CHAPTER SEVEN
DEE-PHI HUM
Floundering about in the Foothills of Folly
or
Founding the Foundations of Bubylon*1 the
Great
(No, this is not a plus and minus option,
but a question of which negative)
OCEAN-STAR REFLECTS
This needs some explanation, so let us proceed by the biographical method.
HU tossed about in bed. It was not that the bed was lacking, for it was a very prodigy of comfort, organised to the last chip, computerised to obey the least whim.
It was just that the genome reconstruction unit had not quite managed somehow, to get the thing going. Genomes not God! it was a great plan and catch-cry. Hu*2 had personally worked on it, till, to be frank, some of the bio-technicians had almost despaired of sanity. They had to treat hum reverentially, since, after all, hus was a great destiny. Representing all of humanity, and the final judge of all crimes against humanity, hu was becoming a very great person indeed. You had only to ask hum.
Aspirations were thick in hus bio-augmented brain. Euphoric additives had enabled hum to overleap some of the more mundane realities, as they used to be called, and in the combination of these bio-chem supplements and electronic increments, he felt that quite literally, he could do ANYTHING.
That at least was the message. Hu dwelt for a moment on the recent past.
It was all very noble, Hu felt.
The Terms
First there had been the decision to evacuate the very terms ‘his’ and ‘her’, both adjectival and pronominal. These distressingly dwelt on the differences between parts of humanity, as did person, with its son ending. This had been changed to hupers (though it was rumoured that some, alarmed at the salaries and perks of the new most humans, called them hupurses). SO now one could be a hupers, not a person; and instead of his and her, in the alert mind, tuned in to the common thought waves in the international communication program of thought transfer and accretion, new terms were fashioned.
These ? Instead of his, we now gained the term hus, as likewise for her. It became the common term. This stressed both the common elements of both male and female, and the humanity aspect, felt to overreach both. What did it matter which gender ? In vitrio was now the only authorised mode of reproduction, and sexuality was a toy. Like all toys, it could be used as was found most pleasant. The ONLY moral now allowed was the exclusion of what was against hupers, hu-pers, if you wanted the derivation format, or humanity if you wanted it more largely written.
It was true, he reflected, that some wits and sarcastic slaves of convention had tried to rubbish it all. Super-duper hupers, they had called it! But they had been re-educated before long, in the interests of their own safety, for the move was not popular.
Again, right and left had been abolished in all reference to hupers (it was good too, that the very term allowed singular and plural to be one, since it ended with 's' anyway!). Now there was alpha and beta. You would scratch your nose with your alpha hand or your beta. Beta of course, in full hupers style, was the one near the heart, since after all, the thing could beat, you could not deny that. So that was the left. Alpha was the right, and this was good too, since most people were what had been called right-handed, and this made alpha seem first; but there was no real priority, since it was after all, symbolically, only one of the many letters of the alphabet, and there was thus no feeling that it was BETTER to be right, no, alpha-handed.
The same was used in hupers morals. Things were alpha or beta. Alpha meant approved, since the 'a' also helped people to remember. Of course, humanity, that great notion which Ocean Star (which was his name, so deft, he felt to cover height and depth for man) had so emphasised to his own just and highly deserved glory: it was always right, as they used to say. And of course, hu humself was you could say, its … mouthpiece. Comforting thought, a sort of guarantee that so helped hus authority! It had been tried before, only differently by other hupers, he seemed to remember in their own way, in a sort of imperial way.
But the term 'alpha' seemed to make the fact clinical, as if wearing a white coat outside an asylum, the scientific sort, not the medical. He scratched hus alpha ear in perplexity here, for a problem passed like a mist over the face of his thought.
IF, he mused, it was right to move with Humanity, and right was alpha, and alpha was just a letter in the alphabet (good that! as if the alphabet were a sort of a, b, c of morals), and if the whole thing was to be a matter of science, objective and sure despite the many controversies which had grown much less lately, owing to some difficulties which had arisen in the superior re-education processes for the more hupersonally backward of them (an unfortunate slip - hupersally or hupersly ?): then what did it MATTER where a thought were alpha or beater. Beta, not beater: goodness, he pondered, that WAS a slip, another one, so it is just as well this is PRIVATE.
A little anxiously he checked the chip-layout to ensure the public pronouncement one was not turned on. Ingenious these chip-genes, external modem type!
It was off, so he was on again.
THE TRENDS
Yes, while the mere hupers mechanics of the thing could be handled by the tribunals, and punishments dealt out, rewards given and so on, to help the conditioning processes, and of course those right-hand and forehead marks were SO useful in controlling through permitted purchases (no! not right-hand and forehead, alpha hand and forehead!), there was that foul, lingering question. HOW on earth COULD anything be sensibly called BETTER if it was not, because it was not morally so! Is size a dimension of value, is the nod a means of objective measurement ? Ah yes! hu had forgotten momentarily.
Of course, it was better
because hupers had SAID SO! and HUPERS was what used to be called God! He had
said that only recently. Humanity! And now hu could say it FOR humanity,
couldn’t
hu ?: so very useful when the
wretched things - ah! say rather, the flood of variety in personkind - Oh!
Again! say rather: when hupers, made decisions so very difficult for
themselves… itself ? He was growing weary and dismissed the thought.
God! what on earth. He had used that word in hus own musings! The term must be made to cease at once... or, could there be a better way, an alpha way, to be defined by the tribunals, but they ? since they were so bogged down with cases now … no, by HUMSELF!
What more representative of humanity than HU! Was HU not the chief executive officer for the HUMANITY TRIBUNALS, and did they not listen to hum more than to any! An edict ... no, a little more thought to huper reaction was needed here: a divinity declaration ? Divinity ? might this not savour of things past ? A god-dict ? Yes, why not. The small 'g' would placate, and the word elevate humanity.
It would be a ... god, and
he its most intimate expressive unit. Indeed, he flirted with the thought ...
HU could HUMSELF be the expressive, the expression indeed of HUMANITY! Hu,
Ocean-Star, would be the ... Humanity Messiah. Yes, it was good to have removed
the A.D. and B.C. in the dating system. Common era is much better. His mind
began to play on BOS and AOS dates, before Ocean Star and After; but somehow
the 'after' part did not appeal. Hu dismissed that musing.
SUPER-DUPER-HUPERS
But at that very moment, as there flitted across the illuminated screen which he had caused to be built so that he could make his thoughts more visual, a distress symbol flashed and Beethoven's appassionata music blared. It was true that from Crimes against Humanity, that glorious beginning, there had arisen the concept of Humanity as a person - uh! say that again, hupers - and then the thought of someone needing to interpret the hupers, leading on to the concept of COMMUNITY and this of course needed interpretation too, so that you had the concept of COM-HUPERS, too long! but still useful as a stepping stone.
True equally, that the Comhupers needed an explicit way of crystallising its thoughts, particularly when they were, as alas so often, scattered this way and that, so that Ocean-Star had to become the expression and so on: but this Humanity Messiah had just a tinge of the God concept, which could be dangerous, despite the most expert conditioning in the world. One had to be careful, and if a little devious, then paternalistically devious! It was all for the good of hupers. Super-duper hupers, he smiled to himself!
Perhaps not use the term,
the phrase, he smirked to himself, Humanity Messiah but ... hmm!
why not ? Why not GOD, stark and
complete. HU, Ocean-Star, could be that! Why not! It had long been forbidden to
mention the name except in scoffing.
TIME IS COMING NEAR
Just then hus morning tea
was served. Hu always liked to be alone in the first part of the morning, till
As the savouries and fragrance of hus little repast stirred his gastronomy, images fled past his brain (augmented as before, but he always turned it down while eating). There had been the alpha stage of humanity, they liked to say, before the Fall. He had not thrown that out, since it suggested just possibly an arising. Then beta humanity leading up to the Flood, and the judgment, followed by the new Generation.
Hu had smiled on that too, because obviously there had been a vast deluge, and he merely satisfied many by saying, Oh well, there has been a lot of principial pollution in our past. Subtly he had moved it, he smiled inwardly, from denying the obvious to interpreting the DOER of the flood. It had been principles which humanity would soon learn to control. In any case, hu left open what the flood really was, so that everyone could be happy. This was a very recent move, and rather a good one, hu thought.
Yes, that was gamma humanity. Then delta humanity was that after Christ. The ‘d’ helped with the A.D., helping to commute the concept. This also helped the synthetic accretion movement, in which no one is ever called wrong, that is beta, because it stirs them, and control is the essence. So Christ, why yes, of course, very important: the Moslems had liked that, the Roman body, well that was over in the fire, and the Buddhists did not object; and as to Christians, why those who had not joined through the re-interpretation phase education unit, and there were many of them! were being controlled by financial activities which so limited them that they were easier to handle!
Still a confounded nuisance. Hus mind flicked reluctantly to Revelation 13 and 17-18, with a small revulsion of feeling. You know, hu thought to humself, it is like that strange sensation one sometimes has, of having done something all before! But the Bible, better left alone.
A message suddenly came on
his subjective-objective screen in the objective corner. They were gone! The
Christians were gone! Those stubborn, unrelenting, unrepenting criminals
against Humanity - called in
But first! Finish the reflection*3, hu mused. The savouries worked pleasantly and the steam and aroma of hus fluid intake played pleasantly about hus digestive apparatus (stomach, so vulgar, apparatus, so scientific!). There was now DELTA HUMANITY! How hu had loved that! It was humanity where HUMANITY ITSELF simply took over and ruled. Oh yes! that brought up the slim, shadowy something which so annoyed hum at times. Hu had the distinct feeling of something ELSE, as if the removal of God from his thoughts only enlarged a mental aperture into which something else was pouring rather like an undammed flood, released when a weir wall falls. Anyway, of course there were spiritual realities, HU was one! and it was only a matter of method, scientific method, properly defined, should manage. WHATEVER there was out there, HU would control it! Hu would HARNESS it!
Indeed, there was no stopping hum. Delta Humanity! How amusing it all was! he carefully checked once again to ensure his declarative modem was not on! No! That phrase was reduced to DEPHIHUM. Phi of course had been the new term for greatness, gathered from the old term 'philosophy' and shortened to insist on a certain sense of newness, together with old ideas, so that everyone would be happy, more or less. And DEPHIHUM, that was too obscure sounding, so that DEFYHIM had been suggested. But that! It was too direct! It could stir up resistance among the NSC corps (the not-sufficiently-controlled), which was constantly being re-educated.
Thus, hu mused, had come the term De-phi-hum. The more direct being dangerous, and obscurity having its points when you HAD to have agreement of some sort, before taking power, the dephihum mode had been kept. It also gave to the SELECT (some energetic lords elevated commendably together - a good acronym), a certain kick! Yes, there was no denying it, it WAS fun to kick the concept of GOD around, without its being provable that this was being done! Ingenious really. Defy-Him was the way hu would think of it, and defy Him hu would!
TODAY, then was the day for
it. Hu would personally go into that
Let
God show Himself if He would! HU would show HUMSELF! This very day!
DEFY-DAY
Of course hu had read the Bible*4. Of course hu knew that the man of sin had to show himself as God to himself, and that then there would be that devastating and just judgment which the Christians used to speak about, before… (And thank goodness! hu exclaimed. Oh no, not that phrase...ah! Hu be praised! that was it, HU-lelujah! ah well perhaps not quite, another time). Before ? Hus mind wavered in its concentration as a certain pathos almost touched him, but he shrugged his conscience and proceeded. Before, hu thought determinedly, they went!
Ocean-star becomes God! The
thought pleased hum. God would be electronically excluded, and the power
employed was such that the whole universe could not exceed it. Hu was safe.
The hours moved on till 3 in
the afternoon. Hu reflected on the closing day, and on the crucifixion late
afternoon, so long before. Really, greatness was now for hum, and the mind
played tenderly on all hus children! Quite a group of them now, in ‘this raging
planet’. But crucifixion ? That was not the way, hu imagined, for Humanity
needed power, not death, and HU humself would provide that.
Then the time in due course
arrived. Hu ascended the steps, and walking around in the
The roar was huge as the
carefully conditioned hupers applauded and hugged themselves with joy!
As time passed and a very
pleasant time was being had by especially the SELECT, but also by some of the
still healthier types of hupers (there having been many set-backs with plagues
recently, but all that could be controlled), another scenario unfolded.
It
was only a short time, it seemed, but it came, and so suddenly. There had been
a massed meeting in Armageddon of many of the SELECT, and they brought some of
their armies. It was then that it happened.
THE DESCENT,
UPLIFTING
AND DASHING:
ACCORDING
TO THE CASE
Indeed, now we have to leave our musing acquaintance, Ocean-Star, because his musings are not the sort of thing easy to interpret.
There had come such a
brightness, such a feeling of truth and light and justice and wonder, that the
remaining hupers had been dazzled. ARREST! the Ocean-Star was gone. The glory
departed. The whole sense of Humanity seemed to frizzle like a sausage with too
much fat, quickly being reduced to almost nothing, with the terrible feeling
that after all, it WAS almost nothing! just mainly congealed fat.
There were those eyes of
flame! there was a scattering and a sense of impending doom.
Christ, that was it, with all His saints. It had happened. God was not excluded, merely not included. Like a bush fire amongst the dead wood, it is not included, but it comes anyway; it is not on the menu but it flames without restraint.
But these flames, they were so
enlightening. They showed things in such a light that there was no answer.
Judgment was the answer.
Postscript
To be sure our little short story is not in essence by any means an original account. In part, it is an imagination; but it is based on reality as found in II Thessalonians 2, II Peter 3, Revelation 19, Revelation 9 and 13, and this with some input from the general profile of wickedness in manipulative power, provided in Daniel 11:21-45.
In this last case, Daniel 11, we move from past history - with considerable emphasis on the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, that tyrant of deviousness who had sought to gull many Jews into subservience through deft compromise, and blasphemy in augmenting mode - to the future when the very resurrection comes on scene, in Ch. 12. The comparison of the historical example and the eventual height of blasphemy at the end (as in 11:35), taken in conjunction with Daniel Chs. 7 and 8, where it is very clear that Antiochus' day was far before the final period of the 4th Empire, is most revealing*6.
One
may be sure that the antichrist, the man of sin, with whatever regional
co-ordinates, and in whatever visitations to key centres like Jerusalem, will
not lack subtlety.
After all, the angel of light
aspect of the devil ( he is a splendid actor, in the dazzling game - see II
Corinthians
11:13-15) is only one illustration of this. How the prince of darkness and
confusion, delusion and profusion of intrusion into reality with his own hymns
of self-praise and inordinate lust for final control (as in Isaiah 14, II
Thess. 2, Revelation 13, 19): how he should manage to declare himself GOD in
the temple, as in II Thess. 2, is a conundrum answered by the very nature of
wickedness.
It confuses. It loses the feet of clay and mounts with wings that forget that the updraft is a heat wave from hot air, and quickly cools as you go aloft. Its insanity is hidden in method: it looks at the means and forgets the ends. It thinks of ends, if it must, in terms of means, and in means, takes a mean view, as if everything were semi-automated, came from somewhere somehow and the power and the glory were ascertainable and controllable, like physical things, though the very mind which thinks so, is out of the way of errorless matter.
Man is now soaring, so that Crimes against Humanity are no longer Crimes against God! Unity is becoming, whether in politics or psychology, in religion or morals, the new game. It speaks with louder and prouder voice as time moves. Children are to be gods, whose companions in literature and friends are auto-elect! A child whom we have met sounds so like a cockatoo in his frenzied seeming staccato commands or arrestings of the ear of his grand-parents, that it is genuinely hard to know whether it is the child or the bird which speaks. The poor boy is allowed to address as if an emperor, and all must hear since it pleases him to an amazing degree, to shout his thoughts! This is not exaggeration. It is a phenomenon. It is alas a more and more typical phenomenon in spirit if not in voice, as humanity takes the reins and rules.
Next, of course, as the United Nations seek religions to agree*7 amongst themselves, subordinating truth to convenience (it was CONVENIENT to the high-priest party to crucify Christ as we see in John 11:50ff.), there is this pastorisation, a sort of philosophic pasteurisation of the milk of the word with the audacity of infamy, into an alien an infected product by an insidious substitute for sterilisation. It all moves like a tornado, visible at a distance, harmful when too near!
To revert, however, to the comparison of the present betrayals with those of the actual day of Christ on earth: the worst of it for them then, in that ancient but crucial day, was that He, the Christ, could raise the dead, so that it would become impossible to CONTROL Him. That was the appallingly pragmatic approach! Thus ? Death was the final control. That was the final plan, to use a backwards reflection from Hitler's 'final solution', used some millenia later, in a reversal of victim situation.
In Christ's day on earth, the resurrection was unfortunate for the plotters; but it was the harbinger of judgment. In fact, judgment on the nation of Israel is now a world proverb, which the UN seems to be acting none too surreptitiously to augment. The power of God has been present from the day of Christ in the amazing testimonies to truth, fearless under frenzy and hate, of love in the midst of opprobrium undeserved, goodness in the face of indecency and profligacy of this race and regime and that, just as predicted (Luke 21:12ff.); and indeed, not least have been those who in the delusion of apostasy, have slain the servants of the Lord, as did misled kings of Israel, when they killed the prophets (as predicted for this epoch, in John 16:2).
Thus do His resurrection power and works (as in Ephesians 1:19) continue to this day, until He comes. But the world is monumentally concerned, remains so, and its brow is wrinkled in the devices of its ambitious and delusive passions of rebellion against reality, rationality and divinity where it is to be found.
After all, the world does not like God. The prince of this world (John 14:30) as Christ explicitly revealed, has NO PART in Him! It is the other option, which though unable to stand, is given full experimental opportunity to reveal himself in the brilliant wisdom of the deity; and in our little short story, we see some suggestive ideas, some extrapolations of current trends mixed with indications from the books and words of Biblical prophecy, to stir thought and help some to learn of the trends of the times.
Naturally, what we have been reading above: it is only a story. There is, apart from the Biblical principles involved, no sense of prediction additives, whatever. It is merely giving narrative-wheels to certain principles and trends, either visible or predicted or both, and sometimes in wedlock. It is not to give revelation or any such thing; but illumination. Rather, it is simply using a story mode to consider some of the principles involved in that ultimate form of intoxication which, objectively will lead on to the point that a MAN will in fact declare himself, or more accurately SHOW TO HIMSELF, parading, that he is GOD! and this, in the temple!
Next, of course, as the United Nations seek religions to agree*7 amongst themselves, subordinating truth to convenience (it was CONVENIENT to the high-priest party to crucify Christ as we see in John 11:50ff.), there is this pastorisation, a sort of philosophic pasteurisation of the milk of the word with the audacity of infamy, into an alien an infected product by an insidious substitute for sterilisation. It all moves like a tornado, visible at a distance, harmful when too near!
Further, as to the temple where the 'man of sin' of II Thess. 2 is to strut, parade in vainglorious impiety as if God, if this were intended as the human heart, it would make a high degree of symbolism, wholly unexplained, to be counter-indicated both by this fact and by the serial, sequential and terminal character of the events in view. They are personal, precise predicted preliminaries to a personal impact from the personal God who, facing this execrable scene, acts with a brilliance that destroys its inflamed egotism and gross pretence. The thing is simply not suffered to continue.
The concept of the 'temple' as the human heart is here simply not amenable to spiritual values or laxities; or to history. Indeed, we learn from Matthew 24 that before Christ returns,there is to be a gross augmentation of audacity in evil, a proliferation and multiplication, reaching into the affair of the abomination of desolation, that total and final affront to God, in the holy place, as was the case with the preliminary antichrist, Antiochus Ephiphanes, who placed appalling idolatries in the physical temple. From the lips of Christ, it is a matter of physical response, in fleeing from the scene, not of some feeling or flutter. The parallel is shown at length in Biblical Blessings Ch. 2.
There is a PRACTICAL question which Paul addresses in II Thessalonians 2. It is to remove any concept that the day of the Lord is immediately impending, rushing up on them like an express train, so that they could relax in its virtual reality. (See A Spiritual Potpourri 18, End-note 1.) Such an approach could lead to carelessness or confusion in conduct for Paul's contemporaries. No! it is FUTURE, says Paul. The day of the Lord, that epochal entrant into history, from beyond it: this has PRELIMINARY FEATURES, says Paul, and it has a FACTUAL PERSON, continues the apostle, who is to be revealed, the son of perdition, or child of lostness and doom.
This being is to exalt himself, whilst OPPOSING ALL "that is called God" or worshipped. It is a development to be RESTRAINED by divine power (II Thess. 2:7); but at the END, it will be restrained no more, for the restraint is to be REMOVED. Now in the Reformation, the restraint was not removed. It was highly, dramatically and magnificently present in the lives of the shining martyrs whose daring attention to the dignity of God Himself, against all armies and tortures, is a stunning exhibition of the power of God.
ONLY when the restraint is REMOVED does this horror of spiritual confusion and deception, depravity and self-exaltation show himself to himself in the temple, as God - II Thessalonians 2:8.
Then this effigy of revolt, this pitiable and puny arrogance, the man is sin, is simply destroyed in the BRIGHTNESS of the Lord's coming*8. Truth is irresistible when you are not permitted to obfuscate your mind with torrents of talk and bravado. What is, is the case. Objectivity is the final exhibition of truth, undaunted, undisappointed, undimmed. It sears the pseudo-shining of the infantilities of philosophic aggrandisements and human ascents to the heavens, such as have been made from the days of Babel in Genesis, and on.
The realities showing themselves end the testimony of fraud, so long maintaining its causes by wrigglings and recklessnesses, fecklessness and deceptive techniques, quite useless in fact, but convenient as ever new temporary bastions of unbelief for the damned. Indeed, these are to effloresce, to reach a kind of bloom before the final stroke (cf. Revelation 13:14-15, II Thess. 2:9).
Damned ? Alas yes. WHEN all restraint is removed, the realities are wholly apparent. Our created kind of time may be past, but the everlasting contempt for the lie which denies the reality of God's word, work and salvation is exposed, and those who hold it are dimmed forever.
Man is trying to evacuate God from his universe, and is all too keen to remove some of the distinctives and distinctions which CREATION having made, are ordained. Thus the hatred of God is shown in the desire to remove masculine, feminine distinctives (as witnessed in Chapter 6 above, where the career of things was traced in overview, from Romans 1), and to act as if they did not exist; it is shown in the desire to remove this-religion and that-religion distinctives, so that divinity can be homogenised by human rule. And if humanity, whether via the United Nations or other bodies to come, is to RULE, and if morals and man are to be the subject of its rule, then obviously in the end it is as GOD HIMSELF that the ruler must appear, since this is the place and power in view.
It has to happen, it is predicted to happen, and in this little story, we see some of the sorts of ways in which are found the movements both of and to the perpetrator in chief. He arises in his time, deluded by the devil, who is perhaps conceived as an angel of light, and of course one to be controlled: for if the man of sin is to conceive of himself as GOD, then the devil MUST be subordinate. That, it is a fatal error many have made, from the anti-hero in Goethe's Faust onwards. There in part, he is typed.
The devil however, is not so inclined. He sucks his victims in like a vortex, and they may think the power is theirs; but it is an evil and a downward thing, and it does not help the deluded by its power, but rather buries them in its darkness.
"And THIS is the condemnation, that light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light, lest his deeds should be reproved" - John 3:19, emphasis added.
Voluntary living in the darkness, when the truth is finally revealed, is a reproof so manifest, a folly so utter, an audacity so unrefined, a misrule so total, a grief so unspeakable that the gnashing of teeth and wailing, the contempt everlasting are mere attributes of its eventual destiny; just as, though subdued and repressed, they are due outcomes of its inward state, often hidden like vipers in its vestments. Such things speak of warfare accomplished and defeat exposed; of what has always having been defeat, now unable further to talk its way into delusive fixations: irrational always, now it is seen in the simple reality of the case. When our time becomes the time of the end, and the endless continues in the mode which shall be appointed, there is still the eternity of the case, the qualitative horror, the contemptible criterion, the non-vanishing vanity.
These things being so, let any reader repent NOW of the follies of the irrational, the fictions of the absurd, the frenzies of feebleness, the swelling words of vanity, and return to the Lord, who is most gracious, and receive the ransom of Christ, whose payment is the one to take rather than an eternity of gloom: for it is He whose love is ever-ready, who misses none who are His, and you ?
YOU are one of these if you come, always known to Him, but now to be discovered by yourself through His grace, all-encompassing grace, as HIS!
We did not make ourselves (Psalm 100), and the extent to which we can unmake ourselves is strictly limited. Being re-made is the answer, and it answers to only one name, the Maker, the Messiah, and it is He who has attested Himself in word and deed, in writing and with voice, as the only one logically possible, as the one certainly necessary, as the one practically effective, gloriously willing, sovereignly sent (Isaiah 48:16, John 3:16), of whom it is written:
 |
"BEHOLD YOUR GOD!" THIS, Jesus Christ, it is HE! |
NOTES
*1
Not a misprint. It is derived partly from 'bub' in the sense that
this is a demeaning of mankind, so to seek height, only and always, to find
depths that are dim. It also relates to humanity, as developed in concept in
contemporary trend, providing the characteristic 'u'.
*2
Hu, hus and so on, are mere derivatives of
he, his and the like. The too use the characterising 'u' and as you will
see, present a solution to the his-her difficulty which so many meet currently!
*3 See for comparison in the musing of the bureaucrat in Barbs, Arrows and Balms 18. For further parallel in the development of evil towards the end, in detail, see SMR pp. 750Bff. and 732B.
*4
His reading had included this:
"And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered
together to make war against Him who sat on the horse, and against His army"
- Revelation 19:19, a number which incidentally seems so fitting, as this was
the date of the influenza plague which killed more than did the Word War II, by
report.
The one on the white horse, in Revelation, is identified in verse 11, as "Faithful and True"; His eyes being like a flame of fire, and His name ? "The Word of God"!
This situation then is express, explicit war on God, whatever may be thought of Him. Historically the fact of Israel is a good place to do it, to let it rage, since God has made certain statements about this place, and to thumb the nose at Him here could be explicit, typified! With the Christians already gone at this stage (as in I Thessalonians 4 and in Matthew 24, where first the elect are gathered, and as depicted in the Marriage of the Lamb as shown in Revelation 19:8), there is obviously an incentive to take over whatever seems available, at the end; and what a symbol is this Jerusalem and all its precincts and regions.
While it is not certain that the city itself is a hub of the movement, Armageddon is near it, and the Lord is Himself to come TO that very city itself, where He was crucified (as in Zechariah 14)... "with all His saints" (Zechariah 14:5, I Thessalonians 3:13, cf. II Thessalonians 1:10).
*5
The term 'hupersity' is a development of human to hu-person, and
with the 'ity' from humanity as the ending, comes into being as the ultimate in
human exaltation, gender derogation and constitutes possibly an outstanding
user-friendly verbal garbage for antichrist purposes.
*6
For opportunity to study these
aspects and developments in their setting, see: SMR pp.
964ff,
886ff.,
506, Biblical Blessings Chs.
1,
2.
*7
For movements of this kind,
first the UN, but many more, see for example:
Things Old and New,
Epilogue, and It Bubbles, It Howls... He Calls
Ch. 11.
The coming of the Lord is SELECTIVE in its impact (Matthew 24:40ff., Mark 13:27, Luke 17:34ff., I Thessalonians 4), and it is accompanied by MOURNING on the part of the "kindreds of the earth" (Matthew 24:30, Revelation 1:7). Revelation 11 gives a fascinating picture of the "two witnesses" (interpreted in the whole Biblical context, in Acme, Alpha and Omega: Jesus Christ Ch. 5) who, enduring in the entire New Testament Church Age, are removed at its end.Called - "Come up here!" departing, they leave an earth writhing in ignominy. This leads directly to the time when "the nations were angry, and Your wrath has come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged", a phase of history when "You should give reward to Your servants the prophets, and to the saints, even to those who fear Your name small and great; and should destroy those who destroy the earth" (from Revelation 11:12-18).
THIS is the coming of "our great God, even the Saviour, Jesus Christ" noted in that blessed passage of Titus 2:13. It is the coming (literally rendered) of the great God and/even Saviour of us, Jesus Christ, one person, the one article, the, covering both, so doubly entitled for Him who is both the great God and our Saviour.
THIS is the criterion. THIS is the coming of the KING, not this time on an ass's colt to cursed crucifixion, and bold, irretrievable resurrection which blasted the earthly and earthy hopes of the rebellious; but to draw His elect to the marriage feast of the Lamb (Revelation 19:8). It is these clad in white linen, washed (Revelation 19:8ff.), who come then WITH the Lord as I Thessalonians 3:13 is clear to tell us. The drama is rich, and the long preliminaries, as in some vast Olympic Games, from far from detracting from the eventual force, when the events are all over, merely lend deeper significance to the final ceremonies which transfix the arena, each in its way.
Indeed Revelation is so direct that the most insidious and invidious of wrigglers can do nothing but ignore it, deny it or depart.
With Satan BOUND for a time (Revelation 20), the earth lacks that evil dynamic which so invigorates the damned to do what he wills; and the millenium as it is called, works its righteous testimony to the salubrious realities of righteousness with the King ruling in manifest beauty and holiness (as in Isaiah 11, Revelation 11:4).
Those with lives NOT forfeited to the evil rule of carnal worldliness, including the beheaded, but summing all who had stood strong in the midst of the searing turmoil near the end of the Age ("and those who had not worshipped the beast" renders the Greek text here), are now focussed. Indeed, this comes before the whole phenomenon of the final exposition of the Satanic power, and here they are listed as present (Revelation 20:4). The beast syndrome or type of course had gone way back in time to Babylon, the city of old (Daniel 7), and indeed the spirit of the thing to Babel, and the nature of it to the first when devil deputies were enlisted, word of God dispersers were sought, even in Eden.
In this vast and cataclysmic conflict, some escape at the first, before such final rigors, while others as the Age advances, awaken in time, and stay awake, like the 5 wise virgins in the parable of Matthew 25.
Some instead sleep the sleep of death and refusing to awake, are found as numbered with “those who do not know God, even those who do not obey the Gospel” (II Thessalonians 1). There IS no other Gospel just as there is no other God and all goodness is His, its source, inspiration and dynamic, suffusing His own Gospel of grace (Galatians 1, Acts 4:11-12).
Thus, as goats they appear (Matthew 25), and without names in the book of life they are to be seen (Revelation 20:12ff.); but they stand to fall, judged by the works (20:12). Works ? whose works are as good as God ? whose shall stand in that day ? whose motives, maxims and minds are pure to the point of heaven, have not varied, have not served self, the world or the devil, have from the outset been in the love of God, without which truth itself is abashed, since God is love!
Small wonder HIS people who know HIM who IS glorious rejoice NOW in spirit with "joy unspeakable and full of glory" (I Peter 2:8), for the presence of One so glorious IN one's life is an inspiration and a vitalising, a virtue and a wonder (cf. Ephesians 1:17-19, 3:16, Romans 8:16). When He actually comes, the appearing of the great God, even our Saviour; when His angels gather the elect, leaving even in the most intimate contexts as in Matthew 24, those who are not, whether they be in the field or bed: then shall the righteous, clad in HIS righteousness (Isaiah 61:10), shine forth as the sun, in the Kingdom of their Father (Matthew 13:23, Isaiah 59).
The power involved is magnificent, for it is the Creator's own power, instituted in the universe, upheld by His continual presence (Hebrews 11:1-4, 1:3, Colossians 1:16-17); and it is He, the Christ, the eternal Word of God (as in Revelation 19, John 1), who is able to handle what He created, for in all the realm of the created, there is NOT ONE THING which He, preceding, did not create (John 1:3, Isaiah 44:24, 45:12,18)). Creation is His domain, like the works of an author, while He, the invisible God made manifest, completes its time, like those who having built a scaffolding for a race, for viewers, then take it down again.
What put it up, has all power to take it down. Heaven and earth at last flee, wear out, for there is no place left for them in the final assizes and glories (Revelation 20, Isaiah 51:6, Matthew 23:35).
How much more readily is this to be found when it is God Almighty who put it up, has visited the scene in Person, provided for man with His power, actuated by love, redemption the prize, faith the desideratum. Christ Himself the indefectible desire of the nations (Haggai 2:7), though many writhe in self-imposed ignorance of His magnificence, has come that the universe might as much as exist, all being foreseen by the all-seeing deity (Isaiah 51:16, 49:2, Ephesians 1:4). He has borne sin, has long borne with man (II Peter 3:9), and having loved, gives love its issuance. Many are the redeemed (cf. Revelation 7:9ff.).
He has long borne with man, and loved and sought, and proclaimed and sent His servants in the Old Covenant and the New Covenant days, even to this present hour, many afflicted, oppressed, sacrificial: SENT!
But He will not put up with it forever! This earth, this world, this parade ground, this laboratory of history, where truth is made manifest, and evil shows its dribbling fangs: it is fabricated as a divine testimony, a home, an expression, a pilgrimage place, vast like a sheep station relative to the homestead. The vast tracts of the universe, like the vast acreages of some Australian sheep farm, these bespeak the meaning of the home, the grandeur of the thing its own witness.
Interestingly, in the Technical Journal for March 2004, from Answers in Genesis, there is further confirmation of what Professor Harold Slusher indicated long ago (SMR p. 78), and Dr Russell Humphreys not so long ago (TJ 16(2) pp. 95-104, 2002). Based on research from some 200 astronomers from 13 institutions (TJ p. Vol. 18(1), pp. 9ff.), it provides an arresting presentation coped with a universe style map. The tenor of the finding is that there is a flat negation of the big bang, the more distant parts of the universe appearing LESS dense in galaxy distribution, instead of more so as might befit a more crowded start; and there is moreover a concentration about the earth which has been compared with a pizza heart, giving it a certain centrality. Such marvels merely further attest both the grandeur and the significance it bears.
Not only so, but as Dr Carl Wieland points out in Creation Magazine, March 2004, the RATE group of scientists, now well-advanced in their project of date assessment, have been shown that helium trapped in zircon materials at great depth has a rate of dispersion from that setting. A world-class expert dealt with the question of this rate and, without being told the creation implications, considered the maximum age of this sample in the Precambrian basement granite repository to be measurable in a few thousands of years. Otherwise, it would by now have been dispersed, but it remained trapped.
Similar results are reported (loc. cit.) for 12C, the radioactive variety of carbon in various examined test sites, now surmounted by the case with five diamonds submitted for such tests. Assumed over 1 billion years old on the disingenuous assumptions of evolutionists, these diamonds were found to retain radioactive carbon, which would have a limit measurable in thousands of years, for its decay.
While thus the myriads of former attestations of the youthful earth are now provided with a new keystone or two for the magnificent archway to the gateway to truth (cf. TMR Ch. 7, Section E, and its references), the truth itself only smiles. It never changes, and always continues as it must, since it is made manifest in Jesus Christ who words and works echo Genesis in its data and dynamic, naturally enough, since they first arose from His own presence (cf. I Peter 1:10ff., Matthew 19, Colossians 1:15ff., John 1:1-3).
The unanswerable constraints of the past testimonies to earth age merely find in their continually augmenting companions that reasonableness and that rationality which befits the earth created by the Word of God. It is HIS book! Things in the earth are always just as He said in creation, and indicated in His incarnation. The only evil mystery is sin and that is covered, albeit in blood – His own!
Wonderful is this earth like a palace in all its marvels, relative to the land on which it is built: yet it is precise in its meaning and designate in its place. When its day is finished, the time venue composed by its Author, then the roll is called, the works are found and the ways are examined openly (cf. Matthew 25). Then are found secure, the meek whose Saviour is strong, COVERED by His pardoning oblation of Himself; then are the mighty whose trust is in themselves, EXPOSED by simple justice and truth, for their presumption and puny exaltations. Then is the grasping for power made the more ludicrous when God has spent so much of it in the very majesty of the glorious heavens about us.
How readily then does He, issuing forth from the Trinity once more at the end of the testing times, for the epoch of judgment and righteousness made manifest, "change our lowly body" that it may be "fashioned like His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all thins to Himself" - from Philippians 3:20-21.
v The earth, then, in the end is dismissed like a tent that is beyond its time, and no place is found for it (Revelation 20:11, Isaiah 51:6, Matthew 24:35). A new heaven and earth being created, they attain to the timeless magnificences of consummation, pilgrimages past, tests concluded, the exhibition of the purposes of the Lord finished for the whole of the ages of the periods past, while the eternity of the ever-continuing present is now lived by His people, in His presence direct (Revelation 22:3-5, Ephesians 3:10-11, Romans 11:33-36).
v The ultimate outrageousness of evil is most securely demonstrated even as the millenium ends (Rev. 20:8), so that nothing but preferred darkness remains and is found, in its time and place. The net is perfect; nothing is missed, all is absolutely revealed and exposed. History’s fevered brow is cooled, the self-imposed waste exported to its woe; and heaven’s clime blesses by its crystal water coming from the place of the Lord and the Lamb, one throne, soothing into calm, that knows its King (Revelation 22).
v The love of God, the patience and the power, the action and the sacrifice of His Son stand out as abundant testimony: HE SO LOVED THE WORLD, but its place is its own. He would have all reconciled (Colossians 1), but their disgrace is their own if they prefer indissoluble union with darkness; and HE knows. From Him, nothing is hidden.
v The world ? FROM it, have come all these, His people, OUT OF IT, those who love Him, THROUGH the Lamb whose life is the emblem of truth, the testimony of love, the payment to justice, the escape from judgment, the savour of spirituality (Hebrews 6:18-20, II Corinthians 2:14).
There are no cheques to cover the cost of sin for the unbeliever, yes, they are not even made out, for God knows His own; but it is not the limit on the cheques which is determinative, as if from accounts, but the knowledge of God, despite His all embracive love at the outset, of what prefers darkness. This is His knowledge and He implements it in sovereign majesty, all composed.
v Thus it is a thing of beauty that WITH HIM when He comes at the end of the Age, to bring His rule to earth before it goes, ALL HIS SAINTS are with Him (I Thessalonians 3:13, Zechariah 14;5). Love is fulfilled, even that which would have all to be reconciled to Himself (Colossians 1:19ff., I Timothy 2). Its majesty is inclusive; its purity is exclusive; the way in is free.
v Those are there who have waited and those who have suffered, those who have stood and those who have been a fragrance and a savour, those whose patience has stood like a citadel, and those whose valour has stood like the gleam on the sword of the truth. The ignominy of evil now is as exposed as always, with its futility. The testimony of faith now stands as always, its reason unsubvertible, manifest, its reward its own God, their Shield and Exceedingly Great Reward.
.