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We shall treat this with question and answer, as in a catechism.

Q. Where do we find creation ?

A. In the mind of man, in his denial of creation, in his other nonsense stories which he tells to stimulate the minds of his children, in the works of art, of literature, of architecture, of research formulations prior to testing, in the evidence of our senses, as we see another creator at work, in the arts and artifices of 'nature', inanimate, animate, conscious, instinctive and rational.

Q: Why do so many blush as with shame, when talking of creation?

A: Because they are conditioned by their peers, manipulated by their fears and/or desirous of this world's rewards for conforming to its self-love and other lusts.

Q: Is there then no evidence for it?

A: None whatsoever, if you mean things developing and then synthesising categories of reality, such as mind, spirit, will, codes, programs, languages ... by chance.

Q: That is not creation is it?

A: No it's fantasy. A major brilliance of creation is this: the development of individuality.

Q: Is this evolution then?

A: No. It is difference inside a kind.

Q: In what way?

A: The genius and super-natural skill of the maker of nature is shown in this, that NOT ONLY does this Intelligence, Creator, Wisdom make CLASSES of things, CATEGORIES, KINDS: for also made are those delightful and often delicious little differences WITHIN KINDS, called individuality. These - and this - can fascinate, intrigue and prevent monotony whether in art, artifice or personality.

Q: Why did you separate these in reviewing creation?

A: PROVISION is made for individual development on the basis of programs, plans and so forth; but life forms, instinctive and personal are able to react and respond WITHIN their kind-format in a way which DOES allow a type of input.

Q: Is this then some type of additional machinery?

A: Not machinery: provision, scope for potential developing within its given terms of reference, of kind.

Q: Is this then a further stage?

A: In life? Yes. Different platforms have been built: the purely material, with programming, the physiological with procedures, the anatomical with structures, the psychological with individual forms in the world of ideas and response, the instinctive with quasi-personal normal reactions but with increasing provision for personality to intervene and alter the base setting (what computer language calls, the 'default setting'). Here was the personal, with power to reason and relate morally, emotionally, spiritually ...and to interact and superintend so that one is responsible at this level.

Q: Do these things then show an ascending scale of being?

A: Not of being: they all ARE... but of operation!

Q: So you are saying that all this is created, as we create, but without our limitations in that we are already a PART of things and so must have such limits?

A: Not exactly. It is not as we create. It is not a magnification of our powers. It is of a different order. Our creative powers depend on what they are and have been made to be. Those creative powers depend on nothing which has been created at all. They are unique.

Q: Why do you say that?

A: It is this. When you get beyond 'nature', it is simply a step from the visible to the invisible, which since we use the invisible every day is nothing strange. But WITHIN the invisible there is always this need to find the basis of it, so that it can all operate and co-operate effectually in unity and comprehensibility. All this requires what is at least as capable as system.

IF however someone or some operational or functional power were to MAKE A BASIS, then THAT would be the creator, and the thing or being which had a basis given to it, would simply be part of the creation.

Q: What has that to do with my question?

A: This: it follows that the One which did all the making IS the creator, so that in the end you MUST face the options to the mind: either the creator is a series of beings, each creating in series the basis of the other, or it is the one which, having been founded by no one, is eternal and limited by nothing, is the autonomous ultimate.

Q: Do you mean that if there were a series of these creators, then someone would be needed to create the construction of and for the series?

A: Precisely. Science is not forwarded by stopping when you want a cup of tea. You have to complete the accounting operation. The Creator therefore is unique, even in the world of the invisible - of which things like truth, peace and love are examples.

Q: Do you not then think that this Creator might have played about with things in order to get the hand in, to gain experience and upgraded things here and there?

A: No. If the Creator had THAT sort of nature, which we could call temporary intelligence, the kind that has a limit, a basis and a method of developing all built in (but not automatically, there are platforms of life): then someone with adequate powers of thought for such an undertaking, would had have to create that.

Q: So there can be no question of developing potential in the Creator?

A: Clearly not. Experiments demand limits: this Creator has none, for if there were any, there would be a system beyond, which requires its creator rather than magic. As to magic, it is something which is either simple denial of reason, or else assumption of other powers, which in turn then simply have to be named and graded.

Q: But is there some other reason why you do not believe in evolution being carried out by the Creator?

A: Reason? Have you been asleep. I do not SEE it, either

a) with the eyes of the face, which look for what happens, so that in scientific method it can be accounted for, or

b) with the eyes of the mind, which examines principles to see how they can operate; nor is it found

c) in the book of history, which records whether upgradings, as it were, in the architect's office have been found in process, nor

d) in the book of life, where procedures and provisions may be examined.

What is not found does not need to be accounted for; and formulations about what it is, are simply works of literary art.

Q: Why do you say that evolution is not found with the eyes of the face?

A: Show me ANY single case in which there is an increase of information in KIND in living things?

Q: I cannot. As I have been taught, the second LAW of thermodynamics declares that natural process moves towards losing specificity, order and distinctiveness: it is not the reverse. Do you expect me to fly in the face of a LAW of this size, history and scope? I am not a magician.

A: True. But you are an observer. I take it then that you find not such happenings.

Q: Why then do people try to explain in the face of this law, what it declares contrary to reality?

A: Certainly not because the laws of their mind, or the eyes of their mind tell them so.

Q: What do you mean by that?

A: In our minds, we account for things on the basis of what causes them, how things are found to work, that nothing comes from nothing, and what does come from anything is there because what was there had what it takes to do what was done. Otherwise, it would not happen.

Q: Do you mean the law of sufficient causation?

A: That is a good name for it. And further, if you try to find a CAUSE for it, then you are USING it in order to explain it, which is normally called begging the question. If you have to ASSUME something in order to show it wrong, your 'proof' depends on its being right. You are merely fiddling with self-contradiction. (Cf. SMR pp. 113, 425ff., Predestination and Freewill, Appendix on Kant.)

Q: So causality, the fact and act of causation is inescapable?

A: Yes, if thought means anything; and if it does not, then words too mean nothing, so anyone who believes that, has nothing to say before he says it, and must retire from all discussion in ruins.

Q: But where is the evidence for evolution then?

A: Seek it high, in Mars. Was it found? Not at all. Are billions committed to 'research' to see if contrary to all law and logic, it happens? What is the latest: Paul Davies on Australian radio this past week (2^nd in July, 1997), is reported to have said we cannot have much hope of finding life on Mars (now that the resources have put some exploration gadget there), and really we shall expect to have to burrow down - kilometres? - before anything much can be looked for.

Q: Do you mean that humanity is engaging, through its social orders to a large extent in a kind of mixture of escapism and rearguard action, in order to cover itself while it sees ever new 'hopes', all hopeless from the start, of finding what neither empirically nor logically can happen.

A: Precisely. The nature of this delusion or confusion can even prevent their seeing it - you find that in the Bible (cf. Romans 1:16-20, II Corinthians 3:14 - 4:4, Ephesians 4:18-19).

Q: But do not brilliant people do these things?

A: Do not brilliant people make brilliant wars which are brilliant failures quite frequently? And do not millions die in them? and do not people blame people afterwards, almost routinely, and say that it should never have happened. It is not different in spiritual things.

Q: What do you mean by spiritual things?

A: Things at which are at

a) our own level of personality which deals continually in the invisible things like courage, character, hope, vision, purpose, ideal; and

b) the level of the Creator. (You could find reference here in Hebrews 11:1-3, II Corinthians 4:16-18, Romans 1:19-21, Isaiah 44:24-28, 45:18-23.)

Q: But how could you know this Creator?

A: By following the evidence, and by any help He may give you.

Q: What evidence?

A: First the evidence of your senses, and of your own mind.

Q: How do you do this?

A: Let's classify a bit more, with a little overview. Thus you notice that:

a) If you seek evolution LOW, as in the Grand Canyon, there are pollen grains of certain trees and flowering plants in low layers*1 (in fact, basal pre-Cambrian strata), wildly ridiculous if there were early to late stages; you find missing layers, unconformities, you find evidence, in terms of the sort of events at Mt St Helens, as Dr Austin has shown so well, of events that happened with thundering and wild seeming catastrophic force.

You find amazingly complex, varied and abundant life, to use the Biblical word, in the Cambrian deposits including a large percentage of invertebrate life. Not bad for a start or start up exercise! What you do not find is anything showing gradual creation.

b) If you look for evolution HIGH, as in Mars, you find the marvellous changes of scene and scenario invented by that marvellous little creator, man, but you do not find life. You find efforts and wonder and ... hope and theories; but you do not find life.

c) If you look into history for it, you find stacks of varied creations, but you do not find phases and stages of undress, as they come to be. It is rather like a drawing pad: all the drawings show the skill of the artist. They are varied, hi-tech, but not half-baked.

Sometimes similar things are drawn, that look quite alike, and then you find some subtle, suggestive difference, almost like a novelist, altering plots and characters and changing scenes. You do not find haphazard collections; you find mind and products and intelligence all the time: at the most amazing level, far beyond the best of man to invent technically.

d) If, fourthly, you look into the minutely microscopic for it, you find elaborate codes, commands and all the paraphernalia of design like an engineering shop and a mathematical paradise, allied with an economic marvel, with no primitive cells; while it is estimated that the gap from matter to cell is itself greater than that from bacteria to man. It would be rather like saying that a pencil evolved into the empire State building, on the ground that both of them are around. That is simply a kind of irrational fixation with an idea, contrary to reality, law, logic, causation, illustration and the definitive modes of design, direction and the necessary radically rational dynamics back of all such things causally.

As to evolution here, It is not merely that you do not see it: you see

i) the precise opposite, with

ii) all the normal functional realities of creation.

Q: But what of the evidence of your mind?

A: You find this road block on causation. If you question it, you do so WITH it. It is a built-in absolute. If you use it, it confirms you in ALL directions. It is part of rational equipment which proves itself, and which it is impossible logically to deny. The philosopher Kant tried, but died theoretically by using it to deny it, invalidating his action by his assumptions, all awry and amiss. Valid logic requires God, and invalid logic requires a cessation of argument.

People without God are arguing with unassessable equipment about relative things which do not even possess an absolute truth. They are therefore doubly deranged in any actual attempt to tell us what is the truth about things. If they say, 'You cannot know!', then they make the same error. Invalid logic shows nothing. Even if they say, 'You perhaps do not know,' invalid logic gives no force to that reasoning either.

Q: What else in your mind spells creation?

A: Creativity. Its genesis has only one basis: personality as a form and sphere of operation, with access to inventiveness at that level as one of its features. It is all as watertight as any other creation, with its DNA, but this is a matter of IQ, and far beyond that, fantasy power and inventive power through sheer display and diversion of thought.

Q: But what else?

A: The wonder of spirit, of will, which flatly contradicts everything that matter is, just as the analytical power of mind totally supersedes it: not by any 'natural development', for a development engineer is not built in, leaves no tracks or traces, shows no power or principles, makes no laws. It is a sealed unit, with this additional feature, that it is synthetically contrived to work together with the other 'sealed units' so that just like our own creations, but at another level, it all works by design plan as one whole.

Q: How then can we know this Creator? This One must be worth knowing.

A: Undoubtedly. You can follow lines like these.

a) thought. His divine nature we have already touched on, in that it is not and cannot be limited like ours, and yet we can find what it cannot be less than.

b) evidence of the eyes of the face. There is a book which declares, has declared and constantly is shown right: how to know Him. Then you may know Him for yourself, as it states.

There is a book written in your cell codes, your cytological encrypted vital programming: this makes your body, including energy production and executives, copiers, editors and the like. This is the other book, written at a more personal and higher level: it tells the resulting unit, mind, matter, spirit called man, this fascinating and fantastic trilogy, mind to mind, person to person, what it is desired that he should know.

As to this book: It asks to be criticised if we can, to be shown wrong if we are able (Isaiah 41,43,48), to be respected if it shows its worth (Micah 2:7), and to be followed if we want to find the One who wrote it to us, who earlier gave us the contrivances by which our underlying equipment operates.

As to the physical book, for our bodies, Psalm 139 tells us that this Creator has a book in which the programs for our very developing embryos are all written, so that things eventuate in the womb where we are constructed, as it was in the first place engineered. (Cf. SMR pp. 203, 488.)

Q: Have we now verified this?

A: Of course. Micro-biology is merely catching up after a few thousand years of God's announcements around B.C. 1000.

Q: But does God care?

A: His name is in His creation. He cannot deny Himself. If He did, He would merely be a creation, at war with His made-up nature.

Q: Where does it say He cares?

A: In Isaiah 26:7, it says this:

"The way of the just is uprightness. You, Most Upright, do weigh the path of the just. Yes, in the way of your judgments, O Lord, have we waited for you: the desire of our soul is to Your name, and to the remembrance of you."

Psalm 11:7 says:

"For the righteous Lord loves righteousness; His countenances beholds the upright."

Q: But what if we are not up to that standard of perfection, moral beauty and absolute justice?

A: Then He has done something else.

Q: What?

A: First He delivered the Jews from the ancient Pharoah who made slaves of them, who first came as visitors to his land, with much blessing to it; and then He told them what their history would be, right down to the coming of their Messiah, their rejection of Him, the date at which this Messiah would come, where He would be born, of what tribe, what sort of death His own people could give Him, that He would be resurrected, what His Good News or Gospel to mankind would be, where it would be accepted and so on.

NO ONE confronting this Messiah was able to show ANY SINGLE thing wrong with any of these divine specifications for His life, though they had EVERY reason to do so, since He was in total conflict with His government in Israel, as predicted. It would have been simplicity itself to show the wrong birthplace, tribe or any other item in the whole paraphernalia of prophesied items which would distinguish the Messiah!

Such discrediting would have 'solved' the whole issue, challenge and removed the unthinkable odium in which so many unrepentant countryman rulers of the day held Him! His exposure of them is found in Matthew 23, and no more searing demolition of carnal splendour could be conceived. Failure in word or works, was needed in only a single instance, when the claims were so high, that of deity, constantly at one with His Father who sent Him (John 8:29,58, 5:19-23, Matthew 11:27; cf. SMR Ch.6).

What drew people to Him, at the level of works, not least was this unfailing daring which in the very face of opposition, arrest or exposure, in fact did not hesitate to do WHATEVER the case of healing or rebuke required (cf. Mark 2:10).

The integrity on the one hand, the fearlessness of authenticity and the courage of truth, accompanied by the unfailing performance at the level of word, refutation, affirmation and miracle were an overwhelming testimony so that thousands milled about Him, ran to Him, pressed in on Him (cf. Mark 2:4,13, 3:6,9, 6:33,55, Matthew 8:18-19, 9:36, Luke 5:1-8, John 6:2, 8:46, Matthew 22:15). All predicted, just as He had to fulfil it for authenticity's sake, so He did fulfil it by a personal power and presence both awe-inspiring and scientifically irrefutable by any means to discredit: verbal, legal, historical, biological, therapeutic, dogmatic or dynamic.

When they could not nail Him, the Messiah, by such means, they used the metal kind of nail to pierce Him to death: even that desperate expedient too was just as predicted in enormous detail, including its significance and ground: in Isaiah, the Psalms, Zechariah, as shown in intimate particular elements in SMR Ch.9 (cf. Appendix C). History and culture simply could not take over. God knew, planned to cover the cost, and paid it, always doing precisely what He had said.
 

Q: What Messiah? What IS a Messiah?

A: Jesus Christ. Christ is simply Greek for Messiah.

Q: What has Greek got to do with it?

A: This, that this was a world or international cultural language at the time, and the books about the Messiah very naturally use it.

Q: Did the Hebrews then have this Christ coming, and what was to happen to them if they rejected Him as it said they would?

A: Daniel and Jesus alike predicted the ABSOLUTE destruction of Jerusalem in a series of horrors, wars, contentions over time, as kingdoms came and went; while Ezekiel and Moses and Jeremiah showed that the Jewish people would be expelled from their land, mocked and scorned by many nations and eventually return to their land, still not receiving their Messiah...

Q: Wait! Where can I verify all this?

A: In Chapter 9 of The Shadow of a Mighty Rock. Turn as it shows you, to the Bible and see.

Q: But what then?

A: Oh, the Jews had to return to their land, fight magnificently and gloriously successful wars, while pressured on all sides, with Jerusalem in much contention and a real wound to those concerned with it, until...

Q: Until what?

A: The Jews had to take it over again and run it - happened in 2 stages, both foretold: first half the city was to be theirs (1948) and then all, in 1967.

Q: But what of the Messiah?

A: You can read about Him in Chapter 6 of the work noted above.

Q: How does this show God is interested in me?
 

A: God has His name in this construction, creation, situation. He also has it in His book. Further, He shows it in His Messiah, Jesus Christ who died, the just for the unjust, as Peter puts it, to bring us to God (I Peter 3:18)..

Q: Why did He do that?

A: Paul in Romans 5 tells us that it was from love; and John in I John 4 tells us this, that God IS love. Love gets its presence, its very existence, from the heart and thoughts and mind, the Spirit of the Creator.

Q: How could I find Him?

A: Take Him at His word.

Q: Which one, the written or the living the Bible or Jesus Christ?

A: Both. They agree in everything. He both fulfilled it, had to fulfil it and requires its fulfilment.

God created a salvation by using His eternal word who in love exists with Him, as a sacrifice to bear the penalty of all injustice, unloving attitudes and actions, of all sin as He calls it, all disobedience to the provisions He has made for our spirits - of all that comes to Him for pardon.

Matter CANNOT disobey. We can and often do. This book, the Bible, told what the good news would be very clearly, around 700 years before the Christ came - and much well before that. This was made especially clear in the prophet Isaiah, as The Shadow of a Mighty Rock shows in Chapters 8-9.

Q: What does it say there?

A: This (Isaiah 53:8): "He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who will declare His generation? For He was cut off out of the land of the living; for the transgression of my people was He stricken."

Q: Why didn't He have to die for His own sins?

A: That is a beautiful part of it. He did not have any as I Peter 2 tells us, and this was something His enemies were continually frustrated in finding out, as they tried to nail Him with words, before, in frustration, they used the iron sort.

Q: How does His dying help us?

A: The living goes on after it, because no one could find His body despite the fact it was of the first importance to the Jewish and the Roman state to keep it safe. When God is at work, nothing is safe from Him. In Him, nothing is in danger because of His provision. Christ went through His prophesied program better than DNA goes through its chemical one, but with the same style of precision. He made it; He knows His life forms and how to handle them. He knows what He is doing, says what it is (Amos 3:7, Daniel 7,9, 12, Matthew 24 etc.) as far as we need it, and then does it!

Q: But what was the good to Him of doing all that just for us?

A: Love is like that. Look at a mother, who only played a part, though no small one, in having the program which made the babe. She is a person, so is the babe; her heart does not lightly relate to that other little person she played a part in making. How much less does God who made the WHOLE construction, including mothers and children themselves, lightly regard them.

Q: It is still amazing. Does the Bible acknowledge this?

A: I John 3 tells us just this. "Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called the children of God."

Q: Children? How can I become a child again?

A: By what the Bible, in fact the Messiah, calls being born again, regenerated, refashioned in your heart and mind and conscience (John 3). It is something the Spirit of God, who is intensely creative, works on the defeated and repentant sinner who comes seeking for pardon, mercy and hope in the knowledge of this Creator. His Father in formulation, He now becomes his Father in spirit also.

Q: I can see that easily. He can do over again but now for ever at a spiritual level, what He started in creating matter, design and personality (I John 3:9, Ephesians 4:24). But why should He forget about the sins? They might be gruesome, or subtle and nasty...

A: Because in justice, which He loves, having made everything in this sort of nature and place and system to be what it is, He is happy to meet the cost, as many a father with love is willing to do for his children. Indeed He is glad to show mercy, redeeming, or buying back with payment that is neither sloppy nor too little, and with satisfied justice, what is now doubly His.

Q: But would that not be humiliating, to come and die and as man take the scoffing and scorn of man as He looked simply awful on that Cross?

A: It was. It is never easy. God is not slack. He MADE conscientiousness.

Q: Where does it talk more about this?

A: In Galatians 3:10-13. It says this: "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree."

Q: 'Curse'? What has a curse to do with it?

A: God cursed the earth when man started off the sin thing, with that stupid and delusive folly of wanting to be 'as God' s Genesis shows, as if he could somehow by using his God-given creative power become like the One who made this very power, grasp something of that status by his efforts! Poor crazy race as it tends always to be, groping and grasping, ranting and rasping instead of being sorry, escaping the curse that is just, and finding the way which is love and lovely, in the person of Jesus Christ, who being alive, can superintend one's life.

Q: But isn't that puny?

A: No. It is not puny but punishment and He took it for all whom He redeems (Romans 8:32). To masquerade as autonomous is puny - you know, like silly strutting children in some game of being adults. When you act as if you WERE God when you are not, that is puny - and worse. When you act as a child of God when you become one, that is magnificent. The fellowship with God is amazing, the wonder of God who made wonders, is superlative.
 

Q: What then do I need to do to find God?

A: This:

1) Repent of sin.

2) Come in sorrow for this, simply asking for forgiveness because God has provided the way and it is there for use.

3) Acknowledge what this way cost: it is only courteous. Thank God for sending His eternal Son, Jesus Christ, to cope with your sin problem, its curse given in justice, and your heart, spoiled by sin.

4) Accept this Son with all your heart, as in a life commitment, deliver yourself into His hands, as into those of a surgeon in an operation, trust in Him completely and so find peace with your Creator through the salvation He created for His human creation, by -

Q: But wasn't that hard on Christ?

A: Yes. But Psalm 40 tells us that He DELIGHTED to do the will of the Father who sent Him. Remember God IS love, so loving is not unnatural.

Q: You mean that the Father and the Son counselled together and this was the way ... the Father yielding His expression, His Son, to this, and the Son facing it so that there was a kind of family love: except this is the eternal family, like mirror images, a sort of trinity in love expressive, expressed, but with a heart of justice which does not co-operate with sin?

A: In a word, yes.

Q: But this is amazing. How COULD He love like that?

A: Our love is quite significant when stirred, and He is our author. As I told you, knowing God is sublime, simply because He is.

Q: Why don't more people come to Him then?

A: Define your question more would you. Do you mean: Is this really possible, to be so good? Or this: What is wrong with man, in millions, to die in hate and self-seeking and so forth, when this is available?

Q: No, I can understand the source of love being loving, the source of justice being just, and the way He handled our predicament. Why don't more people come to Him?

A: Sin is almost as profound as creation. Accidents in motor cars are almost as torturous as the cars in their manufacture. What went into the creation is now twisted, and the higher the thing is the worse the problem becomes in the accident. People often jib at medical operations, and this spiritual operation is far more than that: it is eternal in its consequences.

Q: What does the Bible say on this point?

{The reader may find it convenient to pause here.}
 
 

Q: What does the Bible say on this point?

A: "As I live," says the Lord God, "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn form his way and live; turn, turn from your evil ways; for why will you die, O house of Israel?"- that is Ezekiel 33:11. In Romans 11, Paul tells us this: God has temporarily replaced Israel, which failed in the rejection of Christ (as a nation, that is, individuals come often to Christ from this as from other nations), with non-Jews or Gentiles as they are called. John tells us that God so loved the WORLD that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. God foresaw this - Isaiah 49:7, Psalm 86:9, Isaiah 11:10, 26:9, 49:6.

For the rest, yes, Paul tells us in Ephesians 4:18 that the heart of man is "alienated from the life of God". Accommodation for aliens is provided, but you know how it is: people often find ways of not really wanting a country other than their own, and when the seeds of hatred, mistrust and lust are added, it is a potent brew in the spirit of man. It eats out the heart of man.

Q: May I ask then just one more question? Thank you. It is this. If I come to Christ, is this a matter of my will, so that I can change any time I want to, or is it in itself something that God does, so that in coming, I come in His blessing and way, and the thing is as sure as He is? Do you follow me?

A: Yes, I think I do. Your thought is very good here. No, it is not something like a knee jerk reaction, as if a knee is hit, and it does not really mean much. It says in John 6:40 - this: "And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son, and believes on Him, may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day."

To have your internal eyes, the eyes of your spirit opened so that you 'see' Christ, grasp and understand and find who He is, this is itself a work of God. In this way, Jesus the Christ told Peter this - "Flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father who is in heaven" - Matthew 16:17. He called Peter 'blessed' because of this, just as He called His disciples blessed often enough, for being enabled to understand His teaching. In fact, He said something else.

"I thank You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and have revealed them to babes. Even so, Father; for so it seemed good in Your sight." That is Matthew 11:27.

In fact, there are plenty of fakes, people who SHOW they were not really coming in sorrow for sin to God, in order to find the new life's abundance that He promised in John 10 - how? By turning from Him as soon as the 'problem' is over. Crusades and even preachers in them can show much the same sort of thing when they turn from the gospel they said they believed, because of statistics or some desire of philosophy or psychology, satisfied short-sightedly for the time, without respect to God. What God does, He does forever; and the person born of God is not a mere verbal spout, but a patient who has had an operation by the Spirit of God in the name of Jesus Christ.

The Bible said there would be wolves among the sheep - HE is the shepherd - and it is well to test everything by the word of God and to leave what leaves it (Romans 16:17, Titus 3:10, Isaiah 8:20, Proverbs14:7). One finds this: that some people seem to want PEOPLE rather than the word of God, and go even to churches because of the PEOPLE there, not the PERSON, Jesus Christ who says this: "IF YOU LOVE ME, YOU WILL KEEP MY WORDS".

Paul tells us that if GOD RECONCILED us to Himself when we were enemies, there is a complete certainty that He will KEEP us now friends (Romans 5:8-11). Jesus said this: "My sheep hear my voice and they follow Me, and I give to them eternal life" (John10:27). Life that stops short is not eternal. There are guarantees in this life. It was eternal, is eternal, is given (I John 1:1-4). HE also states: "No one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand." That includes yourself! (II Timothy 1:9). Contraband goods however will be thrown out. You come in through the door or else you are what He calls, a thief and a robber. God is just: no pretence or pretension about Him.

However, if you come in repentance to the Christ sent by His Father, to trust in Him and not in people for your salvation, it is as He said: "He who drinks of the water that I shall give shall never thirst again" (John 4:14). Many would come to the well and thirst and have to come again: come to Him, however, and there is a source within, from Him, of Him, bringing Him by His Spirit continually to your life. You then ARE His ( I John 3:9), and exclaim with John: "Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called the children of God."

As Paul puts it, "we have obtained an inheritance" (Ephesians 1:11); in fact of Christ he declares -

• "in whom we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who works all things after the counsel of His own well, that we should be to the praise of His glory, who first trusted in Christ."
  
  

We might extend our conversation a little on the matter of strata, to show that even here, the generality approach, so inappropriate for science, takes precedence over straightforward interpretation of evidence, and produces misnomers and intrusions that savour of desperation not interpretation.

Q: But surely the strata are a correct idea, that all the ages of the earth are as advertised in geological propaganda books - they have that right?

A: Alas no. As Dr John Morris indicates: creatures in rocks (perhaps formed in just a number of days, a few thousand years ago, on deposition theory) accorded scores - or even several hundreds - of millions of geological years, and deemed extinguished with the those years, unfound in "more recent" strata, and incredibly "out of date", can re-appear in modern times. Cases such as the coelecanth, or the deep-sea mollusk, Neopilina galatheae figure like that, sensational performers in this generous drama of geological expansionism. (See The Genesis Flood, pp. 176-178.)

As for time, DNA, thought to be unable to last because of its sensitive and complex construction, more than 10000 years or so, comes in aggregates and situations 'requiring' millions of years (Creation Ex Nihilo, March-May 1993, p. 9); while creatures allegedly of greater age than that continue gallantly unchanged, like the coelanth, in their nature, unwise to the 'requirements' of survival and advance.

On matters of time, have you read The Shadow of a Mighty Rock pp. 226-252L, or That Magnificent Rock, Ch.7, Section E , esp. *2, and Section F? There things are put in logical perspective.

On the slow-age geological hypothesis, the efficiency of DNA in continuing on course unchanged is perfectly phenomenal, just as its back-up editing arrangements might suggest, and the whole concept of advances in design is as rotten as the DNA should be after so long. The battered evolutionary hypothesis runs into the throne room of hostile facts on every side.

Cases like the Metasequoia, a tree thought extinct for millions of years because of the 'testimony' of rocks, on the slow-age hypothesis, have been found: found where? Alive this century. Altogether too much is 'known', and theories are held with reverential servility owing to the religious necessities of unbelief, instead of being given that fluency and fluidity which science and real life require.

Q: But don't the actual strata line up very nicely?

A: With what? There is a certain tendency for order of various kinds, but there is nothing remotely like the alleged nice scale, since it is never found, and the endless seeming cases of "inexplicable" overlay, where 'wrong' things are on top, lying on more 'recent' things beneath reaches gigantic proportions in such places as the Heart Mountain Thrust of Wyoming abound. The fashionable theories are static. The evidence is fluid, variable, dynamic. We need scalpels to handle it: these rather than elephant's feet, in determining these things. As to the Heart Mountain area, mentioned by Morris in the field of his expertise, there are certain features to consider.

There is :

a) "no indication of where the superposed rocks could have come from (unless of course they were normally deposited on top of the underlying Eocene strata, as all appearances indicate) ..." (The Genesis Flood, Dr John Morris, pp. 182-183).

b) no physical or mechanical explanation of how the fifty-odd blocks could have individually slid into place.

c) this aspect: the entire fault plane is NOT heavily brecciated and distorted.

d) the fact that its appearance is that of normal deposition.
 

Q: Is this perhaps only one exception?

A: No. Pierce is quoted by Morris, p. 184 op.cit.: "The Heart Mountain and South Fork thrusts are by no means the only thrusts without roots. Particularly in the Jura Mountains of Switzerland and France, but in other places also, there are more widely known examples of the decollement or detachment type of structure."

Morris goes on to look at "a large section of the Canadian Rockies in Alberta extending down into Montana, where an extensive area of Pre-Cambrian limestone is resting in apparent conformity upon Cretaceous shale beds", and observes further that: "Other areas in the same general region have Paleozoic limestones superposed on the Cretaceous." He notes that "the overthrust includes the Glacier National Park area, and one of the most spectacular features it that of Chief Mountain, which is an entirely isolated outlier of Algonkian limestone, resting on a Cretaceous base."

Q: Is the whole thing quite unfeasible, a sort of science fiction extravanganza, when they try to avoid the appearances that the whole strata were NOT overthrust, but in fact, as it appears, put down in a different order, very often, and on vast scales?

A: Yes. Moving large parts of States around in this way, as the fashionable strata theory opines, requires more than imagination. Noting there are indeed small scale evidences of rock movement, in the area, he is obliged to point out that:

a) overthrusting on this vast landform scale has no comprehensible force-rock-propulsion dynamics to account for it, theoretically.

b) there are many points where there appears no physical evidence whatever of such amazing movements.

c) it has been noted of a broad area that "the underlying shales appear undisturbed".

d) Kulp, quoting from the Canadian Geological Survey of the region, states the following of relevant Cretaceous shale sites. They "are bent sharply toward the east in a number of places, but with this exception have suffered little by the sliding of the limestone over them, and their comparatively undisturbed condition seems hardly compatible with the extreme faulting which was necessary to ring them into the present position."

e) the comparative softness of underlying shale would not preserve it from mirroring the distortions of overlying rock.

f) no large mass of broken rock in front and along the sides has been found. Being such a mass, as acknowledged, it "should have scarred and broken the hills and itself been broken ..."

g) Lammerts' visit to the area was confirmatory. There was found "no evidence of any grinding or sliding action or slicken-sides such as one would expect to find on the hypothesis of a vast overthrust."

h) the mass of the overthrust is prodigious. In one such location, it is estimated to have weighed around 800,000,000,000,000 tons. If enough force were present to MAKE such a movement of rock OVER rock, friction co-efficients are such that rocks could not sustain their form. Hence a thrust block, say of 30 km along a horizontal surface "appears to be a mechanical impossibility" - as quoted from Hubert and Rubey.

i) in fact, such a block is not required to move horizontally but vertically to ride OVER the strata. Varied hypotheses fail through the sheer magnitude of the stress when such weights move, the need of uniform abnormal conditions to facilitate large scale movement.

j) various endeavours noted, to duplicate possible situations which might have allowed such results neither duplicate the actual materials, nor their scale; while efforts to imagine water lubrication on this scale run into problems of the actual versus the imagined, the sheer immensity of the areas involved, the staggering pressures which would need to be maintained over vast areas, and on the gradualistic hypothesis, the enormity of doing this over millions of years. Added to this, he asks: what produced such power?

Certainly nothing gradual is indicated, enormous convulsions are required if the evidence is to be interpreted rather than subjected to imaginative and unfounded duress; and large areas of NO EVIDENCE whatever for such vast overlaying action are rather a delightful burden for unfettered imagination to "resolve". As to the thrust involved: nothing known is available, unless something like the flood, intimately moving the layers about. If however that were so, it has its own direct and unimagined methods of answering the question: differential deposition, with some underlying tendency for sorting by gravity and position and local conditions, in the order indicated by the -

Q: Are you going to say that forbidden word, 'evidence'?

A: Yes - by the evidence. Actually, as to the evidence, it is the concept that suffers as much as the word.

Indeed, the flood has its own parameters and conditions, and does not need unexampled forces and unexampled material properties and unduplicatable properties, and wild harangues on possibilities: it has EVIDENCE in such abundance, with 70% or more of the earth's crust sedimentary rock, and endless buried archives of incredible complexity and abundance of fossils that need to be ACCOUNTED for, rather than a case of having imagined bizarre features assumed without actually ... appearing.

Fascinatingly, twentieth century Professor Heribert Nilsson's prodigious work on Synthetische Artbildung (Synthetic Speciation), referred to in SMR pp.245ff., makes outraged confessions of one weary of the subterfuges of the gradualists: Looking for example at London clay, he sees plants originating in Malaysia and India and wants to know what was the mode of transportation.

Defining 'allochtonous', as meaning brought by flood as distinct from locally originated, he declares: "An allochtonous process of immense dimensions must be considered as absolutely necessary for the formation of the Eocene strata described. The fossils embedded together have evidently been flooded there from all over the earth. Juxtaposition in the strata does not mean proximity during life; the conclusion must be considered as obvious."

This statement from Nilsson follows masses of illustrations, and a few must here suffice. Referring to East Prussian examples, including amber clumps in which 'insects and parts of flowers are preserved, even the most fragile structure", he notes the insects are of modern types and their geographical distribution can be ascertained. It is then quite astounding to find that they belong to all regions of the earth..." Of all this, his conclusion is: "The geological and palaeobiological facts concerning the layers of amber are impossible to understand unless the explanation is accepted that they are the final result of an allochtonous process, including the whole earth."

Again, of fossil-carrying strata of the lignite in Geiseltat, he notes:" Leaves have been deposited and preserved in a fully fresh condition", and "here too", he declares, "there is a complete mixture of plants and insects from all climatic zones and all recognised regions of the geography of plants or animals." THE FRESH CONDITIONS, HE CONCLUDED, SIGNIFIED AN IMMENSE SPEED AND URGENCY IN THE DEMISE AND PRESERVATION.

Consideration of the massiveness of the basis for huge afforestation fossil deposits, requiring not one but masses of forests leads to the same conclusion: world-wide denudation and accumulation in times of massive violence and water destruction (p. 1198). On p.1197, he refers to 23 salt water layers of fish and marine deposits, substantially sorted as to TYPE of creature, of fish indeed, preserved at each level, as if kinetics of flow dictated the result. Again: "The deduction of a comprehensive and selective allochtony is not only well founded, it is unavoidable." Building on the famous foundation of Cuvier and Agassiz's catastrophism, Nilsson builds up a remarkable case from massive evidence.

He expresses a similar weariness about the claims of transmutation of living things, in terms of intractable evidence which continues witheringly to the contrary - as Denton and W.R. Thompson so well show - and unabated (SRM Ch.2). "The crisis of the theory of evolution is complete," he declares amidst his profound surveys of evidence (Synthetic Speciation, p. 1212). The gradual hypothesis is as bankrupt in one area as in another.

The necessities of creation however remain as inevitable in one area as another. Expert after expert declares against the pretensions, hoping some way may be found; expert after expert leaves... not any. The methodology of science is as harshly unforgiving to undisciplined imagination (SMR pp. 251-252A), as is logic to a laughable use of it, to avoid it (SMR Ch.3).

Following fixed-idea theories against the flow of evidence is a thankless task, but it can bring out the child in man, loving fairy stories; and building blocks of the imagination can be expounded without the need to use the fingers of action to make them sit up.

As for the flood with its rapid powers of deposition, we are inundated with evidence; but for the alternative, we are overwhelmed, in comparison, by its absence.

In fact, the Bible speaks of men at the last following godless fables (II Timothy 3:7,4:4, II Peter 3:7), fables indeed of just this kind; and the proclivity seems as keen in this particular area as in most other places where the evacuation of God becomes an impelling psychological need or spiritual desire, and the world of illusion replaces the evidence of our senses.

The interesting thing is simply this: God is not an evacuee, and a world run on the hypothesis that He is, runs into as much trouble as this present one; and into as much escalation of trouble - something also, as a matter of fact predicted by the Book which does not change, the Bible (Matthew 24:22, II Peter 3:4-7).

Let us return to ... this celestial code.

We therefore examine further, the Book which does not change, the Bible

(Matthew 24:22, II Peter 3:4-7).
 
 

We are run in our bodies by words in code; we use them far more freely, and God who made both the code schedules for our bodies and the language powers for our minds, will require account of our use of both. (SMR Ch.1-3.)

What words, however, can excuse such disorderly thoughts, made possible only by order; or such weakness of heart in the presence of such power; such servility to things in the presence of such majesty of Spirit!

There is no excuse - but the Book of Books does offer pardon in God's name through the lips of the face of flesh - of God incarnate as man, Jesus Christ. Long prophesied, holding history in His own prophetic hand, performing works no other could, He could say things of quite another category of wonder, fitting for Him who is wonderful:

"The Son of man has power on earth to forgive sin" - Mark 2:10. Indeed, He came "to give His life a ransom for many" - Matthew 28:20.

Ransom needs to be collected... and it will be, by those for whom it is meant. If it is not for you, you have excluded yourself. The love of God is not selfish, it gives. But as for you, will you take Him whom it offers? This is the end and meaning, to know God, the Lord of the whole structure of things which He invented. It is display, certainly. It displays wonder. It is a way to freedom, through the halls of bondage, a freedom with God as Father. Better father there is not! Nor can any match Him. The father of lies is the only ultimate alternative, and there is no life there.
 
 

This:

"Take with you words, and turn to the Lord. Say to Him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously: so will we render the calves of our lips."

God does not change (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17; cf. SMR pp. 28-42, 88ff., 307-308, 422Q-W, 580-581; That Magnificent Rock, Ch.7, Part D). And then, in divine response:

"I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for my anger is turned away from him."

In the New Testament:

"Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past... To declare...at this time His righteousness: that He might be just, and the justifier of him who believe in Jesus."

That is Romans 3:24-25... Here is found such a marvel of justice and truth on the one side, and a covering of just grounds for anger and judgment on the other. Here appears the rule of righteousness at once, with the gift of grace; and this has all the wonder and exuberance seen in the maestro marvels of creation, alike the work of God, now seen to be joined to a heart so superb as to require the language of splendour and magnificence to draw near, and of praise to draw ... nearer still.

Ephesians 3:17-20 presents this testimony:

...that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height - to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge: that you may be filled with all the fulness of God. Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever . Amen.