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In one of the religious news letters today, there came a question like this: WHY did God, knowing the results of creation, go ahead with it ?

The idea seemed to be this: if so many end in hell, why not halt proceedings before they begin!

Hunt (cf. News 112), again wrongly, thought that a 'problem' for Calvinists, but in fact any God who relates to the Bible and indeed to the obvious requirements of reason itself, is not ignorant of His creation, like a novice in a nunnery. There is no problem in the comprehensive knowledge and sovereignty of God, but the answer might profitably be given, to the glory of God, since it touches the very wonder of His majesty and grace. Assuredly, it requires the Biblical emphasis on the love of God, not the minimisation of His aseity; and in the end, it is the Bible which gives the outline, not some -ism or anti-ism for that part, some adding, some subtracting. There is only one Bible, and all of it is the answer.

Let us face then this idea. God is supposed to abort creation since so many, as He foreknows, will be in a mess, at the end ?

Is God then to deliver up those who come to Him on behalf of those who prefer darkness, and thus annul their creation, who might have eternally been blessed ?

Is He to construe the gift of grace and glory on such mean terms that He excludes those whose hearts come there, because He is concerned that those who prefer darkness will get what they desire ? (John 3:19 makes it clear where the fault and choice of darkness lies, just as Romans 9 makes it clear that there are no mistakes, and Romans 8:29ff. and Ephesians 1 make it manifest that the result is always known to God: after all, time in its slow passage, this is itself one of His inventions - Romans 8:33ff.).

Let us then re-examine the import of the question: WHY did God go ahead, knowing what would come to many ?

To this we immediately pose a counter-question:

What sort of love is this, which prevents good for the sake of evil ?

Is evil to be a tyrant and criterion of good ? For God who IS good, is evil to reign!

Is He to be bound hand and foot, and is His beauty to be forlornly dispensed with, for all the creation because some hate it ? Indeed, is HE to be called, as implied in the question, selfish because He runs over with joy to ALL who will come ? That is strange selfishness which is liberality, and strange withdrawal into self, which gives extremity of output to others!

God is the truth as we have seen many times, there being no other possibility of ANY truth, and no possibility of any DEFICIENCY of it in Him, for whom lies are mere self-inflicted wounds, since all is at His disposal, a verbal executive collision on the part of a self-warring individual, and hence once with a constraining composition, dissatisfied with what part of Him is, with another part, hence contrived, not self-sufficient, and thus not God at all!

Truth: it must then withdraw itself, and prevent exploits in such things as the creation of the universe and of man, because some will find, in that magnificent thing called personality and its cohort, love (which can turn sour like cream, without detriment to either in their proper state!), a place for departure ? If some defy truth and deny love, the only love which is pure, that which is in harmony with its Creator and so with the life He has made: are all to be denied existence for their petulance ? Is God to be weak, and is His nature to be cancelled because in His love He makes a way back for sinners, as well as a way in for those being created ? What twisted logic is this, which has all held to ransom for miscreants ...

Is truth to be voided for all and any creation, because some want to be shielded from it ?

Or is hate to be hallowed, lest love should eventuate ?

Moreover, what is this presumption, that dares to attribute selfishness to God, because He has a will!

Is a man selfish because his will is bountiful and he expends a fortune on willing recipients ?

Is evil to be called good for perversity and good evil for presumption ? (Isaiah 5:18ff.):
 

 "Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of vanity,
And sin as if with a cart rope;
That say, 'Let Him make speed and hasten His work,
That we may see it;
And let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near and come,
That we may know it.'

"Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness;
Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

"Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes,
And prudent in their own sight!"

Is God plus needed thing, in a whole which contained Him, to be called God; but such would mean  He would not be God at all!

NEED presupposes lack, and lack presupposes an exterior to God beyond and needful to His interior, which is another way of saying that He is contained and immersed. However, God is beyond all, creator of all, and without reliance on anything, since He preceded all, invented time which is itself a limit, as we know it, and permitted creation its place. What relies on anything is already, mentally or physically, spiritually or in whatever other dimension the case occurs, to that extent within a system of which he is component, or in a field of which he is an inhabitant. That is not God but creation, intra-systematic component, derived interactive unit in the medium that surrounds.

With a need, He would be without His place; for need spells lack and lack means the imaginable without the actual, which limits His power, while limit to power is access denied which implies what is not God at the level of God, which at once makes two of them, or God plus a system, which in either case implies not God, but components.

If God needed creation to satisfy a need, then need would drive Him, and inadequacy would be His name. As soon as He is presumed inadequate, then He is insufficient, and hence depends on something else, and hence is not God.

If however it should be said: But He is quite adequate, and can MAKE what satisfies His need, so that He does not then need, then the case is not in essence at all different. This means that only with a creation is He complete, and that implies that God+need is the initial situation. That implies that a system beyond Him is His place, and hence we look for the Maker of that system who is God.

It is nothing to God to find a creation, as if to satisfy an insufficiency which by definition cannot be His. Hence the concept of a selfish motive is not only unscriptural, but a contradiction in terms. GOD so loved that He GAVE, NOT so that He would GET! It does not noticeably say this: God so loved His pleasure and fulfilment and self-esteem (or anything of His self) that He traded His only begotten Son so that anyone who believed in Him would satisfy the celestial need. That is moral as well as intellectual folly.

If then God is not at all selfish, and could not be in this, that to satisfy what is satisfied, and to meet what is met is meaningless, and as to desire, to desire what is not a need, in order to complete what He wants, so that He might be fulfilled, this again puts Him in a system, God+fulfilment contents, to make the sufficient God, what follows ? The author of that system is then God, and the talk has been of someone else, a product of imagination, not the author of all.

All this simply means that God made man out of what is NOT need, or desire in the sense of satisfying a want for His pleasure, since either would indicate an incompleteness, inadequacy and insufficiency contrary to the minimal grounds found for God (SMR Ch. 1).

If He elects however to do something out of love, which as some may know, is not after its fulfilment but after its object, then this is another dimension entirely. In this case, the objective is not self-satisfaction, and indeed any lover of depth would be insulted by the very thought. It is the love which looks with desire to please and elevate, make content and blessed, what it loves. This is to fulfil the loved object, and in the case of the Creator making subjects, then this is the desire towards them.

It is, as Christ said, more blessed to give than to receive. This is the nature of God.

However some may say, To be sure grace is the motive, and goodness is the desire, kindness is the moving expression in the Lord in creation, but WHY did He not say this:

• Since I know all things, and time is a mere invention of mine (as in Romans 8:29ff.), and have even predestinated all those who are mine before the world began (Eph. 1:4) and know the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10), then why not,  seeing the evil in and coming to the lost who like it that way, arrest proceedings, cancel creation, omit the whole thing ? Why not prevent the good for those whose heart comes to Me, on account of those whose task becomes their own ruin ?

Why should I give and give and give, only to lose some. Surely those who would have been blessed children of heaven  if I create, are not to esteemed. Why worry about them ? No, let the lost dictate My plans, and let the delightful children of radiance and light be ignored, doomed before begotten, never made. Yes, let evil blackmail good, control it, dictate to it, give it duress ! That is the way.

However, this sort of fire-works night is not in the agenda. THIS is not what God did, bless His name! Rather He made such capable and generous, such lavish and glorious, such pure and wholesome, such totally intimate and wholly adequate provision for sinners that they need but call to come (Acts 2:21).

This was filled with initiative and precisely what love is: that cost paying that is free of counting when love is there, which meets the need and provides at whatever pain and grief, to secure the one loved.

Thus such a procedure as envisaged for survey above is outrageous, unloving and a fawning on evil.

Such a plan as that ? But no! This is to make the lesser the greater, the wicked the dictator, and that is no part of the plan of the God who is good and true. If any lose heaven, it is not for lack of love on His part, as has been shown on this sight many times (cf. SMR Appendix B, The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 4). If then one should say, Let Him FORCE them into heaven, one merely shows that one does not understand love at all. Love and force are disparate. They do not mix. Friends are not made by a gun.
 

But you say, why not eliminate them before they come ? (cf. Stepping Out for Christ Ch. 3).

Before we answer this proposition, from the Bible and from the principles that stand, let us consider this point: that this requires God to KNOW who are going to be in what category, sheep and goats (Matthew 25). Now in that He KNOWS the Christians before the world was founded (Ephesians 1:4), it is apparent that He knows people before they are born, which indeed it is necessary to do if He is going to predestinate them as He declares plainly that He does: you do not predestinate what is NOT an object of thought, knowledge, but what IS!  (Romans 8:29ff., see Predestination and Freewill, SMR Chs. 1, 5, 8, Appendix B, Tender Times for Timely Truths Ch. 11 and Indexes, foreknowledge, predestination).

Hence this sort of foreknowledge  (Isaiah 44:6-8, 44:24-45:4, Romans 9:10-15 with 9:22, Ephesians 1:4) implies the capacity on the one hand, and the discrimination of some from others, on the other hand, and indeed I Peter 2:8 makes it clear that the non-sheep are APPOINTED. Christ in the same vein announces that the reason WHY some do not believe in Him is that they are NOT His sheep (not vice versa - John 10:26).

If indeed God, contrary to many scriptures, did NOT know then He could not predict things like the betrayal of Judas or the coming of Cyrus (as in Isaiah 44, Psalm 41,69,109 cf. Joyful Jottings 25). It would be some other being, not the Biblical one, not God. As to that, if God did not know what was coming, and through whom, then His plans would be such that He would not know the texture of events so that not merely would prophesy stall, like a plane rising too sharply on take-off, not merely would His word be false as in Isaiah 46:10, but He would be again, at war within Himself, with planned systems of unknown outcomes, of uncomprehended ingredients, desire transcending competence, principles at risk to eventuations (cf. SMR pp. 30ff.).

Moreover, then His governance would be but partial and His control episodic, His subsistence event-prone and His realm one for habitation, experience, knowledge-growth, development, Himself a participant: not the Creator of all, but a scholar in society, His nature a potential being actualised, His constitution therefore one conferred; and so it is once again, not God with whom we would be dealing. Such a being would not rule by His own standards, without diminution or dismissal, compromise or abeyance; He would change and learn, grow and develop, a changeable citizen of the human mind, of its imaginations, not the God of glory or the truth of creation.

Gone would be His exhaustively comprehensive understanding of all things, these and their systems, inter- and intra-systematics, principles and elements, components and persons, all being both from His drafting and to His design. Thus His plans would cause an item to arise which not being known, this with many billions like it, would preclude knowledge of HIS own future, and hence would lead to sacrifice of sufficiency, which being a minimal requirement for God as demonstrated, would be foregone. Hence, again,  such a being would not be God at all but an intra-systematic native of some nature in which He found Himself to be living.

Biblically, this is however not the case. God both declares and performs otherwise. God is not without His glory, but replete with it; and neither can philosophy nor can history diminish it: It is who He is, and both acts and speaks accordingly. As His word indicates in propositions, so history in performance parallels to it. Reason rejoices at revelation, and revelation is pointed to by reason.

It is however only when that revelation is found that all is confirmed, necessities of reason are actualised in the God who made it, antinomies being discarded are likewise removed, rationality becoming consummated in reality, its findings validated, verified and complete where only God is the speaker.

His word declares the case and His presentations to ear, eye and mind are all one: His is the grace and not mere interface;  and His is the everlasting glory, who changes not! (Malachi 3:6, Psalm 102, Hebrews 1 cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms  6,  7, Repent or Perish Chs.    2,   7).
 
 

So does even reason attest what revelation insists on. This being so, then the querulous might persist, why did God not BOTH allow test, so that the sheep might be in a pilgrimage situation, and ALSO prevent the evil from so much as existing. Then there would be heaven and no hell, it might be pressed!

First, however, this is an arithmetical way of 'solving' a moral issue. It is not just a question of who is who; it is a question of the ground plan. If the evil is gone, the good are to this most significant extent, of necessity UNTRIED. They do not find their wings, they do not meet peril and resistance, slander and libel, defamation and challenge, do not find restoration in the heart of the furnace or strength in the midst of weakness (cf. II Cor. 12:10, 1:3ff.), do not learn in this vital experience not to trust in themselves but in God, do not see the power of God in the midst of the tempest, the savoury beauty of goodness in the very torment of the evil one, are as unskilled, unschooled and untaught greenhorns. The keen lines of truth are not etched in conflict, in test, in laboratory conditions.

If you did that, then, the test would be excluded, and the mere force of the power of God would be ruling where the realities had not been displayed for all to read. Evil would be a name only and its exponents and preachers would never have seen the light, to test the light, to exhibit the reality of the light, its wonder and the folly of darkness. Eternal questions would not be answered in the light; but God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.

In this way, you would not have people who like Job, have shown their integrity of faith in test, or people whose smooth pretences were exhibited at length in their evil fruit. Freedom would lose its name and functionality would be replaced by name calling: a roll, not a trial.

If God allows all things their sway, say and way, to illustrate what is not only His demand, but the truth, that is His affair. It makes reality the more precious that its abuse is shown to be just that. It makes light the more realised to see that it is not merely what is working fine, but what alone can work. It moves out the follies of trial and hope in evil, it exhibits with stability for all time, what is the nature in time of eternal things, and so allows the entire exhibition of the truth, not in some private seance, but in the exigencies of fire.

After all, if some want darkness, is their desire a threat ? Is this not a piece of hypocrisy, that they do not want darkness, and yet they do; or that they should be given what they want, but not if it is evil. How is freedom in such pre-conditioning, or liberty to live in such artificiality, such mimicry of truth, such a green-house of stale air as this! They must all be people yet unable to choose evil if they so desire! They must in short NOT be created at all!

IF evil is their desire, you rebel at its fulfilment ? If liberty is their mode, you want its annulment, the destitution of personality, the denudation of reality ? If in the end, evil be not their desire, you imagine they will fail to come where they do desire ? On what grounds ? That, it is another religion. If with all the heart man seeks God, He will be found of Him. It is true that sin is a duping and a deceiving, but it is no less true that God is committed to this, that He would have all men to be saved! (I Tim. 2). If a man wants to disbelieve Him, that is not a problem of theology, but of his own will. If however one believes Him, then NONE will fail to find heaven because of technical difficulties. God is almighty and that is excluded.

If then under these circumstances, a critic of God wants the wonder of being a friend of God to be removed from the millions whose joy this is, by revoking creation before it happens, in his revisionist planning and in his idle dream, then he merely excludes the good for the sake of the evil, or doubts the plan for the sake of disbelief.

In either case, there is nothing to answer. If someone wants to doubt God, this is no case against His plan of salvation. If a person moreover prefers  the implementation of evil to good, to make its needs the dictates for the good, then that is that individual's preference. If however God is good, as He is, and without this it is all in the direction of hell, then good may be expected to be the outcome. Those who do not like it, can do without it. It is lamentable to be sure, but no part of any blemish in God, whose lustrous love is available to all, and lost on declining, not of the love, but of the heart which avoids it. There is no point in whining when what is lost is a declining! It is better to accept.
 

Let us gain some more perspective now from the Epilogue, one section of it, for Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium Ch. 15.
 
 

DELUDED WITH SPACE,

CONFUSING SIZE WITH SIGNIFICANCE,

THE STAGE OF MAJESTY WITH THE MAJESTY OF ITS MAKER,

DEGRADING PERSONALITY BY THE VERY VEHICLE OF VALIDITY (Romans 1:18ff.),

SKIMMING LIKE A MOSQUITO ON THE SURFACE OF SUPERFICIALITY,

WHILE OMITTING THE PRECIOUSNESS OF PROFUNDITY:

MAN IN MULTITUDES GRIMACES AT HIS STARVING, STRAYING  SUPPER OF THE

MEANINGLESS (Jeremiah 10:11, 2:13, 2:25, 35).

 

POLLUTING IN A PROFUSION OF BEWILDERMENT
BOTH HIS INNER AND OUTER ENVIRONMENTS,
LIKE A PSYCHIC SKULL, GRINNING AT FATE,
INSTEAD OF USING THE KEY TO THE DOOR OF REALITY,
WITH RELISH:
HE DIES IN THE PRESENCE OF LIFE, BURNING WITH THIRST,
IN THE MIDST OF FOUNTAINS OF WATER (John 4:14, Jeremiah 1:31).

 

And  to what door is love not the key ? But to what shall love give its name - rather than rebellion - but to truth! And where is wisdom but in God (Job 28:12-28, I Cor. 1:31)! It is not in the puny approximations of manacled man, by himself estimating himself, without knowledge (II Corinthians 10:12, 11:4,14-15, Galatians 1:6ff.). It is not in the stars, mere productions of the Almighty . It is in God who has spoken His words, uttered His thought (Amos 3:7,4:11-13, Joel 2:11, Isaiah 45:19, John 1:1-14, Hebrews 1:1-3), declared His mind in the universe, His production, and in His created image, in man, care of the astute contrivances of DNA and the acute consciousness of spirit, the human psyche, now so degraded in its dance between deluded autonomy in its lordliness and impoverished pathos in its weakness, hopelessness and burning peril, and this, not from stars only, but from the black fire of everlasting darkness, death to truth, like a dismembered arm, lonely without its body and severed from its Head.

There is a door to God, who is love, while many self-trashed into the garbage can of death to truth, may long dismally for what they deny. It is only in His love that life flowers, peace prospers and spirit finds everlasting meaning.

That door is Jesus Christ. Long announced, foreshadowed since the fall of man from the living and fatherly presence of God, at the first, He having now come, is open to access.

To be sure, His cross meets you at the door; and the avenue of hope stretches beyond it, clean, reasonable and bold with integrity, understanding, validity, virtue, truth and peace. Redemption is the price He paid for all who come, by Christ covered at entry (though He has known His own from eternity - Ephesians 1:4). Relinquishment of pollution, of puff-ball psychology, of the materialism of heart that would worship 'nature' or 'self' or some other creation, rather than the Maker of man, meaning and hope, where challenge is choice, because donated as duty: these things are a cost. For pollution to be pure, there is a cost. It entails a  transformation by truth, in love that cares and a payment by Christ, already once and for all made (Hebrews 9:12-28, 10:10,14).

This cover cleanses the universe of the soul - His life for ours
 

	a) as a substitutionary sacrifice, to satisfy justice (Galatians 3:1-13).
	b) as a dynamic impartation to enable vitality of spirit (Romans 8).
	c) as a regenerative reality to give housing to life (Titus 3:5ff.) and it gives the end to death, imparting to the reception of the soul, life that is eternal (I John 1:1-4, 5:12ff.). God who has spoken in worlds and in space, in created life and in consciousness, has spoken most clearly, and definitely in His word; and most definitively in His Son, His eternal word; and what He has said is this: REPENT, and COME and BELIEVE in the ONE whom He has sent, as announced, pre-arranged and foretold, in the One who has in turn foretold what was to be, which now is (Isaiah 45:19, Hebrews 1:1-3, Luke 24:25-27 - cf. SMR Chs.  8 - 9). Our large concert hall, the universe, and marvellous if bombed stage, this earth (bombs of Hitler and the Allies were but symbols of the curse both present and to come from which the redemption in Christ is the ONLY and MOST COSTLY answer) , cursed with man's delinquencies, are to go their way when the Maker, the Creator of all, ends this production and assesses His cast (Isaiah 51:6, II Peter 3). He has already pre-assessed His own, in Christ, for they are His, adopted and adapted, redeemed and called (Romans 8:29ff., Ephesians 1:6-11). For the rest, there is no cover (Matthew 25:33ff., 21:44, 22:11-14, 7:13,22ff.). Producer and products then meet in what is called the judgment (Revelation 20:12ff.). Life requires repentance (Jeremiah 2:35, Luke 13:1-3), because of pollution - "Because when they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were they thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into  an image made like corruptible man..." (from Romans 1:22ff.). Empty, spurious, insignificant and meaningless in his self-chosen nakedness, because divorced from its meaning, its Maker, man has fallen into a standing ruin, erect only in outline, defiled within. Here is the pathos, the everlasting pity for man when, proud in pollutions, darkened in counsel, through ignorance, dead in the presence of life, a rebel in the midst of divine love (Jeremiah 2:35), a spiritual pauper amidst the unsearchable riches of Christ, he murders logic (Repent or Perish Ch. 7), as he murdered Christ. But that is all part of the Maker's plan, this provision, the brilliant work of the Creator (I Corinthians 2:7-8, 1:24-25, Romans 1:16) who arranged death in its hatefulness, as the place of love for life, placing His Son in the path of the contempt of murderous man, as the way to the forgiveness of God (Isaiah 53:1-10). It is WHEN that Son is made a sacrifice for sin that the seed of spiritual reality is restored, and man becomes a child of God by adoption (Isaiah 53:10 cf. John 1:1-4, which echoes this in the New Testament cf. SMR pp. 727, and The Kingdom of Heaven Ch.9, p. 175ff.) . FAITH must so receive what FUNCTION has provided (Ephesians 2:1-10). Double dissolution of all hope ? This occurs when THIS love of God, free, foretold and fulfilled, THIS Gospel, this great news from God (Isaiah 52:7, 40:1-10), is turned away, with the tang of confusion, the dignity of delusion, the ache of autonomy called angst - this becoming as  'god' to the forsaken soul (Jeremiah 2:11-13,19, 25,27-28), while the garbage writes its pathetic epitaph, called philosophy (Jeremiah 8:9). It is NOT garbage by creation, but has created itself garbage by its sin*2; it is NOT inferior by birth, but through lack of new birth; it is NOT a distinction of caste, but of contempt, for what has PRACTICAL contempt for Christ by the inaction of NOT receiving Him in faith, makes itself contemptible through this contempt of truth (John 1:1-4, 3:15-19, 33-36). It is time, while the stage is still here, to enter the kingdom of God with repentance for wilful ignorance that produces woes, by the door of Christ (John 10:9,27-28). You do not need to manufacture your remedy; for He has come so that you should be won, clean, and pardoned; nor could you make it, since you yourself without Christ, are internally and eternally lost, in debt to justice, divorced from reality (Ephesians 4:17ff.), indeed "alienated from the life of God." END OF EXCERPT     GOD FOR EVER, AND MAN SINCE SOON AFTER THE WORLD BEGAN

The depravity of man, that unconditional love of God, knowing His own before all time and all contrivance, the limited atonement, of the love towards all but carrying only some through sin-bearing to glory (Romans 8:32), the irresistible grace of God and the necessary salvation that nothing can dim are all true, and have often been expounded from the word of God on this site; but so is the LOVE of God as in SMR Appendix B, and other references, also often shown. It is only when the WHOLE counsel of God is deployed, that the beauty of His holiness is seen. He is not an inept experimenter, not a green experiencer, but knowing all things, gains and keeps His own. These not being a caste system selection, but the securing of the love which stoops but does not force, by His own penetration before all time, are not in any way superior; but HE is superior. Those who are lost are lost only over His dead body, therefore (as in Ezekiel 33:11, Luke 19:42ff., I Tim. 2 and cf. The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 4, Biblical Blessings Ch. 3, SMR Appendix B).

Hence God is never surprised, man is never given short shrift, love is never demeaned either into 'forcing' or minimisation towards any, all who are His are gained, and none reaches the decrepit destiny without the heart being for it, in the very face of divine love. Beauty knows its perfection and loveliness is spread like Spring perfumes.

These things being so, who would wail for the omission of the omitted; for the omission is theirs. Who would selfishly inflict non-existence on those who are the Lord's, for the sake of those who deem themselves unworthy of eternal life, as Paul put it! It would not be someone who senses the wonder of goodness and wishes to see it everywhere and shared with many.

For further aspects, consider End-note 153, from Predestination and Freewill, Part III:

 
153  Indeed, it might perhaps be said that there is a sense in which to man, at his own instance, belongs access, committal or consignment to an experiment ­ in autonomy. Though divinely the results are foreknown, humanly they are not always believed.

In every phase of life, individual, group, moral, political ...the persistent "experiment" explodes in disaster, difficulty, doubt and eventual drabness. To the principal spiritual parties (Ephesians 3:10 and see esp. the J.B. Phillips rendering in 'The New Testament in Modern English', REF.BIBL.46), in pursuit of a systematically elusive autonomy and heteronomy (cf. Isaiah 14:13, 11 Thessalonians 2:4; Daniel 11:37­38, and 7:25 with 2:21­22; Revelation 13:4), there is 'made manifest' the beauty of holiness and the inevitability of the sovereignty of God for the weal of His creatures.

However imperviously or even imperiously impenitent they may be, truth has prospered. (Cf. Genesis 2:17 & 3:5; Isaiah 41:21­23; 42:3; Psalm 6:10;Revelation 15:4). These things, embraced and disposed before they began, become effectually a "teacher's experiment" - by humanity invested and contested: in humanity attested.
 

Now we turn to end-note 3 in Ch. 11 in Tender Times for Timely Truths, which for those who wish to pursue that aspect, deals with 'double predestination'.

 
*3
 See SMR pp. 422 Qff., 316Dff., 374ff., Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming... Ch. 5, pp. 104Aff..

It is only in God that there is escape from the endless round of causative devices, impacts on the human spirit which, if it were possible, would encapsulate the spirit of man, making his theories reactions, and invalidating the thought that thinks so! It is self-contradiction. (See also Predestination and Freewill, Section 1., SMR pp. 424ff..)  On the other hand, without God, it would not and could not be, for this is spiritual life: it would neither be necessary, nor desired, nor available. Attempts to evacuate the spirit from man are about as effective logically as attempts to turn man's spirit into a divinity, on its own behalf, or to evacuate the God of creation (cf. SMR pp. 422Eff., Ch. 10, That Magnificent Rock Ch.1, 8, A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9).

Man ? He is neither creature of culture nor divinity at large, but creation of God, and equipped in format, for the knowing of God. Sin makes this a failure, and the redemption in Christ a triumph. Certainly this is delightful, but since when did pessimism become maestro ? Indeed cynicism and its ilk, scepticism (cf. SMR Ch.3, pp. 255ff.), relate not a little to the frustrations of unbelief, and in that setting, their acidulous verbalisings are understandable, if not right: for without the ground in God, there is only wastage, itself not an uplifting subject, to be sure!

It is the endless endeavours to turn man into god, into nothing, into matter's slave, culture's kid, history's servant and other deterministic or vaporous unrealities, always forgetting the cause of the determinism, or the ground of the gods, that produces the see-saw of pitiful pliancy, never resting, never right, each always vulnerable to the other, a veritable tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee that ignores reality, and hence cannot formulate it successfully.

That, however, it is predilection as well as predestination, and the latter in no way reduces, but rather confirms the guilt of everlasting gyration, sand not rock, self-realisation not redemption, lie not truth.

As to that, time is but an invention as we know it, and the eternity is neither limitable nor investigable, for it will be as it will be; but this know, that God does not willingly for all that, afflict the children of men. Shame is a state not to be desired; and its dimensions are not to be closely considered; nor is contempt a worthy or worth-while end, when truth is its donor. To avoid what cost so much, it is like what ? a stooping to a puddle in a cow yard, when torrents of mountain water are cascading in the brook.

The World Trade Centre has lost its beauty; but the beauty of the twin towers of God's love and Lordship remain. It is not these which are defiled, but those who in seeking to abort them, or failing to consort with them, merely abort themselves.