THE RECEDING WORLD

CHAPTER 7

THE WORLD IS RECEDING

The Advertiser, Dec. 21, 2000,
Free Church Witness Dec. 2000
Calvary Contender
New Life Jan 18 2001

You can see that. If you are galloping past something, it appears to be receding. That is only natural. It WAS ahead, but now it is past. It is not, of course, always the case that the receding vista is WORSE, in the sense that it is not only recessive, but regressive also. In this case, however, it is so. The recessive world, what anoints our eyes as coming, and then farewells them as going, IS regressive. That is only part of the delicious comedy of organic evolution, that this wonderful masterpiece of electrical, cerebral, neural, physiological, intellectual, methodological, spirited, conscience-equipped, mechanical, chemical, physical, aesthetically sensitive, visually discerning, scientifically sedulous equipment, known commonly as mankind, is regressive!

SINKING into the SEAS

Oh no! say the pundits, we are progressive. Just look, in Holland now, there are full conjugal "rights" for homosexual or lesbian couples. Since 1998, we find in The Advertiser, Dec. 21, 2000, "same sex couples have been able to register their partnership with local authorities, to enjoy the same rights as heterosexual couples," with some 9500 doing so by July 2000. But now, they may say, see the progress! Look: NOW the Dutch Senate allows, indeed legislates a provision that legalises homosexual marriages, allowing 'same sex couples' to adopt children in "the world's most comprehensive legal recognition" of the right to be wrong.

This of course is not how it is put. It is just that there is double disregard of the obvious anti-infection provision in the equally obvious male female procedure for conjoining diverse genetic provisions from diverse gametes, physiologically so that two persons in love and in marriage, can participate dramatically and beautifully in a sharing. That sharing is also individual, and becomes … THEIR child, jointly.

Recognising that state of affairs, so that they can literally SHARE in the united product, the zygote which grows into the next generation, we find that now it can be bypassed by a totally horrendous artificiality. It is this which enables such perversity that cannot so conjoin, to be legally recognised as the pad, the home, the growing up resource for the child. And which child is this now ? It is one thereby deprived of the paradigm, of the example of loving parents contributing physically to his/her arrival, without the terrain of diversity, the normal, natural, physiological parallel to the psychological surrounds. Love, in design possible, in morals permissible, in reality actual, has now by mere act of will, shorn from its beautiful fleece, the safeguard and the joint commission alike.

So the regress is moving into the ignoring of design, of physiological realities, in the interests of some kind of misrepresentation of the same, in a will-related divorce from the God who made the male-female difference, as though He Himself made no difference. Thus are viewed such differences of His design, and demands of His word, as alike indifferent. This war on God (as attested for example in I Timothy 1:10, and seen more directly in Revelation 19:19, II Peter 2) is only a part of the war which is regress.

It is multi-faceted.

God is not repressive, as are those Moslems in Afghanistan, for example, earlier reported to be withdrawing professional woman back to the cloistered 'privacy' of domestic containment (cf. News 82) . There is nothing in the Bible to the effect that women cannot be professional, but there is much debasement of women in such Moslem cases. This, it is progress ? Is it better to go with the 6th century A.D. Islam and its Muhammad (cf. SMR pp. 989ff.), than with the long pre-existing Bible, which has the advantage of being the ONLY religious authority in writing, which is scientifically testable in a categorical and multiple manner, with only one result: ALWAYS RIGHT! It is also sad to find the departure from natural design once again, this time in the other extreme.

To be sure, and emphatically, women as a trend appear to have a special dexterity socially and even, manually which is so delicate, as some tests have shown (News 52), or experience attests, and is ideal in specialisation for the home, for the infant tenderness, for the domestic alertness. This however is not the same as debarring them from professions. These are two separate matters.

Some women do not marry; some marry and look after their children when young, and yet continue in due course with their professions. Some hire help, and still manage, through careful containment of their professional actions, to be a real mother VERY available to the children. It is wise to avoid the two extremes of IGNORING the maternal responsibilities on the one hand, and IGNORING the professional gifts on the other.

It is necessary, in order to be spiritual, to recognise and follow God, to see what He has done, and to read what He has said... not merely to become reactionary against foolish trends, or to follow them. CHILDREN MUST, where possible, receive deft, discerning, sure and consolidated maternal attention; and some women at some times can surely provide this as well as perform a professional task. There are sacrifices to be made, discipline of self-will. Indeed there is life to be lived: not death to be courted.

Thus the pulses of folly mount, and the world recedes in ultra extremes, abandoning reality, design, rushing headlong into forbidden paths, alien from the God of the Bible and the design work of His hands, alike..

UNIFYING THE RECESSION

Man woefully, wilfully wanders; but the UN helps ? In some things it helps, but what it chiefly helps is the arrogation of the authority of God without His wisdom, power or purity.

Chiefly ? But of course. If an officer should openly confront the orders of his C.O., and this in the very scheme of things, any pleasantness of manner which he might show to the other officers might not rate very highly. His incredible effrontery would be the chief thing. It would undermine the entire Camp.

· The UN has so undertaken

· (under the headings of Child Rights and Freedom of Religion^*1),

· on such oppressive mandates and rules. Contradicting the law of the One whose rules have righteousness since they are right for what He has made, being the legal component of the total establishment of reality at His hands, as apt in morals as the DNA is exhibited to be, in things physiological: they declare their own will.

· Thus do these nations lay down new and reckless, heedless, man-made principles for the divine creation:

· so that the parents are prone to become child-minders for the international 'community'.

· That is its new NAME, of this quasi-glory, though one does not scientifically, actually find it possible to FIND this entity, but rather, merely a disunity of heart, mind, soul and spirit. Thus parents are required to do this by the UN, in subservience doing as bidden; but they not allowed freely to instil the religion of the Bible, since the rules reject this in favour of a generalised religion, in which human beings are CENTRAL and FINAL.

· Antichrist could not handle it much better for the Party; but of course he will use force. However, the prophetic point is this, that the apparatus is now ready. It is a matter of human beings, perhaps by nations as now, at least at first, talking together… Then single antions accept, adopt the rules, adapt, legally implementing the thoughts of the international body. it is small wonder that our own P.M. John Howard, in earlier years and before his election, showed very considerable concern at the easy way available to get vast changes made without vote from Australia, by an international provision for change! (Cf. Mystery of Iniquity.)

But human beings ? How do you know what they want ? How do you know that on statistical average, they prefer themselves to God, as the UN fiasco on youth liberties implies ? Or if you could find this out by polling some 6,000,000,000 people, or those able to respond, how to you know that they are right ?

Is opinion now to be, then, God ? But no. It is the UN which acts in this way.

Yet are numbers RIGHT ? Numbers of nations, of votes ? Is this the disposition of reality ? Is the numerical the moral ? Is statistics the actual when it comes to opinions ? Can you poll the world for the correct mathematics, for the correct answer on war, on peace, on privacy ? What would it show if it did show anything ? It would of course show the contemporary trend, that is all. It would not be expected to work, since the method would not be likely to reflect the discipline of mathematics with any accuracy, or the knowledge of mankind with profundity, far less with truth, available itself only in the absolute, which if ignored, precludes its knowledge. And mankind, as Paul puts it in II Cor. 10 of such knowledgeable miscreants, "measuring themselves by themselves, are not wise".

But you say, miscreants ? Yet the word is technically applicable. A miscreant is something amiss relative to its creation, mishatched, mixed, not properly related; and this is the precise disease in question. God is INCREATE, and it is the mental work of a MISCREANT so to misrepresent Him, that the creature dominates in heart over the One on whom, entirely and to the uttermost part, he depends as His Creator, Himself the author of time, and site of eternity (cf. That Magnificent Rock Ch. 7).

All that, as noted, is regressive, spiritually unimpressive, Biblically recessive, going back fast, as if being passed on the gallop, as the race nears its end.

The world is receding. It starts by not knowing, ends by not knowing, and increasingly is disposed to use force, through UN approved laws in the member countries, and so on.

That is what you would expect on a gallop, visually; it is what you would expect when the events which pass LIKE a galloping myriad of horses, are predictively defined as to their SPIRITUAL and MORAL direction, in the Bible.

It is, we are noting, what you also find, moral retardation and spiritual deterioration, Biblically defined. THAT of course is the definition which counts, when you are examining the Bible's presentations, to check them relative to history. What it defines it is thesis; what is found is its verification.

Events in these dimensions are heavily regressive. What has Sodom to teach us, that is not already instituted in Holland ? And is Holland alone, where in other countries like the US, as made so profoundly apparent under Clinton, you can have an Ambassador notoriously homosexual (appointed when Senate was in recess, it is reported), and have it exceptionally clear that anything remotely approaching a negative attitude to sexual perversion , Biblically defined, in the employment scene, any preference for intact morals in this field (not that it is ferreted out, but that is another matter, even when it is patent on the surface) is immoral. Thus we are all but immersed in the topless view (one without God above it) that right is wrong, morality is condemned. The law of the God of the Bible is despised. The vacuity of space is their throne, and the emptiness of heart is their mandate. In this way, it goes ... fast, to its appointed, predicted end.

So is the topsy-turvy attitude of calling good bad, right wrong, divine designer morals undutiful and humanly devised licence beautiful, coming to its culmination. Isaiah's declaration is now inherited to the uttermost! This, we are about to unveil! for these developments of mankind, they are not
something so much with which to live, as to die; for it is deadly to divorce from God.

QUASI-IMMORTAL IMMORALITY

Immortal immorality has raised its head, and it is wrong to be concerned to be right, to have one's firm, as far as may be without intrusion into privacy, conducted by those who esteem the law of God, or of its outward morals in crucial areas such as this. THIS! Let me try to sum up what any such desire is characterised to be (and even Christian schools have to some extent been targeted as WRONG if they desire teachers of Biblical morals!). IF one should try clearly and in principle to PREFER and indeed INSIST on any standard of morals (apart perhaps... perhaps, from wishing employes who did not contemplate murder with relish AND who show a practical desire to implement this thought and restraint AT WORK) for employes, then: one would be... prejudiced, biased (two better than one), slanted, controversial, intrusive, oppressive, illiberal, unenlightened, dictatorial, repressive, unimpressive, regressive, divisive, autocratic ... and so forth. (Cf. News 100, esp. end-note *1, Acme, Alpha and Omega: Jesus Christ Ch. 3.)

There are few who would like to be thought of thus, so that the verbal imperialism of the dispossessed, the oral dynamics, the oratorical fulminations of the perverted in mind, morals or body, or all, become OBLIGATORY from social duress. But suppose someone has the courage to refuse such a verbal assault ? Then of course there is always the law. There can be SANCTIONS and there can be BLACKBALLING, and if all else fails, unions could express how INCENSED they feel that anyone should dare to find ANY of their members, of whatever persuasion, unacceptable, WHATEVER the nature of the business, of the atmosphere desired, the relationship of morals to the same and so on.

So the world regresses, and it is doubtful that Sodom and Gomorrah ever reached such a complete immorality, legally sanctioned for marriage, for adoption, for child rearing, for employment, with such a total depravity of self-elevated immorality, parading as moral, intimidatory of the righteous (if possible), using the club of statistics and votes, to overcome the character of righteousness. What is involved ? It is this. Righteousness is not only being called by this falling world, being named, entitled evil, but the world in its heady spinning and sinning is seeking to exploit, repress and even remove from business, those who love it, as the word of God declares it to be.

What more perfect illustration could you find of Isaiah 5's message to the nation of Israel, in its day, wallowing in folly, as now the Gentile world does, so that it may share, as a totality this time, the punishments so justly due to Israel, and now to itself! Thus the prophet of Israel declared from God (Isaiah 5:18-19):

"Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of vanity,
And sin as if with a cart rope;
That say, 'Let Him make speed and hasten His work,
That we may see it;
And let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near and come
That we may know it.' "

But, you may object: To be sure it is as you say morally, with the Bible as criterion, so that our international movement is regressive to the uttermost in this sphere; but what is this about the Holy One of Israel! Why HE is not even mentioned ?

THE STIFLING INVERSION: WHEN MAN MAKES A GOD
AND WORSHIPS HIS OWN PRODUCT
OR CRAZILY CONTRIVES TO MAKE A MUTATION IN THE ALMIGHTY

(cf. Hosea 9:7-9, Deuteronomy 32:16-17,20-21,28, Romans 1:20-21,30-31)

THAT is precisely one of the points in the UN situation. He is not even mentioned, the God of the Bible (since the Holy One of Israel is precisely the Lord Jesus Christ, God incarnate - Isaiah 48:16, 45, Philippians 2, John 8:58).

WHAT He requires, HIS field is ignored, whether as shown in this volume and DIVINE AGENDA before it, concerning the prophetic fulfilment of Israel's return to its "assigned" land, in morals, in religion as a phenomenon and a subject for assessment, or in the objectives of human life (see News 42, and Appendix 1, The Other News, Mystery of Iniquity)^*2. HE IS IGNORED. HE DOES NOT EVEN FIGURE. After the British Empire, for all its faults, this is a development of the highest order (cf. News 73). The US, which still has many millions of professing Christians, is being white-anted to such an extent WITHIN the churches, that when the author went in 1956, to Westminster Theological Seminary, he was advised, so justly, by one of the chief executives of that body, at a private dinner, that there was much religion in the nation, but most of it was effervescence. It has spilled over the top of the glass, since then.

The movement of the Presbyterian Church U.S. to the Confession of 1967, with its patronising, humanistic, movement away from Biblical objectivity, to the concept of 'theories' within it, merely gave a lead, as did the Princeton movement in the 1920's, away from the Bible as the sole source of doctrine. Princeton that had been among the best of the mighty in Biblical scholarship and defence, with Machen, Robert Dick Wilson and many more, famed for its approaches, fell like a lopped bough.

Since then the departure of the multiplicity of the Southern Baptist, in their continued acceptance of Billy Graham, despite his endorsement so often of so much in Roman Catholicism, and his characterisation of the RC College from which he obtained a doctorate, as being founded on the same faith as he preached, is notorious. ROME is as acceptable in that Church, it seems, since those who forward such fellowship with such statements there, appear as free from rebuke and discipline, as in the Anglican body, is the Queen's visit to the Pope last year, in black besides his whiteness.

But that ? It commences, the clear turbulence, it starts to strike without control. What now of the reported conversation of Tony Blair, PM, with Prince Charles, in which the latter could find no problem with an RC King for Britain, despite the hard won, blood bought law to the contrary! Such concessions, professions, impressions, statements ... they add weight to these things, as to the fact that the PM often worships at the RC location of his choice. "LET CATHOLIC BE KING, SAYS CHARLES" was the headline in The Times front page.

We need only realise that the Scottish Parliament reportedly expressed support for abolishing the 1701 Act of Settlement to see the seething spread of renegacy. This Act was a basic law giving peace from the many internationally based Roman Catholic assaults on British independence (for it is, as has been noted before, one of the three international conspiracies^*3, quite objectively, and as clearly implied in its own terms, not to say conduct). Thus is there manifest to this extraordinary extent, just how there has been degradation and regression in this once Great Britain.

Meanwhile, as Rev. David Murray reports in the Free Church Witness, Dec. 2000, the Liberal Democrats in Britain are now "the first mainstream political party to back the abolition of the 1701 Act of Settlement and the dis-establishment of the Church of England, both of which debar any Roman Catholic, or anyone married to a Catholic, from sitting on the throne."

Charles, Prince of Wales, has also lent his princely credulity to the concept, going somewhat farther, if possible, by indicating his profoundly impressed feelings towards that battle cry of the Arab world, as in much it is, the Koran (see Other Religions). It is there, as demonstrated from the text, in the cited references, that the martial elements, the force aspect even within the confines of faith, appears so clearly, making religion an object of human violence in numerous instances. From earliest beginnings, it is found dealing with battle, and it continues replete with premises concerning it.

Moslem ? But of course, Charles has indicated that he would like to be called, NOT Defender of the Faith, but Defender of Faiths. Thus is God debased, mocked, and the blood of His servants in the Reformation, allowed to congeal unnoticed by the 'liberated' conscience which forgets that Rome has reneged NOT AT ALL on its follies still found IN WRITING and UNCHANGED, from of old (cf. The Frantic Millenium and the Peace of Faith - FM Ch. 6, SMR pp. 1056ff.). This Roman Catholic body glories in its being right, and in being exclusive, insisting on the rule of prince and prelate, world-wide, by an authority (SMR pp. 1070ff.) once made manifest in its much used armies, which crushed, killed, its Inquisitions which sought to impose rule likewise, as did the Ustashi and its Roman Cardinal (to be), Stepinac (cf. SMR pp. 951-2) in World War II.

The Pope's apology for those in the service of truth, who used excessive force, is wholly ridiculous as shown in FM Ch. 6, above, in that it CANNOT cover those who did NOT do it in the service of truth, which is ALL who followed the heretical Roman doctrines, which is all who were authorised, on the basis of their doing precisely THAT. TO show integrity, the Pope would need to tag as mass murderers ALL the popes who authorised the very concept of force at all, in annihilating the personal fortunes, bodily habitats and children's parents for millions. The cause ? It was in essence for one of the greatest categories of the victims, just this, that they did not divorce themselves from their Biblical faith.

In a War Crimes Trial, do you say,

Sorry where we used too much force in our truth directed efforts ...?

Try it on Nuremberg, or on the war crimes commission of today. Equivocation is all that is left, for how can those with infallible-power to discern and proclaim, fail to use it when millions die in writhing agony, and millions more children are dispossessed, so that they may the more readily be manipulated!

The world regresses, even to listen with any impressed attention whatsoever, to such profaning of peace, or to continue sedately unperturbed in such propagandised acceptance of violence. Condemnation, not qualification; purgation of the principles which CLAIM that it is right to have and thus use such power, this is the requirement. It would be with anyone else. So the world slavers for servitude, the Reformation is dismissed with flowing words, the international conspiracies of Rome and Islam join with that of Communism (cf. News 98), all violently active in the last century, and the people - the people who talk internationally - love to have it so.

What is the strategy (of the devil, this power, or that, it is a confused mixture, but the strategist is not an earthling in this, but a fallen spirit) ? Perhaps it is this...Let's put that statue of liberty grandmother, Great Britain (source of Magna Carta, for all its MANY faults) in with the rest, affix it to Europe or whatever else will bind the place, and perhaps soon America will follow, and then NO ONE, but NO ONE will dare to be free. Free from what ? International jurisdiction which, with the various inputs from RC and Islamic and Communist countries, and emasculated other countries, makes humanism to rule, with various tinctures of Rome, or Mecca or Moscow, New Age or Old Sin - say then, Peking ? They ARE themselves international, so it does not really matter except for Rome, which has vested interest in Europe, as does God on the side of equity and proportion, justice and truth, in Rome's own fate (Revelation 13,17 cf. SMR pp. 946ff.).

ENDEAVOURING TO DO DENTISTRY ON GOD:
MUTATION OF HIS WORD
PUTATIVELY PUTTING HIM INTO POSSIBILITY,
WHOSE WORD DETERMINES DESTINY

Meanwhile, and this is a critical and a crucial feature, those who might lead the world back, are being themselves subverted, in Biblical terms. Thus from the Calvary Contender, we read that Clark Pinnock and others (Pinnock started with some endeavours towards maintaining Biblical fidelity) teach the "openness of God", that His knowledge of the future events is not exhaustive, that He can be surprised. This is not as simple as it seems. First it is anti -Biblical. Thus God in Isaiah 46:10 advises not only His knowledge of the future, but that He is One ...

"declaring the end from the beginning,
And from ancient times things that are not yet done,
Saying, 'My counsel shall stand,
And I will do all My pleasure...’ "

In those terms He announces that a king named Cyrus will come at future date and after the captivity in Babylon, release Israel for return to its own land (its own place, as Zechariah has it for Jerusalem, as we have seen earlier in this volume). This is seen in Isaiah 44:27-45:1. In announcing this, God indicates some of His divine prerogatives and powers such as these:

"Who frustrates the signs of the babblers,
And drives diviners made;
Who turns wise men backward,
And makes their knowledge foolishness;
Who confirms the word of His servant,
And performs the counsel of His messengers" (Isaiah 44:24-25).

Further, in Amos 3:5-6, we have this:

"Will a bird fall into a snare on the earth, where there is no trap for it ?
Will a snare spring up from the earth, if it has caught nothing at all ?
If a trumpet is blown in a city, will not the people be afraid ?
If there is calamity in a city, will not the LORD have done it ?
Surely the LORD God does nothing
Unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets.
A lion has roared ?
Who will not fear ?
The Lord GOD has spoken!
Who can but prophesy ?"

God then proceeds to give detailed accounts of His coming actions as though they were yesterday's news.

This openness concept, therefore, is as far from the word of God, and the ways of God, as is an open door to hell, in the presence of the Shepherd.

Not merely does God KNOW what is to be; He is the final cause of its happening. If there is punishment, trial, test, rebuke, if there is cleansing, it cannot work at all without His consent, is not possible without His sanction, and as in Job 1-2, has no chance at all of coming into the bloom or bane of existence, unless at His say so.

Is He surprised ? HE has wrought it. Is He mocked ? He bears it till its time.

From Psalm 33:11ff., we find this reminder:

"The counsel of the LORD stands forever,
The thoughts of His heart to all generations…
The LORD looks from heaven,
He sees all the sons of men.

"From the place of His dwelling He looks
On all the inhabitants of the earth:
He fashions their hearts individually:
He considers all their works."

Indeed,

"Who has directed the Spirit of the LORD,
Or as His counsellor has taught Him ?
With whom did He take counsel, and who instructed Him,
And taught Him in the path of justice ?
Who taught Him knowledge,
And showed Him the way of understanding ?" (Isaiah 40:13-14).

"His understanding is unsearchable" - Isaiah 28. It has no number, no invasion ramparts, no instruction platform from man to God. He has the information, His is the consummation, He announces the end, He is there from the first (Isaiah 44:6, 41:4, Psalm 102:25ff., 94:8-12, Romans 11:36, Isaiah 48:3-8). The poses of man, the poseur so often, are posturings that receive the flames of divine irony repeatedly:

" ‘Present your case,’ says the LORD.
‘Bring forth your strong reasons,’ says the King of Jacob.
‘Let them bring forth and who us what will happen:
Let them show the former things, what they were,
That we may consider them
And know the latter end of them,
Or declare to us things to come.’ "

This from Isaiah 41, is paralleled in Isaiah 48 (cf. personally, Psalm 32:8, Isaiah 50:4, the beauty of the willing ear, the prepared heart), and extended:

"I have declared the former things fm the beginning;
They went forth from My mouth, and I caused them to hear it.
Suddenly I did them, and they came to pass.
Because I knew that you were obstinate,
And your neck was an iron sinew,
And your brow bronze.
Even from the beginning I have declared it to you,
Before it came to pass I proclaimed it to you,
Lest you should say,
‘My idol has done them…’ "

The idols of man are numerous, and one of the worst, perhaps, is himself!

As to God, however, whose are the worlds of space and time, He has the authority of the author, and the sovereignty of the Creator, for whom there is no surprise, but only the performance of that wonderful creation, liberty, which however is NOT the creation of 'god', but a site for abuse of those who, from the very first, would in this or that way be 'as God', as Satan so cunningly pointed out (Genesis 3:3-4). To be 'as God' however, without actually being He, is like trying to be an atomic bomb, while actually a mosquito. It is ludicrous. There is but ONE, from whom, of whom, and to whom are all things (Romans 11:36).

Not only does He KNOW, but He announces, and characterises the result, that His word alone stands in forecast, His knowledge of the end is sure, His detailed knowledge of the means is irreducible and His will based on His wisdom, will always stand (cf. Isaiah 34:16-17^*4). As a statement of ignorance, it is the opposite. As a statement of knowledge, it is complete. (Cf. SMR Ch. 1 .)

The openness of God is towards repentance, Himself the donor, not to the regality of the flesh, itself the giver! (Psalm 33:18, 32:8, Acts 11:18, 13:48, Ephesians 1:4) and it is He also there, whose counsel and gift of repentance stands. The actual word, in truth, is this:

"The eyes of the LORD are on the righteous,
And His ears are open to their cry", for THAT is the real openness!

"This poor man cried out, and the LORD heard him,
And saved him out of all his troubles" - Psalm 34:6. Again,
"The LORD is near to all who call upon Him, To all who call upon Him in truth" -
Psalm 145:18.

It is because He can never be surprised, that He can always answer, in timely, true and assured fashion, even announcing long in advance when and how He will do it, to prevent that idolatry of the flesh, which so readily, if blindly, imagines itself comparable with Him, whose product it is.

It is hard, then, to over-emphasise the anti-Biblical nature of this grabbed doctrine of delusive 'openness' which shuts out the ever-wise penetration of the living God; which sets God back in Primary School, who made the mind of man who seeks to educate! It became more personalised when one medical doctor was busy telling the author of his own interest in this "openness", perhaps in over-reaction to a Seventh Day Adventist past, for this, he stated, was his religious start. Naturally, he was given SMR to study, with a clear indication that God is CLOSED in this, that HE KNOWS and does as He knows and is moved by no force in heaven or earth, from His pronounced decisions to act:

"For the LORD of hosts has purposed,
And who will annul it,
His hand is stretched out,
And who will turn it back ?"

Isaiah 14:27 (cf. Jeremiah 4:28, Isaiah 43:13, Isaiah 44:26).

This is the position. What are its practical results ?

Why this: be WARNED by God of what is to be, when it MIGHT NOT BE! That is the way of contest and confusion, carnality and the devil, whose endeavours are always to falsify and demean the word of God, in the interests of his own power, position and indeed, destiny! (cf. Rev. 12:12, Isaiah 14:13ff., Genesis 3:1,5, cf. The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 8).

If so puny, underprivileged, non-sovereign a god, a mere caprice of human invention, a dweller in the interstices, not the God of fiat creation, contrary to logic and the Lord’s word alike (Ephesians 1;11 cf. SMR Ch. 1, Barbs, Arrows and Balms 6 - 7), if this weakling prodigy of self-contradiction were to rule, man might well arise to seek the summit.

The devil in fact does. In that lies all the difference. It is not available, all things being known, foreknown, and at that, the whole predestinated as well (Romans 8:28ff., Ephesians 1:4, Romans 9:17-18, 11:32-36, Genesis 15:16ff., Isaiah 40:13, 45:21). If ONE thing were out of hand, then ANYTHING could be, for the interstices and interactions would be multiple. But NOT ONE THING comes to pass without the counsel of the Lord (Ephesians 1:11), who WORKS it to be so.

Were such a god to rule, what then ? At once, all Biblical warning becomes subjective, all rules of the road for a purpose in hand, become questionable, and all directives become subject to revision. TO be sure, God can announce an impending disaster, and on the application of repentance, not implement it (as in Ezekiel 33:11ff.), for this is part of His mercy. It is NOT that He does not know, but that He warns, and if the conditions and criteria of repentance are met, has NO desire to act in judgment, since He delights in mercy (see SINNERS ONLY, and Micah 7:19ff.). He also knows when judgment has no recall, and often says so (as in Hosea 13:14, where the judgment is vicariously being born by Himself, in the Messiah, for those who being foreknown (Romans 8:30ff.), are His.

Not worked on to be moulded or entertained, but trying man (Psalm 11) and of infinite understanding (Psalm 147), God works all things after the counsel of His own will (Ephesians 1;11). THEY do not work Him! He works them. It is not the counsel of man that will stand, but the counsel of the Lord. it shall stand.

Thus it is the Lord who must be understood, not ourselves; for it is He who is God, and has made us, and not we ourselves (Psalm 100); it is He who has said, in Isaiah 46:

"My counsel shall stand", indeed, all these words:

"I am God and there is none like Me,
Declaring the end from the beginning,
And from ancient times things that are not yet done.
Saying, 'My counsel shall stand,
And I will do all My pleasure...
Indeed I have spoken:
I will also bring it to pass.
I have purposed it:
I will also do it.' "

It is not that the Lord induces evil, but liberty produces it; but the end of it all, and the way of it, the penalties and processes, the Lord superintends, supervises, of them all He declares, of His will He makes sure, so that not one peep, not one chirrup can distort, pervert or alter His mind which He has made clear, or His counsel which He has wrought out. SO does Amos make it clear, Isaiah manifest. In mercy, He divulges and challenges, in blazing glory He shows; but He knows the way and manifests both His wishes and His determinations. Practice proclaims in fulfilment, what purpose proclaims in knowledge. They always match, as He declares (Amos 3:5ff., Isaiah 44:24ff.).

Not restless, but resistless, not immune to feeling, but having already felt, foreknowing all things, and predestinating what it is to be, ordaining who shall stumble, and knowing the end of a matter before it sheds its light or darkness, He is nevertheless not capricious or arbitrary, for it is His COUNSEL that shall stand, and He WORKS this counsel as Ephesians states. Moreover, His foreknowledge does not make knowledge the less real, because it is secure, or His emotions void, because they are composed, His compassions less ready because they are neither capable of being outdistanced by events, or invaded by them.

· The living God never grows old, nor is anything stale, because eternity is before Him

· (cf. Psalm 102:26-28; Matthew 26:34 Luke 22:32, where the poignancy with Peter embraces both knowledge of his coming fall and its manner, and the lively prayer FOR him, with fully KNOWN result),

· and time a creation (Romans 8:38-39);

· for in Him in no shadow of variability or turning (James 1:17),

· who dwells in light unapproachable (I Timothy 6:16),

· yet has released His wonder to man, on His terms, the gospel of grace (John 1:18).

He does, as the Psalm tells us, what He pleases in heaven and earth (Psalm 115), but it is a GOOD pleasure (Ephesians 1:5).

Thus Christ was delivered up "by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God", and the number of surprises in this plan, schema, even at the interface of God and man, GOD AS MAN, were without number, not because they were too great to count, but because they did not exist. The springing up of the trap, the calamity in the city, it is not a thing man can dissever from the divine counsel, for "will not the LORD have done it!" Indeed, "All things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account" - Hebrews 4:13. There is NO exception. It is NAKEDNESS before His eyes, NECESSITY before His spoken word, FOREKNOWLEDGE in Him who declares the end from the beginning, and not one fact can alter His word, not one event can outdistance His foresight, conquer His predictions, no not with the utmost ramifications. His work is precise, His word is sure.

"Indeed, before the day was, I am He:
And there is no one who can deliver out of My hand.
I work, and who will reverse it."

The doctrine of divine "openness" in the sense presented, then, is merely one of divine exclusion. The accessibility of the heart of God is real; the counsel that enables it equally so. The judgment of the Lord is sure, and His counsel stands always as He performs the words of His servants (Isaiah 44:25-26); and His mercy is not meddled with, but to be sought. It is not the less sure that He will hear because all is naked, and He is beyond time, which is His mere creation, informed by His purposes, and distorting none, but interpreting and fulfilling. It is rather the more sure.

So is this disingenuous heresy of 'openness' better called frustration of foreknowledge, or ignorance, good neither to God nor man; is neither Biblical nor possible. God does not spend His time mending His ignorance, and trying to fit in His longstanding forecasts to the things that come upon Him unawares. As He states so clearly, HE DOES IT. Unmoved, He moves. Before Him, NOTHING is closed, or enters into the arena, to His consternation, surprise or regress. It is WORKED by Him. The universe, for all its liberties, is HIS; and He knows it, tells it, and then does it. The phrasing of this heresy is back-to-front. It is not the openness of God to surprise, but the OPENNESS OF ALL THINGS TO HIM. THAT is the Biblical rendering of the matter!

Strange indeed are the feelings which despite all reason and reality in God's perfect fulfilment without the slightest wavering of all He says, despite the horror and appalling fiasco of a God who at any time in the midst of billions of people, finds the unexpected abort His will by happening unannounced and unknown, and so abort His principles, standards and responsibility, making Him in incompetence a witness, not a worker. Over time, He is not inundated with it. It is ALL before Him as is a panorama in spatial terms, for man. He involvement is not the less personal, but the more; nor is His any estrangement through perfect counsel, but rather the more intimate is His participation.

Strange too are those revulsions which seem to imagine that BECAUSE HE KNOWS and all is naked, it is not fair, or reasonable, or lacks liberty. It is BECAUSE He knows that liberty can be, for only then is His control such that liberty can be maintained in its integrity, NEVER invaded by anything, since of all, He knows all, always. (Cf. Predestination and Freewill.)

Thus is the folly of this heresy of partial blindness in the Almighty!

What are its practical results ? Well then, in the light, or rather darkness of this anti-Biblical heresy, one could ask: Why be WARNED by God of what is to be, when it MIGHT NOT BE! At once, all Biblical warning would become subjective, all rules of the road for a purpose in hand, become questionable, and all directives become subject to revision. But what does the Book of the LORD
say ? This (Isaiah 14:24):

"The LORD of hosts has sworn, saying,
Surely, as I have thought, so it shall come to pass,
And as I have purposed, so it shall stand.... For the LORD of hosts has purposed,
And who will annul it?
His hand is stretched out,
And who will turn it back ?"

TO be sure, God can propose an impending disaster, and on the occasion of repentance, not implement it (as in Ezekiel 33:11ff.); for this is part of His mercy. It is NOT that He does not know, but that He warns, and if the conditions and criteria of repentance are met, has NO desire to act in judgment, since He delights in mercy (see SINNERS ONLY, and Micah 7:19ff.). However, as we have just seen, when He determines the end, nothing can restrain or alter it. You see this positively, in Jeremiah 32:36ff., short-term, and 33:3, 20-26; and negatively in Ezekiel 12:1-11, Jeremiah 15:1-9; in great detail, even to the name of a coming delivering king, in Isaiah 44:25-45:1, and in desolatory detail in Isaiah 34.

In Jeremiah, indeed, the Lord made the most amazing offers of deliverance on condition (Jeremiah 17:19-27, following the categorical proclamation of disaster, of Jeremiah 15:1!), but knew full well the result. Knowledge does not remove heart; it heartens it. Even in human terms, at times we can discern with a strange assurance and certainty, the disposition of things, not to the stifling of compassion, but to its increment. With the Almighty, this gleam is a searchlight. ALL is naked before Him.

UNMANGLING THE CREATED ‘GOD’,
AND VIEWING THE WONDER OF THE REAL ONE

Such mercy, then, does not turn on a lack of knowledge, but is an open door for MAN to repent (cf. Ezekiel 18). When however the decision is determinate, and not principial, a resolution and not a proposal, the thing cannot be changed. Thus we see the actual transition from multiplied mercies with multiple messengers and multiple methods, to actual determinative action, in Hosea 13:10, moving to 13:7. It is then that it is followed by the divine method of mercy noted in Hosea 13:14, one involving prodigious action and cost for God, but done nevertheless. As He says of this, His resolution to act, even to His own pain and grief as in the Gospel, it is determinate:

"O Grave, I will be Your destruction,
Repentance is hidden from My eyes."

Again, in Jeremiah 4:28, we see the same time of resolution without further offers and opportunities:

"For this shall the earth mourn,
And the heavens above be black,
Because I have spoken,
I have purposed and will not relent,
Nor will I turn back from it.
The whole city shall flee from the horse of the horsemen and bowmen,
They shall go into thickets, and climb up on the rocks,
Every city shall be forsaken,
And not a man shall dwell in it."

The confusion of mercy, and its longsuffering desires, with knowledge, and its sure awareness, is what may mislead many; but it is no help to the receiving of mercy to mock the knowledge of the One who shows it, as if His heart held indemnity on His mind, and He could not think because He was so kind. The stars He numbers, we find in Psalm 147, but HIS understanding is WITHOUT NUMBER, infinite! ALL things are from Him, to Him and through Him. Even liberty, that wonder of creations, is contained within His plans; and even though this is given truly amazing rein, it serves in the end to demonstrate the unworkability of all else, the folly and the fecklessness, the sham and the shame (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 16), before His knowledge, wisdom, power and righteousness, with - for all that, mercy like a wind, going before His face (Psalm 89:14).

God does not short-circuit the laboratory of history, in favour of the law; but directing man to what is right, also allows history to demonstrate it. To this, He adds the wonderful savour of knowledge, telling us precisely what is to be (Amos 3:7, Isaiah 41:21-24, Ephesians 1:11, 3:10), scorning the upstart imaginations that try to add to Him or subtract from His dispositions of all things, while He Himself proceeds in WORKING all things after the counsel of His own will. This He does while for our own duly progammed day, specifying even the unbelief format which refuses to accept either the universal flood or the realities of creation (II Peter 3, Romans 1). This very thing ? it is now to be found as if man were mocking himself both in intellectual folly and servile pursuit of the predicted character of it; and with it, He declares the time in history, the end time, and with this, as in Matthew 24 and many other places, the tartan of events which make it definable, describable and hence isolable to knowledge when it comes, so that we may KNOW that it is here.

KNOW it! He SHOWS it in advance (Isaiah 44-45, 41, 48), and where it will be contested, as here, and now.

Mankind thus is regressive, moving back to the blighted littleness of assumed greatness, as in Eden, Babel and before the flood (Genesis 6), and in the service of pollution, to the travesties of truth which degrade God, in thought, in the interests of humanism, that blush-free insertion of divinity into mortality, that makes a cocktail that intoxicates the world.

We are degrading, rather like old rubber tyres prior to burning, in the world, going from bad to worse, from restraint to increasing lack of it, to calling bad good, good bad, evil splendid, virtue wickedness, God weak, man strong, to the point that vocabulary exercises in alteration could well become a University subject, except that the powers that be would not like to note the Biblically predicted trend, in terms of its standards: DOWN, DOWN.

In the end, it brings to thought a memory. One remembers the image from a Philadelphia tyre dump incredibly sending up clouds of black smoke hundreds of feet into the air, as it sought to diminish its load - and in just such a way, finally, there is the result of perdition, sedition against truth, recklessness against righteousness on the part of those who not only did not MAKE their equipment, but MOCK the One who did, ignoring Him like some modern child, disregarding the feeble protestations of its parents, as it indulges in gluttony and noisy intrusion at the table.

This was to be (II Timothy 3, Matthew 24, I Timothy 4, II Thessalonians 2). It is.

REVERTING TO THE FACTS

But God is not mocked. HE SAID IT ALL. Look at II Timothy 3, on the now actually HELPED conduct of many children (given educational assistance - in the interests of better survival and self-realisation and so on), that they should be self-interested, self-propelled and self-declamatory: "disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy".

But what of the faithful ? They diminish in this, that the Church of England is looking and has long been looking at Rome as a base (cf. A Question of Gifts pp. 65ff.), and its recent moves are touched above; the Lutheran Church has moved in ways epochal as well as merely astonishing, towards Rome (cf. Stepping Out for Christ Chs. 7, 1, News 107); the Methodist Church in Australia has been virtually enveloped in the Uniting Church, which has been romancing with homosexual preacher questions to the point of near division, and does not even claim to be based doctrinally on the infallible word of God, the Bible; Baptists have divided and redivided on Biblical questions, and the Southern Baptist has been noted above! Presbyterians in the USA have at least made some effort to return to the Bible, but only in small bodies, the major churches remaining far from the faith, now with increasing clarity, virtually without exception.

It is true that the Presbyterian Church in America has done rather better than some, being an amalgam of various bits, but it too has weakened catastrophically on creation, separation (if it ever had a policy on this), and at the missionary level, on the latter point disastrously. It has even become, in one’s own practical work, because of this, an impediment in Australia, to reform (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 8, News 97, Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium Ch. 3, pp. 44ff.).

Tender Times for Timely Truths 8, Joyful Jottings Ch. 5, News 69, News 100, News 82, News 87, Acme, Alpha and Omega Ch. 9 and The Frantic Millenium and the Peace of Faith 7 and 9 add data to the degenerative dynamic of our times, Biblically assessed.

It is total, illimitable, irresponsible, intoxicated, boastful, pretentious, official and endorsed.

It is educative, sexual, marital, social and military.

It is bloody, beatific, visionary and sodden.

It is godless and spiritual, spiritistic and self-enshrining, the spirit of the Age with its normal background dynamic rising to crescendo (cf. The Kingdom of Heaven Ch.8, SMR pp. 743, 750Bff.). Church survival is one of the most degraded of the phenomena, as when the PC in America accepted all the most eclectic and reckless seeming sorts of visions and views on creation's episodes one could well imagine (apart from visions and dreams of clamour and glamour), with one chord playing loudly, HOW THEN SHALL WE LIVE ? if we do not so accommodate.