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THE GENERATION OF THE
DISPOSSESSED
A Few Million in Cambodia, many millions
in China, as in Russia, millions in World Wars
I and II; and the children are catching on - the litany of
death
They cry. They cry with
guns, shooting children in the cafeteria, levelling a
rifle from the balcony at other youth; at 11 one can take cunningly contrived
potshots at classmates, relishing the wonder of it all, not using shanghais, or
throwing stones, but guns... guns... guns. There is now a mind to murder in the
mites, relishing violence, taught survival, orphans from the truth, people
re-fashioned as talking lumps of clay, who have their day, and will use it as
they see fit.
Did not Jesus say that
to be angry with your brother without cause put you in danger of hell (yes, in
the Sermon on the Mount! The beauty has a discipline,
and the wonder has principles (Matthew
"You have heard that the ancients were told, 'You shall not commit murder'; and 'Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court';
But I tell you that every one who is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment ;
and whoever shall say to his brother, Empty-Head {good-for-nothing} , shall be in danger of the council;
but whoever shall say, You fool! Shall be in danger of hell fire."
There is here a sense of being bound up with the evil, the guilt, the affliction, needing release. This is perhaps physical, mental, is certainly spiritual, personal and as to the 'court', juridical, needing pardon from the Maker of the persons wrongly used. Man is not free for spree in spiritual squalor.
Is not the invisible the author of the visible, even in human life; and is it too soon to point out that the invisible causes have very visible results. God is not mocked.
In Japan, ghoulish purveyors can come from the top level of professional life, spend
millions, create sophisticated nerve gases, exhale their bile in subways,
disable their prey amid civilisation, new Hitler
rashes with new vision of new Stalins with new
manipulation to make new things for a new world that is frankly getting old.
Such is the growing genre on many sides.
THE PRODUCTIONS OF DEATH THAT IS STILL EMBODIED
They will not listen; then
cannot listen (Matthew
It cannot happen; it must unhappen, they must be helped, imprisoned, set free, given forty lashes with the rattan, given no lashes, given life in gaol, given new hope; so speak the civic leaders. But as they are, they have no hope. Dope with them mind-tamers, speak to them of morals structurally unsound, because they pathetically are based on nothing; address the place where their spirits would be if the trainers believed in what they are. Let the lost speak to the lost: such is the mainstream of manners with man.
THE DISPOSSESSED
THIS is the generation of the dispossessed. Small wonder. In their schools, most often they are little removed from the banal follies of blind Communism, released into the earthy lusts of materialistic substitutes for thought. Specialists in vision they enhance it with drugs, mutant mental disorders 'created' by toxins, while their lives are like gliders in a downdraft from a small hill, with the wrenching force of foul air from polluted minds, their guide, folly their mentor (cf. That Magnificent Rock, Ch.8). The array of mental abuse and spiritual torture is manifold, varied, but its trend, with whatever high-sounding words, is clear.
Forbidden
in the maze are thoughts of the decisive revelation of the next world, of the
Creator, of the design of the spirit, the matrix of the mind, the life of the
soul, the modes and manners of human feelings and their ground in personality,
in turn grounded in the image of God. No such foundation can there be; and
foundations in air are unstable! These things are as carefully removed as grace from the
heart of the young murderers who disadorn their young
lives, even at 11, at 13, with death on their hearts and blood on their hands (see Time
Magazine, Jun 1, 1998)*1. They regret,
but can they repent? What is there to repent when the soul is dispossessed, and
possessed by what is not its master, in the mastery of madness, and the madness
savours of an unclean mastery where the equipment of
eternity is cast to the dogs. Do they not lacerate it?
THE CULT OF THE SACRED SELF
The sacred self concept has become a religion. Devilishly denying God, they cry to their consciousness or their unconscious or their mantra or their yoga or to their transcendental meditation or to their moment of universal consciousness or to their hopes of nice old aliens coming from nowhere, just as they are themselves going to nowhere ... that is nice (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri, Ch.1). . A place is prepared and its name is hell (Proverbs 30:12-14, Amos 4:1-13). Is it any wonder that hell on earth comes so near when its fires rage in the soul, or that the fires rage when the house is imagined not to be there!
What sort of fire protection do you make, what fire extinguishers do you provide for a house which is not there; and if none, where is its safety? It is mere illusion is it not? so that you panic, or shriek, or grieve when you find that it is certainly there. Then the smoke and the anguish and the torment and the mad misuse of the mind with insane-making drugs, unreality provoking opiates of the soul, double agent dopes and stimulants, social, political, cultural, pseudo-religious, civic, supinely quasi-intellectual, which stir the imagination and drug the understanding: then these catch up.
Then breathless with the ecstasy of the wonder-self, the cool, self-advancing, self-reliant, self-fulfilling destiny, they shoot, and burn their minds, ravage their bodies, sexually abuse their minors, prostitute their souls, debasing sexuality which is the language of deep and intimate mutual concern, into power crazes, pleasure cruises until the ashes of the fires are the remnants of the buildings... that were not there. But they are there. And the ruins are there. And the cost is not merely in millions, or billions; it is in men, or what would have been men; in women who are dissected by disintegration into loosely residual systems, astray, out of control. Minors run amok, because God is mocked.
THE MOCKERY OF PRETENCE
Dispossessed of understanding, owners of houses that are not there, they become irresponsible care-takers; for what is there to take care of? They grow into ruthless divorcees, for what is love? And will not the children find their ways? Do they need nest of love, when love is not there? They develop into parents whose children wander from home, for where is home? is it not a pad for convenience, or a shack for advancement, or a base for work or a place to have some relaxation. There is no place for the soul, for its Maker, for the love of God; for God is not loved. He is first invented in delusive formats, controllable because not real, and useless because not living; or dismissed; and then the gap is served.
The GAP becomes the leader,
and the evacuated residue in the heart becomes the listening device for
nothingness, emptiness, ashes and shards, clever contrivances that have no
therapeutic value because what needs the therapy is not there. It is imagined,
even when it reeks of spiritual radio-activity; it is still not there. It is
The Gap in place of God is the emptiness for the fulness, the imagination for the reality, the despair for the triumph, the woe for the wonder. The generation of ashes finds itself fancy for a time; and then the disrepair of the heartless sets in, or the disruption of the dispersed, or the shadows of the illusions, the once gleaming aluminium foil of the pretences and pretensions, the false ideals, the imagined hopes fall twisted, making crazy patterns, some gleaming for the time in the dirt, some "successfully professional", some already visible relics.
And where are those patterns? In the dust. Man disdains his dust and imagines his life is self-productive in the generation of the dispossessed; but the dust is the material and God is the Creator both of dust and of destiny, of soul, and mind, and spirit and emotion, of feeling and of the whole architecture which is the basis of the product called man. What is it like? It is like a pen that thinks, but disdains to write, for there is no author, and it was produced in a fit of abstraction by what is not there. So it is used to dig the fields, and it leaks and it breaks and the maker of pens is disdained, or despised but in any case not considered. Ink-blots are then the least of the troubles, for the 'advanced' case where paper is still considered 'relevant'. The philosophy of the relevant replaces the spirit of service; but relevant to what?
"Just keeping fit, Uncle!" says the young man in Punch, as he goes off to tennis in the days of mere gadding about. "Fit for what!" returns his senior. Fit to be considered, in that case, recklessly irresponsible as his glamour world of self-entertainment misuses the joy of sport by substituting the life of self-satisfying balms, which turn sour. Survival of what? of ashes, of twisted metal, of dirty houses, of broken staircases to the loft, to the skies, so that the light is not seen in the sunken basements, carved out, hewn from below for the purpose?
The architecture of the house is ignored.
The schema of the life*2 is disregarded.
it is ignored like dust, returns to
dust; but not only to dust.
THE VISIONARY VICES
The mental wreckage is a destructive act; the visionary vices are a warping distortion, the wild sprees are a frustrated dysfunction, the blindness to fact is a toxic violation of the power to imagine, the assurance of godlike powers is the denial of God, and the denial of God, even when a false god who has no power, no creation and no judgment is imagined, is the assertion of delusion. Deluged with delusion, what do you expect? Will not even mentally active professional people of discipline in the mental world, show their barrenness in the moral and the spiritual, because they do not understand that it is there.
Immersing themselves in 'Nature', which is somehow made into something real, rather than a series of products inter-related by plan in the multitudes of inter-meshing worlds, with which they live, they look to the visible, as if a pen worshipped paper when its maker would use it, and the two went off on a spree of finding out what "life is like". It is then like absconding with equipment, with madness for vision and recklessness for reason.
The feelings that go with the exultant trip are those of ruin, when the fling is past, and of ashes, when the fire is burnt. Some fires burn more slowly, and the bitterness of facing death without reason becomes a lust for life that will pay thousands for drugs to extend it just a little. Some rejoice like Solomon in their works (though he saw through its vanity to the truth); but the worker is ignored, and his destiny is like that of any thief. To the productive worker in Song of Solomon, comes this word: "Your own vineyard you have neglected!" To use the words given: "I have not taken care of my own vineyard" (Song of Solomon 1:6). What if it is not remedied? When judgment is delayed, it is not dismissed.
The
dispossessed are repossessed, if not by demons, as we see more and more
frequently, in higher and higher profile, then by lurid dynamics, broken
systems out of control surging and charging, like an aircraft on one engine,
inadequate and only partial; or a power aircraft acting as a glider which looks
to the drafts which cannot lift, because it is constructed for power; and
because the engines are not there, only things that happen with a roar, so that
no oil or service is provided as the pilotless craft
crazes through the skies of life into the oblivion of dramas ending in death.
Perhaps it crashes into other craft before it hits the ground.
THE STARK HULKS OF MISEDUCATED MISSIONARIES
Stark hulks without life, they are often taught by miseducated missionaries to believe in their sacred selves, their internal fulfilment, their hold on life; so that? so that they may look to their survival as relics, spiritual outcasts, demented meddlers with mind without the knowledge of its place in the hierarchy of the soul, and the place of the soul in the agile vigours of the spirit, and the placement of the spirit in the hands of God who made it, for the realities of fellowship with the One who having given it meaning, means nothing else! (Cf. Ecclesiastes 11:9-12:13).
The escalations of matter, mind, imagination, feeling, personality, spirit with their multitudinous equipment in ever more intricate divisions, as of a firm, directions and instincts, programs and programs suffering intervention, opportunities of understanding and results of ignoring it: these like a vast skyscraper sit in each yard, in each life (cf. SMR 332G-H). No manager, but abuse, no standing orders but the self, no purpose but to be there, no care but desired receptions from the clouds that pass, no service but what is lusted, no significance but what is assumed, nothing. It is the generation of nothings because of dispossession; of dispossession because of blindness; of blindness because of sin, and of sin taught, actively instructed, belaboured on the tormented brows, the lost minds and the steely hearts.
WHY, WHY, WHY do these horrors happen even with the very young! they ask. Why do so many children murder, why is there no sensitivity of heart, cluster of morals, awareness of significance! Why is the mind dead, they ask as they deliver the mind-destroying drugs of their cultural dis-ideals? Why is there no heart? they query, as they give the cultural substitutes for good, the heart-arrest drugs, since there is no heart is there? only when it is needed!
But
does such vain asking after ruin, does this remove the misinstruction,
the blindness which led to the collisions with the lampposts on the side-walk,
because not only are the eyes shut tightly, but the arrogance of flesh is
promoted, promulgate, survival is sainthood and sainthood is getting there,
whatever your thing is, whether in work or play or pleasure, getting it. YOU
are the mentor, the mind, the player, the worker, and NOTHING shall interfere
with you, because you come from nothing, it is a matter of nothing. SO what is
not there is the imaginary source of what is, and what is there is the
object of blindness and yet they wonder: WHY! There is no answer from the
dismal nothing, the great myth, the self-contradictory illusion; it is time to
turn at length to the Producer who leaves 'nothing' of life's blessing to the
dead who turn from Him, who however, will not find that nothing which is their
desert. (Cf. Proverbs 8:34-36, Isaiah 66:24, John 3:30-36).
THE REPOSSESSION PHENOMENON
Repossession by demons, by malfunctioning systems, abused mentally, physically and certainly spiritually, by social imaginations of community, and pretences of unity, pieces of manufactured specification which surge on without life or meaning, vision upon vision, the visions of death for the blind: such is the call, such is the tenor, to this due result of desecration is the destiny.
Are
not the demons of World War I enough, that World War II has to happen; and is
not World War III, the Cold War enough without making more specifications for
what we will do with the world, as if we had invented it, or ourselves! Will
Brussels teach man, will the United Nations become God, will power teach truth,
will force make faith, will desolation produce reconstruction, will a US reconstruction-assist
Europe manufacture for its pains, a new world, whirled about in the cyclotrons
of human hope, resting on the radioactive powers of flesh in a one-world where
the environment is desperately stressed! Why? Because we cannot make it, because
we are not God; and His creations die off, and His world is misused, and it
cannot be created anew, so it grows old, so the human capital must be
conserved, so ever more desperate methods must be devised to make the veteran
vehicle, this world, seem capable (cf. Isaiah 51:6).
It is never enough. There
is only one way out of the derelict pretences of a drugged nation, and that is
to return to its founder. Even "Advance
The Australian Constitution has "Almighty God', but the nation does not. It has a god of forces taught in high schools, drugged into debased minds with ceaseless propaganda. Is it any wonder that this worshipped "god", this avowed maker whose making is never seen in principle, in practice or in reality, has his payment schemes? Is not pretentious clamour and force the name of the game in war after war, force to give freedom which is then thrown to the wolves of the dispossessed generation: no God, no understanding, relics relinquished, ashes with fragments still burning.
So
the 'wise men', as at Babel, will step in and tell them all how to make the
most of the least of it, and this will be the wonderful thing while the relics
relinquishing all reality, become the playthings of mindless visions, blind
spirits, so dead to sight that they know not what they are, as they direct the
followers to a world which is growing tired and will stop (false prophets
abound - Matthew 24:24, II Peter 2); but not before judgment fires its way into
the rubbish, and there follow the lightning strikes of escalating
disestablishment of the woeful world, which reels with the shocks of its
blindness, lurching into never new feats of folly.
THE RETURN OF THE MAKER
Before the return of the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, according to His everlasting Gospel, all on plan, as always, all as prepared, all just, all appropriate, all in mercy, to remove His people from this devastated aircraft called the world, where masses of the passengers are in mobile revolt without number, there are prophetically prescribed to be: the distresses of nations (cf. SMR Chs. 8-9). These increase now. There are horrors upon horrors, of which the demented follies of foolish juniors are prototypes for their seniors to come; just as the evolutionary self-aggrandisements, based on nothing, worth nothing, have been the programs to help the young to receive the blindness which now stirs their misguided parents by the million, so that the dance of death may continue through the generations, for yet, just a little (Matthew 24:11-13, 22).
Meanwhile there is better than repossession by new powers
and new illusions to be gained. There is life. It has its source in the invisible
(cf. It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, Little Things
Ch. 5),
which has given life to love and truth and peace within us, for which no length
is adequate, or relevant, nor any shape, no, not weight nor thrust. Guns are
wielded by minds with spirits in control and with bodies as equipment. What
leads the mind, what provokes the spirit, and where is its place? Its place is
with its Maker, who has not lost HIS POWER to re-create what first He created.
The environment is giving increasing notice of intention to quit, for it is not
eternal, and its visibility is mere expression of the Planner, the Architect,
the Institutor, the Activator, the correlator, the
breeder, the Creator.
THE MARVEL OF THE MAKER, THE WONDER OF GOD
But HE! He has no limit. He does not grow old. He is not blind who made sight; and He does not fail who made man with such powers that death is slow to evacuate the race, even amidst wild follies which look for calm, directive minds to make them universal, and so dispense with the God who does not look away because the world is "on leave". God is still able; being always what He would be (SMR pp. 27ff., 580ff., 313ff., 380ff., 440ff., 579ff., 1163Aff, .1174Bff.), and always ahead of what might be, He is deathless, immutable; and now at this time, He is willing to RECONSTRUCT, to REGENERATE and to RE-EQUIP *3.
He
does not have to do it; He is under no obligation to intervene. But the
everlasting intervention program is as fresh as from the first. It does not
change. It is consummated in Christ. It is programmed for evacuation from the
destruction of the visible, by the Creator who is invisible, who made Himself
into visible form that He might be viewed, and that our sins who believe and
receive Him, might be evacuated, our aircraft, each one, made airworthy and our
lives forgiven, our very bodies redeemed for the new heavens and the new earth
in which shall dwell righteousness, for the everlasting mercies of heaven where
He has gone to prepare a place for each of His own, for whom, having first
made, He now provides (John 14:1-11, II Thessalonians 1, I Thess.
4, II Corinthians 5).
THE GENERATION OF THE REGENERATED AND
THE ONLY
SAVIOUR: WITH THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL
THAT, it is the generation of the regenerated,
the family of the restored,
the
children of God who have returned from false worship of what is not there,
a 'Nature' which cannot - and
does not - invent,
a 'Self' which is not god, and
knows nothing apart from Him,
a 'success' which is vanity
and oblivion,
disregarding the vital
question, 'At what? and for what? and
with what end?’ :
like people
"successful" in bailing out water from a sinking boat, where the
waves surge over the sides.
But GOD DECLARES to one and to all, at this time, while it is still day:
'BUT AFTER THE KINDNESS AND
LOVE OF GOD OUR SAVIOUR TOWARD MAN APPEARED,
NOT BY WORKS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
WHICH WE HAVE DONE,
BUT ACCORDING TO HIS
MERCY HE SAVED US,
BY THE WASHING OF
REGENERATION, AND RENEWING OF THE HOLY GHOST;
WHICH HE SHED ON US
ABUNDANTLY, THROUGH JESUS CHRIST OUR SAVIOUR;
THAT BEING JUSTIFIED BY HIS
GRACE WE SHOULD BE MADE HEIRS
ACCORDING TO THE HOPE OF
ETERNAL LIFE" - Titus 2:4-7 (colour added).
Note: It is not the "wishing" of regeneration, but the
"washing".
Regenerated
forests are not wished into being, but planted (cf. Isaiah 61:1-3, Romans 6:5,
8:5-10). How simple is the way, how sure and how necessary (John 10:9-10,27-28,
Romans 10:9, John 1:1-4, Acts 4:11-12, 2:38-39).
THE LOVE, POWER AND PITY IN THE PROVISION OF THAT SALVATION
Now let us look at the balm more closely.
If the severity of the disease, the dynamic of disenablement, the force of the futility gripping the generation of the dispossessed is almost inconceivable, culturally reinforced, psychologically manipulated, socially manoeuvred, politically moulded with additives from the principalities and powers of darkness, the mischievous misformulations and misconceptions, the follies the Age, the Darwins and the Marxs, the Freuds and the (developmental) Jungs, the false prophets amongst the churches, making peace with Rome without so much as a smidgeon of reform in her doctrines of surpassing shame (SMR pp. 1032-1088G, and cf. That Magnificent Rock, Ch. 8, pp. 277-290, SMR Ch.7, pp. Sections 10-11, pp. 611-623, Ch.4, pp. 333-386), if sell-outs aplenty come from former "evangelicals", if whole denominations slither into holes of open disobedience, making myths out of the truth and leaving the truth for myths:
if all this is occurring, and it is,
what of the night? As the prophet said at the first judgment on
" 'Watchman, what of the night?
Watchman,
what of the night?"'
The watchman said,
'The morning comes, and also
the night.
If you will enquire,
enquire;
Return! Come
back!'" - (Isaiah 11:12).
Alas and woe to the world,
a far greater judgment that this devastation which made of
"Wail for the day of the Lord is at hand?
It will come as
destruction from the Almighty.
"Therefore all
hands will be limp.
Every man's heart
will melt.
And they will be
afraid.
"Pangs! And sorrows will take hold of them;
They will be in pain as a
woman in childbirth;
They will be amazed
at one another;
There faces will be
like flames.
"Behold the day of the Lord comes,
Cruel, with both
wrath and fierce anger,
To lay the land
desolate,
And He will destroy
its sinners from it,
For the stars of
heaven and their constellations
Will not give their
light:
The sun will be
darkened in its going forth,
And the moon will
not cause its light to shine.
I will punish the
world for its evil,
And the wicked for their
iniquity;
I will halt the
arrogance of the proud,
And will lay low the
haughtiness of the terrible.
"I will make a human more precious than fine gold*
A man more than the
golden wedge of Ophir,
"Therefore I will shake the heavens,
And the earth will move out
of her place,
In the wrath of the
Lord of hosts..." - Isaiah 13:6-13.
(* See The
The heavens will indeed be shaken following His rejection, when mercy defiled by its rejection, typified in Isaiah 65:10-13, 49:7. As here shown, the judgment will spread to the EARTH as such. You see this likewise in Isaiah 24:
"The earth is violently broken.
The earth is split
open,
The earth is shaken
exceedingly.
The earth will reel
to and from like a drunkard,
And shall totter like a hut;
Its transgressions
shall be heavy upon it,
And it will fall,
and not rise again.
"It shall come to pass in that day
That the Lord will punish on
high the host of exalted ones,
And on the earth the
kings of the earth.
They will be
gathered together,
“As prisoners are gathered in the pit,
And will be shut up in the
prison;
“After many days they will be punished.
Then the moon will
be disgraced
And the sun ashamed:
“For the Lord of hosts will reign
On Mount
So Christ stated this:
"And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached into all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come... and unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect's sake those days will be shortened. Then if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ!' or 'There!' do not believe it.
"For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand... For as the lightning comes form the east and flashes to the west, so also will be the coming of the Son of Man...
"Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light...
"Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He will send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heave to the other" -
from Matthew 24:14-31.
Nor is the apostle Peter
silent, as at Pentecost (Acts
"I will show wonders in heaven above
And signs in the earth
beneath:
"Blood and fire and vapour of smoke.
The sun shall be
turned into darkness,
And the moon into blood,
"Before the coming of the great and awesome
day of the Lord.
And it shall come to
pass
That whoever calls on the name
of the Lord
Shall be saved"
-
and this, it is taken from the prophet Joel, many hundreds of years before Christ (Joel 2:28ff. - and see Item 23 above, pp. 169ff., where the detail concerning the prophet is given in some depth). Revelation continues the theme with more uncovering of things to come.
We have asked a question. It was this:
even until the consummation,
which is determined,
is poured out on the
desolator" ...
on the detestable things -
Daniel
We have asked a question.
The answer is comforting, like balm in the night upon wounds, or like clear, living water from the icy places, flowing sweetly in the brooks towards the plains, under quietly warming skies, amid the blooms and the grasses, the pastures and the wildlife, natural, delightful.
It is this. If THE POWER leading justly to destruction, the duly dynamised PATHOLOGICAL POWER of man, BEFORE the judgments of the end come to end the light, and make the night come (cf. John 9:4);
IF THAT POWER is vast, how much MORE DECISIVE is the very power of God which provides the answer, the solution. Solution? There is the wonder of it. It is not like some mathematical solution, which taking into account the various numbers and forms and symbols and substantial realities in view, works out how to combine and compute, so that THE ANSWER appears. THAT ANSWER has no answer from man. He is doomed by such an answer as that.
Without the LORD, the answer is death, mutilation, dislocation, disaster, devastation IN ENTIRE JUSTICE.
Judgment without mercy is abhorrent, because sin is abhorrent; but it is just.
Not so here; for the MERCY of God, which is everlasting (see Items 17 , 13 above, SMR Ch.7, Item 7, pp. 582-594, Ch.4, pp. 386-396 et al.), is from everlasting to everlasting to those who have reverential trust in Him, who fear Him with that fear of the Lord which is clean, with faith which grasps the object, the Lord Himself in His format as Christ, and takes the mercy inherent in His holy gift on the Cross of a life for a life (Romans 5:8-11), repenting and receiving tis glorious gift from the unsearchable riches of Christ Jesus the Lord. (See Ephesians 3:8, Psalm 103:1-18, 91:1-2, Titus 2:11-14, 3:4-8, II Cor. 5:19-21, Galatians 3:1-13.)
WHOSOEVER will CALL upon the NAME of the Lord (in which is all His reality expressed) shall be saved! THAT IS THE ANSWER.
How great was the PERFECTION shown in His mercy, when His
answers were a marvel, to the vehement cross-questioners, whose illicit
power-base, harboured by the misled
Moreover while many were
broken in their efforts to dislodge the corner-stone, the Christ, many were
drawn and came to Him, volunteers (cf. Psalm 110), no press-gangs needed,
overcome in the mercies of God, by the savour of the Saviour. His works alike with words were not merely
perfection, but showed Him IMPERVIOUSNESS to defeat, impurity, compromise for selfish advantage, pollution
or corruption, His zeal knowing no end: working with the power of His Father,
while in the format of flesh, with the Sovereign certainties of eternity, WHILE
STILL ON EARTH (cf. John 8:29). He was indeed the Just One (Acts
His was no slick, slack,
sloppy substitute for truth (such as organic evolution and a score of such
mischievous alogisms, irrationalities and absurdities
of millions, sick phantasms with gravelly voices and wandering minds attest, or
constitute in our day*4. It was neither the
dead-hearted, blundering precisionism of the
Pharisees, nor the astute, devious delinquencies of the scribes or similar
scholars with the folly of mutual honour
their destruction (John
What a dawning of divinity
was this amid the sinful paths of man! No wonder they exclaimed,
"He has done
all things well!"(Mark
7:37).
Spontaneous praise burst from the crowds as this man of wonder, worker of grace, strength with mercy with human face rode into the city of Jerusalem as Zechariah in 9:9 had predicted it:
"Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the kingdom of our father David.
That comes in the name of the Lord!" so attributing to Him the place and power of the Messiah of Psalm 118:15-25.
Perfect and impervious in His perfection, He was not merely sinless (II Cor. 5:19-21) but aglow with all the righteousness of God (cf. Matthew 17:2-5), not episodic but intrinsic, unvarying in its intensity but with the human face that showed the lights and perfections, like the Southern Aurora, immense in its disposition, delicate in its shadings of feeling, enlightening the imagination, noble in the scope of its coverage, lofty in its expression, scintillating but not glaring as it touches multitudes of spots, like the Lord feeding the 5000 first with spiritual food, then with the physical.
v
PRACTICALITY
beyond vision, power beyond virtue which yet incorporated it, capacity which
could meet any just application, respond to any real desire (Matthew
v
patience or power, care or concern, even amidst the assaults of the theologically perverse,
even in the midst of peril, physical or other.
He did not merely draft sketches in heaven, or send emissaries to earth; His was no mere spate of construction of Headquarters on earth, in New York or elsewhere, had it been there at the time, where luxurious salaries could be drawn in meeting "the world's needs" with such a wealth of concern!
He came to earth to buy for freedom, pay the penalties, build a church, a kingdom and a place for those who came, those who were His, calling ALL with a compassion so hearty that its very tenderness could stir even the wealthy (Luke 18:23), though they might mourn their affiliation to lesser things, draw the learned (Acts 9) though they angered the blind by coming.
Moreover, His kingdom not of this world, was like a bridge*5to the next, over teeming waters, with magnificent views, to the other side (Isaiah 33:17-20). As the prophet has predicted it, "Your eyes will see the King in His beauty; They will see the land that is very far off." And meanwhile for His followers in the loveliness of His presence, "He will dwell on high, His place of defence will be the fortress of rocks" - refreshment provided under "the shadow of a mighty rock" (Isaiah 32:2, Psalm 62:13, Isaiah 44:8), "a cover from the tempest, as rivers of water in a dry place". But this was not the desire of many in power, so they discountenanced Him in the only way open, by cutting and tearing His face; but He outfaced this, even though there was scarcely face left on His head (Isaiah 52:14, 50:6).
Nor was it MERE suffering in His practicality, His foolish wisdom, His weak strength (I Cor.1) which He provided. It was DIRECTED SUFFERING and DYNAMIC DELIVERANCE which endured impervious and without sin, the sting of sin and so sentenced the power of death to oblivion, where His provisions were accepted and His person was received (John 1:1-14, Hosea 13:14). And all this ? best of all - it was GOD, not man, who was provided; for though man He was, it was no mere flesh adorned, but eternity formatted in flesh, and it was to THIS He brought us, and it was HE who was the Good Shepherd (Ezekiel 34; John 10; John 8:58).
Here was the builder, and here is He who endures for ever and for ever; it is He who built it, who provided Himself for its structure. Not, like the Prince Edward Island Bridge, long planned and now built across the ocean from the Canadian mainland, with elegant materials, its massive wonder arising to convey readily those who come to the delightful isle - not like it, subject to strain and decay: but with eternal certainty has He come, and with eternal life does He provide, and to "the land which is very far off" does He lead. His pilgrims are sure, for the way is sure, and He is it, and He? He is the "I am" who built flesh in the first place (John 8:58), causing spirit to lodge in it, who knows the home of the spirit of man, and at infinite cost has provided it (John 14:1-3, II Corinthians 5).
The bridge is built, the crossing must come. The "capital expenditure" has been made by the Lord Jesus Christ in such a style as is seen even in the ancient prophecy of Isaiah 52-53, as in Luke 22-24, from His sweating in prayer in anticipation of His bloody sacrifice for sin (Luke 22:42-44) which should so sever Him for the moment from the communion with His Father since sin DOES this (Luke 22:46), to His appearing and eating with His disciples after death was defeated and destruction was destroyed in any application it might make to those whom He so covered (Luke 24:40-43 cf. 24:25-26).
It must be traversed. Traffic must appear on it. It must include you, reader, and ANYONE on earth for there is none who does not sin, and the one who thinks he/she is without sin merely practises self-deception (cf. I John 1:8).
IF, however, and for mathematicians , IFF, "if we CONFESS our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Indeed, "If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us" - I John 1:9-10.
BUT "HE is the
propitiation for our sins", and this is on behalf of, directed towards, available and adapted to
ALL THE WORLD, says John. It is NOT in the PLACE of all the
world, but it is ON BEHALF of all the world. As Isaiah 53 has it, those who are
the "us" whom He saves, their iniquities falling on HIM, these are
those who are HEALED by His stripes. As Christ put it, "If you do not believe that I am He, you will die in
your sins" - (John
THE PRICE THEN IS PAID FOR YOU IF YOU COME FOR HE KNOWS WHO ARE
HIS,
AND IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO COME,
WHY THEN,
THE JUDGMENTS WHICH ARE YOURS ARE NOT INTERFERED WITH:
THEY ARE YOURS FOR KEEPS, AND YOU HAVE THEM, EVERY ONE OF YOUR TREASURES UNMOLESTED BY PITY, AND UNSHRIVEN
BY FAORGIVENESS. The complete nut, you remain in your shell until you rot (see
John
11 ff. ).
But let us ensure we fully grasp the ANSWER.
If the POWER of evil, the results of devastating sin in the earth is profound, if the cyclotron of interacting forces is moving the human particles in their proud arrogance and despicable failures, their blatant disregards of the Lord to a doom like the sucking of the giant oceans, mingling in whirlpools of all but unspeakable force: if this is happening, and awesome and amazing and of vast devastating potential, which will come:
HOW MUCH MORE is the Lord in His power which created, since He has DESIRED MERCY, how much more effective is He, to draw out of many waters, to reach down and save and deliver and protect and adopt as children those who were on the way of destruction! If there be few who enter His narrow way (Matthew 7:13-14), yet they are privileged with His protection from that day they enter till the end which does not end, for when all ends, every the earth and the heavens growing old and being dispensed with (II Peter 3), yet a new heavens and a new earth in which dwells righteousness is prepared, a place is prepared, the pilgrimage is complete, the pastures are protected and the eternities of heaven follow (John 10:9,27-28, Romans 8:27ff.).
NOTHING is by chance (Ephesians 1:4,11 cf. Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Chs. 9, 13, Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch. 6). If you say NO! you say it. If you come, you are prepared for.
But yet there is more than this, even than this, for what is the wonder of this Gospel, this great Good News that anyone could exhaust it!
If the PITILESSNESS of the powers of evil and destruction, as man indoctrinates man, as culture reinforces and politics swims with the stream, follows the flow of folly, while psychic forces are habituated and myths are solemnly received as if they were some new version of the Emperor's new clothes, which yet left him naked - though he paid for them - in the story: if these things are so, HOW MUCH MORE IS THE DIVINE PITY! Hear this word:
·
"I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself:
'You have chastised
me, and I was chastised,
Like an untrained
calf;
·
"Restore me, and I will return,
For You are the Lord my God.
·
"Surely, after my turning, I repented;
And after I was
instructed,
I struck myself on
the thigh:
·
"I was ashamed, yes, even humiliated,
Because I bore the reproach of my
youth.'
·
Is Ephraim My dear son?
Is he a pleasant
child?
For though I spoke
against him,
I earnestly remember
him still,
Therefore My heart
years for him:
I will surely have
mercy on him, says he Lord" - Jeremiah 31:18-20.
·
Or
this: "How
can I give you up, O Ephraim?
How can I surrender you , O Israel?
How can I make you
like Admah?
How can I treat you
like Zeboim?
My heart is turned
over within Me,
· "All my compassions are kindled..." - Hosea 11:8 (NASB_
Or consider the rendering of the NKJV: "My heart churns within Me".
And this:
"Therefore My heart sounds for
(from
Jeremiah 36-39 - NASV) and ponder the NKJV: "Therefore My heart will wail
like flutes for
And look at Luke 19:41ff.: "
"Now as he drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, If you had known, even you , especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground: and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation."
And this:
"O Jerusalem,
Matthew
GOD DOES ALL THAT HE SAYS. He has no need to change His "theology" or His topography, His messages of peace and mercy or of judgment, His truth or His utterance at all. He knows what He means, means what He says and He does it; and if at times He holds back judgment in the pulsing power of His eternal mercy, His poignant pity, even this is relayed; but when the time has come, He announces it, yes and announces it thousands of years that it WILL COME, thousands of years in advance; for He knows His pity and He knows all flesh, and though His offers pound like the waves of the sea, even the times of things are known in advance to Him (as Daniel 9:24-27 show so exactly - SMR pp. 886ff. ), whether or not He chooses to divulge such things.
THIS END, this ONLY END, this individual and particular end which will see the end of this world in a time of judgment and of rule where He will show forth righteousness within it (Habakkuk 2-3, Isaiah 61, 65, Revelation 20, Amos 9, Isaiah 2,4), when the sheep and the goats will at length meet their brand names objectively, where hypocrisy will be red with shame and truth will be manifest as the sun (Zechariah 14:6-16 , Micah 7:15-20 cf. Biblical Blessings, Ch.3, esp. pp. 36ff.), when the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14, Zephaniah 3:10-13).
The red light is showing, it is shining splendidly upon the dial of history as in the heart and bloods upon the ground, soaking and saturating it this century (cf. SMR pp. 839-840, Ch.8); and it is even coming to the children*1 whose little beings and slender spirits are being drugged by things far worse then chemicals, fearsome those these may become for many. The END IS COMING but he Maker of the Beginning and the Surveyor of the END, whose it is, HAS COME. There is the wonder of it all! He is not waiting till the last but in the fulness of times, He CAME (Galatians 4:4), as predicted by Daniel... precisely.
It is OUR FAILURE as a race, not that of HIS PITY, which is the astonishing thing. Here a millionaire spreads out (spiritual) funds to our (spiritual) poverty, and we turn from it as a race, only a few, praise the Lord, coming! What might the multitude then say? Is it not this: 'We whine and we waver, we mutineer and we mumble, we grumble and we growse, we attack God and we deny God, we argue well or go to hell, or make some scene or demand more wages, and are taught in rorts and see innumerable politicians gaining exceptional wealth and wonder and the world whirls its way through the potential dreadnoughts of space, and we are warned how soon any one of them could explode with the force of multitude of atomic bombs at any time: and we IGNORE THE MERCY, TAKE PRIDE AS A SOLVENT FOR THE DIVINE PITY.'
We? I do not, nor do the hearts of the those multitudes of Christians who have by His grace and
mercy found grace (Ephesians 2:1-8). He has made us "a holy nation to
proclaim His praises" ( I Peter 2:9), whose "citizenship is in heaven" - Philippians
His pity transcends, His mercy overrules, it is available, it is prevenient, it has already come, you do not need to wait for it, it is not powerless, its power is shown already. He needs nothing from man, who exhaustively produced from Himself, is ruined by himself and the co-operating follies of other creations; but God does not let the lies of the land become the lie of the land, or the inequity of the terrible become the milieu of creation, for what is lie, but denial of actuality, and whose actuality is it but His; and what is inequity, but denial of what is fitting and made so by the Creator, by the creature, and who then is making war on whom, and from whom then is the solution to be found, the remedy to be expect, if indeed He does not exterminate the race, which having not happened leads us to expect what divinity has given. It cannot be from need, or from desire, for in all things He is replete, not limited by any or for any.
HIS POWER AND HIS PITY LEAVE FOR NOTHING THE GREATEST POWERS AND PITILESS MINDLESSNESS OF A FALLEN WORLD. If then you marvel at the power of horror in the world, then marvel far more at the might of the Lord who has entered it, taken it on its own terms, exposed it, overcome it, overcome death in the meantime, moving in pity like a beneficent stream of waters into the desert, sprinkling flowers and joy to the migrating birds as it goes, as the sun shines in its splendour and the desert blossoms like the rose. Marvel at the splendour of His response, the personal involvement, the contrast between the need and the revelation found in one evidentially relevant place, the Bible, the gap between selfish squalor and spiritual love and rejoice (cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 6 -7, Repent or Perish Ch. 7, SMR).
TAKE it, then, reader, USE
IT, it is for you. If you will not? "Then
consider the wonder of the love of God, who of
Hence, God forbid that I should
glory, except in the Cross of Christ by which the world is crucified to me, and
I to the world
(Galatians
(See also: The
Kingdom of Heaven,
Appendix - Question and Answer on the Cross;
and
That Magnificent Rock, Ch. 3, Creating Waves,
with Ch.2, Crosses and Losses. )
NOTE
*1 The litany in Time magazine is evocative (Time, June 1, 1998, p. 48). They list: Pearl, Mississippi, where a 16-year old killed his mother and fatally shot two classmates with a rifle, Oct. 1997; West Paducah, Kentucky, where a 14 year-old killed 3 girls with a semiautomatic Ruger, Dec. 1997; Jonesboro, Arkansas, where an a pair, 11 and 13 year olds, ambushed with plan and killed five, using handguns and rifles in March 1998; Edinboro, Penn., where a 14 year-old attacked at a school dance, killing a science instructor with a hand-gun; Springfield, May 1998, a 15 year-old son of two schoolteachers, discharging 51 rounds of ammunition, killing two students, wounding 18; and his parents he did not omit in his death round.
See SMR pp. 140-145, 329-332H, 315A-316G, 251-252N, 333-386, 422E-422W, 75-91, S1-S34, Ch.5, 611-623, 973C-1002C; Biblical Blessings, Ch. 13,pp. 151-159, A Spiritual Potpourri, Chs.1-9, pp. 7-144, That Magnificent Rock, Ch.6, pp. 123-137, Chs. 1 and 8, pp. 1-41, 188-293, Appendix 1, pp. 295-342 and Epilogue pp. 277-293, Barbs, Arrows and Balms, Items 7, pp. 27-34; 18, pp. 121-130; 19,131-141; 26, pp. 203-204, 'The Kingdom of Heaven, Ch.1, pp. 9-16, Ch. 10, Part 2, pp. 169-181, A Spiritual Potpourri, Ch.16, pp. 205-210.
See above, Items 3, 7, 13, 17, 21, 25, 27 and 29.
See also That
Magnificent Rock, Chs. 2, 3, 4, 6, The
* 4
Cf. The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, Chs.
4, 2, 10, and pp. 867ff., 1011ff., That
Magnificent Rock, Ch.1, A Spiritual Potpourri,
Chs. 1-8.
John Bunyan pictures the END as a swimming to the other side over the river of death. In the case of this, his allegory, the water is how deep ? It is, he declares, as deep as you think it is! With pure conscience, the confident steps onward; but those afflicted, or behind in their Spring Cleaning may need some support; though ALL who are His make it effectively through His prevenient - foreseen and pre-arranged - mercies (II Timothy 1:9-10, Romans 8:28ff., 5:1-11).
One of the beauties of this provided way, whether pictured as a swimming over death's waters, or a bridge over life's torrents, or a way surrounded, as it were, by an electro-magnetic field which is barrier to the excessive, while suffering due tests which develop the saint: it is this. It is PERSONAL; for Christ Himself is the way (John 14:6).
Those who enter at its gate, end at the other side, for the wayfarers, though fools, shall not err in this way (Isaiah 35:8-10, Romans 6, I John 3:9, John 10:9,27-28).
Let us revert to Bunyan's
allegory. How well he pictures the end of the journey for the regenerated,
whose is eternal life ( I John
While fierce magnetic storms destroy the helicopter which would try to find some unauthorised way of its own , deviously seeking bypass of the bridge or the way (see Clouds without Water, John 10:1, cf. Item 24 above), saints, the people of God can reflect that the views here on this way are beautiful, like high country in the thin and pure air, that even the feet of His faithful are beautiful (Isaiah 52:7, 33:5-6,17-19), and the faces of their spirits transformed (II Cor. 3:18).
(cf. Christian
Assurance, Ch. 16 in Biblical Blessings).
He went that they might come who knew no God, and those who
did not know God, and freely they may come (Rev. 22:17), to cover the unpaid,
to remit the sin no other blood could cover (John 16:5-22, Galatians 3:1-13,
5:1-5, Hebrews 9:22-10:22), that those who receive Him might relish His
righteousness which has kissed peace (Ps. 85:10), with a "new song"
on their lips. And that
(Rev. 5:9-10)
? It is this:
"You are
worthy to take the book, and to open its seals,
For You were slain
and have redeemed us to God by Your blood
out of every tribe
and tongue and people and nation,
and have made us
kings and priests to our God,
and we shall reign
on the earth." (Cf. Rev. 7:9-17, 14:6, 20:6, 21:4, 1:6, Hebrews 9:15,
Romans 8:28-29, 5:8-11, I John 5:13).
So the Lamb, the Redeemer
who is the Lord (Isaiah 44:6, 52:3,11, 51:11) opened the book of history to
come, and brings His people to its triumphant perfection in heaven (Colossians
3:1-4, Philippians 3:20-21). This world has nothing to offer like its Creator,
none like its Redeemer, Lord of all.