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Chapter 1

BEGINNINGS

I was born in 1928, the day after Australia day. Soon the depression would hit, but we were relatively insulated, living in a hill-top property of vast views in Heidelberg. The years of my childhood were intensely happy, despite a crushing occurrence in terms of my left hand, at age 4, when two relatives for fun tried to turn a chaff-cutter fast, while I, unknown to them, had rested my hand on one of the little wheels as I patted a dog. Fortunately, it was with my right hand I patted - I like dogs.

My mother was exceedingly literary, as well as practical and it has always struck me as a great shame they did not have her do Medicine, but according to some of the ideas current then (around 1905) felt this was not the natural thing, but rather to marry. Her disquisitive mind with practical address would have made for a fascinating result. It was her brother however who was permitted that study and he did become a prominent medical specialist.

From childhood my imagination could be vastly stirred, and I loved books of imageries and thoughts. Passing through the State School, exceptionally well-run by a fine Christian Principal, I had some times of interest. On one occasion, when we were about 8, we were to give stories, and mine apparently went on and on, and impressed the teacher. The next thing was this, that the Headmaster came in and I was set on a box and invited to declaim! There was much kindness in those days.

I was entered for Scotch suddenly, at age 11, just before war started, and the war ended while I was still there. Dux of the Junior School, and of Scripture - an augury - I went on to be awarded the Scotch Council Scholarship, which came to me quite readily, since you simply had to be first in the A form for that year (or more precisely perhaps, top the five forms, since top of the A form was likely to have the highest average of any of them). The scholarship was good to have and remained with me to my departure, having spread my studies from Chemistry and Maths to Latin and French, Economics and British History, as well as two Englishes.

Amazing at it now seems, in the Matriculation studies, I was Dux of Chemistry as well as of more literary subjects; but the fact remains, it had a theoretical thrust as presented to us, which I found intensely satisfying. Indeed, in the beginning of year 11, it was customary for this entry to the last two years, to be given an historical coverage leading through various theoretical questions and answers that issued in more modern Chemistry. This was the very sort of way I like to think, probing, finding, questioning, answering, developing, refining and so forth, and although it was usual for nearly all to fail and much very badly (shock tactics, it seemed), the teacher was highly surprised to find my work soaring above the ruins at 88%. Do you ALWAYS do this sort of thing, He asked me, or was this just a fluke! My bent is not practical, and this work was in my line.

During these years, 12-17 or so, not only were there the joys of surfing at Ocean Grove, where we spent a good 5 weeks of Summer holidays, camping, a time which left with me an enduring love of and delight in the ocean and its cliffs, dunes and ways, but there was a farm to which my brother went, and this became the scene of horse-riding for which I had great attachment, delighting in galloping along the country lanes. One farmer in the area, if I recall, expressed the view that that youngster would come to grief one day, in view of the way he rode. It almost happened. On one occasion, galloping to catch a bus, I found my horse on the slightly moist verge, managed to lose its footing.

Perhaps nothing if not quick, I at once saw that this could mean a fall and that its body could roll over onto mine with disastrous results. Hence I at once detached my foot from the stirrup, to be free; but the steed regained its footing with a jolt which sent me, thus detached, flying through the air, over the gravel road. I do not forget that purely delightful feeling of soaring like a bird, with the green grass contrasting with the orange-fawn gravel to make a delicious ensemble. Landing was no great problem, since in line with the fashion of those days, I had on a sports coat with padding on my shoulders, so escaping almost any trouble at all!

While some horses can be mean, tricky, walking traps to rub your leg over a post, or even act as a concertina, so that the saddle is displaced, and we had one like that which mercifully rarely came to me, my own horse was sturdy, inclined to take a chance, but stout for a gallop. Once, as I was early in riding at about 12 years of age, it saw a spreading pine tree on a rise, a branch just above its own back in height, and suddenly rushing to this, it would have given me real trouble if the overhanging branch swept me off, or broke some part of me. However, I saw the need to lie right back on its rump, so that I added as little as possible to its own height, and nothing happened, except perhaps a lesson in me: watch your way!

A little later, when I was 13, nearly 14, a family friend was going by ship to Brisbane and offered to have me come as a companion. The vessel we took in that end of 1941 year was a cargo ship of about 8000 tons, and allowed quite a few passengers. It had a deck cabin, and for 5 pounds, I was made occupant of it, a reduction for student use, possibly having applied.

"Shut the port-hole!" was the strenuous shout that resounded in the night air! I had opened it for a moment to do something, and the stringency of our situation was thus brought to my clear attention. The ship that sailed when we had been supposed to move from Melbourne, had apparently been torpedoed, and the need to prevent the vigilant eye of a possibly lurking enemy from sighting us was immense! Both the excitement of a descent to the ocean and the horror of being its cause, if I recall, entered my mind. It was not without some relief that we found ourselves still on the high seas and onward bent to Brisbane.

We obviously had little idea of the danger to Australia in those days and things were not always what they seemed. For example. I had dressed in a Donegal tweed suit, and in Brisbane, some people we met in a business setting took me for a young Englishman of some 26 years, approximately double my age! Some youths can look like that, and apparently this one did. It was an appearance that savvy knowledge of mankind did not accompany.

This escape reminds me of an event later in my 'teen years, when hiking in the mountains near Marysville in Victoria, I was moving alongside a waterfall in dense scrub, and coming down a small incline, with everything obscured in terms of perspective, I suddenly emerged on a bare rock directly over the falls! It entered one's mind that another step in the impetus of the vigorous movement through the obstructing bushes and I would perhaps not have been writing now! How effective is the Lord is preserving His people for their life's work. One is as amazingly protected as another allowed to dash; but one thing is sure, precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints, and His prevenient mercies are of His own depth and wisdom. I remember thinking of one very nice seeming lad of about my own age, who at about 17-18 years of age was killed in traffic, just as his career brimmed ready, like a full river.

The thought comes to mind, Perhaps he had already done much in gracious Christian testimony, integrity and kindness, and the quality counts. You see, I remember him for one, without any effort, though I was not a close friend.

As Isaiah 57:1-7 puts it,
 

                                Under the clefts of the rocks?

                                To offer sacrifice."

There we see that they wanted to worship naturalistic things, idols or whatever other physical variant might appeal, and their sodden spirits were submissive to these illusory deities, while they even had the cheek to come near to God, Him who made their children, and to offer the young as sacrificial victims to illusory gods! It is very much like the present, where educational dreams are made mandatory for harassed Christian children, and even their independent schools are often taken into protective custody as far as possible, being required not just to ensure that children know the state of the case vis-à-vis these confrontations amongst scientists, and the nature of scientific method, but SERVE the gods of naturalism in their overall presentation and preparation. If physical death is worse, then the flames are the same, physical or mental, moral or spiritual!

The world seems to be seeking to make of itself an idiot, complete with straw in the old hat, despite the fact that its evolutionary fantasies have long been exposed as old hat

(cf. The gods of naturalism have no go!, Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch. 4, Beauty for Ashes Ch. 3,
The Desire of the Nations and the Crystalline Fire of Faith Ch. 2, http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/Area/bios/default.asp).

Here the naturalistic myth laced with whatever religious rubbish seems proper to the inventors of gods, explicit or implicit, is seen in contrast with the true love of God, in whom is confidence founded on truth, from whom is mercy to be gained, not as an economist might dole out reward for precisely this or that, but with an abundance of understanding. You will notice for example that in Matthew 25, the parable of the sheep and goats of the nations implies that SHEEP as sheep gain acknowledgement of good done (and because these are Christians, AS in love in principle at least, it is looked upon with joy), and GOATS are condemned as goats, for every failure to love.

That is the nature of mercy: God WANTS to save and narrow conceits, imaginations of purchasing power in heaven by earthly labours of aspiration for importance are as irrelevant as is a diamond necklace to a woman of discernment, from a husband who does not love her.

But let us return to Scotch, which I did regularly from 1939-1946.

After a time, I found a fellow student, and to use his term, we became 'buddies'. I for my part was delighted to find someone who had a strong moral sense, a crisp manner and a sense of spiritual significance, practicality and seemed to show scanning alertness. Alas, in Scotch College not a lot of this was to be seen, at least by the non-Christian that I then was.

There did develop in this young person, however, a fierce competitiveness which distorted the vision splendid (the way gravity is supposed by Einstein to present a distortion in space-time), and seemed to make accuracy less reliable. To my mind, at the academic level, results poured in, and competition was if a slight spice, nothing really substantial.  It was just a matter of being and functioning and receiving whatever it was that came. Why strive ?

To be first was interesting; to understand was crucial. Not competition  but consummation, in the attainment of understanding and the capacity to thrust home what was there, this seems to have been the way I felt. The material was arresting, the need of mastering it obvious and the value of it immense. Moreover at the personal level, faithfulness and perceptive sensibility were always important ... but suddenly were seen to diminish. Here came change, an unexpected decline.  In this area therefore, the vision faded and with it the interpersonal felicity of earlier days.

There is always room for complementarity. If the forte of one was to be strong in method, then mine perhaps was to excel in understanding and creativity, so that we were different.  Both of these qualities have great value. To leave the actual case, and look at principles, if there were only method, without inspiration, where would interpretation of the wonderful be for the method of use; and if there were only creativity and such interpretation, where would its practical implementation be ? Naturally, these were only trends in any case, but it does bring up the whole point in human relationships, of what man seeks, whether in a friend, a political sphere or a society and often there is a reciprocity in this, with results to match.

There is a desire to see someone who not only looks good, but is good; of this there is no doubt, as you find by the negative strength of the criticism when someone fails in some point. It is often as if some huge city were destroyed when some perhaps comparatively minor fault is found, or error in judgment. One fault becomes another's responsive fault, and the cyclotron readily continues.

The ASPIRATION for what is perfect is so strong that it is not merely, in the subjective feeling of many, a failure but an affront when this happens. To be sure, this may come partly from a form of hypocrisy, so that people failing themselves in some point, and not keen to acknowledge it even to themselves, then with any variety of rationalisation and mental changing of the rules, vent on the one in whom they had hope, their disappointment that NO ONE is around, who is DOING it fully.

With leadership, there is much the same criterion, as in the directly moral realm. The leader who fails is more than an exalted shop-keeper whose books, or ways failed to impress in this or that, or in some phase or fashion or feature; he is an iconic failure. He lets you down. The hope is forsaken, yes, but more than this, the ideal is dimmed or dashed or at least dented, and it seems that this is the sort of thing that many people find almost impossible to tolerate, if not in their actions, at least in their hearts. If it fails within, they are super-sensitive when it fails outside.

Moreover, a similar phenomenon is not distant in spiritual leadership, since the number of crack-pot, non-based, irrational power lusts which seek to distinguish themselves as religions, some major, is vast, and those who watch the cents in commerce, and the tax returns with eagle eye, soaring in sophistication, readily follow what is worse than the prevailing wind. They seem to itch for

	the witch (strange pseudo-supernatural powers),
	the switch (brute force to implement their baseless religion) or
	the ditch (where rationality being dumped, any number of absurdities of self-centred arrogance meet the mud and come up like monsters from the deep, to oppress mankind). II Timothy 4:1ff. predicts such a thing, and the 21st century wallows in it.

In the case of the 'buddy' of some time in my youth, where a spiritual and moral pleasantness was so happy an additive and atmosphere, there was change in him. Together first with a loss in sensitivity,  at length there came also and over the years,  a sense of this-worldliness and a deliberate distancing from any clarity about Christ, and worse, about His deity. The former sense of the presence of some measure of godliness that one sensed, had seemed to yield to the all too natural smog of rebellion in his words. Yet a man's love for his friend does not depend on such things, or on the passing blemish in oneself or the other, but seeks as a father, for good in the end.

This is not absolute, for man may fall for ever, and one for whom a person seeks, for that person to find God, may at  last have to be yielded to the devastation which is the final place of a lightless life. Yet diligently to seek good IS a work of that love of heart without which man is a pain in the neck, and a sore on the forehead. It is there, in the love of God,  that all personal and inter-personal relationship may safely rest, in that perfection which is the Lord's alone, never fades, or is corrupted. To spurn it is to spurn life.

To know the Lord is the only solution where love and truth, peace and holiness, grace and sensitivity, concern and constancy proceed in unison on a  base that is divine ... and in Him,  immutable,  beautiful and dutiful.

Steadfastness, alas, is not a signal in this world, readily understood; and in its impatient impenitence, it has another way. The ultimate environment of man needs application, and when it is found and realised, in the only intermediary between God and man, Jesus Christ, then there is a new heredity also, that of a child of God (cf. I John 3).

When it comes to spiritual wanderlust, where the national power of man to seek knowledge and wisdom is perversely distorted into a movement away from the very basis of life to anything-ness, to quiddity-parade, vapidity admiration, where such delusion is provided, it is ludicrous. In gravamen however, it is impressive, for the case has a certain consistency, as does a raging storm. This has appeared from the first family on this earth, and now mounts like a mushroom cloud, radiating death as man seeks to find in himself, his world or his thought, the power and the splendour that created him. Since a part of man does not have the minimally distinguishing features for the creation of man, this is a process in which man becomes idolater extraordinary, like a page worshipping the book, or another page, or a paragraph, and with a sensuous intemperance, ignoring the author.

The love of God, inspiration of millions, becomes more generally degraded into the love of this world, of man's own functions and relationships, so that the peripheral becomes central, and the obvious impossible. So it goes for many, and for many there is no return.

What then of any particular example of such false religions, founded on force, fable or distortion of what is true ? Sometimes in crankiness they may tend to do this, eating themselves up with some obsessive thought, power lust, wantonry of oppression given fake angel's wings (II  Corinthians 11), wandering into some nebulosity, diffuse thought or confused conceptions BECAUSE it is a prevailing theme and immensely popular, and at other times, because it is not. In the former case, they swim readily or congenially even with the current, splashing with waves in abandon; but at others,  they may unconsciously or otherwise wish to register that things are not really good enough so 'obviously, we need something different'. Turning in their own evil, then then indulge themselves by throwing out their former good, as if it, and not they, had failed. Once moving, like a boulder down a mountain slope, on a roll, they may depart from one delusion of devilry for another.

Thus they both confuse and lose themselves, amplifying folly as if a human  cyclotron. The waywardness varies in direction but far less in intensity. The blindness can even become an actively controlling agency, or a room for evil dynamics, which looks for home, and blasts at length, their own base (cf. Matthew 12:43-45). Soon many are  oppressed, manipulated, all but decommissioned as spiritual beings, blighted, benighted, promised much, given lost life, unhallowed, unvindicated, unsound and sometimes virulent.

If they performed such feats of folly  in commerce, they would be not only ruined, but routinely ruined. The world does this however rather routinely. Indeed, it is doing so progressively and with increasing acceleration as knowledge and motion, as predicted by Daniel 12, and evil and commotion as foretold by Christ in Matthew 24, alike increase, so making both the lust to govern all with some oddity sought with avidity, and the lust not to be so governed rushing to resist, like an oceanic whirlpool of contrarieties, the truth long departed from the writhing, tormented mêlée below and the feverish follies of mind and corruption of dissonant heart that helps create the confusion.

Thus the human desire for goodness, integrity, morality, spirituality, high and consistent principles, utter reliability, for an example of prodigious proportions, an uplift, what has real splendour, to follow what is profound and to serve what is worthy, this worthy directional dynamic is dashed, like a shattered mirror, into a thousand pieces, all awry and reflecting with confused images, merely a part of this earth. God who made both the mirror and what is mirrored,  is forsaken for erratic ideas or despotic aims and distorted ideals, and man becomes a maestro of combined arrogance and antinomy, his thought in ruins, his world increasingly reflected in his dominations and his misdeeds.

In all of this, like E=MC2. there is one key, and in this case, it DOES include what at the physical level, Einstein could NOT include - namely for him, electromagnetism in his strangely frustrated unification crusade, occupying many of the later years of his life. In the spiritual sphere of human personality and being, however, unification is not merely possible but actual and integral to any understanding. It is as available as it is necessary, as demonstrably attainable as it is made so by the Creator (cf. Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer,  Light Dwells with the Lord's Christ). .

Actually, creation is unified in the mind of its Maker, and its delicacies and involvements, weavings and parities and disparities depend on the variety of means, the intention of thought and the purpose of heart in the One who better than the self-contradictory nothing, actually DID IT. You have to be there to do it, and to be adequate for all the ideational, symbolic, cerebrally witty, legal, composite sophistications and integral involvements which constitute what we see; you need what it takes. Creation is a masterpiece, and just as in surveying literature, there is method and there is a standard and there is system in many things - as in English, the 26 letters of the alphabet, the rules of grammar which are semantically relevant to action, the character and meaning of punctuation - yet there are many things of which you say, 'Ah, but that is Shakespeare!', or 'Oh, this is Wordsworth!' and smile tenderly for their ways in principle are their own, however vast the advantage of this or that talent may loom. Both prodigality of system and of individuality, this is the simple fact in creation, the exquisite in method, the astounding in artifice, the innovative as a norm, the standard as a basis, as imagination and application mingle freely with sheer brilliance and enterprise.

So we apply this excursus more fully to the creation. What then of this. the  Creation ? It has system and originality in KIND, it has correlations of convenience and engineering of such intense and immense creativity that it becomes obvious that a point is being made, both in the reality of imagination and the higher scope of thought, which disdaining mere uniformity, finds as many artists do, in words, a thousand ways of dealing with things, sometimes almost glorying in diversification while the controls on implementation function with seeming effortlessness. In this milieu,  some constructions have this subordinate purpose, some that, the overall possessing a comprehensive purpose and the fashionings at lower level, a whole subtlety of orientation, correlative with the assiduity of the controls and the exuberance of the strength. Mind does not dissipate because thoughts regarding its exploits wish to do so. Its criteria do not wane before reductionist pomposities. Phrases do not dissolve facts (cf. Wake up World! ... Chs. 4-6, TMR Ch. 1).

When the Creator is also the Judge, a role as we have been seeing, it is very possible for man unwisely to take upon himself, then what in Genesis is called the curse, and in Romans 8, 'subjection to vanity' may come at any point. The blithe conception that furnish folly as you will, abuse the Creator's property as you might, ignore His instructions to your heart's content, or more factually discontent, nevertheless nothing really matters, and concern is futile. It is like seeking fish and chips without fish, only batter and fat. Consequences are partly inherent in any misused creation of anyone; and partly exhibits of the owner.

At the intrinsic level, primary lesions, wounds appear in the already complex and yet directively more simple production, as abuse creates abortions in the creation. At the extrinsic side, action awaits the owner's will, and carelessness meets the Owner's care. He acts. How He acted, the Bible details, as we have just seen (cf. News 74, Beyond the Curse ), and history exhibits. Thus, what a miniature marvel of distress-dynamics is the mosquito with its many wonders of surgical equipment and sophistication of action, so that to catch one is a very considerable challenge, and to be the butt of one can be a piercing pang before disease! We marvel at our maestros of electronics, many not once imagining that to fiddle like Nero, while these creations of curse, or inventions of human imagination 'arose', catastrophe for the human race poked its head through the door,  smilingly inviting to profound disorders, while they were perfecting implements. The fall is not all; but it is not slight; nor are its cumulative consequences. There is a certain inhibition however at marvelling at mosquitoes, and their many crusading parallels in flies and lice, skilfully spitting snakes and arcane penetrations of spiders, that restrict the grandeurs of impotently aspiring man.

It is imperative in any assessment or even relationship with what is sophisticated and intense and vast in correlative characteristics and original additives, to find the mind of its maker. If you had never heard of war, the atomic bomb might seem inexplicable; but not so, after you learnt of Pearl Harbour. That is one reason why man, in his constant rebellion against his Maker, is forever misconstruing and becoming annoyed at calamity, as if his deliberate dynamic of generations, in ignoring, distorting and resisting what is biblically characterised as right, and incurring what is ignoble, tedious and foolish, did not instantly exclude him from any RIGHT to mercy, pity or pardon (cf. SMR Chs. 1 and 10).

How could you expect a native company such as BHP once was, to feel obligation or even desire to help you in some debt, if you had never worked for them ? How much less if you had been approached to work for that company, and had haughtily, nastily or contemptuously rejected the offer! They might wonder what was possessing you if you in such a case, asked for help, even if they had a desire without that provocation, to do so.

Yet with God, for many there is all expectation (without grounds), no acceptance (of the chosen way that alone is logically verified in the approach) and recrimination readily arises at the rejection of such astounding arrogance and distortion as man dabbles without deity. Man prescribes. This is the way. God MUST do ANYTHING you think would be good, but you NEED do nothing even to come to know Him, far less find in His wisdom the way for your life. Such an approach, tediously trivialising reality, is forever chafing at the failed and futile desire to control God or manipulate Him, without even seriously pondering the pass word, Jesus Christ, the entry door, the Gospel, or the requirement to repent and believe Him, the focus on the door so that it may even be seen! (cf. TMR Chs.    2,    3,   4, Repent or Perish Chs. 1, 7, Barbs ... 17).

Why ? It is irrational, presumptuous and equivocal so to act, to treat your derivative mentality, one impossible to validate without absolute truth being unattainable and available,  from the structuring source and His knowledge, as the ground of knowledge and container vessel of actuality (cf. TMR Ch. 5, It Bubbles ... Ch. 9).

At first glance, it is all but inconceivable that man, adding to his callow confusions enjoined by will in such assertiveness, should create his own entry points to reality and establish himself on himself (cf. II Corinthians 10:13). On the other hand, his own divagations, seen in the light of the provided truth of the Bible, are completely to be understood, with all their squirmings. Thus the just desire for God and all the leadership and beauty of holiness that is His, endemic in man, being thwarted by perversion of heart, and will in a furore of frustration, react to Him and His ways, both in making new convenient gods for a quick fix without repentance and faith, and casting hyper-critical and hypocritical aspersions on the failed human models that incite hope and doom desire. Artificiality is attractive to some; but reality does not cohere with it.

Then frustration wedded to desperation leads to some yet more inane confidence, awaiting the high cost of its breach for the warring ideologies, polluted politics and philosophic prevarications of man.

Thus the conduct of man is explicable in the domain of deity's declarations, which like a doctor's diagnosis, if correct, confirm their impact on every side, explaining even most delicate data in terms adequate and potent. The Bible does just this to such an extent that it is both a delight for desire and a fire for confidence (cf. Light Dwells with the Lord's Christ,   Deity and Design, Designation and Destiny).

The purposes of God are revealed quite clearly as not resting on our immediate destruction: we are still here. Though it is a MARVEL that this is so, one that people seem but rarely to envisage, it is a fundamental fact of the patience of the profound wisdom and love of God.

Consider Biafra ALONE, or the Sudan, don't go further; yet look at the tolerance for the horrendous deeds of former African colonies still viewed as sites for sport,  and the intolerance for South Africa, which was in anti-parallel, so often shown! What kind of humanity is this with its special pleadings and self-deceptions ably assisted by chronic distortions and abortions of facts in the face of desire.

The case of Israel is a classic of cultural cramps and reality torture, as hypocritical desire seeks more and more of the land of cheated Israel, with less and less return, as if former assurances and Israel's self-defence alike were meaningless, and it must be blotted, or blighted, or distorted and squashed, if not out of the Middle East map, then at least till it is significantly shrunk in it. Such is the apparent process,  until  some further conflict will translate the current, inane bullying by international forces used for attrition in its scant land, into the grisly fiesta of local nations taking it over completely and destroying it utterly. This  Iran, for example,  has posted as its will; nor is that nation alone in such issuances from Islam (cf. The Teheran pan-Islamic conference of 1991). Such is the increasing appearance of the will of man; but God has His own plans, that fatal flaw in man's schemes, almost routinely ignored among the nations.

God as is apparent, did not at first determine that man must go, a destroyed prodigy; but He has acted both negatively and positively. The former has been noted; but as to the latter, it has been posted for the last 2500 years in many places, and He has always acted on it in detail, doing as He has said (cf. The Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet Ch. 4, SMR Chs. 8 -  9  ). In its time, as always, He will act further (Micah 7, Joel 3, Ezekiel 37-39, and see It Bubbles, It Howls, He Calls Ch. 11, The Defining Drama Ch. 10, Galloping Events ... Ch. 4).  Many love to ponder His steps as non-existent, and the culmination as dismissible; but they come, have come and do not fail to eventuate.

Blindness by faith is fiction. Children too sometimes find this: exquisite parental patience is not to be consigned to weakness or indecisiveness: they CAN act. Sometimes the child, at last, is glad because this is done, lest a worse error succeed the last of their little exploits.

At first, one may be inclined to wonder at the interminable provocations of this our race, but then, it must be faced and without more ado. How could the Lord of understanding and creation tolerate any continuance in such a race ?  Add the sins of nations and individuals, in lying and fraud and misappropriation, expropriation, subtle deception and downright fraud, exaltation of self or race or chosen idol, and you wonder not WHY this or that is allowed to occur, but how the race is allowed to continue to ... occur. The Gospel is the biblical ground, the stated reason, the passion of mercy to redeem, the practicalities of Christ in doing it, the love of God to find the lost, the paraphernalia of history as He does so, possessing likewise information for wisdom and direction for willingness.

Surely man seeks for the good leader, the good friend, the good politician, the good worker, the man of integrity plus kindness plus peace, plus authority plus wisdom, plus heart, plus spirited demeanour, or whatever else in the residues of conscience and the aura of creation is left in man to desire. That is why in the case of all of these dimensions, with fall, even if slight, there can come a sense of betrayal; and it is intensified when there is a beginning of personal movement in the right direction, but someone, some figure falls.

That is equally why man can be so UNFORGIVING at even the slight error, and so readily proceed to MAGNIFYING in slander, to exaggerate. It is because he is cut to the quick, wounded in heart, bruised in spirit. For many, wanting to escape cynicism, they find no outlet after all. Refusing the source of the desire, the Manufacturer of man who endued him in heart and mind and spirit with such desire, this being now sometimes suppressed, now for a time brought back to the light, there comes another way. Man thus makes his own idols. If intoxicated, it is easy, if ludicrous, it may provide temporary solace; if pushed with force, it may indulge perverted militancy, which rightly should be consistent faithfulness.

As to the idols, man's creative plant continues putting these out,  whether they be ideational or personal, fraudulent in religion,  or exalted in social or political or professional dress. It is alas quite a natural result when the supernatural prevenience of man is dismissed, and the Gospel of grace is disregarded. Imaginary scenarios built on expectations never found, always hoped for, become the graveyard of wisdom, while the realities of God and His own speech become the lacerations of Calvary and the lampoon target of diseased wit, rubbing gravel into man's wounds. Ignoring the axis of history, man cannot keep stable as the world turns (cf. Deity and Design ... Section 9. as marked). Wilfully ignoring the resurrection, man avoids the power of God that beats the curse, and ensures that Act V Scene V duly arrives.

Without the living God, man readily becomes super-sensitive whether to the loss of species, such as polar bears now in some danger, or of the aura of beauty or excellence which he had sought and failed to find in some hope. In wild excess, he turns now this way, now that, drugged by rebellion of heart into subservience of the mind to the point that the ludicrous becomes 'lovely' and the irrational 'acclaimed' (cf. SMR Ch. 3 in contrast to Ch. 5).

It is rather like those who seek for a gold mine. They invest here and there, always wanting and always believing - before cynicism sets in, or scepticism, that septic spiritual wound, and are embittered when they do not find. With them, there is some 'chance' of finding, since deposits exist, however great the preliminary scouring of the earth for many generations over perhaps 10,000 years (cf. TMR Ch. 7).

However, with the divine realities suppressed, then for the ideational, ideological, spiritual and moral beauties which they desire, including grace of the leadership and a plain heart and spirit and soul of man, they seek and do not find: they seek now for perfection in vain. Wounded by the unwisdom of such idols, they then will often make of something now deemed a defunct delusion, or of their exasperatedly still desired human result, an irrational ground for not seeking the Lord. This is done though departure from Him in the beginning, or else determined ignorance (cf. Romans 1:17ff.), created the conundrum; but the infection is made the ground of the complaint, in febrile substitution for seeking the remedy of the disease.

Thus does man in masses lead himself and suffer himself to be led to this generic wild goose chase in a notional land without geese. In the end, of course, this cauldron of forces and aspiration, laced with desperation and self-exaltation of the race as the best visible thing on view to the sightless, will turn to a super-Hitler, supra-Mao, post-Stalin era and its appropriate deceiver, commonly known as the anti-christ or man of sin (I John 4:3, II Thessalonians 2). Man does not rest with his Maker, and restless unrealism enshrined in spiritual refraction of light,  ensures the curse comes to its fruition.

 Meanwhile, instead of repenting of idolatry of heart, many charge God, if they elect to face the issue at all, with betrayal, cruelty or whatever other word occurs, or seek to change Him into gods of forces, fictions, of the drugged mind and the callow soul (cf. Deuteronomy 32:17-21). This too has its result.

So do many yield their souls to the nether forces, and forsaking the duty of life, and the dawn of truth, follow what they will, with often decreasing zeal, but not seldom, distorted substitutes where passion still flickers, or becomes feverish.

What then ? The Lord Himself is that faithful, reliable, wise, doughty, patient, diligently active, delightfully spiritual, intensely moral, magnificently creative, fearlessly disciplining Being for whom man is looking, even when in rebellion of obfuscated heart, he is not looking TO Him.  This is the rational basis of the irrationality of his follies; for in forsaking the truth, he seeks to invest it where it simply will not fit. In so doing, his method is wrong, and his world is in anguish.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ however, unique in logical validity, evidential attestation, verification and application remains while this world pauses at its ever nearing end (Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer, Light dwells with the Lord's Christ); and it is this, the crucial core of the word of God, which is the practical ground of the divine delay (II Peter 3:9) before judgment sits. It is so,  in that it contains the abundant mercy of God, the basis of the divine creation itself (Isaiah 51:16), a point dramatically attested in Revelation 5, where only Christ Himself could undo the seals which, releasing the scroll, gave scope for history to unfold and so to reach its end.

No mercy, no creation; but there is mercy, and so in this designate provision, there is creation.

But let us return to youth at Scotch College.

It is almost difficult these days even to imagine some of the things that happened. Thus on one occasion, the Art teacher, an affable man, was referring to the Parthenon. It was, he said, simple and plain, majestic and inspiring - like Donaldson.

An anguished cry came from some student far from sharing the view; but the utterance of this kind was as a part of a dream. How could such things happen, but they did, the demeaning and the elevating.

On one occasion, we had to perform a music 'standard' or something which was to count for House points. Presenting a flowing piece of Schubert, if I recall, I was amazed to find that the music teacher, a well-known identity, was telling me I could be a concert pianist! He did not know two things. The first was that my left hand had been crushed when I was 4 years old, and while the result of three operations by a notable surgeon restored it to the point I can type with facility and play the organ reasonably well, it was not material for that! The second thing was this:  that my approach to music is to read fast, new material, and to forget the data readily, so that my mind-set was far from being adept for such a task. In fact, as one teacher of English said later with a touch of humour when I was around 17, I did not need to recall Shakespeare quite so much, as I could invent it for myself.

It was true that I could with great facility write iambic pentameter, and create as a commission. Once lampooned, one of the negative developments, something which I thought ludicrously done, in an 'Ode', I invented a flow of iambic pentameter to deride the attack; but this was not permitted. It seemed there was a protectorate for the privileged. A suggestion I take the matter to the Principal fell on deaf ears. I did not so act. It seems too puny a point to disturb him, and if the relevant authorities wanted it that way, to lampoon and exclude rejoinder, so be it. The rebuttal was thus not published, but it was fun to create it.

Such facility helped to give me the School Short Story prize, Essay prize and the position of Dux in both Englishes; for the love of words and of creation is vast within me, just as recall on set words takes much more time! I tend to remember first of all the sense and meaning, the meat and pith, not the form. In one Class at year 11, the teacher announced, re a Shakespeare examination, that if he had judged the rest of the Class by the standard of my work, no one else would have passed.

From memory, I believe he gave me full marks; but alas, youth! Once I asked him why he gave me only 24 out of 25 for an essay: how long it can take to realise the existence of and the need for the heights! That is one reason why I personally detest this business in this State nowadays, of having a lot of people gain full marks at year 12 entrance to the University. It means one of two things. EITHER the standard is ridiculously easy, built perhaps on social pre-occupations with image or political ones with outlet or both, so that you can indeed guarantee (as one teaching body did for one subject) a pass or even full marks; OR the concept of what man CAN and should often do and should be encouraged to envisage, is forgotten in the interests of some kind of standardisation for various reasons.

There are of course times when one's maturity or disposition of talents may make things SEEM easy, but that is as in a cricket match, an event for interest and approbation, stimulus even, for others. In another setting, something very different may occur.

Well do I remember exhibit alas my tendency at school to arrive a little late (it took about 90 minutes to get there, and often I would be running down the long ramp my grandfather had built beside the Bowling Green, to catch a train before it escaped); and it happened that in the year 11 Mathematics III examination, the final one, worth double that of other terms, I arrived 10 minutes late. What pleasant joy to find that I finished 30 minutes early and gained 200 out of 200 for it! Such little joys of youth can arrive for different people in different phases of life, but the darting dynamic of youth is not necessarily limited to that season, and it all impresses with the thought how good is the God who makes man.

It is part of life to have something, someone excel somewhere in something, and it is important to nurture such natural outpourings, as each stirs the other here and there, to output and outcome and the spirit of enterprise and attainment, not for its own sake or reward, but for the glory which it brings to the Creator and the imprint it makes of the wonder of life. I often think of those who can remember the value of p to 10,000 decimal places, as an example or win simultaneously occurring chess games. It is splendid to think of what criteria and talent the Lord makes.

Indeed if you think of all the heights of human attainment in terms of the ideation and application of individuals in their spheres, it stirs the heart to be thankful for such energy of creative imagination and application given to man, who knows almost nothing of its genesis at the inward level. We see the product, realise things about the producer, but do not share the experience of actually DOING the creation. That is in one sense secret! Its works are manifest; its operation within is personal. We may see the fingers move, the brow frown, but not the heart. We  may come to realise things about the heart, but do not see it in its selective modes, dynamic arousings and deft decisions.

It is so, as in all creation; for even when you see the fingers of a milliner making some exotic hat with simple materials quickly, and voilâ, it is done, the creative act itself is seen, but not the dynamic within. This may involve various layers of thought, understanding and devisings, acting in marshalled concert, through the powers which God gave with vast gifts in these various integrated cosmoi of operation, each one with its own laws and spheres of creation in the first place, and creativity in the second, while personal oversight and intuition, insight and moulding perspective arrive from the fact man is ONE, as the work proceeds.

What then of pedestrian principles in examination ?

Excellence and exuberance, vitality and imaginative brilliance, facility and agility, this becomes an et cetera. It is as if Michelangelo were to declare something like this, It is all just colour and I could teach any Cretan to produce such a good show! So to act and to think lacks inspiration and application to the vast reaches of illumination available to man, and is in the final analysis,  the end-product of that hideous mediocrity which arises when faith in the God both of creation and of creativity, lies as a myth, dead in the arms of myth-makers, who make man or some other little thing, to be god. Man is the great myth-maker and is forever imagining ANYTHING to be the greatest, the actual, the ruling, the determinant, like some child having a fixation first on food, then on excitement, next on movies, then on cigarettes, these passions ruling now here, now then, until the dabs in the dark move the lines of his or her face to be that sad relic of unreason and residue of escapades so often found.

Truth is not a series of little stark darts into elements of creation, but the understanding of its entire composition from its composer and invention by its Maker, its beauty from its benefactor, its creativity from the supra-programmer, its verifications from the evidence on all sides, explicit and implicit;  and not from that dead non-entity, nothing, or its ilk.

(Cf. The gods of naturalism have no go! and with it

Secular Myths and Sacred Truth,

Downfall from Defamation Ch.   2 - the sad fad of the motherless child,

Gratitude for His Glorious Grace Ch.   4, includes  'mother nature', and in particular,

Deity and Design ... Preliminary Canter,

SMR pp. 380ff.)

Indeed, as Christ declared, it is the PERSON who makes who is the truth (John 14:6, 8:58). Thus truth is available and capable of being intimated in order that one may affirm or deny it, without being irrational in the process. It is because it has been verifiably so intimated that the intimacies of man become increasingly the oddities of creation and the perversities of devastation, physical, mental and moral.

 At last School was over. A prefect in 1946, I found the fellowship both enjoyable and interesting, being awarded the Economics Exhibition and a  General Exhibition as one of the top 5 students in the public examinations for Matriculation in the State of Victoria,  in 1946. This led to a substantial sum of money, but nothing compared with the extreme poverty in terms of what mattered most, a lack to be found in the errant University, custodian of deplorable cultures not least, to which I then went.

Well do I remember the news concerning a doctor of science who was living next door, an affable Englishman labouring in Australia, that he could get me into Cambridge University in England. That might have held a splendid stimulus, but this I did not take up: little did I know to what spiritual depths, that of Melbourne had fallen.

UNIVERSITY of man and
LEARNING from the LORD

On my entering the University in Melbourne, storms arose. No longer were righteousness and truth taken for granted as criteria of life itself.

I found to my amazement, horror and shock, that it was in the grip of views so profoundly awful, illogical, rash and rabid in various departments that it was more than appalling. It was like watching the movements of a lake, rippling under the pines, only to find it suddenly replaced by a superficial puddle, and not a clean one at that.

Moving through this and that type of gross reductionist approach by this and that body, and finding no sympathy or useful study in the Economics of that day, which seemed hideously doctrinaire, in fact using mathematics as an excuse for poor philosophy, it provided us with an illusory picture. Prior questions seemed not to reach consciousness, and methods appeared to rule objectives out of sight.

It was like a vision of man as complex cash-registers responding to programmatic stimuli, if not in whole, then in principle, to use the seemingly derogatory phrase of a later Sydney Economics lecturer of some distinction; or at least a thrust of economic determinism, both pregnant and distorted with  the most shocking divorce from the complexities of versatile reality. In that broad domain,  some work for profit, some with it, some preferring to lose wealth to surrendering ethical principle, some simply securing their best in the light of a call, and with due diligence for discretion, as with Le Tourneau, letting a strong creativity adorn the tarmac. In such cases, this can be done for the sake of the welfare of many, with the responsible use of human talent under divine direction. That famed inventor of massive earth-moving equipment, once appearing if one recalls, on the cover page of Time Magazine, apparently had a waiting list for entry into his employment!

They did not despise his scrupulous care, just as he did not despise vast projects with much risk to his accumulating wealth, because of the vision splendid, his sense of commission.

Such things did not move much earth with the earthy, it seems. Their doctrinal noses scented no posies.

What then of the University ? To find such deformity of comprehension was like staring into a leprosarium in its pathos, and finding it billed as a tourist site. This could command neither respect nor attention (cf. SMR pp. 357-358 and context).

I read widely and started Medicine in 1948. Here more appalling things were found, including an incredible addiction to organic evolution in that sphere, as something simply taken for granted, and never given the slightest edge in the form of logic (cf. The gods of naturalism have no go!).

This and a realisation that practical things could never be my métier, led to my demission of Biology just before mid-year, while completing the other Science subjects. Interestingly, I found the Scientific Method course most stimulating, gaining first place in that with 90%. The Lecturer made some predictions about the top two students, which have to some extent been fulfilled in different ways. In neither case did it happen quickly, yet happen it did.

Though I thus and then left that field of medical studies, it did give me a basis for many things, extending my studies into fields of many kinds. This done, a vast desire to study many realms occupied me, and drama, philosophy and literature of various kinds drew me, but without distasteful, ideologically rampant university supervision.

Soon, about 1950, while studying philosophy at the University, which fortunately had a fine sort of Professor, I came into the most intense desire for truth. It was more important to me than life itself. My philosophy tutor, a pleasant person,  appeared to regard me highly in that field, deeming it ludicrous when I ceased the Honours section ('you'd be mad not to do Honours' was the sort of way he put it). Yet I did leave that Honours work at that time, feeling as I did  that it was too light and vain, too much this and that 'brilliant exercise' by this or that stellar person in the hall of fame, and not serious enough. The principle of the thing, I felt, deserved a different sort of honour and the realities had to be pursued. The truth had to be obtained at any cost, and I paid.

One day, not far from this time, the tutor, later a Monash Professor of Philosophy, told the Class to miss the lecture, as they would learn more by listening to me. That tutorial went on, if memory serves aright, for about 3 and three quarters hours instead of the normal one hour. However, it did seem strange that such adulation should exist, when I had found the University such a dump at the philosophic level in the various applied areas. Not all shared it.

At this time, I suddenly became aware that, by contrast,  the New Testament was clear, cogent, delightfully apt, intimately appealing, straight and sound, with an aura of verity and a simplicity and profundity that alike charmed me. I had joined the Church at 18, but the Gospel had not reached me, though I was perfectly sincere and most idealistic at the time.

Now the way lay open to seek God more personally still, and in 1952, my conversion occurred. It was just as dramatic as was that of St Augustine, for I was literally arrested, my whole life met, confronted, penetrated and illuminated with a light both final in authority and unyielding in truth, which was centred in Jesus Christ, who revealed personally to me my sinful condition, His own amazing Person and His sin-bearing function; and there He concluded in a dynamic fashion with me, my salvation. Here was life as it ought to be, the life of God made available, and that as no mere roving option, but a realistic vitality which carried inherent truth. Its loveliness and its august authority were alike a wonder. Moreover, He Himself was revealed as God, and as such, only Saviour, alive and in inalienable control.

About 14 days later, I was called to the Presbyterian Ministry, and despite some reservations on the part of some in view of the nature of my conversion, which included the vision of God, I was accepted and prepared in Hebrew, Greek and Bible knowledge for my first year. The Chairman of the Philosophy Department at Melbourne University wrote me a lovely letter, and talked about distinguishing myself there and abroad, and being convinced on scriptural grounds about not burying talents; but the call of God which would supplant these potentially pleasant pastures; and His truth having come direct in the word of God, the Bible, and the inward revelation from His Spirit, in perfect unison, there was nothing to do but go!

It was in one sense like being called up to war, when young. There is certainly a time to fight, and there is a time to seek to protect; and the Church of my forefathers, as I would soon find, was afflicted not with malaise, but with a passionate delirium concerning the word of God, which it sought to adjust - not the passion but the Bible! like plastic surgeons who lacked both the skill and the commission!

SEMINARIES - OF WHAT ARE THEY SEMINAL ?

Melbourne

Here once again, I was astounded. What sort of a seminary did the Presbyterian Church of my Scottish forefathers here provide in Melbourne ?

Had it entirely left all bounds, was it in name only ? or how could it be so defiled and none act to correct it! It had indeed been transformed negatively following about 1934. Later in 1974, when what was to be the Uniting Church split off, there was at last realisation in the Church of the extent of the corruption: one official paper deplored then that they had been in the wilderness for forty years.

That was much later around 1974. This was 1952. The facts had to be faced in more lonely fashion then. How COULD such wickedness be... in the Church. It was revelatory in a disgusting fashion.

Folly and deceit in prisons ? well perhaps yes, in alien juntas ruling in violence, yes again; but in a theological seminary of the Presbyterian Church of Victoria! So great was this maelstrom of virtual malediction on some of the Bible, carried on constantly before our very ears, that it seemed I had been in an open forest, and now visited a snake pit. It made the University seem almost ideationally chaste by contrast. I had moved from the soiled seas to the pit.

Being there, one had to work, and when they constantly attacked the Bible, many times per week, it became apparent from the extraordinary irrationality and imperception which seemed to control them, as from the obscurantism which seemed in nearly all of the instructors, to render them immune to reason, that this was an evil thing of the first water. Indeed, was it water at all, or slime! From time to time, I would protest, interrogate or challenge.

Hence when we were as students CHALLENGED to answer in terms of intellectual INTEGRITY, by a professor had finished a course, or was well advanced in it, concerning the book of Daniel - which he sought to show to be an erratic work of deceitful and devious kind, there was no other option but to answer. Will the word of God be attacked and one not answer ? or will a challenge concerning this be issued and no response be made! God forbid.

Since this seminary attack on the Bible had been irrational to the uttermost and internally inconsistent, here was another piece of amazement that any could be so gullible and apparently careless about facts, let alone a Professor and Principal, as to accept such a theory, let alone teach it or wield an axe with it. An answer had to come as day from night. God is not mocked, and truth is not to be impugned.

So I spoke. This rebuttal was briefly sketched in response to the challenge and before the Class. We had been told that the major thrust of the book was in no sense sound and true, and so in summing up my defenestration of that idle theory, I noted that the theory attacking it thus, itself, did not make sense. The case was the very opposite of that professorially suggested, namely that in this Book the Bible was gravely awry! Such was the tenor of my answer. If we were going to have debate as in Philosophy, very well, let's have it.

It was not the book of Daniel but the character of its ideational assault which did not make sense, add up, hold coherence and force. That was the CONCLUSION of my rebuttal to the clamour against the Book as presented in Class. The challenge being public, so was the reply.

What then was the impact of the reply. It was this. The presentation in Class was no challenge at all to integrity of intellect; hence that one should retain belief in the book thus in vain attacked, was perfectly consistent with intellectual integrity. That was the answer in terms of the question, on the basis of the invalidation of the attack on Daniel just given.

In fact, the Professor concerned had not invented the assailing theory, but merely asserted it. Nevertheless, he responded so personally to the answer to his own challenge, that one might have been forgiven for thinking it was his own Ph.D., if he had had one, that was in question!

In a remarkable ad hominem, the frustrated professor, not desiring the refutation of his attack on the Bible, erupted in passion.  He had told us of his annoyance with Professor James Orr in Scotland, who had defended the Bible in detail, and explained how this had exasperated him when he was a student under that same Professor Orr! The spirit of the Principal flared.  He proceeded yet further down the defiles or irrationality. He decided that to show the irrational character of the theory which he had attested, and by which he had challenged our integrity (to which  I had just duly responded), this would not do. It was a thing wholly unacceptable; and it was no less so, even under challenge issued by himself to the Class.

This was, he averred, equivalent to saying that HE had no sense. This therefore, a mischievous logical fallacy and personal folly of his, was uproariously and ingloriously asserted. If the University seemed depraved, what was this!

Was this Australia ?

It was of course quite disgraceful on three counts, just initially.

Firstly,  exposing a particular theory that someone holds, especially if he did not invent it, is an academic, not a personal exposure. If the question is what makes sense, then that is the nature of the answer. If the attack is to make what claims authority, to be banal, what seems true to be false, and what presents itself as coherent and correct to be fallacious and misleading, not meeting canons of evidence: then the answer is to show that notwithstanding all such claims, it still in fact stands valid, that the attack itself lacks validity. Thus, to answer adequately and entirely, the attacking theory itself may be shown invalid, incapable, and to lack cogency and correctness. Thus invalidated, it can have no purchase, like a dud weapon attacking the heart.

The entire refutation thus was properly to show where good sense remains, in the Bible. It was as it is, there and not in the assailing theory where evidence is not met, nor reason attended. It was in fact  in biblical terms that coherence, consistency within and without is found, and not  in the confines of the method of attack on it, being used. This is what was done and evidentially attested. Good sense was thus in the Bible, not in the forces of ideational assault.

What was criticising it, as a theory, was itself critically incorrect, crucially inadequate. A mistaken assault had been made on the Bible, and our own integrity was not violated by our adherence (as in my own case) to it. This was not only valid, but appropriate to show and in answer to verbal and public challenge, to show both verbally and publicly. If you want a contest in chess, is it a crime to win! If you CAN win, if an emotional explosion the best way to show it! It may, however, disadorn a loss. The significant thing was this, the Bible stood, in answer to attack number X, down the history of the ages. It had done so once again. Should a cost be exacted for this by a Church!

Secondly, there was not only an ISSUE, to be met, but there had been an explicit CHALLENGE to answer it. Does one receive a challenge to race, and apologise if one wins ? Moreover, this was not in the least personal from the perspective of faith (supposedly a necessity for students, not an inventive faith but one which held to the word of God as in the Bible, in terms of what the Westminster Confession's principles on that topic). It was of the very substance of faith, where it met and had familiar concourse with reason.

It was a matter of principle, and basic at that. It is not at all unheard of in the history of the Christian Church, starting with the apostles as in Acts 4-5, to put the word of God above that of Church authorities which attack it. Nor was it unusual for it to win. This was just another case in the history of Church degradation, and an upholding of truth in the face of it. One might, however, have been excused for imagining that defence of the faith had just newly been invented. The effect of doing this seemed almost catastrophic, as if the Twin Towers of humanism had just been destroyed for a humanist. Why should this be so, and in what perspective, and with what ethical validity, was this done! The ethical and the rational did not applaud this personal attack on a student.

Thirdly, as students for the Ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ, we students had been told that if we could NOT answer this challenge, and still believed the Book of Daniel in the face of the assault made, we lacked intellectual integrity. While this might have seemed - and was to a degree - a personal additive, yet its impact was clear. Not only was the ISSUE present, and not only the CHALLENGE concerning it, but there was an assault on the Bible such that no Minister to be, here in training, might justly proceed in open conscience and clear mind to present what was written as truth. It therefore had to be answered in the name of the Lord.

It was being asserted, in terms of the whole invective against Daniel over many weeks, that IT was devious, deceitful, using the name of God for political purposes and so forth. That was the teaching of the Professor, of the seminary. If WE did not accept this concept of devious deceit in the construction of the biblical book of Daniel, we too, like the book in this allegation,  lacked integrity. The basis was the point; this was a mere application. Yet could the Spirit of Truth stand by and not energise an answer to such an assault on the word of the living God, who rules this universe and from whom history gets its opportunities and come-uppance! Was Luke 21:15, for example an utterance of divine commission or its nullification ? Does not perfected praise come EVEN from the mouths of babes and sucklings! There is no excuse for watching spiritual defalcation in silence, when one is committed to the authority of the word of God, the Son of God and His testimony, as the Church ostensibly was.

The word of God is not only defensible but always true, and such one finds, has found and constantly discovers. It is like opening your eyes; for when you do so, you see. indeed, let God be true though every man be liar, as the apostle Paul declares. This IS how it works out, but it is also a work of faith to realise.

It always amazed this student how any could possibly fail to see the actual point and truth in case after case, of what the Bible was stating, yet repeatedly in these Classes, it was as if the obvious became obfuscated and the true incapable of being so much as seen. Most frequently, there appeared to be a continual, spinal squirming and burning in all kinds of distress and uncertainty, resulting from closed eyes, these effacing and the tongue not presenting what was there. Non sequiturs were so much the order of the day, that the experience was rather like that of boarding an air liner and finding the pilot proceeding to use it as a submarine. Where the skies had been clear, the waters were not only obscuring vision, but ruining the frame of the entire craft.

It was rather like being told that if there was one thing that could never be true, it was that one plus one made two. That. 1+1=2, it became an intolerable abuse of authority, and anyone thinking so could not be endured. This was the impact of the teaching!

The clear fact that it did so, however, did not alter for all this vociferation. It did so in numerous respects, practical, principial, intuitive and definitional. SO here. It seemed that blindness prevented even the glasses of logic from being operative. Of course this is precisely what the Bible teaches (Ephesians 4:17ff.), except where  God intervenes, in this realm. It is not an individual apparition but a category failure which here occurs. The individual does not create the disease, he catches it, and it afflicts him. That is the biblical nature of the case, and how many apt students have been caught in this spiritual influenza epidemic, where you do not seek the Physician but attack the orderly.

It is always pleasing to find truth verified, and the more so in the very midst of opposition to it; but grief is not the less to be experienced  when this abode of thousands was found with white ant disaster, with some feeding these destroyers, with those given a religious call!

By such means, then, and strategies has Satan long sought to conserve error, of which theological liberalism was in that case merely the issue at hand. We were being indoctrinated in it, and like an idol, it had no hands. It is however the most illiberal irrationality known to man (though some historically later freakishnesses of thought are more outstanding in the gibberish area, for now irrationality is confessedly a mainstay of many, who use argument against reason, while by reason they seek to establish their wares).

Let us consider that student case then. What might be said of anyone making a mistake, who taught. Are teachers infallible ? Are crusading and challenging teachers invulnerable ? If it is the Bible or the teacher's views, does the former fade by some kind of automatic reverence to the teacher ? Or does a theoretical error constitute an insult, when it has been used to attack the Bible, and then in answer to challenge is shown to be what it is, in terms of its own affirmations, namely untrue, invalid and unsound. Is this to be lacking, in answer to explicit challenge ? I showed that there was a failure in the theory  on which the attack on the integrity of the Bible was based, and showed what it was, pointing out that hence did not make sense. It gave no ground for this challenge and this view of the Bible!

What then ? Does anyone have no sense if endorsing at ANY point what lacks it ? Should David apologise to Goliath ? and if the Lord helped him, would that not be in any case lèse-majesté to the Lord Himself!

This would mean that Einstein had no sense, since he once in effect, divided by 0. Ludicrous as this logical fallacy was, it was used to evict me, and although I was offered restoration if I apologised, this could be no option. The challenge was on the integrity of the Bible in one major book cited with approval in particular, as all were in general,  by Christ (Matthew 24:15, 5:17-20).

What then ? It was an irrational challenge; it was contrary to faith as well; and it was adverse to the biblical standards of the church, as shown in general approach in the little work (Basic Documents on Presbyterian Polity - p. 91, footnote 2). Notes, of which this was one, we are advised in the preface, are those provided by their legal Procurator of the General Assembly of that day, Maxwell Bradshaw.

Of what then did this note in this little book inform us ? It is this. The word of God, in the Old and New Testaments, is to be construed in accord with the Westminster Confession as a subordinate standard, and hence means what that Confession says it is. This is of course, one can find by inspection of that document, that it is in written form co-extensive with those same testaments, infallible, immediately inspired by God. Anything FURTHER from this, it would be hard to imagine, than what was to be found at their own theological seminary. This was for a shame, and remains a parody of the purity that all ministers were obliged to seek in the Church. !

That however was in itself a subordinate if crucial point. The main principle was a challenge to the Bible, one contrary in logic and reality, to truth. It dared to challenge students in such a place, and indeed in any place on such a position; it had to be met. In fact, the whole aura of the place was continual assault, based on no logical ground, on the Bible. It appeared a putsch, and soon most of the Presbyterian Church decamped into another body, called the Uniting Church, which had no such biblical standards noted, from the outset.

Brought to the ruling body, I answered their query about the matter.

There could be no apology for having defended the absolute truth, I affirmed, when called to answer what appeared as the local Sanhedrin, the Theological Education Committee, which staggeringly allowed such a defective approach to breach both Bible and Church standards, and reason as well, in the arena, the seminary, under their survey, and for which they had responsibility. What responsibility is this which does not respond to its commitment, to the sanctions which it is to uphold! There seemed almost an intoxication, broad in impact, deep in kind, afflicting much of the Church. Respect for human authority had become disrespect for the Lord's. A former Minister of our local Church whom I later met, on being told of the situation, amazingly averred this: They are just doing this to test you. Do you speak lies to test ? or do you for years without relief, present for students, only error in order to instruct! On challenge by the professorial host, then, I indicated that I was on trial for the sake of the Bible, which being absolutely true, was something for which no apology could be considered!

At length, then, knowing their preference, and despite the outrage committed, they cut me off, removed the financial support, attacked my name, called me unpleasant names and proceeded to exterminate my ministry, just as they had suffered their seminary to attempt, audaciously and fallaciously to do with various books of the Bible itself. Indeed, on a day just before this Old Testament debacle, the New Testament Professor at that same seminary had summed up some of his lectures, declaring that Jesus COULD NOT know He would rise from the dead in 3 days, since no mere man could ever know precise things about the future.

Such a professorial announcement made all heresy reach its epitome. Here was another Jesus being manufactured before our very eyes on nil ground! Was this Aaron at work again with his fire, with Moses away on the mount ?

One could not allow such a new christ (cf. II Corinthians 11), to be invented on such an nullity (or indeed in any other way) as if this were some kind of party. A student does not cease to be a being, nor a Christian, nor subject to divine challenge to speak to the honour of the Lord, and not deny Him. He is not free to be faint, nor allowed to put the ministerial 'profession' above integrity of heart, truth of mind and fidelity to the word of God, as if man were his new mentor for gain's sake, or that of personal prosperity.

The fear of the Lord is CLEAN (Psalm 19). Its disruption in changing gods (since Christ IS God and a new christ is a new god) is not. Paul says far more on the topic in the Corinthians passage just noted! It cannot fail to apply where the criteria are met. It is good to remember Psalm 2, Rejoice with trembling! Do not allow irreverence to become the illegitimate offspring of joy.

This New Testament challenge in the other Class also was therefore met (the day before my eviction from Class as outlined above), by noting that in that case, the entire thrust of prophetic detail in the Old Testament would need deletion. Taking him, in the Class situation where this assault on the Christ of the Bible had occurred,  through Zechariah and the ass and the 30 pieces of silver, and varied parallels, one then showed in case after prophetic case,  the consequence of such an assertion. Either the entire Bible was wrong in a salient feature, essential to its revelation, or he was.

Of these two, what had the relevant attestation! Where did the evidence exhibit the answer ? Was it in a mere nostrum, or in the tested word that endured through 100 generations. Had not time given full scope to finding contrary evidence at any of its centuries, and had it not failed ? Is a word in a room to depute to the dump what stood in the light! Is the indisputable success of multiplied prophecies to be unhinged, because someone does not like the door! Such were the obvious implications of the simple challenge, that if this word were true, that of man, then a substantial portion and central area of the Bible was not. The weight of the matter could not be disguised.

One can imagine with what relish my removal was then accomplished, on the next day, after the already noted event in the Old  Testament arena concerning Daniel, brought this same student into 'discipline'. Historically, in one way or another, this has been a mode of address by heresy to truth, practised not least by Romanism, but by many in various moulds and modes over the tortuous years. Alas for truth. It is as in Isaiah 59! It was as if fallen in the streets.

Was it for this that church funds were dispensed to the seminary ?

Before my physical removal was accomplished from the seminary, one of the ostensibly more 'conservative' students unleashed a new weapon. As I approached another classroom, he announced concerning my coming, 'Here comes the least of the apostles!' It appeared an acme of the fall in that seminary, that such apparent submission should become laced with the arsenic of scoffing and scorn, when the word of God was at issue. Alas I was to find that 'conservative' forces, in New Zealand could be amazingly supine also.

I therefore was out, but the call of Christ was in. What was to be done ? God intervened. I had been at times visiting an old Anglican of notable sanctity, who had a vast library. In it, there was found a book called "The Infallible Word"! It was excellent and came from a Presbyterian Seminary in the USA.