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GALLOPING EVENTS
CHAPTER FOUR
News 140
KINAESTHESIA, ANAESTHESIA AND CHRIST
Time,
Kinaesthetic sensation is simply the sense of movement, whether featured via muscles and sense perceptions or brought by the mind to a focus.
When galloping on horseback in my younger days, it is to be admitted that the kinaesthetic were delicious. There was no need to jog, or even for the leg effort associated with cantering. Instead came this wonderful, glorious feeling of ease of motion with speed, facility, little movement on the saddle, touch guiding of the horse, flow, glimpsed beauties of nature, wonders of challenge and effortless seeming progress as coming events became present then past, as if one were intimately associated with them all, yet apart.
Galloping is fun. One larger landowner made reference to this young 13 or 14 year old, as a young fool who would come to grief. Apparently he thought the equestrian activities lacked a certain restraint! It is true that on one occasion, galloping to catch a bus if memory serves, one did have a difficulty. The foot of the horse slipped, and having no great sense of adventure, should the animal fall and then roll onto me, I felt it best to remove the foot from the stirrup with a view to instant disjuncture from what could be a mass of horse above, instead of under me.
However the delightful wind whirler regained its footing, and in the joint action, my removal of the foot and his regaining of his feet, there were results, both in less restraint and in a jolt as pace changed. Over his head I went, sailing blissfully into the beyond, noticing how beautiful it all looked, the green and the blue sky above, and then in due course came renewed contact with something under me, namely a gravel road. By some marvel, landing on my padded sports coat shoulder, I seemed to escape with hardly any bad results at all. Ah youth!
However, what it has in facility and agility, it often lacks in wisdom!
Now one can have a certain kinaesthetic sensation about WORLD EVENTS. The LEAD RIDER, Christ is certainly taking the world on according to the announced plan (like one's itinerary when one is the rider), and leads events to their culmination and consummation.
They flash past, fling themselves into and out of vision like buildings swept through in some narrowly constrained aircraft passage, tumble like waves, scud like clouds, embroil themselves like approaching tornadoes, funneling their passage like aerial geysers, then are gone, taking much that is precious to many, with them. It is as if the very events are galloping, and when one is riding past history, they indeed do so, in such times as these.
Events do not wait upon man, unless man waits upon God, where He is to be found, in Christ according to His covenantal word. It is then that man can be conducted in their midst, as was Christ in the midst of the murderously inclined people of Nazareth (Luke 4:16ff., cf. Psalm 2), taking no more kindly to His words than much of the world, which as a consequence, finds His events without knowing whose they are, or how to walk or work with Him (Psalm 1). What in the world is happening to the world! they say, and nowadays this can include some of the worldlings themselves (cf. SMR pp. 601ff., 620ff.).
It is not IN the world, which is happening to the world so much as what is BEYOND this world and what ACCOUNTS for it and indeed, CREATED it and and conducts as He has declared (Amos 3:7, Isaiah 44:26,, 46:10), which is galloping, galloping (cf. Revelation 6:1-2), and is to gallop very considerably closer (Revelation 19). It is the WORD OF GOD which is unravelling destiny (cf. Revelation 5, and 8:1ff.).
As the finish of his term appears to be today, and no party seemed to assured,
this intervening prowess seems to be ready for listing with all the others, as
Zechariah 12:1-3, rides galloping on. ALL who endeavour
to oppress Jerusalem, or get too close, may find as it is written, that it is
indeed a BURDENSOME STONE, heavy and inclined to cut, not manoeuvrable,
not manipulable, even when this or that leader may
appear weak. As we have seen in Divine Agenda Ch. 8, the margin may be small at times, but the
result is one, the Biblical one.
But what have been these squirmings and mewlings, these
cacophonous stridencies and quieter
cluckings ? "I want ot
be as precise as I can, so " I'll read this slowly," Time
reports of Clinton as he approached the negotiating table of Middle East
representatives ... "sounding like a settlement attorney". In this
way, we are told, he "laid out American 'ideas' " : Israel gives
Arafat a Palestinian State (all of Gaza's strip is ceded, 95% West Bank),and in
"exchange for the 5% of the West Bank Israel keeps for its settlements
there, the Palestinians would get an extra slice of territory in Israel's
Negev." This victory without war, to recover from the defeats through
war, is thus to be 'wrapped up'. But what of
The Time comment ? "If Jan. 20 passes without one {a 'deal'},
Arafat knows it will take Bush some time before his diplomatic team will
probably be ready to broker an accord. And if
So it goes as
it is written: "Behold I will make
and
But it is BACK,
the surrounding events predicted surge like breakers, gallop like horses, scud
like clouds, crash like a coda, smash like boulders. The dénouement, It comes,
it is coming, one can sense the intimacy of the passing events, as in a gallop,
they appear, move about between earth and sky, and our past.
So do we see the tornadoes, curling, swiping, moving in a cloudy fashion at a distance, but with more visible impact as they pass. We are warned; we may heed; but in either case, it comes.
There is, when on is galloping, a certain heightening of awareness in some perceptions, especially the kinaesthetic, but also perhaps even aesthetically, and certainly it tends to stimulate perception of coming events, and a sense of flow about and through events. When one is galloping with Christ, since the rate of movement is now at that level in this world, as it reels and bends and rushes on to fulfil all His words in this past half century, this is also so.
There is an amazing awareness of the developments, as one sees rather than gazes at this tornado, fulfilling its role on the program which one has, the Bible, at that tempest and the other deceptive calm (as in I Thessalonians 5:3). NEVER since Christ's own day has this world been so privileged, or say rather, have the inhabitants of this world had such a display of historical tectonics, those ground moving events which change things so rapidly that the present seems almost to have bidden untimely adieu to the past, before it is well away.
It is therefore time, now, to recall that Christ has said two important dicta on this topic. ONE, when all these writhings and events so noted in Answers to Questions Ch. 5, are upon us, as they now are, with all the finesse and detail the Book of the Lord provides (as for example in some things observed in Ch. 3 above), then:
But there is
more: Christians are to lift up their heads KNOWING SOMETHING. What is this
knowledge ? It is that the REDEMPTION OF THEIR BODIES is now near (Romans
8:20-23, Luke 21:28, II Corinthians 5). Already redeemed in life (Ephesians
1:5-11), according to divine foreknowledge and historical fact (Ephesians
1:4,7), we now look forward to the cessation of pilgrimage in triumph, and the
consummation of joy when the Lord, the M.C., comes for us all who have loved
His appearing (Hebrews 9:12-28, I Thess. 4) and found
in Him the cause of its occurrence (John 3:16), not mixing our works (Titus
3:5ff., Ephesians 2:1-12), but resting on His (Romans 3:22ff., John 5:24,
10:27-28, I Thess. 5:9-10, Hebrews 8-10).
It is not time
for anaesthesia, but kinaesthesia;
nor for sleep but waking; not for states of mind but the Kingdom of Heaven
(Ephesians 1:3, 2:6); and above all, for Christ who is all and in all who are
His (Colossians 3:11), and whose word is the rule of right (John 14:21-23),
whose love the caretaker of the spirit (John 13:1), whose life the criterion of
virtue (John 14:6), whose death is the cancellation of sin for all who so
receive Him by faith (II Cor. 5:19-21), whose ways
are just (Acts 3:13-16, cf. Repent or
Perish Ch. 2, Barbs, Arrows and Balms, Appendix IV), and whose name is
truth, who is preceded in His way, by mercy, which He ministers (II Timothy
1:8-10, Psalm 89:14, 72), and succeeded by NONE (Ephesians 1:10, Revelation Chs. 5, 21-22). Moreover in Him is life that does not end
(John
MORE ?
1) For more on
Scoop of the Universe 47; SMR Appendix A; Biblical Blessings App.1, 3; Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium 11, The Biblical Workman 1, 3, Appendix II; Barbs, Arrows and Balms 13, 20, 23; The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 9, pp. 175ff.; Repent or Perish Ch. 3; Divine Agenda and the preceding Chapters in the present volume, together with Ch. 8 below., esp. *3.
2) For more on this world's ways and the wider world grabbing procedures, see -
SMR pp. 743ff., 750Bff., Biblical Blessings App. 3, Barbs, Arrows and
Balms 20, 30, Tender Times for Timely Truths 11, Acme, Alpha and Omega:
Jesus Christ
3) THE WORD OF GOD AS THE SOLE SOURCE OF DEFINITION FOR THE WORD OF GOD
It is imperative to know, to ascertain the meaning of the word of God, the internal prescriptions of that word. To find what He means, you need to study what He says AS HE says it! (Amos 4:1-2,13, Zechariah 12:11., I Corinthians 2:9-13, Jeremiah 23:28-30). God is we ll able to specify including our own DNA specifications, and the data for our minds and the pre-requisites for our own spirits; and He assures us of His clarity (Proverbs 8:8-9). Stability with His word involves especially taking it as it is (II Corinthians 4:1ff.), and not as Peter states, 'wresting it' , or twisting it (II Peter 3:16). A little twist here and there and it is marvellous what you can 'make', as virtual co-author of people's words.
When it is the word of God the necessity of taking it as it comes without addition, accretion or secular insinuations, or spiritual devisings, is even greater.
Thus to receive the word of God is not merely to think one is doing so, but to compare spiritual things with spiritual (I Cor. 2), and to rest wholly on what He says as He states His meaning in ways magnificently just and adequate, but requiring none of the dirt of additions, or the scraping of subtractions.
Disbelief concerning this adequacy of the word of God here can fog issues, as it patronising the word of God, in a way that is quite comical, both as to its results and in its presumption. God is unimpressed with this 'handling'. They "steal My words, every one from his neighbour," God declares with disgust (Jeremiah 23:30, cf. John 5:44). God's word is the hammer that breaks rock (Jeremiah 23:29), and nothing stands before it. But this, it is not some light-weight alloy of this honourable man and that honourable philosopher, as people receive "honour from one another" as Christ declared. IF THAT is the way, He protested, "How can you believe...!" It is human traditions which are the obstacle, with their honourable mimicry of the word of God, and their pretentious self-adulation (Mark 7:7).
Let us then study IT for its meaning, the mouth of God for what to live by, and not human speech therapists who devise and define what they will, when God has already assured us that it is HIS word and not something more or extra, some vision, some conception of our own, which is to be the criterion. Hammer is hammer that breaks; and wheat is wheat that feeds; while chaff is the feathery stuff which floats with the breeze. Evacuating the seed and distempering the steel is so much waste of time. It is, as Christ showed the devil, what is written that counts.
For God's divinely disposed, indispensable, incorrigible, faithful and determinate promises on the topic of Israel that was and is and is yet to be, for the offspring of Jacob, and their distinct and assured possession of the land, despite the follies, tribulations and exile so often emphasised on these pages, reflecting the word of God, see:
1) Genesis 13:15 for Abraham and his seed, called in Isaac (Genesis 21;12) - "to you and your descendants for ever";
2) Genesis 15:7ff, for Abraham with an oath;
3) Genesis 17:7ff. - "And I will establish My covenant between Me and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you. Also I will give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession and I will be your God."
4) Genesis 26:3 - Isaac: "Dwell in this land and I will be with you and bless you; for to you and your descendants I give all these lands and I will perform the oath which I swore to Abraham your father... I will give to your descendants all these lands..."
5) Genesis 28:3-14 - "the land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants" cf. Genesis 48:4 - "I will give this land to your descendants after you as an everlasting possession";
6) Psalm 105:7-11 (excerpt 9-11):
"The
covenant which He made with Abraham,
And His oath to
Isaac;
And confirmed it
to Jacob for a statute,
To Israel as an
everlasting covenant,
Saying, 'To you
I will give the land of Canaan
As the allotment
of your inheritance...' "
Then note Isaiah as in *1 and its related references to that prophet, Ezekiel as in SMR Appendix A and earlier in this volume and that preceding, The Divine Agenda, in Micah as in Ch. 1 above, in Jeremiah as in Ch.1, The Biblical Workman and so on, where these things are exposited.
It is important to notice that this is "an everlasting covenant", namely "the covenant with Abraham, and His oath to Isaac, and He confirmed it to Jacob for a statute. " It is this which we have scripturally isolated and investigated above, this non-qualified and unconditional covenant, which only needs to be read to be cited, sited and secure. Further, we are told that the Lord "remembers His covenant forever, the word which He commanded for a thousand generations."
THIS is then specified as mentioned in this paragraph at the outset. As so often, it meets the case succinctly and with devastating clarity, drawn up to meet equivocation and quibble alike. It is not, for example for 100 generations, or if you like to be conservative, say 4,000 years. It is not in any time frame which has the slightest opportunity to wear out, even if you 'happened' to forget the word 'forever'. It would cover 40,000 years, rather a elegant sufficiency! arresting to the dabbler and dreamer, clear to the practical! It is NOT GOING. It is to a GUARANTEED people whose practical identity is no more in doubt, as returnees to Israel, than is the peculiar, specialised character of their customs, their internal vetting of genealogy and their Biblical liberty to adopt. People may dream of such a place (though they would never have done so in 1940-1945), or seek to translate it to London or New York, as if history had no meaning, words were mere vacancies for the apt mind to fill with its own twaddle; but the word is clear.
As in Jeremiah, there is a recognisable body, world recognised, treaty recognised, the one which was not lost in entirety with the Assyrian invasion of the North kingdom in the 8th century B.C., all but obliterating a segment to come in dribs and drabs if it could, back to what remained in the Judah nation, and it is one which when coming as it did in 1948, with various practical preliminaries for generations, to Palestine, faced amazing internal programs. It is one which was to be unified, then, as two sticks, as has of course happened (as in Ezekiel 37). It is unified in language too (as noted with prophetic reference in Zephaniah 3 cf. SMR p. 798). It is this, then, which, well short of the provision to cover 1000 generations, is now back, intact, yielding results to match the promises in the premises, based on the premisses of the God who speaks and does. Israel in the promises of God is covered like a particle of iron filing, in the presence of a powerful electro-magnet.
But what shall we say of Psalm 105, in this connection ?
There is observable a certain tenacity, resolution, reality about realty, firmness of word, indeed oath, and there is observable a certain insistence as Israel is now back where it was to be, the called in Isaac, the people of Jacob with whatever voluntary increments bound to its ways. It is moreover, and of course, a people equally equipped with the pertinacity which has for so long blocked the blessing in that characteristic tenacity, that unbelief in the Messiah, whom, having killed, they lack, and lacking, find themselves tossed in lunges and plunges, depths and destructions, even amid the triumphs predicted as in Zechariah 12. It is, precisely as there predicted, only when they come to that very self-same Messiah, that the spiritual depths again are reached.
It is moreover, this
people, one which even recently has shown a considerable unwillingness even to
be EXPOSED to the word of the Lord concerning the Messiah, Jesus Christ, in all
things matching the word which makes matchwood of any controversy concerning
Of the disposition of the matter there is less doubt that this, that 1+1=2, for this, though unquestionably true, rests on human symbols; but that, it rests on the Maker of mankind Himself. Unwise are they who test the strength of His word, or occasion contempt for His meaningfulness when He utters meaning! God, we must all realise, and will realise sooner or later, in whatever state some may choose to be, means what He says. What He has said we find from Genesis to Isaiah, from Ezekiel to Zephaniah, from Zechariah, to Micah, Hosea to Jeremiah, backwards, forwards, like their own predicted wanderings to and fro. Explosively the word of God has determined their goings; tenderly it has adduced their return to Himself.
Thus we gain the
It should be
carefully noted that the PREMISSES of God are the criterion of the
interpretation of God. From the Bible ONLY can we take these, and other
premises, interesting though they may be, can no more with integrity be
inserted into the divine words, than similar secular thoughts be inserted into
the divine MIND! There is just no possibility of kidnapping God, since He is
not a kid. Efforts to kidnap His word, conscious or confused, are quite in
vain. What He has defined in His own way, is the last word. Other words are
noise. They are also nuisance and if it were possible, might deceive the elect.
God has given us the power of language, and this is an instrument; but as to
the substance, His word is the ONLY ingredient that is determinative.
To understand and follow Him aright, our thoughts must be CHAINED to His decisive definitions, which unlike EVERY option man chooses instead, work. When "My thoughts are not as your thoughts" and His thoughts are as the heavens to the earth, in comparison with those of His creation called man, then manifestly the insinuation of human invention and imagination and philosophy into the word of God is like putting hydrogen into a lead weight, in order to help it hold. It is simply comic; though the results are less so.
It has long been a repose of liberalism, sleeping peacefully until He comes, like the unwise virgins, that God is not really so very apt, and we NEED to include and incorporate into His word, our (better, oh so humble!) words, in order to get the best out of His. Not so. It would be libel among human beings. The Bible is a self-defining book, in that what it means is defined within; and hence looking beyond for meaning is a confused chaos at best, neither yielding any verification, nor having any virtue, in line with the follies of the Pharisees of Mark 7:7.
Religionists so often KNOW the liberties they can take in seeking definition from other sources, and this merely illustrates the ways of Satan in the end, for it was he who introduced the bright idea at the first, "You will NOT surely die!"
How is that for an 'interpretation! First, then, there is this knowledgeability about the FACT, transcending God so well that the cursed state of mankind outside Christ is the simple, sure and steadfast result. Then there is the imputation of motive (God is not really going to say this or that, BECAUSE), again used by Satan at Eden: "For God knows that in the day you eat, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Such was the Satanic word. It did not STATE that God was wicked; it merely implied it. The devil could readily 'discover' such motives, since this is his own nature.
In fact ? The motive of God is undivorceable from truth, in love, with judgment for the reprobate. To alter His words, or add to them, adjust them, so clearly presented in His own word, in the interests of cavils, and conspiracy constructions, or other grandiose abortions of sober evidence, in order to avoid the premises of the promises and the premisses on which they are divinely built, or as if they did not matter, merely makes one thing clear.
It is not apt to make a world of thought in God's name on other ideas, and it is not possible to make another world on ANY ideas. It is only open to distortion in the field of words; where the word of God has the double advantage, HE makes it happen, and it is HIS.
People can become confused, and it is not being here asserted that errors concerning the word of God are all Satanic in intention, or that error in understanding implies a personal devilishness; but the degree of distortion of His word is an index to the severity of the pathology when what He says is departed from; and the ultimate source of deception is only one (John 8:44ff.). Flat, teaching contradiction by distortion is not a pleasant sight. Often the means are heavily disguised 'angels of light' as in II Corinthians 11, but the deception with which the unwary are gulled is anything but angelic.
The children of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the people of Israel, the divorcees in sin, the returnees according to promise from Babylon, the latter day return brigade in God's own concern for the divine word of promise, the new occupiers of the land, in the word which specifies what is to become of His people (Amos 3:7), and declares this, that it does not omit the pivots of history: all attest one inescapable fact. Israel was still alive in the day of Christ; to it did the curses and promises come from the lips of the Lord; Israel has been a butt of international scorn, listing and delisting them, for profit and punishment; Israel is back.
Now it is also back to stay; and staying, Israel is back to be won in large measure to the Lord. Israel is being sought in word, in arms, in blood, in confusion, in profusion and diffusion of oddities and peace manoeuvres, philosophic framings and the like, political schemas. These come to nothing. They are wind. But Israel ? The deputed remnant comes to Israel, the predicted remnant comes to the land. GOD HAS SAID, and in defining so very carefully His terms, He has left nothing to chance, to choice human wisdom and the brightness of that mud-pit, man's meddling with His speech.
Salvation is
of the Jews, said Christ; and soon it will be true of many prophesied to come
to Him, that THEY are of HIM! Here is a large band of Jews to come home, making
a national scene, to return to the Lord Himself, whose is salvation! There is
to be a turning in their land, and though the 10 tribes were dismissed and
disbanded to the winds in a more grave discipline than that of Judah, some of
these return, as predicted in Ezekiel 37, to be joined as one stick, recognised as one people. SO it was to be. SO it is.
History does not make the word of God;
the word of God makes history.
It is applied in history:
1. by God,
in making it happen, according to precise divinely revealed specifications; and
2. by His people, to
detect its fulfilment and so, to rejoice in His
power, love and wisdom,
for in the end,
it is a loving plan, that on behalf of those called in Isaac, states as we have
verified repeatedly above:
As before in
Babylon, many do not or cannot achieve recognition; or do not or cannot return;
but these, they do.
This is the butt
of the promise, here is the buttress of mandate of God, and the site of the
oath, for the people who are accepted in terms of this very thing, with such
additions as they see fit for the land. The nation has arrived, these 42 years
past, and it was born (as predicted) in a day, in May 1948. Many may wish they
could establish such credentials or falsely claim them, or having them, ignore
this, their land. So be it. They do not qualify for the elements of the
definition provided (cf. SMR Appendix A) for
the people of the geographical restoration, and do not comprise part of the
events specified for these.
As to Israel, it is this which constitutes the citable returnees, and it is this which is predicted.
This is who they
are, where it is and what is to be, having already been fulfilled in all
preliminaries. It is like an exam; the final approaches, and all this jockeying
for power, in phrase, in word, in weaponry, does precisely nothing to
obliterate the Jews, to add to them or to remove the word of God, which has
preserved their identity so notoriously that they annoy, infuriate and amaze
the world so often, that they have been accorded their place among the nations
(from 1917 esp., when England "viewed with favour
the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people" with
others in accord).
It is the nations which nevertheless have now since 1947, come to wish the land, or nearly all of it, back, to renege on their largesse; but as to the Jews, they adhere to it. It might, at that, be yet more accurate to say, IT adheres to hem! They themselves might even try to GIVE much of it away, but it comes back. Back they come as in Ezekiel 34, 36, Isaiah 49; and more and more of them from this and that land, this and that culture, recognised as Jews and accepted, with mangled pasts, with pasts like a sheet, with clamour, with quietness, and often with Gentile riches as predicted, they come. They now are.
So it is to be, till they go on a far greater journey, that is
the remnant who as in Ezekiel and Zechariah, come home to Christ, back to the
God who made them, in the presence of the Lamb, then joined to the church of
Christ, and one with their brethren.
NOTE
EXCURSION INTO ISAIAH 42, 49
where is to
be found choice territory
*1
Isaiah 42 and 49, with 66 are
of great interest. Let us add here a little to the account of the former.
First as shown in SMR Ch. 9
and elsewhere (see Isaiah excursions esp. in Scoop of the Universe 47; Biblical Blessings App.1, 3; Spiritual Refreshings
for the Digital Millenium 11, The Biblical Workman Ch. 1, Barbs, Arrows and Balms 13, Divine Agenda Ch. 5 - esp. Isaiah 9,
and
From Isaiah 4, typifying
the temple symbolism, to Ch. 32, exposing it as the prerogative in substance of
a man, to fulfil its portent; from Isaiah 7 and
the birth-that-surpasses (SMR pp. 770ff.),
and Isaiah 9, to the child who is the Mighty God, we move on to Isaiah 11 with
the King, maternally of the seed of David, whose kingdom is such that His word
is per se equipped to do WHATEVER HE SAYS; from Isaiah 40 and the God
who on earth takes the lambs tenderly, to Isaiah 52-53 where the pure sacrifice
REQUIRES One not of Adam's race as to status, but merely as to format - a
non-sinner for slaughter to cover sin; from Isaiah 55 with the free grace offer
of a salvation thus paid for (53:5-11) to 65:13ff., where this replaces the Old
Covenant; from Isaiah 62:1ff., where it occasions a new name for the New
Covenanters, to Isaiah 66 (cf. Ch. 1 above) ,
where Israel is brought anew to the birth in a day, and the Lord uses power
such as in Exodus
(cf. Micah 7, Isaiah 66:15-16)
to rescue His restored people, we find Isaiah expressive of the depth and the
scope of the movements.
Let us however now look a
little further at Isaiah 42 and 49.
ISAIAH 42
Here, then, in the very face and light of the Messiah's coming, Himself to BE the covenant (for it is, after all, in His OWN BLOOD, Isaiah 53:10ff.), we find some repercussions for the nation which assailed Him (Isaiah 49:7). Let us look through this prophetic chapter.
DESPITE the fact that He is come to be a LIGHT to the Gentiles (49:6 cf. Appendix, Biblical Blessings, End-note *1), opening blind eyes, and removing those in the prison house of servitude to sin, and in the very midst of stating that He will NOT give His glory to another while at that very time of instituting on earth His servant as a light to the Gentiles, and in 53, as the Saviour, whereas ONLY GOD is Saviour (43:10-11): despise all these exquisite facts , focusses, features and facets, there is a sudden contrast. What is this absorbing injection, this new thing ?
Even though the Messiah, God Himself on earth (Ezekiel 34), doing the job as the Good Shepherd that those witheringly exposed 'shepherds' of Ezekiel 34 vintage so despitefully, disgracefully and emptily used, and abused, we come to an abysmal contrast. There, exposed to our eyes, as likewise in 49:10ff., is a people who for all that, are still BLIND, and are dubbed His servant, a failed one (42:18ff)..
What then is this development ? "Who," the LORD asks, 49:19, in sublime irony, "is blind as he who is perfect, and blind as the LORD's servant!" HOW BLIND to you have to be not to NOTICE these magnitudes of divine splendour reported and exposed here, as THIS MESSIAH! WHO is so blind as this ? WHo has such a blindness as to ignore what is predicted when it comes, what is in Jewish format when it arrives, what is the culmination of centuries of prophecy, when it surges into their midst... WHO is so blind as THIS! God exclaims with total justice.
This divine disengagement from the sinning nation (as in Isaiah 1 and 65), mocks their pretensions just as in Ch. 1 He scorns their ceremonial substitutes for spirituality, the end of all conceivable claim from the sacramentalists of this world (cf. Questions and Answers Ch. 2).
Clearly then, we are seeing
sinning Israel in the sort of colours witnessed in
Isaiah 30:8ff., and 30:15ff.. "Seeing many things, but you do not observe," God chides, very much as in the
message to Isaiah concerning the nation in Isaiah 6:9ff.. THIS is made the
worse, since in the intervening verses from the exposé on the Messiah, in
42:1-9, the LORD has been exposing ground for new rejoicing. Acting like an
invisible but wholly effective magnet, the Lord is seen bringing back to their
forsaken land, a rebellious people, with gratuitous grace, amazing power,
tremendous determination, irresistible resolution. He carries, they come. He
wills it; they are there. This is after a "long time" (49:14); but it comes. Twelve
midnight seems far off at 5 a.m., but it comes. Wait for it, it will surely
come. The LORD ... far more surely than that, for HE MADE TIME! It serves Him,
He does not serve it!
He shall stir up
His zeal, like man of war,
He shall cry
out, yes, shout aloud;
He shall prevail
against His enemies" - Isaiah 49:13.
I will bring the
blind by a way they did not know...
I will make darkness
light before them,
And crooked
places straight.
These things I
will do for them,
And not forsake
them" - Isaiah
42:15-16.
Thus the focus coming on this so disappointing servant, of such pretensions to spirituality as to be "perfect", but of such lapses into unloveliness as to be "blind", after all this grace of God, astonishes the reader. HOW COULD anyone be so unreceptive, unperceptive, in a word, BLIND! Well, that is the word of which the Lord makes use!
Despite their being a "people robbed and plundered", God "will exalt the law and make it honourable". The divinely long announced schema will be fulfilled; the promises will be redeemed; the Messiah will come and the restoration and restitution alike. WHO, He asks, "gave Jacob for plunder, and Israel for the robbers", concerning the covenantal people who as such are still a "servant", and as a disciplined servant have been lavishly exposed to plunder by explicit and often expressed divine design, from Leviticus 26 on.
Since it is undoubtedly His own removal of the divine shield to the covenant forsakers, which led to these disasters for this people, it is clear that He is making obvious one simple fact: HE acted in discipline, and it was NOT the power of the enemy which accomplished it. At HIS will and discretion, in HIS time, He will use the same power that instituted the nation (cf. Micah 7:15), to deliver it; the same resolution which left it in just rebuke, to bring it back, so making the nations look to their own foolish pride and imagination and forcing them to face this fact: GOD did it and GOD will restore it. HE took away and HE will restore, AS He will. It is HIS affair; and so, not quite so incidentally, are the sins of those who plundered what He disciplined! (Cf. Ezekiel 36:15, 37:28).
What then ? THIS: "All flesh shall
know
That I, the
LORD, am your Saviour,
And your
Redeemer, the mighty One of Jacob" -
just as in Deuteronomy 32 we
find that the Lord proceeds to "raise My hand to heaven,
And say, 'As I
live forever,
If I whet My
glittering sword,
And My hand
takes hold on judgment,
I will render
vengeance to My enemies..."
Then the Gentiles are asked
to
"rejoice... with His people...
He will provide
atonement for His land and His people" - Deut. 32:43, precisely as inscribed in the detailed words
of Zechariah 12:10ff.. It is then that the Redeemer, fulfilled in the Messiah
in His works, is recognised, so that the faithfulness
of God leads now to the faith perception of a changed people, who in large
numbers receive the crucified, the pierced Messiah (as in Psalm 22, Isaiah 53)
as Saviour, and wash in the fountain of blood which
becomes to faith available (Zechariah 13:1ff), when the significance of their
former folly leads to repentance, repentance to life.
Now let us note further that God confirms, in Isaiah 42:25, the grounds of special, specific, historic anger on this servant people, who have had to be replaced by MY SERVANT, in WHOM MY SOUL DELIGHTS (Isaiah 42:1). Indeed, the Lord stressed in 41:26ff., the entire absence of anyone else whatsoever to fulfil the role of Saviour being unfolded at once thereafter, as in Isaiah 42, and reflected in 49 and 52-53 (cf. 51:18ff.).
Thus is the Jewish nation,
located by divine restitution and grace once more in its land made desolate for
their sins, which led to this "servant" being so plundered, and this
"servant" being so blind. In this, it has been wholly unlike any
other, for there are no others who have been as a nation in this position, and
then being repudiated, have remained to be called a servant, and blind
simultaneously! Gentile unbelievers have not the historic preliminaries, and so
it is indeed to Jacob, as He says, that the Lord speaks. He means what
He says, and the covenantally unqualified promise is
confirmed, both in its express statement and its sublime spiritual
significance. GOD ALWAYS carries out His resolutions, duly set down and
inscribed is His word.
By all means have fear about
the sun rising tomorrow (cf. Jeremiah 33's promise of continuation of what is
in view, Israel the nation); but never doubt this, that God is so honourable that it is a sweet rejoicing of the heart to
behold it. HE IS TRUTH, as well as the way and the life for us who know Him;
and there is no other for those who don't!
ISAIAH 49
In Isaiah 49, the next major focus on the Messiah, we see these things, not unexpectedly, extended. Again we see the Messiah in 49:1-9, with all the wonder of His being, facing the desolatory task assigned in its cost-effective ransoming aspect (49:4), as when He cried as in Psalm 22, "My God, my God why hast Thou forsaken Me!" as sin hit (Isaiah 53:6 cf. Joyful Jottings 21, 22, 25), and the necessary sense of separation accrued (Isaiah 66:1-2).
Here, He cries, as with the
bleak experience of the gaunt and unhallowed weight of sin coming to Him as
assigned: "I
have laboured in vain,
I have spent My
strength for nothing and in vain.
Yet surely My
just reward is with the LORD,
And my work with
my God."
His "reward" is the multitude of children whom He redeemed, for though He lacked His own, in this He gains more, even from every tribe and nation. His NAME attests who and of whom He is, God in fleshly format (as in Philippians 2:1-10); and in this name has He exalted His Father who has exalted His Son.
With this immense payment of God the Sent (Isaiah 48:16), there is a magnification of the dimensions of the task: not as if it were suddenly thought of, but the weight of accomplishment by the Messiah, makes it now apt to expose this facet in the 8th. century B.C. prophecy, concerning His exalted mission, framed in ignominy, fulfilled in glory (cf. Luke 24:25-26). Now we find this:
"Indeed
He says, 'It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant
To raise up the
tribes of Jacob,
And to restore
the preserved ones of Israel.
I will also give
You as a light to the Gentiles,
That You should
be My salvation to the ends of the earth' " -
Isaiah 49:6, cf. Biblical
Blessings, Appendix 1, esp. End-note 1.
With this augmentation of
role for the Messiah, we find nevertheless the original sustained, to restore the preserved of Israel - for many
fell, and raise up the tribes of Jacob. In the process, as already seen in
Isaiah 42:10ff., we have this amazing phenomenon of the blind servant, in total
contrast to the effectual one, who so far from being blind, IS the light!
and He declares:
So we see the walls of the
spent nation, the disciplined, blind servant, as a divine focus as He restores
the people from their destroyers, who had reduced the prior magnificence of
their servant post, to this desolation. This, it is a thing true of no
other people, as a nation, and the just opposite of Gentiles, themselves
lacking any magnificence or post of past divine relationship; and here He is,
performing this noble task, as becomes Him, with one amazingly and almost
immeasurable one to be added! That ? The Gentiles, to be their light also.
It is not the world or the church, or Britain or Panama, it is not in the Himalayas or in Ireland, or in some South American place once patronisingly thought of for the "Jews", those wanderers, those dispossessed, those plundered and robbed, that people served with contempt by so many for so long, extending into the Middle Ages and well beyond, Hitler himself, a mere consummation. It is not another than those for whom so many have been assassins, and so many have THIEVED.
It is Israel the nation, to be restored, the perfect who is blind, the ex-grandee who is robbed, the servant who does not serve.
But wait! "For your waste
and desolate places,
And the land of
your destruction.
Will even now be
too small for the inhabitants,
And those who
swallowed you up will be far away.
The children you
will have
After you have
lost the others,
Will say again
in your ears,
'The place is too
small for me:
Give me a place
where I may dwell' " -
just as if it were said by the hundreds of thousands reputedly demonstrated in Israel and Jerusalem. And what did they want, that they so demonstrated ? This: that they did NOT WANT ARAB CONTROL of the Mount, and this was their concern, in parallel with those Israelis who for long and loudly have proclaimed, Enough! in the give-away mission of the rulers of Israel, seen so often of late. But this Israel, this restored nation, this suddenly reborn nation, they are indeed being crammed into the forsaken nation, to what the Lord calls so exactly, "the land of your destruction". It is there, not in heavenly places, that the action is to occur, it is here rather than in some spiritual condition, that the restoration statedly occurs, with battle, not balm, with blood, not choral items. It has been ghastly, but this is the prediction. It has happened as forecast. Sin involves costs to many, and when there is also redemption, this is even greater.
Thus it is to the land of their desolation, that they come, are returned by the resolution and faithfulness of the Lord, back to the site of the destroyed Jerusalem and the place from which went an exiled Judah and little Benjamin, and even in greater tragedy, aggravated after the murder of the Messiah, in a real saga of suffering, that nation. The suffering as itemised in kind in Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 32, with the clinical precision of a syndrome, addressed by the doctor, when diagnosed: it has come. The return has come. The nations in their turbulence have come; and the intervention by the Lord as so often predicted, both has come and is to come. But listen, to the recording in advance of the nation, Israel, on its restoration, phase 1 (see earlier chapters) ...
Then indeed, "You will say in
your heart,
'Who has
begotten these for me,
Since I have
lost my children and am desolate,
A captive, and
wandering to and fro?
Who has brought
these up?
There I was, let
alone;
But these, where
were they?' " (from
Isaiah 49:21).
In verse 23, we find the international actions which helped this staggering result of the murdered crush of Jews, yet yielding a nation so crammed. KINGS were to have helped; and how the British Government has helped since 1917 right up to the World War II time; and how Germany repaid in reparations, and how Nixon helped in 1973 with an incredible largesse of aid to the beleaguered Jewish people, with a SHUTTLE OF ENORMOUS SCOPE, through monster US cargo planes, constantly equipping and re-equipping the Israeli armies until they, in dashing bravado and initiative, drove the Holy Day attack of the Arabs back, with their allies, beyond Suez and surrounded and Egyptian Army on the FAR SIDE of that body of water!
Yes it is fulfilled.
Or the captives
of the righteous be delivered ?
But thus says
the LORD:
'Even the
captives of the mighty shall be taken away,
And the prey of
the terrible be delivered:
For I will
contend with him who contend with you,
And I will save
your children.
I will feed
those who oppress you with their own flesh,
And they shall
be drunk with their own blood as with sweet wine.
All flesh shall
know that I, the LORD, am your Saviour,
And your
Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob."
There is, as often noted on
this site, MUCH MORE to come. But this much has in large part already happened,
with just that zeal and bloodshed stated so pithily, pointedly and didactically
by the Great Teacher, the LORD Himself.
HOW GERMANY suffered for the sins of her false and foolish government of World War II, and what German blood was shed for these follies. How USSR was bled in WWII, also as she was prepared for the eventual liberation of great numbers of Jews from her once entrapping midst! What developments have liberalised the Russian ways, to this end! How nations like France have suffered humiliation for their treatment under Louis XIV and others, of the Jews, in ways Hosmer points out in his story of the Jews. The Lord knows well how to repay, as He declares so, roundly (Deuteronomy 32:41).
Thus have the captives of
the mighty been restored amid widespread bloodshed, and thus has the "land of your
destruction", the
very site on which they former grandeur of this 'blind servant' was so desolated,
causing grief all but unspeakable to the rebelling people, the Jewish nation,
thus has it become a source of concern for land sufficient for its returning
sons.
*2 See
The Biblical Workman Ch. 1.