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CHAPTER 5 "WHERE IS THE PROMISE OF HIS COMING..." ? (II Peter
3:4) 1
THE
CHARACTER OF HIS COMING THIS is a question put by mockers in the
terminal velocity area of world development. As this predicted phase, the
end is coming like an asteroid, sighted and sited by astronomers, too late
to alter its course, converging with earth. In fact, it is Jesus Christ who
is coming, but a rocket would be more desirable for many, who will, Revelation
instructs us (Revelation It is like the question of a school-child,
mocking and performing in some class, and on the whole, getting away with
it, and beginning indeed to think of himself as quite a lad, somewhat assured,
a touch of devilry, until ... at last the teacher perceives the situation
as inveterate, the child as intrigued with his own derring-do, and not merely
the victim of uncontrolled high-spirits, disruptive, inattentive and lacking
self-control ... and ACTS! The child would never have believed, but when
the time came, he soon learned to believe what he then saw! In our mini-parable, THEN it is too late!
When the Lord in fact returns, and calls His own for the very good reason
that they are His, and they have an appointment with Him ELSEWHERE, those
left are to be left in no doubt of their position, in preferred UNBELIEF.
Matthew 25's parable dramatises it in incisive style. The 5 virgins, waiting
in their irresponsible sleep for the bride-groom, whose coming SEEMS delayed,
are caught unready. It is no vindictive passion of a frustrated and disappointed
bridegroom which seizes on their sleepiness, like a disciplinarian.
Rather it is simply the fact that their
lights had gone out through lack of oil, through a) lack of care and
It meant that when the bridegroom of the
parable did (at last!) arrive, that they had to GO and try to GET oil so
that they could FILL their lamps and so be OPERATIONAL as they ought to be,
with their lights. THAT was a proper and due function! WHEN they had at last
found the merchants who would provide, the occasion was past. The doors were
closed. They COULD not do what they slackly did not BOTHER to be prepared
to do. They were not ready. He was. They missed. But there is more to teach us the nature
of the case concerning Christ's return, the promise of HIS COMING, to use
the words predicted in the text's depiction. The sleepy bridesmaids were not
girded by HOPE, but by sight. He was not there YET, so that their own form
of expectation led them to use their eyes of the flesh, not of the spirit
or even of the mind. Again, they thought the time long to the
point that they ceased to be operational, ceased to consider the realities
and requirements of FUNCTION, and allowed themselves to be in disrepair. Hence
the thrust is that the return is to SEEM long to some. II Peter 3:9 makes
the same point. We are not, says that apostle, to forget that one day with
the Lord is as a thousand years; that He is not slack; that He will come
on time (as in fact He did the first time in incarnation definitively of
the godhead - cf. SMR pp. 886ff.).
What does this imply ? Even in A.D. 60
or 70 or so, there was a need to realise that the actual coming of Christ
was not a matter of immediacy. Even at that time, perhaps 40 years after the
resurrection and ascension of Christ back to where He came from, the thought
world was in the region of a thousand years as to type. It was not a thousand
days or weeks; the order of magnitude which was, admittedly merely in an
image, but nevertheless in a selected image, such that 1000 years was not
an alien option. It was not outré, bizarre to think in that style,
but realistic, practical and temperate. Hence from these two sources, as elsewhere
from the study of Matthew 24 which made so many of the signs and signals
to be indicative (and which are now operative in historical fact) of His coming
being NEAR (as in Luke 21:27) to be merely "the BEGINNING OF SORROWS" (like the end of the beginning as distinct from
the beginning of the end) as in Matthew 24:8. Indeed, "the end is not yet" (Matthew
24:6) is the designation of Christ,
even at that advanced stage of the scenario, as set forth by Him in answer
to the disciples' question concerning the end of the AGE. Another
phase of truth to be drawn from Christ's parable of the virgin is this.
The doors are to be CLOSED. Now this is
obviously of intensely parallel nature to the SEALING OF THE ARK in the case
of Noah and family, when the floods came. It was not left to sundry human
initiatives of varied motivational source, when the time was actually come.
It would seem that decade after wearisome decade of heavy toil, enormous financial
expenditure (not so terribly sacrificial when you consider what would have
happened to Noah's possible investments if he had used the money in some
other way, right up to and into the FLOOD!) had passed, and people had been
decidedly unimpressed. This is shown by their ACTIONS. Did they besiege him
as he built a vessel so apparently far from actual WATER! Did the NATURALISTIC
considerations not make it so very 'clear', not to put too fine a point on
it, that he was nuts! Was it not apparent that only what had happened in
the past would happen now! It was so terribly and obtrusively obvious.
In retrospect, we see that their very
naturalism was unnatural, for nature is not its own maker, for the simple
reason that neither in its interstices of power nor in its operational expressions
of any such thing, does it do so! The ONE who DID make it would do as He pleased.
Just because some executive has used his company car for ten years never
to go beyond The bridesmaids were inclined, apparently,
to feel that - 1) it was getting so late
that one might as well not be concerned about the ... what, silly 2) it did not matter
so very much anyway Such 'bridesmaids' help
to insult the name of Christ, annul the teamwork in the church, betray the
ardent flame of the cause of Christ, and bring into the realm of spiritual
things, an anaesthesia of spirit which many, not realising, follow. Still
going to 'church', they sleep while night comes, infiltrate its voting, and
where a particular church is lax to allow such things, derail its progress,
while securing their
own doom (Matthew 25:11-12
cf. Matthew 7:23; Revelation 2:20ff., 2:16). Let us be clear, that is the issuance
of this matter. There is no way that God who
"must" be worshipped in spirit and
in truth (John 4:23-24) is worshipped in comfortable compromise; for faith
does not follow some other Lord (cf. Isaiah 26:13), and this one has issued
His command as well as His reason for it. The Great Commission (Matthew
28:19-20) requires both the proclamation of the Gospel and the
inculcation of the keeping of ALL the commandments. This second feature DOES
NOT SAVE, but it issues from salvation. Faith does not loot the treasures
of Christ for self, or group or voting bodies, but works by love (Galatians
5:6): and love ? "If anyone loves Me, he
will keep My words," says Christ
Dedication ? in these sleeping bridesmaids
? The word does not apply. Conviction ? It is not apparent. Faith
in their Lord ? It is no more evident than is trustworthiness towards Him!
So is the coming of the Lord, in the
Scriptural revelation. Many are surprised as by a thief in the night, even
those who 'go to church', and others sleep in the night which requires rather
alert action, and godly enterprise. Where is it then ? WHERE is HIS COMING!
THIS is our question, and this is our answer. (On this side of things,
you may care to read A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 18, (cf. Benevolent Brightness
or Brothy Bane 74, pp. 103ff.) II Peter 3 tells us much concerning the
specific character of the attitude to be developed before the Lord comes,
and as a sort of receptor site for it. It is not at all more conducive to
comfort than the first coming in the incarnation at A) The
Attitude of the Lord who is Coming One must note that Peter
in II Peter 3:9 makes it clear that there is a qualitative as well as a quantitative
side the matter of when the Lord actually comes. It is a special characteristic
of God that He is compassionate, not willing that any should perish,
and that the word should go as a testimony bringing the Gospel to all the
earth (Matthew 24:14). It is only then that we hear from Him, these words:
"Then shall the end come!" There is arrest until this geographical distribution
of the Gospel is accomplished. Peter gives light on why. First, as stated, it is for
a testimony; for as the Bible states through the apostle Paul, God has not
left Himself without a testimony, He is not mute; as Isaiah 45:18-10 declares
from the Lord, He, the Creator of all has not spoken in a secret place ...
I declare things that are right!" Secondly, the compassion
acts as a constraint, a restraint on terminating things, the long-suffering
holds back the finale until it must wait no longer. That is what II Peter
3:9 makes so very clear. In the context of HOW LONG, the apostle Peter makes
an indication that for the Lord, 1000 years is as a day. THAT is the immediate
context (I Peter 3:8). A delay of 1000 years is not at all to be gasped at,
therefore, should it arise. There is, then, MUCH TO BE DONE and for a LONG
TIME, before the Lord comes. That, of course, was THEN.
NOW, nearly all is done already. b) The Predicted
Prevailing Attitude of those to whom He comes What however is to be one of the foremost
spiritual syndromes of this terminal phase of the cancer of disfaith, before
Christ comes ? It is this: sardonic mockery. We had this experience when
two elders went to a University radio station in order to present something
(as they offered), and what we chose was the certainty of the truth in Christ,
relative to the follies of magical evolution. The interviewer grew agitated,
interrupted, seemed to want no answer, but mere scope for mockery, so that
the only answer appeared to be to ANSWER ALL that he in fact put, even though
it appeared to be his desire to hop about like a flea, stinging here and there,
never consequential, but flitting in fanciful pursuits. After the interview,
mocking music was played. It was the only 'card' that could be played!
The poor man had, in the abyss of ignorance,
advised us that one had only to go to the University across the road and
behold, all would be solved. Evolution would appear there. It would certainly
make South Our point in this context however, is
simply this: mockery is the EXPECTED agency of assault. It is one choice.
Reason has nothing to offer. Mockery is in training in the absence of logic.
Faithful even in our
weakness (as with Peter who swore when he should have testified, marvellously
restored, as in John 21:15ff., He keeps what is committed to Him against that
day (II Timothy What then do we find to our point ?
WHERE IS THE PROMISE OF HIS
COMING! they chant. It is all just as it always was. Nothing is being done.
It is all just the same old thing. It is this chant which constitutes them
mockers, as predicted for a pathological phenomenon for the end of the Age,
by Peter. Is this the historic picture
which we have developed on this site in many places ? Assuredly it is. It
has the panache of proprietary contempt, establishmentarian oppression, ignorant
mockery, blind allegiance, mixed with barren naturalism, epic evolutionism
replete with all the magic Israel ever mustered in its naturalistic idols
(Jeremiah 2:27), and while it changes the images and imagery, it does not
change the blind devotion to the creation as its own creator, even if nothing
has to become productive for the purpose. This being so, we have
a primary fulfilment; but in our present context, a precise index to the near
return of the Lord, as if you were on a journey from Moscow to London, and
had identified Paris as your train passed through. 3
THE
CHARACTER OF OUR TIMES IN FULFILMENT OF THE PREDICTION ABOUT IT
Clearly this will relate
to the above, but it has its own particulars, A) PERSONAL There is just that masterful and compulsive
contamination with evil of which Christ speaks (Matthew 24:11-3), and which
Paul amplifies (II Timothy 3), and also particularises (I Timothy 4:1ff.),
both of which enlargements are also abundantly fulfilled (cf. SMR pp. 660-674., 699ff., 1041, 578ff.). Even this week, a case of preoccupation
with the 'occult' revealed a man in serious crime in consequence; and naturally,
as evil views and news aggregate, mutually confirmatory, so lacerations of
society compound with original sin, which is highly unoriginal, but quite
inveterate until cured, so that the immoral teachings freely preached as if
history or sociology or even science, to our young, augment their infelicities
and direct their errors with even more force. Further the fears of the impending, even
from the viewpoint of overcrowding, food, disease, greatly aided by Aids and
immorality, which can lacerate the pocket of any democratic society, and
radiation, both actual and impending irradiates the race, whether in body
or in mind, the fears being the more feasible when nations erode and erupt
into ever new tiny bits, and terrorists of yesteryear adorn Parliaments. This
too is just as in Luke 21:26, with "men's hearts failing them
for fear". The teaching has already been mentioned,
is attested both in fact (That Magnificent Rock Ch.8) and in prospect (Lead Us Not into Temptation) in many places. (See Youth,
Education in Indexes.) Its impact on the young (SMR pp. 125ff.), and on those who in due
course are no longer so young, but no less contaminated by pseudo-science
witlessly masquerading as if knowledge (cf. That Magnificent Rock
Ch. 1, and A Spiritual Potpourri
Chs. 1-3), has been traced at great detail
on this site. Our present point is this: it is as PREDICTED. The "disobedient to parents", "unthankful", "unholy" elements shout from the streets, call from the
class-rooms, while in New York the gun in the corridor expresses the level
of social dissolution, attested in schools. The outcry in
Kansas because they made an exceedingly mild law to inhibit a little the religion
of evolutionism from swaggering monopoly is itself an adequate testimony to
the gravity of the disease, being
officially administered to the young (Creation Magazine Dec.
Feb. 2000, p. 8)... The breed of disloyal and unthankful, disobedient and
without natural affection (II Timothy 3:3) implies a loosening of kinship
ties, and what goes with it. No longer the pattern of propriety, but with
errant affections loose, there is soon to be found (as expounded in Romans
1:21-32), that perversity not only of temperament in wilfulness, but of morals,
sexually or other, which is a major component of the abstruse rebellion of
our time. The young age, and the Age ages with them. The point is simply that this aspect of
family, morals, education, aggravation, intemperance is THE code word for
the times, at the moral and structured level. This is what it had to be;
this is what it is. But while on education, it may prove
beneficial to survey some scenes of practical kind. These, excerpted with
minor editing from News 51, and adapted, follow
in indented format. After all, it is useful to be able to show that those
who live in a godly way, MUST suffer persecution, and that one's information
is not merely by reading of things! As a Christian, one is a laboratory
of the love of God, the truth of the Lord, and with whatever sundry imperfections,
one should be able to indicate something of the RESULTS in a practical way,
which ILLUSTRATE and VERIFY the principles which one proclaims, which indeed
are from the Bible and which the Lord pronounces. Below there is a part of
the various elements in this work, which do just this (inset). If never was so much owed
by so many to so few is one side of recent history in England; here rarely
was so much credulity forced on so many young human beings by so small a percentage
of the population, with such manifest obeisance to a philosophy at once vacuous
and irrational. Such however is and has long been the
froth of frivolity of thought, which has been like a party paraphernalia,
where custom rules and the magnificent and impenetrable perfections of the
result of scientific method applied to the evidence, are systematically refused.
Its very perfection seems to create offence. That is about as near to creation
as some of the obstructionists will come. If it is not always so, it is always
interesting to hear of an exception to the trend at any University.
An excellent but intriguing example
came in The author found in Again, as
noted elsewhere, when lecturing in Communications in what is now a University
in The place of imagination is great; but
it is NOT in this sphere, to create the facts; and then interpret what is
so created. It is rather to proceed with the deliberate dignity of scientific
method and to assess the result. Facts are before, not after theories; and
results are found, not propounded! Hauled up to explain my position, I
explained that some things which had been challenged were of a type best answered
at student option out of Class, as had been the case; but that in Class the
need to use such examples (of scientific method) was important. They
had with restraint and care been presented, and any error in the process should
(in effect) be documented! Without that, how could this differ from a divergence
from academic integrity, that it be suppressed! In so important a phase of communications,
it was imperative that students arise from the pit of mere cultural conformity,
to think for themselves. If an example of misuse of scientific method in the
grasp of current culture and contemporary desire, could be examined, one
of wide appeal and vast propagation, then this was in the interests of the
students to examine. The BEST case, the most impactive, arresting,
was not something lightly to disregard, as a matter of teaching method. In
a University, where presumably truth and knowledge had some position,
I indicated, there was no room, not even possibly, for entrenched prejudice.
Such was shown, it was explained, in the tertiary body's own treatment of
this topic of creation elsewhere. What balance was there to be found in this!
Only one monopolistic approach to such a topic was permitted ? This would
be disastrous, when it did not even meet scientific method criteria. I Challenge
was presented for an indication of error on my part, for a disestablishment
of what was presented. None came. It was "inconvenient" to have
me proceed in this way. Logic played no part, as is usual, in answer to me
in such cases, whether as student or lecturer, in such cases. Never can I recall that anything remotely
resembling reason appeared in that cultural conditioning process, which
often appears instead of lecturing, but bearing the same name, when challenge
has been permitted. Nor has the situation been essentially different elsewhere,
or from any who in turn, have been encouraged to challenge my own presentations
in free University discussion situations or elsewhere. The truth is ineradicable
by the most brilliant minds; after all, it fashioned them at the first!
Further, the Lord of His word is alive and powerful (cf. Luke Such opportunity to continue my Lecturing
without the scope for wisdom was as unattractive as unreasonable, and could
only be rejected, once the current needs were met in examinations. Shackled
with illogical and unethical bonds, unable to evoke truth, a social convenience,
what a fiasco that would be, as trite and trivial as insipid soup, a
soul sale in which I for one could not participate, a denial of student needs
for which I could have no sympathy. 'Inconvenient'! Also inconvenient,
it appears, is any answer to several challenges to debate at Adelaide University,
made to Staff or Student Body; and activated over years of offering in The
Truth and Life Club, to whom some came, but where none could overthrow
the simple proposition that Almighty God is, and has revealed His word in
one only authoritative declaration, the Bible, for mankind. None came near
to doing so. Moreover, the presentation
made in the presentation was to the effect that this proposition, this
statement was demonstrable. We must try to remember that not so long
ago, such a presentation at a school or university would not have seemed
at all strange. Ad hominem and so invalid attacks have rained like
hail; but there has been no logical answer on any common ground, though by
now, debate, writing and attendance have all been offered to This, then, was in
contrast with his initial position, in which at first he showed some
readiness, merely failing to reply when the work which he requested was presented
to him in writing. (End of adapted excerpt.
If you want more such testimony it is available at Scoop of the Universe51, and the immediate context continues on pp. 249ff., and this takes you into the secondary
school level for this phenomenon, with no less drama and decisiveness.)
Education
is not merely slanted: it is on precipitous terrain; and its manner is as
far from objective as was the fire of The failure of many churches, the dissolution
of much that was stable and fine (as in Isaiah 33:6) into polluted remnants
as of a remnant sale, in a fast-moving and ill-organised emporium, such that
an Anglican archbishop can advise that in our times, it is no longer apt to
insist that Christ is the only way to God ( Tender Times for Timely
Truths Ch. 7 cf. allied departure, noted in
Stepping out for Christ Chs. 1 and 5, cf. 6, and more at the
moral level in The Frantic Millenium and the Peace of Truth
Ch. 1 as also in Wake Up World! Your Creator
is Coming Ch. 3):
this has been largely treated on this site. Again the failure of Lutheranism
in large measure to keep pace even with the early flushes of reformation in
Luther, is notorious (cf. News 88) , and if not
amusing, as apt to the case of the history of that body, as is the amorphous
in the crystalline, and a broken wing in an aircraft supposed to lift a rocket
body to its aerial launch (cf. for parallel data, Stepping Out for Christ
Ch. 4 and The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 3). The For convenience, News 107 is reproduced below, to give the tang of
the occasion, in that case. Yet it merely amplifies the action in the Uniting
Church as noted in The Kingdom of Heaven (loc.cit.),
in the Anglican and of course in the Presbyterian field abundantly in the
USA in particular (where a major church is now looking into having homosexual
pastors*2, and not for the first time).
But to the Lutheran case in this country, let us now turn. The forecast celebrations
in For the full background see News 88, which took up the matter in some due detail,
What aggravates this defeat of enlightenment
in the second dark ages to be so
Christians abiding in His word: do not be disappointed, discouraged or downcast
about this Rather, rejoice in
this, that it is one more index to the fact that the TIME of His coming is
It is time to re-unite
about the word of God, leaving past things to their place, and in accord
The broader coverage of such things
occurs in such places as SMR pp. 686ff.,
857ff., 844ff.. Some of the more personal
aspects appear in Biblical Blessings Ch. 11, as in The Kingdom of Heaven
Ch. 7, pp. 123ff., and these
similarly illustrate the vehemence with which anti-Biblical animus can be
pursued, the more so when reason lacks. Here this figures simply as further
attestation, added in placed, of the predicted trends. As was one of the
author's joys at that time to reflect: if they did not (in the Church) assault
the Bible, they would in the end falsify the Bible, for it declared that
they would assault it. In so doing, however, they in fact merely verify it;
and the more reason lacks, the better is the verification (cf. I Timothy 4).
The Bible pointedly attests this grave
phase of degeneration of the church, Biblically assessed, in such passages
as II Thessalonians 2, II Peter 1 and Matthew 24;24. Notice that it is FROM
AMONG YOU, that Peter indicates, the plague will come. D) THEOLOGICAL The above references in SMR also cover
some of this aspect, with suitable indications and examples. The CHURCH is increasingly subverted
(that part of it which is falsified, not the true and enduring one against
which the gates of hell will not prevail - Matthew 16). The articulation of
this subversion in theology is one of the dynamics of the putsch. The panzer
divisions of false theology noted in these references are as conspicuous as
the actual fall of the structure of the churches. Thus in a good illustration, in the
1920s and 1930s, the Presbyterian Church US, for the first time refused the
duly nominated professorship for Princeton of a claimant, one Dr Machen. His
staunch adherence to the Bible was at issue, and his articulate defence of
it in public interchange in the press was famous. Hence the church concerned proceeded
till the Confession of 1967 indicated its relativistic and non-doctrinal
move towards theological agnosticism: clear Biblical teaching being
relegated to the role of theory. In this way, doctrine preceded, but so did
attenuation of the Biblical doctrine, since the Assembly had allowed Thus the church tottered. Then it split,
just as doctrine was also officially made remote from authority, of a Biblical
kind, splitting off from that like a splinter. It was the 'CHURCH' which decided
these things; but the church of the Lord Jesus Christ has HIS words, not
its own; and indeed even He did not teach His OWN doctrine, as He said (John
It was to HIS words that one had to
abide (Matthew 7, John Similarly, the World Lutheran Federation,
having for many years broken the commandment (Romans 16:17 and see Separation, Ch. 7 in The Kingdom of Heaven)
concerning AVOIDING heretical company, fellowship, and hence having in this
very thing, debased doctrine, was weakened as a CHURCH in the process.
This weakening led on to the formulation that they basically agreed on justification
by faith, with Romanism, even thought the Biblical notation is specifically
condemned in Roman formal teaching (cf. SMR pp. 1042-1088H, esp. 1045 ). Theological is gaining new
ambivalence, while clear abhorrence for Biblical teaching becomes irrelevant,
because of the felicity of phrasing. In this way the dynamics of doom and
the romance of words, building and beliefs, structure of church and structure
of words, move as one, in forbidden alliance, and in increasingly free fall,
they go down together. There is warfare which must in all integrity
and probity be waged; and in this case, the error is as if one makes
friends with one's enemy - not at all the same as loving them. Indeed, to
love one's enemy, one can do no better than introduce him to his deliverer:
not join him in rebellion from that necessary source of aid! For further PERSONAL ILLUSTRATION and
CONFIRMATION in actual life of these things, see Biblical Blessings
Ch. 12. This has been as sharp
and repetitive as one could wish in any experiment, and not at all lacking
in two things: DRAMA and DELIVERANCE, for just as evil is being given its
unleashed but not uncontrolled opportunity to SHOW ITS STUFF, so that all
may wisely consider, and the Lord is vindicated by its actual awfulness, so
the Lord is still in majestic control of the testings, and His triumphs as
in the resurrection, while not without suffering, are without parallel. One
MUST praise the Lord because HE IS faithful. Such faithfulness is ALWAYS BEAUTIFUL,
and in Him, it is also wonderful because of His eminence, His grand holiness
and unending beauty, who never declines, has never begun and brings things
to their alpha and their omega, knowing both from the beginning, before our
serial time, where one WAITS for it, had even begun. There is
indeed a spiritual warfare, and one must learn to love one's enemies and realise
that the underlying enemy of souls is he, the prince of this world, who afflicts
those whose attacks one faces, for whose deliverance one also seeks, if by
any means they too may be rescued. E) MILITARY This may seem a strange component for
'spiritual' things as some may deem them, but so it is. The war gears, fears
and tears are at a summit these several decades, with nations being spawned
and adorned with blood, as they strive, sometimes amid famine, with one another,
with super-powers or with tribes, or against domination, or in order to
achieve it, or for ideological purposes, or to prevent them, so that the
world is fast becoming a garden of blood. The Bible indicates that not merely
would there be a manifestation of war that would be symptomatic, but it would
occur in a syndrome which would be infested with fear of the same and rumours
as well. This horrid trilogy is found now in
the fullest measure, if not conceivable, at least for any but a profoundly
stirred imagination. For the
super-race of man coming of Age it is a decisive refutation of grim humour,
as is often found with vaunting pride, whether or not expressed, as here,
in philosophic terms such as organic evolution and controlling it and other
paranoid leaps without bound in either sense. Thus the words of Christ master
history as usual, and it follows with the same degree of subservience, as
man is showing in rebellion. The irony is this: the more he rebels, the more
history is subservient to Christ, and the more man is himself correctly
predicted by Christ in the highest possible contrast with all 'developmental'
dreams, as if things just ... did it of themselves. "And you will hear of wars
and rumours of wars" - Matthew 24:6,
while fear abounds just as shown it would do, in Luke 21. F) PSYCHOLOGICAL The tearing of the
fabric of the personality is accelerated by such delusive materialisms, mystical
mistakes and the results are not hard to find. One such example appears in
Scoop of the Universe 51, and the condition
is articulated in some depth in Generation of the Dispossessed,
Appendix 1 in Barbs, Arrows and Balms. Meanwhile the new nurseries abound from
TV and news alike, on "the flood of blood" as expressed in Benevolent Brightness
or Brothy Bane 84, which examines a news item on the saturation point of
violence and blood which our last century has invested in this race.
These things all tend to work both
interactively and cumulatively, so that mood swings are like common colds,
tablet mentalities are always under construction, the millions of mental
patients in the USA alone, are subjects of surveys and computations, and
the energy of termination manifests itself with all the reality, which the
dream worlds of the visionary mystics, wed to materialism and unknowables,
with all the fervour and propaganda of the inarticulate (which yet speaks)
declare, but are equally unable to find. The psyche begins to resemble a
tornado in irons: the irons are very strong, but not very relevant. The answer
of repentance in faith, by the Gospel of Christ, is a narrow way, and the
way to destruction being broad, it is not normally taken; though millions
take something parallel and bearing the name. This too is predicted (Matthew
24:24, II Peter 2:1ff.). G) HEBRAIC No longer are they the wanderers of the
nations. They were consigned to this from Deuteronomy 28ff., Leviticus
26, in terms of covenant breaking, finally breach in Christ's death (cf. Zechariah
11). They were to have their civilisation rampantly overturned (Daniel H) CIVIC - special case
of The Jews
in fact now ARE BACK in Jerusalem, so the times of the Gentiles either are
or are in the final touch of being fulfilled. As in Zechariah 12, 14, there
had to be wars of enormous disproportionate for the Jews following their return,
a return to post-date the resurrection (Zechariah I) VISUAL Meanwhile, and
in view of the flood of blood, this is a generation of horrible sights and
scenes. TV has ensured that, partly while they
made the case for abandoning But more
relevantly at this point, note the fact that this all turns into a fulfilment
likewise of "distress of nations with
perplexity" (Luke 21:25), and "fearful sights" (Luke 21:11), which is not so surprising with
the 'god of forces' in full sway (SMR 707ff., and see Index), immune to morals, full of morality,
prone to preach, empty of spirituality. J) SOCIAL Accordingly, there is a social centrifugal
force, tending to disperse, disrupt and destroy the peace and order of society,
as illustrated so valiantly with the British soccer phenomenon, deemed so
grave that even The distress of nations, and men's hearts
failing for fear in apprehension of the things to come, allied with the
moral ditching already noted as in II Timothy 3's prediction, and the indoctrination
with the tender mercies of survival of the fittest, in direct antithesis
to the former teaching in England, for example: these things make for a social
milieu so beautiful and glorious, that even the Pacific Islands, Fiji and
the Solomon's, disturb their vaunted idylls, to disrupt their rulers, disperse
their order and lose their reputation no small amount. Unemployment helps
society to ruminate on its intense wisdom without God, as it proceeds with
other things in mind, manufacturing inter alia, the mindless mischiefs of
desperation, disturbed hearts and frustrated wills. It is NOT ONLY the physical and the medical
which are to stretch society to breaking point: it is likewise the moral,
the behavioural and the violent. Thus indeed, if those times were not shortened,
the WORLD OF MAN would not continue. "Because lawlessness will
abound, the love of many will grow cold" - Matthew 24:12. Note for the moment however,
that LAWLESSNESS is to ABOUND. It even reaches to the behaviour of children
to parents, and parents to children, many of whom they will betray one another
as they often did in World War II (cf. Luke 21:16), and of course this is
only one case: "you will be betrayed even
by parents and brothers, relatives and friends, and they will put some of
you to death" - Luke 21:16.
The symptoms are there, are mounting in
gravity, and the social temperature is rising, as it had to do. Natural affection as we noted from the
prediction of II Timothy 3, being low, the families being components of
society, and education being ideologically invasive, debasing and pushed
with the full putsch propulsion of propaganda (mounting to the predicted
climax of Revelation 13:14-17): there is an aura of intrusive manipulation.
In In more and more countries, freedom of
speech is quite real, so long as you do not wish your head to remain in close
association with your body. In other places, like Government schools in
But whether it be by seduction, miseducation,
mistraining, chains on thought, authoritarian political intrusion, denial
of scientific method by making theory not fact the starting point, or excluding
views not desired by feverish authoritarian fiat instead by due debate,
and installing what endures, after that: It is becoming increasingly clear, that
there is more than a mere national establishment, barren in logic, evanescent
in life, propagandising in tone, controlling in mode, intrusive in platform,
projecting the surreal image of the beast. It is an international assemblage
of ideological cohesion, irrational, irrelevant and fanciful in the realm
of facts and scientific method, which infects and invests universities, schools
and mass media. (Cf. Mystery of Iniquity, Appendix I in The
Other News, That Magnificent Rock Ch. 1 with Barbs, Arrows and Balms 5, Appendix 1, Joyful Jottings 5 and 14, and SMR pp. 727ff., 732Bff., 750Bff.). This is nothing to be
concerned about, for it is predicted in type and power; and indeed the climax
of Rev. 13 is precisely the nature of the culminating case to which we churn;
but, for all that, it is something to ACT AGAINST, for the Bible is
perfectly clear about that : If you are not burned
(as some missionary children were with their father), or imprisoned (for daring
to speak against Muhammad or whoever - maybe, Stalin, as in the case of Solzhenitsyn,
though it was ... only for a decade or so), or hunted (like the youthful
Chinese leader), then perhaps you may be turned. The reported cases of evolutionary
doctrine being required or a post lost ... or at least no sustained criticism,
have been noted earlier, as also the case of the author in his own lecturing
program (as in Questions and Answers 7, pp. 72ff.). While the point
is closely related to the EDUCATIONAL one, it is not identical. The ideological basis and bias is as strong
as a dark gospel of evil, and is pushed with passion that will know no contradiction.
Facts become irrelevant and hopes become the substance of the philosophy,
which, though always dashed, continue to arise like odour from sewers. This,
mingled with the blood and cruelty, slaughter and ends being justified by
means, means meanness is in the ascendant for millions. The ideology is its
own commentator. It sometimes adds for us, as shown in Lead us Not into Educational Temptation, its
own formulations and even codifies them. This is convenient, but not necessary,
as the codes begin to appear when the radio, TV, lecturer, teacher, news
caster all join in a voice of thunder, signifying the same ludicrous myth,
like obsessive, compulsive religious deviationists, intent on 'converting'
some poor people who are not yet 'hooked'. On this topic, it may prove instructive
to specialise a little, and to review some of the ideological compulsions
which obtain, the standards of naturalistic orthodoxy, but equally, the nadir
of logic, the downfall of science and the advance of beast-ideology, effectively
(whether or not in name) making the world stand on its head, and then removing
the head. Shortly, we shall consider many things
from Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming ... Ch. 5, from end-note 1 in this respect. It will be
available in our Appendix to this, our present Chapter. The different type-face
will be left, in order to make it easier to distinguish the excerpt from the
rest of the text of this chapter, and there is an indent, further to identify
this largely imported section, from the source just noted. (You may then
wish also to consult Models
and Marvels Ch. 7, in That Magnificent Rock, esp. Section E, which brings
in more detail again in this fascinating excursion into intellectual and spiritual
pathology, so distinctive of, as predicted for our times.)
Here we see a conspicuous example of false
knowledge being claimed with such a clamorous and contemptuous certainty,
in the face of scientific reality, that the ignorance - scientifically
- of What is found is that
this arrogance plethora of assumptions is merely a technical parallel to the
other arrogances of the flesh, which despise what is clear and confuse what
is known with what is not, to the destruction of truth, if it were possible,
just as it was to the nailing of Christ (cf. Repent or Perish 7). In this case, as in all in science,
what is not known is best left in that category; whilst what is known, is
better left to declare its integrity, than become subject to the schemas of
assumption and the dilemmas of self-contradiction. As to what IS known, in all simplicity
and directness, the multitude of processes attest a relatively young earth;
and the multiplicity of ignorances attest things so varied in so much so often,
that it is almost a joke to compare the finality of the flourishes with the
virtual infantility of the assumptions needed to gain them and the contradictions
obtained when they are gained. So man, once again, ignoring the obvious,
and trumpeting what he does not know, ends in a turmoil of sophisticated confusion,
to which any the scribes who sought to trap Jesus, might lend their admiration.
However, as we have seen and shall review
in the Appendix added, the facts remain. Degradation of energy, diminution of information
in living creatures and non-formulation of new information sources and new
creation, together with enormous clarity in numerous fields on the stricken
youthfulness of this earth, are merely one side of the equation. On the other
there is the degradation of morals, of churches, the infestation of the gospel
with moronic and other pseudo-angelic, quasi-scriptural substitutes precisely
as predicted with such a time (cf. SMR pp. 837ff., 857ff., 864ff.). With this, is the insertion
of JUST that sort of ignorant and unwieldy scorn for the REALITY of the
Creator's power and the factuality of its exercise negatively in the universal
terrestrial flood which was predicted for the end of the Age epoch to Timothy
by Paul, and to all (II Timothy 3, II Peter 2, II Peter 3 - see L below ), in the revelation of Paul to the Thessalonians
(II Thess. 2) and the scenario of Christ's own lips (Matthew 24), and
As the call of lust in immorality and
perversion, socially, politically, sexually, psychologically and spiritually
fulfils its ancient plans, as predicted by the Lord, and the confusion in
pseudo-science with its ever new expressions of anguish*2A and bluster mixed continue, so the simple
fact of the return of the Creator, the Word Incarnate, God manifest in the
flesh continues, like a smoke alarm, on its step by step way. Now read first the
Appendix below , at the end of this chapter, for the
verification, validation and information relating to the above, and if your
appetite is not sated, then Ch. 7 E of That Magnificent
Rock. You have finished
this ? Then you may reflect... v
Ideologically,
this is the way it is, v
But
let us turn now from mere age and creation outset, to intensity and
development in this ultimately spiritual field of the earth, its history and
its coming history. THE CHARACTER OF RELIGIOUS CULTURE,
muqos is the Greek term of interest
to us here, found in II Timothy 4:3. The time - "the time will come". In II Timothy 3 we have
already in parallel exposure (like a pair of X-ray plates, developed
from different angles, of the chest, here cancerous) seen the reference to "the last days", when there will be "perilous times" and have considered the
interstices. These in II Timothy 4 are very similar.
The time will come, when what ? When the fruit is ripe, when the plucking
is near, then: "the time will come when
they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because
they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers, and
they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to myths" -
This is just as II Peter 2 tells us, in terms of "damnable heresies" from many who would arise, in the church's own
midst! For example, the onset of organic evolutionary teaching into the seminaries
of many major denominations, not to say church schools, has been so intense
as to be virtually assumed, one Sydney RC body being governmentally reported
as preferring to teach this in their schools, in order to reduce shock when
they leave them (cf. That Magnificent Rock, Ch. 8, where the Circular to Principals
of South Australia, is analysed - and this is part of its 'testimony')!
What of this ? It is hardly the testimony
of the giants of courage, the zealots of truth, not at all what would have
won the Battle of Britain: and of course, the pope has made his peace with
Darwin, just as the follies of the latter's theories (as shown in That
Magnificent Rock Ch. 1 and
SMR Ch.2 et al.) have reached the very climax
of exposure as unvalidated scientific guesswork, imposture and intrusion of
ill-disciplined philosophy! Hence they writhe and squirm and suggest 'other'
ways, which similarly, are already past, mere tags for events which they
neither begin nor proceed to explain. In fact, these like other myths are
closely related to magic. Let us consider their definition. MYTH has been defined
in SMR p. 252I, as "the imagination of result without
adequate cause, for the satisfaction of desire". Such has organic evolution
been exposed to be in the references noted, with emphatic and continual detail
to match. Similarly the estrangement from the word of God is such that in
vehemence (cf. Biblical Blessing 11, SMR pp. 1082ff.) and all but pervasively,
religious and irreligious bodies alike, cast it from them. (As to
that, the Anglican situation in Australia is merely ONE highly dramatic
example at the top level! and it is readily paralleled with Lutheran and
other basic movement cf. Tender Times for Timely Truths Ch. 7 with News 99 and
A Question of Gifts Section 6, STEP 5, pp. 249ff., STEP 1, 4, News 107). Accordingly,
this is the PREDICTION, and it is predicted to be so pervasive and powerful
a psychological slant, that the general character of the time is indicated
in terms of "they will not endure". This was thus to
be the nature of major churches as in II Peter, and major civic organisations
like universities; and this is now fulfilled. As such, by its very DEGREE
and PENETRATION, it is one of the testimonies of the approaching return of
Christ. To be sure, such vagrant theories are in acute logical discomfort;
they change like clothes in a coal mine. Yet the social sway, of these alienations
and myths alike, is in inverse proportion to their logical validity: for the
former is vast and the latter is non-existent. This therefore is
a perfect match, prediction to performance. In what then would the 'myth'
consist in the context of Paul ? In the RELIGIOUS domain, in competition with
sound doctrine. And in what would this consist ? In inventing (as Christ indicated
in Matthew 24:24), other gods, other christs, other prophets, therefore other
perspectives, views trivialising God and investing trivia with grandeur, and
in view of the nature of decline in man, whether in the Jewish time or the
present, the parallel to worshipping the CREATION rather than the CREATOR
(as Paul spells out the basic syndrome in Romans 1:25). It is moreover in
the type of II Peter 3, already investigated in this chapter, with its emphasis,
both specialised and specific, on mockery of the flood and the personal intervention
of God, in creation and judgment. Intemperate, it is
derisory, dismissive, soigné, sophisticated in jaundiced disdain and
inveterate implacability. Thus 1) its nature 2) its widespread incidence and
3) its quality are predicted with admirable precision and punctilious care.
He whose care is for us, has cared enough to show His care not in thin air,
but in a non-rotting body on the one hand in the resurrection, and in a rotting
body, on the other, in the decay of much that, having left the Lord but not
the name, stinks to high heaven! Body odour for the unwashed may not be blameworthy;
but when a bathroom is refused, it is another matter. So more also is it,
when life is refused, and the sallow odour of corruption enters into mere
wilfulness of desire. It is worse when the name above all names is adventitiously
employed, almost as if a play-thing. It is not wise to so use the name of
the Lord in vain, as the book of Jude superabundantly attests!... yet it
is not superabundant for those who will not listen. Further, the total
fulfilment of these things IN SIMULTANEOUS profligacy and company with all
the rest is marvellous to behold, directive as to diagnosis. Its impact: the coming
of Christ is near. What makes it the more staggering
is specifically the sense of NECESSITY, of DRUG ADDICTIVE TYPE OBSESSION,
which is to accompany this reaching into myth: cynicism vying with scepticism,
while mockery is here as much a behavioural mode as is blinking the eyes,
when one is in bright light! Thus they are unable
to "endure" sound teaching. First, there
is total incapacity, as in a drunkard. Second, there is the sense of UTTER
INTOLERANCE of teaching, provided only it is sound. It is an all but comic
compulsion to receive the objectionable, and dismiss the true. Indeed, this
is so precisely what we ourselves have found as to make it practically straight
out of our diaries! Let us now contrast these
spiritual vortices with the factual realities, in overview at the most basic
level. Nature and the word
of God express in unison, and with deliberate constancy, the exact opposite,
as does likewise all experience (SMR Chs. 1-3,
That Magnificent Rock Ch. 1, Ch.8, pp. 252ff.) In reality, the universe does not answer
to these who like the rulers of Thus whole denominations
either dabble or immerse themselves in organic evolution, and homosexual proclivities
alike, sometimes for pulpit wear. Moreover, governments rival or possibly
surpass Sodom, in making it an offence to be concerned whether perverted
employes appear on the pay-roll, or not; and preferably, would like in many
cases to inflict such things on the Christian organisations, as if Communists
should BY LEGISLATION have been required to serve in the White House, by
legislation, during the Cold War. THIS! it is the finesse of corruption.
Not,
however, in the tedium of the trivial have these grand and supervised creations
of incandescent brilliance been performed, nor does the articulated record
so attest. Nor is it in abuse of the Creator or His creations or their functions,
that glory is to be found. Blind matter has not invented cogitation,
nor has purpose 'arisen' from this purpose built product. Thus, for example, the Canyon is not merely
the monument to catastrophe, but as we shall see, much more. It is however
eloquent in attesting the vast forces required for the River to Efforts more generally to explain sedimentary
and marine deposits 'misplaced' repeatedly, as also found in Accordingly, in this vast Canyon, the
"underfit" of gradualistic mechanisms, and invisibility of implicated deposits
from their proposed erosive mechanisms are fatal to the credibility of that
approach. Morris (The Genesis Flood, pp. 150ff., 180ff., 209)
similarly in other locations indicates the necessities of vast forces and
direct laying down of the numerous exceedingly extensive sedimentary
deposits of the earth, and so often, moreover, the abrupt appearance of
'older' on 'younger' domains of rock, with no coherent indications of method,
other than direct. What else then is found in the Canyon
? Evidence both cohesive and consistent, for post deluge breach of once existing
capacious lakes, resulting in an enormous drainage system with eloquent
relicts (Cf. Austin, op. cit. Ch. 5). Yet it speaks far more than even this.
Austin's multiply authored treatise -
rather more than a symposium - shows carefully and with acute consideration,
the evidence both of creation strata and their deluge denotation, with attestation
of mighty deposits provided, not with the interfaces of gradualism, but
the abrupt tectonics of suddenness. Fossils come without the not-so-sweet
dream of gradual 'improvements', but with the torrential suddenness of deposition,
types intact, resistant to the end to gradual improvement no less than
to gradual burial or gradual arrival of the utter technical brilliance which
in fact is indicated from the very early times (by conventional geology),
in the fascinating symbolic wonders of the DNA and related structures in the
living cell. Nilsson in not dissimilar vein (as in
SMR p. 245) showed the out of place
deposition of numerous massed fossils, drawn from all over the world, and
settled in deep beds. The fossils arrive, world-wide, rather like the post-war
remains of Amazingly ''early' come the elaborately
ingenious eye of the trilobite, even evidences of pollen ( "... evidences of
higher plants have been reported elsewhere from "Cambrian", ·
These things occur
as though they had never heard of organic evolutionism, so that the whole
ugly deception is laid bare, as if by a better probe than that to Mars. This
one, moreover, in the Canyon case, is excavated already. Neither the Darwin-refuting
theory of punctuated equilibrium, nor the frolics of Darwin himself, can
account - far less, logically - for the joint evidence of creative profusion,
effusion, efflux into rock strata which, as indifferent to these theories
as to all human pretension, layer themselves with abrupt and 'misplaced'
configurations, immune to relevant weathering that did not happen, as to
'steps' which were not needed in the launching of the already mature realms
of vigorously abundant created kinds, and in the deluge of judgment on the
earth. ·
As we
find ( Nothing works!
Not even magic. It is necessary to return from the fiction of pretence and
pretension, to the power of God, from insufficiency to sufficiency, from
causative, conceptual, formal and functional absence, to its presence, in
order to gain what you have, find what you discover and enable what you 'possess'.
In a way, it
is rather like the apology theory concerning aborigines in various countries:
they were here first, so they OWN the land, which they however did not create.
This does nothing to reduce any atrocities performed, or mercy required; but
it does illustrate the extent of the myth, as if occupancy constitutes ownership,
while possession in its 'justice' is compared to creation! Creation of land
? It is ignored, like modesty, in bikinis. So in his racial
imagination as a whole, it is the same in pretension. Man 'OWNS'
God's creation, as a race, and has 'right' to dispose of it; as if God Himself
had not provided the whole instrument of habitation, and the cogitation powers
as well, not to mention that existence of mankind so that they might be, the
most advanced design by far ever seen with these mortal eyes (cf.SMR pp.
113-116, 211, 224, 252E-G). The most notable
of these situations concerns the Jews, where the ONE who DID make the organised
magnificences and masterpieces of the universe, DID assign to a nation,
under certain conditions, and with certain eventuations, a piece of land
which all the world seems intent of compromising, either driving them out,
or making them so minuscule in their possessions, that it is a comedy!
God has other ideas, and has shown it with His usual precision, in
our own life times (cf. SMR Ch. 9), since
both the return of the Jews and their restoration
to a Jerusalem lusted after by the world, are UNCONDITIONAL (cf. SMR Appendix A and Ch. 9, from the outset). They have
similarly happened, unconditionally. As in science, ignoring the attestation
does nothing to remove it. It was planned as an exhibit, statedly so, by
the will of God; and comes in the same way (cf. Ezekiel 37:28, Isaiah 41,48).
Proposed as a test, it is invested in factual history, as a test product;
and duly appears. It is not possible to over-emphasise the fact that this
is always the case with the word of God. For millenia, it is the same. In
things great and small, it is the same; in things personal and impersonal,
it applies as always. Thus God has also employed His power, that with which He created the universe and
raised His only begotten Son from the dead (cf. SMR Ch.6, Stepping out for Christ
Ch. 5, Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital
Millenium Chs. 5, 6 ); so that precisely what He said,
is what has happened in this racial case, as in all other matters of which
he has spoken. The power with which the universe works (which had to be created
since nothing has no resources, and eternity is not the nature of the expendable)
: this is the same as that with which the word of God works. God CAN speak;
and things DO happen as He says. This is that other science, genuine, authentic
and uncorrupted, which like the true form of our own science, watches reality
and consorts with facts. It is indeed, even more testable than is material
science, since the thing which is to happen is stated, and then happens. It
is first pronounced, and then performed. It is explicit, it is eloquent; it
is invariable. To the Jews
the free simplicity of the faith (cf. I Corinthians 1:23, Romans 10:1ff.)
was a 'stumbling block', as to the philosophic Greeks (cf. Acts 17), it appeared
to be foolishness. Nevertheless, this user-friendly grace of the Gospel of
Christ is "the
power of God and the wisdom of God" (I Corinthians (For a development
of the sheer pretension of the myth, in its various phases and viral-like
assaults, see such sites as SMR pp. 374-385, 252Hff., 422Eff., A Spiritual Potpourri
Chs. 1-3, 7, That Magnificent Rock Chs.1 and 8, not least, pp. 252ff., The Spiritual Refreshings
for the Digital Millenium Ch. 4, and
myth , man and meaning, in SMR Index.) 3) II Peter 3 with I Timothy 4 have a joint and
special message into the midst of this vainly creative mess, the myths of the 20th century, now the amoral flood of the 21st that inundates
the young with the debris of the old. II Peter 3 therefore
provides in its celestial scope, a rapid traversal from the comedy of those
ignoring the Sovereign of symbols who both made the ingenious array of them
in their bodies, and the soaring capacity to organise them in their minds,
as well indeed, as their unadmirable facility to misuse the same in their
spirits, to the end. What do
these mockers mock ? the beginning. What do they trivialise
? the end. This is the standard
way of errant and erratic youth: it would ignore its parents as far as may
be, and dream into mere abstraction, both the rigour of reality and the appointed
end of folly. Thus Peter in II Peter 3,
depicts the mockers of the beginning, who despise the end; This, the word of God
(cf. I Peter 1:10-11,22, II Peter 1:21, I Cor. 2:9-13) presents accordingly,
not only a rebuke to high-flown fancy and intellectual rebellion, exposing
the logical irrelevance of the inept mockery of reality, but a testimony to
triviality. Indeed, Romans exposes the very kernel of worship which lies within
(Romans 1:25), which exalts the creation of the Architect to worship, while
denuding the architect as if some phantasm: but it is not so with the bill!
In fact, this worship is exhibited in some little detail in The
Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 10, Part 2.
Not thus will the God of creation be treated
by His conspiring creation. He has come and done all that may be done; and
past this, there is mere, simplistic rebellion. There is an end, not less
than there was a beginning, and to this II Peter 3 diligently proceeds (vv.
7-10). Nor does it stop even, at the final dissolution, in divine judgment,
of the universe. Instead, the apostle
adds two features. 1) The whole arena of the
end will open suddenly (v. 10), like a thief opening a window at night. Jesus
Himself indicated precisely this (Matthew 24:42-46). 2) We are exhorted to be
awake, and to this effect: "What
manner of persons ought you to be in all holy conversation and godliness,
looking for and hastening to the coming of the day of God." As with Noah, and his derided doings in
a land without sufficient scope for sailing, as he built the ark which ministered
in the end, to his deliverance; so now, before the typhoons of judgment,
while insolent presumption, blind in its pride, refuses to batten down, there
is a space. It is a time given for repentance and the giving of the Gospel
(Matthew 24:14, II Peter 3:9). IT will be preached, said Christ, and THEN shall the end come.
God loves - so much
that He sent His everlasting word, clad in incarnation garment of humanity,
for the deliverance of all who receive Him. It is time to get into the ark,
and it is not, this time, the family of Noah, but the family of God who are
there. CHRIST is that ark (II Peter 3:19-21). The 'baptism' that
saves is not that of deluge, as in the flood or in baths or sprinklings,
but, says the word of the apostle, it is that of "the answer of a good conscience
toward God... by the resurrection fo Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven"
(II Peter 3:21),
but will return (Acts 1:7ff.). How deftly the apostle
arouses the sacramental delusion in order to dash it on the rocks of the objective
Christ, the actual source of salvation in and by Himself! Saved by baptism
? Oh yes. BUT NOT the washing of flesh, but the witness ... (cf. The
Kingdom of Heaven, Appendix,
and Barbs, Arrows and Balms 30).
He effortless but vigorously moves in one step from sacramentalist sidetracks,
to the substance of the faith in the resurrection of Christ, and a good conscience
(as in Romans 10:9). What then is to come
? Not flood but fire is the end in its ultimacy, in destruction (II Peter
3:10), but that, it is the garbage collection, a witness to weeds (Matthew
13:41-43)... wees, in this case, so by desire and not by design! (Matthew
23:37, I Timothy 2:1-3). That, it is the negative, though even this
has that glint of the love light of His eyes. The affirmative ? "Then shall the righteous
shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father" - Matthew 13:43.
God is righteous. In love He cancels sin
in the log book of the lost, when they are found , entering by faith with
repentance (Luke 13:1-3), the domain of His redemption. Indeed, He has known
them from the first (Ephesians 1:4). In purity, He dims and diminishes no whit
of His wisdom, His light, His wonder, His incandescent purity Neither a dictator
(if so, no world of vilely misused liberties), nor a mere witness, HE has
become a participant (Philippians 2:1-10), and provided escape from the artful
wiles of depravity in naturalistic pride or hedonistic weakness, or any form
or format, into utter freedom (as in John 8:34-36). Without charge
(Isaiah 55:1-3, I Peter 1:18-19, Romans 6:23), He has done it Himself, just
as He created also by Himself (as in Isaiah 44:24): one Trinity, without beginning
or end (Psalm 90:2, Isaiah 48:16, Matthew 28:19, II Corinthians 3:18).
Small wonder, then, as we see in *4 below, that Paul declaims, in the very next chapter
of II Corinthians: "Behold, now is the accepted
time; behold, now is the day of salvation" ( II Cor. 6:2). The way is narrow ? Assuredly
- as in all thing wonderful, there is a way and transgression is not it (Matthew 7:13-15). False prophets declares Jesus
the Christ, are those of whom to beware. It is necessary to do business with God - and HE has written
the contract already (Isaiah 42:6), in the blood of His Son (Matthew 26:28),
for without
blood there is no remission (Hebrews
9:22), even of Him who died ONCE FOR ALL, and does not suffer a second
time, as, we are assured (Hebrews 9:28, 10:10-14) He would do if the
sacrifice were ever repeated. It is ONLY SACRIFICE WITH SUFFERING which is His, and only SACRIFICE WITH
HIS BLOOD which is His, and when it is offered by HIM (John 10:17-18) that
it counts, and only when it is received from Him by faith (Romans 3:25ff.)
that it counts. It is only when you count on HIM ALONE, that it counts (Galatians
6:14, Psalm 2:10-12, Jeremiah 17:5, 9-10), since there is provided no other
SAVIOUR but GOD HIMSELF, in the person of His eternal life, His eternal word
incarnate (Acts 4:11-12, Hosea 13:14, Psalm 49). It is deity alone who alone knows the
hearts of men... and who justifies without works (Roman 3:23ff., Ephesians
2:1-10). That is the way it is, and the way it
is going to be (Ephesians 1:10, Revelation 5:12-13). Thank God for that! We
do not have to depend on the devious sinfulness of man, or the corruptible
notions of flesh, or the variable credibility or credulities of our race.
It is on GOD ONLY we depend, just as GOD ONLY is our shield. HE ONLY is my
rock (Psalm 62:1-3, Deuteronomy 32:4, 15-18, 31, II Samuel 22:2,32,47, Isaiah
44:8), as prophets and the redeemed alike attest with glowing assurance and
utter peace. The covenant then has been written by
God Himself in the blood of His only begotten Son (Isaiah 42:6, Matthew 26:28),
by death (vicariously) and resurrection (imperially) breaking the fate and
blessing the faith of those who receive Him (John 1:12ff.). The deluge ripped up much of this earth,
but there is a greater deluge of judgment according to just dues, even than
this! What then is needed ? Each living person on this earth needs to be planted,
like a tree, in the soil of Christ (Isaiah 61:-13, Matthew 15:13), through
the work of graciously granted faith (John 6;:29). What did Christ say: "Every plant which My heavenly
Father has not planted, shall be rooted up." But what ? It
is some other master, some other prince, some other presence, some other gospel,
some other spirit which is continually invoked by the many: it is 'we'
(some select imagined group), or 'mankind', nature, gods unthinkable without
heart or power, what have you: dream it up, it will not help you.
"The gods which
have not made the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from
under these heavens" - Jeremiah
Ideological gods are no more a rock than
naturalistic ones: they are all the mere contorted projections of confused
flesh, ignoring its Maker, and exercising some of its own components in
order to fall down and worship them, saying, this, this, it is the way,
before the body dies, and the mind which so declared, is eternally cut off
from its source, proud like cancer in its disorder, lethal in its progress.
We have not made, but God has, ourselves,
our environment, our universe or the things of destiny. Man has sinned, and his sin reaches to
the heavens; nor has he repented, as a race, any more than has Centuries, yes millenia
have seen the foolish musings of philosophy (cf. for some, SMR pp. 422Eff.) - sometimes in borrowed
party clothes, imitating science, but frivolous in method, fatuous in philosophy,
doctrinaire in presuppositions and empty-headed in demands, as if the source
had to be the result, and the effect had to be the cause. We, this race, have
made these things, these ideological, these mythical fantasies, kaleidoscopically
changing them in a virtual ecstasy of impudence, impenitence and reckless
self-indulgence of an imagination both disordered and astray. From what we have made, in life, in heart
and thought, whatever its 'moral' pretensions, we need to repent so that we
might have accord with the God who DID make us. As Jeremiah put it, these
'gods' will perish before the God who DID make earth and the heavens. It is
a fitting funeral, divested of celebrant. This we have
seen, and here for diagnostic emphasis, re-iterate. The tail wags
the dog, and the leash is ignored. His divinely granted gifts and opportunities,
even His paid for trip in redemption to His presence in Christ(Colossians
M) PERIPATETIC - tourism
and commerce Daniel is notable here,
as in Daniel 12:4 Just as the world is the obsessive focus
of the naturalist, The globe-trotting,
nation-shrinking community of peoples is seen today: the travel touchstone
is predicted before. The significance of knowledge, its enduement, procurement,
is one of the features of our current civilisation - even if, in the normal
heights of frustration and vortices of contradiction, the knowledgeable
emphasise knowledgeably that they know nothing. Yet they grab for the controls,
and seek to specify where they are to be found, how moved, like a child in
dad's car, not quite knowing at the tender age of 14, what each of the levers
will do, as he move down the drive-way in a virtual ecstasy of power of impudence.
In the penning of prophecy these features are plain. It is not some superman
who comes, but man in his moral misery, vaunting pride, selfish squalor of
soul. It is not that all are such; but that this is the culture of the times.
And so it is, adorned by the hi-tech, multi-movement symptoms predicted. Let
us hear Daniel: "And there shall be a time
of trouble, Love of this world ideationally, as if
its own maker, ideologically as if its own basis, and idiotically, as if one
should make the means of life their end, and forsake entirely the ascertainment,
with all one's knowledge, of what it is for, the designs of the Designer for
His design: these three constitute a fatal mixture. Its end is shame and
everlasting contempt. Its Rescuer is the redeemer, and His terms are not
different. Until one receives His wounds for one's own transgressions, transgressions
rule and ruin the purity which alone can be received in heaven. Flesh is
not fit for the kingdom: it must capitulate to the Spirit, to the Lord who
made it, and concerned and coming, healed its woes with His work (Romans
8:1ff.). Like all other healing, it must be received, not cast to the dogs.
OUR
FINDINGS What we have found is this: that not merely
is the TIME for the return of the Lord, by implication, LONG after the time
of His coming - and incidentally, immensely important is the transfer
of the GOSPEL "in all the world as a
witness to all the nations"
- it is written "and THEN shall the end
come" (caps. added); but there are
more ingredients. It is to be a time when Time, Gentleman, Time Ladies, Time Children It is a time when KNOWLEDGE will be NOTABLE
in terms of its INCREASE, and TRAVEL throughout the world will be
like an epidemic, when fear for the future will engulf, stress fractures
will appear in society, militant and military turbulence will be like CAT
disturbance to air-craft in the heights, but this on the surface, when signs
in the heavens (such as aeroplanes and space stations but much more) will
abound, when water levels will be such, and energy distribution, that roaring
waves and seas will impound distinctively on the coastlines (as has been
documented and is now most notable, through the greenhouse effect, the
el nino, the la ninia or whatever other cause, the result is the
same). It is a time of MUTLIPLE fraud and falsity
in terms of prophets, or gurus, or false denominations, pretenders to being
the Messiah or the Christ or from Christ, like the Mormons, the Jehovah's
Witnesses, the New Age and the whole host of anti-Biblical 'dreamers' to
use the Biblical term, which are to be so multiplied that this will be a SYMPTOM
of the phase of the Age. And what phase is that ? It is this: "THEN SHALL THE END COME".
For all that, there is also to be a certain
hidden character, to the extent that it will catch the many by surprise,
lulled with a sense of false security, false hope and the entertainment of
false conceptions, just as in the last days Judah before the captivity (I
Thessalonians 5:1-2, Revelation 9:20, Matthew 25:1ff., 24:45ff., 24:24,
II Peter 3:3-4). It is a day in which inane
hopes for a happy future will constantly underlie vain vexations for the actual
present. It is, this COMING OF CHRIST, to be preceded, indeed introduced by
such an increase of tempo, a writhing and contriving that the very continuance
of the earth will come to be threatened, even before its time (which is of
majestic proportions in REMOVAL drama, just as was the CREATION in ARRIVAL
drama - Genesis 1-3). In World War II, there was,
especially near the end, such a tempo and trading, such commerce and action,
such planning and devices, such wholesale organisation and arrangement, as
before the SECOND FRONT, that years of labour, which had seemed all but interminable,
were suddenly frenzied in months of marvel. Things happened as at LAST (cf.
II Peter 3:9), the long endurance was being replaced with growing speed, by
the last ambition, the final deployments and the incredible seeming thing
came into being. The troops landed, dramatic reports rifled from the front
to the homelands, famous names of Generals appeared, encirclings, overcomings,
combinations of carefully laid plans occurred, and then - It was a time of rockets
being busily deployed by the Germans, and one in which their atomic endeavours,
not least through the daring raid in Norway, showed what MIGHT have been.
The enemy (not so much So here. There is not only the pattern,
the tartan of strange, significant and in some cases UNIQUE events which must
be simultaneous, but there is the increasing RATE and spate, flow and glow
of development. It is in some ways like a cancer which having been on some
physical site, has now reached other organs, and in a simultaneous way, is
grabbing now this one, now that one, and organising its fateful grip into
that of death. All this we now see, the rate, the relationships,
the items and the coherence spirit and character of the whole, ecclesiastically,
philosophically, educationally, psychologically, militarily, economically
as the cashless society prepares for the final manipulations and control,
politically as the nations squirm into existence and fight into confusion,
developmentally as the whole becomes ·
a mass of mess, ·
inhabited by false hope and
oratorical fraud, ·
such as the magic of organic
evolution, the myth of materialism (which itself is constructed only by mental
powers which have their own ways, and are related to purpose and possibility
of error, not program and simple occurrence), ·
idealisms of fervent falsity, ·
'spiritual' wonders of intense
iniquity, money grabbing, soul grubbing excursions in many cases It is to be a time to
be completed after the millenium (the length of which is wholly unknown -
II Peter 3:9, but adequate for the manifestation of the stated qualities -
millenium q.v., and the vindication of the Lord as shown), by the absolute
removal of the universe in panting horror, as its clashing, super-heated clangours
at last are still (II Peter 3:10-13). Indeed there is a certain poignancy which
the love of Christ alone allays, since it is a PRACTICAL LOVE, and has behind
it the CURSE OF CALVARY where HE took it, before He GAVE it. Sin is abhorrent
and the attribution of its penal horrors to Christ is the beauty of His holiness.
He does not compassionless contrive these ends and terminal conditions that
crush and exhume the awfulness of iniquity from the hidden depths of the
hearts of mankind. Nothing could be further from the truth.
HIS EXPEDITION (so beautifully described in Colossians 1:19ff., and extended
in consideration in I Peter 3:18ff., with the intimations also of I Peter
4:6) into this universe, His creation (like that of an author into his own
library) has been the greatest love song of all time, the most massive sacrificial
splendour, dedicated devotion, empathetic involvement, nobility of majesty,
tender-hearted concern, agonising anguish of rescue that could ever be conceived.
It is because GOD in purity and wonder of heart, did it, from majesty unspeakable
in light of an unblemished intensity, holiness of enveloping power and intensity
of knowledge and power beyond all number, to depravity unspeakable and decline
beyond all comprehension, the Lord to the lepers of this world, not to condemn
but to save (John 3:17): it is for this reason that it is augmented in wonder
to infinity. That HE, whose magnificence is beyond
the heights and flights of the most agile mind, should so lower Himself and
do it in love (because 'charity' can be cold, but the love of God is to blood
and bone, to face crumpled and beard ripped out, to being nailed by criminals
and mocked by meddlers), and should act with sharp and incisive effectiveness,
this makes it clear that WHAT HE SUFFERED is an INDEX to what the WORLD DESERVES.
IF it gets it, it is not as if HE DID NOT GET IT FIRST! What aweful action it is then, to ignore
or even blame God in the end, as the landing, as it were, on the beaches of
this world comes near, and like seething Nazis, to despise the deliverance
from their evil hands which 'threatens'. For those of you who ARE Christians,
in whom Christ resides (Colossians In THIS CASE, it is YOU who refuse the
aristocracy of meritless salvation, the special people situation of the
Christian children of God. YOU are the agent of your own destruction, your
own humiliation and it is not only this, you do this in the very FACE of
the LOVE OF GOD, which distinctively, individually and personally you SPURN.
It is only in THIS way that you could find the END irksome, instead of deliverance,
rest and delight, restoration to the very face of God, from whose mouth
the creation itself derived. 4
LOOKING
AHEAD after LOOKING ON This then is the
reality: the return of the Lord is to be found in its itinerary of preparation.
This is as sure and in train, as a dam with thousands of tons of concrete
pouring in and setting. It is in the hearts and spirits of those whose actions
and rebellions, cultural, educational, social, personal, make for the conditions
required for His advent. It is NOT where is the
promise of His coming ? Rather:
Here
is the promise of His coming -all things progress as
they have been required to do by the word of God, these several millenia,
and the promise of His coming, like that of royalty on a yacht, its points
of approach being chartered, is so precisely being brought into fulfilment,
that it virtually requires blindness, in order that one should not see...
unless of course, one simply closes one's eyes.
This is an ocular
procedure much in vogue in Christ's own day, and it is not losing its popularity
(cf. Christ's own diagnosis, as the Truth, in Matthew APPENDIX
TO CHAPTER FIVE ADAPTED
and EXPANDED EXCERPT The Cambrian
The Demonstration
It is not to be
desired, that the righteous should bow before the wicked, says the Proverb.
Nor is it, when as ambassador for truth, he/she is on commission.
Thus the FACT
of the Cambrian "Age" (admittedly a philosophical construct, but then, we
are showing on THEIR territory, their prodigious failure, no righteous holds
barred) is evidencing an explosion so vast that Gould wallows in it, glories
in it, expostulates in it, admonishes concerning it, uses public address systems
to embrace the ear concerning it, details it, lists it, loves it: this has
to be faced level-headedly. It is everything
that Gould says, and more, in the dimension of novelty, innovation, prodigious
spread of engineering design impact, streams of PHYLA not now around, EARLY
rock profusion leaving current biotic levels LESS! How can one say this ?
Simply because the innovations back of the innovations, those of constructive
thought and executive means require MORE than what appears. This is merely
the aircraft, as it were, in motion, watched by the buyers. BEFORE THAT, the
thing has to be ENVISAGED, and put together in mind, in thought, in the domains
which, like it or not, are the necessary field of activities which are their
speciality. Hence the suggestion
one has recently read, that the astute Christian Apologist no more really
STRESSES the Cambrian situation is not to the point. This is to yield to propaganda,
to go with the flow of frothy philosophy. Gould's endeavour to philosophise
with irrational modes, on the basis of his actual scientific observations
have no more validity than the expositions in this volume attest. It is what
he has SEEN that is important. His exuberance in attestation of the facts
is delightful. That is not to
be countermanded by philosophy, far less acceptable philosophy. On the basic premiss
that the rock record and its piles, strata, modes and manners, IS a RECORD
in a TIME dimension BASICALLY and one with supreme importance in DATING,
which has NOT AT ALL ceased to play this pirate's role, then the RESULTS
of the CAMBRIAN explosion, which on Gould's attestation is in effect in the
atomic dimension, after using merely conventional explosives, MUST be stressed
ALL THE MORE, by those for whom evidence is critical, vital, crucial, and
not merely a prelude to tiresome philosophy. IF the rock strata
are to be abandoned in the above role; well. Let us hear it. If not, very
well, let us draw conclusions in terms of the philosophical parameters imposed
by the organic evolutionists. On those bases,
it is all that has been said. It is outrageous, as incredible as to Nilsson,
were the flood evidences (see SMR Index Nilsson),
or the mutational NON-PROGRESS to
LØvtrup; and indeed with these
senses of profound outrage, that of the paleontological, the fossil gaping
and unredeemed gaps to Director W.R. Thompson (Index, Thompson) . These with Gould are protesting
in a furore of disgust, a clamour of incredulity at the REALLY VAST GAP, the
one between two precipices, those of theory and evidence. What they do is
one thing; that they have been outraged is another. Folly is at the helm in
these philosophic substitutes for theories relating to data, for the most
simple reason that they not merely lack finesse in adroitly handling the data
for an explanation, they would NEVER BE THOUGHT OF, to use Gould's masterpiece
of phrasing. Further one should indeed go: they are the OPPOSITE of apt theories
for the evidence. They are philosophically propelled like warships against
the tide of evidence. There mission is not scientific AT ALL! Hence all these
outrages are justified. They ALL hit gradualism. Various as are the suggestions
for 'resolution' in reform and change of theory, NONE has been acceptable
to all, for the very good reason that NONE is really based on fact and indications
and known laws or logic any more than the original! With ONE exception: that
of W.R. Thompson, who justly and clearly adduces the fields of evidence and
those them all utterly devastated by the alien theory superimposed on them,
whereas one, which is neither new nor at all difficult, creationism merely
IS VERIFIED; and in THIS, it is WHOLLY UNIQUE. By no means, therefore,
let us supinely , or indeed in any other way, accept the concept that the
Cambrian excursion is no longer on the tourist guide list for travellers to
these realms, in Christian Apologetics. It is as devastating as ever; and
Gould's desire to distance himself from its clear cut impact, with an immersion
in detail is just what he said it was at the outset in WONDERFUL LIFE,
an alternative to addressing the real issue of HOW did it happen. In the
end he seems to return rather shame-facedly, or at least almost surreptitiously,
with some reference to some particular corpus of characteristics found, like
so very many others, in an interesting combination of the same. Novelty is
almost the name of the game. Its sheer profusion
SCIENTIFICALLY ADDRESSED in terms of known phenomena, known laws and causal
stringency REQUIRES innovative capacity correlative, and that is FAR more,
and not at all less, than that of any man, or indeed, than that of the ENTIRE
human race for SEVERAL generations, working in the growing tip of its super-abundant
research! The Grotesqueries of Unreason,
and or CONQUERING THE EARTH
WITHOUT GUNS - IN ORDER TO LOSE IT OVERVIEW concerning
TIME, RATES, SPATES, DATES At the heart of
the discordant deviations from reality inherent in the reconstruction of
time · by what
after all, is geologically not least a vast array of sedimentary rock with
all the earmarks of catastrophe, violence and tumult, covering much of the
globe, · with
the presumption of unobserved changes in ludicrous extensions of time which
would even have fossil DNA kept contrary to reality, for millions of years
past its due date: · there
is a simple assumption. · It is this: All things go
on as they have since the foundation of the world... from the "beginning
of creation" as
we saw in Benevolent Brightness or Brothy Bane 74, pp.
103ff., from II Peter 3:3-4. Indeed,
the very term 'creation' as there noted, is modishly used of what is not creation
but mere
permutation and combination, ·
sometimes
of nothing, which therefore does very well to manage (as in Barbs, Arrows
and Balms 29), as it might
well in that other fantasy of so much greater depth, Alice in Wonderland,
and · sometimes
of what is unthinkable, but still thought, which does even better to be thought
about. The
unthinkable does the unverbalisable with what is not there. Even though
a start of what is here, is inherent in limited supplies and rates of usage,
it is normally deemed, nowadays, not nice to think of it in any real way,
since this is disruptive of continuity, conformity to the present, peace of
mind and power over all things. It deals a death blow to the delusive desire
to manage without ... interruption, interference or direction from the Maker.
It is therefore psychologically mandatory, spiritually compulsive and socially
necessary to get rid of God and replace Him with various fictions, depending
on the fiction and faction desired, all inadequate, none observably operational
in the least degree, and to fall on one's knees and start building.
It was the same
at Thus we proceed
with the dogmas of nothing (nihilism is not different except in name) leading
to something which is very apt, but rather witless in wisdom, which has by
a superb strategy, decided to invest itself in us, though it is not there.
So is the twenty first century race of man filled to the brim with madness,
like a deprived youth suddenly winning Tatts, or a cow re-united with its
calf. WE WILL NOT HAVE THIS MAN TO RULE OVER US, resounds with the new cathedral
bells, as in terms of the new Anglican moves in the hierarchical eminences
of its Australian settings, where Christ is fitted into the pantheon of possibilities,
and God is smudged into unrecognisability, rather the way it was done to
Jesus Christ. You recall ? "Behold
My servant shall deal prudently; Many kings have
been converted, but as in Psalm 2, there is an inveterate confederacy to "cast
their bonds asunder" and its end is rule by a Majesty which having created,
and provided for redemption with the utmost humility and attestation, institutes
a judgment as realistic as creation, and as detailed as salvation (as in John
So the century
looks from its dismal doom of contemporary disaster, mounting to no very distant
climax (as in Matthew 24:22), to its night life of the spirit. Dressed with
nothing, built by nothing, it has far from nothing to say; and having pilloried
Christ in contempt, it bypasses Him as if exempt. This nihilistic
crusade for nothing and its ghostly counterparts in oblivion: It may not seem
that this is a very rational ground for life, but how often is reason consulted
in these things! The mere fact that actuality
requires reality to propound it in thought as in visible format, is of no consequence. Why
be scientific ? It is more fun to talk in the mathematics of science and the
jargon of the nursery, because it has that dashing, erratic air of importance.
Again, it has nothing to do with reason; it is merely rationalised desire.
·
As Denton points
out, DISCONTINUITY is what is found in Nature; CONTINUITY is what is found
in the mind of man (That Magnificent Rock, Ch. 8, pp. 257ff.),
in abstraction from the attestation of what in fact is there. ·
(That is, it is
a frequent product of the poseurs of this world, the philosophers and their
Mars Hill - Acts 17 - ponderers, for whom every new thing ALONE is desirable.
Some even try to dignify their delinquency from reason by styling their new
thing 'anti-philosophy' and duly arguing for it by reason, while in breach
of it.) ·
Facts are fictions
in this realm, where the impossible is the only coin of value. Nothing must
produce something, or nothing in particular anyway, and above all, nothing
adequate. THIS is the necessary conscript for creation. Then for nothing of
reason, and from nothing of reason, it must diversify and create itself in
the most wonderful of ways. It is, as Shakespeare penetratingly put it in
an allied area of human life, much ado
about nothing. ·
The something however
remains. The much ado about nothing has nothing to do with it.
As to the date of its
formulation, the exact date of the creation of the material realm from the
immaterial, the visible from the invisible (after the manner of poetry and
all vast conceptions), that is unknowable, for it is lost in the form of
God, for whom OUR serial, event by event limitations of 'time' are a mere
invention (Romans 8:38-39). It is meaningless in the best sense, since it
assumes what is not so, and then asks questions of what it would be if it
were so. It is all a question of when God invented creation-style time. Creation-style
time is a result, not a cause, of that. It does not trace its origins any
more than does a baby, but rather less, since its beginning is absolute.
As to the events
of its formation, this universe, when matter poured forth from the cauldron
of creation in the will of God, instituting its domain and thrusting it into
being: they are found in inference and in the Bible, as logically demonstrated
to be the word of the God of truth (SMR Chs.
1-3,10). As to the scientific formulations which are justly to be made concerning
the evidence, these are teased out in That Magnificent Rock Ch.1, in just and precise format.
As to the dates of these initiating
events, they are scientifically not obtainable. Many essentially concordant
data imply a short history of the earth (cf. Professor E. H. Andrews,
God, Science and Evolution pp. 114ff., Dr John Morris,
Scientific Creationism pp. 149ff., Dr Harold Slusher as in
SMR pp. 237, 243ff.), and no known method can harmonise these with vast ages.
These things are dealt with in some detail in places which would be wise
to use as preliminary reading in this case. They are: SMR pp.159-179, 235ff., 246-250, That Magnificent Rock
Ch. 7E. , and perhaps Spiritual
Refreshings in the Digital Millenium Ch. 13. Methods do not exist for their conquest.
The ONLY way is to make assumptions and see what happens. What happens is
not too good. As Snelling points out in Creation, Technical Journal,
Vol. Nine, Part 1, in considerable detail, many of the results even of the
isochron methods of dating are meaningless. ·
"As
with all the other apparent isochron 'ages', these results from the weathered
rocks and soils have no apparent geological meaning, because there is no geological
event to which these 'ages' might correlated." Further, he exhibits at length
the diversification causes in rock structures, components, exits, additions
by this means and that, making the concept of closed system rather like that
of a jigsaw puzzle, with different source pictures as base. The incredibly
diverse results tend to suggest such a concept, apart from theoretical considerations!
Professor E.H. Andrews (op.cit.
p. 122) likewise indicates after review of discordant dating results liberally
attested, from radio-isochron methods: "All the examples cited above, where
ages were obtained exceeding the supposed age of the earth, were deduced from
Rb-Sr isochrons and it appears that isochrons are just as likely to give
geologically meaningless ages as are straightforward calculations."
·
"The present writer," he declares, "has ...
found that any whole rock containing two or more minerals with different
initial Sr87/Sr86 ratios must automatically give a false isochron, possibly
of several hundred million years, even at zero age. The assumption that Sr87/Sr86
ratios are identical at zero age for all closely associated minerals lies
at the heart of the method and is questionable both theoretically (because
of the differential mobility of the two isotopes) and experientially (because
the isotopic ratio varies widely in nature). " By their fruits you shall
know them! They do not accord
with confirmatory events, verificatory happenings. They appear like
will-o'-the-wisp happenings, elusive, illusory. As the distinguished Professor
E.H. Andrews similarly insists, they do not find confirmation in uniformity
of result, or result agreeable to confirmatory considerations. Snelling even
goes further and brings up dating horrors of such magnitude that one wonders
almost if one is seeing Gilbert and Sullivan in HMS Pinafore, where not the
British establishment of that day, but the Evolutionary Establishment of this
one, is being pilloried! Events within LIVING MEMORY get dates of billions
of years. Time has very little meaning in the wake of such expansiveness:
dreams appear as realities, and realities as dreams; pantomime rules and drama
displaced discipline. Moreover, the
appearance of these dating resultants, from the diverse but philosophically
concordant assumptions, is so antagonistic to unity, as in the trunk of a
tree from which the branches sprout, that it rather resembles an uprooted
tree, set on its head. This is essentially the parallel image given in Grand
Canyon, Monument to Catastrophe pp. 148-149. Instead, it is noted
there of apparent entry of species of life: instead of a family tree of diversifying
creatures, coming from a basal stock which transforms itself into major
diversity, as is philosophically postulated, the actual evidence is the opposite.
It is of the branches starting, and the trunk gradually growing. "It would
seem the 'family tree' of life gets wider toward the base!"
It would seem that this obsessive philosophy creates a prodigy of fun, like
Comic Home Videos aired on national TV; but in this case, fun is not the
aim! ·
Again,
from Grand Canyon, we read - "The pattern of geological succession
predicted by evolution is from bottom to top: species to genera; genera
to families; families to orders; orders to classes; classes to phyla.
·
"The
dominant pattern of geological succession, as evidenced by the fossils, especially
those of Grand Canyon, is in contradiction to evolutionary theory. Disparity
precedes diversity! The initial appearance of virtually all phyla occurs
with very low species diversity." ·
"Scientists
are beginning to recognise that the order of appearances is backwards... It
appears that the living world is in a state of decay, rather than in a metamorphosis
of evolutionary progression. As a result animals have become, and continue
to become extinct." In other words,
the idea of the theory was for little things (whether fussed up slowly or
miraculously created by 'nature') to grow in bulk and form, until total systems
were devised, and then diversified. You would get the main structures in due
course, after the little fiddlings, whether bigger or smaller in dimension;
the new species would cluster into families and so in, IN DUE COURSE. Those larger segmentations
would come later, following much fussing about, or fishing about, and
after biological efforts made by what, of course, was not there to make it,
but still made, for so the theory says. In fact, however, and in view of such
logic, not surprisingly, you get the main structures (on the geological dating
theory in vogue) evidentially at once, and the little fiddlings follow with
them. It then all decreases in disparity as Gould so vigorously points out
(cf. SMR p. 234), in terms of his
'decimation' which brings the initial prodigies of brilliance of design disparity,
into happy contrast with the later declines and decreases. Professor Giertych,
Head of the Genetics Department of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Kornik,
stresses just this point. ·
"Is nature
moving from chaos to ever-increasing organization, or from an organized state,
towards ever-increasing chaos ?" he asks. What are we finding ? he interrogates,
"An increase in information in nature or loss It is then striking that the
error of evolutionary theory (both Gould's and Darwinian, as Austin's work
points out - op.cit.) relative to fossil reality in its mode of apparent occurrence,
in REVERSING the entry scenario of new life forms, resembles so closely the
DATING FIASCO, which likewise reverses the proper expectation for any
sound theory, in this area of chronology. It would be expected that the many
concordant dates, mathematically determined from data, would point
back to an initial unity, harmoniously indicative of actual, decoded events.
In fact, however,
the many datings from our one present time result in many discordant and branching
oddities and sometimes seeming idiocies of clangour and clash, for beginnings.
The branches so determined in vacuo, appear to spread out for the beginning,
while the only root that is one remains ... the present, which not
being subject to naturalistic manipulation, is indeed ... one! It is essentially
a philosophy in reverse, whether in its biota, or chronological conception,
and this turning of things upon their head is indeed to give head to that
racy filly, mankind; but alas, it is not all so placed, and the generations
to come are drafted to pay for their pleasure, as are all who sideswipe and
act to invert truth must find, except they find mercy where it IS to be found.
Generation to
come ? Indeed, this one is not doing too badly in that domain; and the very
potential for that which remains is already a stress setting for many! They
fear what they see, envisage as in process of coming, fraught with peril.
If that, then, is the thought, what then is the reality, when it comes!
Unlike evolving self-generated marvels of myriad concepts unified into action,
which do NOT come, cannot be COAXED to come, but must recede into the creative
canyons of the past, THIS THING WILL COME. It always has come, always does,
and the word of God is NEVER falsified. What it says,
is what happens with the same prolific constancy, indeed consistency, with
which what evolutionary naturalism and its implications, fail to appear. But
let us proceed to further illustration of the shame of sham. Alas as for
so many in so much, sham is not the name by which it goes, even in the minds
of many of those caught in its sphere of influence. We noted above
Professor Andrews stricture of the abysmal performance so readily found in
dating by presumption. The gifted geologist, Dr Steven Austin in his
GRAND CANYON: Monument to Disaster goes better. He points out
that some of the materials taken for test, are dated as older (6 billion
years) than the assumption-girt idea that the material universe is around
4 billion years old! (p. 128). This is perhaps the ultimate in scientific
El Greco elongation, where fire meets fire, and imagination runs dissatisfied
away, from its own mother! If necessity were
the mother of invention, the 'necessity' to avoid the times and orders of
the creation would seem here indicated; and as with many other personal relations,
the last thing that may enter the minds of some, is that they have 'family'
problems. In this case, however, it is the families of mankind, derivatives
from God, but no part of Him, which in their created protrusions,
But what! We find
also from ·
"However
we notice that the oldest Rb-Sr dates come from Uinkaret Plateau basaltic
rocks, which are the youngest rocks in the Canyon" (op.cit. p. 127)..."If
we embrace the popular assumptions of radioisotope dating for Grand Canyon
rocks, we can make a case for the youngest rocks being deeply buried within
the Precambrian strata and the oldest rocks being on the surface among the
Quaternary strata. Such interpretation is, of course, contrary to the fundamental
superposition of What a further
upside down cake*2B is this! Indeed, the careful and heavily
field-backed presentation, in a select screening of hypotheses on the Grand
Canyon, that grand spectacular of action, delivers the cohesive conclusion
that vast lakes in a catastrophic situation managed the erosion, which sits
still now in the form of the Canyon, leaving the relicts and providing the
scenes frequently comparable with other such catastrophes that have been documented
- except in scale. More generally,
as we have seen, where catastrophe and creation, or vast upheavals and changes
are in view, the very concept of deploying the smooth assumptions of simple
extrapolation backwards (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-3), easy-going assurances that all things
have gone on as now, is as precipitous as the walls of the rocks of many of
the canyons, and as eroded as they by the force of reality. It is rather like
imagining you are sitting down to a well-prepared lunch, when you are in
the midst of a tangled litter of remains of those who have already eaten.
Not merely the processes of devastation, but the provisions of what could
BE devastated, in the creation of the world, these are the necessities to
be faced; and not with such means as these of nihilism, naturalism and gradualism
either should, or logically and experimentally, CAN these be met.
·
When, then,
the RESULTS of assumptions are found to be a)
meaningless b)
irrational c)
discordant with
results from other methods as Austin, Snelling and Andrews point out, even
to the point that numbers of specialists in the field are cited as being satisfied
that the only safe dating method is that of fossil bent thoughts (which are
based on dating assumptions for their stratification in time), When however the
ASSUMPTIONS are UNIFORMITARIAN in concept, and the very issue is the nature
of things early (cf. Professor Harold Slusher, Critique of Radiometric
Dating pp. 22-23, Dr John Morris, The Genesis Flood pp. 354ff.);
when indeed the whole question is where did they come from, then this
is simple arguing in a circle. If it does not make your head go round, then
regrettably, and indeed in some ways poignantly, it appears you are dizzy.
Circular argument NEEDS to be detected, and if it is not, you are deluded.
If this is your condition, it is not entirely your own fault; for culture
and society and establishment are in a huge propaganda putsch to subdue your
intellect; and even then, pitifully, many of these are similarly subdued by
other and earlier thrusts, which, in the end have only the Prince of this
world for its base, and as to him, as Christ noted, he is a liar and a murderer
(John 8:44ff., 14:30). Rich you say ?
Murderer. Liar, to be sure, but murderer ? Do you then not
realise the full EXTENT of Hitler enslavement to the concept of organic evolution,
survival of the fittest, the master race to be evolution's masterpiece, and
the god of forces ? ... (see references below), anon pale and bleached,
anon red with the rush of blood! (cf. Revelation 6:4,8). Or do you
not understand Communism's worship at the same shrine of forces moving sure-footed
to their prey ? ... Or do you overlook
blandly the whole concept of SURVIVAL as god (cf. SMR pp. 809ff., 708-709, 611f., 127ff., That Magnificent Rock
Ch. 6, Barbs, Arrows
and Balms Appendix 1,
Repent or Perish Ch. 7, End-Note I, Part II), or for some god,
being planted in the minds of the young who, likewise, are shown the wonders
of self-esteem, self-advancement, self-regard, self-fulfilment, endurance
without loveliness, and 'love' without responsibility ? The essence of
the philosophy of Nietzsche (who of course went literally mad), tastable in
his Thus Spake Zarathrusta, is very much dominant today, and
the concept of force, even in sport, power as the plenitude of admiration,
continues way past any thought of law and order, grace and beauty, nobility
and the admirable. Some dating accordingly
simply makes the assumption that we RULE OUT the creation, or any of its
COMPONENTS in our thinking, in working out age. That is rather like saying,
I do
not know where this youth has come from, he is obviously a high-tech production;
but one thing we can rule out when thinking about the way he has arrived,
is any concept of a beginning. That is ridiculous. He just grew out of ...
well nothing in the beginning, and oh! yes, of course there wasn't one. IF we are right, then we are
right, comes to be the logical status of this mode of 'dating'. It has no
scientific validity at all. Its gruesome horrors of discordant results from
different such methods, irrational results and meaningless ones, are not
at all surprising. It must be so; and it is; and that, it is verification
of the analysis and the error. What happens thus, is just the fuss one would
expect to happen when means so arbitrary and irrational are its bases. It
is not the technical procedures, fundamentally which are awry, but the principles
they are set, like cruise control, to maintain! ASSUME that THIS
was the BEGINNING amount of this or that radio-active material, and these
were the BEGINNING RATIOS, and then ? Why not assume the date direct ? It
is all the negativing of logic, and the mere fulfilment of philosophical
postulates on which no science can be built. It is simply the weary and wearisome
religion of irrational negativity (see Repent or Perish Ah! but, some say,
you mistake, Our isochron method of dating is wonderful, truly marvellous.
Why we simply
take various amounts of daughter product of radioactive action (like argon)
and mother material (like potassium) and we find that there is some degree
of relationship of these amounts, so that they mirror a decline from state
A to state B, with production of gas. The bigger the amount, the more the
gas. We can even graph some of it, and show that they point back to an initial
state in which the gas at the start and the mother amount, are both known.
From there we simply work down the line to the present, and we know without
guessing at all. Steve Austin's work (op.cit.) presents the procedure in mathematical
detail, just as it presents, as did Professor Slusher of ASSUMING that
·
1) the
rate of decay is known, is constant, is not violated, manipulated, transmuted
in any way by any force, astral, cosmic, chemical or physical (multiply
violated cf. Morris, The Genesis Flood, pp. 346-355, Slusher op.cit.
pp. 18ff., SMR 78 - including the
implied variation of rate in terms of pleochroic haloes made by particles
emitted in certain rock formations, radioactively, and the implications of
Tom Barnes's finding on magnetic field decrease over time, and its rate -
SMR p. 170, That Magnificent
Rock Ch. 7, End-note
2) ·
2) the
initial conditions are known in all necessary ratios (as seen Andrews, op.
cit. p. 122, violated cf. Morris, The Genesis Flood pp. 366ff.,
Slusher op. cit., p. 22, 31ff., SMR pp. 169-171) ·
3) the
initial dispersion of the argon is uniform (unknown) ·
4) there
is no addition or subtraction of mother or daughter material in the
(billions
? of ) years from the 'beginning' (exceedingly improbable over such
venues and conditions, with such variabilities of permeability and diffusion,
leaching and transmigration - cf. Andrews op. cit. pp. 118ff.) ·
5) no
unknown processes or procedures intervened or were initially operative (... unknown)
·
6) the
rock is one unit, and not a composite from different sources (may appear so
when in fact there have been various interactions) ·
7) we
have a closed system (a brilliant imagination - Andrews op.cit. pp. 120-122,
·
8) energic
impulses or procedures (p. 6, Creation Technical Journal, Vol.
9, Part 1, 1995), in particular, were not active at any stage of which we have no knowledge,
or in any manner of which we have no knowledge, either at the start or in the (billions of unchartered years of) time in-between...
(an assumption shocking to the meekness of science),
·
9) the
ratios of relevant materials taken from the field are in fact derivative from
radioactivity in toto! not from other sources (contra, we can then arrive at a date,
which has only the irrational, meaningless and discordant problems to face! (See also the presentation
in Dr Steve Austin's Grand Canyon, pp. 119ff..) Assumptions about
the original mixture may be wrong; mixtures may have come from lower areas,
beneath the rocks, and be differential in combinations of minerals from the
outset; differential melting points may drain off some items allowing various
resultant complexes, and more complex materials may thus be drained of some
of their constituents, and be mixed with those less complex from the outset,
while differential heats can do the same. 'Drainage' may be by erosion subsequently,
so too may insertions, with their own variabilities, and decay rates may
vary in ways neither known nor fully understood, but beginning to be experimentally
ratified. Provided then
that we know what we do not know, and can assess what is not assessable, and
could reconstruct what happened, which is our investigation, not our assumption,
we could do something useful here. As it is, if we
make assumptions we can get results. For that matter, we could assume the
dates in the first place, rather than assuming the data and then working on
it mathematically. It is rather reminiscent of some economic mathematics.
If you KNOW the realities of man and his changes, you could predict, provided
again in his case, they were of the kind that is assessable mathematically.
How nice! assume what you are trying to show, and you can show it.
So could a child! If we say,
But of course there have to be errors! yet we are not really in the arena
of "the limits of normal procedural error", such as normally lead to approximation
with the + and - symbol to indicate the limits of accuracy. We are dealing
with a batch of unknowns not dissimilar to this imaginary pep talk:
"I am
sure that your bank account will swell by something of the order of magnitude
of 50% in 50 years, says the Bank Manager, on the basis of the market activities
of the last 41/2 years, the existing commercial law structure, the inflationary
movements and their known and current dynamics, the Bank rate internationally
in its relationship to Tokyo, Washington and Europe, the trade cycle and international
wars which may break out!" THANKS! you say. This is marvellous!
OR do you smile inwardly at the excessively pompous pronouncement of figures
obviously ludicrous even to contemplate in such a series of unknowns, dependent
on considerations beyond the highest discernment, immersed in a sea of troubles
which make mathematics a mere henchman, reflecting principles to which it
does not relate, but merely quantifies if they occur! This is not a
matter of errors! It is a matter of a multitude of forces and realities of
unknown kind, whether in principle or in practice, piling up like snow in
a blasting storm, along the drive-way. When again, we
now find that ·
the velocity
of light is PRECISELY what depends on the STATUS QUO (cf. p. 6, Creation
Technical Journal, Vol. 9, Part 1, 1995, Barbs, Arrows and
Balms 15, Calibrating Myths
... Ch. 1), and ·
the status
quo is precisely the question in relation to the origin of things; that
·
neutrino
impact on atoms can alter their rate of decay (Morris, Scientific Creationism
pp. 142ff.), and precisely such impacts are of the very fabric
of commencement, even now in the maintenance phase of the universe being variable,
·
and that
·
rates
of decay can indeed vary with (even currently observable) pressures and environmental
forces (Creation, Technical Journal Volume 14, No. 1, 2000,
pp. 4ff. - Dr Tas Walker) - then the circularity of the
reasoning, the pomposity of the pronouncements and the discord of the results
are all of one piece. Presumption has
begotten irrationality, and irrationality has begotten discord and discord
has begotten expensive ignorance. It is a unitary, self-verifying fabric,
like the skin. Rational errors and irrational results cohere like skin and
cancer. Their correlation is expressive! Certainly nearer
events have more opportunity to relate accurately to assumptions which are
well within current menus of events; but even then, the simple fact that there
is not yet even an equilibrium as between C12 and C14
(SMR p. 164, 238, Scientific Studies in Special
Creation, article on radiometric dating, by Melvin Cook, pp. 79ff.)
- this in itself strongly suggesting other things equal, 10,000 years as
the maximal age - in agreement with another maximum index, the magnetic SMR
p. 171), and the other simple fact
that this C02 disequilibrium was DISREGARDED in many applications
of the carbon dating method, is warning enough of the philosophic character
of ignorance, inventing too much with the mind, too little with the observations
for which science is properly, but not always actually, justly famous.
Indeed, the fact
that Dr Cook can make an adjustment through reasonings based on the divergence
between atmospheric nitrogen and that in compounds, relative to the N14/N15
ratio, such that it "effectively wipes out all geological time", (SMR p.
236) when that factor is presented
to the chronological equations, speaks more than enough. The factor concerns
cosmic ray penetration and alteration of nuclei, and such causes, whether
affected by magnetic or atmospheric, solar or diluvial (and hence atmospheric
and associated) causes, or indeed supernova explosions, provide as Morris
in no small part cites (Scientific Creationism pp. 142-143 and
The Genesis Flood pp. 352-3.). Such is the magnification,
stressed by Professor Andrews, inherent in the nature of the equations,
that results of millions of years is a natural correlative of their use,
at all (God, Science and Evolution, p. 119). Hence these absurdities
- billions, thousands, occur as freely as the presumption of the assumptions
would suggest in theory, in practice also! (Cf. Let there be Light,
Barbs, Arrows and Balms 15).
As inchoate as
are the dreams in the air of the imagination, in principle, so when it comes
to practice, and if possible the more obviously, there is exposed the more
rampancy of assumptions made concerning what is frankly in various significant
aspects, quite unknown, subject to intrusions not witnessed, prone to occur
in the dimensions of past events, let alone in the immediate succession of
events, from the institution of matter itself. In expanding rims of the vortex,
force on force, the dragging swirl of suggestion has replaced the contrite
concepts of patient science. The results are
as docile as a bull on speed drugs. Thus Morris in
Scientific Creationism cites (p. 143), a Russian case of
uranium ages of over one billion years being accorded to known materials of
living memory production. Snelling has by
his own research in co-operation with separate laboratories, shown similarly
that materials taken from a new New South Wales site, As noted in That
Magnificent Rock, Rising to some
7500 feet, the volcano noted erupted in 1948, with a lava flow proceeding
thereafter down the north-western slopes, in 1949. About 20 million cubic
feet was the estimated volume of lava. In 1954 an eruption hurling blocks
with ash, occurred with some 8 million cubic metres of lava. Further activity
occurred in 1974, with an ash column soaring into the atmosphere. Blocks of
some 1000 tons were hurled hundreds of metres. Then in 1975, a huge violence
occurred, with blocks up to 100 ft across catapulted almost 2 miles.
11 samples were
collected from the five recent and conspicuous lava flows during field work
in 1996 - from the flows of 1954, 1975 and 1954. All with maps were clearly
identified. Various carefully checked samples were sent to an eminent laboratory
for dating. The dates for the age of the ROCKS were of the order of millions
of years. The laboratory manager re-checked his equipment and tested again.
The results were similar. Since the rocks
are KNOWN to be of the order of 50 years old, the apparent 'age' is assumed
to have come from 'excess' argon, radiogenic inclusion, in the lava, before
the rocks formed. This sort of failure is "also known to occur in many other
rocks, including both recent volcanics and ancient crustal rocks," Snelling
adds, giving references. Here the INITIAL
SITUATION assumptions are wrong, but confidently made (cf. SMR pp. .240ff), just as the VARIABLE RATE
can be merely a theory based on philosophical preference, abstracting from
the ages to the present, or to the ages from concepts of choice. Similarly the
lead factor for neutrino allowance, as devised by Cook, makes enormous inroads
on time. Such things are OBVIOUSLY of the matrix of the matter, and while
assumption is the answer to actuality, the reality of the result MUST be as
ludicrous. What is NOT at all unknown is the rate question in much simpler
situations which abound, such as noted in SMR pp. 235ff., 246-250, That Magnificent Rock
Ch. 7E; and these are
not merely discordant with the results of our philosophic assumptions as noted
above, but wholly diverse. The comparative
concordance of the rates noted (as in 1) in assumptions made, above) on the
contrary is neither illusory nor irrational, but balanced work moving to minimal
consequences of current rates, providing a time frame far more congenial to
residual DNA still being found, despite its limited life span, and limited
erosion on the surface of the earth in terms EVEN of current mild procedures
and precedents (as distinct from an eroded and humbled earth surface, given
time*3), non-equilibrium of C12 and C14
in the earth's atmosphere, the cooling rate of the earth's surface*4, the reformation rate of moon rocks, and such
various matters as have been noted above, or in the references to other
works on this site, above. This composure
of comprehensive concord on the one hand, and this dissolute seeming diversity
of self-contradictory and even irrational results found on the radiometric
array of mere assumptions, begging the question in the process, leaves no
option for the steely face of verificatory procedure. The earth is young or
reason is odd! If reason were odd, we could not validly assert the earth to
be young OR old. If we are to reason, THIS is the reasonable result. The earth
is young, but presumption is not. What then ? Dates
? Commencements ? If you know all the answers, then you can set out the elements
in your mathematics, and these will reflect the accuracy of your knowledge.
If, however, your ignorance of these things is the problem, mathematics will
not because it cannot help you. It is the servant of knowledge, indicating
what it implies. It cannot supply the knowledge, when its own derivation is
one of the questions. It is necessary to subject one's thought not to the
discipline of mathematical consequences of self-defeating assumptions, but
to the unexotic and assessable, making for proper maxima. The area of 10,000
years is suggestive; realms far beyond it run into problems which have all
the countenance of the insuperable. As with the expectation of aliens in space,
life on Mars, missing links on earth, information increase in forthcoming
generations and the like, however, these things are still taught, because
it is the desire that it be so. Rationally, they are indefensible as a preferred
option. For more detail
on dating see SMR and That Magnificent Rock 7 as cited above, with
Let there be Light (Barbs, Arrows and Balms 15). This is the end
of the adapted except from Wake Up World! Your Creator is We have surveyed
things ideologically, with this latter emphasis on the ignorance on the dating
of these creative magnificences, and the assiduous acclamations for its, like
the emperor's new clothes, with all the passion of the unfounded. We have
considered the folly of mere romancing, with anti-evidential, irrational,
or self-inventing universes, chance made laws and other antinomies, and continue
to watch the record not in imagination, but in current observation, of the
word of God and the unfolding of history, in perfect, testable accord.
Ideologically,
this is the way it is, But
let us turn now from mere age and creation outset, to intensity and
development in this ultimately spiritual field of the earth, its history
and its coming history. End-Notes 1* This
includes the relevant volumes in general and in particular, of
Modern Science and the Genesis Record Eerdmans,
The Harmony of Science and Scripture
The Theory of Evolution and the Facts of Science
Dead Men Tell Tales In fact, one learns
from United Press International, early June 2000, that this "church's Permanent
Judicial Commission decided to allow ministers to bless same sex unions".
"Religious ceremonies recognizing homosexual unions are permissible, as
long as they are distinctly different from marriages." From the same report,
and in its words, "The commission also declared that it would not automatically
turn down a gay man's application to become a minister." More amazing still,
a minister is cited who "said the rulings leave intact the church's
opposition to same-sex marriages." Such changes are rather like an inverted
natural decay curve. In it, the fast decline is near the first, and it moves
until it may become almost imperceptible (as often now), when all the fizz
and energy of the initial creation is more distant. In this, however,
in the church noted, the fizz of fast decay is near the end. THIS is the nature
of the ecclesiastical situation as predicted, and it is coming along on time,
like a skilled athlete. That ? It is always
the way with the word of God, whether it predicts this quality or calibre,
pattern or date, rate or conspectus, or that: what it says, the situation
provides. How beautiful is this for solace and comfort to the Christian, who
knows that he battles not alone, nor in any uncertain events, but that the
irresistible God, perfect in restraint, is also perfect in power, precision
and hearing prayer. How precise it is in telling one and telling all: IT IS
NEARLY TIME. It is like an examination
in which after hours of toil, one hears the sonorous voice of the supervisor:
There are ten minutes to go! It is the nature of examinations that they
do not end until the scheduled finish; but in them as in this, it is wise
to be prepared for the end. It involves getting to know the One who was there
in the beginning (Revelation 2:8, Isaiah 44:6); and as to Him, when He is
in you and with you, it is indeed "God with us". But "if
God be for us, who shall be against us ?" (Romans 8:31). See for example That
Magnificent Rock 2B
Thus on pp. 57ff.
(Creation's Tiny Mystery), Gentry details his findings both
of and about coalified wood, along with other colleagues, in the Colorado
Plateau (cf. That Magnificent Rock, TMR, Ch. 7, Section E). Pieces from
what in the cultural preference for 'ages' of the Jurassic, Triassic and
Eocene were collected, supposedly separated in time by millions of years,
and all packed into the never-never past almost beyond comprehension. Nevertheless,
a fellow scientist's report included the statement in this regard, that although
some specimens of the material were so small that magnification was needed
for close identification, entire tree trunks were also to be found, which,
Gentry observes, is clear attestation of rapid burial. It is, after all, for
a supposed time of many millions of years, not at all bad preservation! Further,
flexibility in some wood specimens was attested in the report of his
fellow scientist's published account of his discoveries (p.58)! This rather
reminds one of the presence of haemoglobin in material by inadequately prepared
time postulations, assessed as millions of years old! (cf. TMR Ch. 7, End-note 2). It is therefore scarcely
surprising that the corroborative report published in Science
(1978a, Appendix, Gentry et al. ) attests likewise that "Uranium to lead
ratios were found suggesting that various Colorado plateau formations are
only several thousand years old instead of the 60 to 200 million-year-age
required by the evolutionary time scale" (p. 59, Gentry, op.cit.).
In line with the work
of the Nobel scientist, Dr Cook, in his observations on a corrective radiometric
factor, bringing ages down to just such a time scale, already noted, the
CO2 lack of equilibrium also noted (That Magnificent Rock
- TMR, Ch. 7,
End-note 2), the various concentration rates in oceanic chemicals, the
Slusher attestations on the heat age, the moon rock age and the galaxy implications,
as well as the comet indications of age, magnetic field decline for the earth,
its measured rate and associated predictions, these things all cohere (cf.
SMR pp. 238ff.). What is still
more impressive than the more evident aspects of Gentry's and others' wood
work, in coal, attesting its rapid formation (in terms of elliptical radio
halos, evidently from compression from radioactive intrusion - TMR loc.cit.,
Gentry, Creation's Tiny Mystery pp. 54ff.) is yet to come,
and we now relate it. This arises from the fact, already noted, that specimens
were collected from the Jurassic, Triassic and Eocene imagined epochs as
noted above. These 3 highly chronologically diverse beds, in terms of geological
culture, prevalent in our time, gave but one result in relevant halos observed.
The evidences in Gentry's
own highly specialised field of polonium radio-halos shows an alignment for
all the three geological 'ages' noted above, so that the conditions seem identical
or nearly so. There were the same two halos, the same combination or duality,
the same elliptical and circular assemblages. The conditions - intrusion
or permeation by radioactive solution, emission before the wood hardened,
leading to compression of the circular track, later emission without distortion
- are eminently alignable with a vast assemblage of rapid events, with rapid
depositions. Prevailing conditions allowed coincident contemporary results
(misnamed, for various depositions, 'ages'). It fits like a claret
glass in a set. In itself, it is merely a remarkable series of repetitions,
this similarity for the three 'ages', in the highly specialised regard of
the double radio halo, common geometrical pattern. But let us return to the Gentry
case and rehearse it. We have noted the quick formation data for the coal,
but let us re-examine the three age situation involved in one aspect.
At issue in the coalified
wood case, are ' "dual" 210Po halos', (p. 57). On
the basis of the radioactive decay products, one earlier and one later
emission can be expected and their tracks in the wood residue, investigable.
In view of the nature of the reactions, the time for the second track would
be in the vicinity of 20 years after the commencement. For the double and
geometrically similar halos to form in the wood, extreme parallels of formative
forces is implied. Advanced scientific equipment was used, in collaboration
with colleagues, just as it had been in the granitic materials earlier, to
attest the data. The result then suggested that only one uranium solution
had infiltrated the specimens taken from each 'age'. That in turn would suggest
a similar 'age' for all the specimens, despite the geological mythology. Elliptical
(from compression) halos in particular, are met by the hypothesis that
in each case, the wood specimens were in the same "gel like condition", enabling
such penetration of the solution and that a special parallel applied in each
case. The phenomenon occurred alike to specimens from all 'ages'. However
double halos in each case involve what appears a constraint. Thus if the emissions
(in various types) were to occur before the wood hardened, then BOTH sets
would be distorted, or rendered elliptical by compression. If compression
in fact did not occur, then there would be expected to be NO ellipse at all,
merely a circular display. This however is not the case. There is something
in-between. It is an elliptical halo with a circular one, a double effect.
If the hardening occurred WITHIN the twenty years relevant to the double emissions,
then one would escape the distortion, the later emission, and one would
not, the earlier one, hence the actual result, an ellipse with a circular
product, would be expected to occur. Moreover, on this basis, the wood hardened
to a coal-like or parallel condition in that time, around two decades. It
is notably short, conforming to other experimental results. Moreover, the
parallel conditions met in each case multiply. The 'ages' have a decidedly
contemporaneous look, just as the coal formation has a hurried appearance,
precisely in line with the conclusions of This is merely one
of the interesting indices to be considered in the anguish of the 'dating
system' which is so sovereignly imposed in the cultural clique of the Age
(ours, not a geological one). Many others come from what is also noted
by Dr Steve Austin in his specialised and extensive ·
the formations
do not conform to expectations, ·
any more
than does the rapid coalilfication attested by Gentry as above, or the prima
facie indication of a similar time for what are represented as vastly different
'ages', ·
or the
Nor do the zircon results
ally themselves to gradualistic expectations, as noted, but to much less time
(cf. TMR Ch. 7, End-note
2). . Moreover, these data
conform to the oddity of vastly different results from radioactivity dating
to the point verified by Professor E.H. Andrews, the whole array of theoretical
assumptions which presuppose a world view which the facts do not attest
when it comes to the character of formations on which it is visited. Nor
is it merely that such results frequently differ depending on which dating
method is used, of 'bad dates' thrown out, ones which do not conform
to theory, but of dates which provide millions of years of age to recent
occurrences. Clearly we are in
the area and arena of theory invading fact. It is better to acknowledge the
presuppositions, and make the realm philosophy; and for science, keep to
observations and what they actually imply, with due reserve and respect for
primary data. It is far, far better to proceed from fact to theory, than
from theory to fact. Theories must WORK, be UNIFORMLY attested, CONSISTENTLY
verified and harmonise with their results, as with other WORKING THEORIES,
themselves duly attested, and not aborted by rebellious non-verifications.
Calamity, catastrophe, immense forces, rapid actions, variable rates, inadequate
theories are all consistently and insistently attested. The gradualistic,
uniformitarian theories therefore have nothing to do with science. They are
fact-abusing philosophy. From a religious, a specifically Biblical perspective,
this would be the prediction for such a case of philosophical intrusion.
It is verified. That ? It is simply
one more verification of two things: the error of the nature-made-itself scenario
empirically as well as logically; and the serene contempt of the Biblical
certitudes for such rash, rushed theories as for far too long assailed the
mind of man with the inventions of unverified imagination. Philosophy ? it
is vain. This, it is but one example of what Paul calls (I Cor. And this ? it is as
the divine gift for this purpose, neither duplicable nor dismissible (cf.
Acts 4:11ff.) . As to the world, it is as for man: God is, made it, maintains
it; as to mankind, He presented for it , its redemption; yet it wallows
in rebellion even against this; and God determined the outcomes, forecasted
them. They still happen, and He still invites. Michael
Oard, Creation Technical Journal, Vol. 14, No. 1, 2000, pp.35ff.. The
same is found in special deposits at the foot of some harsh cliff land forms
(talus deposits) in the Grand Canyon (Austin, Grand Canyon, Monument
to Catastrophe), making light work in small volumes of large dates
and great pretensions (pp. 98, 100ff.).
IN
TERMS OF TIMING AND MUNDANE ATTITUDE,
EVIDENT
IN THE BIBLE
b) lack of foresight
and
c) lack of wakefulness.
thing ? impediment to comfort, intrusive religious necessity, optional
expectancy for service ?
(were they then
opportunists, like the Vicar of Bray, in the English rhyme, who could
change his 'doctrine' to match the sources of power, prestige and income in
the varying 'church' structure of England in persecution days - days not a
few actually, but mercifully not inscribed for ever ?).
(from John
and for more
detail on Christ’s preliminaries to His return, SMR Ch.
8, pp. 644ff..)
"For if we died
with Him,
We shall also live
with Him.
If we endure,
We shall also reign
with Him.
If we deny Him,
He also will deny
us.
If we are faithless,
He remains faithful.
He cannot deny
Himself."
This then is the
Biblical depiction of this last phase of the race before the impending judgment
and the Lord's return to His earth, with all His saints.
and they are
many. Hence prepare for the trip!
So silence shrouds the darkness,
and no light appears for many. How crucial at such a time is a faithful church!
Yet when you consider the courtesy and construction of this woeful chaos of
words versus needs, it is no meagre thing. It is a gross failure to meet challenge,
and then, to act according to the step proposed. It is as if a vast paralysis
occurs, when reason invades the dark sanctums of doctrinally directive silence!
justification matters, between the Church
of Rome and that of Luther, have now
happened (The Australian, May 29, 2000,
p. 21). Talking of justice, the
announcement is just cause for mourning,
that such a beginning in stepping out of
the quagmire of Romanism, as Luther was
helped to make for this people, should
halt in this sinking slough of despond,
nearly 500 years later.
when the forecast celebrations, and their
occasion, were earlier in the news.
concentrated in the 21st century, while
it lasts, and before the Lord Himself returns
(A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 18), is this report...
disenchanting development!
NIGH as Christ depicts
it in Luke
did not happen, His
coming would be further off, but now it is near.
with His words,
striving towards the high mark of the calling in Christ,
whom no can conquer,
nor any pollution impair. In Him, you can be restful in heart while
energetic in spirit!
next generation with
The Jews are
back. It is as simple as that.
the result is the same. The ideology of
debasement rules; the prince of this world is swaggering in the enormity
of his delusions and many follow as if iron was in their hearts instead of
flesh, and a magnetic field instead of due thought, were their instruction.
It is as Christ indicated (John
as blusteringly and
bucolically asserted with false assurance,
and
that is the way it is predicted to become. This attests that: this condition
is one more part of that syndrome, and that is the index to His coming ...
soon.
NOW NEAR THE END, WHEN,
CREATION, FINISHED, and its PRODUCTS
PASSING,
the SUPERNATURAL SELECTION BY GRACE
COMES TO ITS CULMINATION THROUGH THE GOSPEL, in a WEARIED WORLD.
II Tim. 4:3-4 (emphasis added).
The 'handling' of our affairs is as clear
in logical necessity as in evidential attestation.
cut directly
through a most extensive plateau instead of simply moving around it,
erode
and cut deep into enormous terrains, leaving only sample heights, such as
buttes,
move boulders of huge weight in their course for good distances, as
if they were stones,
burrow hard into bedrock, traverse limestone segments
with the precision and sense of incision of a knife (cf. Austin, op.cit.
p. 68), and
settle disparities into strata, with the reckless seeming profusion
of of enormous power,
without either leaving evidence of time (supposed
to exist between the disparities)
in suitable pitting and erosion between
the surfaces, or even more deeply eroding
the anterior section of the river
(Austin, op.cit. pp. 42ff, 47, 48, 77ff. ,84ff., 98ff.).
or from strata
beneath the "Cambrian". Fossils of vascular plants have been
documented in
strata conformably overlain by early Cambrian strata
in the
In other words, to use that author's terms,
disparity preceded diversity, so that the concept, however 'sudden' as in
punctuated equilibrium, is reversed. The DESIGN comes in comparative fewness,
and then the VARIATIONS come in comparative abundance. Even magic has its
limits, and an architect in absentia is not helped by having his main designs
appear before the supposed doodlings which inspired matter to do without
him in a way many a householder would be thrilled to behold, and likewise
his bank manager.
and then depicts
the end which is not distressed by their mockery,
but comes in any
case.
In Christ "God was reconciling the
world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them... For He made Him
who knew no sin to become sin for us" - and with what result ? "that we might become the
righteousness of God in Him" (from
II Cor. 5:19-21). It is not the
washing of the flesh baptism ((I Peter 3:21), but the enmembering through
faith into the body of Christ (II Cor. 12:13) which is needed.
What then ?
We, as a race, have made sin, and in the
glaze of glamour or pride, have sketched in monstrosities of irrationality,
unspirituality, ungodlinesss and disorder of mind, soul and body, spirit
and structure, as our source, sovereign or ultimate desire.
as if the first particular race that comes
to a country, made it,
as if those who have history have plenary
right;
as if those who have come in this fair
orb, to the place of being in the image of God, to think and construe,
imagine and masterfully make use of symbols in science and thought, in short,
this human race, have made the universe,
or are its masters, keepers and beneficiaries,
without more ado, to use it, employ and
deploy it,
and if necessary, remove any other pretenders
to the throne,
such as its Creator.
as are rats from a high-rise apartment
building, by the owners.
Whatever else is to be said, absolute
truth is outré
(as in Lead
Us Not into Educational Temptation, on the grand and quasi-governmental
level, and as in spirit and reality, in the work surveyed in That
Magnificent Rock, Ch. 8).
Nevertheless, the amplitude of God's own
provisions is immense, starting with matter and order, law and organisation,
and ending with spirit for man and imagination and logic, love and liberty
with which to hate Him, if so be. This is done now, especially with
that undramatic comedy of urbane quietude which, with the predicted miasma of secular
mythology, dismisses
Him like a suitor, even the One who made the ground on which we stand, both
logically (SMR Ch.3, Repent or Perish
Ch. 7) and terrestrially.
TECHNICAL AND
TRAVEL
or
else nothing, even if in the heights of inane ineptitude, this knowledge
is that there is no knowledge: yet he knows this!
or
else nothing:
Such as never was
since there was a nation,
Even to that time.
And at that time
your people shall be delivered.
Every one who is
found written in the book. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the
earth shall awake, these to everlasting life; these to shame and everlasting
contempt."
ON
THE SURE AND SIGNALLED COMING OF THE LORD,
SO
ENORMOUSLY OBVIOUS
THAT
EVEN TO THE BLIND THE IMPACT IS ON THE VERY FACE
(apart from some
marvels and wonders of purity, self-control and order which have arisen
when the ways of
the Lord have supervened from time to time)
will reach a zenith
(Matthew 24:12),
will
wreak havoc on the decaying planet.
(II Peter 2:1ff.
specifies it).
"for since the fathers
fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation", in actual fact.
from
k) above
from
WAKE UP WORLD! YOUR CREATOR IS COMING ...
1a)
A CAMBRIAN CONCEPT
The Bang
Drying out from
the Drugs Drunk
at that
Blind DATE,
from the Cup of
Continuity...
and the APPROPRIATE CHRISTIAN APOLOGETIC APPROACH
It is quite a roar, as of a drunken party, uproarious, hilarious and irreverent,
irrational, inveterate.
He
shall be exalted and extolled and be very high.
Just
as many were astonished at you,
So
his visage was marred more than any man,
And
His form more than the sons of men:
So
shall He sprinkle many nations.
Kings
shall shut their mouths at Him ..." (from Isaiah 52:13-15).
of it
?" (cf. SMR pp. 252Hff.). The laments
of the 'greens' dramatise the answer.
seek ? or act as if
to invest the very heavens by making them descend, to a more manipulable level.
we
would not be attracted to them.
When the ASSUMPTIONS
THEMSELVES are grounded on concepts of continuity, whereas nature provides
discontinuity and continuity of discontinuity as its manifest thrust and
genius, then we would be somewhat repelled.
Will we be able to
drive out ? It all depends on ...
assigned a fossil
date of some 250 myrs, was found by radio carbon methods,
to be around 34,000
years (cf. That Magnificent Rock, Ch. 7, Section E, End-note 2 ). Both methods
being so ill-founded in objectivity, and so rich in the subjectivity of
preferred assumptions, their discordance with one another is scarcely surprising,
but the richness of such discord as attested by Andrews, Snelling and Morris
in detail, is of the normal scientific anti-verification dimension. As soon
as the systematic enters into things, beyond odd casual errors, the assumptions
are presumptions, one or all, and fallen. Sources of living memory production,
is scaled into hundreds of thousands of years of age, by radiometric method,
even when carefully checked (see Let there be Light, in Barbs,
Arrows and Balms 15).
and
that is the way it is predicted to become. This attests that: this condition
is one more part of that syndrome, and that is the index to His coming ...
soon.
The coincidence of
the impact from various findings is as overwhelmingly positive as is the discord
negative from the gradualistic option.
In its setting of
other data, it is one more confirmation.
Where
5000 supernovas might be projected on the nature myth basis, NONE are
found (TMR Ch. 7, pp. 180Pff.).
Where
a (relatively) recent earth's magnetic field is seen dispersing with some
speed, in terms of observation, predictions are fulfilled (as with Professor
Barnes specialisation)...
which is indicative of catastrophic might, not gradualistic formation in
the way reviewed earlier.
The results of long ages of crumbling are replaced, says Austin in his researches of various locations, by the bareness or near bareness of surrounds which attests a very different scenario. It is concordant with the deep cuttings and vast scouring effects so often seen. "Most major cliffs in Grand Canyon have only a small amount of talus ...", but "If such rocks are the result of slow erosion over hundreds of thousands of years, we might expect a progressive increase in the decomposition of talus on the benches away from the cliffs.. This, he notes, has not been demonstrated, but "Instead we see shale benches which appear to have been swept clear of large rocks by extensive flooding" (p. 102).
In the process of acute investigation, Austin, the writer of this particular chapter in the anthology of Ph.D. and other specialists, perceptively treats the numerous relict results relating to catastrophic acceleration of 'normal' processes, removing the whole rationality of gradualism over millions of years in this canyon exposure. This is merely one of the endless parade of exposure of non-conformity of theory with fact, based on philosophic bias, where theoretical dates are liberally inserted into unfriendly factual environments!
One of the most appealing parts of the demonstration is the simple matter thus summarised, and in the chapter searchingly appraised, as the origin of the canyon is considered:
- "Both
the antecedent river and the stream-capture theories have the extraordinarily
difficult problem of disposing of the products of tens of millions
of years of river erosion. Thus, evolutionary and uniformitarian theories
have failed to explain the history of the erosion of
(0p.cit.
p. 107).
The paraconformities so conspicuous in the canyon, rock types embedded on others without evidence of intervening years of deposition, though the rock types are theoretically perhaps millions of years apart, do not need mere admissions, any more than the huge 'uplifts' of sedimentary rock without evidence of the same, by stress fracture or allied mechanical attestation, over hundreds of square miles in other locations as attested in Morris' Genesis Flood pp. 144ff.), but material for conclusions to be drawn, which are feasible for the explanation of the facts. Magic is not one of the means available to science, but creation in short order, on the other hand, is. The deluge contributes, as well as post-flood deluges of more limited type. To seek to interpret such materials by current processes is in all reality, like attempting to explain how a man arrived, by assuming current processes, and becoming 'unaware' of youth, and far more so, of infancy!
In parallel to such considerations, in Ch. 6 (op. cit., e.g. pp. 126ff.) Austin shows with great detail in the dating arena, that with an array of dating methods at hand, including isochron, not all in agreement with each other, the youngest rocks in the Canyon are given the oldest ages. This is found by the fact that in the type of areas concerned, the rocks assessed as oldest "overlie virtually all the Grand Canyon strata". Indeed, these, by radioactive means deemed the oldest, appear to be, says Austin, the youngest rocks in Arizona.
The presuppositions for radioactive dating as so often, are shown for what they are in reliability by their contradictions of normal geological reasoning, as well as of each other. The actual grounds of the rocks and the actual dates are but two of the assumptions which, unlike the rocks, ultimately rest on air. What floats in such airy theories, can only fall; and it does. Austin however gives close and integrated reasoning on large cross-sections of relevant evidence and produces an elegant harmony for all.
What then do we find ? Rankly presuppositional geology writhes in torment as the dating errors complicate the sedate concepts of the rocks; that is, not the concepts held by the rocks, if that were possible, but concerning them.
While the dating collides with itself, therefore, it does so no less with the rocks; and the turmoil is perhaps as good an example as the incredible fascination with the theory of phlogiston GOING to make oxidized things weigh more, rather than oxygen COMING. Lavoisier in this case did not have such an establishment as now is, to fight; but it was still formidable in its empty assurance, and psychic lack of solace, when the ground was being removed from under its feet. Here, however, it is the very ground under our feet which is talking!
Non-gradualism
is the attestation of evidence, and CONFORMITY of the structures in the
canyon with numerous other structure TYPES where the origin IS known, is
as outstanding in its exhibition in this volume edited by Dr Austin, as are
the querulous quiddities of contrary suppositions.
*4
A beautifully
elegant attestation of young earth age by this means is provided by Harold
Slusher and Thomas Gamwell in Age of the Earth, publ. Institute
for Creation Research. Dr Slusher in the tradition of Professor Barnes of
the same
This with the work of Barnes himself on magnetism (see That Magnificent Rock, Ch. 7 E), so well confirmed later by further work of Dr Humphreys, the rate of accumulation of minerals in ocean water, the fast spending energies and configurations found in astronomy, erosion rates on the earth's surface, rate of reformation of deformed moon rocks (as there attested, again the work of Slusher), limitations on age through helium production rates, the declining availability of information in biota, the measurement of pleochroic halos and numerous other aspects of the evidence as attested in this site (see as above and SMR pp. 73-87, 159-166, 171, 234-252N and S1-S34 and Index in Other Works) presents overall a requirement on both the method and timing of earth's origin, which is stringent.
It is not time but God who invented the earth, its systems, sub-systems, structures, ingenuities, codes, operational symbols, power and wonder. God is so much more capable, while time merely allows what has what it takes to do it, to do it. It does not substitute for the power to do it! As to time, it is running out of being run in for such tasks, and neither for the future to the coming of the Creator to His disobedient orb, nor in the past, scarred with the catastrophes of former judgments, is it any solace to unbelief, but rather a very proper threat in life and mind alike.
Ø "Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation" - II Cor. 6:2. One does well to remember that the Creator is not an object in a super-market, but as His codes show conceptual precision and imaginative brilliance, so His other codes of integrity and faith are necessary and not optional, for the finding not of ore, but of truth. As Hebrews 11:1 has it: "Faith is the confident realisation of things hoped for, the evidential assurance of things not seen". Its object is the One revealed in the word of God, demonstrated to be His in SMR Chs. 1-3,10, and verified constantly over the 3 million or so words on this site, in field after field, with that beautiful consistency which is a hall-mark of truth, and the depth which is the attestation of reality when it is discovered.
Ø
That One is Jesus the Christ,
ordained and sent from eternity to time, the sublime sovereign who neither
bullies nor merely placates, but in truth by love performed what was needed
to allay justice with sacrifice, so that peace with integrity could prevail:
"He
made Him to be sin, who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness
of God in Him," as Paul declares (II Cor.
5:21, cf. Galatians 3:1-13).