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CHAPTER 4

News 285, The Australian, September 16, 2003

PARALLEL LINES CAN MEET IN HISTORY

but the concept

Is in JUSTICE, not GEOMETRY

NEGROES WERE ONCE SHAMEFULLY TREATED
BY MUCH OF THE USA:
with blood-letting in the Civil War one of the payments;

 ISRAEL WITH ITS JEWS IS IN SIMILAR DISCRIMINATION

WITH MUCH OF THE WORLD,

with blood-letting present and predicted to come, one of the payments.

It is easy to say, Ah yes, but we really could not have done it differently!

Oh yes, you could!

THE ISRAEL DOCTORS ARE MISCALLED, MISTAKEN AND AT MISCHIEF

What is the point of pretence ? Former Rhodesia has become current butchery, and the UN is not greatly moved. Current Israel has become terrorist's paradise (they need one, since they are so keen to forfeit the mercy of God, and it needs to be on earth, since heaven is not for remorseless murderers - Revelation 21:8). In this part of the word of God, we find that their actual inheritance in final destiny may better be described as "the lake which burns with fire." God does not take a light view, we find from His word, of those who assume control over what He created, and acting as God, abolish beings He made for their will.

The UN however does not seem greatly concerned about this either. Instead, it takes the view that the real answer to murderers of children and youth, assailants from within a land, terrorising others is this, that you give them more of the land for themselves. This seems rather a quaint solution. Try it now in Brussels. Suppose some terrorists felt that the UN should be destroyed, and in their supercilious way, set about showing how relatively easy it is to destroy, compared with creating. You know ? You can run your car into a lamp-post and crush it with little intelligence and less effort, and the work of thousands, in all stages when you consider it over time, is lost in moments. Very clever ? One would not have thought so. It shows the dynamic and fearlessness of the destroyer ? One would prefer to call it inane brutality, and bucolic bash-artistry.

Would Brussels, then, if so treated, be inclined to say, Ah yes! it is so. We realise that some Dutchmen do not feel in all things as we do (assuming purely for the purposes of argument that this was the source of the terrorism), and hence there is but one way. We will give sections of Brussels to them, allowing them to feel that certain integration with us, that importance, and this will appease them.

Then more terrorists show their inimitable intelligence in blowing up more of Brussels, and they say,  Ah but of course: how stolid of us. They would like Brussels to become an international city, and to take one part as their own actual capital for Holland! How backward can the intellect be! Certainly boys. After several more thousand Belgian boys and girls like dead or maimed in agony, perhaps for life, a new intellectual flash might come on their mental screens. But of course! they chant in surrealistic unison, we need to MAKE BRUSSELS the capital of Holland.

Unlikely as such a silly scenario is, it is not far from that being envisaged, by some more aggressively and more completely, by some rather less, in the awesome foursome of the USA, the UN, the former USSR, currently curtailed to Russia, and the EU. All of them are, or have recently been ... UNIONS! With none has the capital city been gifted in part to someone else who felt concerned: for example no part of Moscow has been dedicated, or re-dedicated as the capital of Chechnya ? One does not observe that emphatic empathy with the terrorist, such as the group which saw fit to take hostage many in a Moscow picture theatre, and that sublime subservience by which hostility equals a need to remove it, equals a gift and a pat on the back, and more authority, and so on, down the line, until, if ever, it is shown no more.

No, that is not what we find in the USA, which has suggested NO part of Washington as future capital for those of the Taliban. Indeed, something rather different appears to have occurred. In fact, when some nasty terrorism took blood in New York (which they do HABITUALLY in Israel), TWO NATIONS WERE INVADED.

Does it not strike one as a having a certain disparity, on the one hand, in one's own case if you are American, invading two countries as part of your action to respond to terrorism which hurts YOU, and on the other hand, the recommendation to Israel, that it cede more of its already much eroded territory as a response to terrorism, with no small pressure for it to cede part of Jerusalem for the terrorist's earthly haven and reward, the objectivisation of their plans and the palm tree of their triumph, the laurel wreath for their accomplishments, the international acceptance of their morals and the donation for their dedication.

These 'parallels' do not do other than intersect.

Which country (and the USA is NO exception) has fought no wars, failed to gain territory by war ? Is it true of Russia - consider Chechnya, or of Europe ? consider the colonisation days for Portugal, Spain and Holland alone! The UN is not a nation, but in its policing has it not given Israel to Egypt by quickly withdrawing its buffer force, to allow Nasser peremptorarily to invade Israel ? Was not that not a
donation ? But you say, It COULD not have resisted his force! Did it try very hard! Did it fume in outrage, gather speedy international forces, make an august frown, spume with words, correct the expansionist thrust of the lust of Egypt at that time ? Not noticeably. It just went.

 By no means is this to justify force in the acquisition of territory when man so desires; it is to show the non-parallelism of those who try to dismember Israel (further than that done in giving much of the INTERNATIONALLY ACCORDED PALESTINE, as homeland for the Jews, to Jordan), without doing the same to themselves; of those who seek to allay terrorism against Israel by giving more away, while meeting it with a WAR ON TERRORISM when it concerns themselves, with the sky itself scarcely the limit to the pure thrust of their response.

But you say, Where is the parallelism of which your title speaks  ? We receive on the wave-length of non-parallelism, yet your topic is parallelism! An artful plea: yes, but parallelism is not provided in ALL things, but in SOME things in order to CONTRAST those things with the others.

Let us then come now to the actual parallel, as distinct from this intersection so far seen.

When the USA most foolishly used slaves (it was not the only one, but the point is that people do not in general like being slaves, and with some reason), it asked for judgment. If it loved God, could it not love its neighbour ? When it was not quick to respond, and when it had - not all slave-owners were nasty, but the leaven of Christ should have moved into the lump and the land should speedily have rid itself of this appalling inhumanity, children often separated from slaving parents, while other liberties were taken in ways too inhuman to list - spent much time getting rich, then judgment came.

ITS white families could now mourn loss, its people suffer agonies, its family emotions could be burned with the fires of horror. In the Civil War it all came to pass. This is in no way to limit one's admiration for people like Abraham Lincoln, that man who could feel the suffering of humanity, who took the nation on a better course, whatever the legal talk, the one who reputedly said to Harriet Beecher, So you're the little lady who started all this! or some such words, concerning the Civil War (in view of the massive appeal of Uncle Tom's Cabin). Nor is it to assume that many brave people had confusion rather than cruelty as their downfall. It is however to notice that if you sow the wind, you are apt to reap the whirl-wind (Hosea 8:7). Israel itself has STATEDLY done just that, as was so widely forecast from Deuteronomy 28ff., Levicitus 26, and that in the most graphic and historically fulfilled manner.

A POINT OF HONOUR - THE DIVINE HONOUR

While it is true that the divine gift of liberty, which makes sense for love and creativity alike, is with the astounding patience of God, allowed enormous scope, so that whole Hiterlesque horrors can reign for a time (as in Assyria, listed for downfall, and smitten, Babylon the same, Egypt the same, as noted in Isaiah 13ff., Ezekiel 26ff., Jeremiah 50-51), it is not less so that these reach the end of their tethers, and when the rope strains on the neck, the end begins, coming now suddenly, not inexorably, sometimes fearfully. Babylon and Nineveh alike (Nahum) are hostages to the word of God, like Tyre (cf. SMR pp. 713, 623ff.).

The WHOLE WORLD (cf. Isaiah 24, Matthew 24:35) is likewise on notice of the results of sowing the wind ... Its come-uppance has two main features: 1) its terrorisms, of which the current more lonely batches are but one phase, in general so notable throughout the twentieth century and now adorned with new methods for the 21st with that human inventiveness which uses a glorious creation, liberty, for an inglorious folly, shambling shame: they have an end.

How ? There is a divine terror. You see it in Matthew 24, in Luke 21, in Revelation 6, 8, 13, 16, 19 and it is a reminder that just as God made the inconceivably brilliant integrations of mind, body and spirit, each participant in the one design, yet each separable in more than more analysis, with one total meaning and output, in form of a person with liberties and capacities which shine into the darkness like a miner's lamp, made for far more than man at first could even conceive, far less use, so He is able to intervene again.

Creation was one intervention. Without that, you are not here. Desecration of the liberty provided, which no man can invent, even his programs being his own products and the control of his outputs, direct or indirect, this is man's privilege, when mad enough to do it, which he most frequently is. It is now becoming an accepted thing, so that the abominable is lauded, not only by nations intent on power, but by fragments, philosophies, disciples of false prophets who will blow up the products of superior talents with the means of minor ones, in order to show their love of power.

At that, it does not show any supernatural being involved, since the words of the Koran, for example, are horribly in contempt of history, just as history is in horrifying contempt of them. They do not meet. They diverge, showing in a tour de force, that the God of the Bible holds this and all other idols in contempt. They do not work, simply because they are not there. What, that is not there, ever DOES work! It is fearfully simple.

Thus God mocks Israel's own binges in this connection, telling them with scorn of their preferring new gods, new boys, new arrivals on the scene, not eternal, not real, artful substitutes of NOT GOD for GOD! (Deuteronomy 32:18-22). He indicated in detail as He stated that He would (Amos 3:7) what the history of His people, Israel, would be! In the beginning He had made it abundantly clear that there were two paths. He even had them recite the consequences of blessing and cursing from two separate mountains (Deuteronomy 27:11ff.); and they have come to pass, just as in Leviticus.

Further, He indicated that He would make it a point of honour to bring Israel back EVEN THOUGH their dismemberment as a nation, their seemingly perpetual exile and international mockery would be a proverb, when HE was ready. This was mercy, and it would occur in a way which would lead to their cessation of this ruinous idolatry (Ezekiel 36-37), and even to a conversion to Him, as they warred with their neighbours, after their return to the land in this flourishing mercy of the good Lord (Zechariah 12:1-13:1). All this proceeds as the word of God always does, WITH PRECISION. Moreover, they COULD not repent for slaying "Me" (the Lord is speaking here in Zechariah 12:10), if they had not already done so. You do not repent of adultery is you have never first COMMITTED it.

Yet this is not all. They are slated, at some time during this warring season slated to occur on their eventual return (occurring in May, 1948 in that glorious moment of history when this much tormented people became once more, by proclamation, a State) to repent for PIERCING "Me" ... and that too is possible only if they first DID IT. Now God went further. He showed that they would in fact hate the Messiah when He came (Isaiah 49:7), and judicially murder Him, accounted Him a criminal and indeed killing His bodily format in the very presence of criminals (Isaiah 53). Thus firstly, they had to return through pure divine mercy, despite the hand of the law for their idolatry; secondly to war much on return; thirdly to repent of killing God as man (you cannot whip a spirit - Isaiah 53:4ff.), fourthly to repent of PIERCING Him, and fifthly to have had amazing victories against all but innumerable foes, so that one of Israel became like 1000, as Zechariah forecast, which of course is part of world history now.

THE THREE MODELS

So far we have seen this: that God intervened in creating man with liberty; and then He created law with consequences; then He specified for the MODEL chosen, Israel, precisely WHAT consequences, and then that despite all this, He would intervene again to bring them back, but to wars for all that, yet with this, to staggering victories to astonish the mind by so few gaining so much from so many. He indicated that He would intervene still further in sending forth the spirit of grace and supplications, to shower on Israel, so that they would repent of their murder of the Messiah, by piercing.

That is one of the sow the wind, reap the whirl-wind parts of His predictive history of the world. It is but one.

Another is what is to happen to the world, the rest of it. That we saw in SMR Ch. 8, and you can read Matthew 24, Luke 21 and Revelation on this, as a commencement exercise. It is happening with the same magnificent precision as has the forecast Jewish history happened. All the world is getting it, the whirl-wind, whether Jew or Gentile. For long, Europe was a disgusting, if not more so, with the Jew as the USA was for a short time with the negro. Pogroms, thefts, inquisitorial massive cruelty, inhuman exactions and the foul misuse of Christ's name for such confusion, for Christ did not come to judge but to save as HE says (John 3:17). HE ought to know. HE did not crucify for religious reasons; HE WAS crucified for religious reasons, thereby fulfilling a THIRD part of history.

That part ? There is the JEW part, the WORLD part, yes; but this is the MESSIAH part, the CHRIST part. You see all that in Joyful Jottings 22-25, and elsewhere of course. He too had His course to run, just as did the Jews, and just as has the world. His part was to reap the whirl-wind and to sow peace^*1.

This is of course the entire opposite to the Jew part and the World part. It is the antidote to the disease. It is the solution to the problem. It intersects with the parallels of the Jew part (sow the wind and reap the whirl-wind), and the world part (some principle). It absorbs the results of the first two parts, but selectively. It is like a superb inventor, mechanic, engineer, mathematician who visits car yards and selects some to rebuild.

However it has this special feature, for none is a specialist in that combination of pure power, pure inventiveness and pure creation, with pure mercy as God, and none could be, since His powers possess no limit, and all limitation is His product for His creation (as one does in creation, if you consider it in man's small case - small by comparison, but large and vast compared with material things). What then is this special feature ? It is this, that He can and often does select some of the WORST cases of wreckage (see the end of I Cor. 1 on this topic!), to make them into entirely new creations (II Corinthians 5:17ff.). They are, to use scriptural terms, transformed, washed, regenerated, so that "all things have become new". That of course is the direction of creation, and the more the scope of it, the more this is the case. 

It takes perhaps more power (reeling cars from production facilities is comparatively routine compared with making strong and beautiful machines from wrecks: I know which I would prefer to have to do!).

Power, however, belongs to God (Psalm 57). He has it; He knows it; He states it; He shows it. It is so easy in these affairs, if you follow the realities. They work, cohere, and happen. The other nonsense does not for the one good reason that it cannot. It is amazing how men tend to become entirely irrational in religion; but that, it is sin, and that is one of the chief ingredients requiring correction, cleansing and of course payment, when the new creation comes, as in salvation (Titus 3:7ff., cf. 2:4ff., as to the divine motive).

In the MESSIAH part then of the divine forecasts, one for the world, one for Israel and one for the Messiah, He was to provide the antidote, make the payment required (Matthew 20:28, Galatians 3:1-13, Romans 3:23ff., Hebrews 8-10), accept hatred, heal bodies and minds, do good, be rejected, whipped. spat on, illegally crucified, break death, show the way for life from the dead, send out His Spirit, convert Gentiles with the Gospel concerning Himself, as in Isaiah 50-55 for example; and of course, in this third domain, as in the other two, it has all happened.

This then is the signature on the word of God, just as a certain lack of power despite depraved and malignant force from Islamic sources for example, understandably desperate since they fail utterly to show the omnipotence of their god, who is humiliatingly shown up as inconsequential in that cockpit of vainglory, the Middle East (cf. SMR pp.  829ff.).

WHAT THEY HAVE IN COMMON IS NOT COMMONPLACE : IT IS COMMON GRACE

So far then, we have seen non-parallels, indeed the opposite in seedy circumstances; and then we have noted three phases of history, all parallel in this, that God says them and they occur, but diverse in that two are from evil to evil, with whirl-wind amplification, and the third is this in reverse, swallowing up the consequences for SOME PEOPLE, but this on a selective basis. We have just seen that this is NOT a matter of getting the least wrecked specimens from the wreck from the whirl-wind, but sometimes the MOST.

This is because of love, and because God seeks and finds His own, not to please His sense of the better, for all are as good as dead (Ephesians 2, 4), but in terms of the freest of offers wrought in power by the Holy Spirit, who seeks and finds. In this, NONE is excluded if the offer is received; and NO disease is permitted to make mere formal channeling out, as if absent-mindedly. God loves, and this is shown, as Paul declares, in this that WHILE we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 8). He did not pay for us in so dying (Romans 8:32), for those for whom He was "delivered up", have all things, which are not of course available, in hell. Offered freely and sincerely to all (I John  2:2), He is making payment sufficient for all, yet covering only those receiving it, as with any payment, where no funds flow till received.

His offer is effectual, in making the requisite payment and having it lodged where it will go. GOD WOULD HAVE all to repent and to be reconciled to Himself and SAYS SO (SMR Appendix B, The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 4). Seeking to 'escape' from such repetitive divine utterances is no more useful than trying to escape the gravity of the earth, wafting off into barren space. Yet it is quite as bizarre to seek to escape from the security and stability (cf. Isaiah 33:6) of His ransom, in making it a matter of some sort of juvenile seeming commerce that pays for what it does not get, covers what is damned and provides for what has no provision! That is mere verbal play: HIS sheep ENTER, and are shown so, and are KEPT when they enter, for ever. As for other sheep ? "You do not believe because you are not of My sheep!" (John 10:26).

So many farces are created in this field (see Predestination Trilogy) that it nearly makes one weep. Yet simply, GOD DOES declare His LOVE that all might be reconciled to Himself; GOD DOES declare that while the offer is sufficient for all, it by no means acts for any who reject it (Romans 8:32, Isaiah 53:3-6), ONLY those who are healed being those whose sins He bore! Wesley was right in his main emphasis on the scope of the love of God; Calvin was right in his chief emphasis on the sovereignty of God, for the Bible states both these things clearly. The TULIP (acronym) is correct; but so is the ROSE (following from the Tulip, in the reference given). We are not a uni-floral garden. The  entrancing perfume and petal gentility of the rose is no less and no more divine floral work, than that of the tulip. One needs to be a gardener, or at least to appreciate gardens, not some kind of specialist, with eyes only for the flower you want.

That then is the third area of divine prescription, prediction and fulfilment, that of the omni-loving Messiah, whose hatred for the devil is shown so well in Matthew 4, for as in health, so in love, you must hate what is the enemy, once it is rendered by irreconcilable folly, to be such; and the devil, he takes that crown. He is even willing to rescue those taken captive at the devil's will (II Timothy 2:26, Hebrews 2); but with Him, as for Himself, so for His people, oneself is given up. Just as HE did not twiddle a dial or simply fill out a prescription order, but was the prescription Himself, and lay down His life of Himself, for His sheep (Matthew 20:28, John 10:17-18), so those who come to Him in salvation, do not merely visit. In coming they BECOME His, and there is an operation so vital, so profound, so dynamic, so transmutative, that the old nature simply no longer rules. Nor is it simply 'new management', for when GOD is IN YOU in an articulate manner (cf. Colossians 1:27, John 16:7ff., 10:27-28, with Acts 8), guiding and moving as He will, but always in terms of His standing orders and provisions, as in His word, the Bible (Proverbs 30:6), then it is far more transmutative than is the case when a 'glider' gets and engine.

THIS, it is the engineer!

LET US VISIT HIS VINEYARD OF OLD, ISRAEL (ISAIAH 5),
AND CONSIDER WHAT IS HAPPENING THERE

When, within the divinely provided perspective, then, we see these three potent predictive fountains, and see them fulfilled to the letter (as HE said they would be, when on earth Himself - Matthew 5:17-20), it becomes important to consider what is happening in the light of this. In Christ, yes He came, was hated, did good, fulfilled all predictions, none falsified despite a millenium of notice, nothing ABLE to be snatched away, which many would love since they love not God, and in triumph on completion, left as arranged.

 The world meanwhile goes its asinine way, filled with vainglory, false glamour, prodigious waste, enormous vacancies in stomachs, overlaps in others, hatreds, passions, false prophets, false dedications to false gods, false wars for false reasons, duplicitous deviations, uproarious pleasures, insidious satanisms, oblivious thought that travels in star-tracks never touching this earth or its scientific method, and this even with many scientists when theirs is secular, humanist religion, and it requires what cannot be found (cf. TMR Ch. 1), killing with prodigious lust, willing with eccentric unrestraint, paying with careless prodigality, losing its limits and not limiting its losses. In all of this, it is quite like one of those highly strung horses who (rather than which - they can be so personal), flinging itself out of control, with a certain peremptory majesty,  continues its thundering departure until wildness sated, it can run no more.

With man, there is more: when you can run no more, you run into the Rider. This is called judgment, and Christ has provided the scenario as we have seen for the WORLD, as above (cf. its magnificent accuracy in Answers to Questions Ch. 5). It is now well advanced to the Judgment Day in which, all preliminary ... findings complete, the actual decisive work is done.

But Israel ? Yes, let us look at that one of the three predictive formats or functions provided. That is the one we take next.

We find that even the awesome foursome felt that someone other than the terrorist of fame and name, Arafat, for leadership and international consultation. A prime minister ? said they.  Yes, and let it be Abbas. It was. He was to the the face of the movement of the PLO, and to make things happen; while Arafat was to be more nominal. Powers were to  be yielded to Abbas, to the extent needed to make the Road Map (actually a surgical kit to dismember parts of Israel) work, peacefully. Abbas really appeared interested in peace, the idea seeming a pleasing one to him. Many are not interested in it: they want as much war as it takes to get as much land as they want, and depending on circumstances, this changes to more, and more and then more again... Hitler was of course a European star in this business of endless 'need', endless lebensraum requirements, always now met, always not quite met yet, upon reflection.

Arafat appeared in this rogue's gallery of insatiable, here religiously inclined desire for land, someone's land, and whose better than that of Israel. Why use Jordan ? They failed in the civil war to take it over, last time, and in any case, killing and dispossessing Jews has long been a fame-making ride in Europe, whose anti-semitism is one of its best qualities for the time to come, when it seeks to rule the world, according to the prophecies of Daniel, in conjunction with Revelation (cf.  SMR pp. 886ff.). Then this insatiable seeming desire to rid the world of Jewishness which has from time to time in the past arisen like a tornado in its midst, wreaking destruction for a time, and then subsiding, will continue in its anti-God course. Let us not misunderstand. GOD Himself has chastened the Jews, just as a teacher might discipline a student: but THIS is no excuse for OTHER STUDENTS, each with his or her own fault-lines and crevices, if not crevasses of heart, deciding to expend sin on the stump of the tree, and chip it further.

God is most eloquent here, as you see in Isaiah 51:21-52:6.

"Awake, awake!

Put on your strength, O Zion;

Put on your beautiful garments,

O Jerusalem, the holy city!

For the uncircumcised and the unclean

Shall no longer come to you.

 

"Shake yourself from the dust, arise;

Sit down, O Jerusalem!

Loose yourself from the bonds of your neck,

O captive daughter of Zion!

 

                 "For thus says the Lord:

'You have sold yourselves for nothing,

And you shall be redeemed without money.'

                               

                ^"For thus says the Lord God:

'My people went down at first

Into Egypt to dwell there;

Then the Assyrian oppressed them without cause.

 

"Now therefore, what have I here," says the Lord,

"That My people are taken away for nothing?

Those who rule over them

Make them wail," says the Lord,

"And My name is blasphemed continually every day.

 

"Therefore My people shall know My name;

Therefore they shall know in that day

That I am He who speaks:

              Behold, it is I.’ "

 

To be sure, this passage is immediately followed by the good news of the Gospel, in the Messiah's coming, just as Summer holidays, include Christmas. Yet this in no way mitigates the divine diction here: HE is concerned at the treatment the other nations give the Jew, HE is unimpressed with their presumption and  cruelty. Certainly, He rebukes Israel roundly for having made itself so vulnerable by loosing the divine bonds, and playing the fool, but here, as in Isaiah 59, 66, Micah 7:15ff., He indicates firstly that He is aware of the evil done to them, while they were under His discipline by other nations, secondly that He heartily disapproves of this, and thirdly that He will SO ACT that His people will realise once more the entire relevance of their God to their need, His care and action replacing concern.

The acme is the Gospel; but the outcome is also that HE will deliver HIS people, those at least who come,  and the nation will be extradited from the passionate travesty of justice the other nations wish to serve on it. Indeed, in Deuteronomy, cited in Romans 11, He makes it clear that VENGEANCE from its divine source is to come on the heartless jackals who feed on Israel. In Zechariah 12, 14, as we have often seen, it takes a composite form of Gospel on the one hand,  and deliverance from tireless land grabbers on the other, not because land matters like love but because HE SAID SO. His is the land to apportion, and when He says it, He means it.

Notice in particular the red sections in the above extensive quotation from Isaiah. The cup, meaning the suffering, is to be taken from the hand of the Jew, and put into that of THOSE WHO AFFLICT her. This is precisely what Zechariah indicates, so that those who seek to DISPOSE of Jerusalem, will find themselves with a large load, and a deep trouble syndrome will moodily follow them. This is precisely the situation now; and it is not some slight crevice in history at which we look, but that ONCE ONLY EPISODE in 1900 years, the return of Israel to the land once divinely appointed UNCONDITIONALLY, by the will of the ORIGINAL MAKER (much more significant than the tediously presumptuous title, 'original inhabitant', as if men knew!), and now to be restored (cf. Micah 7;15ff., Ezekiel 37:6-39, SMR Appendix A, Galloping Events Ch. 4).

 

GRIPING ABOUT THE GRAPES

	This time now is, where following the crucifixion, to be repented of,
	the Jews for the FIRST time since the predicted destruction of Jerusalem (Daniel 12, Luke 21:24, Matthew 24:1ff.),
	and its falling into Gentile hands,
	are back in place, in their national home, with the scenario in place.

 

It is the first time that these things have come  to pass.

They signify the end of an Era (as in Luke 21).

It is not, as in some experiment, a law which rules, so that whenever you do this, you get that. It is a WORD which rules, and WHEN this happens, that will happen; and it will happen ONCE. It is HISTORY, not LAW which is in point. The history has come. The events  go.

Thus in the setting of predicted victories of massive and indeed monumental proportions (as in Zech. 12:6ff.), following the restoration of Israel, we are finding that the PLO (current representatives of the Philistines in terms of the name 'Palestine'),  with far the LARGER SHARE of the assigned land already digested by the Arab camp, is dissatisfied: it wants MORE and MORE and MORE.

In this extension of the ludicrous situation when in 1947 the Arab camp REFUSED a grant of even more of Palestine, with Jerusalem an international city, and the Jews in bits of it, via the dispassionate 'justice' of the UN, we find that a Map with more give-away land in view, required adequate personnel. There had to be, in other words, some acceptable leader to negotiate, whose heart was not that of terrorist in the offing. It had to be found from those whose names did not simply spell global gluttony, or Israel damnation, as once Arafat seemed to deem apt (they could go to hell, was the reported word, as one recalls). Since Arafat appeared indissolubly united with arms imports, war stirrings,  terrorist maintenance with whatever else, pending achievement of his territorial ambitions, thus Abbas was to guide the situation from their side. He, Abbas,  it was felt, desired peace, as a datum not to be readily cast out. Perhaps it was even passionate.

Months of argument, terrain debate, turf troubles between Arafat and Abbas ensued. This was not too helpful, as kids continued to become sods, or broken vessels via the courtesy of Hamas, operating in Israel, as if they could never leave alone what they had not yet grabbed,  and of such other gangs as can find their life work in this sort of thing.

Eventually, and most recently, Abbas resigned as Prime Minister. He had a reason to present for it. He simply was NOT PERMITTED, he declared, to have such control of the armed forces in the place as would ENABLE HIM to CARRY OUT the peace prospects, in dealing with the insurgent terrorist element in the territories occupied by the Palestinians: as the Road Map required.

Now you might have thought that this was categorical and conclusive enough. The man whom the awesome foursome saw fit to accept as PM, STATED that he was prevented from using PLO POWER to stop terrorism. Clearly, it was Arafat who was the opponent; and clearly it was Arafat who would disallow such a thing. This is in perfect line with the Israeli comment, that peace is not to be seen as his objective.

One would expect then, that either Abbas would be shown to be a liar, and that the power to control the violence, to stop the terrorism in fact had been handed to him freely, and that he had just not used it, having a heart for violence; or that the need was there to remove Arafat, on the two counts, of having prevented the necessary power from reaching the assigned man with the purpose delivered, an obstructionist, and of having failed to act to the limit of power to stop the terrorists, in this case, by stopping the man appointed to deal with them.

That would appear to show him as in line with the terrorists, unwilling to dismantle them.

This would mean that the Road Map would require his expulsion, if not death as a terrorist.

Thus one option would be that Abbas would be shown to be untruthful, and that Arafat would be shown NOT AT ALL to have obstructed the use of power, and hence the gift of power to Abbas, for the appointed ANTI-TERRORIST PURPOSE; and the other would be that Abbas would not be so shown, so that Arafat would loom in that light himself. No apparent and plausible denunciation of Abbas as a liar, as one who had all the power he could possibly have needed has surfaced; nor has he happily withdrawn his resignation, on the assurance that by all means, yes, the power is yours, you have only to use it!

However, one has not noticed any line of Arafat's seizure as a war criminal; of his dismissal even. Rather there is talk of its being wrong to expel him. Imagine this in the USA. Would George Bush want to harbour in the nation itself, a multiply involved terrorist ? Would it be considered it fitting to flirt in the shadows with 'proper' ways of letting him stay on ? Would it be a question of giving him too much prominence "on the world stage" as Colin Powell perhaps diplomatically put it, in the case of Arafat ? Would there be apprehensions to equal that of a leading terrorist, one who actively stopped the stoppage of terrorism, lurking WITHIN THE LAND, indeed being left at large! One cannot think so.

Israel, however, its land stolen, its rights forfeited, its citizens endlessly attacked by the residue of hostility not yet completed from Hitler, made into a land of cemeteries, a place of hospitals, a site for agonies, is to keep Arafat in ITS OWN LAND.  That appears the consensus. Many nations (The Australian, September 16, 2003) reportedly were expressive of desires for Arafat, far short of any discipline.

Let's be quite clear about this. Israel has far less than was given to them, to the Arab camp; and Jordan has far more of it than they do. In those two facts, you have an unseen part of the fracas, as far as many are concerned; and it is like the unseen part of an ice-berg.

It is their land by divine appointment and by human gift. It is outrage alone which keeps them from it; and it is, if not criminal, at least incredibly difficult to differentiate from it, to seek to FORCE them to keep in their land a major terrorist,  immune and in charge of operations against them, who is SHOWN to have REFUSED to allow force to prevent terrorism. By all accounts, in what way did this occur ? It was in a refusal  EVEN  WHEN it was the Prime Minister of the Palestinian -occupied territory, who was seeking so to use it for this stated purpose:  namely Abbas.

The world need not hope for peace from this; for God as we have just seen is very much on record as to the fact that HE HIMSELF will act when the time is ripe, yes in a way comparable with the Exodus and redolent with the implements of fury (Isaiah 66, Micah 7:15ff.). Indeed (Isaiah 2, Micah), He is on record with far more. He is going to abase human pride once and for all, and He alone will have glory in that day. Flesh will retire in the same dismal futility as that which Pharaoh displayed:  all talk, all power, all fiasco.

It would be wiser for the witless world to recover its wits, currently apparently  on loan not least

	to fear, passion and religious fraud,
	to some  mixture, or syncretism -
	these suitably oiled up perhaps, and secreting hope of pacifying large Islamic contingents of people*2 ,
	along with satiation of greed, insensitivity and exploitation:

and to start acting justly.

Propaganda has become a pandemic in this, and that will never help. Forget God ? the end of that is to be cut to pieces (Psalm 50), as a somewhat inglorious prospect. Truth does cut; and in truth, the King can wield the sword.

HIS PEACE MISSION to this world (cf. Isaiah 52:7ff.), has been an object of war both before and following the crucifixion of Christ. Next time, His charge is to rule (Psalm 2, 110, Micah 4, Psalm 67, Isaiah 11); and it is vain to imagine that because He is love, that He loves hatred. There is a place for the haters, and this is to be found where its name is just: in darkness. Darkness is what excludes light; and that is what has been done in vastly increasing measures, for two millenia. In the dark, you stumble. Exclusion of reality IS dark. Exclusion of a loving, merciful Creator who has shown prodigious, no infinite kindness, is a clandestine black hole within the darkness.

As the darkness grows, so does the stumbling.

It is better to be wise, and to love what is lovely, mercy and peace and truth, in justice and righteousness, not the insane seeming delusion that GOD MUST FIT.

Man acts; God fits, is the apparent program in mind, or at least, in train.

 In fact, man proposes, God disposes. If in love and patience, He waits (II Peter 3:9), never imagine this is equivalent to never acting. It is just that He never acts until the TIME COMES. This is a lesson which had to be learned MOST EXPLICITLY before (cf. Ezekiel 12:27ff., with Jeremiah 15:1ff.!).

When it does come, the appointed time, then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in its glory,  said Christ (Matthew 13:43).

That, it is the coming joy, for then is the truth and the love and the mercy and the justice of God to be seen; and this, it is delicious in truth, and in truth, delicious.

A word to Israel ...why die ? (cf. Ezekiel 33:11). Why not live ? Why continue to wander ...

Will you not once be made clean, asks your own prophet, Jeremiah (13:27): "WHEN SHALL IT ONCE BE ?"

 

NOTES

*1 For some coverage in addition to Joyful Jottings 22-25, and extending into the divine predictions on nations and cities, on the Messiah's role and the whole conspectus of operations, see The Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet Ch. 4.

*2  See on this trend,  Lord of Life Ch. 8 .