JOYFUL JOTTINGS 8

II Peter 3 is a marvel. Look at it !

 

It tells you that the prophets have not been slack in WARNINGS! (II Peter 3:1-2). THESE are to stir you up and make you awake, alert and prepared, like pilots about to fly over World War II Germany, getting their briefings.

SCOFFERS are the main thrust here. They, says Peter, are GOING TO COME! Their SPECIAL TIME is in the "last days", which of course are those in which the current freedoms gradually, and then more and more quickly come to a climax of abuse, leading to the normal slavery which sin produces: a corrupted, corrupting world going to its fall, beyond redemption. They have been predicted, says Peter, not only by the apostles but by the prophets. In fact, we read in Jeremiah 23:20, for example, an inspired exposure of the flaunting flutings, the tauntings pipings of the false prophets in Israel, substituting a "dream" for the word of God.
 

• "In the latter days, you will consider it perfectly," says Jeremiah. Daniel 9 shows us how it will end!

It is as stated: we DO NOW consider the sort of unspiritual, spiritistic phenomenon spoken of by Jeremiah "perfectly", that is in consummate proportions. It has reached its end-product, the end of the assembly line for impudence, for arrogance and for folly cf. The Shadow of a Mighty Rock -SMR, pp.683ff., 699ff., 836ff., 857ff., 863ff., 911ff., 946ff., 955ff.; Biblical Blessings, Appendix 3, pp. 250ff., Barbs, Arrows and Balms, Appendix IV, Appendix III, Item 30. The "walking after their own lusts" of II Peter 3:3, meaning according to their own unfettered desires, their extravanganzas without restraint, is likewise fulfilled to perfection. How humbling for the scoffers that not only their content in kind, but their arrogant romancing, their impious presumptions are so characterised so long before they reach they hey-day, a day in itself, predicted with the divine composure!

THEIR TAUNTS: What about this Christ ? they say. Long time, no see! Isn't He supposed to be coming ?
Quite incredibly - but with what a tribute to the blinding effects of unredeemed sin - they are NOT reading the guide book, even WHILE they mock, and NOT noticing that the route traced for the coming  cataclysm is being precisely followed (see SMR, Ch.8, and also 9).

TIME, say they, is the thing. IT goes on; but as to any developments ? why the generations come and go, THAT is the thing. There is a continuity about things, 'Nature' goes its way. It is as it was SINCE CREATION.

Now this is a comparatively recent thing, this stress on the word, "creation", by the ungodly who do not believe, and in fact these days, are fairly uniformly indoctrinated with the sheer fantasy that things made themselves, possibly starting with nothing as "their" commencement (though of course on that basis "they" were not there at all to HAVE a basis), and always finding the intelligence and codification capacity, the engineering and administrative skill to run the greatest and most complex designs of all time, from the same general area, that is, NOTHING. For science it is not advantageous! For science falsely  so-called, this sort of thing is normal. It goes with astrology and other romances of the unfettered spirit, when mind is cast aside.

NO, say, they, it all continues as since creation.

Now as often noted in this Site, 'creation' is ONE THING we know a lot about! We are acquainted with it, as with the face of an old and faithful friend. WE DO IT CONSTANTLY! We create theories about world or neighbourhood events, business, political developments, social events - whatever. We create poetry, sculpture, art, letters, and alas, many create 'names' for other people by equally prodigious acts of ... creative thought. Slander runs like a sprinter. In creation, then, fantasy is one aspect; constructive mental comprehension is another, but it is all creation. The human race is rich in it, for good and for evil.

We EXPERIENCE it in ourselves, NOT in making ourselves, for it is hard to make with what is not there in the first place, when YOU are not there either. No, we create WITH and THROUGH ourselves. BEING here, we do what comes within the created capacities with which we create. It is all created. Creation is one of the commonest things on this particular planet. It is a happening.

Now the newish thing is this:

• that those who do not like to talk about creation,
• preferring NOT the bare essential facts, that WHAT IS HERE IS NOT COMING BUT HAS COME, in all its basic patterns and powers,
• but the IMAGINED (and yes, permit me, the 'created' ) IDEA that what is NOT SEEN is nevertheless happening because that is the way it is (although that is the way it is not, in laboratory and observational terms):
• these people are changing their vocabulary.

Granted, they still start with what is not available in data, and use this non-data base to make a non-theory speculation, to explain what is not found (they call this organic evolution as before). Granted that they invoke anti-laws never found, and anti-logic which never has worked, to explain what is not found: that is what is constant. Yet NOW they are going further. This is the comparatively new thing, trend or development at the common level. You can see, perhaps, why this is.

Now they like to talk of 'creation' - because further actual science is showing the amazing brilliance of design (cf. SMR pp. 251ff.), incredible capacities of thought and deep comprehension involved in what is happening at the most minute levels in our physical beings, and because things DO NOT IN PRACTICE show themselves to have come in stages at the basic level, but at once. This is troublesome to people like Harvard's Jay Gould^*1, and while they may try to skirt around it with words and phrases, they pay tribute to this SUDDENNESS, and as we have seen in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock (esp. Chs.1-2), and in That Magnificent Rock (esp. Chs.1,7,8), there can even be expostulation, even phrases like "literally incomprehensible" used of the idea that it all came gradually. From whom ? Why from better informed evolutionists! The main reason for this, is that it did not. Some things at least are faced up to in the end, by the more adventurous and factually inclined of the kind, caught in this mire.

What then is the troubled evolutionist to do? He MUST seem up-to-date! He MUST make allowances for research in some way, even if the results are not in his perspectives. What he does is this: He talks of "creation" which is nice when you are seeing incredibly brilliant designs "arrive" in the record, and "act" in current research, but he then makes this word mean something else. It now comes to be:  an event of no ground, happening for no reason, with no basis, and moving along nicely with no thrust. For anti-science, this is perfect. It makes Alice in Wonderland seem by comparison almost an example of consistency, logic and discipline of thought! It gives new wings to fantasy, and new scope for delusion. But you can see how it comes about: the WORD 'creation' in this context,  is a sop to the fact. The idea of having a theory to explain what does not happen, continues. But at least a nice 'new' word is being used, under some constraint!

Back to II Peter: in 3:4, the prediction is this: That in the LAST TIMES, the NATURE of the SCOFFING will include this point, that "all things continue as they were from the beginning of CREATION"!

A few years ago, that might have seemed to putting into the mouths of scoffers, a language, a phrasing, a term they did not use! 'Creation" ? Would they use such a term! Not so now.

And NOW! Here is the precision:
 

• it is NOW while the other signs of His approaching return, who created in man the capacity for the creativeness which, misused, produces such magic mysteries as this -
• it is NOW as things warm up and steam and bubble that this TERM, 'Creation' is indeed used BY SUCH PEOPLE AS THOSE WHO SCOFF.

And that ? It is accuracy in prediction, right down to the word. It is not merely the ATTITUDE, nor its COMMONNESS which is predicted. It is the WORD. And that ? It is happening. In terms of scientific method
( you may recall, that actually this deals FIRST with what happens, and then accounts for it), this is a prodigious precision from the pen of inspired Peter (cf. his own account of inspiration in II Peter 1:16-21, and Paul's in I Corinthians 2:9-13). After all, when the words are guided by the Lord, it is to be expected that they be right! And they are! (Cf. SMR Appendix D.)

But this is not all. The apostle, in II Peter 3, proceeds with more, after this feat of prediction from the mouth of the Lord, who equally in His own Person fulfilled precisely what He had to do, so that NO ONE has EVER been able to SHOW that He failed in anything on earth, in terms of fulfilling prediction, whilst the MOTIVE to do so was extreme and intense!

II Peter 3:5-6 then shows that the mockery at the LAST TIMES will include a special, emphasised feature. It will concern the FLOOD, by which "the world that then existed, perished, being flooded with water". Of this, charges the epistle of Peter of these end-time scoffers, they are going to be WILFULLY IGNORANT. They will shut their eyes to the FACTS (see News 1, for example).

All this is happening like the movement of a suburban train, down the listed row of stations, as it approaches it destination. The world accordingly is approaching its own destination. Just as - logically - it did not start for no reason, with no ground and from no source; so it will not finish for no reason!  Its end, when it gets there, in the midst of judgments yet to be, is to be "with fire". Water last time, fire next. (See II Peter 3:7,10-11.) There is to be a "fervent heat". What mockery that could produce, even a hundred years ago. Yet now, it is just the thing: it is as new as 1945, as the atomic bomb. The interplay of matter and energy is better understood now, and the results of releasing that energy enshrined in matter has been seen in Hiroshima. Mode is now better understood, so showing the REASONABLENESS of Peter's statement of the end. For all that, it is to be produced, the end like the beginning, by the MAKER of it all! THAT is HIS prerogative, just as sin is the prerogative of rebellious flesh.

Interesting, isn't it? Scientific in its essence, unlike the fabricated follies which keep claiming this and that (see
A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 1), and just not happening to find that it ... happens. THAT is one profound difference between fact and fiction, capacity and incapacity, truth and falsehood. The OTHER stuff, this disordered imagination hypothesis, built literally on nothing, DOES NOT HAPPEN. As you can see in That Magnificent Rock, Ch.1, they TRY to MAKE it happen, but it refuses. They give it every chance, they search the heavens for signals, they move mountains of matter for results. No go.

But the word of the Lord: it is THIS which happens. That happens to be the way that it is.

Now what is to be done? First, it is time to jettison the misuse of creativity in making foolish, febrile, feverish theories, illogical at the start, unverified at the finish, and to return to the only word which stays around: the word of God. It ALWAYS happens. There is NO CASE in all its hundreds of thousands of words where it claims what is not so. Get back to creation by the Creator, your own in particular, and the creation of sin by your own means, and repent (Luke 13:1-3), a sina qua non, an absolute necessity, and a logical one. Wrong is no good as a way, it conflicts with reality. It is enough to be pardoned; do not try to LIVE WRONG. It is better to go the wrong way on an express lane in a super-highway than that! (Not that some people apparently, have not tried that!)

Peter has advice, which is too good to miss. In II Peter 3:12-18, we find this:
 

• a) Be godly, holy in your ways and life.
• b) Have godly expectations of a new heaven and new earth, when this 'first house' is over, this universe.
• c) Be blameless in virtue, diligent in life.
• d) Be thankful that the Lord is not One to lose His temper, but is longsuffering, giving you such extended opportunities to come to Him, before the time for repentance is past, and the day of redemption is over, and the blood of Christ, shed on the Cross as Calvary, is no longer the point, to receive this sacrifice in your stead; but rather the point comes to be the judgment of God, because you did not receive the Saviour, hence having no just cover at all for your sins.
• e) Avoid the fictions that mock creation, and similar foolish errors, and be steadfast in faith.
• f) Grow in grace and knowledge of Christ: first meeting Him through His Spirit, and the word of God, in repentance being found:for He does not despise a humble and a contrite heart; and then being diligent in prayer, life in His life, with i) understanding growing of His word and ways, ii) His company bracing your heart, and iii) growth in your whole spiritual outlook and behaviour.