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THE SPACE RACE WAS OVER LONG AGO
First, what IS the space race ? It WAS a race for control or power in space. The US won as far as the moon was concerned. Now it is co-operating with Russia on some evident casualty in the crockery of space, which is more crock than cock of the space walk.
Next it is intelligence in space. There is plenty of that, as obvious as on earth, in the dimension and order and the integration with time, and the passing of things in that momentous characterisability which ever beckons and ever manifests itself more, to the human mind. It is there. But they want it to be in some bodily format: perhaps force of habit. We are, so something else might be. A Jaguar might feel the same if landed on Mars; but then there would be some excuse for it. It does not have the power to relate cause and effect as we do. There are simply no factories on Mars, ever found, hinted or suggested; hence it would be an unreasonable thought, if the Jaguar could think, and indulged it.
Men can think and they indulge it. It still is an unreasonable thought. We needed manufacture (or cognito-facture, let's settle for 'creation'), and the Manufacturer, as we have often demonstrated, left His handbook with us, who are His handiwork. Nevertheless they look - some intelligence from space. The intelligence is EVIDENCED in the parcel called man, in his DNA in code which expresses it, as we have also shown (as in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock - SMR, Chs.1-3), to perfection of definition. It is not however being used well when it is looked for in terms of some non-manufactured being who is not God. They don't come that way. That's the way it is down here: you need what it takes to get what you want. What has happened however already, is the point.
Now in our last Jotting, we saw the glory of the Lord expressed in His creation of and dealings with that time-frame unit, that space-suit being, that spirit encapsulated, known as MAN. With the Prince of Peace glorifying His Father in that flesh suit, subtly introduced from the womb, virgin borne and virgin born, we grasped how great is the grandeur which can surpass the sun EVEN when so humbled - and not humbled by anyone but Himself.
Space man ? HE has come already.
The SPIRITUALLY insane endeavours (Hosea 9:7) to try to grab token of life from the dead outposts like Mars, in view of what the Bible clearly says (Psalm 115:16 -
"The
heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD's;
But
the earth He has given to the children of men") -
and the clear intimations of Genesis 1-2, concerning the scope of His creation,
are alas unlikely to go unrebuked. If nowadays, the United Nations feels able to rebuke and invade a land, because of the gross abuses of a nation which displeases it, however retardedly, is it at all likely that the fashioner of the mind of man will watch with delighted aplomb the rebellious and reckless mind of man asserting itself in domains where the site has not been made for it to dwell, while dallying with every irrational folly in justification! The book of Revelation is answer enough to the idolatries of man, as that creation carries the knowledge his creator both enabled and predicted he would gain (Daniel 12:4), before His own re-entry as King. On that score consider this tableau, as the Book races to the end:
"But the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk. And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts" - Rev. 9:20-21. That is noted when a vast international military conflict is being unleashed.
No, such follies as seeking sovereignty in space, on the part of man, will not go unrebuked, in the end; and indeed in the appalling accumulation of space junk with its radio-active and other perils, only a little imagination is needed to see a beginning of that rebuke! Meanwhile, they do show the confusion which comes, when blindness rules, and evidence is disregarded. If in SMR we have gone to the point of invalidating this sort of cause-free thinking, it is only to make its inherent absurdity formal (SMR Chs.1,3,5,10).
In fact, not only has the Spiritual Spaceman already come; He has come from beyond space, as its Maker. He has not MOVED about in space, but INVESTED it with His Person, like an author entering into the scenario and scenes of His own book. The visit was paid as and when predicted, with the scenario delivered hundreds of years before, and first intimated long before that. It is better than a space man, therefore, it is the Saviour as Man, ultra-space, and then intra-space.
When then will man stop worshipping the creation rather than the Creator, looking for IT do "do its thing", when this is from moment to moment, precisely what is NOT and is NEVER seen to be its thing, and what is SYSTEMATICALLY removed from its power, since it is merely something set to do what it does. Logical imagination is not part of that; it is part of us.
And as to us, we cannot do it. You need more than that, not less. We were not made that way, though we can mess about with what He made, in more ways than one, both morally and mentally. What is it like ? It resembles goggling children, mesmerised by hope, instead of realising God made the universe to be what it is, and us to be what we are, giving to heaven and earth alike (Colossians 1:19ff.), NONE but the God-who-made-space as Saviour-in-format-of-man, as Saviour for any anywhere.
Saviour ? Have you noticed that man is not well - not quite all right ? Good. You are right. If it isn't dishonesty, look for pride, or if not that, for complacency, or incredible self-centredness, even to the point of becoming god by oversight, and acting the part with all the flair of a child of 2 years, playing Madame Butterfly at the Met!
Man NEEDS a saviour because he has lost his spiritual virginity, and needs innocence and truth and purity and power and life, restored. God sent His Son to make and provide peace (Isaiah 9), and the murder resulting, though pre-planned into the scenario as a way to bring justice satisfaction, since love was willing to have the murder as a sacrifice for sin, even for murderers, still was not helpful as a show of virtue on man's part. That divine Son is still on offer in the GOSPEL which God predicted for thousands of years (Barbs, Arrows and Balms 17), with intense precision, and then enacted so that now it is preached in precise conformity to that predictive prescription, to all nations, just as He said it would be, ages before His Son was murdered. It all happens. It always happens. This is the best law of regularity you can find; for it knows no qualification, ever!
What a delightful thing mankind is - or would be, could be, if he were altogether without sin. That is the only way he is even tolerable, in the end. That of course is what destiny shows. Hell is the name of the other option. Its broad highway is littered with horror (Matthew 7:211ff., Isaiah 14:11, 57:10-12), not without grounds (Isaiah 59, Jeremiah 7:9ff.). The confused religionist there joins the obtuse self-vaunter; some trot; some gallop. The end however is not worth the effort.
Love is the name of Him who facilitates its avoidance, enables heaven and came to earth to secure HIS squad... His 'children', with whom He has such empathy as we see.
As to them, theirs is the One who IS altogether delightful, not only because He is without sin, His motives so pure that the very lamb might seem spoiled by comparison, but because He made the prototype and in love was prepared to suffer all that was necessary for its deliverance. That is underivative, ultimate, final and original beauty! It is beauty at its source. And to think that beauty at its source should come to us, is entirely overwhelming.
He then engenders children of His own, as we saw, from Isaiah 53 earlier (cf. Isaiah 61:1-3), having had no family on earth, because "He was cut off from the land of the living " (Isaiah 53:8).
That, that is a marvel. To be willing to be ostracised by chaff is choice, for such a saving mission as His; to be willing still to redeem it, and to pay for it, empty though it was, this is a cause of worship, so delightful because He is, after all, God Almighty in the flesh (John 8:58)...
How awful it if were not proper to worship such a ONE! Rejoice you pure in heart, for it is right and good and fitting and seemly , and eminently to be desired (cf. John 20:26-29). Recall what was shown of HIm when we looked at Psalm 110 earlier! (Joyful Jottings 23).
He engendered children
of
His own (recall Isaiah 53:10 and its exposition - The Kingdom of Heaven,
Ch.9, pp. 153ff.), and of course
Hebrews 2:10ff., speaking of Him to whom the Father says,
"Thy
throne O God, is for ever and ever" (1:8), has this -
As
to the last reference, it is in turn from Isaiah 8, where in 8:20 God said
this:
Before
this, Isaiah is led to reveal the Messiah,
"He will be a sanctuary, but a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence
to both the houses of Israel" - verse 14,
made obvious in 32:1-3, as in 40:10. It is this Messiah who is then portrayed
with His disciples, just as in Psalm 40, with His body, delighted to act,
so here prepared and potent for service in spiritual things. Indeed, He
and His disciples become "signs and wonders"
and as such they did indeed serve, being personally appointed to this end
by the Father (Isaiah 9:1-7, cf. Isaiah 7:11,14, where this is prophetically
definitive of the Messiah as such, the PERSON who would be the sign).
He
and the CHILDREN whom the Father has given Him (as in John 6:37,39,44,
12:32) ...
children!
"Here am I and the children whom God has given Me." These
are they who must grow up - if they are alive!
Look
at it in Ephesians 4:15! Next time we shall look at that in its Biblical
setting. Growing up ? Great thing for children...
Note:
See also A Spiritual Potpourri, Chs.1-3,
and That Magnificent Rock, Ch.7, part
F; and Index: SPACE.