THE SMOULDERING CANDLES, FLAMING FLARES, ARTFUL POLLUTIONS, PRETENCES TO PRECLUDE PROUNDITY OF PEACE IN THE LORD

CHRIST'S INEFFABLE PEACE AND GRACE

AMID THE SMOKING CANDLES,
FLAMING FLARES AND POLLUTED PRODUCTS OF MAN

Robert E. Donaldson

Published by World Wide Web Witness Inc.

May 2006

ISBN 0 9775556 1 5

PREFACE

Man in his own modes invites and sometimes even invokes blessing or cursing. His actions can appeal to nearly all the human race, as with Saddam Hussein, or Hitler, or Idi Amin, as being morally those to be despised, reprobate, ruinous, disjoined from humanity. What then is the humanity ? What is it that makes its discernments in any slight way, at least, valid ?

Similarly, the practical provision of aid to the afflicted often commends itself to the many, especially if through ignorance they suffer, or through a prize-fighting brutality of the oppressor. There is a sense of justice and equity which, however repressed or distorted into a shape convenient to lust or selfishness, still exists.

There can come the smouldering, smoking evidences of error, as with a smoking candle, the flaming flares of deserved evils, like darts descending on a spiritually slovenly people, or those who have swallowed some ideological potassium cyanide without even checking carefully the description on the bottle, or the site of the manufacturer. How often, afterwards, with a few millions of souls departed from their twisted bodies, or tortured corpses, they reflect on their errors!

Man's polluted products, whether in the appallingly horrible and grossly misnamed 'female circumcision', which appears an ultimate in masculinistic oppression and heartlessness, almost to the point of self-serving assault, if not indeed in some ways past it, or in chopping off hands for stealing, or killing for trifles, in mental mists of philosophical fog which obscures vision, till the next one replaces it, these seep in, and sometimes, as if preferring the maritime mode, roar in like giant breakers for which the surfers are unprepared.

Beyond all this, there is the alternative mode. Here a man does not rely on himself, or what others like him relay, on culture or on the current idiocies of thought which will be called so in a following generation, if one is allowed to come, but seeks his Maker. At that there are two ways: he may seek in a cultural vein, or a racist-self-realisation model for a working religion to get you places, or something to bring you advance without tears, choosing carefully as at an ideological super-market, or a pleasure tent; or he may seek God where He may be found. Here reason impels, sin lashes and truth drives. If a man seek the Lord with all his heart, says Jeremiah (29:13), he will find Him!

He is not far to find (Acts 17:22-31), and His word has penetrated all cultures, all ideologies, like light into darkness, being both verified, rationally inevitable and alone valid. All this has been shown often enough, but here we are seeing the applications among men, with special emphasis on the profundity of peace with truth, which God provides.

^"And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart."

So obvious has the Lord made the finding, that if it were not for the polluted products of man's constant bombarding of his soul, his social systems and his environment with evil, the whole world would be as a place illuminated with a radiance irresistible; but man has discovered many distancing devices, and pays accordingly. When he does not want to pay any more, there is a peace of a profundity unspeakable, like that of some lake above measure, filled in heights that yet have land above, to bring down wonder and quietness of heart, amid the woodlands of words which operate more dependably that any surgeon.

Paul in his address to those at Athens, put this aspect with definitive form:

"Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious;

for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.

"Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you:

God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth,
does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’

"Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising.

"Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained.

"He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead."

The truth of these and kindred things, including inward and outward testimonies to man, especially in his own life and its attestations, paralleled by what is divinely provided, we shall consider in its exquisite reality.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

THE MORAL IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN

THE NATURAL MAN, THE CONSCIENCE,
THE LONGING AND THE LORD

News 375,

The Australian April 23, 2006

Chapter 2

SMOKING CANDLES THAT OBSCURE

THE HORRIBLE NATURE OF THE CONCEPT

OF THE DECRETUM HORRIBILE

Chapter 3

BRANDING FOR BEAUTY