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CHAPTER  7

You can Change Government

but Not God!

The main substance of the reply to a letter received is presented below. It is the issues, occasionally slightly extended to meet the nature of this volume, are kept in view for their intrinsic importance, because it may be of help to others in a more general way.

Dear Correspondent,

First of all let me thank you for at least trying to be honest and not to slide into meaningless meanders and assertions.

You have tried.

However more is needed, yet it is good to see the good elements in the beginning.

The second point is this. It made me smile to hear you speak of some religious body's main doctrine being money, for this does appear at times to be true of some. Demas, you may recall, left Paul,

"having loved this present world" (II Timothy 4:9).

The love of money is not confined to non-religious people, and Jesus (read Matthew 23, I strongly suggest) devastatingly criticised some hypocrites who made long prayers to 'devour' widows' houses (gain control of them).

Hypocrites have a long history, markedly symbolised by JUDAS ISCARIOT, a most religious man, who for years was to be found near the Lord, in meetings but not in spirit. He was in fact 'a devil' (John 6:70). Yes, while we are speaking of the Bible, as you very much do, let us keep to it and see what it actually says. Later we can if you wish, look more to why you should believe it.

The next point is this. You obviously have some trouble with 'spirits' which can say anything, and are not a good thing to listen to, since the devil can use them, as I see you realise, readily. IF you do listen to some spirit, real or imaginary, and are not based in God, ANYTHING can happen and you can become like the chaff with the wind behind you (Psalm 1). This is not desirable. We are to TEST the spirits, and to some extent it seems you try to do this. As to God, He can neither be truncated like a cone, nor expanded like a chest. He is Himself, and known by His words and His ways, clear to the mind that is open, the reason that pursues and does not hesitate for anything. (Cf. The Shadow of a Mighty Rock.)

NOT FLOATING THOUGHTS BUT FACTUAL REALITY

What is needed is not floating thoughts (let alone 'thought clusters' confused with the Spirit of God, for which reason I have no interest in the site noted); but I do have interest in speaking with you while you are willing to reason! It is a rock of certainty, a place of truth and trust, a basis for living that is reliable with reason to believe it so, which covers the questions and answers the problems. There is one; but not more than one. So what ? Is this not the case with even a mathematics problem. Do you want, then, 2 plus 2 to equal at least 5 different things ? Is the truth to be a drifter, wandering about never knowing what it is ? Forget it. Death is better.

Well then you were offended, possibly rightly, by a money emphasis in a church which wanted it that way. Some do. They appal me. We have sold land which would now be worth millions I suppose, to continue our work for Christ. So be it; we have enough to do our work, we do not starve, we are surrounded with blessedness and peace, joy is our food and labour is our part. Incidentally, it is not wrong to be prudent and to seek to avoid trouble for others by managing your affairs wisely; but it is wrong to be anxious about it IF you are a Christian.

As to your 1000 starving babies, and the imaginary arrival of these at the church door, where you feel they would be fed, though not when they are far off, let us think. If the Good Samaritan meets the victim of thugs, is he going to be good-hearted enough to deal with what is within his sight, power and way, or not ? If your son is in hospital, will you visit him as a PERSONAL and DECISIVE duty, since he is yours ? I think so. Will you visit billions in hospital ? I think not, unless God has called you to this. There are duties, we are limited, and we have limited resources of intelligence, initiative, imagination and body, many responsibilities, so that we act as we are led, enabled and find occasion.

Is this in some way strange ? You know, I think you are tending to create abstract problems without enough practicality! In any case, many go as missionaries, and I for one have gone to a number of countries in the service of Christ WHATEVER the cost in any sort of terms, as a simple matter of devotion to the Lord. If I had two lives, I would give Him both, since He is worthy, having loved beyond all.

Who else in perfect bliss and purity, infinite power, has seen fit to take the limited format of man, to suffer from rogues KNOWINGLY and by INTENTION, so that when murdered slowly, His pure and perfect soul might suffer the pangs of a guilt that was not His, so that justice being done, the beauty of mercy might flourish (Galatians 3, Philippians 2, Romans 3:23ff.). Not to all, to be sure, is this work of grace done; for there are many who would faithfully protest that it would be hell to them to be in heaven, since they love themselves more than any God. Yet it is offered to all, sufficient for all, suitable for all.

Do we need then to act as judges before the time, when God says not to do so ? (I Corinthians 4:1-5, Matthew 7:7). Suppose we leave that to God and get on with blameless living in the love that sent Christ, sent His salvation, and urges us to make peace with God (Isaiah 55:5ff.). If someone will not do so, the world then simply contains one more who is at war with Him; for He COMMANDS repentance, and has COME to make it meaningful in free pardon (Isaiah 52:7ff.), with DYNAMIC in dealing to His children, new hearts and a new spirit. It is useless to TALK of music, when you do not listen to it.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE ?

Nay rather, what the Lord has done!

Have I ever healed anyone ? You ask me a personal question. It seems fitting to answer this one. Now notice that the GIFT of healing is for SOME Christians only. That is particularly clear if anyone actually READS the Bible. It is to be seen in I Corinthians 12:14 and 12:28ff.. I do not have this gift. I am 'flat out' with if you like, the 'gift of prophecy' or whatever you may want to call it. I have not written some 82 books by sitting still, and it is a most exacting task to seek for children of God, to win sinners and to help many by this means. It has been laid upon me, and so I do what I can as I can, but God helps me so much that it is almost like having a teacher beside me. That of course is PRECISELY what the word translated 'helper' in John, means in the  Greek. One called alongside to help.

But have I healed anyone ? Well I suppose I could be called someone ? Yes, God has enabled me to find healing in some unusual and in one case, both fascinating and fantastic seeming ways; but they were in the process of serving HIM, not just for my pleasure.

On one occasion, I had to rescue a brother (when I was quite a young Christian, about half a century ago) after a nearly fatal road collision which he suffered. He was in a country town in hospital, and I was coming down with a bad cold. I had to pray hard to be willing, but went. What was the use of helping him if I gave the cold to him! But when after hours of driving in the cold, I arrived and took a bed somewhere, I began to get influenza with all its horrible symptoms. I then knelt down and asked the Lord, putting it to Him as we are supposed to do ('pour out your heart before Him at all times - Psalm 62:8).

It is this Psalm, incidentally, which tells us that

"In God is my salvation and my glory,

the rock of my strength and my refuge from God."

This has been my experience in all sorts of persecutions, which those who love Him MUST suffer (II Timothy 3:12). It is what I have found true, dynamically, financially, professionally and in good times and difficult ones, when loved and when hated.

Let  me clarify that: it says all who would LIVE in a GODLY fashion MUST suffer persecution. If you love Him, however, substantially and in spirit, this is what you will do (John 14:21-23) and how you will fare. The world does not love Christ and thus there is bound to be conflict. So be it: you take up your cross and follow Him. Even a doctor could get (as one of my own surgeon friends did) a sore back in performing operations.

Suffering ? if it is in a good cause, not for thought but for fact, coming from  God, does it really so much matter ? What matters is getting the job done, and doing it well,  in love, with His joy and peace as you function as intended for your heavenly, your divine friend. You abide in Him and let His words abide in you - what else would you do if you loved Him, and what else would you do if He saved you from sin, set you in His presence and by His blood atonement, settled your accounts before God, giving you eternal life! Therefore He hears you when you do this, since He IS love; He does not vary, quaver or quiver. He is my ROCK (Psalm 62:1ff.). What is needed, He secures. The seas do not overflow me, settled on His truth, in His place, with Him.

What is the earthly good or heavenly point in avoiding suffering. It is DOING what it takes to live for God that matters. It is not so difficult, for GOD is LOVE. To be sure, the opposite is NOT true, that love is God. That would be meaningless. What kind of love, of what!

But God is WHO HE IS, and His major motivation is love, since it is only sin which He hates, evil and folly. SINCE He IS love, how much is He to be loved! That is, has no hostility without cause, and what hostility He has is to the destructive forces which would void and mar life; He came to give life, that it might be obtained more abundantly (John 10). Since further, He is patient, so that He does not write people off at once, but SEEKS them; and since thirdly, He even went to the humiliating trouble of coming to this earth to exhibit perfection and purity, to show what He is, and to die for the sins of those who leave them with Him, it could not be better. How well should He be loved!

There is no one else like that;  and He has power, reliability, faithfulness, continuity and understanding, lacks nothing, and loves to give, first of all mercy, then strength (cf. Micah 7:18-19 - a great portion to study!). This makes it all utter perfection.

Now to return, in terms of power, to the healing. I do not have a lot on this topic, as noted; for I do not have the gift of healing. As you so rightly note, however, the prayer of a righteous man can avail much (James 5:16). THIS righteousness is explicitly and marvellously a gift of God by grace to His children (Romans 5:17). How blessed to know that you are heard!

You do not, indeed,  have to have this or that gift to have a real need met by the God of all comfort (II Corinthians 1:3).

What then was the outcome of the trip to deliver my own brother ? It was this.

As the influenza made me shiver in that awful fashion you probably know, I knelt and put it to God that it would be little use to come to rescue my brother when I would give him a disease. Indeed, could I drive ?

The shivering stopped if I recall, right then; but certainly, when I awakened the next morning, there was no disease evident at all. I took him back to Melbourne, and preached on the next Sunday, so meeting my duties, and then, on the Monday, the disease struck me like a victim, with vigour! The point is that the necessary power got the necessary health to get the necessary job done. The Lord dealt very tenderly with me, and led me, teaching me to follow.

This case is less dramatic than the next one. This was not long ago. I am, as you may notice, much engaged in writing books (this is NOT, for example for MAKING money, but means spending of the same: it is done, hear that word again, for love, since God is love). This means that I use my eyes a lot, and as I am not at all young, this is quite a burden. I thank the Lord that these have met the need, and the 81 volumes have poured out with no real distress there.

However that is the RESULT of the Lord's action, not just my strength. One day, on a cliff-top, near my son's new car (relatively - new to me), with a strong wind, and waves not far off, I somehow wandered off course a little and the aerial he had in that car went up into the space between my eyelid and my eyeball. It was a shock, but nothing terrible seemed to happen at once.

After some time, some weeks I think, I noticed that my focal length seemed strange, and that odd things were happening in an irregular way with my vision. I recorded these carefully, then saw a specialist and he said it was remarkable I was seeing at all. The pressure around my lens, which he measured, was over twice what it should be. He told me that he could use laser, but the case was too bad for that. It would not work. He could use drugs, but these could not bring it down; the pressure was too high for that. He could perform an operation and puncture the eyeball to let the pressurised fluid out, but this would mean that it must not heal, since then the pressure would mount again. Then, he said, with this operation done, you will have to come in to me every time your eyes are inflamed in case it is an infection.

In effect, I remonstrated with him:

Do you mean to tell me that this is where medicine is in this,
that short  of a miracle this will happen to my eye ?

Yes, he affirmed.

Now a pianist needs hands to play, a concert pianist. An author needs eyes to see, especially eyes capable of much hard work in the comparative glare of a computer screen. We therefore prayed to God, put to Him the fact that I was writing for HIM ONLY, to show His truth and wonder in Christ Jesus, and to help His people FOR HIS SAKE, and that therefore in His love,  I NEEDED help in this. In what ? It was that  a necessary part of me for His work of grace through me, was about to become weak and unsafe, when it needed to be strong if I was to continue in my task. Divine and gracious action was needed.

We do not often do this, but my son then anointed me with oil as it says to do in James in such a case; and of course I looked to the Lord to do what it took. I DO TRUST HIM (in answer to another of your questions) more than anyone or anything, myself included, and delight to trust Him, since He is absolutely trustworthy; but you need faith if you are to be trusting. I do have faith in Him. How could I not, since He is faithful!

He has never let me down, and is the truth in all ways, logical, experiential, experimental, historical, archeological: there is no comparison with anything anywhere for His word, now going in written form which we have, for nearly 3500 years, in no point is ever shown wrong. Scientists often make theories and are wrong in 10 years as more is known. Not so with God. Not so in 35 centuries. Time does not age Him, nor does He need it to be educated: all knowledge is His, and quite factually, as an evidential matter, His word shows this in the Bible, where alone is this testable marvel to be found. He has not forgotten to be clear. The "book of the Lord" as He calls it is not ... unknown.

When, therefore, two days after my son anointed me with oil and prayer was made in the Church prayer meeting, I returned to the specialist. On measuring the pressure in the eye, he declared it to be a minor miracle (my own doctor said, Of course it was a miracle! or some such words). The pressure had dropped if I recall about 2 mm of mercury BELOW the maximum healthy amount, and had more than halved! It dropped something like 21mm. of mercury in those two days.

It was marvellous. No operation. Therefore, one could continue to write books, as I do to this day, with thankful heart to my heavenly Father, reached in the name of Jesus Christ, sent to show WHO HE IS. It is not philosophy but history, not thought but deeds which are shown by this same Jesus, whose words to this day are being fulfilled before our very eyes

(cf.  The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, Chs.   8 and   9.
You might, for the sake of truth want to read parallel material in
The Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet Ch. 4).

Yes I have participated in healing someone! I do not KNOW if I have ever cast out a demon, but a number of persons have left their old lives to become Christians through the ministry the Lord has given me. One of these, let me tell you for your own edification, was a young school teacher in a country area on an island in Canada. After he and others had decided to find out what Christianity was (since I had asked them please NOT to join the church UNLESS they were Christians), and after the classes were over, he told me that he could not join.

Why ? He told me that he was not good enough. How my heart warmed to him. Blessed meekness!

How blessed! Rarely do I hear such talk, rather than some nonsense as if it were a privilege for God to lay down the life of His Son to rescue sinners, a privilege for someone to be good enough to receive His salvation! instead of the reality, that they deserve doom and this was taken and broken for them, as many as receive Him in this light and with this feat of His accomplishment, the atonement.

I asked the young teacher then,

Are you good enough to be a sinner ?

Oh yes, he replied.

Are you bad enough to need a Saviour ?

Yes, he responded.

Then take Him, I declared.

I believe he did and so joined. The Church 'camp' if you will, has more than my small measure of gift, but is festooned with many others. There are those who cast out demons or heal the sick as a specialty, and this is fine. One of the most famous was a Methodist Minister's wife in South Africa, where I believe they were missionaries, about 1950, or in that era.

Her first book about it, I think, was called He Heals Today.

She was feeling sympathy as she went about, in that war or near post-war time, and for one man in hospital, she simply placed her hands on his head as she prayed. It was merely a gesture of concern. The next day a tumour was passed. It then appeared that she had a gift of healing and some 10,000 cases of often medically incurable diseases (that is why they came to her rather than to a doctor, and often they had seen the doctor with no avail) were in this way healed in South Africa, it is reported.

This facat came to the attention of the President of the Methodist Conference in England, and he confirmed the matters, as did various doctors, lawyers or such, in testimony that quite simply, the client had had this or that, and had seen Mrs Salmon (the name of the authoress), and now was healed. This is edifying and instructive. There is far too much hype, a sort of glamour not to be found in the New Testament with some who simply seem to trade in these things (rather like Simon, in his odd intention as recorded in Acts 8:14ff. - hence the name 'simony').

It was found with Mrs Salmon's gift, that exactly as in the Bible,  people could be healed at a distance or even through a proxy coming to her on their behalf, if they lived far away.  The cases are astounding in their medical  detail. Nearly always the healing was at once, but sometimes it took two or three times (as in Mark 8:24). In one amazing case, a verified missing part of an arm including the hand of a baby, so since birth, was restored over some months.

As to your concern for the truth, I congratulate you, but you must follow it, not only say it.

FOLLOWING THE TRUTH WITHOUT FEAR,
LIKE A CAR IN GEAR,

IS WONDERFUL, AND HE LEADS

Let us however be clear. You raise a number of variously contexted things and push them together. Let us follow these. One concerned parents, honoured, yet 'hated' in another context.

Is there some reason, then,  why you should not honour your parents ? why shouldanyone  not love God more than they, for He made both them and you ? Is there any problem in that ? Presumably not.

What then of the work of verbal imagery in which Christ dealt in showing the necessity of a complete divorce from competition in following Him. Is He to be muzzled ? Is understanding to die ? Is the mouth to be dumb in case someone does not twig, to use the vernacular ? I think not. Let him who has ears hear, was the Lord's repeated challenge. In any teaching, it is good to have things to stir the minds and hearts of those who may otherwise take things too smoothly, without rugged understanding developing. Let us then consider this passage in Luke about parents.

Is it really unclear that 'hating' parents is in the same verse as HATING YOUR OWN LIFE ALSO (Luke 14:26); this surely is not obscure. Do you really imagine this means some sort of odium for yourself, some bitter enmity, cutting off your arm or detesting your abilities ? Would that seem from any other word in the Bible to be the meaning ?

Or would it rather be this,  that you must IN COMPARISON with the call and duties of Christ,  act as if you hated your own life! You take up your cross daily, are crucified with Christ (Galatians 2:20), and the life you now live, as Paul declares, you live by the faith of the Son of God who loved you and gave Himself for you! That is the clear meaning of 'hating your own life also'.

The same therefore applies even to those nearest and dearest to you, such as parents, as to your very own self. Thus it is in a sense not hard to see, based on Christ Himself, so that His followers might like Him, come not to be served, but to serve. With Him, the ransom which He alone could do was the centre; but with them, it is to walk and work in the same spirit of love and self-sacrifice, abounding in goodness through the presence of God. So does the SON Himself, become a brother to those who are rescued and ransomed by Him.

Thus to 'hate your own life' in its indubitable meaning is like Christ 'hating' His own life enough to surrender it to hypocritical haters, in order to suffer, the just for the unjust to bring us to God. It is not to hold yourself so dear to and for yourself that you omit the work and service God has for you. That is the obvious sense: that is how one has to be in preferring the good of the things of God to one's own selfish interest, whether it be direct and personal, or in terms of preferences both natural and secure. Great as these may be, unless the love of God is greater, how could you even be reliable! Therefore one must be willing to put the things of God in a perfectly similar way, above ALL other claims. So hard ? to understand ? I think not. To do ? Undoubtedly it is hard, but what would you, a path of roses and scents ? Not thus are  we made, and not for this do we live.

As to the sword which you mention - 'not peace but a sword'  (Matthew 10:34), in your apparent desire to have strange contrasts, let us examine this also. Where, you seem to ask, is the PEACE, with this sort of statement about! Let us consider the context.

"He who does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me.
He who finds his life, will lose it; and he who loses his life for My sake will keep it."

THAT is where it is, this peace of His. There is no peace for the wicked (Isaiah 57:21), but those who are AT peace with God, then IN that peace, which is a living reality in His presence, can indeed do as He did, in spirit, and losing all find all, not seeking for themselves, find the glory of God is richer by far than the petty solitudes of inveterate self-centredness, whether occupied in making illusory gods or any other thing! WHEN all do as He wills, then there is only peace. Since most do not, then Christians suffer in the interests of the gaining of peace by many, even who hate them. Thus Christ prayed for His killers.

What then of this 'sword' in the phrase, 'not peace but a sword' ? Had we better not seek from the biblical resources, to at least understand it ?

Since Peter had to put up his sword, as in Matthew 26:52, and Christ would not tolerate ANY force being used even to protect HIMSELF, then it is clear that first of all, the word indicates division, which is indeed what we find in Luke 12:51. That therefore is the basic sense: it is as if a sword were to divide those who love Him, and those who reject His redemption, His reality and His crown.

However there is even more in it than that, now that we have removed ourselves from simplistic misinterpretation. There is a sword which draws no blood, and which nevertheless divides. This is one of the main symbols in the Bible. What is that sword ? It is "the sword of the Spirit" as found in Ephesians 6. What is this sword ? It is the word of God, as explicitly there stated (Ephesians 6:17).

This does indeed divide, the followers from the fiascos, and it is truth. HOW it divides, how the truth distinguishes its friends from its foes, and how its foes hate it; that is why they use the steel kind of sword and kill so many thousands of Christians, and have done for so many centuries.

Truth always divides, since sin always seeks a place. If then people in the same house become Communists or Nazis or Christians, is this in some way a problem ? Would you rather there were no people ? If there are to be people, they will exercise the image of God in them, and move this way or that, and since God is alive, some He will find and some will move to their own preferred darkness.

I would not have an interest in that: being delighted to be allowed to live even one day in the presence of God, whom to serve is a delicacy and a privilege. Personally, moreover, I would not care to ever have been alive at all, were it not that there is a free gift of an eternal life. This gives meaning to life, and beauty, holiness and wholeness.

THIS sword of the Spirit, then, it does indeed bring peace. It brings the only lasting peace possible, since it brings conviction and often conversion to the truth, without which the fighting about it is endless, since all are wrong. For that dark preference,  there is no resolution, and it ends justifiably in the hell it lives.

Again, in this world of your own making, these factitious contrasts, you ask : Why do WE pray, Your kingdom come, and not believe it will happen ? This you are asking me ?

WHO are the WE ? For my part, I do not so pray, not believing. I certainly believe it will happen, see it happening in some things, am shown in the Bible not only that it will happen but in what sequence of events. Believe, it is a choice delight to believe it, since God is reliable. It is HIS WAY!

Meanwhile we who are His, are already living in the Kingdom of Heaven and seek to do so irrespective of what others say and do. It is there that peacemakers are to be seen; but peace is not found in pretending truth is error, but in being gracious to those in error, seeking more sharply to correct them when one can, and being at peace and seeking no evil to any. Doctors in their field can be like that:

    If you can, heal with ointment.
    If you cannot, try an operation;
    but ensure that you have the consent
    of  the patient first; and in this, seek for his best health as he is made!

It is nothing strange then, this Kingdom of Heaven, though it is entirely different from this world.

Next in line, you seem to have trouble that God rested after creating the universe ? Why ? As to rest,
this does not imply tiredness, but cessation. If we personally find tiredness in it, is this some reason to imagine things about God. The point here may be that you do not want to rest on ANY day, even if it is in order to relish and realise more abundantly the truth of God, and His will for you. Why ? Is that some problem with Him or with you, then! If you loved a girl when young, would you find it hard to have a day in which you spent a lot of time together, getting to know and appreciate each other ?

Is God less than that ? Is having a day of restful strengthening, with new vision and vigour from the Lord, each week, some sort of monstrosity then ? It is actually a practical and wonderful gift, which is to be relished IF YOU LOVE HIM.

If not, then what ? Are we not discussing the ways of the Lord, for those who know Him ? We are not asking if cats like paper to eat, but how they address fish!

Again, you are concerned that there is not in all places at all times perfect cohesion and joint understanding of all things concerning the Lord, in churches.

Is this so strange ? As even the blind could now see, some of them have been leaving the Bible for a long time, some move away slowly, others have become sects in practice, others again have been used as mere social assemblies in which manipulators, communist or other, seek to subvert them, either consciously or not. That is why discipline, not so popular nowadays, is really necessary, just as it is in a rowing team, seeking to move that boat. It is necessary similarly in medicine, and if not too popular, then infections are the likely result. This is good for nothing. It is necessary, as Christ put it, to WATECH AND PRAY. Many do not, and some even stay in churches which do not even pretend to follow the Bible. What is the good of that ? Asking for trouble by talking of God speaking and then taking His speech over as if some sort of Amazonian secretary! Yes, there are false christs and false churches, and these abound just now, as Christ, Paul  and Peter made it clear they would (Matthew 24, II Peter 2, II Timothy 3).

Let us look however deeper into this matter  you raise. It is not confusion for some people to be immature and needing to study their Bibles more faithfully, for some to be dictatorial, and not actually Christians, for some to differ and divide, and for some to take time to realise things. Paul talks of milk and meat, the simplicities and the challenging aspects, the latter presumably to enable GROWTH and JOY in GRASPING under challenge (cf. I Corinthians 3:2). In meaty things, in hard things, this humbling can be found, testing patience, trying humility, challenging sincerity; and it can indeed be satisfactorily humbling as people realise their own superficiality and need to grasp things more carefully. In milk things, it is so obvious that where people depart from the word clearly, it is simply rebellion. They are trying to play tennis on a table tennis table, and need to be excluded from this foolish presumption. Since many neither humble themselves, nor keep to the table, there is confusion where it belongs. It is where it is asked for, as in trying to understand heavy terrain without map, while group hiking.

The love which can wait is part of the clarity which supplants confusion; but the discipline which does not permit, as many churches did, outright contradiction of the word of God and useless doctrines, like all speaking in tongues at once when it is expressly forbidden, and the like: this also is needed. There is no use brining a golf club to the cricket pitch, and less to bring man's philosophy to the house of God.

This is not a soldier marshalling yard. God is very deep, and He tests. As you see in Revelation 2-3, some of the churches back there were already astray, some in some confusion, but the call was not to continue in it, but to accept the truth and apply it, or be removed as true churches, and become mere shells. Many are. If you visit them, you can find it. I try to avoid it, since it achieves nothing. What is the use of watching people with tennis rackets playing table tennis with a light table tennis ball ? It is rather ridiculous, and while in principle this sort of abuse of the church is not uncommon, they also killed Christ. The world is bad; you have to watch, pray and find where the live of Christ, the fidelity to His word, the love of His nature, abides. Seek and you will find.

God is love, but many as Paul declares with tears, are enemies of the cross and perform in the place of worship for other motives. Find it out and leave it out. If you love, eat His word, take His ransom gladly, and seek whom you may to follow Him also.

Thus your next concern, at leaving some if you follow Christ, while understandable, requires nothing but clarity and charity.  Are you then surprised that people are not forcibly shunted into heaven ?  What do you expect love to do, arrest them and dump them on its boundaries, kicking and screaming ? or sedate them ? or trick them into coming ? Then you could have plenty of 'company' if you could call it that, if you were a believer and therefore reached heaven, which is an unconditional guarantee (John 5:24).

The truth however is not like that. God is love, not shove. THIS is their condemnation says the Lord in John 3:19, that LIGHT has come into the world and men have preferred darkness. So be it. What would you ?

Excluded by their own folly from God, then, they suffer the consequences. I trust God and know that however He is handling it, it will be good and loving. He does not FORCE people to hear what they do not want: for some THAT might be like hell! If they do not want it, they go without what is necessary for their well-being. Christ did not come for fun, but for factual need, to heal a disease, a lack of faith, a sovereignty of sin, and did not take it on Himself in anguish and agony because it did not really matter! It does. To be an orphan in this universe without its Maker and Redeemer, a little shore of meaningless sovereignty is for the birds (if even THEY would have it!).

However, some autonomous sorts want to be their own saviour, their own king, or even their own GOD-MAKER, whether by listening to spirits (their own thoughts ? devils ? who knows) ... it is a most foolish thing to follow a voice or impulse without checking its source; and this is something you cannot do unless you know God, so until a person does know God, it is necessary to avoid this sort of thing, to be wise.

GOD IS NOT FOUND BY GUESSWORK,

BUT GIVEN BY GRACE AND NEEDS TO BE SOUGHT

God is not found by guesswork. He, as you seem to realise, has made everything and this includes the remedy for those who want it. I am among Him, and yes, I do trust Him utterly, and NO I do not worry about finances, even though I have sacrificed real wealth. I trust God and delight to do so, for He is trustworthy. It is therefore the thing to do.

Further, it is not some God of my own making, but the only one who has shown by His word who He is for any rational enquiry, that exists (cf. my book, The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, where I prove this over some 900,000 words or so). If you start from yourself, who are you ? If you start however from the God whom reason requires, and test the word He provides, the life He gives and the power He uses, then it is without parallel. There is not even a problem.

A God without a remedy is a virtual contradiction in terms. TO DO as He wishes, and then to DITCH what He has fully understood, and to LEAVE it in the sort of inane wickedness which fills this world to such a profound extent would be to be against Himself. HE NEEDS NOTHING, since as God He has it all, and if He did not, it would not be God.

Very well, there is a remedy, since He has not as yet removed this world; and this is ONLY ONE in existence, which for millenia has progressively been revealed and applied, works. It is His of course, since as God it is He who is disgracefully abused, against whom sin is directed. You cannot TELL someone how to forgive you. It is the only one from the lips of God Almighty, verified, validated and applied for millenia. There is nothing else. It comes with the evidence that God gets His will, will, will done (as you put it), for in every detail Christ fulfilled every prophecy concerning His first coming, whether it involved power or precision, wisdom or healing, dying at approximately AD 30, or breaking death and presenting Himself to the great congregation, its master!

There is NOTHING else that does this. Again and again medicine is found wrong about butter or margarine or some other aspect of the physical working of the body, that what seemed best, is not so, but has dangers and so on; and it is not in this field alone. But as to God, whose word is out and whose will is found in His word, whose word is NEVER on any SINGLE occasion flouted, but always done, all predictions coming true with all but monotonous regularity: He forecast many things, and the most important is Christ, the only way to Him.

God knows His own remedy, and does not need someone to pretend firstly to be infinitely wise, and able to assist Him, or a long-range psychiatrist and work it out. God has SAID it, and DONE it. If there had been every one slightest error, then the nation, or the person, or the date, or the miracles of healing, or the tribe or town into which Christ was born, or the method of His execution, or the time between this and His resurrection, or the destruction of Jerusalem which Christ forecast, one or other would not be competently foretold.

One thing affects a vast line of consequences as people who program computers know full well. Only omniscience can know these things, and only omnipotence can do them. Do you want more ? There is no need. If He has it all, He has enough. If this is what you want there is nothing in religion or philosophy which can match it. God points this out again and again in Isaiah 41, 43 and 48; and if you are seeking the truth, it would be good to verify this. He says it; He does it.

THE REMEDY IS HIS AND NEEDS TO BE APPLIED FOR

As to this remedy, it is called in the Bible, the Gospel.

Its centre is Jesus Christ. To trust your own thoughts instead of Him whose record is infinitely better than that of any one of us, is not reasonable, not could it be truth. To know the absolute truth, you need first that it is there, secondly that it is willing to communicate itself to you, and thirdly, that the power and will which does this is omnipotent, able to transcend not only your limits, which like sunglasses could distort, but able to know your mind so that the reality arrives there intact and unclouded through incapacity, unwillingness or selective distortion through disturbance of one kind or another. What is not absolute needs help to find what is; and what is not God needs revelation from Him who is, assured, checkable, confirmed, unique, to identify the sender and enable the receiver. If this is needed to know the thoughts of a man, how much more is it so to know the thoughts of one’s Creator!

God has not left this to guesswork.

The joys and horrors are far too great, nor could it enter into the mind of man what the solution would be. He has SPELT it out, in a book called the Bible, where whatever He says without exception happens, and where the historical facts of the Gospel were duly and truly wrought out. Thus the same Gospel that Isaiah SAID would be broadcast to the Gentiles (Isaiah 42,49-55) is precisely that which came. It is not only Christ, it is also what He did, and the message and application following. It has all come as God said, even to the rejection of Christ (Isaiah 49:7), forecast of Israel, and the results for Israel, this from the days of Moses.

You want power ? It is here. Wisdom and practical capacity ? It is here. You want God to do your bidding and act in your way ? You want God to be converted to you ? But it is He who made you and knows you and all, and that is not a reasonable proposition. His is wisdom and He knows it and shows it. Can you compete with Christ ? The record does not show it. Do not therefore try, or work out for the Almighty your own Gospel, as if someone were hit by a truck, and YOU told the relatives what compensation they should seek, or what action. It is for them. How much more is it for God, and to dismiss His manifest action in favour of imaginative this and that is merely to insult Him!

It is also to ignore what He has done, unique and superlative, testable and incomparable. You CAN ditch Him, but this will not, this time, leave Him in the ditch. It is like ditching your car. It does not help you to go.

As to the result of refusing this remedy, it is not unlike refusing an antibiotic when untold troubles await you if you refuse it. In this case, yes, the spirit of man is a limited thing, unlike God, and there comes a time when it is finished, when its messing about is the cause of its terminus, so that healing is no more available (cf. Isaiah 57:15). You do not mess with limited things for ever; they could not take it.

TIME as we know it is a patience-requiring sort of a thing and is an invention of God (Romans 8:33ff.). It is a 'creation'. What sort of time they have where the preferred darkness lies, I do not know, for it is in a realm beyond this creation and its own time; and what sort of feeling is theirs whose is destruction is not known to me,  nor do I want to know: I do not worry about the technicalities of hell, since it is a thing actually wrought by its participants' own action, who 'eat the fruit of their own doings'. It is like watching someone try to eat 20 hamburgers in 20 minutes in some competition. It is not good to watch, since it is mere spoilage and waste. Knowing the mercy and grace of the Lord, I am satisfied He has it all covered in terms of His own revealed principles which are perfection. Certainly He has done all, suffered all to deliver any whose heart is set on deliverance.

I am not a specialist in hell, but rather in eternal life, which since I have it, I can speak about. Knowing that you have no hope because you preferred light to darkness, not only in some momentary way, but in the very sight of God as the last will and testament of your spirit is a thing so appalling that it gashes the spirit almost to think of it. It is not the result of wanting life in darkness; it is the way, like slashing wrists, that it brings this reality screen down on itself by its own will!

What sort of thing everlasting destruction is, I do not know. I can imagine, but my imagination and the word of  God are two different things. One thing is sure, that if anyone wants eternal life and takes the remedy, it is his. What more could anyone want. If it is not desired, then this is chosen dereliction. So be it. In the image of God, you can refuse. Since this is to deny reality, it is rather like becoming refuse, WHAT IS NOT USABLE FOR WHAT IT WAS MADE FOR!

In fact, God KNOWS all people and no one is going to be lost by oversight or error. He knew His own before all time (Ephesians 1:4, Romans 8:29ff.), and TELLS us quite clearly that He would like ALL in heaven or on earth to be RECONCILED to HIMSELF (Colossians 1:19ff.). I believe Him. I have no trouble. It is good that He is not a dictator, and that He would like this. It is better than He has done such colossal works to salvage and save. It could not be better.

You mention Baptists ? Why do they not all agree, on such matters ? you seem to ask. If you look at my web site, Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch. 2,  you will see some reasons for just such things.

It is unfortunate that many take ONE part of the word of God and ignore other parts. In that site, I point this out in detail in a number of instances such as the one you mention here. I am able to work with Baptists, if all they are doing is ducking instead of the biblically continual mode of cleansing symbol, sprinkling. It does not phase me too much, for people get confused. There is however a great matter of MILK where all who love the Lord must agree, and the MEAT sections are humbling to many, and intended no doubt to teach us all to be careful, scrupulous and conscientious.

On baptism if it troubles you, you could read on our site at Questions and Answers Ch. 11. Paul seems thankful to God that He did not send him to baptise but to preach the Gospel (I Corinthians 1:17). He tried to minimise this erroneous maxi-stress. Peter puts it in perspective in I Peter 3:21, where he makes it clear that the baptism which really counts is one of having a true-hearted faith, which of course leads to be baptised by one SPIRIT into one BODY, that of Christ, a spiritual matter (I Corinthians 12:13).

You are apparently also troubled by "the character of the christian god which does not change", and find that the Mosaic and parallel civil laws were not to your liking. Why ? There is ruin in reckless lack of discipline just as there is in reckless excess. When people know what the spiritual score is, they can consider a little more whether it really is worth while to ruin their lives for a little flutter when young. A little sanity gained a little painfully can be worth more than a lot of silliness left unchecked. Sometimes death does come when mercy having done all, folly is left strident. It is not unknown, or without reason and result. Letting everyone do anything in the end comes to mean that someone else may come, invade your weak and feckless folly and do it for you, or if you are still living, tell you far worse things, to satisfy their power lust. It is best to live crisply, clearly and without self-indulgence.

As to the entry into the Promised Land when all were killed, or meant to be, again, you need to think. Let us now move from lesser level options to broader social ones. Always remember this, if YOU do not discipline or bring things to penalty time, somewhere, reality will! It is better to bring wisdom with vigour than to have death without it. It is better to have thought before folly, rather than to indulge in it freely, knowing that nobody does anything anyway.

When therefore a whole society gets too wicked for words, a mess and mass of spoiled spoilers who ruin and bring evil and agony on all sides as life slips into reverse mode and folly rules, there is a time when its removal is better than its keeping. This is NOT FOR MAN to decide. In the case of the Promised Land, however, God who had led His people consistently for hundreds of years, had told ABRAHAM hundreds of years before that the time was not yet ready for the invasion, since the wickedness of the people in Canaan had not yet reached that point. Their 'cup of wickedness' was 'not yet full' (Genesis 15:16). Is it for you to decide that the immoral mulch, continuing to ruin the lives of the distorted people should not be ended by the Creator at that point, before more myriads suffered the consequences ? I do not see that.

The Taliban treatment of women seemed in important ways rather to be a fate worse than death; the current AIDS epidemic with whole nations being threatened with slow ruin and pangs of heart, mind and body through disregard of life, and all that those guilty bring on some not guilty in this, it makes it clear that ruined life can mount worse than death itself. It is well to be warned than to be wandering into a spiritual pawn shop. hateful and hated, a thing of shame and agony, slack from first to last.

It is not then that God is not exceedingly patient. He waited some 400 years in the case of the invasion of the promised land, knew that He would and foretold that He would do so, knowing all, and not wishing to act till the situation in that land had become such that judgment had to intervene.

Again, centuries later, before He even let Israel go into exile, in the 6th century BC, He put up with centuries of disastrous evils (sometimes sparkling with occasional revivals). He warned; He exhorted: He pled and His prophets endured much suffering seeking to awaken the people to their seemingly mad desire to walk over cliffs of truth and righteousness, into the sea below, as if it were not there. They were not heeded.

The world now is in the same case. It has had, consider this, TWO MILLENIA to do what you could be in danger of doing: drawing so near to God, but then as if in rebound, instead of entering, returning to your own mind, life and will. Nations have often moved rather in that sort of way, oscillating, not really progressing,  or coming a little closer to God and then rushing away.

The end is certainly near for this Age (as shown biblically in Answers to Questions Ch. 5), and it is not too soon, as far as I am concerned. There is a beginning and there is an end; there is a test, and there is an opportunity. Those who prefer themselves to Christ, can do so. I am not with them, though I pity them enough to put up with what it takes to write, as far as I am concerned; and of course the Lord helps without limit as the case arises when and as I do so. This is because He is love, and in this He inspires me, and then in love, helps me.

There is no other way to be, but to love, practically not merely sentimentally, and to seek with strength to do His will, who being love, and having shown it in the Cross for all time, forwards truth which brings mercy. It is only when this is despised, that the shining burning of truth becomes a shadow of death to its haters. It is pure folly to try to ignore God as if He were some sort of celestial cretan with less love than you, or others of His creation, less truth than you, less power than you, so that you trust in yourself in the very face of His manifest love, power, word and control of history; or make gods or imagine them.

As to universalism, this is one more example of taking one part of scripture, extending it into a philosophy, and ignoring the rest. If you did that with a contract you would be done a million! Why do people seem to imagine that with God you can treat Him as a fathead, less than yourself, someone who just left us lying around without a word, when the word which has worked for millenia has been a best-seller or something like it for centuries! Is there no limit to iniquity! (Cf. SMR pp. 100-101.)

There is one and only one proven, valid, confirmed, testable way, and that is Jesus Christ, focus of the Bible, fulfilling the forecasts about Himself in all things, while the world to this day fulfils HIS forecasts about it. What does not come from absolute truth cannot be it, since there would not be any to have. If you seek absolute truth, it cannot be with a merely relative mind, as if there were no truth. You have to come to Him as He IS, and find what His evidence what He requires, like a light globe that needs to be put in a socket.

There is no point in trying to put yourself into the door jamb because of some spirit, or some philosophy, or some idea. It is all made with great precision, and the power is not so that someone's muddle-headed attacks on  God's speech should be the substitute for following it. It is useless to follow meanders from nothing for nothing to nothing.

For the car of life, the manual is in the glove box. It is just a matter of following it, and first to the crux, Christ crucified, received in repentance, acknowledged as Lord, taken in salvation by faith; and in this, it is a resultant to go  to the outcome, Christ risen, and of knowing Him as you abide and obey. Once you know God, you realise there is nothing else so worthy of knowledge, nor any knowledge to be compared, or even worthy of the name. It is like trying to define a human being without a heart.

You have to abandon your own self-hood, as a seed does when it germinates, and take from Him the power to become a child of God as in I John 1:12ff.. If you do not so trust Him, then you are of course not a Christian. That is the simple fact. It is a matter of surrendering as Christ put it (Luke 14:28ff.), and there really is no substitute for that. God is wise and has no competitors in that. All wisdom comes from Him (as in James 1), and to put it into your own head as a god creator is neither reasonable nor sustainable.

You have to get it where the bowser is, and that is where the Maker says it is (Isaiah 55:4ff.); for He has not left it to us to nut out, having made only one, one only book, sent one, one only Son, and left one, one only Gospel. It is necessary to go where it is to be found, and for that, to look at what endures and is valid as ultimate, consistent and interminable, like rock (Jeremiah 23:21ff.,28ff.), rather than being satisfied  painted cardboard varieties which deceive those who do not bother to look.

God is God and you come or go; and if you come, you receive what you find. You cannot make Him up with out taking yourself down. The Creator is infinite in power and wisdom, and making things up at that level is infinitely unwise, and impossible.

How many gods do you want to masquerade as mannequins without beauty or place ? You mention, Love your enemies, perhaps as if this meant that you love to see them duped! This is not love but slackness for which no-one should be inclined to say thank you!

 You then proceed to the difference between Christian and Moslem being their religion, as if to imply that this religion bit is the problem. It can be, and when Romanists used the Inquisition to destroy the bodies of thousands of Christians and steal their money, you did not need to be Solomon to realise that this was a take-away job, with nothing more to do with Christ than to be the exact opposite. He WAS CRUCIFIED in love. They killed and have done so more recently, and they did it in whatever mood, mode or spirit was contrary to Him. THIS, He did not do. These they were like a Peter who REFUSED to put up His sword! The actual Peter had learned how to obey!

Christ came to give life more abundantly and FORBAD the use of FORCE in His kingdom's ways (John 18:36, Matthew 26:52ff.). Yes they could not even use force to protect HIM!

Does this seem to you to mean that therefore He is not really this or that, and you can paint your own Christ, because He was no dictator and suffered on purpose, to procure ransom, using the sin of men as the planning work of God, to deliver them, if they would come ? Or rather than the God who is love has shown His eminence and pre-eminence, and that there being none like Him, you can leave Him if you will, but His patience and wonder continue with or without you.

When you wander geographically, you do not create new lands, only find them. When you wander spiritually, you do not create new gods, only find idols. Religions that men make, whether you or others ? what does this provide. It provides war and competition in vying and violence very readily, since the evil men think tends to be the evil they do. The actual truth, from God, this FORBIDS this, since the Cross has now paid for all that is needed, and the truth of God has been seen in depth and dimension.

You cannot logically blame Christ for forbidding what you are concerned about, can you! or try to foist onto Him the mad religiosity of men who rebel against the living God, with all their vile violence, as if it were all of a piece. He came to deliver; they ignore Him and do not deliver. What is the point of speaking of such inventions of men, when the power of God is to the CONTRARY. This is not a problem for Christ, but one for men who reject Him. Do you blame a spanner if someone throws it at a mechanic ? The spanner is good, the hand that misuses this wonderful equipment it is which is wrong.

No, do not blame the spanner, the Saviour, who did the opposite of these truly terrible and evil deeds, which are indeed deplorable. If some use His name to do it, so much the worse. This would be rather like painting the name 'peace' on a spanner before throwing it at the mechanic. It does not at all implicate either mechanic or spanner. It does however show how vast is the need in the heart of the spanner hurler, those who misuse 'religion' instead of finding God where He has presented Himself.

But what is it like ? It is like a famous pianist coming onto the platform, playing superbly, and then having people ask, Where is the pianist ? and looking in the flower pots for him. That, it is common-sense compared with ignoring the God who is there, and making new ones, pseudo-gods of the imagination, while clamouring against Him for sins committed in breach of His word. This is an outrageous outage, as if some part of the system simply severed itself from the grid of God. Is it surprising that there is no spiritual power, that the quality of the transmission fails, that man becomes not like animals but like devils, knowing full well what he does, but doing it with a stout heart while his hands reek with blood, and his mind is filled with violence like a drug, sopped up with TV, while his children are forcibly fed the puss of philosophy, the deceits of Darwin^*1 and the fatuousness of Freud^*2, as if to reject what they are in favour of the pathological residues which cover this earth with squalid sin and astounding shame.

Freedom has its day and its pay. Love is not possible without it. The Father has sent Christ to take up the cost, on the Cross, and those who prefer to pay, it is their choice; but if ever there were ingratitude, ever there were folly, this is it. Then to blame Him for such departures, of oneself or of others, nations, religions, it is neither correct nor supportable. It becomes something like assault! That, in fact, is what they did to Christ when they could.
 

RIOTOUS AND RECKLESS RELIGION IS MERELY ONE MORE SIN:
THE SAVIOUR IS THE REMEDY

THESE SHOULD NOT BE CONFUSED

So where does that leave the thought about 'religion' ? I agree that culturally home-made religions, two a penny (cf. News 122), are disasters, leaving the Bible for this and that as Christ said would be the case (Matthew 24:24) and Paul (II Timothy 3), believing in some God without power. Some like many of Islam - and the Koran pushes it often enough - do use horrible force without the slightest ground (cf. Divine Agenda Ch. 6). Would you like to acknowledge their efforts then ? God has no place for force where faith is in question; and judges how and when He will, but justly.

In fact, as distinct from abstract and factually incorrect theory, Christians have suffered by the millions as Communist, Islamic, Romanist and others faithful to force concepts in their day have slaughtered them, tortured them, robbed them, cut off hands, sawn them in two, sent armies after them as in the case of papal armies against the godly Waldensians, and gross have been the slaughters, or the careful slanders and reckless indictments as in China, where pastors have been arrested and incarcerated, and then again, in efforts by slow attrition and fearful humiliations to break their spirit.

It is religion then, that strange  grouping of wholly different things, which causes the problem ? When some kill for it and others are killed for it, it is all the same  ? When some invade for it and others are invaded for it, it is all one then ? When some suffer patiently, not only in physical but in social, financial and professional ways, for Christ, this is to be grouped with their assailants  ? This is indeed a strange logic!

In fact, there have been great forces of financial, military and religious glory seeking which have not made the word of God their guide or goal, but have moved for their own glory. Jesus made that point clear. Some seek their own glory (and it can be their fallen church, a mere facade, like that of the Sadducees and Pharisees which sought the death of Christ, or a fallen nation, or part of one), and some follow the Lord. To be sure, He is just, but also patient, kind and longsuffering.  If you want to confront Him, you may find His patience enough to give you quite a head, and it often goes to people's heads when He does; but His patience is not weakness, just as the sufferings of His actual people, forbidden the use of force for religious purpose in their international community, these are not weakness but love and godliness.

If you want to compare the scimitar with the cross, perhaps then you may notice that in one case the 'religious' person is on the cross, and the exponent of force in religion puts Him there ? There  is perhaps some difference in that ? Do you see the logical pit, and the spiritual slum into which you fall when you proceed to lump together the religion of the devil and the word of God ? It is simply not possible to have any concept of fact and try to put the sufferers with the persecutors, the losers in this world, with the winners.

As Christ put it, the children of this world are wise in their day and generation than the children of light. They KNOW what they want; but we serve the King of the kingdom of heaven and His ways are to be seen in such places as the sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). If there are many hypocrites, there is no need to join them. It is simply a matter of finding what DOES follow His word.

You realise, do you not, that MANY will come to Him in the day of judgment and say, We taught for you and were with you; but He will tell them, DEPART FROM ME, YOU WORKERS OF INIQUITY. He will tell them straight that HE NEVER KNEW THEM. If the Judas category is becoming notable now, in proportion, so be it, that is what Christ indicated, that false Christs and false prophets would abound, and that many would be offended because of this, and their love would grow cold. Do you plan to let this happen to you,  that love grows cold ? It is not to be found in imagining Gods without power, evidence or validity. Clouds are pretty, but they do not constitute buildings. Imagination is nice, but you can misuse it to destruction when idly inventing gods.

That is the folly of millenia, right from the earliest times, when Eve listened to Satan's vying and emulous arrogance, and when Israel heeded new-boy gods, gods coming up, spirits arising (Deuteronomy 32:15-20a).

For your convenience, let me quote this now.

                                And He said: ‘I will hide My face from them ..."

Hiding His face in the case of obstructive rebelliousness and ingratitude is not strange; but then, the good news is this, that He is great in seeking, even when people become arrogant, and thus we find in Isaiah 32:14ff.., this help to hope for those who have wandered (emphasis added):

Because the palaces will be forsaken,

The bustling city will be deserted.

The forts and towers will become lairs forever,

A joy of wild donkeys, a pasture of flocks—

 

Until the Spirit is poured upon us from on high,

And the wilderness becomes a fruitful field,

And the fruitful field is counted as a forest.

 

Then justice will dwell in the wilderness,

And righteousness remain in the fruitful field.

The work of righteousness will be peace,

And the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever."

 

Again you find this beauty of His holy love in Isaiah 30:14ff.:
 

	"For thus says the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel:  In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength: and you would not. But you said,
	No; for we will flee upon horses, therefore shall ye flee: and,
	We will ride upon the swift; therefore shall they that pursue you be swift. "One thousand shall flee at the rebuke of one; at the rebuke of five shall ye flee: till ye be left as a beacon upon the top of a mountain, and as an ensign on an hill.
	And therefore will the LORD wait, that he may be gracious unto you, and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you: | for the LORD is a God of judgment: blessed are all they that wait for him"

So is the Lord neither negligent nor impatient, but seeks, without using force, but with every reminder and epitomises this in sending His only begotten Son into the world, His eternal word into fleshly format, His own definitive expression into mankind, who of course thought so much of Him that they murdered Him slowly. You can take this God, if He graciously enables you, or reject him, which latter is within your power. He has however left no doubt as to who He is, as to His love, and there is nothing in power or love, mercy or truth which is even within an infinite distance of Him. The rest are, to use His word, NOTHING, VANITY.

Thus you may worship  the One who has demonstrated Himself, if so moved, or you may worship the gods of your own mind if you will, and love mankind in his atrocities and sentimentalities (often combined) instead: but know that if you do, God will certainly bring you into judgment for ignoring the truth, and despising His love and preferring the race He made, now made with contention and invention, never satisfied with the truth in massing millions, slaying one another and ignoring the contrary recipe of Christ, just as they despise His redemption and continue their distempers till the world becomes all but unlivable, as He said it would for this very reason (cf. Matthew 24:5ff.,22ff.).

As to people 'faithfully' following these forceful intrusions into faith, brandishing a sword or scimitar and asking you to 'believe', a use of force which the Bible NEVER sanctions, do you want them to be accepted ? Do you want those principles to be conserved ? What is needed here is faith. Since God has said (if you do not believe Him, that is nothing to do with Christianity, but only with your preference, without reason or ground) that He would like all to be saved, and has all power, there is no slightest chance of anyone being lost who might be found without force. Here I cite from Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch. 6:

But come when and how they may, if indeed they do come, leaving all that, to the Lord: when they come there is prayer; and to Him with whom these are now united, there is that same love which sent out Christ in this divine expedition, yes even into the pit of hell, preaching to the spirits in prison (cf. The Biblical Workman Ch.5, pp. 79ff., and The Kingdom of Heaven Ch.4, pp. 52ff.): and this of course is precisely what the apostles' creed declares, in the fulness of that compassion which is so precisely stated in Colossians 1:19ff.!

 

DISMISS CHRIST ? IT IS EASIER TO DISMISS THE HEAVENS -

BUT IN DOING THIS, IN FACT YOU MERELY DISMISS YOURSELF

You would like to dismiss Christ as the definitive expression of God (Hebrews 1:3, Isaiah 48:16, John 5:19-23, 8:58, Philippians 2) ? You do not wish to honour His works and His witness, prescribed for millenia, done in a life-time, fulfilled in every detail, without comparison or equal, even to the uttermost part ? You would ignore John 15:24-26 ? What did Christ say of this ? "If I had not done among the works which no one else did, they would have no sin. But now they have seen and also hated both Me and My Father." Note the word that He uses. There is a failure to accept which amounts to hatred, and Christ saw through it.

You wish to reject Him as Lord and Only Saviour, Son of the living God, who is to be honoured as the Father is ? No reason appears. You feel God is one not three, in this that He cannot be ONE BEING with three persons infinitely intimate (II Cor. 13:14, Matthew 28:16, John , one like the lake of resource, one like the stream and waterfall (the same nature), and one influencing and moving into hearts on an individual basis, moving the power of God into the intimacies of the human heart ? You would perhaps like to prescribe from your imagination to God what He should be ?

If it is not so, yet it seems that this is IN EFFECT what you are beginning to do.

But this is hard tack: to dictate to the world map where the continents should be is much easier. You will TELL God how He is to live, and that He can have no fellowship in Himself, so that He grows when He makes man and has fellowship with him! What sort of 'truth' is that! What grows CANNOT be God in Himself, since then He is in a system of which He is part, and the One who made THAT IS GOD! What changes for just this reason also, cannot be God. "I change not!" He declares (Malachi 3:6), and that is why His mercy is obtainable.

Serene in truth, immovable in truth, His merciful love is great towards man; but it does not reach those who pour it out like blood on the ground, whether literally or symbolically. But we are talking of God, not some construction of the imagination. If someone gives you water and you pour it on the ground in the searing desert heat, who is to be blamed for that! Is it all to be treated as nothing, like money for the son of rich parents ? I think not!

God Almighty is present in each one ? Ephesians 4:4 declares of those to whom the apostle writes who are statedly Christians (Ephesians 1:1) and of himself, that "God is in us all", and Christ in you, the hope of glory is indeed part of the Gospel (Colossians 1:27). It is also part of CHRISTIAN LIFE, for those who know Him. But living in others ?

Did Hussein or Hitler look like it, and believe me, some can be so boorish even with their wives (or vice versa) that the spirit of evil is not a great deal different to the perception! Let us be  more realistic. God Almighty is what He is, and can send from Himself His word if He wants to. He did want to, since He is love and man has fallen into follies almost unimaginable, through the misuse of those marvellous powers of liberty and spirit with which he was endowed.

Even I send my words out, and they go with my thoughts within them. The Holy Spirit brings God to the hearts which the Son of God (who became the Son of man for His saving mission) has redeemed. He also challenges many who fall, and  encourages many who seek to return. There is reason and reality, not vague abstraction and it is necessary to let God be God, and not to invent Him.

You deny Him the privilege of anger ? You would like to rub out the anger of Christ, then, when He looked on those who were more concerned about appearances than reality, and though watering their cattle on the Sabbath, would not like to see a poor man in anguish on whom Christ came one day as He went on His way, healed by His almighty power ? This case is to be found in Mark 3:1-6. The Pharisees were so incensed that they consulted how they might destroy Him. Now it is simply not possible to destroy Him, and now not even possible to kill Him, but the spirit of the thing is what bears attention here. HIS move and HIS anger at their pig-headed smugness, failing to see the very nature of God, led to their DESIRE to destroy Him. It can be much the same when people want a 'god' who is biddable, who will do what THEY want, a sort of spiritual car which they can take out to fulfil their lusts, desires, preferences.

Not so. You do not want to be a programmable servant of the State; far less is it feasible to make a 'god' of your bidding to be and to do as you desire. God is God: accept that. He is not available for moulding.

It is WE who are to be available for moulding, and if people want to reject the Creator and Redeemer for man, so be it. There is no other, and imagination does not save. As God declares through the prophet Isaiah in 57:5ff.:

                           And shall inherit My holy mountain."

The duller blue has been added to point out aspects of special concern here in this connection. God is using the figure of marriage, as He often does, to illustrate the profane and appalling nature of this playing about with imaginary gods as if they could do anything, or there were any point in making them up, our heart the furnace for forging God! 'Come off it!' as they say, this is horrendous. God is not mocked, for those who sow the wind, unless mercy intervene to bring them back to the Rock of their salvation, they will reap at length the whirl-wind.

Winds are not things to play with, far less is God available for instruction on who He shall be! The objective facts of His testimony, confirmed in reason, evidence, verified ad infinitum, unique and without competitor, confirmed in Christ, applied through Christ in words which take hold of world history to this very day, these are what the reason must conform, or else go into the absurdity of making a relative world where absolute truth is not available, and asserting that this is absolutely true. You get God from HIS action, not your invention. Your invention is by definition not God. HE cannot be invented. It is we whom He has invented. It is necessary to listen to the voice of the ages.

By the way, concerning 'ages' or 'aeons' as you seem to want to call them, and some do, the term in the Greek is similar to 'forever' and means that time will not be when this is not, when it is applied to some topic. However the nature of that time remains to be seen, for since our sort of time is invented as Romans 8 declares, what sort of time is available when eternity comes into the scene is not for guess work. There is assuredly a time when a person has gone too far, and a time when judgment sits, and a time when our sort of time passes into new realms; but sure it is that the haters of truth, who slip and slide to every sort of invention instead of facing the unique reality of the everlasting God, these are due for everlasting contempt. Refusal to realise reality has a penalty of unreality, illusion, and if mental disease is horrible, what must be the case in spiritual disease when not misfortune, but mischief is the ground!

Then you have concern about the continuing effects of sin. Let us consider this.

You feel you must order a stop to having CUMULATIVE CONSEQUENCES of sin over a number of generations, UNLESS they turn to God. It is of those who HATE Him that this is said. If someone hates a doctor, is the doctor to be blamed because the person is not cured ? I think not.

Is this even reasonable ? Look at families. Are you seeking a God who manifestly is not there, or are you content with the works of the One who is. It is not anger (and God is slow to anger, very slow, amazingly slow - indeed it is staggering and a matter of awe how He waits so long, often, before acting, and that He has suffered us to have this world for so long, some people even using this for scorning and scoffing as He predicted they would in II Peter 3:1-5), but unrighteous temper which is the trouble.

Of that, God has none. Anger, righteous and controlled, can purge evil and cleanse folly, awaken stupidity. It can arrest the madness which could destroy, and caution the frivolity which seeks shame.

The making of God, it  is a useless fiction which brought endless trouble to Israel, and does the same now.

What then ? This same Almighty is in all, regardless of creed ? this you say ?  Creed ? what is this but a summary of what is believed, of what God is. So He can be anything, modelled at will ?

Thus if someone wants to kill the Son of God, God is in him; and if someone wants to make up a make-believe God of racism, the biblical term 'god of forces' being a biblical depiction of parallel follies, and then this person wants kill a few million Jews in gross vileness, or Christians in the Sudan if possible, then God is there! this you would embrace, this concept of His being in all ? surely not.

If such a villain wants to worship that 'god', the 'destroyer', the 'adversary' as the term 'Satan' indicates, then God is there ? You would think this ? To be found in such a cess-pit of arrogant presumption is the true God, abiding in the sons of Satan who act like it, think like it and show the world a travesty of truth till it nearly vomits ?  What precisely would all this even MEAN! Do you hold the hand of the murderer while he stabs ? Is this strange being called 'god'  to be IN those who abuse their fellows, caricature Him and declaring for a universe which is not here, act as if they could live in it , as if this helped anything! Making up imaginary worlds where imaginary gods do what they will is mere rebellion, worse than witchcraft as God says in I Samuel 15:23.

But you have more to impart, concerning religion and chains.

Has religion then chained love ? Really! In fact, pride to be sure is precisely what does so. Would you put Christ into a box with gods and call it 'religion' ? Then Christ's death to procure pardon by bearing sin is to be dismissed in favour of the 'love' of the God who is made up and does NOTHING! Do nothing love is nothing at all to the point. This, what a pleasant change it is, which is brought out of thin air! It is like preferring a Ford Cortina to a Jaguar. I prefer the authenticated regality of Christ, the practical passion of His atonement and the orderly predictions to His day and from His lips, which nothing changes, which stand from the first day they were created, and stand for millenia, more unmoved than any rock. I prefer the Rock that no tide or stream can change, impregnable, powerful, ultimate, initial. I prefer the One who made time and has time for me and for all who seek Him and believe in Him, where He IS to be found, and assuredly, this is not in the mind that jangles with idols of the thought, inmates of the mind, contrivances of the imagination.

The love of God is indeed chained when its foremost and necessary expression in redemption is rejected in favour of air or 'spiritual' feelings founded neither on logic, evidence nor the testimony of the ages. It is however not at all chained in the Cross of redemption, but it rather unchains before the eyes of mankind the narrow and miserly misconceptions which so many seem to wish to thrust onto God, as if a philanthropist whose millions are given to charity as is well known, were to be accused of being penurious, petty and without heart! Is there then no limit ? Alas, consider well, for it is the very nature of sin, of rebellion, that it desires no limit. From this, be far away if you value life.

The jealous idea concerning God  is nearer to 'zealous' as in the case of a husband, for that is the image often used. It is not that He is intrusive into what is the very liberty of life which He astoundingly created;  but if adultery is proceeding, that is, the use of His name while other gods are worshipped in reality, then He finds ways to put a stop to it. He may let it proceed till the shame is red; but in the end, if the persons in this folly are really His, and not just nominal, then discipline for the hypocrisy duly comes. It is better to be cleansed than to be unclean. But what of the error ?

That sort of thing  is to make of a 'marriage', to use the image in view,  a fraud. IF you love God, then this zeal to keep you pure is just what you want, like taking vitamins physically. It is useless to misunderstand the clear meaning in the TOTAL context of these things, as if we ourselves did not all make our points in jutting language at times, to stimulate thought.

Christ is the only way, but how He is applied is up to God. You cannot take a bit here or there of Him, any more than you can with someone you marry. Imagine being married to a finger, or to a foot and an ear, putting together the 'ideal' wife by stitching up bodily parts. If this seems ghoulish, the spiritual parallel is far more so, and is to be avoided. It is not to the morgue of imagination but to the marvel of reality and history that you must turn, to follow the track to the truth. You take what is there, or become married to dreams, unfair to the actual wife, and folly that leads nowhere but to tragedy because of unrealism. 

Israel was once a nation, and God used them as such. He is free to use judgment on the appalling atrocities which cultures and civilisations produce and induce in their children over generations, as He will. If the time comes for removal, it comes. Garbage can get 'high'; and life can become mortgaged to infamous evils which make all its wheels grind. A friend of mine is blind, and was taking care of an old dog for a while. Apparently it suffered badly from arthritis, so that when someone saw him taking it for a walk, this observer said, If you come by here again with that dog, with its terrible arthritis, I shall report you! or words to this effect. It seemed better for the dog not to live, than to live in such agony! So it can be with civilisations which ruin their youth with follies, like organic evolution, as some of our own nation is now doing, and continue to produce evils unthinkable whether sexual or spiritual, as if madness were a form of life. There comes a time when God may resolve the issue by removing the unrepentant evils.

No longer however is the people of God limited to a testimonial nation (cf. SMR Appendix D). Indeed we who are His are called a special people, and it is now international, a kingdom of priests (I Peter 2), for each can find God in Christ directly according to the Gospel, and the word of God.

The point now  with Christians is that they are not a theocratic body; they are not organised in a national format any more. They do not carry out divine sanctions to overthrow nations. With the death of Christ, they are moulded into one international community, where the unity is of the Spirit, and where the love of many will grow cold (Matthew 24) as Christ predicted BECAUSE of all the unfaithfulness of many, some led for money's sake to go their own way while even daring to use Christ's own name (II Peter 2:1).

As Peter put it, these false prophets will come from YOUR OWN MIDST. Why then be surprised or offended because what Christ said has come true! If it had not, there would be a real chorus! Some are never satisfied. If (and when) what God says happens, then they want to ignore it or object. If it did not, they would jump on it and protest. It becomes rather like a blatant divorce case, when ill-will makes facts seem almost irrelevant. This spirit is not good.

It is testing,  certainly, that these are the last times in which the greatest ingratitude of all time becomes linked to the greatest diffusion of spiritual rubbish of all time, until man at last seeks to take over from God and set up an INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL BODY (cf. Of the Earth, Earthy ... Ch. 13, Biblical Blessings Ch. 2). Sowing the wind, ignoring Hitler and Stalin, Mao and Lenin, they proceed as if you could ignore God, make your own gods, form your own world, free-wheeling along, with nothing to fear. Illusion is like that, and it soon offers itself as delusion (as in II Thess. 2:4-10), and then of course mankind pays. It is better to listen now than to mourn then.

Testing, yes, we are being tested. Why fail a test ? What is the point of that ?

If we have to use energy and walk in faith with labours of prayer, is this so new ? Is it to be so easy that it is cream cake and tea ? Is taking up one's cross to become a luxury item, undertaken in a Statesman, the cross in a trailer for ease of motion  ?

No, it is not Christ but religion, deceit, arrogance, pride, self-trust and willowy wanderings in religion when the answer is a hundred times clear, that is the problem. I have had to bear with untold evils from some who call themselves Christians, but so what ? Often they merely mangle the Bible, as Christ said they would! The false prophet syndrome is rarely far off nowadays.

Well what is the problem ? They are free to do it, He knew they would do it and said so, in one of His accurate as usual, predictions (John 16:20). In fact, He here declared that some would kill His servants, and think they were doing God a service. That is one of the results of making up gods and following them: it can lead anywhere, even to killing Christians in the name of Christ, which of course was as specialty of Romanism in the Inquisition (cf. Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 14) and later, as noted. Christ  even knew and predicted that this phenomenon, now in its wild stage as increasing numbers of formerly sound churches go off the rails into perversion and the like, would offend some (Matthew 24:24,8-14).

If you want to judge Christ by Judas, go ahead, but what is that ? Only a perversion of truth: if you seek it, then follow it. Rather follow the Lord as He is, not reactions to betrayers who use His name falsely as He warned would happen. Discipline is necessary, not wandering. What good is achieved without it! in athletics or any wonderful work...

Are you to be amongst such as these, then ? Could it be possible ? My prayer for you is that you may desist before it swallows you up, for the human mind is capable of great errors, and when it indulges freely, these can come like squadrons of soldiers and invade with their own force, taking the victim where he might rather not go, into territories of confusion and shame.

Is such a thing in mind ? Can it happen to those who taste and do not swallow, who touch but are not subdued, who are slightly healed as Jeremiah puts it ? Why ? Why is man so made that he even CAN do this ?

The answer is not hard to find. It is a disease which freedom enables, and without freedom you cannot love, have meaning in your purposes or amount to anything beyond a thing. It is not being a person, or being one and following your Maker, not taking over from Him in vain.

If you trust God, trust Him then to lead you where He is. You seem to have tried many this and that and indeed many things. Just try Christ, as in the Bible, not as in your own abstractions: since He did not commission you or me to become a portrait painter. If you stick by what HE SAYS, and what HIS WORD declares, then start LISTENING, not jumping up to assault the speaker, if you follow the image. Then you can gain wisdom. If you fail, then repent, rather than wander on. If you err, one finds it better to be quick off the mark and go back to where it was correct, and proceed again. Just going on in the wrong way, it is like being in a forest and erring, then not being quick and lively to retrace one's tracks, so that the lost condition becomes a nightmare.

One remembers being once in Colorado and praying on the top of a hill in the high mountain area, and then coming down. The track did not seem right. There were so many of these hills and tracks and valleys. It was a territory so vast, under the exposed sky. Where was the track leading me and where was my car ? Seeking the Lord, I found that the track was narrowing. Ah! it COULD not be the right one since the car was not on such a narrow track, and how could it be! Then at once returning, I found more familiar territory in a little while, and then the car.

As I knelt near it to thank God in the wilderness, so that no helicopter would be needed to look for me to the dishonour of His name, since He had delivered me personally Himself, as He always does, a skunk appeared, probably one hiding under the car. It scurried off, and I am not sure, but rather think it turned to look at me. Apparently if they 'spray' you from their hindquarters it is an experience not readily forgotten, and can be serious depending on where they hit.

From this the good Lord also delivered me; and He does deliver from every evil work, as also one has found in the past 50 years of ministering for Him (as in II Timothy 4:18). Walking with Him, however, does not mean using His name only, but living in it, as in a tower of strength, as in a temple of truth, as by a sacrificial altar, for HE is the altar, the priest and the temple all in one (Hebrews 8-10). By ONE sacrifice He has justified in eternal redemption, and sanctified for ever those who are His! This we read, and this is the nature of life in Christ.

From Him is every good thing in verifiable practice, just as His word is true in verifiable fact.

Wisdom, like love, needs time and patience, and a willing heart: these are a need, but for the Christian, Christ is MADE to us "wisdom from God - and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, that, as it is written, 'He who glories, let him glory in the Lord' " (I Corinthians 1:30-31). Chains in truth ? chains in love ? Do you talk of chains with your loved friend, with your liberator, faithful more than the rising of the sun, powerful more than the atom, yet personal more than anyone, the very source of personality ? They may seem so to enemies of truth, to despots who hate love, but to those who love God, the concept of chains here is like calling a million dollars, a debt, or Niagara Falls a drain. It is ludicrous.

If you want chains, try sin (John 8:28), not in practice of  course, but for thought and observation. That is where the chain lies, which disorders life, pretends the Creator is not available on an assured and verified basis, bypasses the Bible, and ignores the Christ or does worse, and seeks to nail Him up in some safe place, or to subject Him to plastic surgery in the mind, to make a new one with the old name. If Rembrandt would be concerned if people tried to improve on his pictures, imagine the attitude of God when His eternal word coming to save, becomes a mutt to be led by the leash of licence! These things and all their ilk are to be avoided far more than SARS!

For my part, I have not found any fault or blemish in any part of the word of God in fifty years, in practice, in theory, or in any other way. On the other hand, I HAVE found that it answers readily ALL the problems of philosophy (in which I was trained), leaving nothing over. It outperforms everything with its hands tied, if you take the image. There is no contest.

Yet I see you have another point of concern. Let us then consider that.

LOVE YOUR ENEMIES ? Why not! Would you like God to show more love by forcing them to be robots and so to follow what they do not want ? or would you prefer Him to go on the cross every two minutes for good measure ? No, I am not making fun, but trying to help you to be serious. God is love and loving enemies, which is not the same as capitulating to their evil devices where this is the case, is natural. It does not of course mean that you invite them to put poison in your soup, to inhabit your house and mismanage your affairs. That is not love but folly. That merely makes you unable to serve God properly and accomplishes no good thing. Love seeks the GOOD of things, not to make them gods!

God in love has done all. There is nothing more that could be done than has been done. If you reflect on what HAS been done, then you will begin to appreciate the nature of love. You might like here to read Great Execrations, Great Enervations, Greater Grace Ch. 7. It is when sin obscures the vision, like spiritual macular degeneration, and seeks to blind to the fact that the rescue operation for us who have fled for refuge in Christ (Hebrews 6:19) is a marvel of concern making D-day for Hitler's Europe a small thing by comparison, and the rescue of Dunkirk a minute matter by comparison. Those things were for troops, or for Europe, but this is for mankind.

Those things helped people to find their feet; these enable them to find their hearts, and to have them healed into holiness, bred into beauty and cleansed into a new purity which Christ is able to keep continually, washing and cleaning better than any mother, watching more than any Father, reliable, faithful, already having gone to death in His rescue, and now living for evermore in His keeping (cf. Revelation 1:18-19, Romans 5:1-17).

You are concerned at those who find darkness their desire and this their destiny. This is understandable, but it is necessary to consider again what is actually the case in the biblical picture, before standing back to review it. It is necessary to look at what is there.

Those who are to be separated from you, if you become a surrendered and actual Christian, are not some people PUSHED OUT. I would personally sympathise with your problem if this were the case. This however is not so.

It is because this is CONTRARY to the Bible that it is irrelevant to our issue! God WOULD HAVE all to repent (I Timothy 2, Ezekiel 33:11, Colossians 1:19ff., Matthew 23:37ff., Luke 19:42ff. cf. SMR Appendix B) and come to the knowledge of the truth, to be reconciled to Himself. It is not He who prevents faith, but He who has done all but use force, to enable it. Certainly He is sovereign, but He is a loving sovereign and this is what He seeks, in the limits of love which does not force, for then it is love no more, but pretence, and God is truth, pretending not at all, but rather amending not Himself, but those who are willing to come to His changeless purity and truth.

If however they want to be separate from God, and you for your part are drawn to become one of His, what is that ? Are you to hate Him because others do ? It is as simple as that.

As to their separation, if heaven would be hell for them, since they do not want any God over them, they are where they elect, and this has been discussed above, so I shall not revisit it. Many prefer to kill God, in flesh as in Christ, or in their own hearts and minds, rather than actually relate to Him. They would snuff him out like a candle, and wander in the dark. It is no lark. It is folly.

They would like to take His world and the spirits in them which He made (cf. It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, Little Things Ch. 5), and rule them in their own so wise way. That is theft. It is also colossal pride, to imagine they know better than their Creator; it is not even possible (cf. SMR pp. 100-101.). Nor is it feasible morally. Goodness is not found by desire but by reality; and it is only here because that is what the Lord is, true, reliable, merciful, freely pardoning, exactly just, and exacting the full payment of the penalty of sin, but exacting it of Himself in the person of His eternal word, become man for the purpose.

People however in masses use their liberty, and this has been virtually inveterate throughout history, to assert their social, moral, political, military, intellectual preference and bind it in this way or that. Even the Greeks had masses of slaves while they thought about things! and what thoughts they often produced (cf. Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 13). So all are sinners and many continue to do as they please, their nice morals, changing daily like nappies ? And what if some do not please ? What contests in fact and history then arise! Assertions without grounds meet their ilk, conflict and chains follow.

Or again, others might seek to live the Sermon on the Mount, without its source, while ignoring Him who alone has evidence and necessity for reason, that He is there ? and who alone has the power to unity and purify the heart of the mankind which He made. If you try it, this assault on God by taking one of His words and ignoring the Speaker, it is mere imagination. It is to be Rembrandt in your own mind, but not on the canvas. It is like using a car without oil.

History in its ranging ramifications has NOTHING to show.
Christ in His incarnation has everything to show.

As to the latter, the awesome input of the Almighty who condescended in Christ to our lowly estate to join us in it, to deliver us from it, yet without sin and having salvation, this disfaith seeks to short-circuit; but the power remains, and only the cinders of burnt-out disbelief remain.

As to the former, it however is a logical void of philosophic prognostications, evacuations and despair (cf. SMR Ch. 3, No Thanks for Angst! ..., Predestination and Freewill Section IV, A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 3, and *1 and *2 below). You can take your pick; it is your liberty to reject Him; but remember this, you cannot toy with God, and made-up gods lack both power and reason.

Well then, God is NOT the author of confusion, but many wander from His word, and are.

God is not the author of hatred, but is love, yet many wander from Him and His word, and are. God has given all in love, to the point of sacrificial death, and others have not; and those who seek to have their bodies burned to help, do not do so, since perfection is in God only, and man cannot redeem man (Psalm 49:7,15). Other options DO exist, but not in the truth, only in imagination. As to God the Lord, He is both deep and true, powerful and precise, the source of all understanding and there is no excuse for man to misunderstand Him.

GOD DOES NOT USE FORCE TO GAIN HIS CHILDREN

BUT KNOWS WHO ARE HIS

God does not use force to gain His children (who would!), but many act that way, and are not His children. If some churches follow traditions (despite Christ's words in Mark 7:7ff.), or some people prefer their fighting clothes to what the Bible says, is this God's fault ? Do you want Him a sergeant major ? or is it for people to repent and find Him, while He MAY be found (Isaiah 55:1ff.), and seek to overcome all their errors and to follow His word! YOUR word or His ? that is the question.

You CAN follow your own, make-up your own gods and call them anything you like, even term one of them 'God Almighty' for old time's sake, or any other reason; but the result is the same. It is an idol, not God, made up by mere choice, like preferring blueberries. Neither logically nor spiritually is 'setting up idols in their hearts' to be commended (cf. Ezekiel 14:4-6).

When however liberty from God is used to despatch God from the scene, vanity indeed results. It can stay. Consider well what you do. Read Proverbs 1 before you take the vision of imagination, the enticements of your own mind or your own heart as the determinant. Read, I would strongly urge you, Proverbs 28:16 on that. It is not a thing to have, but to avoid. It is my desire that you may be delivered.

If you want more, consider reading SMR Ch. 1 and Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 16 which demonstrate the truth of the foundation in Christ; and of course there is much more on any relevant topic almost that one could imagine, on which the indexes are useful.

I hope you will now think carefully, and we will pray for your spirit, that it may not fall into the confusion which our culture is so able at producing. There is no god but the One God who has sent the Saviour, and there is no redemption but His, and there is no evidence but His, nor has there been anything like this over the history of man, and this, it passes all tests with flying colours, and goes beyond them, when it solves problems you do not even have, but think about (cf. SMR Ch. 5,  Ch. 6).

It leaves out nothing. Let however God be God, and do not invent Him. If you do, refusing Christ for your own preferential production (or choice, it comes to much the same thing), then judging yourself the better, in the very presence of Jesus Christ, you divorce on selfhood grounds. For my part, I have no desire to forsake the greater (infinitely so) for the less (myself), and preferring God to myself, since He is my Creator, Redeemer and Friend, without any limits or sin, and magnificently kind when you know Him, am well content. I would the same for you, but you must seek the Lord. It is then that finding opens up. Seek not figments but facts, for God has not at all left Himself without a witness. On the contrary, it is so vast, so many-sided, so original, so tender-hearted, so necessary that it is always a source of delighted amazement when you realise who He is.

Only seek Him with ALL your heart (cf. Jeremiah 29:12-13). This, as you will realise, does NOT mean praying to the virgin Mary or any other person than God. When she and His brothers sought Him, He stated that all who did the will of God were His brothers and sisters and mother (Matthew 12:50). What has she to do with providing salvation ? She had to make a sin offering herself! Let God be God and the Redeemer be your Redeemer, for there is no other, and His perfections are illimitable; do this, and you will do well.

In the service of Jesus Christ,

 

Robert Donaldson

for World Wide Web Witness Inc.

Some further references from the above may help some.

NOTES

*1 On Darwin, see:

in overview or interview, Of the Earthy, Earthy ... Ch. 4, News 82, 94,
TMR Ch. 7, The Three Frogs, Ch.1 ,  SMR pp. 226-236, 145ff.,251ff., 
Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming ... Chs.   5, and   6 (where Gould, having mocked Darwin's concept, has trouble with his own - naturalism CANNOT produce what is needed since by all logic and observation, this particular world is not made that way, books do not write themselves), The Other News, 12, A Spiritual Potpourri, A & F Schools

*2

On Freud, see:

Spiritual Refreshings Ch.  9, incl. End-note 1 (esp. programmatic psychology and its ilk),
Marvels of Predestination and the Ways of Will Ch.   7,  including *1; BEN 80; TMR Ch. 7, The Three Frogs