CHAPTER TEN
Mosaics of Fields
News 144 for Feb. 22
enters
into conspectus re Sharon and Barak in Israel
There is a reason.
There is always a reason. There is even a reason for a lunatic, because the madness has a reason. There is reason why some are swept about like the chaff, as Psalm 1 tells us, identifying them as the wicked. There is a reason for salvation, in the love and mercy of God, and for its amazing method, in the justice and understanding of God, and His delight in mercy, being merciful, directing towards mercy, even at the most profound cost, and this last lies within Himself.
There was a reason for the love between the wagtail and the eagle. It was that both of them loved the Lord, and the way in which He loved.
It had results.
For example, they were discussing one day, if you can call it day, for the first tendrils of light were tentatively touching the velvet of the luscious grasses which adorned the fields, making them meadows fit for the streams, just as the streams were colourable companions for the meadows: they were discussing things broadly.
The eagle's wing-tips were
fluttering now and again with sheer excitement, while the wagtail's posterior
extension, as the medical people might put it, or extensible tail, as the more
literary, or its fantail, or its fashionable feature, as some of the svelte
might have it, would flow into graces of spreading movements almost like an
electric fan in its flushes of air to one corner or another. It WAS exciting
and pleasant and mutually profitable. It is good to see a lively spirit when
fun and joy, hope and help, friendliness and sheer exuberance are in it, and
love covers it as the ambers, browns, yellows and reds cover the maple forests
in the Autumn, in
They are volatile a little,
but most generous, so that there can be no possible doubt that they would not
mind our listening to their conversation, so let us do so.
THE CONVERSATION
I agree, said Wilhie, but there is more.
For a little chap, you have very large notions, replied Maji.
Maybe, at times, retorted Wilhie, but you see, to be fair, these are NOT MINE.
You dug them up one day ? asked his friend.
In a way, yes, but the ground was the word of God, that Bible which blesses in rains and reigns of wonderful power, and troubles with the deepest of evils those who impenitently seek them.
It is powerful, yes, replied Maji, but the way you put it, one would think it was just so covered in wonder that it is a miracle, virtually a miracle, that EVERYONE does not believe it, follow it and indeed wallow in its fields, pastures and streams.
In a way, yes, came the answer. It is amazing, but then so is cancer.
But first, yes, I agree. You could say much the same there. Here is this beautiful, wonderful format that you have, that I have, with all its programs and voluntary orders of things composed, combined, and humans have it more so. It is so sophisticated that it makes our scientists look small, for they all but exalt in finding so relatively simple a thing as a genome after years of research - not MAKING one, mind you, just finding the thing. Yet it is a mere child's toy compared with the freedom to conceive, BY thought, rightly or wrongly, and to leap the bounds of former thought to new conceptions and new wonderlands of understanding, and to weigh the pros and cons, and be conned or not conned, and to be utterly brilliant in understanding things, but utterly foolish in misunderstanding the very spirit which a person has.
Of course, said Maji, but what is this to the point ?
This was a little sharp, but then Maji had been sharpening his beak, and felt sharp with it, just as that moment, and as for Wilhie, she was so abounding in joy in the Lord that day, that this seemed like one of those half-hearted mosquito bites which are as pitifully inept just as some are masterpieces, or more strictly perhaps, since the female bites, mistress-pieces of penetration.
The point ? mused Wilhie. There is always a point. Let me see: yes, we were talking about the marvels and wonders, the prodigies of skill embalmed in the body, skills that go on for thousands of years quite happily, and then make more units with the same skills, and yes, I know, then more and more often, perhaps now, there comes cancer. But that, it has many parodies, or exemplars, in other fields, of which it is the deadly reminder! But this too reminds us: as to the magnificence He created, the body, it is for all its powers, just a beginning: there is far more beyond the mere body, the piano of human life if you like. There are the composers, oh yes! the composers with imagination and vitality, for good or for evil...
She had let her mind wander, because there had come to her attention such a sheer bulk of worm that she had become temporarily distracted.
Now she resumed her second point. Cancer, she mused, is such a devastation sometimes in weeks, of so much elegance, sportive frolicsome joy in a young person, of so much power, so exceedingly numerous systems, all intertwined like daisy chains into the necklace of physical capacity, and the mind works like a torrent, and the spirit like a team of builders! and the whole has a joy of exuberant intelligence. It is like something, what ? 50,000 times more complex than a space station, 100,000, yes millions of times more intrepid in design, acute in performance ... you must try to imagine the sheer magnitude of a person. Then comes the disease! in weeks it is a mess, a writhing, painful mass of failing connections, fallen spheres of operation, disjointed dishevelment, and then death comes like a shot from a gun, at a rabbit.
Himm! said Maji. Still, I kill sometimes, and it is faster than that!
Your actions, you aerial garbage tin ...
Wait! said Maji, let me explain. I clear the earth of vermin, snatch death to my premises ...
And sundry things besides, said Wilhie. However, it is a cursed earth, and you do much good as well as ... other things, I know, and I myself, though my quarries are small, play a part.
They looked musingly at each other.
But, said Wilhie, this cancer is a systematic thing, and its results are anti-systematic. It defiles, it destroys, with method! It grows in places of order, and in an orderly manner, produces disorder. It is a lethal device, subtle like the plans of its place, vehement while silent. It is orderly and creates disorder.
In short, said Maji, it is part of the curse, a reminder of death, an avenue to it, an illustration of sin, which likewise, in an orderly manner, can produce disorder. Take drink, drugs, gambling: they come with an order to fulfil a desire, or escape something undesired, or as a concession for the sake of something desired, like a business contract, or a night away from 'problems, problems', and they proceed with the lethal equipment carefully designed by those who like to forward such things, perhaps the worst of all of it. It proceeds by arousing NEW desires, and fulfilling them, till the feel of it, the way of it, the chemicals of it, whatever the case, enters into the blood stream, or the mental pattern stream, or the aspiration scheme, and the new problem can become in a day, worse than the old.
There is just that horror ... said Wilhie magisterially, which was strange for one might have thought that better for Maji, who, however, did not necessarily make his bulk his brow, and could be as humble as a little lamb when you were on a channel of thought with him, flowing like a glider in an upward thrust of warm air.
However Maji did have something to say. Sin, he declared, strides like an army into the city of life, and like cancer, disorganises, disorders, divides, uses its past to make its own future, and does so in such a way that the lovely is murdered, ruined, injured, in agony. As to that, war, it used to be regarded as glorious by some, and except it is a just thing, it can be the very work of the devil.
Well then, continued Wilhie for him, magnificence has its enemies, vitality its foes, design the curse, and life is a cherry with many pickers. But still, it has its protection in the Lord, who is able to make from it, even in such circumstances, a thing so noble, so blessed, so warm and sympathetic, so compassionate, so merciful, so discerning, so enlightened, so uncompromising with evil, so like a warrior against evil, that the whole picture of sin with evil domineering over it, from the site of the devil with many willing helpers, and life with the Lord, and many in it, becomes a cosmic picture of warfare, as Paul has it:
· "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this Age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore ..."
Ephesians 6, mused Maji. If we
are pressed, it is that we might be impressed; if we are weak, it is that we
might be made strong, and realise that it is HIS grace which is sufficient for
us, not some imaginary life of our own, as if we made it, did not need the
Maker and were stupid cars, which being given choice, declined the mechanic.
Paul
even puts it in this way, said Wilhie: WHEN I am weak, THEN I am strong (II
Corinthians
The world is weak, puny in sin, magnificent in potential, but doomed. It will vanish away like smoke, be tossed out like an old garment (Isaiah 51:6, Matthew 24:35). Its curse is not forever. Its time is not eternal. God is eternal, and His life which HE gives spiritually to His children through His eternal word, Jesus Christ, "the first and the last" like His Father, this too is eternal; but this platform creaks with sin and is to be removed after HE has made of it what He wills, to complete the picture of liberty with that of righteousness, and of cruelty with that of mercy, and of delusive misuse of powers HE made, with the use of His own power, not as a substitute for liberty, but its bloom.
That, cried Maji, is precisely what makes it so marvellous.
You mean the word of God going out and doing what it says, even IN SUCH a world as this ? with its sins and impotent disorders, its dynamic disorders, its delusive disorders, its divisive heretics who call others divisive while they divide and all that ?
Well, chirruped Wilhie, that IS what we were talking about, when we began to consider the state of things in the world. We did begin with the power of the word of God, not only to specify the history of the Jews, as we were pondering last time we met, but many other things simultaneously, and we were beginning to proceed on that current, when somehow we moved into the field of the wonder that anyone could POSSIBLY disbelieve, and then there came this thunderclap of all the evil in the world, and I suppose, it means that THIS is a very active thing. It is not merely weak, or an absence or anything like that: it is directed in its madness, dynamic in its delusions and there is a spirit of envy and of destruction which is quite palpable, if you understand me, visible though invisible, perceptible in spirit. I mean, look at The Kingdom of Heaven, Ch. 8! or SMR Ch. 7, pp. 582ff. and more especially, 590ff.!
DESPITE
ALL THAT EVIL, you are telling me, then, said Maji, that the word of God not
only in the 20 synthetic points about
You could almost put it like that, her eyes glinting in the reddening glow of the fabulous sunset that showered glory on the earth, thousands of years after its monumental creation, her tail brandishing like an aerial sword ... meditated Wilhie. But of course, winds though not without cause, are such mobile things. The results we are looking at are very fixed. Again, if you like, they can come in like a wind, which though it comes so freely, has many background forces leading up to it.
The fact is, Wilhie's feathers ruffled a little, which was rather unusual, but the breeze was strengthening as the sun set - the fact is that we could outline it all.
Do!
said Maji, who was feeling the discourse somewhat onerous, and was only too
glad to rest awhile.
THE COURSE OF THE DISCOURSE AND OF THE AGE: ALL IN ALL
Israel and Jerusalem, the return to the land, the defeat of vastly superior enemies, as to domain and armies, by the Jews as they launched their new origin, the speed of it, the suddenness, the sheer verve, all are predicted. The population explosion, the forests, the flowers, the specialisation in repeated military victories of the order of triumphs, contrasted with the all but derisible littleness of the midget nation and the vast, wealthy expansiveness of the enormous Moslem territories surrounding it, the complexity of the situation, God helping Israel again, even BEFORE her turning in predicted penitence back to Him, the tension and the agony, the wonder and the deliverance and all those things we saw ...
Yes, yes, said Maji, the sheer cliff-face of divine faithfulness, rising as if it had wings, solid as rock, moving without a moment's hesitation into the clouds and mists of the empyrean above: it just sat there. It worked by being there, being there, it worked. He did what He said, how He said it and ...
He
did it in the context He had earlier declared ... if by 'earlier' you mean two
and three and a little more millenia before. He knows time as a student knows a
book, but the book for the student is before him in space, whereas it is TIME
ITSELF which is before the Lord, and He drafts it, being without hurry, for its
drafting in the beginning was under His power, and His specifications are in
the order of perfect knowledge, who works all things after the counsel of His
will: for known to God are all His works from eternity. They would need to be,
for Him to predestinate people before He even MADE time and space (Ephesians
1:4, Acts
Now to the listings! said Wilhie.
There
is then
Then
there is the GENTILE CORRELATION. Thus
It was at this time, the times of the Gentiles being fulfilled as we see sketched in Luke 21:24 and in Romans 11, that the other phenomena of this end of Age phase had to appear, and just as the Jews performed a magnificent didactic operation, SHOWING precisely what God has said, as we saw last time, SO the Gentiles in SYMPATHY OF TIME, synchronously if you like, moved into their disorders and evil dynamics with a vengeance, as if determined at least to equal the folly of the Jews as their innings ceased, with the enormities of Gentile kind, as the second innings, the present one, drew to a close.
It
was - is - a bit like a dance, macabre, emulous, seductive, a clamorous affair
of the seduced. Iarael one step, Gentiles (in their day, over 2 millenia
later), one parallel step; the
As to the Gentile version, you have only to read Matthew 24, Luke 21 and II Timothy 2, II Peter 2 and 3, I Timothy 4, for a start, to see the direction of things, traced in outline way back from the words of Paul to the elders from Ephesus, as you see in Acts 20, and then covered in specialised detail for the new era and the new dancers!
But the Gentiles! Do you remember the chapter in Tender Times for Timely Truths (TTT), outlining the general plan and power of evil, in seeking the overthrow of the people of God, of the gospel, of the word of God. It was a planned thing, and our seminaries and sects in the last century reeked and reeled with its mastermind, the devil, as they lunged, plunged and gorged on evil, unbelief drawing seminary salaries, while folly was being being supported by what were once reputable churches, and many were they who gave in trust, funds for the continuation of the Gospel, recklessly used by infidelity, to further fashionable substitutes.
There were to be seen force seeking to overcome faith, and efforts of the most insidious character to distort, seduce, induce oblivion of spirit like drugs, spiritual drugs, produce substitutes, make cold seem hot and hot seem chilly. Churches fell like ninepins, and sects rose like skyscrapers, liberalism with its cultural humanism, invaded the church, and the mess was like a city invaded by an army, while brothels of spirit, and gambling dens of heart arose like rats in the basements of neglected buildings, and many loved to have it so: thus, Jeremiah 5:32 is like a spiritual keynote from the day of the Jews, utilised by the way of the Gentiles! .
The world arose like a wicked uncle, and took much of what had been the church for a look 'at life' in the city.
All this is just as it was to be, and it is so beautiful to see the Lord outlining the enemy's task force and plans, a few thousand years before it happens. II Peter 2-3 specifies days called the "LAST" FROM HIS PERSPECTIVE, and future. Hence they were as they purport, those leading to the near return of Christ - it is that which for the church is the end! THEN as in I Thess. 4, HE comes for the Church. When your race is over, then that is the end... for you. For the Church, the living church, the uncorrupted because incorruptible body which did not yield, does not yield and by divine grace CANNOT yield to all these senilities of spirit which grabbed and grasped greedily for control of large denominations and still so act (look at what has happened to the Lutherans and Rome! in their infamous accords!): the Church has a mission. When it is done, then it is with the Lord, pilgrimage accomplished, the walk of faith complete!
II Peter 3:3 is very explicit, as is 2:1-2. Hatred of creation and the works of judgment, though they speak like orators and proclaim like Demosthenes, will make men torpid in thought, smug in spirit, derisive in derogation of the Almighty, even when and if they bother to acknowledge Him at all. This has been followed in little, in much, for long, by many in and out of churches, my own former denomination, the PC of America, being one now in the very turmoil of concession, and the lurge of collision (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 8).
Oh the conniving, the corruption, the sedition, foretold by Peter in such detail; the spiritual insurrections that he names there, the great swelling words of vanity, as likewise the scoffing, the rejection of the universal flood and of the dynamic of creation and judgment in a sort of deism at best, with hollow words signifying nothing, like the tale told by an idiot. THAT tale however is the retelling of the truth in the guise and format of lie, the lie of which Paul speaks in II Thessalonians 2, where those who DO NOT because they WILL NOT receive the truth, are given an active delusion. There is force and disorder and curse if you like. It is spiritual cancer in type, dressed in glamour, equipped with diseased feet, odorous in style, foul in breath.
Yet what is to be expected when a cursed world aborts the truth, which lies as if fallen in the street, and justice is stricken (Isaiah 59:13-15 - but note what comes next!), and folly grabs for whatever powers, mental, civic, political, social, spiritual, psychic, it can get and goes on the spiritual rampage, with deeds to match. The church obviously had such social and political, often, such a presence and power in the world, despite the rampages earlier of the Romanist inquisition, and the follies of the sects, that it HAD to be reduced. It has become like scrubbed air, freed of its insurgent pollutions.
The Lord allowed THIS reduction, because it was really dredging the harbour of truth, and removing fellow travellers, seductive influences, and allowing the spiritual picture of the living church to emerge, to be hated, harassed, despised like Christ, so that the heady work of the devil could proceed with some hope, and the battle joined be more purely spiritual. The forces now seem to be growing truer to type, as near the first: the church purged, the world flushing with pomp and pride, speaking offhanded at times, as if it were conceiving itself to be ... god. Nor is this so surprising, when you come to think of it, since the god of this world was the one to come following Christ, and his time is to come when in supreme arrogance, He invites and gains supreme disaster (John 14:30, II Thessalonians 2, Revelation 19).
You remember Paul in Ephesians 6 talking of these spiritual battles. These are now coming to the terminus. The fighting is fierce, for mixed motives move many. One even recalls one church whose pastor, having separated from an unbiblical denomination, then proceeded to get help from another denomination which for its part, was on all fours with the Graham ministries, which so readily accept the Romanist delusion as ... similar. It goes in whorls and the wheels turn, and many are crushed, crunched under the chariot of desire.
The point: all this devastation of the great FALLING AWAY which Paul specifies in II Thessalonians 2, and Peter depicts in II Peter 2 and 3, coming to a heady and delusive denigration of the truth and invasion of what had been a large part of the church, is itemised in advance. The false prophets and false christs, the deluded minds, the aspiring spirits seeking to dethrone God with their prescriptions, conscriptions, are all there, and II Thess. 2:4-10 shows the spirit back of it, telling itself in the person of "the man of sin", that he is God! In a moment, to be stricken, he confuses such little things as being birthless, with being born, being eternal, with being temporal and temporary, being almighty with being limited to whichever breath is the last on this earth, and so on.
It is really pathetic, virtually incredible; but it is this, and not Shaw's superman, this and not some pinnacle of the delusive substitute for scientific thought called organic evolution, it is this which was to happen, and continues grandly to scale. On this earth, it looks increasingly big, but it is a spiritual midget, with a sting, very like a mosquito. It also makes a big noise, with its swelling words and inept thinking, stinking and reeking with hell, its destiny, as both II Peter 2 and Jude make so dramatically and emphatically clear, challenging in horror, even to the imagination. But then! that is precisely what the behaviour of this world is like, in its power struggles and conscienceless mutilations of mind and spirit, as far as may be, without even mentioning bodies!
Like a mould, it intrudes, arrests, spreads and turns things sour. It is sad because it is itself which turns sour, not the church of the living God, against which, for all this strategy and world-power manipulative forces, it has no hope as Christ made so clear, as seen in Matthew 18. HE is the rock. Nothing rocks Him; and HIS words endure, though earth itself should go, as it will. Then, it is gone! representing a futile investment of lust for many, who misused it, and each other. The course of its diseases of spirit are not traced with macabre wit, but intrepid spirit, if by any means any like Lot, like Noah, might be spared! (II Peter 3:9, I Timothy 2).
So, as in SMR Ch. 8, you have Israel and Jerusalem, yes, and with it, the Gentile World and the history of the Church foretold in all relevant detail as to the DIRECTION of flow, the MOUNTING CRISIS at the end, the details of tremors like the shakings before the final outpouring of a huge volcano, duly ignored: the famines, earthquakes, the seething wars, like breathing in multiplicity and folly now, the rumours of wars, the false christs and prophets, the false hearts, the false politics, the false rulers, the false ways, the illustrative showers of presidential profiteering in countries mounting to the skies in number, almost as if such things were a perquisite of office, the huge words of the UN and the barren thought in the sphere of religion and morality ...
Yes, yes, I know, said Maji. It is all there in TTT Ch. 8 and SMR 8, and Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium (REF) Ch. 13 exemplifies the passion for dispensing with the living and dynamic reality of the all knowing creator with processes of thought, as impotent as dreaming on a Summer's day, when in truth, building takes time and effort and application of knowledge, whether sooner or later, this way or that; and the way is evident in word and observation, in unison (cf. REF 13, Repent or Perish Ch. 7). Dreams supervene like alcoholic stupours, but they do not actually DO anythng. The ways of reality do not alter for mere dreams.
It as II Peter 3 foretold, as II Thess. 2 indicated as to its spirit and dream content, just as Israel dreamed of old (Jeremiah 2:27), in one of the earlier chapters of the dream-world, if you like. .
And HOW did it dream of old ? pursued Wilhie. "Saying to a tree, 'You are my father,' and to a stone, 'You gave birth to me!' " What is the thrust of the fall of man when separated from God, as Paul shows it in Romans 1: "And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind", and it traces the follows of sexual perversion, like newspaper of tomorrow, which characterise the end of the road when spiritual rebellion against God sets in systematically, as is the nature of the end of the Age shown by Peter. And what else is the trend for this kind of pathological process ? This:
· "... although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image ... who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshipped an served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them up to passions..."
"Creature"
? It means "creation" : they become creature-conscious, instead of
God-conscious, and desecrate the creation. That is predicted, and its course is
shown, as one aspect in the medley or syndrome of disorder of the spirit, the
mind and the body, all three, that have followed, do follow and are to follow
quintessentially, like marching troops. They are marching particularly well,
just now, though alas, on the road of doom. Still, they can warn the
others the better, by the rhythmic splash of sound from their concerted feet.
AVOIDANCE ... AND THE PRESSURE PRESENCES IT
BRINGS,
WHEN THE
ANTIPATHY-TARGET IS THE TRUE GOD:
AND LAVISHINGS
FOR THOSE WHO WOULD LIST FOR LISTINGS
But you see one of the
greatest of all the passions is simply this: TO AVOID GOD! You see it in crisis
consummation when the man of sin SHOWS HIMSELF THAT HE IS GOD! Delightful
irony! What that shows about creation is all too clear. Since the man of sin did
not make the world, and perhaps remembers this fact, it shows by his mental
elimination of God what he thinks of creation!
Desecration, in the mind,
is all that left of majesty, like
It acts as did the Moslem menace in the 8th. century A.D., and the Romanist one especially in those smitten centuries, the 13th. to the 17th., where its rampancy was so ruinous to many, heartless in a fiasco which aborted the faith, and made its very name to be dreaded, in the strictest possible historical libel on Christ, whose name they used! It goes on, now, in its varied forms, with the more desperate desire to WIN, to secure the host of men as its slaves, clients or field. This world is its object - and the souls of men.
It cannot win; but it tries
so hard, is so futile, so flushed with pomp. THIS, it is our world in spiritual
terms, as predicted, now.
·
You
see it
- in the aspects of
- glamour,
- stammer,
- hammer,
- amour,
- armor, drama,
- manner in Acme, Alpha and Omega: Jesus Christ Ch. 9, and again in
Answers to
Questions Ch. 5, where it comes
· in the expository and referenced last-day listings of
- The Attitudinal,
- Personal,
- Educational,
- Ecclesiastical,
- Theological,
- Militaristic,
- Psychological,
- Hebraic,
- Civic - Special Case
- Social,
· Ideological*2, as also in
- Mandatory Myths in just the style predicted (II Timothy 4:3 with 3:1ff.),
- The Overall Picture (it now has character, like a Rembrandt painting, though not beauty in this regard!),
- with further reference to II Peter 3 and I Timothy 4 as a joint venture, or venue!
All this is
shown extensively in SMR Chs. 8 - 9 (merely for example, in pp. 661ff., 671ff., 699ff., 707ff. - this last the war syndrome in
prediction and philosophy as well as blood, to which may be added pp. 125ff., while 686ff. with 1056 and 1070ff., add to attest an allied and
no less systematic fall), and Answers to Questions 5, in detail.
Then there is the financial, and what a temper of the times that is, for it is aimed at controlling MEANS, and so set to seduce, reduce or restrains ENDS, or AIMS. Currently, the means TO IT, the procedures, methods to be needed when the time is fully come, are spreading like wild-fire (cf. SMR pp. 684, 906ff., 967-968). These are a cardinal hinge both of the time of its operation and the predicted cumulative crunch at the end, which however, is like the jaws of a lion coming down on the head of a lamb, to be interrupted in a moment, as the Lord comes (Revelation 19).
· You see it in SMR 9, where the very details of development reek with prophetic reality. You find more in Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium - REF - Ch. 3, and in News 70. Here you see further components in terms of:
the exploiters,
the oblivionists, and
a further testimony of a poignant longing in poisoned jet-propelled wickedness, the greens.
You find it in
SMR pp.
750Bff., where we have the
increasing rush to the 'demonic head', since "the desire for 'something
greater" (p.
958 infra),
yet without God has long been pathologial: it is now pandemic." It
multiplies, ass there noted, growing and showing in