JOY COMES IN THE MORNING

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Rev. Dr. Robert E. Donaldson

Published September 2003,

World Wide Web Witness Inc.

PREFACE

Psalm 30:5 tells us that weeping may endure for a night, but JOY comes in the morning. He moves to the shadow of death, but sees through it, and is assured, "O Lord my God, I will give thanks to You forever."

This is an index. Psalm 17 declares of David, that when he awakes, "as for me, I will see Your face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake with Your likeness." The same concept rules: the morning, when I awake ... it is one. THAT morning is like the resurrection morn of Christ. In what way ? In this: that it is a total transformation. Trial is past; power is present; production is future, in this case, in the souls that will constitute for Him, His children, though He was cut off from the generation of the living (Isaiah 53:8).

Again, we read in Psalm 49:14-15, this:

"Like sheep they are laid in the grave;

Death shall feed on them;

The upright shall have dominion over them in the morning;

And their beauty shall be consumed in the grave, far from their dwelling.

But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave,

For He shall receive me. Selah"

IN THE MORNING, that is when the power of the grave past in prescription and then in performance for all His people (as in Isaiah 26:19), the Lord has assembled with Him, His redeemed, "the upright shall have dominion over them" (Psalm 49:14). Then, as Christ declared in Matthew 13 of the day when the weeds are removed, then " shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father."

JOY comes in the morning. However vicious the current, the contemporary aspirations of anguished history; however ludicrous the misrepresentations which we suffer, however poignant our cutting off, as the world shrugs about us, deplores, in its church dress of Judas or otherwise: yet joy comes in the morning. It is happiness to be with the Lord without intermission or separation, to know as we are known, to see the things that are past, as one sees a photograph, knowing this is far better, being life, and not mere preparation for its fulness.

Thus in this volume, we plan to have various news items which either speak of the NEARNESS of morning, or of the CONTRAST to it, the CALL for it or the CONSEQUENCE of it, or indeed, the NEED to act while it is yet day. Does it not say, in Isaiah 21:11-12, that there is need to consider the night ?

^"The burden against Dumah.

"He calls to me out of Seir,

'Watchman, what of the night?

Watchman, what of the night?'

"The watchman said,

'The morning comes, and also the night.

If you will inquire, inquire;
Return! Come back!' "

What indeed of the NIGHT! Small wonder he repeats the question. This is no vain repetition! It is pregnant. The morning is coming, but the night knocks like an armed man.

Did not Christ declare it,

"I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day;
the night is coming when no man can work" (John 9:4).

One reason, without doubt, that this author has written so much so suddenly, and at such a rate, is this, that the night is coming when truth will be intolerable entirely, when the passion of the Beast, that social-economic-financial-political-religious mess men will revere as world community, is assuredly coming (cf. Revelation 13, 17). And in it, there will such an industrious abuse of power, such a complete folly of sanctified humanism, a revering of man by man for man, that the spreading forth of truth, of reason for faith, of the wonder of Christ, of the poignancy of loss from His generously constructed fold, of the severity of the final ruin based on refusal of remedy (John 3:19), the tracing of the fulfilments of His word, the alerting of the people whom, after all, Christ so loved that He came, is a commission indeed.

After that day, however, is the morning. The night comes, WHAT OF THE NIGHT ? What indeed ? such a conglomeration of the sores of psychology, the soaring vanities of sociology, the aimless confusion of biology, the squandering heights of self-acclaiming politics in that hideous display unit, HUMAN RACISM, with such a rock fall of reality on it, will it be, that one may well ask! Such a pantomime of man overcome and so distorted from his created mould that he will appear as if truncated, a triangle indeed of two sides, a square with three, a pentagon with four, more dead than alive, such a show of superior inferiority, stylish uncouthness, insidious sovereignty, prying pulses of power, that though "the morning comes", it will assertively first challenge, "and also the night".

"Return, come back!" (Isaiah 20:11-12). What is the use of careering, carousing, cascading into judgment. RETURN! is the message. It has always been the message since the Fall. It is not to some unknown, but to the purity of the personal God who first made us that the call comes. It is not to the exotic or despotic, but to the Creator who recreates the heart, realigns the spirit, creates for each who receives Him, an eternity in holiness, and leads His sheep who shall thirst no more, that one comes (Revelation 7:15-17). It is to this personal God who made personality, who donates peace, rest of heart and strength in the soul, who has come, who will come and that soon: it is to Him that one returns, and in returning, finds one is simply now AT HOME!

And after that, joy comes in the morning.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1. Pantheism or Purity,

The glorious and absolute difference of God!

Chapter 2

News 284

The Advertiser, August 28, 2003

Downgrading Clerical Liberty

Gets its Come-Uppance

Chapter 3

FEED AND TELL –

TV and TO BE ?

Violence is not inviolate to judgment,