbued with understanding from above.
It is here that the only actual missing link (for that is not missing which is not there but merely imagined ) may be found. it is, the link between made man in his minimality - and his God in His eternity, even beyond infinity, generosity in His eye, liberality in His love, preciousness in His provisions.
Without Him, man is like a lost child, not abandoned by God, but in a reckless abandon, averse from his Creator, unaligned with his Redeemer, like a car with the front tyres at a 45 degree angle to the path of progress.
But Isaiah 40:28-31 has it:
To whom then will you liken God?
Or what likeness will you compare to Him?19 The workman molds an image,
The goldsmith overspreads it with gold,
And the silversmith casts silver chains.20 Whoever is too impoverished for such a contribution
Chooses a tree that will not rot;
He seeks for himself a skillful workman
To prepare a carved image that will not totter.21 Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?22 It is He who sits above the circle of the earth,
And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers,
Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.23 He brings the princes to nothing;
He makes the judges of the earth useless.24 Scarcely shall they be planted,
Scarcely shall they be sown,
Scarcely shall their stock take root in the earth,
When He will also blow on them,
And they will wither,
And the whirlwind will take them away like stubble.25 “To whom then will you liken Me,
Or to whom shall I be equal?” says the Holy One.26 Lift up your eyes on high,
And see who has created these things,
Who brings out their host by number;
He calls them all by name,
By the greatness of His might
And the strength of His power;
Not one is missing.27 Why do you say, O Jacob,
And speak, O Israel:
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
And my just claim is passed over by my God”?28 Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
The everlasting God, the Lord,
The Creator of the ends of the earth,
Neither faints nor is weary.
His understanding is unsearchable.29 He gives power to the weak,
And to those who have no might He increases strength.30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary,
And the young men shall utterly fall,
31 But those who wait on the LordShall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint.
The Holy
Bible, New King James Version, (
It is worth repeating the
point, since the world seems to be having hearing problems, and
finds no specialist to cure, since the Maker is increasingly despised. The
brilliance of the glory of God is as crystal (Ezekiel
There is the contrast.
It is there that lies the power, renewal, revival, orientation; and Isaiah 50-55 shows HOW the necessary linkage must be made. It, that actual linkage with God, it is this which REALLY IS lost, for it is available, and merely not used, ignored, disregarded in stultification. It is sad, horrendously sad, the ultimate tragedy, which man himself is writing as if intoxicated with the pen.
When in place, by His
grace, there comes that noble magnificence, God as Saviour,
ultimate site, Father of the man, the woman, the child, who has so come to
reside in Him. It is not merely a call, it is a consequence. It is not only a
birth, it is a life, one that grows, grows up indeed into the Head (Ephesians
A royal diadem
in the hand of your God" (Isaiah 562:3).
But what of those who made this up in their created particularity, each one set with care in the royal diadem ? This (Isaiah 61:10):
I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,
My soul shall be joyful in my God;
For He has clothed me with the garments of salvation,
He has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
As a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments,
And as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.(As above)
JEWELS IN THEIR
FLASHING HAND THAT MADE THEM
and then
CUT THEIR FACETS
And for the rest ? Indeed the Lord has proclaimed
To the end of the world: