In Memorium: From Time Immemorial ... A Shuttle Crashes

*20 GENESIS AND ENGENDERING:
THE CRYSTALLINE COHERENCE OF CHRISTIAN CONCEPTS

a) VALIDITY IN ITS SIMPLICITY:
To Evacuate Truth is to be Invaded by Torment.

One may say: This all starts with man. It does not however do so. It starts with God and proceeds from God. By GOD, man exists, and comes to be, created by fiat. By GOD, man is given a mind, and it functions. This mind finds the Bible, the word of God. This instructs that mind; it may not believe it, but it still instructs. The seed is sown; the wind has swept, whether the trees bend little or much.

Contact has been made, reality displayed, words have been deployed. One has seen the result. Moreover nature itself teaches man, and the form of his own mind instructs him. As he uses it, so it leads him; and as it requires, as we have shown, so if he follows, he finds the key, the word of God, which was sitting there.

It is reason or treason. He follows what he is given, clearly, necessarily, irrefutably to the word of God, which is there (as shown in SMR Chs. 1, 3, 10); or he baulks, reconstructs his mind, though it will not work so, indulges in absurd philosophies, theories which belie themselves, contradict themselves, experiences anguish, falls and fails or becomes cynical; but the truth is the same. It attests itself systematically, empirically, heuristically, continually. It never blinks, blenches or is mouldable (cf. SMR Chs. 5, 8-10).

Man as a race follows the realities of his mind and comes to the word of God, or he resists them and comes to an end of himself either through violence to the body, to the mind or to the spirit, either sooner or later. This does not work. It was not meant to do so; it was constructed to be right. Man was made upright, as that same word of God says; but he has found out many inventions (Ecclesiastes 7:29).

If then the question be this: how can man start except in himself ? the answer is: If he be blind, then so it seems, but he is instituted and constituted and when he acts as made, within its design specifications of thought and logic, he finds the word of God; just as nature itself teaches him of God, though that vision be dimmed or distorted, at times more, sometimes less, always by sin, so that God is not known (cf. SMR Ch. 3). Further, God having spoken, as reason requires, and evidence attests, man is not at all constructing from himself, but following the construction given not only to the world, but also to himself.

If logic be valid, then God's word is discovered. If logic be not valid, then to show this, reason must be used; and that is impossible for any valid result, if it be simply assumed invalid from the start.

But one may say: Granted if reason be valid, the word of God is true and is the Bible; and that it be shown invalid is impossible. What however if it be merely assumed invalid; may this not be an option ? The very assumption however, employs the specifications of form, meaning, logic, correlation of word, reality and concept, of consequence: if reason were invalid, man would be unmade. He could not even speak or formulate the hypothesis. But he does! In deeds he therefore destroys the 'assumption', even if in words he would deny it. Man is so made. There is no escape. (Cf. pp. 200, 229, 251, 263, 285, 299 ff., 306, 314-316D supra, 349E-353, 420-423, 424 ff., 620-622 infra.)

b) THOUGHT AND ITS INTEGRITY:
The Inlet of Truth is the Expulsion of Confusion.

The Human Brain, Human Thought and the Realm of Human Pain. (Cf. pp. 422E ff., and 429 ff. infra)... In the light of the above, let us analyse these things.

One has heard of a transmitter. A radio used to have valves which would light up, with thin filaments inside. Did they create the waves they received ? It had a complex circuitry. Did this create the impulses it transmitted ? There is complexity (and design) to transmit, and complexity and design to receive.

Neither of these is - nor could it be - the studio performer. Each plays its part in coding and decoding the performance.

So it is with the human brain. One hears profound obtuseness, as learned men debate, consider what is this mystery of original thought and ideas, relative to the human brain. It is as if some are at least tempted to have this circuitry, this cybernetic apparatus appear as the producer of the thought, validity, virtue, ideas, dreams and imaginations within and for man.

Small wonder the 'mystery' is never resolved; the impasse is never removed. A circuit is no more capable of producing freedom (q.v.), than is the Statue of Liberty capable of producing liberty. The circuitry of compulsion is not the maker of mind, but rather its slave, servant, transmitter.

Just as a typewriter expresses, not only by coded symbols called letters, but by a (relatively) complex system, the impacts which create the letters on the page, so the brain interprets through its design that profound reality, human life. And that ? It can engender ideas, be guilty, be brazen, be coarse... be angelic. It has ways of its own. Human vitality has the brain serve as special interpreter, not performer. (Cf. pp. 348-350 infra.)

We are doing it all the time: finding ways of impacting codes into apparatus so that we may then receive them again in comprehensible form, at the other end. We would never imagine a TV made the studio, or a computer constructed the thought of the programmer who first conceived, then coded words relating to that thought, into the already conceived and code-carrying unit, the computer. Hardware and software are included as recipients, but not creators of intelligibility. How it could ever be conceived for one moment that such machinery made the machinations it conveyed, that such systems of objects created the thoughts they transmitted, would be an all but insoluble problem, were it not for one thing.

And that ? It is this. The human spirit is as capable of being rebellious as is a fish of swimming. It is a natural habitat in this, that its very freedom, to be real, must admit of misuse of design capacities, as surely as does an ungoverned sports car allow reckless speeding.

It is perhaps not too much to say that we are surrounded in a complex net of devices, from sensors to nerves to brain, within us, from radios, to computers, to atomic bombs outside us, always interpreting thought, and in our cases made by it. As for ourselves, our own 'hardware' ?

We assuredly have not made this; nor can we, however freely we may move about bits of pre-existing genetic structure. It differs from our own products in being incomparably more complex, more miniaturised and having content of surpassingly greater dimensions. In human life, the moral, the aesthetic and the visionary have their place. Nothing merely happening has or can have freedom or morals or aesthetics. All these things depend on a standard, whether expressible in code or not, and a liberty in the use of it, to excel or to defile. (Cf. Ch. 5 infra.) With such equipment, only then meaningfully, we design. Our results - our own products - demand such a cause for their functionality and structural integrity. (Cf. Ch. 5 infra.) For us, captive symbols (words, codes) merely convey the results of liberated thought. There is no contradiction in that. What is not impassively controlled sends what it does, transmits it, through what is controlled.

Without such control, it could not send it. With nothing but such constraints, there would be nothing to send. Vitality employs and deploys material complexity and engendered codes to display itself, its fruits, products.

Nor are we in general - nor our brains in particular, less than our products. On the contrary, we as mini-creators are far more. We as shown attest a creative designer-of-creativity: whose power transcends, surpasses and distances our own, while giving it meaning as derivative, and structuring it, where appropriate, through the use of captive symbols, codes. (Cf. pp. 137-141, 211, 252A-G, 292-315A supra.) We both deploy codes in our mental capacities and incorporate them in our physical equipment, simultaneously designer and designed.

What we code and transmit from our (relatively) free spirits by machinery, methods in motion, is via the ectype of an archetype made by the Spirit of God. And that ? it is mankind, the design that reproduces itself. Able to use standards, it may violate or adorn them, because not only is man's own equipment created for just such a purpose; but the very spirit within him is created. It is the expression of thought divine, design divine, possessed of this quite remarkable addition: this design is designed to be free, though of necessity in the presence of its Maker. When it rejoices in Him, it possesses liberty; when it is at war with God, it is in disruption with itself, showing this sooner or later, interpreting itself into hell, or receiving God in reality.

It is well for the human race that God provided a redeemer, Jesus Christ, to salvage spirits. Reductionism is the irrational, voluntary, multiple sclerosis of tortured minds. Its antinomies which we repeatedly show, are merely its more obvious pangs.

Returning from such torment of error, we again observe the coherent majesty of the truth, free from the self-contradictory imbroglios of impassioned minds.

The simplicity is statuesque: we both incorporate in one phase, and deploy in another, of our beings, code and signal, symbols with significance, themselves the products of imagination, vitality and purpose. The very constraints and impassivity of the symbols are one assured means of expressing our vitality without distortion or intrusion. Our expressiveness depends on our codes and symbols, speech or other, not having expressiveness per se, but merely consequential power, as designed, to forward securely what is to be expressed. We are neither self-contradictory nor divine, but designed by divinity, to whom we - mind, body and spirit - are answerable, using there also, if we will, the codes we incorporate and the codes we design.

Before we proceed, it is necessary to consider further the situation of man as seen in Barbs, Arrows and Balms 6 -7, and Appendix 1, which latter explores the current situation of man, of his spirit in his universe, which is not his by right, but by grace, and that according to rules and specifications. Lordly man may decide that NOTHING and NOBODY can tell HIM ANYTHING!

In some obscure way, because he decides that thought is mere motion, and hence has no validity, that logic is mere happening and hence has no cogency, that all is mere relativity, and hence there is no truth, he seems to think that telling us what cannot be true or valid or cogent, should seem to be impressive in some way! However, there is no escape. His vagrancy is part of his freedom, his choice of invalidity of his dour obstinacy, his irrationalism is not inherent but a matter of will. There are structures in the universe, as the big bang nonsense has found to its cost, spatial and organisational (cf. TMR Ch. 7), and there are structures in man. How the one should relate to the other is not a matter of mere opining will, but of the Master of ceremonies who structured both, enabled both, and kindly confers wisdom to those willing to receive it. Ignoring this ? Very well. It is costly. Ignorance is always costly when it is perverse, for the facts get in the way. They can be sharp.

THE COST

Ignoring God is like ignoring the fact that the square root of minus one is not available. God is. In either case, ignoring does not help. It hinders.

Thus some years ago, in Joyful Jottings 26, some of the space consequences for ignoring what God has said in His word, were considered. Below is a short excerpt, with slight changes in presentation to aid comprehension in this way.

First, what IS the space race ? It WAS a race for control or power in space. The US won as far as the moon was concerned. Now it is co-operating with Russia on some evident casualty in the crockery of space, which is more crock than cock of the space walk.

Next it is intelligence in space. There is plenty of that, as obvious as on earth, in the dimension and order and the integration with time, and the passing of things in that momentous characterisability which ever beckons and ever manifests itself more, to the human mind. It is there. But they want it to be in some bodily format: perhaps force of habit. We are, so something else might be. A Jaguar might feel the same if landed on Mars; but then there would be some excuse for it. It does not have the power to relate cause and effect as we do. There are simply no factories on Mars, ever found, hinted or suggested; hence it would be an unreasonable thought, if the Jaguar could think, and indulged it.

Men can think and they indulge it. It still is an unreasonable thought. We needed manufacture (or cognito-facture, let's settle for 'creation'), and the Manufacturer, as we have often demonstrated, left His handbook with us, who are His handiwork. Nevertheless they look - some intelligence from space. The intelligence is EVIDENCED in the parcel called man, in his DNA in code which expresses it, as we have also shown (as in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock - SMR, Chs.1-3), to perfection of definition. It is not however being used well when it is looked for in terms of some non-manufactured being who is not God. They don't come that way. That's the way it is down here: you need what it takes to get what you want. What has happened already, however: this is the point.

Now in our last Jotting, we saw the glory of the Lord expressed in His creation of and dealings with that time-frame unit, that space-suit being, that spirit encapsulated, known as MAN. With the Prince of Peace glorifying His Father in that flesh suit, subtly introduced from the womb, virgin borne and virgin born, we grasped how great is the grandeur which can surpass the sun EVEN when so humbled - and not humbled by anyone but Himself.

Ø Space man ? HE has come already.

The SPIRITUALLY insane endeavours (Hosea 9:7) to try to grab token of life from the dead outposts like Mars, in view of what the Bible clearly says (cf. Chapter 2 above and *1 below), and see Psalm 115:16 -

"The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD's;
But the earth He has given to the children of men") -

and the clear intimations of Genesis 1-2, concerning the scope of His creation,

are alas unlikely to go unrebuked.

v If nowadays, the United Nations feels able to rebuke and invade a land, because of the gross abuses of a nation which displeases it, however retardedly,

v is it at all likely that the fashioner of the mind of man will watch with delighted aplomb the rebellious and reckless mind of man asserting itself in domains where the site has not been made for it to dwell, while dallying with every irrational folly in justification!

The book of Revelation is answer enough to the idolatries of man, as that creation carries the knowledge his creator both enabled and predicted he would gain (Daniel 12:4), before His own re-entry as King. On that score consider this tableau, as the Book races to the end:

"But the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk. And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts" - Rev. 9:20-21. That is noted when a vast international military conflict is being unleashed.

No, such follies as seeking sovereignty in space, on the part of man, will not go unrebuked, in the end; and indeed in the appalling accumulation of space junk with its radio-active and other perils, only a little imagination is needed to see a beginning of that rebuke! Meanwhile, they do show the confusion which comes, when blindness rules, and evidence is disregarded. If in SMR we have gone to the point of invalidating this sort of cause-free thinking, it is only to make its inherent absurdity formal (SMR Chs.1,3,5,10), just as the Bible, there demonstrated to be true, provides unique logical coherence on all sieds (cf. SMR Chs. 1-3, 5, 10).

In fact, not only has the Spiritual Spaceman already come; He has come from beyond space, as its Maker. He has not MOVED about in space, but INVESTED it with His Person, like an author entering into the scenario and scenes of His own book. The visit was paid as and when predicted, with the scenario delivered hundreds of years before, and first intimated long before that.

Ø It is better than a space man, therefore, it is the Saviour as Man, ultra-space, and then intra-space.

When then will man stop worshipping the creation rather than the Creator, looking for IT do "do its thing", when this is from moment to moment, precisely what is NOT and is NEVER seen to be its thing, and what is SYSTEMATICALLY removed from its power, since it is merely something set to do what it does. Logical imagination is not part of that; it is part of us.

And as to us, we cannot do it, make this universe. You need more than that, not less. We were not made that way, though we can mess about with what He made, in more ways than one, both morally and mentally. What is it like ? It resembles goggling children, mesmerised by hope, instead of realising God made the universe to be what it is, and us to be what we are, giving to heaven and earth alike (Colossians 1:19ff.), NONE but the God-who-made-space as Saviour-in-format-of-man, as Saviour for any anywhere.

Saviour ? Have you noticed that man is not well - not quite all right ? Good. You are right. If it isn't dishonesty, look for pride, or if not that, for complacency, or incredible self-centredness, even to the point of becoming god by oversight, and acting the part with all the flair of a child of 2 years, playing Madame Butterfly at the Met!

Man NEEDS a saviour because he has lost his spiritual virginity, and needs innocence and truth and purity and power and life, restored. God sent His Son to make and provide peace (Isaiah 9), and the murder resulting, though pre-planned into the scenario as a way to bring to justice, its satisfaction, since love was willing to have the murder as a sacrifice for sin, even for murderers, still was not helpful as a show of virtue on man's part. That divine Son is still on offer in the GOSPEL which God predicted for thousands of years (Barbs, Arrows and Balms 17), with intense precision, and then enacted so that now it is preached in precise conformity to that predictive prescription, to all nations, just as He said it would be, ages before His Son was murdered (cf. SMR pp. 755-769, Isaiah 50-55, Joyful Jottings 25, The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 9, No. 8. It all happens. It always happens. This is the best law of regularity you can find; for it knows no qualification, ever!

What a delightful thing mankind is - or would be, could be, if he were altogether without sin. That is the only way he is even tolerable, in the end. That of course is what destiny shows. Hell is the name of the other option. Its broad highway is littered with horror (Matthew 7:211ff., Isaiah 14:11, 57:10-12), not without grounds (Isaiah 59, Jeremiah 7:9ff.). The confused religionist there joins the obtuse self-vaunter; some trot; some gallop. The end however is not worth the effort.

Love is the name of Him who facilitates its avoidance, enables heaven and came to earth to secure HIS squad... His 'children', with whom He has such empathy as we see.

As to them, theirs is the One who IS altogether delightful, not only because He is without sin, His motives so pure that the very lamb might seem spoiled by comparison, but because He became on earth the prototype and in love was prepared to suffer all that was necessary for its deliverance. That is underivative, ultimate, final and original beauty! It is beauty at its source. And to think that beauty at its source should come to us, is entirely overwhelming.

He then spiritually engenders children of His own, for as we saw, from Isaiah 53 earlier (cf. Isaiah 61:1-3), He had no family on earth, because "He was cut off from the land of the living " (Isaiah 53:8).

That, that is a marvel. To be willing to be ostracised by chaff is choice, for such a saving mission as His; to be willing still to redeem it, and to pay for it, empty though it was, this is a cause of worship, so delightful because He is, after all, God Almighty in the flesh (John 8:58)...

How awful it if were not proper to worship such a ONE! Rejoice you pure in heart, for it is right and good and fitting and seemly, and eminently to be desired (cf. John 20:26-29). Recall what was shown of Him when we looked at Psalm 110 earlier! (Joyful Jottings 23).

He engendered children of His own (recall Isaiah 53:10 and its exposition - The Kingdom of Heaven, Ch.9, pp. 153ff.), and of course Hebrews 2:10ff., speaking of Him to whom the Father says, "Thy throne O God, is for ever and ever" (1:8), has this -

· "For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory , to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings ...saying, 'I will declare Your name to My brethren ...,' and again, 'Here am I and the children whom God has given Me.' "

That is the excerpt. Did you notice this point:

· “No, such follies as seeking sovereignty in space, on the part of man, will not go unrebuked,
in the end …”?

Much as one admires the courage and commitment, daring and intellectual brightness of the astronauts, and understands their youthful zeal and even sense of achievement as if all would help humanity, one can only lament their being so misled. The heavens are the Lord’s, and it is the earth He has given to the children of man.

The secular passion to understand, to summarise, is merely in its base dynamic, a desire to find what in fact did not happen, since it could not happen. It is for this reason that space philosophies about the past (sometimes evocatively titled ‘science’ - a sort of intellectual adventure into space without rockets) have a special characteristic: they both disagree and change FABULOUSLY, and rapidly, almost like an alternating electrical current. ‘Science’ blushes at its transcience, as men manhandle its method (cf. SMR pp. 140ff., TMR Ch. 7), while the word of God like rock, not in 5 years, but in 3000 does not alter, never blushes or rushes: just does what it says, verifies what it claims, proceeds as planned.

In TMR Section F, thought is given to this aspect, and to the basic institutional criteria which, being singular and immense, like the writing of a book, are wholly distinct from the residual processes, AFTER creation, just as the yellowing of book pages is not really highly relevant to the intellectual and spiritual agonies which may have coursed into its actual production, before the INSTRUMENTALITY of paper and markings called ‘letters’ were required to hold the result. In this they add, by this multiplying frenzy of our own day, to the certifications from the book, concerning our now near approach to the end (cf. II Peter 3:3-5, cf. Joyful Jottings 8, and 26).

“For this,” says Peter, “they willfully forget, that by the word of God the heavens were of old …” How are they characterised there ? “Knowing this, that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts …” (3:3).

One of the other features noted by Peter, of course, is that of the flood. This is another realm predicted to be so treated, at this time, as it most emphatically is! (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5). It therefore constitutes another and allied verification of this prescription for the end of our Age (cf. News 1), to be given company with the creation alliance, which mounts on wings like the Challenger, and falls without favour continually (cf. Beauty for Ashes Ch. 3, TMR Chs. 1, 8).

THE FUTILITY

Vain is the endeavour to find how it was MADE when the actual effort was mental and spiritual before materially sophisticated means were implemented, so that these followed - much as the body follows the DNA specifications which MAKE it grow the way it is planned - as the universe came into being. Professor Slusher is most apt in referring to the difficulty of finding the original state of a blast, from its latter state. Only comprehensive knowledge could tell that, which, if it were possessed by watching such things, would make it unnecessary to do the watching, and since it is not available, renders it futile (cf. SMR pp. SMR Ch. 1, Endnote 13, and TMR Ch. 7, Space for Space).

Thus does man create not a universe, but only a universe of thought based on chronological, ontological, geometrical, metaphysical assumptions, often unakin to logical constraints or even evidential constrictions, and project from these whatever follows. It is like electing a cat as leader, and following it through the barns. Interesting for animal psychology, rather than research into the nature of the universe.

With such bases in assumptions, at times like choosing diamonds for modelling clay, and with the point of Slusher who likewise stresses this undue philosophical gladwrapping, that entropy dissipates, explosions do not bring increments of order, based on observation, there are two results. First, there are vastly divergent views of the nature of the astronomical universe in its relationships (cf. Divine Agenda Ch. 1); and secondly, without traceable developments such as program would attest, guesswork becomes a virtual god. When these variabilities are dressed in the frock coats of form and ceremony, the world whirls in disdain at its mentors.

A paragraph from the former reference above, appears below (divided into two).

Indeed, if taken at all seriously, amusing results come from frequently held gradualistic hypotheses on the universe. Thus (p. 8), Slusher speaks of the 'instantaneous snapshot' of the universe which the present situation presents. But, depending on actual distances, and the speed of light (the former with its models - p. 78 infra; the latter with a history in fact under enormous controversy, and affecting 'brave' time and age estimates dramatically), we are seeing events occurring in distant yesterdays, different object distances giving different 'times' to 'view'! What DID happen ? Because of entropy, the law based on observation and found in related theories of many kinds, it is not possible to reconstruct the past on this sort of information.

All that can be said is that it was far more complex and highly organised then than now. Perhaps as illustration, one could conceive of trying (without other present examples to 'go by') : what a functioning appendix looked like some thousands of years before it is first seen or dug up. 'Reconstruction' into projected former times from the degenerative and rotted, disintegrated and dispersed back to the constructed and operational, when theoretically you cannot (to revert to the actual case) see what it was, becomes an exercise in imagination. If it also rejects current realities of entropy, it is a contra-evidential piece of fantasy, not even remotely related to science, or to any data from this universe. In all fairness, that is precisely what science fiction is. The impact on such considerations on logic, and vice versa is considered elsewhere...

(Cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 7).

Again, if you saw me polishing a piece of prose, after creating it, or adapting it to some new need by slight adjustments, because what preceded it did not now appear in some citation, even this would be as profoundly different from the work of creating the original writing as is the maintenance physically from the origination of any part in any way. In general principle and rule, the endeavour to trace by one set of criteria, what is subject either to another totally or partially, but in any case in some mandatory fashion, is pure waste of time: unless you KNOW the way the mandatory thing works.

Omission of the major player does not help you understand the game, and can make your ‘research’ ludicrous as well as incomprehensible, both to yourself and everyone else who follows you – unless they know the fundamental error you are making, and allowing for it, realise the futility of the proceeding backwards into time, and then before our time began (cf. TMR Ch. 7, Section F, SMR pp. 882ff., Torrent of Truth … Ch. 6).

The way the mind of God works is not available, though as often, we can find things BELOW it and INADEQUATE for it. Man does not even understand the way the mind of his neighbour works, frequently, even his own! let alone that magnificent fountain of originality, creativity and conceptuality which surged the originating draft into detail at the Creation.

It is always dangerous, as well as futile, to get beyond yourself. If you are man, vain to be angel; if angel, vain to be man, except in the case when God Himself does it, whose powers of total comprehension of both are godly. What comes before a fall is routinely, pride, just pride. What comes before a fall in space is pride, just human racism (cf. SMR pp. 1008ff.). This is not at all to impute that to ANY who are astronauts, since each is individual and has motives of his own; but when it comes to a nation which makes it CLEAR from its mouth, as it were, that SPACE MUST be explored in order to satisfy curiosity and this or that in man, this becomes humanism. God is left out.

Imagine now if God left man out! That would be fatal immediately, for if ever a being were preserved

· by air pressure and mix,

· by angles of earth to sun,

· by the nature of water,

· by the character of gravity,

· by the terrestrial specifications of magnetism,

· by variety of crops and fruit,

· by abundance of liquid,

· by physiological devices from the reconstructive power, within limits of the brain,

· by the renewal power of skin and much tissue,

· by the elaborate and multi-stage resistance – the importance of which AIDS abundantly illustrates, as if to teach man to realise himself, not in insane endeavours but in modest graces WITHIN specifications,

· by distance from the sun,

· by the size of the moon,

· by the extent of the oceans,

· by the powers of his imagination, presented tout complet, in package as

· by the power to love:

it is man!

Ø As with the space rocket, vulnerable to destruction if its angle of coming into the earth’s atmosphere were ever so slightly different from the optimum (The Australian, February 3, 2003), so with man in space, in his terrestrial ball, in his air pocket, in his speed of spin, in his entire environmental situation from the cleverly clad and protective physiological cell wall or film, to the circuitry of his billions of brain cells, there is much needed, in order for him to function. Just as it was stated that the Columbia space shuttle had successfully landed hundreds of times, so leading to a sense of routine, though it was always a risk, so it is always a challenging thing for man to be on earth, though far better protected on earth than ever Columbia was in the heavens.

There is the challenge

Ø to live and not die

Ø by starvation,

Ø plague,

Ø war,

Ø fever,

Ø mad visions,

Ø massive hatreds,

Ø torturous money-making pretences,

Ø rapacious greed leading to obvious or effectual slavery of some to others,

Ø social scourges or

Ø delusive self-exaltations like organic evolution.

The last named, in conjunction with the whole of the rest of the armoury of humanistic philosophy, with tinctures of divine invasions incognito, as is the way with some, has done much to stimulate World War I and II, the Cold War (cf. SMR pp. 127, News 195) and in measure, the Terrorist Death by Death which wants to exalt a profoundly arbitrary philosophy in a book, the Koran, incapable of any rational defence from verification, and susceptible to total dismissal by the failure in that same field (cf. More Marvels…Ch. 4, SMR pp. 1080ff., 830ff.).

The better nation, system, belief, philosophy, race, fear-creator, propagandist, it is to be put to the test. That is the wonderful and lethal idea, for since truth is already overwhelmingly attested, such skirmishes bring on judgment as well as jagged edges, for deception and lies work like greyhounds in pursuit of electric hares, in all such matters. It is rather like athletes, disappointed at the Games, trying some gang warfare in an effort to prove the contrary. Nevertheless, this too, it results in the end, at all times, in the exposure of folly as such (cf. SMR pp. 743, 830ff., 971ff.) as the word of God simply verifies itself by DOING WHAT IT SAYS. Nothing else does in the whole litany of human philosophic enterprise.

Meanwhile, the Pan-Bedlam Games go on. Delusion is to confront delusion and the result is first deflation when the appalling cost is found, then inflation and even exultation when someone or other wins, and then more pride before more fall, as the human race in its racism of itself, expands its throbbing breast, ready for yet more intakes of sulphur from the volcanoes of godless folly.

Far beyond such challenge, however, is that to find the truth, to know when and why to die, for what to live, to sacrifice, to labour. Without the acceptance of that, as God gives it, survival is a nonentity, a continuing failure (cf. Proverbs 8:35ff.).

Man WILL not learn. Since Babel the same grandeur comes when he has occasion and liberty for it, repetitively. Now it is the United Nations, the WCC, the movement for Religious Unification, the Axis against the Evil Axis, the Pan-Islam movement, the New World Order, and sundry other expressions of man’s undoubted greatness, which unfortunately routinely leads to his visible littleness. Let us cite from Trust in God … Ch. 1:

So does lust lavish itself, and the oily voice petroleum declare so modestly its ambition, with its religious thirst, and its hypnotism with false prophecy. It has not done much for it so far, except murder and massacre, intimidatory threats to Israel, collections of nations to destroy it. Now is it to be left to a group of four groups, each a sort of union - the UN, the EU, the USSR (deprived a little now, but still far more than mere Russia that was) and the USA - to TELL Israel what it should do ? It may well be so.

As we have seen, however, God thinks otherwise (cf. Trust in God … Ch. 1, Galloping Events Ch. 4 and see Ch. 4 above). That therefore also brings judgment to man and his vanity, and in this case, it is a specifically crafted judgment, announced in advance (cf. Zechariah 12, Ezekiel 36-39).

THE PREDICTABILITY OF THE END
AND THE ASCRIBABILITY OF THE BEGINNING

Man is going to RULE the world somehow, and make his rulings somehow, whether by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, by philosopher, guru or the power out of a gun (which of course always depends on the restraint of God, who holds it and who uses imagination, wit and courage to disarm the villain, such as Mao, who enslaved a large portion of the earth and exacted a calling fee of tens of millions of dead, by reports); and he is NOT, repeat NOT going to listen to such a figure as his MAKER! He has been told both the beginning and the end, irrationally refuses both sets of information continually confirmed as they are in all verifiable ways, from the book demonstrably His (SMR, TMR) and proceeds inveterate, ignoring the plight of those caught in the fight, whose funds evaporate, whose young are slain, whose military hardware sails aloft, often radioactive, as if we had some sort of heavy-duty roof.

Yet we have not such a thing, and lust for glory, for the same old knowledge without God which snared man in the beginning^*2, continues to the end!

The gyrations of the human spirit in Genesis (Ch. 3) have scarcely ceased, indeed, grown old, they grow not decrepit, but merely more complex, like a psychiatric patient in virtual senility, yet left with some physical strength. It is unpleasant as are the mangled bodies of millions who pay for the day, the fray and the deadly dynamic of man out of control.

In that case, what we have is not merely PREDICTABLE, because it is PREDICABLE of such a people as this, in such a situation as this, but it is PREDICTED, because in addition to all these follies in his spirit which refuses to be tamed, man has his Maker, who refuses to abdicate (cf. Acme, Alpha and Omega Ch. 8), and the very thought as there shown, is ludicrous, irrational and outrageous. It is as if to ask the author to abdicate, as a request coming from some of the characters in one of his books. I of course cannot make free characters, but God can and does (cf. Predestination and Freewill, News 195, Barbs, Arrows and Balms Appendix I, News 52, Little Things Ch. 5).

Of course, sin becomes endemic and enslaving, and no less so when like pride or arrogance, it is unconscious, and perhaps even especially is it corrosive when it is so. Trying to be unbegun (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9, SMR Ch. 2, TMR Chs. 1 and 8), he is not unspun, but merely entangling himself.

What makes the result WHOLLY predictable is this, that God knows what He is going to do, having seen the whole thing, plan and scope, ruin and remedy in advance! He just says it, and of course, that is what it is (Isaiah 43:11-13, 14:27). There is nothing automatic about it, as in human programs, for God has no derivational devices that diminish His personal oversight, as if lack of power would remove His control and foil His desire, when after all, His creation too, as one whole, was a foreseen work. What then makes the wholly predictable result wholly predicted, is simply this, that God said it. What makes it wholly verifiable is this, that it happens, always, with whatever degree of particularity, just as God chose to announce it.

One of the things predicted is so close to what we see already as to do two things: it is first of all awe-inspiring, not surprising, since the capacities of God would ALWAYS surprise if you did not allow for the fact that He and no other is God (cf. SMR Ch. 1). Secondly, it is evocative, for it shows that the day of Christ’s return is drawing nearer (Answers to Questions Ch. 5). It is mentioned above, as in Ch. 4 in this volume.

What then is this ? It is nothing less than a site for vaunting, taunting and testing, a place where man is determined to show that he and not God will rule. It is the return of Israel, its assault by many nations, and the price those nations pay for this highly dubious privilege (cf. SMR Ch. 9 cf. Zechariah 12), as they aggregate more and more, ready for their predicted, and most forceful coming ‘unification’.

On the contrary, this saga of prophetic fulfilment is now a massif on the mountain terrain of our Age, the details of the triumphs of Israel over assault on its nation by armies, being a significant chapter in the whole of military history, and amazing deliverances for all time. Another rising event to the point of rule and ruin, is the decrying of the creation (as seen in II Peter 3:3-5, for this end of the Age complex of events –and ‘scoffing’ is the precisely proper term to describe it!). They do not want Him at the first, do not desire Him at the present and especially are keen to rule without Him at the last. As all this occurs, His word rules without effort, in every facet, almost amounting to mockery of this boastful glee and inordinate appetite for power in the hearts of the nations.

Thus while the Creator whether as Institutor of all, or Executive in history is summarily sentenced to a grave from which He long ago rose, when men tried their utmost to dispatch Him from His premises as from their hearts (cf. Magnificence of the Messiah esp. * 1, SMR Ch. 6), so does His word turn events like a sheep dog with foolish sheep, putting them through the appointed gate in any case! Together with these things, as Peter here likewise predicted, is a muse of muddle and virtual execration on the Flood which afflicted the world ( - see News 1 for a fascinating example of this sort of thing and its perilous errors), since it is not desired that God be seen in judgment: indeed, as if God were passé and man were in the saddle.

However the horse is not trotting just now, but lingering languishing downhill.

Costs therefore accumulate, multiply, costs in misadventure, in misconstruction, in mischief, in muddled efforts to ‘prove’ superiority, in arbitrary blindness, in humanistic missions aplenty, in vast expenditures for what is wrong from the first, and huge aspirations for what is doomed at the last.

THE SPIRITUAL PLAGUE

(cf. Matthew 24:24 – Christ’s prediction: the world a blaze of haze)

The cost to man, in general, apart from the many losses individually of the face of the beneficence of God and all that this carries with it, is that he will lose is liberty by political-social-financial-religious means before he is finished. This is not to be just in Europe, as largely happened in the last century, or in Russia as happened with such gross and uninhibited ferocity, or in China as is currently largely happening with guile and shrewdness added: for it will be of international proportions. In the meantime and as the event looms nearer, there will of course be that appalling horror which is little men without their Maker using His gifts in order to try to enslave others.

Already and often voluntarily, they put their own children through the fires, as in education in so many nations, where organic evolution, though wholly unscientific myth (cf. Earth Spasm Chs. 1, 7, Secular Myths… Ch. 7, TMR Ch. 1), is the de rigueur slant, to greater or lesser degree, its monopolistic presence mandatory. Gone is reason, gone is laboratory methodology (cf. SMR pp. 140ff., 203) with increasing vehemence; philosophy rules, as man seek and think to rule in more and more, like the fiery Columbia, in sheer heat declaring its way in the heavens, while alas, it was but the furore of fire that doomed it.

The relevance of this last point is that it is precisely this secular meandering delusion which is back of much of the space research which is back of the deaths of astronauts, which is part of the cost of rebelling against the word of God and its specifications for man, at the national level. While individual astronauts may not fathom the national purpose, the nations seem equipped with desire for any competitive advantage out of more exploration, prestige, greatness, satisfaction, but not at all with desire to reverence the word of their Creator.

Strange it is, but part of the rejection syndrome which appears in mankind so largely, against their Maker (cf. Secular Myths Ch. 7), that man is anxious and distressed (as Christ said he would be – Luke 21:25, Matthew 24:6,21ff.) in this particular tartan-like combination of criteria near the end: and yet he does not stop violating the law of God!

Indeed, he glories in his ‘educational system’ though in the art of putting children through the philosophic fires of folly with more or less professional enticement and allure, or simple command (as in this State), he is no better than the ancient Israelites. In their case, the affliction to children was more physically obvious, certainly but scarcely less destructive when Israel provoked God (Psalm 106:38) in confrontation parallel to much in this country and many another, at present.

Thus, it speaks in this Psalm of Israel at that time, in that “they sacrificed their sons and their daughters to devils … unto the idols of Canaan”.

· These in the twenty first century are different idols ? Yes, that is so; but they are still idols. Moreover, it is still NATURALISM which is the source of all of them, both those ancient and these modern, in this case, signifying the worship of the creation more than the Creator, a fundamental syndrome of man’s revolt from God (cf. Romans 1:20,21,24-25 cf. Spiritual Refreshings Chs. 6, 13, 16).

COST ? Yes there is moral cost, as they seek to enforce their wills, their wiles, and not live by the sublime peace and beauty of divine grace. There is spiritual cost for those who, lapping up this poisonous fiction, live by it and so make sure their divorce from God, in many cases, perhaps for all eternity: for time is the scope when light is given (John 3:16-19), and eternity is the destiny. Preferring darkness is the STATED criterion of judgment. There is physical cost when astronauts die, as when millions of others die, in superiority-driven wars, or philosophically inspired wars of survival, of being the best, of being dominant and so on. These, alas arrive like water on the weeds, when you tilt the watering can, just as these tilt the truth, to pour out filth instead, on the flowers of youth.

There is global cost as the RESULTS of these follies of philosophy, religion and pride bring agreed need for more combination, enforcement, rigors of government so that just as Hitler had the ‘solution’ for Germany, so the world will soon have the ‘solution’ for itself. When even Victoria^*3 in this our own continent, makes such a befuddling monstrosity of religious freedom as it does, it requires precisely virtually NO imagination to see what can come quickly in such a setting as our own, wrought by sin, with pollutants insinuated through rebellion, the case exacerbated by humanism and its human racism as if man were god, and nothing made him in a fit of illuminated abstraction, which, for nothing is not bad going!

The aggregative trends proceed, meanwhile, in a world where almost unimaginably 20 years ago, RUSSIA is seeking whether perhaps it might agree after all with the USA (cf. The Australian, February 3, 2003 ‘Bipartisan Support for War is Coming’), and USA is waiting with some care on the UN, after all, Powell planning to present ‘damning’ evidence on the Iraq weapons front. The drive to thrive in a world where delusion is driven by oil funds, and confusion is feared by many, is leading to the unity which religions propagandists have been trying to make of religions for centuries (cf. News 121, 122, and the work of Auguste Comte), ignoring realities and using phrases and ideas to bring skeletal religious remains together in a sort of dramatic play, using bones instead of persons!

Even in the Anglican case, where the unity of CHURCH AND STATE has for long been a chief violation in Christian terms (for Christ is alone Master, and the State, the more secular it becomes, is ANYTHING but Christ!), the matter is moving in odd ways.

Does Archbishop Jenkins indicate that there will need to be a provision for evangelical Christians in the Anglican framework, and that the Archbishop of Canterbury is not the final authority ? Very good, but then we hear in The Australian, January 13, that though the rule should be “Evangelicals First, Anglicans second,” yet for all that the idea being displayed by this report at least, is this: that “as some English bishops are licensed by the Archbishop of Canterbury to minister to congregations with conscientious needs, it would not be inconceivable that Peer Jensen be similarly licensed to minister to dissident parishes.” (On this see Beauty for Ashes Ch. 9, where even worse relativism riots into divergent life, if life it could even be called!)

Whether or not such a plan (amazingly) should be adopted, one can see the same sense of cohesion. EVEN IF, some want the Bible and not irrationalist philosophies that do not because they cannot stand (cf. SMR), yet the idea is then touted that UNDER a body NOT founded on the Biblical truth (whatever norms and forms may exist), not bound to them, evangelicals should nevertheless RECEIVE LICENCE.

This illustrates the continual human desire for a ONE which must not however be God, one particle, one moral code, one religion, one form of politics, one method of evaluation, one universal this or that or constant, as in the velocity of light fixation a little while ago. It is because man is designed by ONE GOD that he constantly seeks – in some ways rightly – for the unity of things; and it is because he refuses that ONE GOD that he as constantly does not find it, though it is there and this without any difficulty^*4 . It not as he often would want, one matrix, one formula, for God has given to us a creativity which ‘nature’ also evinces not in its doings but in its disposition. It is no more one fundamental particle than our imagination is one fundamental dream, or our poetry one fundamental verse form or our buildings one fundamental schema.

Depending on PURPOSE, there are many inventions, and depending on material to hand, and environment. With God, there is no limit to the material, for it is hand crafted, or to the environment, for it is made also to order. There is no answer to the ‘problems’ of man in seeking a self-creating universe, for just as the concept is irrational, so are the ‘means’ unfound, unfathomed, febrile and sterile all at once. This, it is just one more of the virtually infinite number of verifications of the truth of God, of the Bible and its creation, which alike provides frustration for those who without reason, seek in reason, to find reason in what has it first evacuated (cf. SMR Ch. 3, Repent or Perish Ch. 7).

As to the purpose of creation, you find this by finding God, just as you do when you find and get to know someone who is very creative. It is then that you find that His purpose for man is to redeem him, but not by force.

v Where is the need for man to licence,

v when God is Himself confronted in negation of His commands ?

v or how should the Creator commission people to seek commission
from those who would decommission some part of what He says ?

What then of Christ ? Does He not licence ? What then of truth, is it not REFUSED by GOD for His people to be even so much as in fellowship with contra-biblical teaching (Romans 16:17)! How much less would they seek to be COMMISSIONED by those who so engage! To what enormities in religion and politics, in society and arms races, space races, cold wars, hot wars, philosophic proprieties, political correctness will man not go in order to have his way in his day, in direct and total, in flamboyant and almost adolescent disregard of the Father who made, and that not as earthly fathers make, by procreation, but by a creation absolute. Just as He did not allow this dismal confrontation with His constructions, by His constructions, both against Himself as God and each other as His property, but spoke the necessary remedy, never being in abeyance, always in control, so does He require its adoption, just as a cancer patient needs cure.

Failure to love and follow this Father, makes only for disorder, discipline, devastation by natural or supernatural causes, grief, and a certain grandeur of folly in a disintegrating world, not by design, but by the evanescent furores of the flesh. Evanescent however as is the rule of this or that philosophy and correlative political power, force and process, by no means evanescent is the result. Darwin helped the autonomous humanism of his day to receive a deluded sanction, and it loved it, millions dying as this edge to the desire of man to be God, helped folly to flap its wings, and fall like Icarus, too near the sun for such a waxed wing.

New rules and this time world rulers arise, and though their total years will be small indeed, yet not small will be the anguish, agony and spiritual insanity which will populate the globe for a short time (Revelation 17:10-13, Matthew 24:22). This is thus seen to be happening, with new grounds for the happening, new lusts, new powers, new magnitudes of the dissidence from deity, as the desire for NO LIMIT for man, becomes in the end, NO FREEDOM FOR MAN.

It is much like using a fountain pen as a plough. TO be sure, you CAN do something for a little while with the nib, but it is rather futile, very destructive, and quite irrational. Ruin is the result.

*20 GENESIS AND ENGENDERING: THE CRYSTALLINE COHERENCE OF CHRISTIAN CONCEPTS

*20 GENESIS AND ENGENDERING:
THE CRYSTALLINE COHERENCE OF CHRISTIAN CONCEPTS