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CHAPTER 7
2005 and still alive ?
Consider then the regimen as portrayed by Isaiah 54-55,
and find your own place in it!
Great Shall be Their Peace
GLOBAL PHENOMENA AND PARTICULAR PLACES
Aceh was an Indonesian name which spelt persecution of Christians, as do a number names in Indonesia. A very interesting map put out in 2002, shows them geographically.
Aceh itself, however, is now subject to a higher order of devastation. Today, January 3, 2005, The Advertiser refers to the devastation there wrought as 'apocalytic'. How vast are the Moslem lands, for they go not only from North Africa, with substantial Islamic content, in Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and not a little in Egypt where extremists set their sights and look for their sites, but to Turkey, Syria, no small part of Lebanon, of Jordan, in Iraq, in Iran, in Saudi Arabia, in Burma, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, and moving down, in Malyasia, in Indonesia, and yes, back to Aceh.
How much militancy, now as so often in earlier centuries, now sprouts from this source, world-wide! (cf. Divine Agenda Ch. 6, More Marvels ... Ch. 4). Its heady slaughters will doubtless in their time, have their come-uppance, since it is merely one more form of haughty imperialism, with gaunt substitute for God if not as a pretext, then at least as a delusion. God is not mocked; as to gods, there is one God (Ephesians 4:4, cf. SMR), and He is not overly fond of impersonations.
However, the Almighty is not accountable, to bring punishment to bear in a specifically selective way as we might assign it, as we are specifically instructed in Luke 13; for His wisdom is very deep. As to His judgment, it IS selective, but not on our terms. In times past, He on various occasions shared with man via His word in the Bible, what He would do to which nation and why; so that we know He does select for instruction, and has His own method of repayment, both now and hereafter. Yet when He does not say, it is not fitting that we should do so!
On the other hand, He has His ways, and you see this in Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet Ch. 4, for example, as in Ch. 3 above concerning Egypt's fall, and of course in Matthew 24 concerning that to come of the entire Gentile world. There are moral consequences for atrocious acts of persecutions, and they come as He directs them; moreover, as you watch over the centuries, you see not only rebukes and rebuffs, as to Stalin's USSR, but to many other nations which grew aggressive, self-sufficient in spirit or proud. He is able to bring down the proud, even to desolation, as in the case of Babylon, Nineveh and Tyre. Yet it is by HIS wisdom and judgment, where and what and to whom ...
Indeed, where are those who could be called at all innocent in the nations, and their power makes their evils the more apparent, now in this century, now that! Hideous pillage, equally hideous revenge - Mugabe is probably in this category, though the UN is most velvety about him, by all appearance. As for that, it has its agenda ... nor is it one that needs to be written; for its writings are in what it does, and does not.
Britain behaved abominably to Israel in 1948 in using the Royal Navy to turn away Jewish refugees from their internationally promised homeland of what was then some 30 years standing, as earlier in the 1920s when Jordan was accorded most of the Palestine granted internationally to Israel; and in repatriating Russian prisoners of war to the USSR, where slaughter was their expected reception. As to the former, we recall the political Minister Bevan noting the importance of oil, unabashedly, as England charted her then inglorious action. In Regal Rays ... Ch. 1, the matter was covered in some detail:
Was it not that secret document from British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, which as reported in the Age Magazine, August 20, 1988 (pp. 16-21), in the post-World War II turmoil, showed the frank desire to placate Arabs, with oil, with Bevin evidently passionately pursuing the line that centres of oil production MUST be available. There was, it is reported, found to be grave risk in alienating Arabs "by appearing to ... endorse the Jewish aspiration for a separate State." How does oil spread softness on the paths of war, and incline the heart to greed rather than goodness, when there is no restraint! It is a world in which restraint in 'national interests' seems increasingly if not obsolete, then all but antique.
At least, they realised what they were doing. Arab plus oil is greater than Jew without it ? It seemed a shoddy spiritual grasp of things; and to say no more, grasping.
France has sought glory in de Gaulle, following a not particularly splendid set of armed performances in 1870, 1914 and 1939. To be sure, she fought in 1914, valiantly, but she was given immense help from beyond, especially from Britain and in later stages, the USA, towards which benefactor and rebuilder after World War II, in no small part, she seems just now singularly ungrateful! USA can stand without her, thank you very much, and needs no reciprocity of loyalty in her time of trouble.
Louis XIV in earlier days, was notorious for his persecutions of Jews; whilst he managed to revoke the toleration in the Edict of Nimes, so leading to the export from France of some 400,000 persons called Huguenots, a reduced inheritance in a name for what they had been. Moreover, he hada the appalling effrontery to announce in 1715 the end of the Protestant religion in Frnace. Forcible 'conversions' were renowned from the satanic activities of those who sought to use power of hand where only truth and its inherent power in the Lord were even so much as relevant. In this way, France joined the club of militants in religion, just as in the Inquisition.
It is in many such ways and days that Romanism showed the same forcible and presumptuous face as Islam in its own ministrations of the scimitar and the discrimination against second class citizens, deprived of many rights and ludicrously demeaned.
Thus France lost a vast reservoir of skilled persons for the sake of ruinous prejudice and anti-biblical passion, whilst becoming guilty of a gross and turgid discrimination against simple Christians. Surely she was sowing in this double persecution for the sorrows to be reaped in the centuries to come.
Yugoslavia has had a Communism which corrupted followed by a series of wars reaching back in the last instance, to Nazi days and the inordinate slaughter of one group by another, the latter with Nazi force to help the religious atrocities headed by a priest, later to be acclaimed (cf. SMR pp. 920ff., 951ff.). Czechoslovakia, in the form of Moravia, had John Huss burning as a 'goose', by a heartless play on his name in the atrocities of the Inquisition, which sought to shake that nation, as so many another.
To be sure, a marvellous Protestant work went on for long, with courage and determination under the fire of militant and godless passion against it, and this has been a joy and a refreshing to see, not least in the Moravian Brethren and Count Zinzendorf in his day. Yet the persecutions were rife and an outrage against man and God.
Russia has not adorned the rule of grace and kindness in Siberia for example, while Japan was not entirely altruistic in World War II, in the little matter of the Burma railway and the treatment of prisoners of war. China has not been without spot, in the immense and sustained brutalities towards Christians, and more recently the Gulang Gong; nor have multiplied others of nations avoided the rod on back of believers in Christ (cf. News 37, 68, 69, Beauty ... Ch. 4).
Infamous deeds are a litany on many grounds, in many times, for many reasons, in many lands.
A short quotation from News 68 (slightly extended) is to the point here.
You know of that, the world record, don't you ? The record in seen not least in China where religion is increasingly taboo (even if it claims not to be religion, as in the case of the multitudinous Falun Gong movement ), and oppression has this name: the PARTY MUST HAVE CONTROL (no 'party' as it would seem to the free!)...
It is found, this world record, in Rwanda, in Biafra, in Kosovo, in India-Pakistan, in China-Taiwan, in Kashmir, amid the Tutu and their associates ... in South Africa where Aids is blooming, indeed in the sub-Sahara continent according to the latest Time, to the point that experts are amazed at the apathy about it all, and it is appalling in the Sudan, where the UN does not find the method of doing much while the months pass and the myriads of sacrificial victims to the Islamic violence soar ... but why increase the litany. It is NOT a subject for praise. The world-record needs recording but it is not impressive in its moral tone, spiritual attainments or level-headed facing of facts about the inhabitants. Where then IS there due and true topic of praise, unalloyed and uncounter-manded by folly ?
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Currently, the non-religious multi-national Europe
is coming into being, and having toyed |
GLOBAL DESTABILISATION AND DEVASTATION
So much for Christ and the past of what is oddly but often called 'Christian Europe', even to the point that those wanting Turkey to join the EU, have been inclined perhaps towards the denunciative rhetoric, that Europe must not be conceived as a 'Christian club.' Club it might be, but one has to study hard to find in this receptacle for MISSIONARY WORK TO IT, as is now the case and has been for many decades, the Christian part in any dominant form whatever. Even Romanism was given its come-uppance very markedly when it showed in cardinal format, a desire for - shall we say - a more religious formulation for the new and grander EU.
This EU, it is passionate about its common destiny (cf. Ch. 2 above, with His Wounds ... Ch. 3) and its potential prosperity and the power for safety in which it seems to think it will become prominent; but of aims and morals in terms readily recognisable as more than amoral, and even beginning to approach the throne of God, there is absolutely nothing. It is an empty religious husk, seed long since shed. But what is it like ? It resembles a sports car driven by a yuppie, with the foot flat to the floor, minus map. In its increasing membership and aims, dreams and directions, minus steering wheel it surges. For that, of course, it will pay. You DO need in this world to know where you are going. After all, in the end, you get there, wherever it is, and merely to GO is bucolic; and its end is likely to be acrid and acidic.
A quotation from Christ, the Cumulative and the Culmination, Ch. 4 (q.v) may help to bring more pith to our point.
Of course, this is the generation without understanding, as to trend. It seems to love to understand that it does not understand, and to voice the view with ardour that this is very understandable. Has it not seen the suffering of its great-grand-fathers and grandfathers, its fathers in Boer War, and WW I, and WW II, and in the Cold War, the Korean War, the Gulf War, the engulfing Second Gulf War, in the maelstrom inherited in the place of Christ's crucifixion, Jerusalem; and has it not experienced local outrages and moral outages in Yugoslavia that was, but is no more, in Eastern Europe (shiver here, and not without reason at the politesse of letting Russia surge in while Montgomery waited, under duress, in the wings lest he get there first), in China with the iron ring on the ruling finger for the people of course, oh yes, always for the people, whoever they are.
So likewise has it been in Communist USSR, perhaps the most malodorous of all misunderstandings, that man is meat for the wolves, and the wolves are his deliverers!
How then COULD they be expected to understand ? Is not man about to meddle with destiny, take 'evolutionism' its god, by the scruff of the neck and start dictating the way it should go, all of course without understanding of life, facing the evidential realities, either biological or spiritual; and with the existential will that glories in its subversive cleverness, while accomplishing as always, precisely nothing. That is to say, nothing of much purpose, for if this be called accomplishment, yes it crashes, like crazed youth in sports cars, into poles for light, into other cars for death, mistaking mischief for life.
This lack of understanding is the often unspoken but intimated plea. It mocks at truth and even essays to become it!
As it is put elsewhere in that same Chapter 4:
But no! as in Europe, so here, there is that glorious ambiguity, that marvellous ignorance, that profundity of non-comprehension, that highway of the illicit, that stunned anti-significance which KNOWS that there is no knowledge, which affirms as true that there is no truth, at least officially, and finds it CONVENIENT NOT TO USE THE TERM, Christianity, even when it is thought.
There can be no pleasure in such recitations; but there is much need! They are not inclusive of all, but they are needed to encourage realism on scope.
When therefore we abandon the sophistry of 'Mother Nature'
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who has no breasts, |
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no nor power to control (cf. The gods of naturalism have no go!), |
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nor yet to invent itself; |
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and come to the Creator in heaven, from the space staging post of our earth, |
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which is not founded on matter since this is itself a circumscribed and delimited, declining creation; |
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and so come to the presence of the God of Eternity |
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who sponsored the creation of the human race with its prodigious powers of thought and analysis, |
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which continually show their
harmony with their topics |
what then ?
Then we begin to perceive that the outrageous arrogance of presumptive autonomy to which man is now more than ever tending, as if having invented an evolutionary tree which does not have the advantage of growing, he will now control it, though it does not work, and so contrive his destiny: it is mere daydreaming. The grating grandeur of self-aggrandising man strives to direct events, and suffers in its bucolic follies; for if you are good at shooting, it is but vain to try to shoot a star!
DISPLACED PERSONS AS A VOLUNTARY GROUP PHENOMENON
Calamities do not come from mummy, but from the Creator (Isaiah 45:7). Nor are they always without direct input, for their arrival, from mankind himself, in general or in particular. WHEN man ceases to rely on God, to find in Him his place, then he is that horrible thing, a displaced person. It can become grotesque, and one must admire how courageously so many of them continued after World War II. Yet to be a DP, it is near a calamity. To be one voluntarily, and spiritually in particular, it is near to madness.
There is a place for man; and when it is not just your family or nation, but your very being as a race which is in question, and you are displaced, then it is an unholy mess. The ravages which strike increasingly those who prefer to ignore the design manifest in every cell of mankind's biological book, his DNA, as to their overall unitary creation, like a car of many components but one issuance, are predictable in kind. These calamities and dissonances, these disturbances and perilous dreams, these mad machinations and power lusts, these terrorisms and gaunt delights in destruction at the very hand of puny man, these and many more such things: they are no more than are to be expected in such a case, for at first, two main reasons.
The First Reason
First, if you ignore what you are, you are certain to find calamity from the dream which you substitute. Dreams are for night seasons; it is vision required for the day, not contra-factual fiddling.
What you are, correctly understood, will allow you as you increase your knowledge of what you are not, to become more adroit and the better to address your relationship with your overall environment. Ignorant of what you are, you become rather like a cake fork, being used to dig. You WILFULLY take yourself out of the procedure where as a person you are cherished by the personal God (Trust ... Ch. 4), and so, finding things not necessarily adapted to you, you think of them as chance*1A.
By no chance is this so (cf. Ancient Words, Modern Deeds ... Ch. 9, 13, Trust ... Ch. 7; Delusive Drift ... Ch. 6); it is merely that you are out of your place, and the impacts may indeed simply be allowed to reach you. Again, at times, they may be specifically ordained for correction, understanding or rebuke. Freedom is on both sides, and that of the Lord is infinite. Like chaff before the wind, you may indeed go as in Psalm 1; but that, it is what happens to chaff in the wind. It has better uses; but then, when it is out of its place, these preferred functions may not come into force! It may thus be that no purposive intervention occurs. Orphans, they tend to find a certain distancing from the personal source (cf. John 14:18). This can lead to serious problems, whether it be physically or in the spiritual realm.
But ignoring what you are ? It is not appropriate, and when you do not, wilfully do not care to realise what you are, such is the extreme peril you are in. Thinking himself to be a god, man becomes quickly far worse than a beast, as you see in the perversion of drive into torture, of care into godless contrivance, and of pity into steely resolve, to ignore all that is sensitive and spiritual, kindly and concerned, humble and willing to test, in the interests of some naturalistic dream. Communists did it explicitly, as did the Nazis. Their views tangled with history (cf. SMR pp. 925ff., Aviary of Idolatry), and became a dead weight.
Next time, it will be the entire international 'community' which in this bewitching seeming euphemism, seeks the priority, the supremacy, the Louis XIV-style grandeur amidst appalling persecution as its dream becomes mandatory, as if a husband, dreaming in the night, orders his spouse to step out of the fourth floor window. It is not so much comic as absurd; yet there is little so comic in the abuse of power which naturally and continually comes in the end, where God is replaced with the nostrums and notions of man.
IF MAN WANTS TO DRIVE THE WORLD, with his nostrums, notions and potions, then there has to be force, since it is untrue that he has the power or the right or the sight to do it. Frustrated, or ambitious, and if the first at the first, then the second in due time as with Hitler at Stalingrad, man then uses force. Rome did it; Mecca got it; Moscow thrust it; Peking now with its new name, it smashed with it; and now even London is toying with the Jack Straw creations of intimidation, where Christian evangelicism can be chastised by the State! in some of the most muddy thinking you could ever imagine.
The desire to derogate 'fundamentalism' has been analysed before, and is no more than school-boy howler type in logical validity. If some who believe in some book use violence, does that mean all ? If some who ascribe to God some book, torture and kill, mutilate and sack, does this mean that any who believe in a book of divine origin are the same ? even if their book REQUIRES MOST DRAMATICALLY THE PRECISE OPPOSITE! (cf. The Biblical Workman, Appendix II). Just as England sees fit to distance herself from Protestant reliance on God Himself ex-pope, and the Bible, with the Church of England long on record as seeking alliance with Romanism (cf. Question of Gifts), and now is reportedly conceiving a Coronation (when it may come) where different religions are represented (the theological pantheon is never attractive to the God of creation and power, since it mixes infinity with the finite), then as in Romans 1, the whole gamut of results accrue. In this likewise fits the trend towards persecution of creationists, as seen in Beauty for Ashes Ch. 3.
Departing Dynamics in England and the USA ? and the Imperial world ...
Thus Britain, twice repulsing and repelling European attack, whether in the days of Elizabeth I or a later Elizabeth, in 1588 or 1940, is now succumbing in the Common Market, the European Union, to the vacuous common destiny without connotation spiritually, and stumbling into the courts of Romanism: she who avoided them by power, yes now coming close by willingness. In this way, one of the great political bastions against slavery is going down; and the USA - caught in immense and increasing debt structures, and so increasingly dependent on other nations, the comrade to Britain in its resistance to dictatorship, and friend in World War II's search for freedom - is growing less and less able to intervene again.
The imperial world is arriving. Its ONE international corpus, its HUMANIST spectacular, its SELF worship, whether direct or via gods which it makes (cf. Ch. 2 above), its NATURALISTIC magics (cf. Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Chs. 6 and 7) and assertive pre-occupations without God to help its humility and provide it with realism: all this proceeds like a golf course in the second nine.
The UN with it, it begins to describe the humanity of humanism, as something in its own right. It is however wrong to act in your own right when you do not have the right to do so, the authority, the reality to use what has been created, as if you had made it yourself.
Thus ignoring reality, man runs into it.
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In short, becoming a displaced globe, it runs off course, and invites a calamity which at length, with reluctance, arrives; for the Lord is slow to anger and of great understanding; yet as to Him, He is not mocked. |
When the predicted impact arrives, apparently an asteroid described in Revelation 8:10, with its colossal consequences for this earth, there will be seen in some more literal sense of what it is to be a displaced globe; for the God who made things material and spiritual alike, and IS Spirit, He is well able not only to create man with a material body, but a globe with material consequence. Defamation of truth is by no means immaterial!
The Second Reason
The second reason for expectation of calamity is this. When the reality you ignore is not only THERE, but also GOD ALMIGHTY, then the ignoring is rather like those who RAN TOWARDS THE APPROACHING TSUNAMI, in the region of Indonesia, into what would destroy them, apparently not in the least realising that this was not a tourist plus before lunch, but a devastating reality to shock the world, and reach out its hand or wave of death, as far as distant Africa! Running INTO a tsunami! Can you believe it ? One must; and it is common to mankind in this century as it runs into God. Some still run TO Him, to escape the godless contention and arrive where truth is; but these, they are not the mainstream of passion, nor are they in the direction of flow.
What then do we find in this second REASON FOR CALAMITY amongst the peoples of this world ?
There is an a fortiori proposition here. If you not merely ignore the Lord, but act inventively to seek to replace Him in philosophic follies and ignominious irrationalities, you go yet further to stir and stimulate action to correct. It may not be immediate; it may be subtle: the Lord is free. In love He corrects, in patience He waits, but in the end, there may be ... no remedy left (cf. II Chronicles 36, Hebrews 10)! Reality is unleashed. When we consider just a little of the provocations, this is amazing indeed: that He waits so often, so long, with so many correctives, providing man with words and writers and preachers and teachers, before He acts.
How vast is the volcano of human folly!*1 Though God has sent His Son in service to blot out the guilt of sin and enable the glory of victorious living in love and peace, man sought to blot out the Son and now flees from the light, trying to invent gods, or non-gods who act as gods, which is no better, in order to devise rebellions of spirit and traumas of heart, in the interests of the arrogance of illusory autonomy, a fly directing a herd of bulls. The fly can expect trouble while so obsessed.
The Third Reason
There is now however a third reason to expect calamity. The God who is being ignored, did not ignore the books (approximated at 1000 large ones, in man's DNA) for man in his construction, for the architectural plans are there, and the program for the programmatic part, is thus documented. There is something else He did not ignore. He did not fail to provide a handbook - having made man so able to manipulate thought and symbols that he could read - for man to read.
This had to do not a little with the way in which the INTEGRAL but COMPOSITE vitalised reality called man could and should act, understand, and what was to be fruitful, blessed and productive for him in his living on this earth. As with cancer, so with destructive episodes like that of December 26 (the new September 11), it is not that they happen which is stunning, but that they (relatively) happen so seldom.
It is like a fantastic car, so organised that while things CAN go wrong, so many programs and procedures are integrated in its computerised integration control systems, and manufactured into being in its integral mechanical structures (with little meaning except when operative according to the entire design, so that a something-casually-on-the-way-to-a-car would be ludicrous), that relatively little goes wrong. That is, this occurs for a good design, provided it is VERY PROPERLY and CONSTANTLY serviced.
That, it is the manufacturer's business, just as our own servicing is our Creator's business. In general, create something, and it is your affair to designate the rules and constraints. If the thing is personal, like man, it is also his affair to READ the thing that tells him.
If you do, but don't DO it, follow it, then you might as well save yourself the trouble. If you believe that some scrap of paper with tidal marks on it is the REAL manual or the code for you, then one can but pity you; for calamity is near. When it comes, learn to expect it; when this is the way over centuries, learn to expect it when it says it will come. The manual, the Bible as repeatedly shown (cf. SMR) on this site: it is MOST EXPLICIT on this point.
God has given to man such a system with such programs, that we have not been wiped out by asteroids or diseases, or wars, or uprisings, which is quite remarkable. We are so apparently fragile that one might think it staggering that we have reached a civilisation of such leisure and power; but that we should repeatedly bombard and obliterate ourselves in part, over long years of devilish devastations and hatred, and then go on living, this is a testimony to the resilient features resident in our created design, and to the mercy of God. We nearly went in the global flood (cf. Contributor 1), and the Bible predicted that when the end of the Age drew near (II Peter 3), men would not like to think about that event. That of course is just one of the whole myriad of signals of the end of the Age.
Ignoring mercy, man expects in humanistic illusion, to find both peace and dream of his own, for all the world like a vainglorious Pinnochio. In fact, the resilience of the human race is so great that it is one of the delusive dynamics which seem to hypnotise him into self-trust. Global catastrophes come slowly, but their message is stern. Global illusions come in strength of determination in false prophets, but they lack any help. What is the good of such talk for man ?
It does not of course have any helpfulness when he is drowning.
This present calamity which evokes pity, compassion and concern, can be ameliorated by giving money. One is, as above noted, appalled at the stages of cancer, but does one for that reason, in pity, decide NOT to warn other patients before, for example, their smoking brings them to this destiny! Warning is no substitute for pity, but rather an implement of its concern!
It is thus at times helpful to give advice. And this ? it is not to this region or that, but to all regions, for MUCH MORE IS TO COME, as Revelation makes so clear in chapters 6 and following. It is advice not coming from wisdom which one invents, but from God who has invented us all! and said it all long ago.
Listen to the Book which God has Given and History Follows
It is wise to listen now to the book, to the Bible, alone verified and validated as the word of the living God (cf. TMR Ch. 5, SMR Ch. 1, Repent or Perish Ch. 7). THIS current calamity is ONE of its verifications which are legion. The seas and the waves roaring, as we have seen in an earlier chapter (Ch. 5 above, Luke 21:25-26) are one of the end of the Age phenomena, together with the shaking of the powers of the heavens as in the atomic weaponry (cf. SMR p.790), something provided in fascinating detail as seen in this reference.
It is however far more than this that is occurring. It is part of the entire program of performances, which are to intrude by divine decision into the ludicrously self-important world of 'humanity', which seems so to interest Kofi Annan, who is wanting to find what humanity can do and so forth, in this current disaster, in that UN without religion.
That, it is interesting, for in this it is rather like ... the EU!
How popular it is becoming, this irreligion, as indicated earlier (Ch. 3 above, with Generation of the Dispossessed); but really the religion is implicit and it is man, the man kind of religion, as in Europe. So it goes; but where, that is the point! To see a sports car flash off in the evening light, as it dies, with sportive driver and intoxication, it is not reassuring as to prognosis. The more vigorous the self-assurance, the more certain that the evening light will not be the only thing that dies.
Man is on the way to his own worship as foretold in scripture (II Thessalonians 2), on which point the novel, The Moon Soon has recently been written.
The Bible is on the way to its complete culmination in the completion of the DISORDER, since man is so fond of pretending that this is basic to order, and source for it, as if a fat man is winner in a race BECAUSE of his fatness. What disorder ? That which in increasing measure is to come to comfortable man who ignores the will and word of God in titanic (a good image for this) proportions; that disorder which comes as a signal to man that all is not well. It is not that the universe cannot make it; it is that man is making such a mess of his worship and wilfulness, that the disposition of things in his universe is ONE of the many ways in which he is now suffering rebuke AS THE ENTIRE RACE.
Now it will hurt here, now there; but in the end, it is all of it, not without divine warning. FAIL to change the oil, and the engine overheats. Is that because the car has gone beserk ? or is it for some rather different reason! When you insult God as well as ignore Him, and seek to snatch His creation for your own use, then while He is most patient and loving, there comes a time, as in a plague of mice, when decisive action is needed. Otherwise ALL the crops could go. Thus, with man's madness in philosophy and religion amplified AS PREDICTED for this part of the Age since Christ, there is the amplification as predicted of the result, the reward for his follies.
So far it has been rather contained; it is stated that it will to go to the point, however, that unless Christ returned, earth would become uninhabitable to man (Matthew 24:21-22). We are assured here in Christ's words, that the end of our Age is going to be quite a singular thing; and you see the same in the prophecy of Daniel (12:1ff.).
That, then, is what Christ said. So don't blame mother this or that: blame sin, and repent. The message is the same as at the crucifixion, when to the Jerusalem of that time, in particular, Christ gave the advice to this effect: Do not weep for me, but for yourselves, for if they do this in the green tree, what will they do when it is dray!
Such too in Matthew 24 is the prognosis for the WORLDLINESS OF THIS WORLD. Now it is not merely Jerusalem, as then; it is a world that is up for a rebuke consistent with its perennial folly which, mounting into international airiness, gains international calamities.
There is no room for gloom, any more than for those who are smoking, and start to stop it. It is when you continue that the gloom comes; but then, this, it is wilful. The Gospel has for two millenia in exquisite simplicity and clarity offered peace to those who escape from the personal, social and national culture of sin, and come to the call of Christ as Saviour and Lord, who provided as the Word of God incarnate, the commanded words for man, and personally performed, as God in flesh, the necessary sacrifice to atone. Justice then is served, and no more is required.
That is the simple way which, designedly, a child could follow. Indeed, Christ is quite clear, unless you become as little children you CANNOT enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:1ff.). This is far from meaning that you dare not think, for we are COMMANDED in I Peter 3:15 to give a reason for the faith to those who ask. It is rather to require a secession from the sin of personal arrogance, and racial presumption, and to find in God your Father.
The world of course will not repent, and it is bent very differently; but you, you who read, you may do so! You may put your trust in the Creator and in the Redeemer, which to the glory of God is ONE, namely Jesus Christ.
You see it can be a very happy new year after all.
Let us now amplify all this from the prophetic base of Isaiah, in order to gain more of the character and texture of biblical things, and to see where in all of this, the meekness of the majestic Messiah shines like the sun in its glory.
I THE GATES OF CRYSTAL,
FOUNDATIONS OF SAPPHIRES
After Christmas, what ? After Isaiah 53, what ? After all, although Isaiah 53 is the kernel of prophecy concerning the substitutionary atonement of Christ for all who ever come to Him by faith, it is far more. He is to “divide the spoil with the strong.” There is a reign to come which unbelief tries to make seem illusory, just as the Nazis tried to prevent the D-Day invasion of Europe seem impossible. But it came!
Truth comes out in the end, and when God saw fit to occupy in Christ the place of sacrifice, it was not His sovereignty which He sacrificed, for then only the wisdom of oxen would rule, creation would be paranoid and none would provide. Instead, resurrected according to oft-stated plan, He having purged sin for those who receive Him, sent His Gospel and the very Spirit of God to attest the truth until the world saturated with the Good News, arrives at its time of judgment (cf. Hebrews 1, John 14:15-29, 16:17ff., Acts 2, Matthew 24:14,23ff.).
Christ is coming (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5, SMR Ch. 8, Little Things Ch. 6), and the time is drawing near. It is just as foolish to pretend it is not, as it is to pretend you know precisely when. It is near, by definition of terms (Luke 21:24-28). It is in this context that we revert to Isaiah.
The song of Isaiah 54-55 concerns the sure and steadfast spiritual victory of His saints, the world-surging scene of His gospel’s invasion of this darkened globe, which of course has abundantly happened, and the endless mercy which stretches out like jewels on a crown, for His people. All this you see in Isaiah 54. The deliverance from those who seek to squash the spirituality of the saints is marked clearly in Isaiah 54:17. It is even an individual matter.
“ ‘No weapon that is formed
against you shall prosper,
And every tongue which rises against you in judgment
You shall condemn.
This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD,
and their righteousness is from Me, ’says the LORD.’ ”
Indeed, mountains may be removed, but not the mercy of the Lord from His children (54:10).
ii all their children shall be taught of the lord
Affliction will arise, tempests, even spiritual tsunamis will ravage the seascapes of the soul; but even these will not prevail. In Isaiah 54:11, we see this: that tossed with tempest, afflicted as they are who serve Him in this world, and He not only knows it, but has His spiritual medicines for it, yet He provides His tireless strength to support, to uphold, to bless. The very walls will be covered with precious stones (cf. Isaiah 60:18), the walls of salvation in which are the lights and perfections, the burning purity and the beautiful blessing of the living God. It is a matter of knowing God through the Gospel of the sent Saviour Jesus Christ, and then in experience, in power, in peace and in life, in persecution and in travail, in comradeship with the Almighty as friend and redeemer, living in the fourth dimension.
The fourth ? There is body, mind and spirit; and this is the creation (cf. SMR Ch. 1); but there is also the ENVIRONMENT. For some, this is the world of culture, society and so forth, with some hills and clouds and so forth; but for those who know God, the pre-eminent and ineluctable necessity of life is now supplied, the ENVIRONMENT WHICH IS THE COMRADESHIP OF GOD.
What is it like ? It is like a scalpel having thought it was a tin-opener, finding in the Lord’s hands that it is not only sharp, an instrument of specialty, but is blessed to heal: and there is much joy in working with Him in peace, as a son with his own father.
In Isaiah 54:13, we have this wonderful promise. Those who are indeed the Lord’s will have the Lord’s own provision, as He brings teachers and prophets to APPLY and SHOW meaning of the scriptures.
"aLL YOUR children will be taught of the lord
and great will be the peace of your children."
Indeed, as new generations arise, these will have this divine provision. Righteousness will establish His people, however many may be the evil slanders which assail them, and whatever the devilish wiles which address them (54:14). All your children shall be taught of the Lord (54:13). Successive generations in the Christian fold have had this blessing; not of course where heresy swells, but where the biblical truth has been revered and venerated as is required (cf. John 14:21-23, Matthew 54:17ff., SMR Appendix D).
People will seek to control and squash Christians, but the Lord will overthrow their intrigues and His body, seen here as the saints, will be aroused to life, and sustained till He comes (Isaiah 54:15), when they join Him in their own resurrection (Isaiah 26:19):
“My dead body shall they arise.”
That is the actual translation when you discard the italics ('together with'), which are used in the NKJV and the AV to indicate that the translators thought it would be smoother or better with this idiomatic addition; but those italicised words are not there, in the text at all. Thus the translation above is undoubtedly correct.
What then ? The Church will arise in the power of the Creator who first made man, these remade and redeemed, His own. And the Church ? It is that is those who by faith have repented and believe
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in Christ Jesus as Lord and only Saviour, the Lord's Christ
(Luke 2:26), and not some fake copy - |
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in Him whose body is but one,
since He became flesh (Hebrews 2, Romans 8:1-3), |
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in Him whose body has ascended
to heaven (Acts 3:19ff., I Corinthians
12, Ephesians 5), in Him the Master alone (Matthew 23:8-10), and
from Him
the free gift
(Romans 3:23ff., 5:12-17) of salvation. |
Thus just as He personally and physically rose from the dead (I Cor. 15:1-4), so does this spiritual body of His, this construction of which HE is head, which He purchased by His blood (Acts 20: 28) rise in its time in the general resurrection at His return (as in Matthew 24, I Thess. 4); and so do all His saints arise when He comes for them, and then, regathered, come with Him (Revelation 19, I Thess. 3:13, Zech. 14:5) who is to rule.
Is there power ? Of course, there is power in the miracles of healing of Christ, the raising of the dead, in the coming on the predicted date, in the resurrection, in the control of all events so that prophetic predictions are fulfilled, in the lives of His people.
Yet before that, there is the heart (Revelation 13:8, Ephesians 1:4, Psalm 40, Hebrews 10:5, cf. Joyful Jottings 22-25), the willingness to humble Himself to the point of vicarious suffering into the ghoulish horrors of death, in which the sin of many is borne, since to Him it is given by those whom He so saves.
If any suffer, He died; if any suffer for their sins, He suffered for those of others, having none of His own; if any face judgment, so did He first, to deliver such people from it, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 6:23); but in all this glory, there is a crux, the Cross of Christ where love showered its free gift, eternal life.
If any man think he does not personally need this death of the Lord, that he is too good for it, and does not need this death to take his penalty for his own sins, then he is asleep in the deep, and needs arousing; for those for whom the death of Christ is not essential are in the end, not His; for essential it is! (cf. Hebrews 12-15).
One may notice in this scripture that Christ obtained eternal redemption by His blood on the cross, and that "He is the mediator of the new testament, by means of death ... those who are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance." The number of Gospels is ONE (Galatians 1), and the number of those too good to NEED His covenanted death for their eternal inheritance, who can thus receive it, is NONE. Such is the word of the Lord, written. It applies to one and it applies to all.
Thus Paul insists God forbid that one should glory in anything but the Cross of Christ, by which the Christian is crucified to the world, and the world to him (Galatians 6:14 cf. Member Contribution 2). It is here that the curse was smitten, to yield to justification by faith, the divine acceptance since in all meekness, Christ died, the just for the unjust to bring us to God. You cannot come in any other way; you cannot fail to arrive when you come in the way provided. It is free (Romans 6:23, 3:23ff., Galatians 3).
You do not pay your own ransom
(Matthew 20:28), in whole or in part; and if you think you do, then you are
unable to be saved. You INSIST on providing some part which is worthless. It is
ALL of Christ and this in every phase and manner and form and style, or it is
nothing. You have to forsake your entire self as good or godly or fine or sound
or a contributor (cf. Romans 10, Luke 14), and accept His righteousness, His
only (Psalm 71, Romans 5), or you have to join the crew of the Ship or Rebellion
and invent what you want. It is pointless, whatever it is, and a mere further
abuse of the very name of the Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
There is about this a beautiful completion and sense of culmination. He came, He died, He rose, He sent His Spirit, His body the Church is formed by grace and the gift of grace (Romans 5:17), and on the basis of His own resurrection, THIS BODY OF HIS, it also rises to go to and be with Him, when the time comes for books to be opened.
Now we come to basic ingredients of the Gospel.
iii tHE FREE WATER, CALLING OF NATIONS,
CALLING ON THE LORD
In the Bible, as in many other works, the author makes clear His current topic in its own context. Thus here there is an envisagement of Israel, a new Israel by a new name, the Church inclusive of Jew and Gentile alike, a spiritual Israel, the Israel of God, and how tenderly has the Lord addressed her in Isaiah 54.
In Isaiah 55, there is emphasis on the entire freedom of the life-changing, washing and enlivening gift of God (55:2-3) as He calls His servants by a new name (cf. Isaiah 62:1ff.). A new land, a new love, a new foundation, the fulfilment of the old, is now available; and its call is for citizens, fearless, faithful and fervent in faith.
In liberty do their spirits move, for from nothing in mankind, though from much given by the Lord as Isaiah 53 showed, comes this contract, this covenant (Isaiah 55:3-4), centred in the Messiah. In this vitality, in His name, with His Gospel, nations not even known to those first called would come to Him through the continuing testimony; and His own power and presence will enable it (cf. Matthew 28:18-20).
Their treasure is truth, and this not in some formula of man, but in the form of a servant, of a king, conceived into mankind through the line of David, and for His people: HE HIMSELF will be leader, commander and witness. God as man having brought man back to God, the Lamb is the glorious Lord, in the sublime affinity of the Trinity.
His Spirit will surge into the hearts of those who seek Him, based on that foundation of His mercy and salvation, and His pouring His soul out to death on the Cross; His commands will arouse the heart, His leading will satiate the spirit. His resurrection, basic to all, will become the prototype and way of life for all. As Europe fell to the Allies in 1945, so do
“the kingdoms of this world” becomes “the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ” (Revelation 11:15), “and He shall reign for ever and ever.”
This time, it is not human Allies but the Divine Christ who destroys the rebellion as in Psalm 2, Revelation 19; and His rule comes as the Sun in the dawning, for the Cold War is no more, as in Isaiah 11, Revelation 20.
Such is what is to come. It is not found by seismographic equipment but by a prior record in the Bible. The sequence given by God, it is this for the Messiah and His work: Birth, death, resurrection, return and rule!
This time, it is not Europe which needs to be rescued by the Allied Invasion at Normandy; it is the world. Yet it is the world which is forsaken, so it is FROM THIS WORLD, the new Europe if you will, from which not armed forces but the hand of God provides rescue in that day.
It is from this whole spherical cosmos that the rapture, the release and the removal comes. How many will be bewildered by the sudden loss of the people whom the Lord has created TWICE: firstly as man, and then as children of God (cf. Titus 3:3-5, II Corinthians 5:17ff.). These, having none of their own goodness to contribute to their salvation's gift (cf. Galatians 5:4-13, Isaiah 64:6, Psalm 51:5, Romans 3:10,19, 20-24).
Being ready, they are taken! (Matthew 24:44 in 24:37-44). BE READY! Don't wait for the ensuing tsunami sequels. You can read about them in Matthew and Revelation, in Luke and Micah. Rather act first! (cf. Acts 2:37ff.).
Yet this deliverance, this rescue to come, it is for faith, so it is ALL THE WORLD WHICH BELIEVES who are rescued, and believes what ? Since ALL THE WORLD IS GUILTY BEFORE GOD (Romans 3:19), it is that part of which is redeemed by His blood, that of the ONE LORD in the ONE FAITH, who are rescued out of it. For them, their spiritual environment is already God, and when He comes, He comes but nearer!
What then is to save the life of man ? Is it something you make up, your own expurgated handbook ? Hardly. You can change the car handbook, but this will not alter its specifications, or the needs for work to be done. The work is done by Christ, but the need is for surrender to Him (Luke 14:27ff.). You surrender on His terms or not at all, merely masking your rebellion (Luke 14:31-33). That is why the New Covenant is one in His blood, and it is received as signifying His death by each one individually, as cover; for unless, said Christ, you eat My flesh and drink My blood (John 6:53), you have no life in you. NOTHING ? That assuredly is not very much and is GOOD FOR NOTHING!
To be sure, the words which He spoke were Spirit and Life (John 6:63), so that we are not thinking of steaks, but of course of sacrifice, such as made yearly in Israel of old, when the High Priest presented the blood, available for all, in the Holy Place of the Temple. Christ did not commit suicide at the Last Supper, as a true man (Hebrews 2), but gave a memorial feast and said so. Yet, this said, one must face the fact that while making metaphors into meat is ludicrous and blasphemous as the Church of England Prayer Book for so long so well declared, yet it is no less ludicrous to imagine that you can need LESS than the death of Christ to cover your sins, when NO LIFE in you is the result!
Such surrender is not too hard for those who love not the killer culture of this world, and its unkind swaggerings, or the condition of their own unregenerate hearts; but is fine for those who find only in God is the purity of God, and that all else is infamously less, and competitively ludicrous, worthy only of death before His light.
For centuries Christians have suffered - and Christ indicated in John 16, that those who killed His people would think they were doing service to God, precisely as was fulfilled in the myriads whom Romanism killed in the Inquisition (q.v), and often as Islamic terrorists act now. Christians have been subjected to something like extermination in days past in Africa, sometimes in stages, and in days present by Islamic extremists, as earlier by Communists on a wide front, and often by various national fronts, as in China: by those who take it into their heads to do such things.
Now the lovers of God by the Gospel of grace suffer in many places and domains, and Indonesia has been a large component, just as has been the Sudan, and Russia, and China for that matter; but the time is coming. Revelation makes this very clear. Blessed, it says are those who die in the Lord in these days (Revelation 14:13); and it is clear that many will those be who overcome "by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony" (Revelation 12:11); yes and this overcoming has a small consequence we there read.
It is this: "they loved not their lives, to death."
This means that their courage and consistency under duress frequently lead to their death, as often as needed in terms of the whole mass of people called truly and biblically by the name of Christ. This purging and persecution is to become increasingly of the nature of global pandemic as the unitary world rule becomes solidified (cf. Revelation Chs. 13,17), and loves itself, not the Lord.
Thus in this world, and it is to become increasingly more homogeneous in its devilry as times goes on, there is an oppression which is to grow, and this world is to become itself, like Europe in 1944, a place from which the necessary power is to come for deliverance.
What might it be called, this day of divine deliverance for the saints of God ?
CR DAY
Why, CR DAY, that is Christ's return day. It is also the day for Christ as Royal, even to deity, and royal, even to manhood.
It is the avenue of power in the consummation of love; and it draws near as the evil forces increasingly gain control in this world, with willing supporters in humanism, secularism, naturalism, Islam's slaughters, in persecution seemingly all but to extinguish the state of Israel by the international body, in defiance of the dictate of the One who made ALL lands, together with the decline in many churches as false teachers come even from their own midst (II Peter 2:1).
All these things, as seen in the references given*2, one and all are predicted, with many more; and they have come. Yet the return of the Lord, it is to come as a surprise we read in I Thessalonians. Unbelief is often surprised when things go according to the Book! It has not the heart to follow it.
To the unspeakable joy of deliverance, this time not from Nazi occupied Europe, but a totalitarian world as it is to be, the Christians come as a body. It is "My dead body" which "shall arise", even "those who sleep in the dust" (Isaiah 26:29); and in this event, one will be taken, another left as Christ declared (Matthew 24). Those who are still living, Paul declares in I Thess. 4, will be taken first, and then the dead in Christ. If Europe rejoiced at the US and BRITISH and ALLIED advent in a PARTICULAR DAY in a PARTICULAR YEAR, for the need was dire; how much more will the people of God rejoice when their endless executions, deprivations, persecutions are brought to a sudden end. Yes, let us call it CR Day.
In the meantime, now, however it is a privilege to suffer for so great a God as this; and we continue till He comes.
How happy, then, to come to a Year in which THIS MIGHT HAPPEN! the CR Day. And if not yet, then perhaps quite soon, for certainly the word of God now designates that event as NEAR (Luke 21).
Yet many, like those running INTO the tsunami on December 26, 2005, as seen in the photographs, will run on and into the force and cultural manias of this world, as if to embrace what is their destruction.
HOW, says Hebrews 2, shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation! How indeed!
This was said two millenia ago, when these prophecies came from Jesus Christ, and they were specifically appointed to come after nations had arisen and fallen, but with precise criteria for the area of time when it would come. It continues to apply, and in a certain sense, to do so with a vengeance; for these criteria are now almost entirely met. The wave, now, the wave of time, it is rising, and it is very near; and it is not natural, for THIS ONE is supernatural with the same power which created the earth, died for sin and broke death, and now comes to collect its own (Hosea 13:14, Micah 7, Mark 13:19-27, Luke 21:27ff.).
This which comes, it is a wave of peace to the people who do not disdain the handbook of the Creator of that equipment called man, nor the Creator Himself, nor His salvation for the condition of the product. It is a wave of a very different kind for the residue in which horror within becomes matched by that without. Judgment itself is the wave to come, not only for the body, but for the very spirit of man.
What would you ? Ignore your oil and expect a smooth run ? (cf. Matthew 25 and the parable of the ten foolish virgins). When realism is so delightful, it is not a wise procedure!
Therefore let us be diligent in grace, constant in mercy, not loitering in this world’s play-pens, but led of the Lord, not harried, not harassed in spirit, but holy in divine favour, established in principle, sent in service. Christians, know this, that God has not appointed us to wrath but to obtain salvation; and glory in this Christ, in this salvation, in this love of God, in this vast wave of divine kindness towards man (Titus 2-3), and borne along by it, be productive not in fear, but in the rest which is available in the complete Saviour, Jesus Christ (Hebrews 4, Matthew 11:28-30).
NOTES
1A
God spells it out very clearly and most explicitly in Romans 1 in the latter section, and it is there, complete with the passion for homosexuality which is terrorising with disease, with AIDS which do not help, in no small measure, this dissonant globe. If you do not rely on God, then the whole texture of things quickly turns to the passions misplaced towards nature, whether in naturalism, perversion or any other. Such is the biblical message and it is appallingly verified.
Appallingly ? Yes, for if you have a prognosis of death by cancer, although it is the nature of the disease short of miracle, it is still appalling to see the steps and stages ...
See for example the following.
Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch. 4,
Earth Spasm Ch. 1,
Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch. 8 (actual and pollutants) ;
Frantic Millenium Ch. 2
(actual and commonly suggested ... antidotes, incl. survey of many supposed unities,
from the particulate to the social); -
Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 3
(the soporific self, and the unity glide, under the sedation of sin),
Ch. 8, the embracive unity of reality created, not desecrated in reverse;
... IMMOVABLE FAITH Ch. 10,
(Glory that is yet no glory, and good that is no good in the welter of political options,
and spurious secular identities that are not one but many).
News 116 - sham, shame and co., cf. News 132;
Secular Myths ... Ch. 8 (the necrosis of naturalism and the futility of pulping when script is needed).
See SMR Ch. 8, Answers to Questions Ch. 5, Galloping Events Ch. 4, It Bubbles ... Ch. 11, Ch. 10,
Regal Rays Ch. 1.