Chapter 4

 

Spiritual

Inebriation and Enervation

for

Individual and Nation

 

Old and  New News

News 257

ABC News Radio January 30, 2003

 

 

HISTORY ? ARE YOU THERE ?

 

The USA, we learn this morning from George W. Bush, whose name the world seems to love to roll off its tongue, is a great nation. It is, perhaps, ‘this great nation’ and it is called by no less an entity than ‘history’ we are informed in report on his State of the Nation speech, to deal with Iraq. It is not going to let down its team manager, alias history.

 

Now while we have heard of an amalgam of religions, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam, before, in Bush’s clumpy if not afforested national religious approach, and have carefully distinguished what is due to the safety and security of nationals from national acclaim of their religions, or adventurism in alliances with those of Islam AS SUCH, this feature today is new. Now not merely the amalgamated religious front, but the clear voice of that maiden ? history is heard, bell-like asking the USA to act. You are ready, quoth she, you are armed, you are powerful, and it is time to exert your power in this hour, to secure what is needed!

 

The intentions of the USA are at times attested in one matter. It is this, that after the war is over, when all is peace and still, then she can manhandle Israel  - or is it maiden-handle in view of her announced alliance with history -  into a more properly submissive attitude so that she will willfully, even manfully give up more of her current pittance of land. This would be subtracted from what is  residual after the international community, that dalliance with futility, making cohesive bonds of the contradictories of reality has failed to betray her into oblivion so far (as in 1947 to all appearances, it tried hard enough). Perhaps there is to be a leadership from the USA, then,   there also!

 

As to that kind of leadership, it might be helpful if we rove back in this maiden’s territory, this famous ‘History’ which seems to Bush to give him a commission NOW, to see what she was doing, if we may personify events for the mere sake of comparison, in the days of Clinton’s regime. For this we turn to the volume Galloping Events, and Ch. 4 – a volume published in January 2001. Here we find the sort of liberality which the USA at that time,  felt with Israel’s territory, as a sort of prelude to the Twin Tower disaster, in which the USA for her own part suffered loss, just as she had envisaged it in no small  measure for Israel.

 

In  view of Zechariah 12:1-10, it should be realised that when you come to history, she is no maiden, but something under the very firm control of the Almighty God, and is an entity which so far from being an amalgam of the ideas of men, as many might seem to desire (cf. Ch.  3 above, and News 152), is both predicted and predicated to time by God who shows His will by His way. This is done by words, as man often does, and in His book of the Lord, it is written (as it is designated in Isaiah 34:16, with due reverence for His exactitude). What there to our point, then, do we find ?

 

It is precisely there warned, from  approximately 2500 years ago, that AFTER the Messiah is killed,  and AFTER the Jewish nation kills Him, and AFTER they are back (implied in Leviticus 26’s predictions of its dispersion for gross sins, at the climax), then their capital, Jerusalem, will be a ‘burdensome stone’. Those who seek to scarify or reduce that city will find it such, a weight, for duress will set in and suffering, as indeed in the Jerusalem parley game, it has already. As to why it is partly a game, see the thing justly exposed in Deliverance from Disorientation Ch. 11.

 

It is unwise to play with fire, and far more so with the word of God. In this connection of Israel, and especially relating to then coming events, there was expressed on this site a deep concern for the USA. In fact, that was in August 2001, around one month before the Twin Tower disaster (cf. The Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet Ch. 4, *2).

 

Would she come to feel what, too sedate, she was willing to suffer to be done to Israel: would she herself find suffering and intimate domestic pain ? That was the question. September 11 shows an answer, for whatever reason; but the cause that could have been sufficient, this was noted before the event, just as one must always seek to warn and caution one’s friends, if one can. This is a nation where the author took two of his degrees, and it is not one which he lightly regards; but alas, error, this is the domain for the eyes of Another.

 

Yes the USA did indeed feel the “Biblical burdens” of such action, as it sought in talks the reducing of Israel and of Jewish control over Jerusalem; and if it insists on seeking to ‘broker’  more of these appalling charades regarding hard-won Israeli soil, one can only tremble for it; and not for it alone, but for all who so indulge their divesting dynamics on Israel, especially on her capital. When God speaks as in His prophet Zechariah, it is well to listen. When all this world is gone, the word of the Lord will be sated, and never will it fail (I Peter 1:24-25, Isaiah 51:6, Matthew 24:35).

 

To be sure, Israel has yet, according to this SAME CHAPTER of Zechariah, to come in sorrow and grief at the crucifixion of that Messiah which God after so long so graciously gave her, her rejection of whom has led to a vast crevasse in world history, for her. Indeed, that is one into which, morally, fell Romanism in its Inquisitions; and many in another European worldly power, the persecutions of the Jews were rife, as in Italy, France, Germany, Spain and other nations. It is here that in some considerable measure Britain came to do much better, and later the USA. Sad indeed it is to see this last named country now falling down to the canons of world greed, or government, or the spirit of the Age, as if to divest Israel of more of her slight part of the Palestinian inheritance internationally promised to her after World War I, and indeed during it by Britain.

 

Now to reduce, reduce Israel, divest Jerusalem in whole or in part, seems increasingly de rigueur, indeed just the thing, just the thing to corrupted culture!

 

 Ah, one can almost see the glint in the eye! Yes, that’s it,  give up even more of the place! so that Judah of old is all but denied her, and other nations, Jordan already having received more than half of Palestine for the Arab cause, can have so  much of former Palestine. Yes comes the cry, divest Israel always of more, more so that the pittance to be left to her should, in all conscience, or in whatever else replaces it in such cases, be virtually indefensible. If indefensible for conscience, it would likewise come close to this in war, and so many would be satisfied, marginalising Israel into something like irrelevance.

 

In view of these recent developments in 2003, it will do well to give history her chance to talk to us; and hence in reproducing here something from the tides of 2001 (about 2 years ago), we may gain some perspective, as we consider the way those things were done between the USA and Israel THEN, and so  wisely consider all that has happened since, and lofting the eye to the word of God, ponder the path. What path ? The path, to change the figure, that the speed  boat of history is taking. It DOES have a driver, and though the sins of men are specifically condemned by God, and redemption from them is with the  vast largesse of the crucified Christ provided for them, this has to be TAKEN. Without it, the boat has an appalling end, and so do those within it!

 

Let us then revert to a section of Ch. 4 of Galloping Events (somewhat adapted for the present purpose).  This will have the very considerable advantage that it has numerous other references cited in it, to allow the current reader of this chapter, to fossick out whatever phase is desired concerning this matter.

 

As present history rushes upon this world, it is wise to look back a little, and ponder the direction of events, as well as consider, in the light of all this and the word of the living God, their end.

 

 

HISTORY, are you there ?

COMING!

 

Thank you.

Let us have  2001, January, please, or a little earlier.

But what have been these squirmings and mewlings, these cacophonous stridencies and quieter
cluckings ? "I want to be as precise as I can,  so " I'll read this slowly," Time reports of Clinton as he approached the negotiating table of Middle East representatives ... "sounding like a settlement attorney". In this way, we are told, he "laid out American 'ideas' " : Israel gives Arafat a Palestinian State (all of Gaza's strip is ceded, 95% West Bank), and in "exchange for the 5% of the West Bank Israel keeps for its settlements there, the Palestinians would get an extra slice of territory in Israel's Negev."

This victory without war, to recover from the defeats through war, is thus to be 'wrapped up'. But what of Jerusalem, concerning their desire to kept undivided control over which hundreds of thousands of Israelis reportedly turned out in demonstration recently! What of that!

Palestine would "gain sovereignty over East Jerusalem neighbourhoods and  the top of Temple Mount..."  Quite a deal! But the deal is not found to heal.

The Time comment ? "If Jan. 20 passes without one {a 'deal'}, Arafat knows it will take Bush some time before his diplomatic team will probably be ready to broker an accord. And if Sharon wins in Israel, that day may never come."

So it goes as it is written: "Behold I will make Jerusalem a cup of drunkenness to all the surrounding peoples when they lay siege against Judah and Jerusalem. And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of earth are gathered against it." SUCH has been the experience since the predicted restoration of Israel to nation status, in its guaranteed land. It was doubly guaranteed, as we have seen in earlier chapters:
 

·       1) to be LOST, when they repeated chronic rebelliousness to such a point, as in Leviticus 26;

and
 

·       2) to be REGAINED, when God in mercy should see fit, when their strength is gone and their predicted history fulfilled, and BRINGS them back as in Isaiah 42, 49^*1, 66,  Ezekiel 36-37, 34, Micah 7, Deuteronomy 32ff. and Jeremiah^*2.

But it is BACK, the surrounding events predicted surge like breakers, gallop like horses, scud like clouds, crash like a coda, smash like boulders. The dénouement, It comes, it is coming, one can sense the intimacy of the passing events, as in a gallop, they appear, move about between earth and sky, and our past.

So do we see the tornadoes, curling, swiping, moving in a cloudy fashion at a distance, but with more visible impact as they pass. We are warned; we may heed; but in either case, it comes.

There is, when on is galloping, a certain heightening of awareness in some perceptions, especially the kinaesthetic, but also perhaps even aesthetically, and certainly it tends to stimulate perception of coming events, and a sense of flow about and through events. When one is galloping with Christ, since the rate of movement is now at that level in this world, as it reels and bends and rushes on to fulfil all His words in this past half century, this is also so.

There is an amazing awareness of the developments, as one sees rather than gazes at this tornado, fulfilling its role on the program which one has, the Bible, at that tempest and the other deceptive calm (as in I Thessalonians 5:3). NEVER since Christ's own day has this world been so privileged, or say rather, have the inhabitants of this world had such a display of historical tectonics, those  ground moving events which change things so rapidly that the present seems almost to have bidden untimely adieu to the past, before it is well away.

It is therefore time, now, to recall that Christ has said two important dicta on this topic. ONE, when all these writhings and events so noted in Answers to Questions Ch. 5, are upon us, as they now are, with all the finesse and detail the Book of the Lord provides (as for example in some things observed in Ch. 3 above), then:

·       1) Christians are to lift up their heads, that is, feel relief, not reel, though the persecutions will undoubtedly mount as this world-grabbers grab, and the ideal makers dream (cf. Jeremiah 23:21-29, John 16:2, Matthew 24:10-13,24, 10:19-25, I Timothy 3, II Timothy 4), the arid souls live out their drought, and the lifeless pursue their deaths before the body is gone.

But there is more: Christians are to lift up their heads KNOWING SOMETHING. What is this knowledge ? It is that the REDEMPTION OF THEIR BODIES is now near (Romans 8:20-23, Luke 21:28, II Corinthians 5). Already redeemed in life (Ephesians 1:5-11), according to divine foreknowledge and historical fact (Ephesians 1:4,7), we now look forward to the cessation of pilgrimage in triumph, and the consummation of joy when the Lord, the M.C., comes for us all who have loved His appearing (Hebrews 9:12-28, I Thess. 4) and found in Him the cause of its occurrence (John 3:16), not mixing our works (Titus 3:5ff., Ephesians 2:1-12), but resting on His (Romans 3:22ff., John 5:24, 10:27-28, I Thess. 5:9-10, Hebrews 8-10).
 

·       2) For all that, His appearing will take many by surprise (Matthew 24:45, 25:1-10), even some who have not truly known Him, but merely been content with appearances; so that it is time to prune those excrescences, redouble the energy of living abundantly, renew the inspiration of His abiding with felicity, and accomplish to the end what has been given to each one of us, by His grace; and so it is for all Christians. What is in, comes out, and when Christ is within you (Colossians 1:27), His are the operating instructions.

 

·       3) For non-Christians, NOW is the time to come and repent and receive HIM, not some guru church or gyrating philosophy, some synthesis of sin and godliness, wrought in hell. There IS a church of Jesus Christ, and one of its chief marks is this, that HIS WORD rules without addition, subtraction or intrusion of mere surmises (Matthew 4:4, 5:17-21, II Timothy 4:2ff.). In this way, what is written, is wrought in life, thought in mind and taught in church. According to His word, operating where faith is, and fulfilling ALL His promises, the Lord is in the midst of His own people.

It is not time for anaesthesia, but kinaesthesia; nor for sleep but waking; not for states of mind but the Kingdom of Heaven (Ephesians 1:3, 2:6); and above all, for Christ who is all and in all who are His (Colossians 3:11), and whose word is the rule of right (John 14:21-23), whose love the caretaker of the spirit (John 13:1), whose life the criterion of virtue (John 14:6), whose death is the cancellation of sin for all who so receive Him by faith (II Cor. 5:19-21), whose ways are just (Acts 3:13-16, cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 2, Barbs, Arrows and Balms, Appendix IV), and whose name is truth, who is preceded in His way, by mercy, which He ministers (II Timothy 1:8-10, Psalm 89:14, 72), and succeeded by NONE (Ephesians 1:10, Revelation Chs. 5, 21-22). Moreover in Him is life that does not end (John 10:27-28).

(That ? from Galloping Events Ch. 4.)

 
MORE ?

1) For more on Israel's divinely directed schema, see -

Scoop of the Universe 47; SMR Appendix A; Biblical Blessings App.1, 3; Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium 11, The Biblical Workman 1, 3, Appendix II; Barbs, Arrows and Balms  13,  20, 23;  The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 9, pp. 175ff.; Repent or Perish Ch. 3; Divine Agenda and the preceding Chapters in the present volume, together with Ch. 8 below., esp. *3.

2) For more on this world's ways and the wider world grabbing procedures, see -

SMR pp. 743ff., 750Bff., Biblical Blessings App. 3, Barbs, Arrows and Balms  20, 30, Tender Times for Timely Truths  11, Acme, Alpha and Omega: Jesus Christ Ch.  9 .

 

3) THE WORD OF GOD AS THE SOLE SOURCE OF DEFINITION FOR THE WORD OF GOD

It is imperative to know, to ascertain the meaning of the word of God, the internal prescriptions of that word. To find what He means, you need to study what He says AS HE says it! (Amos 4:1-2,13, Zechariah 12:11., I Corinthians 2:9-13, Jeremiah 23:28-30). God is we ll able to specify including our own DNA specifications, and the data for our minds and the pre-requisites for our own spirits; and He assures us of His clarity (Proverbs 8:8-9). Stability with His word involves especially taking it as it is (II Corinthians 4:1ff.), and not as Peter states, 'wresting it' , or twisting it (II Peter 3:16). A little twist here and there and it is marvellous what you can 'make', as virtual  co-author of people's words.

When it is the word of God the necessity of taking it as it comes without addition, accretion or secular insinuations, or spiritual devisings, is even greater.

Thus to receive the word of God is not merely to think one is doing so, but to compare spiritual things with spiritual (I Cor. 2), and to rest wholly on what He says as He states His meaning in ways magnificently just and adequate, but requiring none of the dirt of additions, or the scraping of subtractions.

Disbelief concerning this adequacy of the word of God here can fog issues, as it patronising the word of God, in a way that is quite comical, both as to its results and in its presumption. God is unimpressed with this 'handling'. They "steal My words, every one from his neighbour," God declares with disgust (Jeremiah 23:30, cf. John 5:44). God's word is the hammer that breaks rock (Jeremiah 23:29), and nothing stands before it. But this, it is not some light-weight alloy of this honourable man and that honourable philosopher, as people receive "honour from one another" as Christ declared. IF THAT is the way, He protested, "How can you believe...!" It is human traditions which are the obstacle, with their honourable mimicry of the word of God, and their pretentious self-adulation (Mark 7:7).

Let us then study IT for its meaning, the mouth of God for what to live by, and not human speech therapists who devise and define what they will, when God has already assured us that it is HIS word and not something more or extra, some vision, some conception of our own, which is to be the criterion. Hammer is hammer that breaks; and wheat is wheat that feeds; while chaff is the feathery stuff which floats with the breeze. Evacuating the seed and distempering the steel is so much waste of time. It is, as Christ showed the devil, what is written that counts.

For God's divinely disposed, indispensable, incorrigible, faithful and determinate promises on the topic of Israel that was and is and is yet to be, for the offspring of Jacob, and their distinct and assured possession of the land, despite the follies, tribulations and exile so often emphasised on these pages, reflecting the word of God, see:

1) Genesis 13:15 for Abraham and his seed, called in Isaac (Genesis 21;12) - "to you and your descendants for ever";

2) Genesis 15:7ff, for Abraham with an oath;

3) Genesis 17:7ff. - "And I will establish My covenant between Me and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you. Also I will give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession and I will be your God."

4) Genesis 26:3 - Isaac: "Dwell in this land and I will be with you and bless you; for to you and your descendants I give all these lands and I will perform the oath which I swore to Abraham your father... I will give to your descendants all these lands..."

5) Genesis 28:3-14 - "the land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants" cf. Genesis 48:4 - "I will give this land to your descendants after you as an everlasting possession";

6) Psalm 105:7-11 (excerpt 9-11):

"The covenant which He made with Abraham,
And His oath to Isaac;
And confirmed it to Jacob for a statute,
To Israel as an everlasting covenant,
Saying, 'To you I will give the land of Canaan
As the allotment of your inheritance...' "

Then note Isaiah as in *1 and its related references to that prophet, Ezekiel as in SMR Appendix A and earlier in this volume and that preceding, The Divine Agenda, in Micah as in Ch. 1 above, in Jeremiah as in Ch.1, The Biblical Workman and so on, where these things are exposited.

It is important to notice that this is "an everlasting covenant", namely "the covenant with Abraham, and His oath to Isaac, and He confirmed it to Jacob for a statute. " It is this which we have scripturally isolated and investigated above, this non-qualified and unconditional covenant, which only needs to be read to be cited, sited and secure. Further, we are told that the Lord "remembers His covenant forever, the word which He commanded for a thousand generations."

THIS is then specified as mentioned in this paragraph at the outset. As so often, it meets the case succinctly and with devastating clarity, drawn up to meet equivocation and quibble alike. It is not, for example for 100 generations, or if you like to be conservative, say 4,000 years. It is not in any time frame which has the slightest opportunity to wear out, even if you 'happened' to forget the word 'forever'. It would cover 40,000 years, rather a elegant sufficiency! arresting to the dabbler and dreamer, clear to the practical! It is NOT GOING. It is to a GUARANTEED people whose practical identity is no more in doubt, as returnees to Israel, than is the peculiar, specialised character of their customs, their internal vetting of genealogy and their Biblical liberty to adopt.

People may dream of such a place (though they would never have done so in 1940-1945), or seek to translate it to London or New York, as if history had no meaning, words were mere vacancies for the apt mind to fill with its own twaddle; but the word is clear.

As in Jeremiah, there is a recognisable body, world recognised, treaty recognised, the one which was not lost in entirety with the Assyrian invasion of the North kingdom in the 8th century B.C., all but obliterating a segment to come in dribs and drabs if it could, back to what remained in the Judah nation, and it is one which when coming as it did in 1948, with various practical preliminaries for generations, to Palestine, faced amazing internal programs. It is one which was to be unified, then, as two sticks, as has of course happened (as in Ezekiel 37) and as in v. 23, there is to come an unending blessing from the Lord, no more marred. This is express in Zechariah 12:10ff., as they “look upon Me whom they have pierced”  - the LORD speaking, and it is clear that at this point a vast mass of the people enter the New Covenant, in the most dramatic of ways!

There is then this unity of the Jew, so conspicuous in Israel today, in the efforts for one language and one people, though it awaits the evangelisation from the Lord, before it is completed. That it is unified in language, we noted with prophetic reference in Zephaniah 3 cf. SMR p. 798). It is this, then, which, well short of the provision to cover 1000 generations, is now back, intact, yielding results to match the promises in the premises, based on the premisses of the God who speaks and does. Israel in the promises of God is covered like a particle of iron filing, in the presence of a powerful electro-magnet.

But what shall we say of Psalm 105, in this connection ?

There is observable a certain tenacity, resolution, reality about realty, firmness of word, indeed oath, and there is observable a certain insistence as Israel is now back where it was to be, the called in Isaac, the people of Jacob with whatever voluntary increments bound to its ways. It is moreover, and of course, a people equally equipped with the pertinacity which has for so long blocked the blessing in that characteristic tenacity, that unbelief in the Messiah, whom, having killed, they lack, and lacking, find themselves tossed in lunges and plunges, depths and destructions, even amid the triumphs predicted as in Zechariah 12. It is, precisely as there predicted,  only when they come to that very self-same Messiah, that the spiritual depths again are reached.

It is moreover, this people, one which even recently has shown a considerable unwillingness even to be EXPOSED to the word of the Lord concerning the Messiah, Jesus Christ, in all things matching the word which makes matchwood of any controversy concerning Israel and the promises of God (cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 13). The ONLY controversy in Biblical terms, duly expressed in that adjunct to the word of the Lord called history, is the international furore at their presence, the negative zeal of surrounding peoples, the detestation of their triumphs, the intensity of Moslem desire for their expulsion, reaching heights in the expressed wish for their consignment to the depths of the sea in 1948-1973, certainly a novel suggestion in a world so rebellious that novelty for Israel is the very coin of its commerce! Arafat has added, as seen in our previous volume, yet another suggested location for them, namely hell itself! So does the world invent its woes in its rebellious tongue.

Of the disposition of the matter there is less doubt that this, that 1+1=2, for this, though unquestionably true, rests on human symbols; but that, it rests on the Maker of mankind Himself. Unwise are they who test the strength of His word, or occasion contempt for His meaningfulness when He utters meaning! God, we must all realise, and will realise sooner or later, in whatever state some may choose to be, means what He says. What He has said we find from Genesis to Isaiah, from Ezekiel to Zephaniah, from Zechariah, to Micah, Hosea to Jeremiah, backwards, forwards, like their own predicted wanderings to and fro. Explosively the word of God has determined their goings; tenderly it has adduced their return to Himself.

·       In such ways,  we have BOTH the inveterate insistence on Israel in the land specified, and the repeated descriptions, detail and ascriptions concerning Israel coming BACK to its original premises from which it had been evicted by covenantal application (Ezekiel 36:17-20). Clearly, if this people is to be THERE, and they are to be GONE in the judgment of predicted exile, they must come BACK.

·       Characterisations of this particular contextual episode, this return ?

·       These include

1.    ETERNITY (36:12,14-15, 37:2628), in the sense that it is to be a case of NO MORE EVACUATIONS from the land as a whole, to a

1.    CLEANSING after the return, symbolised by water sprinkling as in baptism, with similar meaning (Ezekiel 36:23-25), a new heart and spirit as in Jeremiah 31’s NEW COVENANT, with staggering

2.    FLORAL and vegetative abundance (as in Isaiah 55:1-4,13, the afforestation now likewise fulfilled), a clear WITNESS to the other nations that the Lord has DONE THIS (36:36). Further, as in 37’s parabolic presentation with the dry bones, it becomes a

3.    A SPLENDID SOVEREIGN SITUATION with the Messiah as King (37:24), who will overall come to characterise this restoration, and do so in a manner, at this phase, which is glorious and triumphant. It is He who is the One who without cease will be such to them (as in Ezekiel 34, Isaiah 11), to a people thus descried, described, characterised as to their past, and in what way ? It is in the specialised grounds of their removal (36:17ff.), their present and the continuity to be bestowed on a people thus defined, in this manner, through the New Covenant in terms of prior involvement in the Old one, failure in it and discipline because of this failure. This is to occur as a second restoration, the spiritual following the physical and territorial to their land as in Ezekiel 37:7,12 (The Biblical Workman 1); and the fulfilment in this land is to be uninterrupted thereafter.

4.    A SPIRITUAL INDWELLING by God in their hearts, and overall, this will be the testimony that comes when phase 2 of Ezekiel 37: 9,12 occurs, namely the specifically spiritual outpouring (as in Zechariah 12:10 where it is first focussed on their killing of the Messiah whom they pierced). So do they join the ONE and only Christian Church, their own tattered failures leaving them now only this, when they return to their God, after so long a time (Deuteronomy 32:36-43), in the same Messiah rejected (as in Isaiah 49:7, 52-53, and 65:13-15 and 60:1ff., 61:ff).

·       Further, as to the land, they are to be there as in Luke 21:24, after the desolations predicted, from which they have to return, awaiting as in Zechariah 12:10, the overflowing spiritual restoration for so many that it transforms the nation in a vast way (12:11ff.).

Thus we gain the
 

·       PROMISES which give the

·       PREMISSES, and the

·       PREMISSES which designate the PREMISES, and the

·       DISCIPLINE which gives the DEPARTURE and the

·       DESCRIPTIONS which give the RESTORATION.

 

·       It links like a chain; but it is no chain, but liberty; just as there is liberty to rebel and to tell God what to do with the earth He made. It is, apart from anything else, an impertinence to despise the instructions of the Creator about the disposition of His property: literally - it is not pertinent to advise Him on how to dispose His possessions. It is a manifest mercy that He is willing to be found at all, and in Him, that there should be a cleft in the Rock, a place of entry into a kingdom which is better than any land, and lasts for ever.

It should be carefully noted that the PREMISSES of God are the criterion of the interpretation of God. From the Bible ONLY can we take these, and other premisses, interesting though they may be, can no more with integrity be inserted into the divine words, than similar secular thoughts be inserted into the divine MIND! There is just no possibility of kidnapping God, since He is not a kid. Efforts to kidnap His word, conscious or confused, are quite in vain. What He has defined in His own way, is the last word. Other words are noise. They are also nuisance and if it were possible, might deceive the elect. God has given us the power of language, and this is an instrument; but as to the substance, His word is the ONLY ingredient that is determinative.

To understand and follow Him aright, our thoughts must be CHAINED to His decisive definitions, which unlike EVERY option man chooses instead, work. When "My thoughts are not as your thoughts" and His thoughts are as the heavens to the earth, in comparison with those of His creation called man, then manifestly the insinuation of human invention and imagination and philosophy into the word of God is like putting hydrogen into a lead weight, in order to  help it hold. It is simply comic; though the results are less so.

END OF EXCERPT

From this, one can move to Ezekiel 38-39, expressly set in “the latter years” (38:8), and further, after the recent return of Israel, the nature of which has been specified in 36-37 as above (38:8), and these things are considered in detail in The Biblical Workman Chs. 1, and 8,  SMR
Appendix A and 510ff. (and see Scriptural Index).

If you want the rest of that chapter excerpted above, kindly click this hyperlink.

 

HISTORY TALKS

 

If this author recalls correctly, it was recently reported that an Israeli taxi-driver had been  asked concerning the situation between Israel, Palestine et al. (‘al.’  or alia, here referring to the vast and wealthy network of Arab and Islamic nations which virtually surround Israel, extort lives from her citizens in conjunction in most cases, with Palestinian zealots, refuse peace and all more than reasonable offers of it, while one and all do NOT take their religious brethren into their own lands, no not even Jordan, which gained most of the Palestine which Israel did not get.)

 

The Israeli taxi-driver replied to this effect. It was no use having dealings, negotiations with ‘these people’, since they had been given offers of the most generous kind, and  even with that, were not satisfied. There was no way out in that direction.

 

As a survey of the above excerpt from Galloping Events Ch.  4 shows, this is true. Even in that one case, in the day of Clinton’s power in the USA, a monumentally liberal offer was made to the Palestinian cause. It did not satisfy them. Nor were the Arabs satisfied in 1947 when the UN made to them an even more extraordinary offer, with Jerusalem to become an internationally controlled city, with the Jews accorded mere bits and pieces of territory here and there, in what was left of the reneged Palestinian offer.

 

Facts may not be healthy for unhealthy lusts, but they do tend to quell the fevers of mind which in continual provocation make of Israel a mine centre where Almighty God, being more powerful than any or all, now or ever, past, present or future, and given  to  speaking His mind to man, both in the love which actuated the passion of Christ, and in numerous historical  fashions, has predicted what it is to be. There is to be an onslaught on Israel which HE will make His own business to decimate: you see it in Micah 7, Deuteronomy 32, Ezekiel 36-39, Joel 3, Habakkuk 3.

 

Overall, we find that it will be painful, lustful in origin, languishing in result, with divine power in the middle of its rebuff. It is revealed that in this episode, God will be angry (Ezekiel 38-39) for the sake of the newly returned  nation of Israel, now made a sucker for the squalor of the iron-fisted of the earth. Iron is but a creation; when the Creator deals with it, it is as dust.

 

It is well to be warned. Iraq is a problem to the USA, and probably a danger to the world; for it appears that an unscrupulous dictator, famous for his vile and rapid exterminations, and tortures, is using Islamic passion to help his cause, though not noted for being religious,. It seems indeed  that this combination could lead to a double  fanaticism, which together with a touch of nationalism and Arab solidarity, could lead to much ruin.

 

Wrongly the USA in her pan-religious festival of fighting (cf. The Impregnable Tower Chs.  6, and  8, with The Biblical Workman Ch. 8 as linked here), is proceeding. Wrongly ? Yes, because of the false and explicit religious basis of her alliance, quite apart from the Israeli matter. What this brings is one thing; but what is yet to be, that leaves this as an Autumn leaf (however red) by comparison. A little reading of SMR Appendix A and Ezekiel 36-39 is here relevant, in conjunction with Zechariah 12:1-10, and just a little of Deuteronomy 32.

 

Long has it been fashionable to disregard divine warnings,  for this is not only the Age of Confusion, but the Age of Unreason and that of Disregard, especially of anything  SPECIFIC from the source of deity, as if God were in some way responsible for the inane human  choices, such as trying to make a State of largely unconverted people into a SUPERVISOR of a CHRISTIAN CHURCH, as was done in England (though despite this they did some things very well), or as is being paralleled in China, to try it to the uttermost. How is this being done ? It is in illegitimate endeavours to chain the Church of Christ to the Statist post,  something little better than pillory,  and for which judgment will doubtless sit in due time.

 

If the USA once had slaves, then what of China’s  treatment of Tibet, which one Chinese gentleman referred to  as China’s  aborigines, though she merely invaded a developed nation in a take-over, now seeking to impose her own religion! What of Russia’s intolerable intolerance for some 80 years of infamy, the execrations of deity, so well detailed in the numerous factual  and literary works of Solzhenitsyn! What of the inexcusable persecutions now in Indonesia (cf. Ch. 2 above), or the persecution of Israel under the implausible pretence that the rich holders of vast tracts of the earth around her, cannot take the refugees, or at least let Israel have enough peace to add more to her citizenry from that source.

 

It is never attractive to allow the immigration of murderers, and the increase of that category in the Arab contingent, especially when they tend to specialise on domestic situations and so wave a bloodied hand over the women and children of Israel. It tends to disengage from great interest in rewarding such internecine conduct with citizenship... SO the farce continues, and is the USA to be called also by this diffuse medium which it calls history, to continue the fiasco, the burlesque of justice, and strip Israel further. In this, it had better be advised by the Bible to do far otherwise.

 

And what has been the great gain of this international perfidy, which has ignored the internationally ratified Balfour Declaration of 1917, accepted after the war internationally, as in Britain during it ? Has the war of 1948 which Israel won against MANY ESTABLISHED  nations, when she was not even instituted as a State, however tiny, that of 1967, of 1973 where Israel encircled an army of would-be invaders on the OTHER side of the Suez Canal and the Gulf War (which included Iraq, still busily bombarding Israel and noting its war was continued from 1948), has each of these and have all of them done nothing to open  any eyes!

 

Did not God say in Zechariah 12 that before Israel repented of the crucifixion of Christ, God on earth, there would be a supernaturally assisted series of great triumphs over appalling odds, on the part of Israel ? Is it necessary to visit the ophthalmologist in order to acquire blindness (as perhaps poor Handel did, though the disease itself may have blinded him in the end), so that one does not realise that God means what He says!

 

Is it vain, then, to suggest that action be NOT taken which will lead to acute suffering because HISTORY, when you do not personify it, or ask it to lead you (what an appalling pit in terms of man’s sin it has so often been … leadership there!), yes, this thing called history, calls you! In this, it is not merely the Iraq war (wrong as noted because of the Islamic alliance in it), but far more importantly, the Israeli beggaring which is in point here.

 

The former of course may lead to the other, and this was noted  earlier: AFTER  the war is over, not a ball, but an imbalance is apparently in view from the USA, when it  will seek further to ransack Israel of more land, and hand it over to the all-grabbing Islamic portion in that part of our globe! Justice would weep (cf.Micah 7^*1, but consider the end of the Chapter); but vengeance is the Lord’s, and what man in his senses and sensibilities could fail to warn and  advise concerning other courses of action ?

 

Who wants suffering needlessly for anyone ? Does not even a doctor warn: Stop smoking! Is that a threat ? Of  course  not. It is the cancer which is the threat. HE, the doctor,  does not cause the cancer; he merely sees it coming and advises against what CAUSES IT.

 

When Theodore Roosevelt was US President, he too, by report, found it necessary to state that it was the  “manifest destiny” of the white people to take over the USA, apparently rather than the Indians. The treatment accorded to the Indians has been documented on TV (as noted in  Earth Spasm Ch. 2), not least that by the Spanish with their Romanist cause at the time, in one of the most ghoulish misuses of demented religion ever known. How the Indians were subjected by GUNS, and then given a false gospel (cf. SMR pp. 1042ff.)!

 

The USA at least did not force that! However, what shame was shown in the case of one Indian Chief who, having gained a formal treaty and agreement from Washington, for peace, was viciously assaulted at the STATE level, and died with his agreement prominently displayed. Is this a manifest destiny, to dash a people and subdue them, slaying their supportive buffalo herds, reducing them, and not honouring even agreement when made ? Even Canada has some sad residues of that era (cf. Pitter-Patter …Ch. 7).

 

That was a ‘manifest destiny’ then, and how  far greater would the USA be now, if she had not done such a thing, but with assiduous care, as in the earlier religious settlement when the Pilgrims landed in the East, cultivated relationships with the Indians, and sought a fair and  reasonable sharing of the lands which neither owned, for neither made them, but which each under God, should have considered relative to the other.

 

What is a manifest destiny now ? It is just that the Iraqi war is EXPLICITLY seen as a prelude to another manifest destiny, proclaimed in terms of a Palestinian State. What is wrong with
that ?  Nothing at all, provided it is somewhere in the vast hinterlands of the Arabs and the Islamic peoples,  all around Israel, and not foolishly thrust into Israel, to render its slender little neck the more easily squeezed, in the stranglehold … of what ? of history ?

 

GOD TALKS

 

God is not mocked, never has been and never will be;
for while you CAN certainly deride and crucify, even the Son of God, you cannot stop

 

v          His resurrection (cf. SMR Ch. 6, Biblical Blessings Ch. 15,  *2),

 

v          His Church (not the paraded exhibit with military power or devious means, but the one of believers in Him according to His word and His Gospel of grace, not force)

 

v          or His word from being applicable.

 

NOT ONCE in over 3000 years has it failed; nor did Christ fail who came with a face which man marred almost beyond human  recognition, such being his virtue and his sense of history and survival (as in John  11:49ff.). Scientific method alone would not commend this ignoring of the only verifiable, always verified expression of the divine power: that is a method which starts with the facts and proceeds to the theories, not vice versa.

 

Alas, in this as in many things, spiritual vice does indeed do vice versa, and adulate what NEVER works,  like organic evolution, no not once (cf. TMR  Chs.  1,   8, A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9, Earth Spasm Chs.   1,   7), just as it applauds what is manifest injustice, as if God had forgotten to ask to the funeral the assassins of His word, which however, is not disturbed by this execration of truth, or this enervation of life,  which afflicts the performers as well as their victims, but does not change the end. Following merely history, or the Spirit of the Age,  and ultimately the Prince of this World, in dereliction of what works, and has worked in order to institute man, man proceeds with puffed up hands, sallow heart and deadly skill, to a judgment that  none could find handsome.

 

Why will you die ?  God asks of Israel in that moving passage in Ezekiel 33:11. It is no less applicable today, and if Europe will follow the US in this approach to Israel, which seems eminently likely, it may indeed soon suffer a dictatorship (with a difference of style, but not of fact – cf. News   5) to make that of Hitler seems rather amateurish by comparison.

 

Man does not tend to hear. History does in fact happen. Its lessons are not that might is right, or that the Spirit of the Age must be followed. They teach instead that what God says, happens, and that it is repentance towards and faith in Him, via the road, the way given, namely Christ crucified and  resurrected and soon  to return, it is this that matters (Acts 4:11-12). It is useless  making false christs, starting of course with international seed-beds in which the next fake could arise, sin intact, for a new sort of sovereignty, a New World Order as  Bush senior liked to call what he saw as coming.

 

These false christs and the epitome of them all (II Thess.  2:4ff.) will bring no less horror than the Hitler and Stalin and Mao varieties of the recent past, being bred in the same soil, with similar genetic structure! (cf. SMR  pp. 127ff., 750Bff.). Past imagery, the spirit of each is one.

 

Christ soon to return ? The One who gained the name by who He was and what He did ? This One ? Returning ? someone may ask.

 

Yes of course.  The events of today, in simple application of scientific method, are uniquely those specified by the word of God, by Christ indeed, as to arise before He would come (Answers to Questions Ch. 5). They have come; He will come. It is just this, that not only is the Bible demonstrably His word (cf. SMR Chs.  1,10), but that it always happens as it says. This particular happening ? it is soon, as Ch. 5  noted  above, indicates.

 

There are better things to do at such a time than follow history: rather follow Christ, and first KNOW Him (cf. Know God).

 

NOTE

 

*1

For exposition of this part of Micah, see Galloping Events Chs.   1 and   8.