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CHAPTER ONE

ABOUT OUTAGES AND INSIGHTS

When the power is gone, many are the encumbrances, complexities or perplexities. When will it come on again ? When one considers the relative delicacy of its input, the capacity for vast areas to be blacked out as enormous voltages surge and resurges, before even considering terrorist action (that is, the obliterative side of maddened man), it is not surprising that many are tense, nervous, distressed. For this is merely an example of modern life, if it can be called that, which culls righteousness like an enemy, gloats in sexual disorder, where churches so-called leave iniquity without comment, for the sake of avoiding division, and present death-penalty material, as in the Old Testament, in the face of pastors, male or female for that matter.

Outages are of more than electricity and its derivative power. They are of morals, of codes of conduct, or kindness, of order and self-discipline, of seemliness, of realism in the flightiness of moral prescribers, who without having made their own bodies or minds, yet would make the way to treat them. Volatile passions inflame, as poor shoes might exacerbate tired and wearied feet, or noise the distracted mind. The right, the left, the centre-left, the independence movement here or there, the slaughter to show how important it is, the explosions as if life were the device of dilettantes and nothing mattered so much as force being substituted for reason, murder for truth,  misunderstanding for understanding,  while mischief, fear, uncertainty, tension and assault loom moodily for trifles.

The assaults themselves, however, these are no trifles.

Meanwhile, there continue those awesome inputs of divine patience and power which sustain the minds which chomp on the texture of their own wills, and trample on their own rationality, and for the time, now two millenia almost exactly (Christ was born about B.C. 4 by all accounts cf. SMR pp. 943ff.), does the God of truth restrain judgment from the obliteration of this earth in its entirety.

It is a good time to reflect, then, now that some 2000 years have passed since the arrival of deity in human format. It is more than unfortunate that man has surged in Europe, in Britain, in the USA in particular with both sound presentation and more recently horrendous perversion of the truth concerning Him; but that is what He predicted (Matthew 24:24), and that is the way it has duly come to be.

Now that much of Islam, devoid of reason, without evidence, sheering off sections of the New and Old Testament without authority, without historical basis, without eyewitness account, without ground or government of ideas, is surging into violent self-affirmation, using money from oil gained from creative countries who had it, there is an augmentation of the evils (cf. More Marvels Ch. 4, Divine Agenda Ch. 6).

This has been asked for: just as man has now turned with increasing resolution to slight rather than sight the Gospel which in its splendour saw enormous effects in the three regional areas noted above, for long centuries. Many talk of it, but comparatively few follow it, just as Christ said (Matthew 7:15). Indeed, man has by a profusion of anomalous confusion has so denuded it of its power, just as his lusts have tamed the truth into a subverted anomaly, and the disabling passions of misled sects have done more of the same, while culture has loved more of its own feckless name than of Christ's in vaulting bodies once churches, but so no more (cf. Revelation 2), that confusion is common^*1.

The contemporary crisis coding resembles the case characterised in Isaiah 59, where "justice is turned back, and righteousness stand afar off, for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot ever. So truth fails, and he who departs from evil  makes himself a prey" - 59:14-15.

So after 2000 years, to a good approximation, not in 2001A.D. rather than 2000, did the second millenium since Christ come to pass. But for our purposes, we must ask: the second millenium FROM PRECISELY WHAT!  It is from the incarnation of the everlasting God in the person of His Word, Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son to provide passage for man from obloquy and obfuscation to light and truth, unburdened by guilt and covered by blood, the vicarious atonement of Jesus Christ for as many as received Him, as He is, and what He did, as the Bible presents this from God's own Spirit (cf. John 14:26, I Corinthians 2:9ff.)

A millenium or two  is indeed a significant period, but it was, then,  not in fact at the turn of the millenium, nominally or actually, but rather before either of those years that the second millenium since the birth of Jesus the Christ completed itself. That was the termination of the second millenium of direly spiritual significance.

Why ? This is so, if we take B.C. 4 as normally done, as Christ's birth-date (cf. SMR pp. 943ff.). Thus it could well be argued that on the analogy of 2000 the nominal and 2001 the actual completion of 2 millenia, on a schema starting without any 0 B.C., hence one covering the first year at the END of A.D. 1, we should move to 1996 for the 2000 year passage of time since the birth of Christ was completed. This is so. We have then been moving from the end of THAT second millenium for some few years.

The cup is full.

In fact, there was NO prediction concerning two millenia; but there were strong predictions concerning the actual, separated depicted signals WHENEVER they came, and that is now, for the next episode concerning Jesus Christ.

And that ? It is His return to rescue those who have fled for refuge to Him (as in Hebrews 6:18) and in due course to judge. It is naturally of profound interest if Abraham be placed, as appears, around 2000 B.C., that then we have around a parity for times, the one that of the Israel of the Old Testament, from the spiritual promise to the patriarch till the performance in Christ (as in Genesis 12:3), and the other,  that of the Gentile period (as in Romans 11, where they are placed side by side) when the testimony of Christ became their responsibility. Actually, and further, the great transition occurred at Christ's death as it appears in A.D. 30, and while that was as prophesied (cf. Highway of Holiness Ch. 4), the time of termination whether from that or His birth is not prophetically significant. Nothing was declared on that point.

THIS timing, then,  of around 2000 years for the Jewish era in direct divine commission, and that of the Gentile, for theirs, be it construed this way or that,  is not a predicted one, though it is of a startling interest in view of the parallel in Romans 11. What however WAS predicted is the timing of the return of Israel, in its land promise (as in Genesis 17:7ff., Ezekiel 36 cf. SMR Appendix A), as part of the signals of the return of Christ (as in SMR Ch. 8).

It so happens then, that

	1) this RETURN of the nation of Israel to nationhood in its land on the one hand, and
	2)  this completion of a parallel period for Jew and Gentile assignment with the saving action of God through His written word, first prophesied and then accomplished, are both now facts, contemporary realities.

But how, one may ask,  is the time completed for the specific assignment of the Gospel to the  Gentiles as a specialty ?

It is so for the Gentiles in terms of its crucial commencement and its defined ending. The commencement ? The torch of divine revealed truth passed from Israel THE NATION, to the other nations, those who receive it, on the death of Christ. Thus on this decisive rejection from Israel the nation, their period started. Then a terminating event occurred around 2 millenia later. .

What was that, on what criterion is it deemed to have ended ?

It is defined by the restoration of Jerusalem to Israel. It happened as foretold in two stages, one as in Zechariah 14:1ff., in the capture of half of that city by Israel, and the other in its entire take-over, as in Zechariah 12:6, Luke 21:24. That fulfilled ‘the times of the Gentiles’.

What then is for us to see ? It is this. While the restoration of Israel has come by fulfilment of prophecy, and in the face of enormous opposition, the completion of the Gentile era for specialised transmission is shown by the restoration of Jerusalem to Israel (Luke 21:24). Thus one geographic event both fulfils prophecy concerning Israel, and a period concerning Gentile specialisation as covenant conveyors!^*2 It is an interesting period indeed; and we are in it.

Unless therefore you judge that Israel occupation of Jerusalem is NOT the case, somehow is not there, is a mirage or something of this sort, then by the word of Jesus Christ, the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. A new silence  if you will, has arrived. It comes like the hush before the storm. Israel WILL NOT go. Christ WILL come. The certainty that His arrival will be unexpected (Matthew 24) works in the midst of the quiet. There has yet to be an enormous awakening IN Israel (Zechariah 12:10-13:1), but the periods are complete in their specialist tasks.

If however, the time is hushed in preparation, in this, that it is a period awaiting an appalling end to complacency and self-esteem, a phase of history facing truth without compromise or mercy without strings, in Christ, yet the work of man is almost manic as he seeks to avoid the fearful day, striving to do this and that, deliberately outside the mercy offered. So does he sedulously act to cause the chaotic increments by his own ever increasing guilt. While angels might therefore look on with quiet eyes, as at a funeral, this self-same period of awaiting Christ's return, both for His own (Matthew 24) and in judgment (as in Revelation 1) has imparted to it by man, a hustle and a bustle. Indeed, it is all but frenetic. It moves in its own will.

Thus as the engines of preparation for Christ's return are humming, droning and in some cases, roaring, at the will of man, the period is a quietly solemn one. It comes like the hush before the storm to the wakeful, and in the silence as of a funeral, to the watchful heart, lamenting for man, as Jeremiah did for Israel in his own day (Jeremiah 9). .

The new millenium, then,  has seen BOTH these spiritually significant events well established. It has seen the new time of completion pausing while the end of the Age trembles like a rabbit fixed by the eye of a snake. However, in this case, while the hearts of many are indeed failing for fear as Christ foretold of this devastating period (cf. Luke 21), there is driving it, a non-divine dynamic, indeed a devilish parade and pomp, a panache with pre-occupation with itself, which is mounting to prepare for the devastation of arrogant pride on the part of man.

As to this, it is scheduled for a day man is forbidden to know, except in this, that the signals are unique, are present, and betoken that it is near (Luke 21:28). Such is the teaching in Luke 21.

Let us now consider the period, without regard for the theme of which race did what, for the activity of mankind as one whole, and look and see.

In 2000 years, then, since the Messiah arrived, a period now quite complete, what has the race accomplished ? It has certainly not taken the prize! Truth is as plain as ever, as the sun in the heavens, and it is necessary to expose the frauds from its light, the extraordinary outages which increasingly become the rule and not the sudden failure, for many millions live in the illusions of the grandiosities of man, his self-help, 'nature' doing a job though it has no power for the purpose, race doing a stunt, ah no! not that, then what ? why MAN! Not that ? no, 'humanity' ? no, too much 'man', then hukind ? a word to coin ? and why not!

At all events, this race has the pace and seeks the place that is not available, and in all such frustrations, there is only one end, and provided it is not earlier obliteration, it is sure to be sticky. Non-truth and indeed fiction as rule and government, as principle and passion in life leads to precisely such innominate violence, such diseased folly as that of al Qaeda, and not to glamorise this ajutment of folly, numerous such Islamic terror groups, intent on capturing their world as the forefathers of many seemed to be, together with others, equipped with their own axes to brandish.

The world is coming to look like a patient near to having a stroke. It zooms intrepidly and futilely in to space, and looks at Saturn, ever seeking for what is never found (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri 1-3). It alternatively is as if it tears out its hair in frustration, and drugs itself with barren anticipation, but finds the one thing it wants least, no evidence, evidence, evidence of what 'nature' did to make itself before it was there to do it, or invoking magic and losing science, what it did after magic put it there, to make of itself something more, more, more. It is rather like a little son trying and trying to work out from the contents of the garage how daddy managed to build his new car. The procedure is unprofitable.

Negative thinking and negative blinking continue, while the vain aspiration manage one thing:  all repetition, but it is NEVER reason, never ground, never actual means, always the dream. It is as in the days of Jeremiah, when God mocks their inventive confusion and their mashed thoughts (23:28ff.):

" 'The prophet who has a dream, let him tell a dream

And he who has My word, let him speak My word faithfully.

What is the chaff to the wheat,' says the LORD.

'Is not My word like a fire ?' says the LORD, 'and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces. Therefore behold, I am against the prophets, says the LORD, who steal My words every one from his neighbour.' "

As to this last aspect in the text above, you see this deleterious practice of 'stealing' His words from neighbours, as Muhammad did, when he grabbed bits of Christian and Jewish materials, and incorporated them, inaccurate and unoriginal, in his own work, the book called the Koran. That he then asked people to believe that the Jewish prophets had been from God, but that he was later and the criterion, when in fact his doctrine wholly contradicted the very essence and meaning of all the Old Testament plan of salvation, is one of the wonders of the world (cf. SMR pp.  1080ff.).

It could with reason have become the eighth, had not wonders departed, like Babylon with its hanging gardens, just as God said it would, to become a devastated relic, long abandoned in the desert, the hanging gardens a colourless rubble, its desolation an endless testimony to multiple religious fervour and the effrontery to the Creator which it constitutes! (cf. The Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet Ch. 4). Small wonder God make it an issue and condemned it to the results it has long shown the world (Isaiah 13-14, Jeremiah 50-51).

So do philosophers provide ideas for the cultural ferment, and pseudo-scientists produce their humanist writs, with less than nil content in truth or fact, like Darwin in his long past day, though many instead of mourning the madness of his fantasies, lament with hope, as if the dead could rise without God. Not so. (Cf. News 94). His presentation has been an abortion of scientific method, and a testimony to the outrageous outages of humanism. All hopes of restoration of 'nature' to its throne lie dashed (cf. Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 6), while simple reality is thrust aside intemperately (cf. Ch. 16 op. cit.).

So it was for Jeremiah in principle, as it is now. Truth lies fallen; but not fallen in fact, merely in the tablets of the crassly misprinted minds of those whose idols proliferate like those of Babylon of old, and who in their ways seek the obscurity of darkness, yet wonder at the absence of light.

The awesome inputs of God remain, to define and predict, to incline and to offer, and it is the most pleasant thing in this world and has been for millenia, that despite all this, the desire of the Lord is NOT to condemn (John 3:15-17). Analysis is to help avoid it; to help those who will come, to come, to make the path more obvious, and the necessity to follow it far clearer for some. The Gospel of divine grace, lovingkindness, life from the dead, life input in incarnation on the part of God Himself, no absentee landlord but coming to live in the very premises so that they might be saved, or rather their occupants, this continues its awesome actuality.

The courage of Christ in so undertaking such a mission is the Tower of Wonder; for the world not merely sought His demise, but delighted in the way of it. Yet for all that, His passion overcame and He performed what was needed, as vicarious sacrifice, judicial victim, a portrait forever inscribed in history, of the look of sin, which so deformed His features that they were scarcely recognisable as human. Nor for that matter, are those who reject the divine offer, and continue in their desertion from deity.

As to this Gospel, it never changes, for God never changes; and all the derangements of earth are merely arrangements of judgment, often self-invoked by man, sometimes imposed in divine comment, as time races to its home, the return of the Redeemer, Jesus Christ, like a horse headed for home, and stopping nowhere on the way!

It is time for insight from the word of God, whose oversight continues unchanged, while the children of men clap hands, not for Daddy to come home, but for their sheer exultation in themselves, except when they lament darkly, and stressed, visit psychiatrists, yes by the million, in order to reduce the tension and that, very often, as an option instead of removing its cause.

NOTES

*1

See News 121, 122, 51, 100, 82, Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch. 3.

*2