THE BIBLICAL WORKMAN -
APPENDIX ON love and judgment

INTRODUCTION

LOVE is a topic often pondered on this site, and its liberal beauty from the life of God has been expressed. Judgment likewise has been considered. Both have been looked at with some simultaneity in Beyond the Curse, Ch.7 in Biblical Blessings, as in Ch .4 of The Kingdom of Heaven ... for example. However, there is a short review in the arena of judgment primarily, with parallel from the lavish provisions of the love of God, which seems desirable at this point, in an Appendix.

First, notice that there is a pandemic of confusion in the 20^th century on this topic. In the days when the wicked perversion of science known as Darwinism, that incubus of folly which moved so many so deftly, and so wantonly to pride, arrogance, pretension, falsely imagined destinies and the like, and vastly aided the world to the folly of two massive wars which prepare it for its final end in judgment in ways which are becoming manifest: there was a certain simplicity of immorality.

Did not 'creation', in perverse misconstruction, come from this proud perversion of truth by which little things that were in fact the product of the Almighty might drink at the chalice of potency, and becoming super-mice, mince the opposition and achieve everlasting glory, in Communism, or Nazism, both of which have this "god of forces" mentality, that right is might, and it is right to use might to do what one might, and that this is the way it is, the way it goes, and even (with glorious folly and anti-sublime antilogy in the case of Communism, ex-God), that the way it OUGHT to be! So does naturalism manufacture its ways from thin air, as it makes its gods and its rule and slaughters to preserve them, the more since they are mere fabrications of fancy.

For Hitler, it was just he way it was going to be, but HE would make it happen. The mouse had access to the mouse-factory.

A God of forces, just as Daniel predicted, was invoked, in vogue and in view (as foretold in Daniel 11:38-39 as the time of the end moves onto the scene, cf. SMR pp. 707ff.).

Morals ? forget them. It WAS moral to force your way, and make it happen, and leave millions of bodies in the soil, as the necessary cost of your glorious dream. Morals were created ex nihilo, as an exposition of the God man cannot escape, logically or psychically, and then applied, with not only no basis, but no POSSIBLE basis on the model drawn from irrationality, as one draws a glowing ember, to become ash, from a raging fire. Soil thought and inter bodies, that was the way.

These bodies would be the litter, carrying you to success. The same idiocy came to force in business with increasing self-justification. Kill, crush and conquer for what ? For the advancement of society, the achievement of the best, the maximisation of human glory. It was no question of removing what could be shown to be corrupt, in the name of the Lord. It was not judgment; it was mayhem. The weak ought to go - farewell, or go to hell, just go! - so that the strong should be what they needed to be, for the proper consummation of universal history. With folly the criterion, irrationality the resource and pride the motif, it would end where it began, in the devastation of man, becoming the devastation of humanity, from which some being rescued, the residue inherit judgment.

It is not force but truth which liberates, and not abstract truth, which being abstracted from its only possible basis in supra-natural obligation and information, beyond the pulsations of puny alogisms, has no more force than other adventitious and meretricious imaginings^*1 . The God of truth however is abhorred, and thus His creation is violated, murdered, deformed, destitute except for pride, vast in victimisation and insane with haste to the ultimate clash with reality. It hastens as a horse to the battle, snorting as the froth floats from its nostrils, but in vain.

The god back of it all, that adversary of truth and mankind alike, he knew about might, and about might being right. He could be used and acknowledged as with Hitler, or dismissed as with Marx, but all the time in both cases, it was this dynamic which was used, stripped verbally with Marx, but as we have seen, not actually, from his place. (See Marx, SMR Index.)

Hitler would let the name remain, something goddish, but his evolutionary thrust was for the "best", self-determined, or determined in battle. With Hegel back of him, and Nietzsche (SMR Index for these names), immorality became morality, wrong became right, the German state became plenipotentiary, and someone, some thing, some State, some body in the fight, in the melee, was to thrust himself home (wherever that was), for victory over the dead heads of the lost, the doomed. THAT was conceived of as - the way it goes. (See Ancient Words and Modern Events Ch. 14 for the symbolic, mystical, humanistically religious association through Rosenberg, and the deep roots of his ideas - The True God has Go, Gives Grace and Glory, Ch. 4.)

As has been shown at length in SMR Chs. 1-3,10, in That Magnificent Rock, Chs.1, 8, and in A Spiritual Potpourri Chs.1-9, the concept that forces are at work which create things from nothing, or with nothing, and build up the universe into such manifestations as man from a natural fabric, ex-God, is unscientific, irrational and contra-evidential; as well as logically impossible. The truth of the Bible is first demonstrable, then verifiable, and this both in logical format and empirical survey.

THIS is not our present concern. What is our focus is this: the FACT of judgment and the FACT of the love of God as shown in the Bible, and how they fit together.

WRONG WAY, GOD BACK is the sign for the failed philosophies of might is right. DOING CANNOT be a ground for right. Description cannot be the source of prescription. The thing is irrational at the start, contra-empirical in the middle, and the endless masher of the human race in the end.

Perhaps one of the most awful things about all this maxi-ego mish-mash is this, that the ruin is assured, right and reasonable. It is that the pure irrational arrogance, is precisely like that of some teen-ager without manners, morals or understanding, wrecking his/her young life with a profundity of folly which is the more pathetic because it ruins what it is seeking to show in its own splendour, so avoiding the splendour of the Spirit who is God: in that pride has this sure-footed path to ruin built-in. It ruins itself because it is boasting itself and even while it is boasting itself. Ruin is its throat cancer and revolution and rebellion its theme; but of the overthrowing of its Maker, who alone sustains man, it is as bereft as is late Autumn of leaves in the deciduous trees whose season is past.

The world is not different in this dimension of philosophical, anti-scientific thrust and counter-thrust. Small wonder John and James advise us NOT TO LOVE THE WORLD! (James 4:4, I John 2:15),  and that Peter instructs us that this world with its works will be burnt up (II Peter 3). What else when the car of humanity is driven recklessly without oil, and without direction, acceleration and hill-climbing no substitute for understanding.

Be yourself, achieve yourself, fulfil yourself become the illogical dimensions of many a life, both nationally and personally. And what law makes some self a criterion ? and what profound reality shows that some limited little cosmos must overcome and overturn and uproot and meanwhile establish itself ? The god of forces, who being a god of forces, does not know much about niceties like truth and life, right and wrong is at his degenerate and perverse work; and this surrender of a whole structure in-built into man, a whole universe of truth, but far worse, of the very name of God is then made a platform. Sexual perversion becomes a fantasy in flesh, as moral perversion an exercise in irrationality, and social and political perversion, a practice in panache.

Some prefer to keep a certain goddishness about it, as if to redeem their waywardness in words, and will use talk of theistic evolution (see That Magnificent Rock, Appendix), and allow theologians the magnificent liberty of fitting in this cruel and wanton "god" with any morals they might prefer, or any "Jesus" they might wish to create, while plagiarising the performance of the actual Christ of the Bible and history. In this, they merely mirror the wild folly of Corinth as shown in II Corinthians 11,

• where Paul could well believe they might seek
• some 'other' Jesus,
• some 'other' gospel and
• some 'other' spirit,
• in mere profusion of confusion.
• It has not changed, but it does develop as Christ in Matthew 24 shows, to its due culmination at the end.

 

Thus they merely misuse the name of fame, and hang another reality upon it in a sort of contra-historical desperation of perversion, as if to make Marx a capitalist!

Either way, it is the same; it is merely a question of which irrationality may take the better in the poisoned soil of a judged culture.

Judged ? We return to the point. It is time to take a little survey in this field. WHAT is being judged, has been judged.

Where does love in fact fit into this awful morass of confusion and pride, arrogance and deceit ? What does God offer, and how does He show Himself to be acting in this ? FORCE ? This gives acceleration to a particle, not intelligence to a man.

The "god of forces" prediction is seen in Daniel 11:37-38 and it epitomises the matter. In the womb of the end, we here see an escalation proceeding to Daniel 12:1-3, where final arrest and ultimate judgment comes to the earth. Moving over history, the way the eye on the surface of the earth may move over successive ranges of mountains, it is as if the eye of God looks in this revelation of the prophet Daniel, down to the end: seeing and showing successive waves of viciousness and striving - coming not to consummation in glory, but to judgment.

One characterised unit in this thrust is described thus, in thrust to the confrontation with reality.

• "He shall regard neither the God of his fathers nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall exalt himself above them all. But in their place he shall honour a god of forces (or fortresses); and a god which his fathers did not know he shall honour with gold an silver, with precious stones and pleasant things. Thus he shall act against the strongest fortresses with a foreign god, which he shall acknowledge and advance its glory..."

 

The Vulgate and the English Revised Version of Daniel render or provide, "god of forces", others "god of fortresses". The root for the force term, means strength, and the concept of vehemence, drive, thrust, power, manifestation of power, place of power is contained in the text. A fortress is a place of power and as such would often be the designation. It is however the manifestation of power, of the capacity to overcome, of a power resource in some 'god' which is to be the criterion of success that is here: except for this. That the 'god' is dismissed, the power is retained, and it is centred in the king's own concept of himself. Man is always looking to worship, whether a girl-friend, a hero of war, a theme, an idea, an ideal, an anti-ideal; for he is a chair well-made, for one to sit in, a place for accord with his Maker, and when that One is disdained, divorced or given some ostentatious funeral in myth, by myth, it is for myth, that exaltation of folly may replace faith in what evidences, attests and demonstrates itself (), and something personal come into line.

 

This is far nearer to man's being and background, and so the forces of evil come into eclectic consummation in the worship of a man who doubtless is deemed to be a goddy sort of thing, and exalts himself as central to all life: a thing born, and to die! The inanities of humanity would the harder for many to credit, were they not perpetual, so that things of no value, like the Red Book of Mao, the cult of this mass murderer, become inventories of wonder, and virtual worship occurs. Of that! But that is what happens when the vacuum from God's personal absence in the heart of the one created in His image, wanders off and seeks to make gods for his convenience. The inanity would otherwise betoken insanity; but now it is rather pathology which it attests, the arrogance of unrealism coming to fruit in its dream, a dream that dashes and smashes and crashes, to align all things with itself, which is but animated dust, working with a spirit which refuses correction, avoids inspection and courts damnation most successfully (Revelation 19).

 

The god of forces ? It is so modern as to be tomorrow... and that is precisely where it is prophetically expected to have its manifestation as in II Thessalonians 2:7ff., where this intoxicated king, drunk with power, worshipping power, covered with force, will admire himself as IF HE WERE GOD, but the "as if" is forgotten!

For this passage, see also SMR pp. 707-709.
 
 

Preparations for the False Glory which Precedes the End

• For all this, the brooding surrealism of existentialism has long prepared, increasingly allowing the personalising of the intellectually shaven follies of "forces" in worlds programmed but conveniently ex-programmer, as in Communism (the actual programmers, not too efficient, of such worlds, tending to have dachas at the Black Sea et al.).

 

• Likewise a preparation were the anti-moral morals of Nietzsche, who turning morals on their head (as to his own, he literally went mad), would make it moral to crush in order to display the panache of power, though morals at all are a contradiction in terms when you remove the extra-terrestrial, the design source, the authority beyond, and just continue to be (see SMR Ch.5);

 

• Of similar odour was the God is dead pronouncement of Altizer (see SMR 846, 862), following his notable predecessor who for all that, is in fact dead - the funeral director of the power to conceive and to speak, alas being able only to contribute to his own funeral, not to that of the Creator.

 

• No small contribution, equally, was made by the hideous New Age blasphemies (cf. SMR 867ff.) , which seem to seek to construct some god from a communal consciousness, like bees making a bee factory from their sweat, rather than looking where their sweat glands came from.
   

These things and many more have long nurtured the spiritual insanity which is to come (cf. the Old Testament exposure of the same in Hosea 9:7 - "the spiritual man is mad" - that is, the artificial version of spirituality, ex-God, 'spiritual' without base). The phenomenon, indeed the fiasco, is now in advanced stages. Before long, it may not even amaze this poor, mis-educated, mistaught, mis-instructed, alienated world to see some cozy creature making the little mistake of confusing himself with the infinite God who made him, and being kind enough to confirm his services as world ruler on such a pedestal! The preparations are long, as they perhaps need to be for a delusion (II Thess.2:10-11) so profound, and so just, after "they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved". Indeed, such a diffuse delusion itself appears as a scathing comment on the philosophic pretentiousness which is to precede its appearance.

THIS TIME, it will be international and disport the power, not as a Hitler or Stalin in the summit of Bavaria or the squalor of the Kremlin, but in the cockpit of world control, as it would appear to those who have forsaken their Creator, and do not know His plans for so long and so widely proclaimed. SOME of these elements in education are considered in depth and detail in the survey in Chapter 8, That Magnificent Rock, as elsewhere in SMR (see Index SMR under Evolution). Education is imperative if the delusion is to be adequate to carry things to this consummation of folly as predicted.

Minds need to be tainted, tilted, disordered, invested with irrational hopes and made to believe ludicrous dreams when young, based on nothing, amounting to nothing, in order to assist the process of devastation of this race; and to evade truth, you must first be made to distance yourself from it, using truth of course to do so in the approved and appointed way which the devil loves, and man laps up as if arsenic were milk.

It cannot be doubted, by one who has long taught in these spheres, that the educative process in the schools and colleges is cunningly suited, skilfully programmed to meet such an end (cf. Lead Us Not into Educational Temptation!). This is NOT to say that someone on earth sat down with this purpose, nor is it to deny this to be the way with some. The devil is no novice and knows a perverse thing or so. No, it is simply to state the obvious, when one examines the data: this is the sort of way to go if that is the sort of result in mind. The preparation of such irrational procedures in places of learning is in itself an attestation of the security of the prophecies which attest the end of the process and the methods by which it is accelerated! Some of these are to be found in II Timothy 3, 4, some in I Timothy 4 and some in Romans 1, as man specialises in transgression, and mourns his mucked world. His own world within he does not see, nor do multitudes of psychiatrists to which the spiritually sodden seek so often, whose world-view is as wanton, over-worked or dissident in many cases, as his own (cf. SMR Ch. 4).

When you have nothing to go back to, because you refuse, and nothing to go on to, because in this model it is not there, then small wonder man becomes a tormented thing, where death becomes for such as Islamic militants on occasion, a relish for regaling, and mad ravagings, as in Zimbabwe, in Sudan, a way of life, in which the last noun in the phrase has 'death' as an exchange student. No address ? For mankind, it does not impress and it ... does show. Many however appear to love its impersonality, its untraceability, as they wallow in the waves of the seas they cannot cross.

We mentioned the diagnosis of the Lord given through the prophet Hosea. Let us ask this now: WHY does Hosea so designate the 'spiritual man' ? Let us hear it...

• "The days of punishment have come:
• The days of recompense have come.
• Israel knows!

• The prophet is a fool,
• The spiritual man is insane,
• Because of the greatness of your iniquity and great enmity.
• The watchman of Ephraim is with my God;
• But the prophet is a fowler's snare in all his ways-
• Enmity in the house of his God.

• They are deeply corrupted..." (from Hosea 9:7-9).

 

Enmity and alienation from God leaves a person open to folly, like some student who, standing high on the horse of his horse-sense, REFUSES to believe, accept or work on the principle that 2+2=4, while burrowing diligently into mathematics. The code being rejected while right, the consequence is ridiculous, though brilliant. Force moves, and follies and derangements continue; and the more he tries on this perverted foundation, this disjointed substitute, this alienated assumption, the worse it will be. It is as in Ephesians 4:18-19, as in Ephesians 2:1-3 before the transformation of 2:4-6.

The world is trying, and it is getting worse, moving away from God, to the construction of new gods, whether as often, using the name of Christianity as a production aid, or attesting more directly the hatred of God, by blaspheming, plagiarising, confusing, deluding, until many become so alienated from those productive enemies of God, that they become enemies in mêlée, detesting
"the whole thing", and plunging from darkness to darkness. So they come to act as if strife removed its bases; as if disease removed the necessity for and means to health, or propaganda removed the proper exercise of politics.

The opposite is the case.

In this case, moreover, the bite of unarrestable truth is deeper. In fact, the realities are so clearly set forth in the Bible, which has for so long demonstrated so much, is fulfilled on a daily basis, and the more so as the time grows near and the fruit of this world matures, that there is no excuse (cf. John 15:21-23). Vexation does not justify vice. It is ground for turning from it, not joining it. The way out and in is available; it is has been available for millenia; it has been hijacked, miscalled, misused; but the name remains. Thugs have taken it up and killed with it; but the truth remains.

After all, the false christs and false prophets were predicted to be multitudinous from the first.

There is no excuse. But there is need! It is time to escape this immoral morality, this pretentious syndrome which denies what it affirms, simply substituting what is without foundation, or capable of foundation, for what is true, vindicated and verified (cf. Celestial Harmony for the Terrestrial Host).

 
 

THE JUDGMENTS IN THEIR CATEGORIES

Judgments can be confused with the loveliness of the reality - as by some much caned school-boy who for all that, and partly because of that, insists on qualifying for punishment in what is a school with much to offer. (Cf. That Magnificent Rock, Appendix 1). Contrariness can be crushing when the positive is beautiful.

Let us then look at the correct Biblical analysis of judgment in some of its categories.

1. There is the judgment on sin at the outset. This divorces categorically not only from God, but from the peace and beauty of truth. For the initial sin, see Ch. 2 above, and Ch. 9 of A Spiritual Potpourri. Judgment as per Genesis 3 and Romans 5 becomes the setting for the race.

2.There is the early climax of judgment, per Genesis 6. Judgment comes in dramatic form, broad as was the sin of the imaginations of man's heart from his youth up, as the indictment in that chapter reads. The depths of man's sin are paralleled with the depths of the sea which likewise, as if in mockery, also 'forgets its place' (see SMR
Ch.2).

3. There is the energic judgment WITHIN, as man becomes surcharged with inability and strength mixed. Disabled towards his design by rebellion, yet enabled to act by creation, he surges like empty waves on a barren shore (cf. Romans 1, Ch. 4 above, and SMR pp. 620ff.; see also SMR Ch.4, Sections 1 and 2).

4.There is the international and political judgment in which the social complications of sin manifest themselves in incapable theories ex-God, and a profound weariness of misspent delirium dignified as militance, management and plans for the human race (cf. SMR Ch.7, No. 12).

5.There is the area of family judgments, where families divorced from God, divorce from each other, with the stupendous awry contortion, of children being helped to 'divorce' from their families at a young age (cf. SMR 717ff., and 689-716).

6. There is, then, overall, the INTRINSIC JUDGMENT, which carries its own results from its own misdirection away from the God who is there, on the terms He has chosen (illustrated in Romans 1:27, exemplified in Romans 1:28-30). It is like a code consequence of a code violation, a structural defilement, a spiritual assault which, whatever the intention, ends on oneself - a S.I.W., wrought spiritually, and with multiple results.

Correlative with this is the everlasting shame (Daniel 12:13), when flight from truth is no more available as a superficial option and partial anodyne, with judgment according to truth is dispensed (Romans 2:2). That in turn has the extra tang that loving remedy was remorselessly rejected (John 3:17-36, Colossians 3:19-21, Ezekiel 33:11, Acts 10:34, Galatians 3:28, Matthew 23:37, SMR Appendix B, The Kingdom of Heaven.. Ch.4, and Chs. 1-2 above). Then  no temporal shame, as with the President of the U.S. , but one set for ever, remains.

7. But now, even on this earth,   there is with a dis-savour of intrinsic judgment, also the EXTRINSIC JUDGMENT, or if you prefer, the IMPARTED JUDGMENT, the actual orders from the Judge, concerning the world and its occupants. This is seen in cumulative action in the accounts of things to come in Revelation 6-16, for example. It should be realised that Revelation often carries a single theme to its conclusion in judgment, and then reverts to the sequential; but the sequences are clear enough, the results portrayed before essayed in history in a way to which we are drawing near, like a canoe near Niagara Falls, the spray drifting already in the face of the toiling paddlers, who oddly enough, seem to be the more energetic as the roar becomes louder; though the stream itself is clearly carrying them without such effort.

8. There is the judgment on sin as such, as we have seen, with its various manifestations; but there is also the JUDGMENT ON THE REFUSAL OF REMEDY. This is put with great simplicity and directness in John 3:16-36. The CRITERION of this judgment is inescapable within, without, anywhere. LIGHT has come and men have preferred darkness to light. The fact that the light came into a self-produced darkness is no help when it comes to scatty rejection of the remedy. The fact that it cost a lot to secure the remedy does not help, when its - His - face is spat on, or His claims are ignored as if ANYTHING mattered more.

The Old Testament is full of the pleadings and judgments of God against a nation which while at times in history, coming close to conforming to the beautiful path prepared, turned again and again, and in the end cumulatively from God. In the New Testament, merely to contemplate Matthew 23:37 and Luke 19:42 suffices for both entree and main course.

9.There is thus the CURSE on creation, which is widespread enough to cover all dimensions, but there is the CURE for creation which is wide-ranging enough to cover all directions of life. There is the second judgment on the rejection of the cure, and there are the external and internal results when this particular folly is indulge in, for man is not a mechano set. He is exquisitely made, and within, justice and conscience and design and righteousness are all provided for, so that there is an aggravation of results when the wrong is chosen and the right dispelled, despised or disregarded.

10. There is also the judgment on the reckless denial of the obvious which takes endless philosophic fudges to protect for a moment here, a moment there, as sin tries in vain and historically so often, to justify itself. The answer, though pity be moved, is always this: WHERE IS THE RIGHT ? God in mercy can remedy, but in the end, it has to be right! (cf. Amos 4; and 7:1-9).

11.There is the JUDGMENT ON JESUS CHRIST.

Here the One who in love was prepared, indeed delighted (Psalm 40), but not with any easy delight (Hebrews 5:7), to provide through His cursed crucifixion a divinely acceptable satisfaction of justice, is crushed amidst mocking cursing from man; and is cursed by His Father as a substitute. He breaks death, being innocent of any sin, and brings triumphant, glory to His own who accept this provision. THAT, it too is judgment. It is here that judgment and love are matched, mixed, and love prevails not to the detriment of justice, but to its fulfilment; not to the diminution of mercy, but to its consummation.

12. Then there is the last judgment, when those who in the face of such light (John 15:21-23) are not found in it, when those prefer darkness despite God's utterly adequate love which nothing can remove from its appointed object (Colossians 1:19-23), but from which many remove themselves in His restraint, are given it. This is the appointment to the absence of God as mandated; it is hell. It has no hope; it has everlasting contempt.
 
 

Now the LOVE OF GOD...

1)This is shown in not removing the earth at once when man sinned (Isaiah 51:6 is the final result).

2)It is shown in His accepting some who found grace in His sight (Genesis 6).

3) It is found in the continuation of seed-time and harvest, the sun and the beauty which despite the conditions which have come with man's fall from God, are still illustrations of the exquisite magnificence of the Divine Craftsman and Creator.

4) It is demonstrated in the mercy with which Israel was constantly given new opportunities, a whole stream of witnessing prophets with imagery and pronouncement, offers and appeals, protestations and exhortations over hundreds of years before its first exile; and before its 2000 year sojourn as exhibits the prophecies of Moses, Isaiah and Ezekiel with precision.

5) The whole proclamation to the Gentile world for 2000 years shows it (II Peer 3:9).

6) The free basis of redemption in Jesus Christ counts it down (Isaiah 55:1ff.).

7)The secure certainty of being eternally with God as an adopted child through the payment of Jesus Christ and His risen life exhibits it (Romans 5:1-11, 8; see Biblical Blessings Ch.16, Christian Assurance, and Ch. 2 above).

8) The cost of the purity of Christ on earth exemplifies it (cf. Matthew 4).

9)The unutterable marvel of God being willing to send His eternal Son into flesh and to experience the full force of the debt of sin, and paying it focusses the love of God for the reader to see for all time (I John 3-4).

10) The provision of a purged, pure, uncursed finality for those who simply receive the gospel of Christ and accept His sufferings and payments, being born of Him, concretises some of its myriad dimensions. Heaven is the place of purity and truth, past pilgrimage, where God is shown in His beauty, to the eyes redeemed and restored.

11) The donation of power in this life, before the final judgment, and inner peace and the necessities of service, NOW, shows the love of God. He does not turn away from His adopted children, but is so close that the reality of love is experienced as well as seen (I Peter 1:3-8).

12) The provision of great and precious promises (II Peter 1) that by means of these His children may escape the pollutions of this earth and the constraints of ungodliness, with power to remove mountains by faith, not to make suffering easy, for the task is not small, but to make reality achievable on earth, according to one's commission.

13) The privilege of being used by God in the dissemination of His grand declaration of love and His practical provision of truth and redemption, expresses it. That such a One as He, should allow such as we, both creatures infinitely less than He, and sinners who had to be paid for, that they might so much as live in His sight, should use His adopted children is of the very fabric and tenderness of love (I John 3:1, Philippians 1:27-30, Matthew 28:18-20).

14) His personal presence (Ephesians 1:17ff.) in meeting one's understanding in its littleness, with the magnitude of His truth, enabling growth in the knowledge of His word and of Himself is an act which can only be called expressive of the love of friendship (cf. John 15:14-17), reminding us that Abraham was called "the friend of God".

15) The sheer magnificence of being brought not to some official, officious or otherwise, some bureaucratic office of dispersal, some pundit or general, but to GOD HIMSELF, by the ONE who having COME from HIMSELF, brings there; and not merely somewhere thereabouts, for God is Himself alone and infinite; but to God as destiny and delight, friend and resource without alloy or pollution - this is love that speaks past many volumes (cf. Revelation 21-22; 5:9,13, 1:8,217, 2:8, Isaiah 44:6, Philippians 2:1-10).

When could such a list be complete; but our present purpose is now satisfied. It is to parallel judgment and love, and to show them in their Biblical inter-relationship, since so many for so long, and with such philosophic confusions, built on the judgments as if they were the creation, then caricature the Creator, as if His punishments were His peace, or lack of it; and proceed so far as to substitute for God, as the creator, nothing, or nothing sufficient, in a veritable ecstasy of rational oblivion. This ? not because they are individually deficient, they may in their fields be brilliant; but because they are spiritually blinded, so that the right answer being rejected in a manner hard to distinguish from perfunctory, the wrong ones become an exercise in Alice in Wonderland dreamland, without the recognition that it is - but a dream (cf. Jeremiah 23:16,28-29).
 

• With the omni-competent word of God staring them in the face (cf. SMR Ch.5),
• they nevertheless stare into space, or some other creation of God, as if transfixed.

 

 
 
 

THE END OF IT

In the end, it is necessary to see this: that the world and its ways are long cursed (cf. Genesis 3, James 4:4), and the pure ways of God are readily available because of the work of His Son Jesus Christ. JUDGMENT accords desert; MERCY avails to provide need; and the NAME of Jesus Christ is the FILTER, without which nothing flows through to blessing. There simply is NO OTHER NAME UNDER HEAVEN GIVEN AMONG MEN BY WHICH THEY MUST BE SAVED. The LOVE is His motivation, for God is love (I John 4), and its consummation is His attainment (John 13:1, Luke 22:31, Ephesians 4:4, John 3:16).

It is not a new Christ. It is not a new look way. It is not some misuse of His name to describe someone or something which did not do what He did. It is not some extra-Biblical new-boy, whose only credentials are HIS EFFRONTERY and MAN'S CREDULITY. It is THIS SAME JESUS WHO DIED IN THE PRECISE TIME PREDICTED HUNDREDS OF YEARS EARLIER BY DANIEL (Highway of Holiness Ch. 4), who offered Himself without spot to bring us to God through His substitutionary sacrifice (Hebrews 8-10, Galatians 3:1-13), and who is always alive (Hebrews 7:25, Revelation 1:18-19), and lives by His Spirit in the hearts of His adopted people (Romans 8:16, Colossians 1:27).

It is HE and HE ALONE, like the 2+2=4, but more so; for that is a functional convention which illustrates and enshrines the way things go; but HE is the Maker of ALL, the Creator and the Redeemer, whose necessity is not merely attested in the mind of man (cf. SMR), but in his life, in his mind and in his history.

THIS is the love of God which He has shown, even amidst judgments, even proffered into the intense inferno of judgments of all kinds; and to confuse His judgments with His creation (cf. That Magnificent Rock, Appendix, Biblical Blessings  Ch.7, Beyond the Curse), or His or His punishments with His provisions, as in the many philosophies of power and evolution, is only one more delusion, of which sin is author: and like a spider is that spinner, to which no thought with reason can come.

Judgment is deserved; grace is not; the one is here, and the other is available. Love makes it so.