Chapter 4

 

The Pulsing of the Arrhythmic Heart

and the Unvarying Virtue of Truth

 

News 243

 

Guardian Unlimited, October 28, 2000 et al.

 

From Chechnya without love,

From man without love,

From Russia without love,

From Al Qaeda without love,

From Arab death squads without love,

From grasping initiatives of many races

without love,

From reckless religious and secular tyrannies,

Mental, martial and partial

Without love:

 

To Christ in love

 

A WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING ?

 

When a thing is out of place, it may be that it is separated out from its true constituency; or that it is melded where it does not belong.

 

We have been looking, in the last chapter, at things displaced, rather than in their holy settings. Now we consider things placed synthetically without understanding, by the play of program without wisdom. Thus we read in a report dated October 23, 2002, relating to Bishop Ria, the Palestinian Jewish citizen, who is Anglican, a few things which, together, are an index to the composition of the incoherent.

 

First, for this date, we find that “Christian Leaders” have been “Harassed by Israeli Security Personnel.” These religious leaders were, we read, engaged in one of the “rare and successful initiatives for interfaith dialogue between Christians, Moslem, and Jews.” The “official Israeli establishment”, we are further informed, was “not interested in interfaith dialogue”, since, in the view of the composer of this vitriolic deliverance, it was “consumed in its own fantasies about self-righteousness, and the paranoia that everybody is out to get them.”

 

By this stage, the discerning reader will perhaps be aware that this is no mere news announcement. IN the name of peaceable dialogue, they are brandishing verbal spears at Israel’s government. It is a strange world.

 

The difficulties of the three heads of Lutheran, Anglican and Greek Catholic bodies, for some reason all called ‘churches’, though the Romanist body’s failure to honour Matthew 23:8-10 necessarily excludes it, if by ‘church’ we mean the body of Christ who has Him and Him alone for Master: these are pondered. The humiliation of having to be asked for a search of their luggage is found insupportable for some reason.

 

Even though almost ANYTHING is used by the murderous regimes which infiltrate death squads into Israel and then complain when they are treated as murderers and pursued as such, it is humiliating, not a proper place for exercising humility, for these religious personnel to have such scrutiny. Similarly, the idea of people being “out to get them” ascribed to the Israeli authorities, when hundreds are being continually murdered by episodic invasion of their land, is so rich that in diet terms it could induce an immediate cholesterol based heart attack.

 

The Greek Catholic archbishop, or more properly it would seem, Greek Romanist, is cited as declaring this: “We want to be friends with the Israelis and build bridges between our communities but it is becoming very difficult. We will build this state together or it won’t be built.” He is even cited as adding, “unless they can overcome their paranoia, their feeling that they are victims, there will never be peace.”

 

That is the report. Whatever the cleric may have said, let us assume this report to be correct for the sake of analysis at least.

 

1.    This delusively worded peace initiative is tantamount to a declaration of war against a sovereign State, that of Israel.

2.    Imagine if the French said to the British, Unless you can overcome your paranoia, your feeling that you are victims, there will never be peace”, and then for clarity, added that “we will build this State together, or it will never be built”! The British - another sovereign State (which has various episodes of the French coming to conquer on its soil, whereas it has also had various episodes, for the assault on which, the ‘witch’ Joan of Arc is famous, on French soil, taking parts as its own for a time) - might make a multipartite reply.

 

a)   WE have already BUILT our State, thank you very much.

b)   It is scarcely paranoia to wish to retain the integrity of our State in terms of multiplied murderous assaults of late (to take the parallel to Israel, for the purpose of the comparison), any more than when Hitler menaced us with HIS brand of building together. You are making war with words and seeking, just like him, to make your arrogant initiatives have some specious semblance of moral justification. We are sick of this whole delusive propaganda technology. If you want to invade, say so and declare war: no more of this blind alley and bandying technique, thank you.

c)    It is clear that you plan  to DENY us peace, since we are already peaceably established this long time in our land, unless we capitulate to your being equal partners in the process of having the State a joint one. In other words, you want something like half of England. How is it that your vision is so  clouded that you do not as yet seem to realise that is simply an international take-over bid for half of England, with the offering price NOTHING, and the terms NO PEACE, presumably as the price if we do not yield our land to your robbery and tirades.

 

 

Ø   With approaches to Israel like that, who would wonder that those responsible are not taken as peacniks, or indeed even peaceable!

 

 

THE HARASSED HEART

 

When however we see the Alexandria Declaration of January 21, 2002, made by the Archbishop of Canterbury (Anglican), Deputy Foreign Minister, Rabbi Michael Melchior, with Rabbi David Rosen, President of the World Conference on Religion and Peace, Sheik Tal El Sider, Minister of State for the Palestinian Authority, a Representative of the Greek Patriarch Arcbbishop Aristichos, and a Melkite Archbishop, Boutrous Mu’alem, we find a synthetic approach. It is not by any means typical of the Israeli Government’s stance over time, shown by the vigorous language of the Jerusalem Chief Rabbi (1994) in an earlier ecumenical situation, in which he declared that “the whole concept of interdenominational dialogue is foreign to Judaism.”  That is found in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April-May 1994, p. 71. Obviously, Israel has exceedingly varied views on such matters^*1A.

 

However it is true to say that the Lord God who made the heavens and the earth (Jeremiah 10:11) does not appreciate^*1 man’s connivances with man in order to ‘create’ some word of God, something acceptable to all, or at least worthy of respect from all, in the domain of religion. The Chief Rabbi in that regard is dead right; though dead wrong in the rejection of Christ as the Messiah (cf. SMR Ch. 9, and pp. 50ff., with Highway of Holiness Ch.  4). At least, there he preserved the core and kernel of the concept, though throwing away the actual apple. That is not sardonic: to be sure, some both Jew and Gentile have rejected the “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53) and ignored his duly determined death date, which is not now, nor to come, but about A.D. 30 as shown in the last noted reference above, from Daniel.

 

Ø   There is but one true God, one true definitive emissary, one Christ, there is one Holy Spirit. There is one Truth, there is one Way, one determinate revelation in written word, one in living format, Jesus the Christ, one morality, one peace.

 

Ø   The roads to other stations are many, their travellers numerous, their
allure passionate, their lucre filthy, their violence vile, their destiny one: and that ? without God, without reason in it but with much reason FOR it, without truth, without peace and with guilt, unalloyed, forged in sin and kept to judgment. Deny Him and He will deny you (II Timothy 2:13, cf. Luke 9:23-26). How could it be otherwise ? As He does not force, so He does not endorse spiritual smugglers, seeking entry on false premises.

 

Ø   Thus, speaking of those who presume to bring other gods, other ways, other words, in or not in the name of the Lord, God declares this in Isaiah, this to the religious adventurers, to those who travail in falsehood and bring forth folly, specious prophets:

”And as for our iniquities, we know them:

 

Ø    In transgressing and lying against the Lord,

Ø    And departing from our God,

Ø    Speaking oppression and revolt,

Ø    Conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood

Ø    Justice is turned back,

Ø    And righteousness stands afar off: for truth is fallen in the street,

Ø    And equity cannot enter.

Ø    So truth fails,

Ø    And he who departs from evil makes himself a prey” – from Isaiah 12-15.

 

How do you LIE against the LORD ? You can do it formally in each of two ways. You can CHANGE His teaching and word, keeping His name, pretending through confused presumption to what is not at all His; or you can DENY His word, either importing the vanities (as God calls them) of the other nations to whom the definitive declarations of God to mankind were NOT given, or combining them with His words. Thus the Moslem, much of the New Age and sects would qualify at once. People going about saying to mankind, “Thus says the Lord” in horrendous imitation of His definitive written word, and proliferation of it,  would qualify. But this is not all!

 

You could also lie against the Lord in a more personal way. His individual guidance for your life’s work, or witness, from His word and through His Spirit might be one thing (as to Baalam), and yet you try to COMBINE it with another, because of desire.

 

Thus there is the formal and there is the informal synthesis. As to that formal case, that is, the false prophet syndrome ?This:  equipped from the outset in the Middle East with many runners, and always a snare to Israel, which nevertheless, to its credit DID preserve the Old Testament, and not without much suffering at that, it has a nether assignment, it is tossed to scorn.

 

Listen to Ezekiel (14:3ff.):

 

“Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their hearts and put before them that which causes them to stumble into iniquity. Should I let Myself be enquired of at all by them ?

 

“Therefore thus speak to them and tell them, Thus says the LORD GOD:

 

‘Everyone of the house of Israel who sets up his idols in his heart, and puts before him what causes him to stumble into iniquity, and then comes to the prophet, I the LORD will answer him who comes, according to the multitude of his idols, that I may seize the house of Israel by their heart, because they are all estranged from Me by their idols.’

 

“Therefore tell the house of Israel, Thus says the LORD GOD:

 

‘Repent, turn away from your idols and turn your faces away from all your abominations.”

 

But if not ? “ ‘They shall bear their iniquity: the punishment of the prophet shall be the same as the punishment of the one who enquired, that the house of Israel may no longer stray from Me, nor be profaned any more with all their transgressions, but that they may be My people and I  may be their God,’ says the LORD GOD.”

 

There is room for exploitation of the singular utterances of God, yes but in hell. God then proceeds in Ezekiel 16 to recapitulate His love, His ways with them isolating them from pollution, bringing them to Himself, not as a concept, but as a Personal Being, equipped with speech both highly specific and wholly undisposed to synthesis. Spiritual synthesis of or with the word of God is merely the byproduct of idols, for the speaker is the one God. The presumption of such erratic intrusion is without limit.

 

To speak as man, when God has spoken, and contrary to His will, word and declarations, or beyond them, it is not mild, that one; but to speak thus and also IN HIS NAME, or with reference TO HIM,  this is the Grand Honour of the Uttermost Lowness, assigned readily to hell. The beauty of it always, of course, is that the love of God, His pity is such that such a destination can always be averted, while man repents, while he returns from his iniquity (Ezekiel 18).

 

Travelling outward, however, is not coming back; and never does God allow confusion of the two! Outward bound is not inward bound; and to be bound to the inside is to listen, not to speak, to ponder not to pronounce, to look upward and to follow what is given, not to seek engagement as entrepreneur with the word of God! It is not to confuse revelation with your own thoughts, but to accept it from its source, with all humility (Isaiah 66:2, 57:15). What would you ? to invent the infinite and to compose for another who also composed YOU!

 

How does God characterise such waywardness when He has already given His word and His love ? Thus: “ ‘How degenerate is your heart!’ says the LORD God, ‘seeing you do all these things, the deeds of a brazen harlot.” Harlotry as in Hosea so emphatically and dramatically, and as in Ezekiel 23, is a symbol of repugnance, and a brand of misused beauty, where the Husband is the LORD, and the people are those immersed in immorality, even seeking to operate or co-operate with other gods, other prophets, other ways, other religions and other thoughts than His, attributing them to deity, or deities and the like. “But you trusted in your own beauty, played the harlot because of your fame, and poured out your harlotry on everyone passing by who would have it” – Ezekiel 16:15.

 

Enough: the Chief Rabbi has not erred in his preference for one God and one revelation. It is merely that he has failed to perceive, as did his nation, that when God sent the Messiah at the stated date, He meant what He did, and it is He who came, as sent, who was to come;  and who was crucified as was to be, resurrected as predicted, fulfilling on the way each and  every detail of His prescribed scenario, which only God can do, being free from any rebuttal, any evidence or attestation of being overthrown in word or impotent in deed, at any time, in any circumstance, any episode, through any omission or any variation in the prophetic schedule (cf. Joyful Jottings 21-25).

 

At that level, you have to be God to operate, and so did God determine it (cf. SMR Ch. 6). Does a child’s cart soar to the heavens, or does man mimic his God with his puny powers, or does God enable with His almighty capacities, a man to pretend to be God who is not ? or does He predict for millennia the coming Christ and His ways and His authenticity, and date His death and resurrection, staking His word and name on it, in order that man should have any GENUINE doubt about it ?

 

No He does not, but expresses an antipathy so profound, a judgment so severe as one would imagine, when the loving lips of God and the pageant of promise in His Messiah is so marked to be overthrown that men dare to expel Him from their midst,  and to import idolatrous prophets, religions, either as they come, or by combination as now so often seen, in adventitious, meretricious syntheses, wrought as if in some way these would contribute to peace. If it is not in this way, then it readily comes to be in allowances for the INTEGRITY of the gods and religion of others, as if this would even be POSSIBLE unless there were idols in the heart, a willingness to DEMEAN the word of God, by making it comparable with idolatry, false prophets parallel to the true, and the witless and woeful presumption of man to be correlative to the pure worship of the God who alone does wonders (Psalm 72:18).

 

But where is this reference to “integrity” ? Is it not found in the above cited ALEXANDRIA DECLARATION of the Religious Leaders of the Holy Land ? But where ? Here:

 

Ø   “We seek to live together as neighbors respecting the integrity of each other’s historical and religious inheritance.  We call upon all to oppose incitement, hatred and misrepresentation of each other.”

 

Now to avoid misrepresentation is good; but is it be deemed misrepresentation to call 2+2=5 WRONG, then that is mere confusion. Indeed, one may misrepresent, and such a phenomenon is not uncommon; but one may also misrepresent God, at which you see above, He does not find content. Would you ? The concept therefore of INTEGRITY which precedes this amiable request, is foreign to the tenor of morals. It is a confusion of miscued concepts. If the religious leaders in their religions have INTEGRITY, then the Lord God of the Bible is already not merely wrong, but non-existent. To the very depth of His heart HE ABOMINATES these VANITIES (as He calls the idols which represent contrary pretensions), as if you can just say “God” and start speaking, at the whisk of a confused and derelicted mind.

 

That is His response to this execrated licence:  for THIS is His approach to the matter as we have seen! What then ? Are we to have Abominable Integrities ?

 

What confounded confusion and what anti-biblical  abuse is already in this alien and alienated concept!

 

Thus it is of interest to see this now long running saga in the Middle East, this correlative concept to that of Bishop Swing with his unification of world religions program, one here paralleling it in a specific locale, and with a specific grouping. What is this contribution of inventive religion ? It is  a sub-category of religions, those large in the Middle East (cf. News 121, 122, Galloping Events Ch. 7, Acme, Alpha  and Omega Ch. 9).

 

So it is like heart beating, once, twice. First it is the separation FROM God which we saw in Chapter 3 above; and then it is the aggregation WITHOUT GOD, of human traditions, man’s mutual respect for malleable gods, gods who can  aggregate  and congregate, give each other compliments!

 

You find this of the Lord God ? You find the precise opposite. He tolerates this ? as the body tolerates potassium cyanide.

 

But should He ? Should truth tolerate error ? Should the Creator tolerate the imposition of |
impostors ? Does not the cry of Isaiah 59 show the sheer desolatory confusion of this profusion! It is intensively detested, extensively loathed and repeatedly condemned with all the vigour of the Almighty. There is no better way of inducing His wrath, contempt and judgment. When it becomes irremediable is with Him; that it scoots on the cliff tops of disaster in a two wheeled turn, is sure.

 

 

THE WORD OF GOD

 

The word of God is neither found by DISPOSSESSING yourself of the Book of the Lord (Isaiah 34:16), as if He had trouble in His impartative procedures, or ARROGATING to yourself, various books in various ways, and allowing various respects to various deities and ways. The arrhythmia of the distressed, disturbed or vagrant heart is to be found in such exotic beats. It goes on to extreme fibrillation indeed, but first to the removal, then to the synthesis of the word of the Lord, or of what is to be respected.

 

Does a husband respect a harlot who has mistaken her place for that of his wife ? Does God respect what presumes to arrogate His mouth for its pretensions ? We have seen the word of the Lord in the Bible, demonstrated often enough its truth (cf. SMR,  TMR et al.), and here merely note the social phenomenon, the religious datum, the social stress situation that proceeds from alienation and dismantling of what God has put together, in society, in nature, in truth, in the one surge, to the movement in the opposite direction, to synthesis of WHAT HE HAS NOT PUT TOGETHER.

 

Thus the heart beats: the secular arrogance is followed by the religious presumption, and it beats its way to the next irregularity, until there comes a fibrillation, which being interpreted politically and militarily, in blood and in bones, means millions spoiled, beauty foiled, folly exalted and divine judgment. It is all old. It has happened; it has been documented in Israel; it has been foretold for the Gentiles; it mounts to its crescendo. The ambulances scream, the dolours grow, the horror mounts; and it is sobering.

 

Then they do it all again, the secular wing in its beat; and the religious squanderers in theirs.

 

It is as it was. It is as it will be; but not world without end! By no means is it that. These, they are the combinations  and they are the patterns of the finale. In some music, you know, the codas may become all but obsessive; the terminal moments can thunder, plead,  appeal, become tender,  bombast their bellowing, intimate their sweetness, extend over the past, look to the future, seek to culminate, fail, try it again and yet again. But in the end,  they do end! They do not last forever. It may be sad to leave the masterpiece without more trills and frills, but alas, the time comes: it is gone. It sounds no more. It is over.

 

So with history. It has shown the flood on iniquity, and predicted the denial of the flood in iniquity and it all came to pass (cf. Genesis 1-6 and II Peter 3 cf. Joyful Jottings   8). It has shown the Messiah and His date and His ways, and it has come to pass, even to the scuffling vehemence of the Cross. He has shown His power in the Exodus of the nation of Israel from the Empire of Egypt, in its glory, made small, and in the exodus of Christ from the tomb, death in its power, made miniature; He has shown His wisdom in the compilation of elements into molecules, into organs, into designs called man, trilogies of mind, matter and spirit, and He has shown it in His compilation of the Bible, attesting the Gospel hundreds of years in advance (cf. TMR Ch. 3, Barbs, Arrows and Balms 17), and the Redeemer thousands, and the response to come to it, in the Gentile field, both in their large embrace of it, and their subsequent betrayals, much along the lines of Israel before them.

 

Then He has supplemented this with His declarations concerning His abundant faithfulness and mercy in bringing back the Jews FIRST to their land and then in multitudes, to Himself (cf. SMR Appendix A, Chs. 8-9, Galloping Events). This has in the very midst of miracles so profound that the world is still  adjusting, just as it was in the Exodus, and it has been in my own generation, seen to the full, observed and savoured. Next is  an event to come amid the sort of wars resulting from the Jewish restoration to Jerusalem, a martial situation equally predicted.

 

Further,  God has shown it in His characterisation of our Age as it ends, as it now is (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5); and as it was to be, so it is, entirely.

 

He has sent His Holy Spirit as He promised, and restored myriads to Himself as He predicted; He has brought His Gospel, the predicted one and not any other, to the world, and it has imbued the world which now whirls to its next phase: not this time flood, but fire (as in II Peter 3 with amazing overtones which suggest the sort of atomic power we now know, in its thunder and blaze). Before that, however, there was to be the decline of the church, not to extinction, but to molestation and many betrayals; and it is so.

 

What we are now examining among all of this, it is one illustration. It is a specifically Middle Eastern sub-variant of the world-wide trend.

 

Just as Jerusalem itself WAS TO BE a focus of war, so it is. Just as there would be many to disturb, harass and seek to HAVE IT (Zechariah 12:1-10!), so it is. Just as those who sought to overthrow it would suffer, so they do.

 

It is all as it was written, even to the betrayal of Christ by many who yet use His name! (Matthew 24:24, II Peter 2). It is not a matter of passion, but of fact. It is not matter of religious orientation per se, but of occurrence, testable, empirical and leaving all man’s wisdom and science, a mere nursery effort by comparison of the majestic millennia in which God speaks and then does, never varying in accuracy, in attainment or in sovereignty.

 

All things proceed to plan, programmed in purpose, effected in power, assigned in purity. Wars were to arise and become an epidemic, and have done so, man’s judgment on himself; and the Gospel and the Messiah were to come, and have done so, God’s provision for man, God’s mercy on man. Israel is back, God’s word freely on trial as always, now resplendent in triumph; and Christ is soon to return: His word on track, His preliminaries long stored in scripture, now attested in history (Answers to Questions Ch. 5, SMR Ch. 8).

 

It is all as it was written, even to the betrayal of Christ by many who yet use His name! (Matthew 24:24, II Peter 2). It is not a matter of passion, but of fact. It is not matter of religious orientation per se, but of occurrence, testable, empirical and leaving all man’s wisdom and science, a mere nursery effort by comparison of the majestic millennia in which God speaks and then does, never varying in accuracy, in attainment or in sovereignty.

 

All things proceed to plan, programmed in purpose, effected in power, assigned in purity. Wars were to arise and become an epidemic, and have done so, man’s judgment on himself; and the Gospel and the Messiah were to come, and have done so, God’s provision for man, God’s mercy on man. Israel is back, God’s word freely on trial and as always, now resplendent in triumph; and Christ is soon to return: His word on track, His preliminaries long stored in scripture, now attested in history (Answers to Questions Ch. 5, SMR Ch. 8).

 

 

 

IN ANSWER  TO SOME QUESTIONS

 

But let us ask some questions in terms of these facts ?

 

Is Israel meant to be extinguished, driven into the sea as one choice Arab word had it, in the days before it was, when its very existence was virtually ludicrous, when united nations and the United Nations alike, were hostile to its actual advent, evidently wanting to remove it completely or else to make its viability as a sovereign State, ludicrous even in concept ?

 

No, for God has shown the exact opposite in Ezekiel 36-39 as shown in SMR A, and many places on this site.

 

Is God in favour of a synthesis of religions in order to enable the United Nations to play host to the dismemberment of that all but ludicrous fragment of the League of Nations’ promised Palestine, as a Jewish territory ? Is this then to  apply to Israel, so that it might be devoured by its eminently hostile neighbours, whose glory in their religion often reaches such heights as in the Islamic Conference in Tehran, in 1991,  when there was to be a pan-Islamic thrust to oppose Israel, help the interfadeh and send troops into the land, something which normally without divine aid, might seem tantamount to what the Muslim President Nasser sought – Israel’s extinction ?^*2  Their lands are very many times those of Israel, their troops abundant, their resources enormous: but they do not, perforce, include the Lord whose name they degrade in their book (cf. More Marvels Ch. 4). Nor have they achieved Israel for their dominions.

 

Is there divine favour for this ? No, there is not. Instead, those who seek to harass and grasp this Jerusalem, this vexed question, this horror to diplomacy, this tease to the tediously academic without the light of life: they will learn. Those who seek to subdue and acquire it, these will find that very city a “burdensome stone”, and  their sufferings augmented. God has programmed the land into His purposes (Galloping Events Ch. 4,  SMR Appendix A), owns it, and suffers none to block His will (Isaiah 43;13); and though, invested in human form, He was prepared to die for the deliverance of man, it is not so that man can deliver his fellow to his own will, and rule the universe in guilty ignorance.

 

This is as it was to be; but few seem disposed to listen. Listening however does not invent the word of God; it merely enables one to see what is happening and to avoid the follies of this world. Jerusalem for its part, it is VERY disposed to TEACH!

 

Would God like to be joined in a pantheon of respectability in religion, and be allowed to have some access to other places in the Middle East, provided He stops all this talk about being the only God and makes peace with the other gods ?

 

Not at all. God is never at all interested in a change of personality, of His address or of His addresses to man (Isaiah 34:16, 8:20, Matthew 5:17-20, cf. SMR Appendix D). What He says, He takes pleasure in fulfilling; what contravenes it He casts to contempt, taking the horns of history in the power of His hands.

 

He says what He means, means what He says, and by nature is the ONLY ONE, for the One God who created man is not comparable to the profusion of reckless illusions of man. That, it is to be found where  men invent gods and their words, whether directly through false prophets, or in realm of the inane pretensions of organic evolution^*3 (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9, Secular Myths and  Sacred Truth Chs. 3, 7, 8, with Epilogue), or other nature myths; or of political myths. The latter are to be found in the case of Marxism, in its refuted confabulations of the superficial ‘laws’ arising magically from chaos (cf. SMR pp. 264ff., 284ff., Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Chs. 9, 13), uttered from a mouth which first theoretically denies itself any access to truth (cf. SMR pp. 614), and then fails to verify itself where the action is (cf. SMR pp. 925ff.).

 

Such cases as these occur where gods arise in the mouths of men^*3, but are quite unable to perform in total and horrific contrast to the Messiah, who was able, and did! … and does, His word being astute to fulfil itself in every dimension, before our very eyes (cf. SMR Ch. 8).

 

The direct type fares no better, being merely adversative to the truth, whether in attempts to add to His word,  contradict it or to contravene it more directly  (cf.  SMR pp. 923ff., 1032ff., 829ff., 822ff.).

 

Would it be better then for the UN to trade off more peace for some more of the stolen  land of Israel, as if it were  an anti-God broker, seeking commissions in order to invoke the vengeance of God as He promised would occur (Deuteronomy 32, Romans 11 cf. The Biblical Workman Chs. 1, 3): in wild disbelief, daring to act for God without His invitation ?

 

Far from it, for all such wars of words and wits against the truth, are for the pits as seen in Ezekiel 38-39, where God affirms that in the end, HIS ACTIONS will demonstrate to the nations that HE having brought Israel to Himself, disciplined them for their false and miserable misdealings, then^*4 brought them back to their God-appointed land by His OWN faithfulness because HE IS FAITHFUL (Ezekiel 36ff.). From THIS ACT, His word declares, Israel will in a little, come to be refurnished NOT TO STRAY further. From this act, Jesus affirms as in Luke 21, the end draws near. WHEN you see such things (as in Luke 21:24, that once in 2 millenia restoration and assault on Jerusalem, now back with Israel), THEN KNOW that the time of His coming is near.

 

Perhaps however it would be more peaceable to betray the confidence of God in His people, the Church to which Israel in much measure is in time to come (not to the inquisition blood, nor to the drifting liberalities with His word which would combine it with human ‘wisdom’ in its witless arrogances), and to try to build some composite Babel for God’s assessment and perhaps
approval ?

 

Far from it. It is precisely such outrage and outage from the innermost sanctuaries of the Almighty, made available in the Messiah Jesus Christ, which brings the final desolation of the devilries of man. It is written in II Thessalonians 2 with the utmost clarity. God never changes His mind because man decides to alter His word.

 

 

v         "For He is strong who executes His word,

v          For the day of the Lord is great and very terrible; and

v          Who can endure it ?”

 

as Joel 2:11 declares it.

 

What then is needed? Micah has it (6:6-8):

       “With what shall I come before the Lord,

And bow myself before the High God?

Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings,

With calves a year old?
 

      "Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,

Ten thousand rivers of oil?

Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,

The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

 

      "He has shown you, O man, what is good;

And what does the Lord require of you

But to do justly,

To love mercy,

And to walk humbly with your God?”

 

Just quietly, to walk humbly with your God: this does not suggest you make your own.

 

It is in context with the ONLY GOD WHO IS THERE  who makes the ONLY DEFINITIVE UTTERANCE for man that there is, BECAUSE HE IS THE ONLY GOD (Micah 3:4-12 cf. Amos 4:12-13, Zechariah 9:7), that we arrive. It is this which requires reverence where it is deserved, to Him who deserves it, because of His truth and equity, His eternity and His love, His mercy and His peace, His goodwill to mankind, but also because of His abhorrence of their treacherous inventions which spoil themselves and despoil the occasions for a better destiny.

 

When God is speaking, it is well to listen, not to gabble excuses for the idols of the earth, which have ruined it, do ruin it and will further ruin it, till judgment itself reduce them to nothing (as in Jeremiah 10:11, Revelation 19). As to that, the Middle East is a predicted hub for the rubble (Ezekiel 38-39 and then Zechariah 14), and it is comme il faut, now to see reinforcing themselves there, the aggregations of synthetic religion, so important for the eventual banal and morbid apotheosis of a deceiver acting the part of god as man, not in authenticity according to predicted power and abundant testimony, but with the lust of flesh, inured against the truth.

 

It is this spurious enterprise, global in impact which is predicted (II Thess. 2), with all his furbelows of politics and power (Revelation 13), as is his amazing mouth (Daniel 7:20 cf. Tender, True) which boasts such great things: that autonomous orifice of a religious Hitler in his day to come. The world has long and intensively been prepared for this with its devious delights in corrupted theology and evanescent religions (cf. SMR pp. 68ff., 367ff., 913ff. , 864ff., 868ff., Stepping out for Christ Ch. 1, The Biblical Workman Appendix III) at times allied with State power. The track is smooth.

 

We move; history moves: the first lights of the incipient dawn steal sombrely, without their usual colour, onto the approaching scene. Even the birds are invited (Revelation 19:17ff.), for the hour when Christ returns amidst His saints (cf. Zechariah 14:5). He knows His own and is to call them first, as to Him initially, then to be with Him as His retinue, as He comes (Matthew 24: 36-51, Revelation 19:8,14). It has been deliberate, is deliberate and proceeds with deliberation. In His plan there is room for deliverance (Colossians 1:19ff.), and there is scope for the squalor of spiritual torpor (Matthew 25:1ff.), indeed the salience of rigorous rebellion (Revelation 19:19), amid the manufactured thoughts and hammered will of man.

 

It is well that we move, and many of us have moved to the immovable (Matthew 7:24ff.) by faith. Otherwise, the time is blatantly crying your need (Isaiah 55:6ff., Acts 2:36ff., Matthew 25:11ff.). It remains,  and He who remains is our God, with that unvarying virtue of truth, ineluctable, ineludable, inexorable, but this no less than in meeting the case with His own incarnate Son. The purity is sure; the purpose is clear; the means are express and sufficient; mutant religions do not register, except for their disintegration with the gods of the earth!

 

What of the end ? As with all disease, it is delightful to see it done, and more so to find it overthrown. The health, it is in Christ the Judge, whose work in that field awaits like the day (Acts 17:31, John 5:19ff.). That HE has borne the judgment for as many as receive such a gratuitous gift, open to all, sufficient for all, deceived by none: this is what makes the thing hearty and good; for who can be offended, but those who love their offences more than their God! God has pursued salvation and grants it; does pursue judgment and exacts it; and does both without pity for the cost to HIMSELF (Isaiah 50:4-8, Luke 9:51-56, Hebrews 5:7, Hosea 13:14). Heaven is not to be mortgaged for rebels, though it is fitted for their incursion, not as princes on white steeds of presumption, but as repentant and redeemed. Let him who is athirst, come.

 

 

 

NOTES

 

*1A

 

Different and divergent views

 

These result from a number of possible causes. Firstly, as with the Christ, though He did ALL in a magnificent surge and sweep of divine sovereignty married to human humility, satisfied every criterion to the point of invention by sheer nobility of grandeur, making the words find their target, as a prospector finds a vein of gold, in sheer exuberance of natural reality and force, yes supernatural testimony and truth: yet they, many thousands in Israel to which He came on prophetic target, did not believe. They suffered as a result, as predicted in Deuteronomy 32 and  Leviticus 26, as in the prognosis of a disease, given  by some  eminent specialist, in target.

 

It was to be; it came to be.

 

WHY did they not believe ? It is because the heart is hardened, said Christ, the eyes are closed (Matthew 13:14ff., as Isaiah indicated in his earlier testimony from the mouth of God (cf. Acts 4:25 for the directness discernible in divine diction). I WOULD but YOU WOULD NOT, is the testimony of Christ (Matthew 23:37 cf. SMR Appendix B, The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 4).

 

Man is not made in the ‘image’ of God for nothing. Provision is made for contempt for reclamation, making deity despicable and the Creator dispensable in the eyes of those  spiritually dead (Ephesians 2). It is a gift too little appreciated. While voluntary necrosis may not seem desirable, without this power, there is nothing in man but emptiness: with it, there is responsibility and ruin, to be sure, but goodness can come and wonder and truth in its full-orbed appreciation, love and that marvel, to become a child of God (cf. John 1:12-14).

 

As to this ‘image’, in its orbit and ambit there is love and hate, thought and integrity or lack of it, the whole spatial grandeur of understanding which may be opened when the eyes are open, to the fascinated, nay intrigued and delighted observer, by the power of the Lord (cf. Ephesians 1:17-19).

 

What other reason can there be for divergent and diverse views ?  what other than this one ?

 

At times it is because, having rejected or failed to inspect the truth, not only does one or one party err, but all err.

 

In this Middle East situation, this appears the actual situation as far as major religious power blocs are concerned. Some (1) want a man to be master, and are doomed in their despising of the sole Mastery of Jesus the Christ, without addition,  employe participation or regaling in the regality of some man or other, who thinks too highly of himself, as Peter began to do. Being genuine and authentic, he however received swift correction (Matthew 16:22-23). Leadership is not lordship (I Peter 5:1-4); and at that, all can be led (cf. John 20:21-23 and even Matthew 18:19-20, Mark 11:23, I John 2:27), and at that, we read, it is only as they go as the Father sent Christ,  so in Him; and HE  ?  He did not violate in the interests of His own authority, but as commanded by the Father, so was His doctrine (John 12:48-50).

 

One of these parties in its teaching (2) despises the testimony of Jesus in favour of another who has no verification, not authorisation except that of Christ,  for false prophets to come after Him, while as to Him, HE ONLY is Lord (Acts 4:11-12), and is alive, and HE ONLY has the keys of hell and of death (Revelation 1:18-19). He IS the truth, and has no successors (cf. Ephesians 1:10). To be authorised to be false, is not authentification, however!

 

A third party (3) rejects Jesus as predicted, just as surely as the subsequent false prophets are forecast, being the nation concerned in His death.

 

All these are simply wrong, competitors with Christ without authority, power or basis, background or future, except that appointed by the One whose word has stood, whose witness was displayed in power and whose coming was authorised from the first (cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 17). Thus, neither Judaism nor Muslim belief, nor Romanism have any answer, though alas for them – for who could not mourn for them – they have much to answer for, before the Judge of all.

 

Hence they disagree. When truth is absent, contest is present among men; and when false  claimants compete, confusion is not the only result. In the end, it is likely to be, as it is, war.

 

These tensions in the Middle East are irresolvable among these statistically major contestants, because they are wrong.

 

There is no right when wrong rules.

 

The only answer for one, as for all, is Jesus the Christ, rejected by His nation (not His race, many of whom have excelled in His way), remodeled by some who name Him and refashioned by others, each according to the mode that appeals, the weakness that developed, not in Him, but in those who would not receive Him as He as and is, unchanging, Jesus Christ the same today, yesterday and forever (Hebrews 13:8 cf. Paul in II Corinthians 11:1ff., whose uncovering a another Jesus, another Spirit and another Gospel which is no gospel, is so succinct and final).

 

That Israel is to come back to their own Messiah in a magnificent and marvellous way (cf. Zech. 12:10ff., Romans 11:25ff., The Biblical  Workman Ch. 1, *3 and Ch.  3, *1) does not alter this. THAT will mean that part of one of the contestants suddenly becomes right, because He WHOSE RIGHT IT IS (Ezekiel 21:27, 16:60,  34:11, 23ff. with John 10) is given what is right in their hearts and minds, and capitulating to their King, they become  both free and favoured.

 

That Romanists have started from the truth and left it, this does not alter the situation, except for the greater condemnation; that Moslem doctrine is a distillate in no small measure of Jewish and biblical elements, fashioned in a regime where force intruded itself into religious faith in an irrelevantly robust fashion (cf. SMR pp. 50ff., 62ff., 1186Aff.), does nothing to alter the situation; except to suggest the fact that in religion, the equivalent of industrial spying may become as profitable for a time as in commerce, or that man is so ready for force, that he can abandon even the love of God in the only Saviour, for it.

 

The diversity of error and its sourcing merely augments the acrimony of the contest. Amidst all of this, of course, there is the faithfulness of the only God who has ever manifested Himself with consistent power and speech in history: HE has said that Israel is for the Jew, that HE would disperse them in discipline and restore them in covenant faithfulness; and He has done so. He is not about to resign (cf.  Psalm 90:1-2, Revelation 1:19-19, Acme, Alpha and  Omega: Jesus Christ Ch. 8); and the contestants had better  resign themselves to that fact (cf. Psalm 2:12-14, Psalm 110:5-7).

 

This is the essence of all good will towards them, for when God acts, nothing and none can restrain (cf. Isaiah 43:13, 14:27, Galatians 1,  Ephesians 1:10). The Gospel of grace from the sovereign God is not about to change. What is to change is one of two things: the heart of those astray, on an individual basis, in returning to the Lord, or the doom about to descend in the day of Armageddon and its preliminary precincts. This will represent a change.

 

That is not yet present; only its shadow grows in depth and density, cast from its towering immensity, just ahead a little way.

 

 

*1 In fact, He indicates the fact that “the gods that have not made the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens” in Jeremiah 10:11, and in Zephaniah 2:11, that

 

	“The LORD will be awesome to them.
	For He will  reduce to nothing all the gods of the earth;
	People shall worship Him.”

 

The Rabbi is right about non-synthesis; wrong about the authentic, yes and Old Testament revealed God who alone IS God, who rejects the synthetic dream and the specious insinuation with such thunder that it is almost as impossible to live under such condemnations as are found about such things in Jeremiah 23, or from the lips of Christ Himself in Matthew 23.

 

*2   From  SMR Ch. 7, Section 2:

The possibility of a pan-Moslem contribution at least, to such an assault is not lessoned by the report (Time, November 4, 1991) of the Tehran Conference 'called by Iran's parliament to discuss ways of assisting the Palestinian intifadeh; with endeavour to "Islamicize all opposition to Israel".' Allied with a reported offer of Iran's President to 'dispatch troops to fight Israel along with the Palestinians', and a conference agreement to establish an 'Islamic army', there is evidence of a dynamic in the area in extraordinary concord with the scriptural predictions for the assault on Israel, its place and it participants.

 

*3

From SMR pp. 809, 986 the following excerpts may sharpen perception. The hyperlinks allow one to revert to the original for further coverage. There may be very slight adaptations to the present setting.

1)   809.

So do men construct their own calamities (cf. Proverbs 1:20-31). In this, the Jews do not otherwise than Gentiles; they merely do it differently. All have sinned, and individuals and nations make their own strayings, even trusting at times in those very things, as though the polluted were the precious! One Jewish organisation in Australia even sought action against an evangelising body for Jews, because Jews sometimes responded by becoming Christians.

This shows the strength which such a passion can have: and the more so, when you consider that numbers of bodies calling themselves Christian churches make no formal objection at all, even when the children of members are forcibly subjected to rash and indeed irrational propaganda for anti-creationist fantasies in multiplied State schools, this being the required method of teaching where tax funds are used for the purpose... in S. A. government schools, to take merely one example. (Cf. pp. 109-110, 197, 199-201, 230-231 supra, and Professor Thompson's reference to 'fragile towers of hypotheses based on hypotheses, where fact and fiction mingle in inextricable confusion' because 'historical arguments are invoked' where historical evidence for evolution is missing. Here Thompson gives a a very mild formulation of thoughtful response).

Ultimately, then, Gentiles in masses have also found their own notions and attitudinal pivots on which to make denial of Christ, in some sense, almost a psychological compulsion. Appropriately, what the Jews called 'the nations', the Gentiles, these alas have constructed their own shibboleths of unbelief.

This brings us to an allied point concerning prophecy.

In the end, the Romanists - 'Roman Catholics' (in principle) - manipulate 'Christ', the Buddhists reject God, the Confucians bypass Him, the Hindus proliferate the 'Christ', the Moslems reconstruct 'Him', the Jews reject Him (as a nation) and many of the Gentiles, helped by insistent government propaganda in schools, in association with universities and by popular TV and other media, tend to ignore Him. (For more detail, see Chapter 10 infra.)

Such an accomplishment on behalf of the 'man' whom they will not have to 'reign over them' (Luke 19:14)! They have had such opportunities thereby in Hitler, with a system built by a man with no small admiration for the Jesuits in his mind; in Stalin, partly trained for Russian Orthodox priesthood, and well able to consider the history of the Roman Catholic Inquisition before instituting his own tortures, brow-beatings and deaths; they have a Mao and his murdered compatriots: all of these used the rule of hypertense orthodoxies of man, which know little mercy. These things have they achieved.

Still, they have done it, managed with philosophy and had her children to meet and relish as they 'grow up'! Thus (Luke 18:8):

When the Son of man returns, will He really find faith on the earth ?

This, no less than the reference to Israel and the proclamation to it, is a continuing attestation that God not merely knows, but can tell man what is to be; yet man continues in his way, as if ears were denied him, and sight were forever missing. The signs of the weather he increasingly observes; but the signs of the times are the topic for oblivion. So it will be, to note yet another prophecy rushing towards fulfilment:

 

“For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of man be…”

(Matthew 24:36-38).

End of Excerpt.

 

2)   986ff.

A. MOSLEM ERROR

 

In the end, religious multiplication is a table you need not learn. There is one God, one Christ, one truth, as duly attested in these pages. All the rest as Jesus said, are fraudulent (John 10:1-4, 14:6), and the world is paying for the fraud. Thus we find these words of Christ, in John:
 

All who came before Me are thieves and robbers,
but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door.
If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy.
I have come that they might have life, and that they may have it
more abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep ... I know My sheep, and am known by My own ...
But you do not believe because you are not of My sheep
(John 10:8-11,14,26).
 

In parallel are: John 14:6, "No man comes to the Father except by Me..." and Matthew 24:24: "For false Christs and false prophets will arise..."

These are the claims made, and these claims we have positively verified. Further, Muhammad (cf. pp. 44 ff.,73 ff.,Ch. 5, pp. 440-445, Ch. 9, pp. 842-857 supra) is simply a predicted false Christ, in the Koran daring to re-cast the character of Jesus by his own admittedly sinful, and academically unhistorical imagination, to make Him come under his own dominion; though the works of Muhammad, like his religion, involve a worldly matter of a force, that directly implicated his "God" in such evils as the muting of resistance to Muhammad's claims, by its mere use.

Religions of force at the faith level all fall by the same criteria, as already shown.

Muhammad's approach embraced force in critical regards, as we saw in Chapter 1 (pp. 50-57), and shall see (*3). This may be observed with pellucid clarity reaching in the zeal of practical conflict, to the faith level. No protestations can hide the reality of what was said and done, and is. As with the U.S.S.R., much done contradicted ideology in detail and in lethal practice. Thus in the Koran, Surah 8:36-41, on The Spoils, and 48:13-17 (On Victory), we find (it. added):

Tell the unbelievers that if they mend their ways, their past shall be forgiven ... make war on them until idolatry shall cease and God's religion shall reign supreme ... and: Say to the desert Arabs who stayed behind: ''You shall be called upon to fight a mighty nation, unless they embrace Islam.''

 

The ground of cessation is ACCEPTANCE, SUBMISSION TO ISLAM. What ceases is fighting; and fighting in war is force, force here concerning faith. Religious conquest allows the force to stop. Then ? ''As for those who led the way ... and those who nobly followed them, God ... has prepared for them gardens ... where they shall dwell for ever'' (Surah 9:100). He speaks (48:1) of a ''victory, so that God may forgive you your past and future sins.''

Not dissimilar talk came, it appears, from Iran's Khomeini, during the fight with Iraq our day. The concept of plastic keys to heaven, reportedly given to youngsters setting out into battle, does not seem at all contrary to this word of Muhammad .

Such glorying and exultance at the very level of spirit and eternity, of faith and of meaning, is a blasphemy so total as to defame God to the ultimate degree. If force made the difference at this level, then God, who has it all, could use it to do so, without allowing men to make such agonies for each other, and fail so often at that, or to drag each other downwards, as they often do. This denial of the very significance of freedom is the denial of the infinite purity of God.

Nor is this all. Idolaters were to be slain, and often were, or reduced to slavery, or...'convert' to the Moslem religion (Schaff, op.cit. p. 171); Jews and Christians were to be thoroughly humbled and made to pay tribute (see p. 91 supra). The code word is 'submission', the very essence of Allah; and people simply have to submit, in blood or life or thought or deed: force rules, and by force this religion swept over much of Central Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, through Turkey and India, some 5 centuries after its first onslaught (cf. Encyclopedia Britannica, 1986, Vol.2, pp. 409-410), with the Shiite variety, attesting interpretive authority over their texts, rather like the Pope in Romanist operations, also prodigious in the misuse of force.

Europe nearly paid dearly for the religion of dominance at the Battle of Tours when in 732 A.D., the armed myriads menaced such freedom as Europe had. Charles Martel however was successful in repulsing them. Leo the Isaurian similarly was able to overthrow their assaults on Constantinople in 717, 718, the more remarkable in that this was nearer to the centre of Islam geographically (H.A.L. Fisher, A Historyof Europe, p. 143).

Alas what the Saracen, Moslem invaders were then unable to do, before long the pope would be doing in his own way, using deplorable force in substitution for spiritual weapons such as would have suited his profession (II Corinthians 10:4), against Christians. (The Popes had not at that time been brought to that unholy imperialism which tended to match some of Muhammad's excesses, but came to proceed more on an individual, victim by victim basis before the more advanced involvement with the Holy Roman Empire, which would offer grand scales - *1 - of repression.)

So the untenable religions of violence at the faith level create turmoil in a globe which, to be accurate, often asks for just such appalling horrors as scimitar instead of spirit, by its hardened resistance to the claims of Christ. He Himself was far from ignoring this recalcitrance and its consequences, when on earth, or as the Word before His coming. (Cf. Matthew 13:15, 23:36-39, Luke 19:41-44, 17:25-31, Matthew 23-31-36, Amos 4:4-13, Isaiah 24:1-6, Revelation 9:18-21.) The tenderness of His pleadings sought deliverance, He coming not to condemn but to save (John 3:17), and offering Himself, to deliver; yet the grounds of His righteous government and the grounds of His government were intense, and shall be, as we have seen in Chapters 6-9 supra, and may investigate in Appendix B, dealing not least with Matthew 23:37.

Christ's majestic wonder and irrefutable authenticity (which, according to prophecy, required force to assail it, and according to the wisdom of God, blended this force into sacrifice and that into victory for sinners, as predicted also): this leaves at the personal level all comparison not merely wrong, but outrageous. Even His mercy was effective, and even His 'weakness' was triumphant. In fact, in nothing did He fail, all plans proceeding to consummation.

Not only did Christ meet the non-violence criterion (at the level of faith), He gave it precisely that majestic surplus and extraordinary facility of wonder, which we find so consistently as we test the things of the Bible... ''led as a lamb to the slaughter'' (Isaiah 53:7). How far other than this cherishing solicitude were the methods of the religions of violence! How far less are their exhibits in practice, as persons, and as violators of integrity with violence, as well!

Predicted by Christ, such false prophets as Muhammad, indeed such antichrists who would replace Him by force and not reason, by implicit libel on God, by subtlety and not truth, have nothing to predict their own coming as authentic, as He did. They know nothing of the date of their death, as He did, or the predicted nature of their work, as did Christ. In fact, they do not give in God's name, to the minds that God made, any rational ground to believed: while they provide acute evidence for their rejection.

Hence they exhibit merely an irksome irrationality. If God were the speaker of such products, He would have failed signally to identify Himself from within the maze and morass of those who can use the name, as almost any other name! Indeed there appear no even plausible grounds to believe more than such as the plundering prophet Muhammad, behind the Koran. Therefore to accept this as divine, provides only more ground of offence against the God who made evidence and reason: a blasphemy against the necessary greatness of the Sovereign Speaker of the universe, it is a arbitrary substitute for reliable grounds, as well as providing inalienable grounds for rejection in terms of force in the area of "conversion" (cf. pp. 50 ff., and 65 ff.; cf. *22, *27, Chapter 1 supra)... to name but one of those shown.

To forsake the authenticated stature of Christ, declared by Muhammad sinless, for the admittedly sinful and actually unverified and unvalidated words of Muhammad via an angel, is to forsake by an act of will the evidence God has been at pains to provide.

As noted, indeed (*2 on pp. 829-832 supra), there is the negative consideration also, that the allegedly almighty Allah does not manage¹ to carry out what devotees organise in the Middle East, under the much-proclaimed massive 'provocation' of the Jews and others, and this despite the unmitigated and passionate favour for the use of force in war, to which Muhammad made commitment for his cause. The Jews' God said He would discipline them; send the Messiah; He foretold the Gospel, said it would reach the Gentiles, and told of the prolonged Jewish rejection of it, all just as we have shown in Chapter 9 supra. He told of the the Jews' return, assisted, from many nations, of their enormously successful wars against disproportionate numbers, the taking of half of Jerusalem and of the Jews being at length back in Jerusalem. It happened.

The Lord God who gives scientific method such scope said it would, and said one reason He was telling it was this: that it could be seen that it would happen. Having false and unreliable prophets receive the death penalty, all as we have seen earlier: He claimed in clearest terms that no other so-called 'god' could or would equal His own prophetic accuracy². 

Precisely as He said on that last point, it is also the case; and the Moslem 'faith' falls doubly here. First, the allegedly almighty 'god' back of it does not prevail in alleged causes of concern over the vast tracks of time; and secondly, the Jewish God, the God whom they served in the Old Covenant, foretold all the steps of the scenario to the end. The power of God is seen in this revelation; but also in the timing of this revelation; and here the Koran is one again simply not a competitor.

Thus to dump Jesus Christ for the Moslem beliefs, casts aside the revelation strongly attested as proceeding back to the Flood (see Ebla, and 3. infra, Progressing to Nowhere: Home Like No Place) and in line to earlier background, in favour of a parvenu, a religion with a Koran that arises some 600 years after Christ: not 1500 years before, or equipped with attestation consonant with a backward movement to the dawn of history, in the related records. To say no more, Muhammad is 2000 years too late, in showing the NECESSARY DIVINE REMEDY, to meet the case of sin in a world undestroyed, argued in Chapter 1. That tardiness (cf. p. 50 ff. supra) is reminiscent of Muhammad's tendency to take this and that from other religions, and excludes the Moslem 'faith' just as surely as does its lack both of remedy for sin (pp. 44 ff. supra) and of rational attestation or grounds to exhibit the divine author; while its use of violence at the faith level, with its implicitly blasphemous implications is similarly fatal.

B. Romanist Parallel

Somewhat similar in the use of power, the Pope in a parallel but different way takes over 'Christ' (Ch.4, pp. 353-374 supra; Ch.10, pp. 1032-1086 infra) ... by changing 'Him', also 'capturing' His powers, and making the 'faithful' obedient to himself.

In the most profound discord with such a practice, Peter proclaimed Christ's own name as the only one necessary for salvation (Acts 4:12), the unique one given for the necessity of salvation; and he emphasised it categorically - ''under heaven''. The Pope however makes his own name (office, power, function) necessary. (See the Bull, Unam Sanctam and other relevant elements: supra pp. 920 ff., 950 ff., and Extension, No Other Name, pp. 1070 ff. infra; and esp. *2 and *l infra for present Section.) This fatal fascination for flat contradiction of the word of God leaves the Romanist organisation, a fertile mother of heresy and inventor of religion with, alas, no base but a mouth, not the mouth of God.

It is in fact extraordinary and remarkable, claiming our utmost attention that, while each of these leaders of major world powers in religion has used, and unlike the Church of the Lord, has principles which authorise the use of, force (*1) in the area of religion as such, and specifically in that of personal response to it, each has also changed Christ into 'manageable proportions'. One did it in narrative in the Koran, the other both in adding traditions and in 'turning' Him into an idolatrised piece of bread, despite His being statedly, according to the scripture, "reserved in heaven" (Acts 3:19-21... cf. Acts 1:7); and despite His explicit statement, in context, that the words He had spoken, dealing with sacrificial eating, were matters "of spirit":

The words that I speak to you are spirit and they are life (John 6:63).

 

"Indeed," He declared, "it is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh profits nothing." Again, He decisively announced: "What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before ?" He is simply corporeally unavailable, by scripturally repeated announcements, for idolatrous cannibalism, or lassoing with the long lasso of 'theology'. When, indeed, the saints burned by the Roman Inquisitors, were murdered on account of unscriptural theories on the place of the body of Christ in the masses themselves, Christ was unavailable for further murder, in mass or by other means, having once died (Hebrews 9:25-28). To this, we shall return.

KINDRED UNAKIN

Each then of these false Christs, the Pope and Muhammad, in the strictest sense has been taking over Christ's role, and is an antichrist. Each has systematically used force (*1), and neither accepts the simple sufficiency of the sacrificial substitutionary offering of Christ by Himself, for salvation (Romans 3:21-24, 4:25-5:11, 8:31-39, 10:9, Titus 3:7, I John 1:7-22, 5:13, Galatians 3:10-13, 5:1-5, I John 2:20,27), to faith.

Each must add or subtract or manipulate (if it were possible) the dying or the point of it, or the corpse for it, either the dying of Christ or the record, by subtraction or by addition, until a brand new 'Christ' (II Corinthians 11:4, 13) being formed, the proponent, be he priest or prophet in this case, becomes in very deed, an antichrist. As a substitutionary 'prophet', he dispenses with the substitutionary atonement - the case of Muhammad; as a substitutionary priest whose word is final, or spiritual ruler, he sacrifices saints - the case of the Pope.

End of excerpt.

 

Sacrifice, to be sure, is not only physical! Think, if you will, of Luke 11:52… and of Ezekiel 34!

Not for nothing did Luther, did Calvin, did Knox, Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer and the mass of martyrs die. They had a message to restore to the tingling ears of shame, so that the lost could yet be found. We have the need still, for now the world is floundering like fish in the midst of sharks, the false contenders multiplying like viruses (cf. With Heart and Soul, Mind and Strength Ch. 11; News 121, 122; Things Old and New; SMR pp. 857-873, 687ff., 699ff.).

God in Ezekiel 34 excoriates thoroughly the shepherds whose concern was not what and where it should be; and as to the truth, Isaiah 8:20 defines it aptly in its written definition (cf. SMR pp. 946, 1032-1088H).

Definition, declaration, verification and power reside in one place only, altogether.

(Cf. SMR Chs. 1, 3, 5, 10.)

Meanwhile, consider from the above: if there are cordial differences between Romanism and Islam, yet is there not a great similarity in deformation of Christ from the historical record (cf. SMR Appendix C, Ch. 1) to the philosophical autographs of their varied systems! In this way, each of these makes its ‘christ’, and through this despicable autonomy, produces but an invention of the mind.  Each does it differently; but by each, it is done.

Small wonder, if, therefore, there are those within each of these two religions who have some respect for the work of the other: can even speak of the ‘integrity’ of their opposite number. They can begin to become ‘peers’ and reviewers.

Indeed, from SMR pp. 809 as presented above, in para 5 especially of that excerpt, there is a common bond available, for all major false religions: their actual or implicit treatment of Christ is negative, either through theological surgery at the nip of a snip; or ecclesiastical aggrandisement of what is not Christ. What He is, they cannot bear. To be sure, they have all  failed to make a kaleidoscopic Christ (cf. SMR Ch. 6, Jesus Christ: the Wisdom of God and the Power of God Ch. 8, Repent or Perish Ch. 2, Biblical Blessings Ch. 15 esp.  *2, A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 15, 16, 17). Integrity necessarily shuns the piecemeal.

Hence from such causes and their ultimate background, there arises the surge to one apposite unity, sufficiently meaningless to let humanism arise at the end, in its religious clothes (Revelation 13 with its dragon 1  and dragon 2 cf. Tender, True), but with both muscle and the mesmeric, opposing the actual Lord’s Christ (Luke 2:26, II Corinthians 11:4ff.), as made manifest in the Bible, while its spokesman and idol is found delivering ‘pompous words’ as his heightened ‘consciousness’ (II Thessalonians 2:4) leads him on to his fatal and fundamental inanity. He ‘shows himself’ that he is god!

Hence it is wholly in accord with these developments, what is written in Revelation 19:19. That ? It is this: that the ‘beast’ with the kings and their armies “gather together to make war against Him who sat on the horse and against His army.” Who is He ? He is defined in Revelation 19:13, as the word of God, of whom John wrote earlier in John 1:1, 8:58, God expressive, God as man, the incarnate Christ. He was manifest on the cross; is manifest now as King.

It is His special work to make manifest who the Father is (John 14:7,11, 1:1,14,18); and as to God, there is no limit to His power, authority or domain. Of God, there is ONLY ONE being, active in three distinct persons (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 12, SMR pp. 532ff.): He who is to be revealed, the Revealer in Redemption and the Purveyor of His Majesty: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  As man, Christ, God definitively incarnate (Hebrews 1:1-3, Chs. 7-10) is the Revealer in Redemption. That was unforgettable. Now it is in Majesty that He makes His Father manifest. He was always majestic; but not accorded His place by men; now His majesty is not veiled.

The war comes to its end. It was always a silly war to seek to wage, but perhaps it rarely seemed so to the antagonist, furious in frustration and intense in desire (cf. Revelation 12:12). It is for those judged by Christ, Himself as always the Victor, as it was before the things were fully formed: without form and void (cf. Jeremiah 4:23-26). Devastating destruction attends their erstwhile delirium, and it echoes to eternity, infamy for ever.

The malign inspiration of this disorder, the Satan, he has his last fling, and at last, his malign presence is no more. It has been his special field, the organisation of disorder; and the disorganisation of defeat, this is his special exposure.

He is not exclusively to be blamed because men so often follow him; but he is to be blamed for giving the lead. Of his final quarters, one has no need to enquire.

 

End of excerpt.

 

For more on such topics, see More Marvels … Ch. 4.

 

*4 See It Bubbles, It Howls, He Calls … Ch. 10, esp. *1A and index on Ezekiel 36-7; also SMR Appendix A.