PALL OF SMOKE AND DIAMOND OF JOY

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PALL OF SMOKE AND DIAMOND OF JOY

Considerations of Contrasts, Complementarity and Beauty

Rev. Dr. Robert E. Donaldson

Published by World Wide Web Witness Inc.

March 2001

ISBN 0 9578816 5 7

CONTENTS

PREFACE

Of course, you may say that red is too emphatic, frighteningly bold, colourful, impactive and so on. But then, when you compare it with the blood which it so readily symbolises, and the anger it so often typifies, the errors that such ink so frequently exposes, it does not seem, for a little while, a bad choice.

This volume as the title suggests, is dealing with events and interviews with destiny, as man progresses in his decline, advances in his regress, moves to the culmination of his crisis, and the acme of his tragedy, which nevertheless exposes the wonder of the diamond, its multi-faceted beauty, its crisp clean lines, its fine light-expounding surfaces, its deep inner depths of light, its protection from defacement, its littleness so often, and its eloquence, with much work in a little, to show so much.

Moreover it has come to speak where it does not act, by association, and to declare what it does not say, by typifying it, from weddings to engagements, from love to light.

The pall of smoke on the other hand is beyond question, the most amazing contribution VISUALLY of our generation, that is, my own, which stretches

from the post-depression years when I was growing up,

before the sudden surge of air expertise,

before television,

before space invited man as the ocean depths had earlier done (and still to some extent, do, with such things as nascent or juvenile water),

to the recovery programs in the U.S. from that great swathe of disaster,

the dust bowl again in the US and the dam work,

to the vast diffusion of US power, amid increasing moral corruption, the reduction of the British Empire, if not to ruins, at least to most modest dimensions (The Other News 13, News 73),

to the rise and fall of the arrogance of Russian built Communism (with the help of Marx, and so of the British Museum, and of course, of the German Engels, and the decay of Russian might and its 1917 humiliation in World War I - see SMR pp. 127, 230, 708-709, 911, 925-928, 862 with 1079),

the rise and fall of the other crazed alternative, based likewise on projections of events which nothing could sustain, condone or make operative, the Third Reich (see SMR pp. 911-912, 918ff., 968-970),

the arrival of Europe as a unifying concept, as the Bible had forecast (see SMR pp. 955-959., 750B-D, 1088G-H, Joyful Jottings 14),

the rise of technology, and

hence ‘science’ as the god of many, who blame most often the real God when their false god does not serve them well, which is really the height of presumption, invalid and vicious … (cf. Divine Agenda Ch. 1);

as likewise to the proliferation of christs who are false, and sects which are spurious, notions erratic, national, irrational, individual (cf. SMR pp.683ff., 689ff., 1056ff., Divine Agenda

Ch. 3,Things Old and New, Chs. 1, 4, and Appendix; Acme, Alpha and Omega Ch. 9, News 123),

and this in a schematic structure satanic in subtlety (Tender Times for Timely Truths Ch. 8); including Statism in its vulpine realities and lamb’s robes (cf. SMR pp. 1191-1192, 910-911, 750Bff., Ch. 1 below, and following chapters),

so that this regress with perplexity is becoming almost a pastime not only for philosophers, and a regressive contemporary museum confused with life, moving backwards into recidivism, to syncretisms unspeakable (cf. Stepping Out for Christ Ch. 1, SMR pp. 857ff., It Bubbles, It Howls, He Calls …Ch. 8, News 85, 99, 116, Divine Agenda Ch. 3, Galloping Events

Ch. 7), delving into the gloomy dells of obscurity, as it leaps into a future as sound as a chasm (cf. SMR pp. 867ff.) ;

and surges into the populace itself (Joyful Jottings19, News 116, 118), the main criterion again and again, seeming to be not only the rejection of the Christ of the Bible and of history, but of rationality itself (SMR Ch. 3, Repent or Perish Ch. 7).

All this is its cliff walk, the sightless of my generation, walking at dizzying heights, and earning dismal depths, and much more.

What more ? It has included this movement from Communism to communalism (The Frantic Millenium and the Peace of Truth Ch. 7), or the god of the community, also, as we see so strikingly illustrated in Chapter One! Man is thus simply worshipping himself, in this sense, that he presumes to attribute to himself things available only from God, and whatever religion or irreligion he may mouth, it makes but little difference to the point at issue, when this is done. When you start using the bank of a millionaire, and his signature, or funds, for your own affairs, it is theft. It is chastenable, as an offence, foolish as a presumption, and disaster is its sure result. Further, it is silly, for whatever GROUNDS he may have had for his funds, the THIEF has none!

It is merely a case of using what someone else made. As to the thief, his worthiness for the imposture is not only zero, but a minus quantity, for if you do this, what results: you add to your subtraction from another’s possessions, the sheer audacity of heart to do it.

As this volume progresses, we shall follow this duality, the brilliant wonder of the inordinately clear God (see Ezekiel Ch. 1 or I Timothy 6:16, with John 1:1-14, Proverbs 8:8), with his incisive depictions, directions, doctrines, programs and power, on the one hand. On the other, we shall see in fateful contrast the obscure and in terms of precision and brightness, rather featureless and preposterous proposals and impositions of man, as the day comes close when Christ, the Judge, returns, and all is put in place, like a craftsman, returning to his workshop, after an explosion.
This explosion of human power, made the more possible

by the divine gift in creation of intellect,

combined with the tools of trade, feet, hands with exquisite sensors, as Dr Brand points out in his repair work on leprosy victims, when questions of replacement of those sensors arises,
with eyes of wonder which can see so many millions of colours,

ears that are sensational to convey sounds from the soft soughings and murmurings of tree and ocean, to the mighty roar, the rasping clamour, the tender nothings …

all this together

with the human spirit, which can rove, consider, contemplate, originate concepts and move into the prepared universe of material things, with power ideational, moral, spiritual - or amidst its demise, when some spiritual cancer seizes his soul, and his works become merely like the tremors of some madman:

it is made available to man.

But as to these tremors, as of the demented: That is often. Increasingly, it is now. If it is not yet rigor mortis, it is a fit on the way.

This disease, this spiritual pathology, it is not an intellectual thing per se, for it is perfectly compatible with excellent intellectual work. As happens in so many other diseases, it is in CERTAIN places and SOME times that you see it, and not until near the end, that its effects work throughout the co-ordinated structure of the body, to the most painfully obvious motions of approaching death. It is so in this spiritual phase too (Ephesians 4:17-19).

You see it in debate, in deliberate obscurations, in muddle from fusty fidgets and musty devices, as the truth is avoided. Increasingly, we shall be seeing it on the corporate scale, in the ‘community’ level, that grand pretence which shrouds its pall of pretended unity, like some maternity outfit, over divided mankind, shrouding the nations. We shall also see it among the individuals of our race.
With these two features in mind, the brilliance of creation, but far more, of the Creator, of His redemption and its power amidst these ruinous times, and the fogs of contemporary follies, notably that pillar of smoke, that column of vapour which Joel predicted as one of the striking features of the days as the Age approaches its end, the mushroom cloud, which like the return of Israel to Jerusalem’s domain, speaks so pointedly of the book of history for our Age, nearing its end: we proceed in this volume, to review and consider, to watch and relay the word of God to the scene.

In the past 7 decades of the author, it has been a wonder, something for the blind to see, the deaf to hear, in both these dimensions, namely the clarity of perspective and the confusion of the foolish fighting, as it most often is; for the war that counts is this: that for Christ (Ephesians 6).

This: It is not to wound the body, but to heal the spirit, to balm the heart, to arouse the mind to reality, and to bring the soul of a man, woman or child to the only God there is, by the only provision He has made, in Christ, while there is time. Like a doctor in a jungle situation, whose medicines are opposed by the witch doctor, so is the gospel opposed, often not directly, but by clamps and conditions, by indirections and impositions, as Chapter 1 of this volume, strikingly exemplifies.

It is not desired by millions. The cost of health is too high; the ease of indulgence is too much, and the temporary profits in the contemporary world are too mind boggling; or the heart will know no ruler, though it was made for One, and the refusal without doubt will always bring in others so far beneath the Lord in wisdom, power and love, that the substitution is like that of a smoker, determined to invade his/her lungs with the noxious fumes of death, to escape the realities of the present (cf. Isaiah 26:12-14, John 8:21-36).

They are, however, not escapable; for the only escape is Christ (Hebrews 2:1-3, Isaiah 66:19), not from reality but from unreality; and it is available with that unfathomable love and unqualified power which raised Him from the dead, and with which He will return in a little, for the time is near, when the preliminaries are all done.

If you like, it is an operation which is about to take place. The preliminaries are as we have seen in the last few volumes, again and again, considering the word of God and the works of history, in all but innumerable dimensions and details, almost done. These preliminaries themselves can be harrowing to many.

However, the operation itself, the judgment on the operational Prince of this World, on his henchmen to come, and partly present already, on his aspirations and confusions, his arrogance and his hardness of heart, and that of those like him, who follow him, and later the final judgment: this is an operation of which Nuremberg gives some scent. It is rather stronger than that of soap, perhaps more reminiscent of that of Dettol, of heavy antiseptic. It comes when battle is done, and truth is to be exposed.

But always, without cessation, let us emphasise this: that judgment is a choice you can make. Salvation is not within your power of choice (John 15:1-4, Romans 9:16), but it is in the inclination of God towards you (I Timothy 2:1-6, Colossians 1:19-22), so that by humbling yourself in repentance, and placing yourself in His hands as the One who died for your sins, and is ready to remove them, for His love is to all, and His payment to those who are to be paid for: you come to Him (II Cor. 5:17-21, Romans 10:9, John 6:47-54, 10:9,27-28).

You do not have to be good to come; if you were good, you could not come, for this is for sinners only (Luke 13:1-3, Barbs, Arrows and Balms, Appendix II). You simply need to come to the Lord your Creator, Redeemer, in repentance, and putting your trust in Him, believe Him and follow Him, and finding in Him the promises of God, use them, and seeing in Him, the Shepherd, find rest in Him; and being then sent, work for Him. Who better than God ? Who less than any preposterous pretender, such as the prince of this world, whose judgment … lingers not!

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Is liberty taking wings, to fly away ?
Or is she to be SENT flying in S.A. ?
THE VERY LARGE BILL THAT MUST BE PAID FOR