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FIFTH CHAPTER
LOVE IS NOT ANOTHER THING
GOD IS LOVE
And Impoverishment from Imagination
Contrary to His word is Voluntary Destitution
Excerpts have been adapted and extended for the present purpose
EXCERPT A
From Spiritual Refeshings…
CHAPTER FOUR
NEWS 98
Ferocity is not Faith
Advertiser, Sat. Dec.
7, 1999
People with a self-fulfilment, a self-expansive or a self-consummating concept are not in the arena of faith. Others parading their ferocity, however, may well be in the arena of their delusions, like lions set loose.
It matters in this, little if it be religious or political or economic or even social. The results are always, like the poor, with us!
In the report on the consensus between Boris Yeltsin and the Chinese government, we find that "human rights" really do not figure when it comes to the needs of the rulers. These little things cannot "harm an independent country's sovereignty". They must not "interfere".
We have long insisted that China's failure, its sorrow, is in effect, not so much the Yellow River as the insurgence of vile violences to swamp those brave enough, and at times wise enough, to stand on a different ground, though in the same country. The young visionary, however misguided (and the case of Han Suyin is pertinent here, as noted in our last new item) may have stimulus to provide the nation; he/she may have a voice to show up some blindness, some cruelty, some extortion, some deep loss of ideals, some hope. Allowing the bulls to bellow in their pride and governmental authority, deciding as if God, presuming in what is not given to man to perform, and doing it while blind, when those who see may be calling: this is no way to run, but to ruin a nation*1.
What then are the so sacred national desires, to be protected at whatever cost to whomever ?
What are they, when they are looked at clearly ? To be great ? How and in what manner, great ? Great in gut ? great in selling souls to feed stomachs ? Great in tongue to execute the unloved ? Great in smell as the flesh of the undesired is consumed ? In what manner is all this greatness to be found ? Greatness to exterminate a people, to give to a free nation the 'liberation' of being slaves ?
The use of force in the area of faith is the ultimate in folly. It is not relevant. It is brutal, worse than the work of animals, which after all are not radical visionaries, the pompous pursuit of vice as a delusion. This has been examined earlier in SMR pp. ff., ff., ff.. Faith is oblivious of force; force is irrelevant to faith. Faith concerns, in the Christian sense, what is true, what is from God. Nothing that hands can do can alter this; no words can downplay the word of God. Nothing else can create the universe, nor any make man. Nothing else foretells what is to be; or rebukes what is wrong with absolute authority, as distinct from the wily wishes of the privileged, as in the case of Communist rulers, whose powers make those of many monarchs seem like scooters in the presence of rockets.
To divide up the 'multi-polar' world, this is the stated aim of these, for the time, the free with the company of the cosy Communists, with Yeltsin's pocket money from Uncle Sam, by the billion from the World Bank, while he expends it on systematic and vast dislocation of hundreds of thousands. Is the World Bank to bank-roll such things ? and is it to do so while "human rights" are relegated to the halls of shame*1?
It is certainly true that "human rights" is an unfortunate term. What RIGHTS do sinners have before God ? And for those who make themselves into wrong gods, why, what they want is what is right in their sight! If you are foolish enough to take on the divine image, and dictate to man, then of course the delusion is likely to go further into the realms of paranoia, and the imagination can come to the point of believing its own mind, albeit without any significance logically, is the arbiter of the destiny of man (oh! throw in a few other powerful ... not minds, but men, equipped with the means of terror and make it a sort of mini-team thing).
How Stalin watched it work: terror! a profusion of delusion and a cornucopia of confusion, along evidently, with deliberate starvation and the slow labour to death, to fulfil the needs of greatness! No justice can speak, for the State is justice; no right can cry, for the State has usurped the place of God!
Such then is the nation which is given the management of South Australian electrical power, it seems, via one of its citizens, whose human "rights" MUST not interfere with what is in the ... interests of the State. Is it imagined that it will magically acquire the exact opposite, in time; will you put your wife into the hands of a self-confessed power pundit, whose whole being sings one song: WHAT IS IN MY INTERESTS!
It is nothing to do with the individual or company concerned. It is everything to do with the CLAIMS of POWER OVER INDIVIDUALS of the country of base; and if it is Hong Kong, then with much ceremony China has taken this over, and with its own interests it sets out to run. As to those interests, human rights in its way ? Forget it! This is the message.
And as to Russia, agreed, say they! Leave us alone in our sovereignty, just as we will leave this human business out when it comes to our will.
Will the US then continue to feed the government which threatens ? will it make its advances in materialistic hope, as if money bought souls, even when it pays for the destruction of life; or will there be some at least who will now begin to realise, that when the papacy, the Moslems or the Communists, any of the 3*2 world conspiracies to govern, SAY what they intend, it may be time to BELIEVE them! WHAT they say has been considered in its place (see SMR pp. (see SMR pp. 1032-1088G, 50ff., 830ff., 983ff., 987ff., 125-127,707, 732B, 332D-E, 303ff, 614, 684, 925ff., 971ff.)
What they have done, without that repentance which is steely in its truth, compassionate in its change and transforming in its object: this too is obvious and has been well-attested. It is time to realise that human beings are God's property and helping the wild to deal viciously with their prey is no part of wisdom!
Will mere commercial interests heed this voracity ? Will they incline nations to 'overlook' the villainies of long constraint, interminable imprisonments, solemn farces that play god like puppet shows, human toys, and treat their victims like little else! Will political hopes make these atrocities like those of the Jews, wrought by Hitler upon them, come to seem small ?
Is not the desire to gulp down Taiwan into the Communist mess, and to overlook human beings in the oblivion of the RIGHT which is God's, violated as if by compulsive obsession, is this not enough to suspend aid to GOVERNMENTS who so act, and COMMERCE from nations which make this not merely their action, but their PRINCIPLE! Are governments then unlike actual people, who must be careful what they do ? Is it then that a government is amoral ? has no feeling ? or a nation, MUST it be complicitous to every nuance of evil ?
There IS no must. It is mere folly, and it deserves its name.
Hitler too was appeased, not appraised. The results were not kindly. Unkindness to the oppressed is unwise. It helps the harbouring of ceaseless quest for the very undivine, the very inhuman, the very exalted abasement to which the human spirit is heir, when it forgets itself and shames the beasts by devilries.
What does Isaiah tell us in Ch. 58:
¨ "Is not this the fast that I have chosen ? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke !" - verse 7.
¨ THEN, he says (58:11), "And the Lord shall guide you continually, and satisfy your soul in drought, and make fat your bones; and you will be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail." This is but part of the blessing of those who act in faith FOR THE LORD'S SAKE (Isaiah 59:1-2, 57:1-21), and in His name.
¨ Again, read it (from 57:15-16): "For thus says the High and Lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also who is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. For I will not contend for ever..."
SINCERITY and HUMANITY, with FAITH and REALITY in the love of God, these are as far from those violent vices of world-seeking contrivings, as is the sun from the core of the earth; and as different as its flames from the cool waters of a deep lake. Destroying, ignoring, mocking the human spirit WITH the human spirit is possibly the most inane invention of that free spirit ever made. Where FAITH is in aspiration, made SUBJECT to FORCE, it has its acme, and there is its consummation. It CANNOT be done; but it acts as if it could, savaging and torturing, talking and threatening. If money was in its love a major vice, what of this, the playing of god altogether, not merely with purchasing power, but soul stinging piercings, as if hell were not available any more, or the reek of blood did not count.
There IS however, still a refreshing, even in this digital millenium to come. It is where it always was, where the humble and contrite heart meets with the Lord of glory, and in sincerity and love, lives in His presence, based on His redemption, working not FOR salvation, but BECAUSE of love for the Saviour. For just as faith without works is dead, a sort of spiritual cancer, dead and deathly; so love without mercy is lust. It is only when the final, last rites of unreason, disfaith (cf. SMR 172, 774) and seared conscience have come, that the woes of spiritual death confine their incumbent to the dwelling of his heart. THIS, it is not quite the same as what his heart desires; it is WHERE IT DWELLS!
But as for the merciful, the humble, the meek, the poor in spirit, the contrite who seek the Lord WHERE and WHEN HE MAY BE FOUND (Isaiah 55), theirs is rest, and there is refreshing as He acts to "revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones."
THE TERRITORY OF THE EXCURSIONS
*1 Excursion 1
THE PENALTY OF GOVERNMENT WITHOUT VISION, AND WITH VICE
This question of the attitude of
government to its nation like that of an individual to his quest, is as
readily made amoral as it is in a commercial firm. The better question, for
Australia as a nation, is not so much whether government be
led or rather safeguarded, by royalty or president, as this: What
presides! What royal way, which no mortal king fully fulfils, is
there to be chosen ? (Cf. Questions and Answers 7.)
Distancing from God, and the various sloppy authoritarian governmental or government sponsored ways in religion (see That Magnificent Rock and Lead us not into Educational Temptation!) comprise no solution. They are mere provocation to the Almighty, just like the synthetic cretans of gods made by Israel of old. If there is one thing which it seems the Lord most monumentally condemns, it is this listless, this syncretistic, this verbosity of religion (cf. Isaiah 29;13), this friendly favour towards anything and everything (cf. Deuteronomy 32:15-22), and if possible, the more when it is mixed with His own name. Listen to the prophet Jeremiah in Chapter 32:33-34:
"And they have turned to Me the back and not the face; though I taught them, rising up early and teaching them, yet they have not listened to receive instruction. But they set their abominations in the house which is called by My name, to defile it..."
The entire book of Hosea is built about the narrative of the unfaithful wife, a harlot to start with (expressly designating by this error - Hosea 2:16-17, the spiritual reality of mixing the gods, unfaithful to the true and ruling one, who is there), who plays the harlot after being mercifully married.
From this, she has to be bought back, redeemed from her unfaithful dalliances, just as Israel was destroyed and Judah humbled for the same thing. USING the name of the Lord in vain is companion to murder, theft and false witness in the 10 commandments, and to mix it with the vanity of folly, the implements of spiritual disaster personified into gods, is insult, confusion, impudence and arrogant disdain. To put Einstein in a paper bag with a number of retarded children, for mathematics prowess, would be a compliment, sheer flattery compared with this!
In fact, however, if there is one lust which seeks to snare this land more than another, it is this patronage of the gods either as a religionist or patron of religions for social reasons. If this prevails as the old Commonwealth connection is dissolved, then not the later, but the former will be the active constituent in ruin.
Whether in the USA or in Australia, if you are to have a President, what you need is someone
· incorruptible, with clear vision of what he/she is about:
· not confusing national interests with national selfishness, or greed,
· but seeing them as principles of integrity;
· securing and maintaining liberty with justice,
· restraint of evil with stimulus to good, and
· the maintenance of continuity for life for the nation,
·
against those who would enslave, invade or corrupt it.
What is needed is ..
· Not the clamant clangor of variable direction of thought,
· interweaving confusedly various COMPONENTS or INTERESTS,
· but the kindly mercies of restraint of what promotes intrusive physical violence as its aim, and the encouragement of the springs of inspiration.
These things follow from a Christian ethos, which is also eminently desirable even for a secular nation: for love of justice, non-vindictiveness, encouragement to mercy, to love one another and to be spirited in seeking and relishing truth, without trying to take control of people by human institutions, are nowhere so heartily and purely to be found.
NOT a Christian nation is it which currently must answer; for there is none such, nor will be any till Christ come and His special "nation" of actual believers is apparent to all (Psalm 96:13, 98:9, Revelation 14, Psalm 67:3-5, Micah 4:2-3, I Peter 2:9). This therefore is not now the pure presidential aim: none is to be forced, nor any enticed by spurious rewards. Yet righteousness does exalt a nation, improving prosperity with peace and productivity with stability, whilst helping strength with security. Only in appreciation of these things, and the integrity to pursue them, without looking for selfish advantage for himself or his people , can any President do well.
The concept that some hog trough of mere pleasure, personal or national, is the - or even an - objective, very understandably leads to reaction. Where ? asks the beleaguered human spirit, where on earth if not here, is there that inspiration beyond myself and my people which I seek ?
Certainly this is not the whole answer for man, for only the gospel received and a changed heart are that.
Since however these
necessary and excellent things are not dispensable by government, this is
the casing which promotes peace and good understanding. The ambition of man,
of course, when divorced from God, will not rest there; but it is
nonetheless the place of presidential aim for the wise.
Only unproductive seekings - like this ludicrous and smashingly abased and abashed Mars probe for life in 1999 , twice in technical oblivion just as it was long so, in logical folly (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri ) - can result when the spirit, denying God, is unleashed in the political milieu of pomp, pride and restlessness. Miasmas, however idiotic, come like swelling waters over the dam wall in Spring, when there is no due release for the waters of life.
They come the
more treacherously through distancing from the long preached goodnesses of
the Lord, called forth from the yearnings of frustration, like those of the
Cambridge perverts in Britain, who, to take but one example, cheerfully
betrayed their nation and freedom in their inundations of spirit, and
confusions of soul.
Even in
Israel, they
have been betrayed, this time by a more recent exponent of their nuclear
arsenal, a man long now kept in solitary confinement. Alas for poor Israel,
all their power is in the midst of turmoil, as it must be, till the Prince
of Peace at last is acknowledged (Romans 11:25ff.). This is the more intense
a whirl-pool, since God's predicted faithfulness to them, even while they
are unfaithful, on their return to the land makes both protection and
eruption predictable.
Thus have many shouted folly! and secreted venom, perhaps not least because foolishness rules, whether of this kind or that, and folly is (rightly) disdained. When the heart is empty, folly readily flows in, and is caught in its own bitterness. The eruptions which result when the Lord is not the governor of the soul are one of the chief declarations of the 20th century, on the tarmac ready to take off into the 21st. They can swiftly surpass in folly the provocations to which they so treacherously, rigidly or even vehemently react. In this, far more than in some computing bug, however disordering, is to be found dire peril to each 'rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly' (Zephaniah 2:15, cf. Isaiah 29:1-10).
Have you noticed that PRECISELY the qualities
needed of a President are FOUND in Christ; are never removable from Christ; are
indelibly imprinted on history through Christ (SMR Ch.6,Appendix C, ROP 7);
and have you realised that His word rules like that of a King (SMR Ch.8 ), which is what He is; and that God is on
record that NO ONE will be able to rule this earth, at length, but He! (cf. SMR
pp. 623ff., cf. 611ff.).That is being fulfilled with
an exacting exactitude at this time! Blindness does not remove it, nor does
irrationality exclude.
The confusions of delusion are the experiences of this world, and its glamour is routinely, as predicted, fading... The glory has departed and it will not return till He comes to whom it is due, and for those by whom He is given it. As a spectacle, it will appear; as a wonder, however, it is for those who have come to Him. The children live in the house. (Cf. Revelation 1:7, Matthew 24:30-51, I Thessalonians 4).
*2 Excursion II
RELIGIONS WHERE THE SKY IS THE LIMIT
These three are amongst those predicted by Christ in Matthew 24:24. Thus the Moslem religion represents the unredemptive false Christ, the Romanist the pseudo-saving false Christ and the Communist the false prophet of twice double delusion. Our references amplify these points and their grounds.
As to the last, Communism, a further word in this context may prove helpful, apart from the red coloured references in the colour coded list above.
SEEING RED IS NOT THE BEST WAY
TO DISTINGUISH FACTS
In Communism, you have a religion without morals telling you what you ought to do; and machinery of matter so certain that it is perfectly clear what it MUST do, though of engineer it is utterly devoid, in this bearing the marks of mind though defined as matter. Tooled without tools, it must triumph in a predestined end which none predestines. From mindless matter comes the determination of all mentality, to the effect that it is has no intrinsic reality. That is the theory. That is the province of matter. This is the basis and determinant. The real produces the unreal which is so real it tells the real what it is. (In fact, the reality of mind is a pre-condition of the theory of matter being true; so that materialism is self-contradictory at the outset; and inadequate at the outcome.)
What follows ? Thus and in this way, the mindless makes the minds that declare their basis mindless, and tell us to mind what they say, for it is utterly true, though no truth is possible in the swirling dialectic of constantly changing forces ever new in their inventions.
· Thus a meaningless material provides meaning,
· a mindless one provides mind, and
· the mind it makes is wholly correct in its assertions about ultimate reality,
· by courtesy of an ever changing series of forces with ever new parameters and products, which are nevertheless wholly determinate and utterly impossible to subvert in their predestined progress to an assured and predictable result.
In this, matter as basis, the forces are invested with all needed for
outcomes:
1) their current dynamic of dialectic of very NON-material because error-prone objects (called men).
2) their ultimate thrust of end-result to every movement of dialectic, so that the mental formulation is inherent in them, though never to be seen; and innately directive, though equally, in matter, being mental, not allowed to exist.
3) the mental capacity of overview of themselves which is objective, and wholly independent of the current state of the forces: though since they are material ONLY, this cannot be.
4) the prediction of their ultimate read-out, though being non-mental, they cannot know.
5) the prescription of morality as to what OUGHT to be done and OUGHT NOT (on pain of death) to be done by those currently involved in any particular program of the said forces; and this in the knowledge, revealed, sure and clear, that there is no "eternal, ultimate and for ever immutable ethical law" and "the moral world" has no "permanent principles which stand above history" (as Engels puts it in his Anti-Dühring, pp. 125ff.). Despite that, there are things which ought to be done; and highly IMMORAL are those ENEMIES of the STATE which do not conform to these non-existent and wholly mandatory morals.
History develops what is to be in every synthesis of opposing forces, for in this world there is inherent contradiction, we read, with its thesis and antithesis merrily chugging along; and in that current synthesis of a given moment (time t), we have a stage and status which is not yet what it is to be, when the next round of conflict enters new ideas and thoughts and understanding into its sequence and synthesis which results. Far less is it the END in which what WAS to be, actually IS!
For all that, we find, in ONE point in this unenviable process (t), ONE man is able to KNOW the END result so well that he can OVERSEE all the preceding ones and tell what their OVERALL NATURE is with a finality which pre-empts the end, and allows one to know where it is, so as to look for it and go there, and so avoid the death penalty on the day. Indeed, he can kill those who are not ... wise, profound enough to know this unknowable thing, for the sake of making sure that what HAS to happen, WILL do so! In such a contrived collation of inherent contradiction, the murderous machine of Marxism has taken its experimental toll, following its theoretical demise. The 'heaven' is not even a haven, except for every polluted bird and power-abusing mogul.
Truly a remarkable system, it wants TRUTH NOW in a scenario which allows it ONLY THEN; and OUGHT as an obligation NOW, when it is constantly thrown up by synthetic forces only in the premature stage of an embryo; and at that, its OUGHT facility is founded on NO ONE and NOTHING which really OUGHT to be done, but on the assumption that what is not yet here, and what is known to be coming, and what should come because it may come, is what MUST be followed MORALLY in a world where statedly no eternal moral principles so much as bother to exist.
This is self-contradiction so numerous that to call it double delusion is flattering; so having expressed its many facets of flaw, it is apt for one to call it twice doubly delusive. However, as to the simple 'double delusion', at least that term draws attention to the two most massive idiocies of the system: telling us what we OUGHT to do when there are (said to be) no eternal moral principles, and all that is in mind, even if this were correct, is what in fact is thought to happen - a mere process; and in telling us the TRUTH in a world which has no mind of its own, but can produce millions of them, which is only now inventing itself, and able for all that to be inspected as to what it is really doing, by someone who is a mere thrust of this world in its various essentially mindless motions.
Indeed, just as Marx left out entrepreneurial management in his list of productive powers in economics, so he has left out truth-finding, and truth-funding in his understanding of mentality.
You do not HAPPEN to make a clever factory, and make it function wisely; you do not HAPPEN to make a clever mind and have it know the truth. There is between the ears something called brain, and there is between material reality and surveying mentality a necessity of operation at a level of understanding, facility and validity which is not the same as action, any more than bombing is building, or cutting is surgery.
Put otherwise, truth is not served by consulting the efflorescence of the meaningless (like Marx's brain, in his own terms); nor is any path prescribed by description. Reductionism may seem cute to kids, but to omit the validity of your own mind in advising other minds what they ought to do is like omitting a scalpel when in surgery. Validity is a necessary condition of truth. To tell men, indeed, what they should put their minds to, by the grace of a mind made by mindless matter, this you cannot ... logically do, unless of course you wish to abandon your reductionism.
In that case, Marxism is dead, and you MAY live, if your mind is led to the actual validities that do not at the outset deny their own possibility by positing a system which imported a validity which its nature excludes. Inventing truth in a system which precludes it by initial reductionist definition, and then knowing it, and then telling it, and then enforcing it, this is more than a caprice or quirk; it is a farce and a fiasco.
To imagine a world which has no truth, so that one can know it, and then declare it (cf. SMR pp. 125-127, 299ff., 307ff., 877ff., 999-1002C) ; and then require it of others; and then make it immoral to disobey this 'insight' when objective morality is specifically precluded from existence; and then predict what must be, and have it not happen with an irksome thoroughness as though history were answering a foolish child (SMR pp. 925ff.): this is an object of thought which vies within itself, whether to be called the very exemplar and paragon of what is irrational, or what is arbitrary; but the former seems more direct, and the latter follows.
IF the world were constructed IN TRUTH by TRUTH, then in it, we could expect to find some reflection of truth. If not, and if truth is not relevant at the outset, neither is it at the onset or the outcome. IT CAN be relevant ONLY when it is KNOWABLE outside all system which constrains, influence which controls, limits which blind, constraints which debase: in fact outside PRECISELY what Marx makes to be the nature of things. It CAN be known ONLY from ONE WHO has this capacity. It IS then known ONLY by those who know this ONE so that HIS truth is given and not secured by their own limited, controlled, constrained or coerced capacities.
IF matter HAS this power, it does not show it. IF it had, it would NOT be what conforms to in-built codes of conduct, but what MAKES codes of conduct because it also KNOWS what both IS the nature and things, and (in the case of any divergence ) what SHOULD be the nature of things. Yet how can what IS the nature of things know what SHOULD be the nature of things in divorce from what is, unless it by itself IS NOT the nature of things!
This inherent contradiction spells the end, is automatic logical finis to Marx. What is cannot be dissatisfied with what is, unless what is has beyond the STATE of things at any time, the KNOWLEDGE of another perspective, desideratum which by definition IS NOT. You thus cannot escape the personal as BASIC when you look for what OUGHT to be, and insist that it MUST be done, in a world which is in part what OUGHT NOT TO BE.
In Marx's view what SHOULD be the nature of things is NOT AT ALL what IS the nature of things, nor does it so much as have objective existence, but is wholly a revelation courtesy of moral principles which to which he is evidently devoted, and for all that does not know to be there; so he is positing an eternal knowledge of eternal truth and morality, even while this is not merely expressly denied, but directly excluded by the system of thought itself. In fact, as Stalin stated of Lenin, when necessary he just KNEW what had to be done and stood against the majority (cited from Stalin's Sochineniya, Vol. VI, pp. 58-59 by David V. Benson, in Christianity, Communism and Survival (Regal Books). He certainly COULD not know what ought to be scientifically by WHAT WAS, even if he were right about it, rather than unscientifically failing in verifiction (SMR pp. Here is subjectivism in all its self-important squalor, based on internal morality whilst damning and indicting morality.
For a world the chief visible feature of which is deemed (in Marxism) to be RAVING INJUSTICE and GROSS evil, it is rather much to find there is no moral law by which one even COULD know this; since such law is deemed not even to exist. In the dynamics of dialectic, it is all the more submerged, even if it wished, despite Marx to exist, for the forces which constrain and dissociate the mind from truth are doing their stuff on Marx and Engels as well as on everyone else (in this system), so their INABILITY to know truth has this added difficulty. It is on such a basis as this, not only NOT THERE to be known, but it is divorced from knowledge of such things as mankind, by the nature of the world which they so authoritatively define.
To read the mind of mindless matter with the mind that matter made is an exercise in delusion which makes the causal necessities of the eternally sufficient cause of mind, matter and spirit, finding the mind of the Spirit who made us and the causative complex of matter, the analytical instrument of mind and the surveying composure of spirit, to be sheer joy, even rapture by comparison. After all, in this: so far from self-contradiction there is logical necessity, evidential verification and scientific method's consummation (cf. SMR Chs. 1-3,10, That Magnificent Rock Chs. 1, 5).
Providing detailed maps of what controls the world from the heart of men sunk in it, however, and unable to rise above it, is playing God without the power or the knowledge of God. When you do as here, it is merely one more fiasco instead of faith, religion without truth, by-product of the human will, in the face of Almighty God.
Religion ? Indeed, it is precisely that: a system which
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a) states what is ultimate |
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b) states that it controls everything |
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c) gives the principles of this control and |
|
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d) exhorts people to
follow it; and in this case, twists their arms or necks to the purpose
in hand, |
Logic, history and evidence alike fail. It violates the first, fails in the
second and is absent in the third. This, Communism, is merely ignorant
religion in which the facilities of God are abstracted, put blindly where
they do not operate, matter, shelving the entire reality, its source, and
using the name of an -ism as a surrogate for God: with neither goodness
glory, grace nor intelligence. As idols go, this is one of the worse ones.
False prophets such as Marx and all who, like Darwin and Freud (SMR Index q.v. and cf. pp. (SMR Index q.v. and cf. pp.612ff.), share his world view with the same or similar fundamental deficiencies, are sprinkled like the products of explosive Chernobyls upon the earth. Final decontamination of peoples and persons from the effects of these is not possible except by a superior power, and there is none but God. Return to reality is the prescription for possession by unreality; and indeed, it was in the first place, failure to know God which has led to all these hopelessly irrational and hideously reductionist philosophic baubles. You cannot toy with truth without a penalty far worse than comes from toying with a bomb.
THE POWER OF GOD SPEAKS FOR ITSELF,
ACTS FOR ITSELF AND WORKS
ACCORDING TO PROMISES GIVEN TO HIS PEOPLE:
HE IS, AFTER ALL, THE KING
However, with God truth is provided in ways infinitely different from toys. It involved His own excursion into this world, not for synthesis, but for sin.
As one old lady in bed with a bone breakage, and set in bed so as not to damage herself, shining with clear blue eyes and no loss of humour in the midst put it, ‘THAT ought to be sufficient.’ WHAT ?
" You are kept by the power of God through faith,"
I had read from I Peter. GOD, the Almighty Creator and Saviour - for His
own, His power OUGHT TO BE SUFFICIENT! The beautiful irony of those words
stays with this author to this day. Here she was in total weakness able to
dwell on the power of the Person who made her, and His word and works, and
seeing her plight overshadowed by His Almighty capacities, could say: That
OUGHT TO BE SUFFICIENT. It seems she had seen much, and knew more.
It is abundantly sufficient; and this Physician can heal any Marxist, any Communist, any subject of Romanism or Moslem false christs. It is the TRUE who has power over the FALSE. It is not only in logic that they fail; they lack the power. Not only the practical power (failing in verification - SMR pp. f.), but the psychic power of peace and truth and understanding for human beings. It is the lack of this power which is one item on the languishing agenda for this degraded and often neurasthenic world (when it is not charging vainly like Don Quixote, at wind mills on Mars or elsewhere - let alone with dysfunctional horses) .
Natural power has a natural inhibition, limitation, career and course. Supernatural power is what is needed WITHIN Nature for correction and consummation, pardon and support. Without that, the follies of having a nature which knows, when it knows nothing but interaction; which should (even if it 'should' do what it 'darnwell pleases'), when it knows only compulsions: these have no 'final solution'. Natural power is in nature, which continues to be what it is, but does not make itself. Supernatural power is the source of nature, and can make it any time, but does not, having done it already. What it DOES make however is the power of pardon in the heart of a man, peace because of objective payment of the price of justice in terms of its own UNALTERABLE LAWS, through an INTRINSIC LOVE which nothing defiles, but which much rejects.
The limitations of merely natural powers, as if it were a forbidden thing to come to the Maker of nature and find the recipe for this PRODUCT of nature, called man ?
They are the angst base, the madness thrust of nations and individuals. To be right, you need to know the One whose word made what is, and who IS right. You cannot be right because you follow what happens for the very simple reason that often, in the eyes of all men, it is NOT RIGHT. But with Him whose right we are, and who made us, and whose demonstrably true word, enshrined in wisdom, valid in demonstration is available and operative, there is no limit. Then what we ARE NOT, but would like to be; and what we SHOULD BE and cannot become: this becomes the reality, and the 'dialectic' of endless advance in a broth of bits becomes, with reason, the pilgrimage of spirit in an ocean of truth, full of opportunity, with directions and maps provided.
For this transition, see Romans Chs. 7-8 and note the flow. You come to Him; He becomes yours and you become His; He lives in you by His Spirit, having covered your sin (such as reductionism and its immoral rages and presumptions against a man's fellows) by an active and practical love, which did it personally on the cross (Galatians Chs.3-4).
THIS,
¨ it is to live with the Eternal God, being born into His inextinguishable family (I John 3:9), and kept by the power of God made manifest in the creation of the universe, and in the predicted and accomplished sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus the Christ, through faith, “to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away" (I Peter 1:2-4);
¨ not to exist in the sleazy spiritual slums of mindless confusion, by the exercise of mentality which has no mind of its own, an invented god or a series of idols flung in the face of the God who lives, rules and acts for those who wait for Him (Isaiah 64:5).
(Cf. Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium, 1, 3, 5, 9 esp. *1, *2, Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming ... 5 (incl. end-note 1A), 6 , Stepping Out for Christ 10, 9, 5, Barbs, Arrows and Balms 30, Appendix 1, IV, A Spiritual Potpourri 12, Scoop of the Universe, 43, Repent or Perish 7, Joyful Jottings 5, 14.)
It is moreover to live where PREDESTINATION is ACTUAL, ATTESTED not in
theories which fail,
first logically and secondly empirically, as happens
with all the miserably defective, deficient
and inefficient philosophical
power-play of man, as shown repeatedly on this site, whether in Communism,
Islam, or other efforts to transcend nature with by-products of the human
mind, duly overlaid with
a mysticism the chief mystery of which is that it
does not WORK, verify itself, or manage logical validity
(cf. More
Marvels Ch. 4, Of the Earth, Earthy…
Ch. 2, TMR
Ch. 5, SMR Ch. 3).
We do not then have IMPLICIT predestination without cause or base, but EXPLICIT predestination, but in the biblical presentation, equipped with such a diligent love as to allow for liberty, without giving it the keys to eternity, but rather the scope in the love of God to make it meaningful, if not absolute, relevant, if not regnant, solicited, but not sovereign. Thence alone is responsibility and eternity matched, the empirical realities sated with a scope that represents and does not misrepresent them, and is the ultimate longing so often seen, when relatively undistorted, in the human heart given its goal and origin, its challenge and its purification.
EXCERPT B
From SPIRITUAL REFRESHINGS
CHAPTER 12
THE LOVE THAT
IS STILL, BUT NEVER STILLED,
REFRESHES IN ITS CONSTANCY
·
The love of
God is not stilled
even when the recalcitrant
pour its streams of pure water into the unreceptive desert.
·
That plant
may die;
yet life is still abundantly provided from the mercy
which is in the heart of God.
·
There is an
end to sin,
but not to the love of God;
there is judgment,
but despite and not because of the love of God.
To be sure, the love of God can be still:
"The LORD your God in your midst,
The Mighty One, will save.
He will rejoice over you with gladness,
He will quiet you with His love,
He will rejoice over you with singing"
- Zephaniah
3:17.
There is a quiet solemnity, a steady joy, a calming beatitude in His presence, an accepting assurance, a delicious joy.
Yet note the verse before this one:
"In that day, it will be said to Jerusalem:
Do not fear;
Zion, let not your hands
be weak..."
This love is no mere quiescence, nor it is frothy effervescence. It leads to action, even in its quietness, for there is much to do; but the action is one performed with an underlying awareness of the mighty arms, their irresistible power and their quietly sufficient protection for the performance of what is His desire; and that desire, it is good, for the Lord is full of goodness, mercy and lovingkindness.
The love of God, however, never runs out. It may have the still of a large and
beautiful rocky expanse in a quiet river; but it is not without intention. It
may be as filled with abundance of holiness and godliness as the sky is blue;
but it is not without impact. The night is coming when no man can work; the
time to work is now.
Yet there is an approach to the love of God, like that of a child who would pour the water from the far- off snows, out of the pipe of provision, into the dead heart of the desert. Wanton, it is often associated with reviling, as if God were reduced in wonder, because His provision is poured out in waste, not received through disbelief, cavil and criticism, as if we men were the judges and He the victim; but that, it is again, what they did to Jesus the Christ. HE has the love and mercy and power, the pardon and the protection, but Him they crucified. Now, in their false prophets, their false hearts and their false pretences, as in this new naturalism, really just rouged up a bit, that new spirituality, really just sadduceed a bit or rendered neo-Pharisaic, liberalised into religion parade, on the part of the renegade, or activated into riot or pretension - they now would do it again.
¨
The lordly licensees of legend, manipulators or mesmeric
victims of myth
( Ch.9 Spiritual Refreshings...),
¨ such as organic evolution,
¨ cultural containment, seeking first your own rights or 'national interests',
¨ they imbue the young with their fairy stories, the fairies having teeth.
Þ Some are lords of the press,
Þ whether in publication and publicity endlessly and sedulously propagandising, active as bees, not half so sweet, or
Þ in the academic culture classes which tend to coincide so often with University education, pressing on the press of students their evil wares;
Þ or indeed, in high school indoctrination classes, by authority preserved from logical discussion (That Magnificent Rock, Ch.8).
To be sure, it is good policy for a bad aim: for HOW ELSE ON EARTH could these nature myths stand, except by having no contest imposed by the educational powers that be, contemporary challengers to the Athenians of old: who want, on the evidence, ANY new thing so long as it is not ... the truth (That Magnificent Rock, Ch.1). It is not so to them: they know what they do not want, but CANNOT articulate logically WHY it is so, for they have the motive, yet DO NOT; but to their blinded eyes, even scientific method is in chains, and logic is by permission, only where the intoxicating medium of desire is first indulged. That is the spirit of this Age, though exceptions may be found.
The world is on wheels; it cannot be still. It is active, but not with His activity; it reels but to dance or squander, not to repent. Hence it grows salacious, vivacious with a spurious charm, ostentatious about is graces, deadly in its moods and modes of resentment and reaction: yet it will not return, for it cannot repent, for it is in the midst of innovations, new perfumes for its witcheries, new lovers for its adulteries of the spirit, religions by recipe, or irreligions by rote.
LESSONS FROM JEREMIAH - not merely for the head, but for the heart, the spirit, the mind of man
There is much to learn from Jeremiah in this; for ancient Israel is a pre-run, at trailer, for a whole world which now trails. Like Israel of old, IT, the GENTILE WORLD, has now had its enormous inundation with the Gospel, its marvellous exposure to the truth, and indeed the days are near of which Christ spoke when He said, "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come..." Matthew 24:14. It is coming, it looms near, its zoom seems to make it nearer yet, while the races yearn for death, make murder a pastime, truculent in rebellion, to the very tomb.
So it was with Israel. Consider this. Jeremiah - 16:5-12, where there is such a sentence of judgment as makes the ears tingle, the heart lurch, the mind saddened. "Behold I shall cause to cease from this place, before your eyes and in your days, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness..." and this is just the beginning (cf. Matthew 24:8 - These are the beginning of sorrows).
Now WHEN they ask WHY, why "has the Lord pronounced all this great disaster against us? Or what is our iniquity? or what is our sin that we have committed against the Lord our God?" Jeremiah is to reply like this: "Because your fathers have forsaken Me, says the Lord; “they have walked after other gods and have served them and worshipped them, and have forsaken Me and not kept My law. And you have done worse than your fathers, for behold, each one follows the dictates of his own evil heart, so that no one listens to Me. Therefore I will cast you out of the land..." and of course He did.
In the first instance, it was for 70 years (as in Jeremiah 25); and in the second one, it was for near to 2000 years. Each had a terminus, the first simple, and the second not given numerically, merely in its outline, essence and the events which would characterise it; until the end, when the Jews would return to Israel, recapture Jerusalem, and in Jerusalem be a 'burdensome stone' for those who would try to sling it away, as the UN did in 1947, before the Jews miraculously (literally, it was prophesied in Zechariah 12 and 14:1-2 cf. SMR ) instituted their nation again, immediately after "all the nations" made this assault.
It is hard to escape fulfilment of prophecy, since our generation is as full of it as Europe currently is full of influenza; and to some it is as unwelcome; but it is here, like morning, and the sun of its progress is not to be turned back. Yet our topic is rather the love of God in its refreshing qualities, and in particular its constant, its consistent availability, though not without the loveliness of love, which requires the readiness of heart to receive, and the resilience of spirit to accept, and the eyes to look and the mind to be open to it. To the Christian, this is one of the many refreshings, that of the unsearchable, the illimitable, the inexhaustible fountains of the love of God, which is as nearly associated with life, as the right hand with the left. Like dew upon the mown grass, it sparkles, and is for reflection, gives colours to the infusion of light...
First note that in Jeremiah 16:14ff., we read that the Lord, so far from being exhausted in His treatment of the NATION of Israel, has in store after their correction, their discipline, "I will send for many fishermen, says the Lord, and they shall fish them: and afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt hem from every mountain and every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks" - and all this, in relief from the judgments on them, would be so monumental that "it shall no more be said, 'The Lord lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of Egypt, but 'The Lord lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north and from all the lands where He had driven. For I will bring them back..."
Indeed, looking ahead yet further, Jeremiah notes that the GENTILES, those who DID NOT have the privileges of the show-case nation (Isaiah 43:21).
"The Gentiles
shall come to You
From the ends of the earth and say,
'Surely our fathers have inherited lies,
Worthlessness and unprofitable things.'
Will a man make gods for himself,
Which are not gods?
Therefore behold, I will this once cause them to know,
I will cause them to know
My hand and My might,
And they shall know that My name is the LORD.”
It proceeds in
Jeremiah 17:1:
"The sin of Judah is written
with a pen of iron,
With the point of a diamond, it is engraved,
On the tablet of their heart..." "Cursed is the man
who trust in man
And makes the flesh his strength,
Whose heart departs from the
Lord..."
But there is yet that same unstoppable resurgence of the love of the living God.
"Blessed is the
man who trusts in the Lord,
And whose hope is the Lord,
For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters,
Which spreads out its roots by the river,
And will not fear when heat comes,
But its leaf will be green,
And will not be anxious in the year of drought,
Nor will cease from yielding fruit..."
- Jeremiah 17:7-8.
And this ? It is so, One finds it so, just as it is written; the fruit is as sure as the drought; the blessing as the cursing, the readiness to bless, as, after all patience, the judgment. The roads divide; but the love of God, it continues.
Then Jeremiah visits the potter's place, notes the ruin which can come to a particular piece of pottery, which nevertheless, can then be remodelled, remoulded into something else . Thus EVEN WHEN JUDGMENT is near, and its specificities are stated, if the cause is removed the Lord is able deftly to change the scenario, and produce peace.
True, there is a point of non-return as Jeremiah 15 so dramatically shows, when there is no hope in ANY prayers from ANY one; but this is not a loss of temper, but a pronouncement of condition, as in I Timothy 4:2, where conscience may be seared as with a hot iron; and such a condition is predicted by Paul in fact to arise, as irremediable in the mass, as was the sin of Israel, which had hundreds of years to repent, just as the Gentile scenario has involved THOUSANDS, a fitting thought if you like, for the new MILLENIUM! Since so much is said of it, let us at least say THIS!
Indeed, II Timothy 4:1-3 tells of the parallel development of this, our own Gentile world, which sounds just like a play, seen at concert level, where we saw earlier the actors at rehearsal; and that rehearsal, it was Israel! We are warned! "For the time will come when they will not educe sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away form the truth, and be turned aside to fables..." - and this is happening now, and earlier books on this site have detailed it in Victoria, in the US, in South Australia and in England, in Canada, in Switzerland, in Germany, in terms of speakers and leaders of 'thought' in religion.
Fables of thought, contrary to logic,
to observation, to the laws of science are indeed produced, and paraded
as predicted in the most imaginative deadness ever to afflict the
deserts of philosophy
(cf. That Magnificent Rock Chs.
1, 8, Lead
Us Not into Educational Temptation!, Repent or Perish
Ch.7, A Spiritual Potpourri Chs.
1-9, Wake up World! Your Creator
is Coming..., SMR pp. 857ff.,
699ff.).
NOW IN THE MIDST of Israel's mess of old, when judgment was sitting on its very gates, the Lord in His LOVE was as insistent and persistent as ever and almost incredibly, gave them YET ONE MORE OPPORTUNITY for relief, yes and even for deliverance (as in principle already shown in the earlier verses of Jeremiah 18). "Now therefore," He says, "speak to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem saying, Thus says the Lord: 'Behold I am fashioning a disaster and devising a plan against you. Return now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good."
But what was the reaction to this sudden, impelling expression of love, of kindness ? In what way did they deliberately and with due relief turn to this amazing opportunity ? The response ? Like this: "And they said, 'That is hopeless! So we will walk according to our own plans, and we will every one obey the dictates of his evil heart." They even seemed to achieve a quiet mockery of the prophet, a sort of sinuous and sibilant sardonism, in the response. Alas for them, they would not, because they could not, mock much longer; though a remnant was spared, and spent the 70 years as learners in another nation, before they came back to rebuild, with the former glory of Israel like a dream that caused quivers in the throat ... (Ezra 3:11-13: from Ezra and Nehemiah, trace the amazing thrust of it, and see Zechariah accompany his prophecies on these things, with those for our own day - see the on Action Site).
APPLYING THE LESSONS TO THE CONTEMPORARY QUAGMIRE
People may indeed POUR OUT THE LOVE OF GOD into the receptive desert of irony, sardonism, mockery, cynicism and scepticism (see SMR for some more detail on this, its cause and cure). This however does not stop it. It goes where it is going, and one pipe burst or worse, turned to waste in the desert of vanity like that, is no limit to the amount freely available in the others.
On such a life and liveliness, a vitality and a passion as this, in the inexhaustible love of God, listen to Isaiah 55:
"Ho! Everyone who
thirsts,
Come to the waters;
And you who have no money,
Come, buy and eat.
Yes come, buy wine and mile
Without money and without price.
Why do you spend money for what is not bread,
And you wages for what do not satisfy?
Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good,
And let your soul delight itself in abundance.
Incline your ear, and come to
Me.
"Hear, and your
soul shall live.
AN I will make an everlasting covenant with you -
The sure mercies of David.
Indeed I have given Him as a witness to the people,
A leader and commander for the
people...
"Seek the Lord,
while He may be found,
Call upon Him while He is near.
Let the wicked forsake his way,
And the unrighteous man his thought:
Let him return to the Lord,
And He will have mercy on him;
And to our God,
For He will abundantly pardon."
So He says, and so He does; for He ALWAYS does what He says.
In Jeremiah 31:31ff. we come to the same mercy in the flood tide of divine love, poured out to the Gentiles and Jews alike in the everlasting covenant of which Isaiah here speaks.
It has come to our own Age. Our own Age has gone as the Jews went. We have had our revivals, our outpourings, the Gospel, and many say, There is no hope, it is hopeless, and we will walk every one after the dictates of his own heart, just as was the divinely recorded response of Israel. They lost their land in two stages; the next stage in the overall scenario is the loss of this world, in two stages, first in the return and rule of Christ, accompanied by the saints whom he has first abstracted (I Thessalonians 3:13, II Thess. 1:10, Zechariah 14:5, Matthew 24:29ff., I Thessalonians 4, Revelation 19); and then in the dismissal of the spatial framework altogether, for a new heavens and a new earth are to come, and eternity itself will be the everlasting platform for the everlasting life with its everlasting clothing of individuality and beauty, which is to come (II Peter 3). For the love of God is not short-circuited, and we have had ample warning and exhibition of things in Israel.
They, Israel, were for a wonder; and the whole world is to be for a wonder. That was the beginning; this is the end. When HE comes for His own, THAT is the end of their pilgrimage, whether they be Jew or Gentile; and the beginning of their entry into the direct view of the Lord their God (I Cor. 13, Revelation 19:8, 14:13).
But to the love of God there is no end; and in His predestination there is the absolute assurance that there is ... no mistake (Ephesians 1:4); just as the very intensity and breadth of scope of His love is the invitation which makes all excuse superfluous (Romans 8:29ff., I Timothy 2:1ff., Colossians 1:19ff.). GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD and accordingly, as I John 2:2 tells us, in language both clear and emphatic, "AND He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world" - (emphasis added). True and of course, this universal offering is ON BEHALF OF - and not IN THE PLACE OF all! That is crucial.
The offering is sincere, genuine and indispensable in the integrity of God; the provision is apt, ample and adequate in the mercy of God... for ALL! THAT is what is being said. ALL do not receive it; the liberality of the cheque would be operative, as far as willingness is concerned: this is the clear teaching of John and Paul in Colossians 1. However IT IS NOT OPERATIVE, since it is not cashed; and therefore nothing changes hands for those who reject the offer, and no account is touched at all: "If you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins" (John 8:24). On ACCOUNT, however, of the love of God, such a thing was available, even if it was despised:
· "We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed"! (from Jeremiah 51:8-9)...
· "It pleased the Father that IN HIM SHOULD ALL FULNESS DWELL, AND HAVING MADE PEACE THROUGH THE BLOOD OF THE CROSS TO RECONCILE ALL THINGS TO HIMSELF, BY HIM, I SAY, WHETHER THEY BE THINGS IN EARTH OR THINGS IN HEAVEN" (Colossians 1:19ff.).
Like Ezekiel 33:11, but here in vaster scope and grander amplitude, we see
· repeated,
· relished,
· the rampant reality of the love of God: but it is
· not rampant in the texture of grace,
· merely in the flow of its fulness.
The territory for the love is
"the world",
"all things, in earth and in heaven".
It is so in terms of the blood of the
Cross, and that blood is presented as an integral part of the plan of
salvation which is what God offered in offering His Son, whom He sent in so
much LOVE, and so says explicitly in John 3:16, I John 4:9-14 (both places,
explicitly)!Nothing but contradiction is
available for the escapist from the reality of the amplitude of the love of
God. Nothing but distortion can result from his endeavours.
· The nature of the claim concerning the amplitude of the love of God relevant to the grandeur of salvation, is -
· INSISTENT, the tone is
· EMPHATIC, the CORRELATION is in
· PARALLEL with "ALL THE FULNESS" of God in the Son,
· which of course includes all His specificities of nature,
· eternity (Micah 5:1-3), majesty and power...
· yes and merciful love!
· In fact, we recall the doctrine of God, that "GOD IS LOVE"! (I John 4:7). He does not lack what He is, and makes this eloquently and repeatedly clear, without bluster or fluster, but with deadly solemnity and glorious grace. It cost Him much to exercise what He is, in this. To crimp His liberality is no just work to any! To receive of it, is the refinement of delight, the cynosure of joy and the glory of consummation. To speak of it truly, is the opportunity of the delivered and the relish of reality!
It is THIS which to all things in earth and in heaven is the stated and declared attitude and scope of the love of God; it is NOT this however which is the reception of all things, for many are they who trample underfoot the grace of God (cf. Hebrews 10:29, John 3:18-19,36, where you see the outcome of negativity in different dimensions). And for this, the fault is human, the restriction being divinely registered and known, foreknown and foretold; but it is humanly that this abortion is ... achieved.
This is the infallible testimony of the word of God. As Spurgeon rightly observed (On Jacob and Esau, in Romans 9, Treasury of the New Testament, Vol. III), it is ENTIRELY of grace that we who know Him are saved, but NO restrictive reflection on HIS GRACE or love that any are not: that, again rightly, he observes, would be a hideous caricature of the love of God.
Indeed, the ultimate reason for this being so, that Spurgeon states, is not some mere irreversibility of the grace is all code, but the fact that God actually SAYS concerning His love and grace, what would render such a restriction on his love as some propose, an otiose, nay, an intrusive, indeed a rebutting rambling into His word.
¨ Unintentional ? One would hope always that; but alas, not the more apt for that!
¨ The paunch of philosophy is no replacement for the peace of God, the purity of His word and the prodigious character of His love. The restraint of God is no restriction on His power, but its channel, an exhibition of His wonder.
¨ While thus, the chasteness of His love and the beauty of His holiness are fulfilled; the inextinguishable reality of His love persists to the performance He has desired. Accordingly, all His own, not for anything they did, but in His own foreknowledge as He states - a loving foreknowledge, since God IS love and this is His vernal disposition, even the thrust of His own willingness, as Colossians 1, with Ephesians 1:4, Hebrews 13:8, Malachi 3:6, emphatically indicate: these become His without anything able to prevent their extradition from the pollutions of this world. (Cf. Predestination and Freewill, Section III).
He has His will. His love has its way. It does not delve in vain. It does not force; it does abhor what is destructive of truth and mercy; but it does not abort, nor does it not eliminate itself, to leave a cold universe, or what it loves, to make a mess not a man, or to produce some kind of pulped mass of machined residue. God made man in His image; He loves; He is tender, not to be trifled with, but does not merely love, as if this were some mere emotion: He seeks those lost from their design, frantic with freedom, fouled with lies, deluded with deceit, but for all that, the sundering from their various pathologies is not operation by command, where it does not belong. Love is love, not invasion.
It is however COMMAND (II Corinthians 4:4), when the point comes to IMPLEMENT that foreknown reality in His sovereign sway; and nothing less COULD bring man back to the truth!
How often has the implementation of the result of His loving foreknowledge been confused with the very process, or if you will, the perception in the first place, in which HE WOULD HAVE ALL TO BE SAVED and to come to a knowledge of the truth (Colossians 1). What short-circuiting have been wrought by that siren of philosophy, that harpy which wings her confusing way into the ship of predestination!
Let the Christian then, and therefore, rejoice in the persistent, insistent, illimitable, inexhaustible love of God, and be refreshed in its vital presence, past all competition (Romans 8:33ff., Col. 1:19ff.); and let the non-Christian heed Isaiah 55, and come, and note the response of the Jews of Jeremiah's day, "It is hopeless" and avoid it.
Hope? That is as nothing compared with the reality: Taste and SEE that the LORD is GOOD! (Psalm 34:8).
.