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CHAPTER THREE
 

DEMYTHOLOGISING DEMYTHOLOGY
 

 

News 111

'News about Myths, and Myths about News"
 

PRELIMINARY

Recently, the author was approached for discussion, by a student. What was happening in the midst of things, in tertiary College ? As I listened, and we conversed, it became apparent that this is a sort of academic news. What was being presented was a view depreciatory of what was called ‘Judaism’, which may have meant many things, but evidently did not hesitate, for some reason or other, to incorporate the Old Testament in its apparent ramblings of negativity. Opinings, inclinings were the acme of udderance rather than utterance, for it seemed the milk was sour on arrival. The Old Testament ?
 

What was its place ? How would he, the lecturer, 'assess it'! Soon it appeared, his evocative inclinations and views resulted in a general consensus, interrupted by one only student with the testimony of truth, that we were in the midst of myth.

Daniel was in view. The fact that Daniel predicted the death date of Christ was thus relevant as we discussed the situation. There is something so intensively unmythical about getting dates right, when you have to create a situation, a Saviour and a people who would set Him at nought, and into this ‘creation’ of the mind, put a date for the occurrence. That is - IF you were doing it - not God; if it were you speaking and not God.

Unfortunately, if it is YOU doing it, it is not possible. If it is God doing it, presenting scope, detail and development in historical finesse, it is not myth.

Since this is what the book of Daniel does, we need to look for a moment in that amazingly novel direction in such things, as one has found so often: the FACTS.

Myth is not of this genre. So we looked at the security of the date of Christ’s death and life (as in SMR Appendix C), the death date of Herod as an index, the time of the letters of Paul (and their being used so soon - in fact by Clement of Rome, and with such reverence). SMR pp. 886ff. was in view in the correlation. Such was the offering of Daniel, together of course in Chs. 2 and 7, with the correct delineation of the empires, with carefully precise notation down to the present time. This may be checked in SMR loc. cit..

Then there was the simple fact (as in SMR Ch. 9) that the entire gamut of Jewish history is aptly covered, in a series of phases, in Deuteronomy 28ff., and Leviticus 26, including the sustained mockery of the Jews, their puniness of power compared with the triumphant prevailing of obedient times, their characterisable desolation and desolatory experience of spirit, the seeming long unanswered prayers as they rebelled more and more and the like. All this was assuredly to be, we find, and in Deuteronomy 32 we see the extent of the deliverance which would finally be necessary!

This desolation in increasing tempo was to happen UNTIL they returned to their land - cf.. Luke 21:24, Ezekiel 36-37 and SMR, Appendix A. Then as we shall see, an amazing transformation in VICTORIES was to occur, yet still one with the faithfulness of God, not their own, the criterion as Ezekiel here shows, and Zechariah 12:10 implies for the outset, as we shall also exhibit. Indeed, these things, duly amplified may be followed in SMR Ch. 9, from the outset.

In conversation, we noted (as throughout SMR Ch. 9) the predictions of their dispersion, their return to Israel, their mighty wars against  enemies HIGHLY disproportionate in power (as in Zechariah 12-14 and explained in the Appendix reference given). We saw too that those who ‘concerned’ themselves with Jerusalem, to oppress and inflict, would find it indeed a heavy stone. Right Mr Nasser ? Right Mr Saddam Hussein ? Right Mr Clinton ? A wearying process! This was in Zechariah, in the immediate lead up to the quasi-national repentance in Israel, for having put the Lord to death by piercing, and as we shall see, that in His hands and feet.

That is now. It is not every day that the Jews recapture Jerusalem, following the crucifixion of Christ. Actually, it has happened ONCE in about TWO MILLENIA. It is not really frequent, then, is it!

In fact, God has a plan as the Ch. 9 above shows so clearly from His word. It is that the Jews SHALL return (they did  cf. SMR Appendix A), that they would do so, as there displayed, without honour, still disbelieving, in fulfilment of divine promise, that they would still unbelieving, this proceeding somewhat later, to a large return at a more or less national level, TO THE LORD. It is then they are shown predictively from around 2500 years ago, to repent of piercing the Lord, indeed, as God puts it, to "look on Me whom they had pierced".

Jerusalem of course had to be divided into two in the process (Zechariah 14) and this happened in 1948, as Jordan took half. This was to occur in the midst of rapine and plunder. Eyewitness account has confirmed that it did so. It is fulfilled like a scientific experiment ... when the theory behind it is RIGHT. In that case, the SAME experiment can be REPEATED as many times as you wish, provided the circumstances are kept to the purity of the theoretical requirements. In this case, it is history which conforms, not repetitively, but progressively, not in the same thing often, merely, but in the VARIETY of things in sequence.
 
 

PREDICTIVE ACCLAIM

This, naturally, far more demanding, involves PEOPLE with wills and wits and imagination and evil and virtuous thoughts and interactions of personality and circumstances meteorological, geological, democratic, autocratic and dramatic. It involves the roving mind and the active spirit of man. It is, for all that, precisely predicted. It NEVER misses, never errs, having the advantage over ANY scientific experiment, where conditions must be most carefully monitored BY MAN. In this case, with ZERO tolerance for error, it is not merely automatically, but emphatically directed by God. He KNOWS man and his heart and ways, and sees time as we can see space, set before Him. He is ABLE and SHOWS it, in this way, to cover any or all history, and elects to instruct us carefully on various matters, and not least among these, the OVERALL and in many respects, detailed history of the Jews (as in Amos 3:7).

Small wonder the  monarch who asked his philosopher for reason to believe in God in two words, got back, according to report, the answer: "The Jews".

But let us return to more detail.

The Jews then were to be evicted from their promised land, as predicted from Moses on. It would be at the end of a vast pilgrimage that they would eventually be restored, in triumph.

Thus, eventually Jerusalem, from which the Jews were to be removed in exile (as happened ), for a long time (as happened), would be theirs again, no longer under the say so and direction of the Gentiles (Luke 21:44, Zechariah 12-14). This happened. It was only on this SUSTAINED return that the repentance for killing the Messiah would occur.

True, the Mosque is still on the Mount, but this is by decision of the Jews who hold the land, not by simple direction from without. At the very least, we are trembling on the brink of what the Lord referred to as "the times of the Gentiles", which of course from Daniel 2,7 and 9, provides us last with the Roman Empire which as shown in SMR pp. 902ff., had to be partly strong and partly weak, and has in fact kept to that throughout its various falls and recrudescences, the Holy Roman Empire phase, the Common Market, the European Union phases, with all the military and social, economic and yes, spiritual consequences as traced in SMR pp. 902-931.

The varied and variegated character of its complexities was all too well shown in the Roman aspect of the Empire in later stages, the alliance with a form of religion (SMR pp. 923ff.) and its various calamities and cruelties. It has been not merely somewhat, but altogether partly strong and partly weak, partly clay and partly iron as Daniel so precisely predicted (Daniel 2:40-42 - partly strong and partly brittle, in fact). It stretched to Constantinople, it retracted, it showered its power on the earth with the Popes of Middle Ages, it towered in obstructive fanaticism in the Inquisition, led to civil war in Germany, had its army, decayed, arose again, pulsating like a dying octopus, arising like a stranded squid, on the seashore, when the waters of the tide come in again.

All this had to happen before the Gentiles’ innings was over. Israel had hers from say, 2000 B.C. to the death of Christ, and now the Gentiles have had theirs, or approximately so. The land and the city IS theirs, after all! THAT is what had to be. It would not be APPRECIATED by the Gentile powers as is most clear in Zechariah 12:1ff.. That too is all too true in the world of events, unfolding as planned and predicted in the Bible. The UN in 1947 accorded to Jerusalem an international status, and gave to the Jews various bits of land, round about, now here, now there. The war of 1948 was, in the world's eyes, apart from faith, merely a work of putting the Jews into the ocean, as announced by their enemies. It did not so transpire. It was forbidden. Another path had been chosen. Not naturally, but supernaturally, it transpired. (cf. Lead Us Not into Educational Temptation! Appendix on Miracles).

Evidentially, this is the way of this world; it has a will of its own, but the word of God rules. The announcements in Zechariah 12 were, moreover, not only PRECISE as to outcome, but DESCRIPTIVE as to the manner of it: overwhelming power was overcome by minimal defenders in a glorious manner which was historic and classical. That is why LIFE magazine memorialised one of the wars of the Arabs et al, against the Jews in a magnificent photographic magazine. Indeed two marvellous magazines appeared in the US, memorialising now this, now that vast and classical military victory at those times. This was the way it was predicted, the manner of it, and these magazines, some two and one half millenia later, confirmed the manner of it, as well as noting the fact of it. That is the way it is. It does not change. Facts are so very important in all this. Observation not philosophy is called for. Scientifically, this is essential. It leads to only one result. Facts are not permitted vagaries in the word of God. They CONFORM.

It was indeed wholly indecent, from a sporting point of view, for Daniel to insist on eviscerating EVERY facet of conceivable mythology from his precise, predictive, empirical, testable approach, down to the use of arithmetic of all things, and dates as indicated in SMR pp. 886 ff., in Daniel 9:24-27. How could any self-respecting atheist, from his/her own mythical position (SMR p. 383) even begin to make the normal assault from the wholly imaginary neutrality of anti-supernaturalist, anti-creationist, anti-God, humanistic, agnostic irrationalism, if he should carry on like this! (cf. SMR pp. 375ff.). How could the normal, and hoped for battering of the book occur from those committed to telling the truth while insisting it was not there to tell, and other allied intellectual slamming contortions which may be good for slimming, but not for scholarship: how could it proceed, if the prophet does this sort of thing. Daniel was NOT a good sport for that particular game. On the other hand, it is not a particularly pleasant or profitable game. The facts are far better.

In our conversation about these things, then, as we roved over the program of the lectures which had been received, we noted that this was in fact,  not the stuff of myths. For them, you are not supposed to dabble in simple, literal history. Quite the contrary, to be really hot stuff at myth-making (a refined mythopoeic professional, or even a good amateur cf. SMR pp. 380ff.), you are supposed to invent things. Maybe a little thought and symbol, or maybe even some legendary activity will make someone or something, or some scenario to be raised to the level in which the true and mighty things of origins and meanings and so forth, will appear. Flash it on the screen, and there is your myth.

This then will account for that, one thing for another; or the account, facade or tracery of imaginary events will imply some perspective of understanding in things mighty and meaningful! In myths, this might appear, though the realities be hidden in the figures, the symbols, because on those presuppositions of imaginative imagery and onrush into the ... great questions,  nothing is really known.

That is the presuppositional hall of fame for myths. That is the way those who are inured to all this, imbued with it, free from truth and ensconced on the academic throne of will-o'-the-wisp chasing, in the land of wandering thought and wilful extrusions from nowhere in particular, can proceed. Its head can be patted, and the hand that pats can do the same thing in modern dress, as with organic evolution, and make a new myth whilst smiling gently at former myths. It can even forget that it is a myth. That is so VERY modern. (See SMR pp. 252Iff., and That Magnificent Rock Ch.1 and Ch.8.)

So the two, legend and myth fit nicely, like two shoes. Make a legend in some way or other, and then use it for a myth. That is one way. In any case, there is some way for the ingredients to be prepared, cut up on the board, and put into the broth.

But this myth manufacturing presuppositional philosophy in which so many, some witting, some witless, live does not live here. It simply does NOT fit with Daniel in particular, or the Old Testament in general. There is one God (SMR Ch. 1), and He naturally enough being infinite, as there shown, does not dabble in things at the comparable level. He is incomparable. He is not found in some other place. He is where He is, does what He does and does it, of necessity, with a hand and manner which none can imitate. It is not a matter of a Jaguar and a Volkswagen here. It is a question of an infinite difference in power and wisdom. If there WERE any other place where this sort of thing occurred, this precision, this incisive, decisive and accurate account of things past and to come, without any need of revision in some three and one half millenia, then it would militate against the reality that there is ONE GOD... unless of course, He put His word in two places. In fact, there is but one account of this stature.

There is of course a second version. This one is the one to which the first one referred. It is WRITTEN, and is called in Isaiah 34, "the book of the Lord". The one to whom it refers (cf. Joyful Jottings for detail, as also to SMR Ch. 9), is called the Lord of the book. It is He who said that the Bible indeed testified of HIM, but it was not enough to think so. It was also necessary to come to Him (John 5:39-40), do business with Him, in fact receive Him as He is for what He presents, like a doctor in surgery. Presented in Isaiah 53 as BEARING sin for those who have believed the report^*1, and who are hence healed of the diseases of sin, like the sacrifices of old, He showed He had to be turned to in repentance and the sin cast upon Him. Otherwise they would, quite naturally and in the normal course for such things, die in their sins (John 8:24, 31ff.).

When one does not, however, and when one does come to this Creator in human format (Colossians 1, John 8:58), then the power which is His, is not different (Ephesians 1:19). It is NOT given for 'success' by this world's standards, since these are condemned (John 14:30), nor for opulent laziness, self-acclaim and all the other garbage of gyrating personalities, captured even if captivating to many, who often pay them well for their pains. Instead, IT IS POWER TO DO what God desires, to grow as He wishes, to overcome what impedes, to expose what is wrong, to lead those who are willing to be led in the way God appoints.

It is shown in myriads of cases and in ways too marvellous to isolate in this chapter. However some examples are provided of that blend of

·       worship (for it is fitting to worship one's Creator and Redeemer, whose goodness give to this quality its very name - cf. SMR Ch. 4 pp. 368ff., 372ff., 428ff., 582ff., 611ff., 620ff.).

·       work (for the night is coming),

·       peace (for "the work of righteousness will be peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever"),

·       joy (for who would not rejoice at the defeat of the sin that binds, the death that severs, the darkness that looms),

·       delight (for the Lord is in FACT very wonderful, and there is none like Him as a friend),

·       grace (for one's failures, here or there, are not pounced on by some angry tiger, but dealt with by One as compassionate as a nurse, as firm as law and as pardoning as goodness, since the penalty is covered, and the family kindness is always present, as are the qualities that prevail), and

·       power to prevail, for the assignments are to be performed as given, and who but He can secure that!

·       miracle as required for SUCH purposes as these, in completing the work assigned.

 

But the history of nations is replete with the exhibition of His worship, praise and the enduements of His grace.

His transformations are proverbial, innumerable,

·       history's darlings and marvels - people of stable and informed purpose who did not cringe, yes, neither trusted in themselves, whose words ring and whose lives speak (like Bunyan, Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Knox, like the 2000 C. of E. Clergy who left in the 1660's their homes, salaries and even physical safety rather than cringe in conformity to unchristian requisitions from forms and forces not the Saviour, but the State; like the innumerable Scotch Presbyterians who refused to Caesar the pulpit of shame, and suffered loss, were put in cages, exposed to winds, shot at in forests);

·       for courage has been so often required that books of martyrs abound; and faith so greatly utilised that wonder mixes with poignancy as the saints suffer and prevail in goodness and righteousness... not the saints of form, but those of fact, whose reliance is on Christ, on God only as required (I Timothy 2, Jeremiah 17, Psalm 2, Psalm 62, Ezekiel 33, Romans 3-8, Psalm 73).

These things are the lot of HIS people, who are not aristocrats but forgiven sinners in whom He lives, whose word is as He has given it, and life derived from His.

It is not enough to tell your neighbours how good He is. You have to come and have the operation and receive the work of His gift from His hands. In that sense, yes there is a living book, the Lord in person on earth (as in Philippians 2 cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 2, pp. 41ff., A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 12, and Biblical Blessings Ch. 13). Indeed, the Old Testament and the New alike, state, predict and retrodict with fearsome indifference to the libellous words of their detractors. They simply do not so operate, as unbelief would desire. They are crisp, clear and decisive, pervasive, invasive and their very profundity is at no odds with their scope, coverage and fearless audacity and enterprise. If it were possible to stick the neck out in the presence of the guillotine of factuality as a stunt, this would far surpass that. Indeed, God constantly reiterates it: HE IS TELLING US and there is on comparison NOTHING to slightly resemble the power and knowledge He is displaying in so doing (Isaiah 41,43,44,48).

But enough. Let us look at the underlying misconception, confusion and lèse-majesté being committed by those, perhaps themselves immersed agnostically in myths of their own making, who like to look at everything and everyone else as if caught in the same predicament.
 
 

PREDICAMENT

Predicament ? But of course.

• If you cannot know it all, how can you tell;

• if knowledge in this old and weary world, is not available,

• but only glimpses of symbolism and talk;

• and if you cannot tell ...

• then why, and indeed HOW

• tell ANYONE ANYTHING about myths and the like.

Caught in your own, you are a mere myth on legs, by your own devisings.
 
 

GETTING DOWN TO IT

Myths! that appears to be the vocal depreciation trundled out to obscure or interpret the fantasies of men in the dust of contrivance. There are those who say such things even in academic circles, in lieu, it might seem, of reason. It is not, indeed, that they do this on purpose; but then purpose is not always the guide of man. Events can come from the cultural medium, the political pressures, the domestic blend, the educational milieu, the longing of the heart and the hopelessness of the burdened heart, often too obscure in its sorrow, to know WHY there is such heaviness.

This is the MODEL often propounded. It is in the generic of Kantianism (dismissed advisedly in SMR Ch. 5 and Predestination and Freewill Appendix on Kant, cf. SMR p. 397, for more than adequate reason, as self-contradictory). It is in essence a mythical model. The forms of fantasy are supposedly enlivened by the imagination of dim comprehension of something or other in the art forms of creative thought. (In fact, this is not the least of the reasons why incredibly unsophisticated and elementary forms of art can win prizes nowadays. It is sometimes to help comprehension of the fact that they do not comprehend, but want to 'talk' about it, that skilful artists present artistically almost execrable substitutes for art. They do this, and often, then they 'win'. The prize is real enough! It is a pose, a posture, a philosophy, and at the present, it can pass for art. So does defamation of art interpret degradation of spirit.)

The general approach to cynicism and scepticism has been provided in SMR Ch. 3. The exposure of the surrogate character of the myth charge, from the source which itself is susceptible to it, has been shown in SMR pp. 380ff.. It is installed where it does not belong; and more ironic still, it proceeds as an intrusive label  FROM the source where it does belong. It is like would-be emigrants who do not WANT their own country, alleging that some other country is the same, from a state of appalling ignorance of its actual nature. Myths are exported intemperately from the land of myth, in the minds of men, who see as if in dark glasses, mythically set. Myths are seen everywhere, but of course, they are really a mere projection of the philosophic glasses.

The exquisite and precise character of the myth which is ANY alternative to Almighty God for the source of the earth has been noted in SMR pp. 252H-I, and its expatiation presented numerously in such places as : News 82, That Magnificent Rock Ch.  8 pp. 254ff., Answers to Questions 5, pp. 116ff., Repent or Perish   7, Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 8, SMR pp. 999-1002. Again, the very basics of its scientific squalor appear in SMR pp. 145ff., and the detail of that squalor in That Magnificent Rock Chs.   1, 5 and  7, with additions in Ch. 8. The historical flow of the escapades is noted in SMR pp. 422Eff..

What of the dominant model of man which excludes understanding, of the temporal man, the controlled and the conditioned man ? Those so shrouded in the clouds of control and compulsion, of the unconscious and the libido, or the martial arts of historical determinisms, or the social injections of the times, or the biological necessities which are imagined but never found as the leverages on life, may well opine about myth. They become myths by their own theories; in theory. In practice ?  It is not quite so simple.

There is the conscience and the spirit of man, with its clouds and vapours, hopes and imaginations, which, when undisciplined can move mountains of mullock onto the mind, and make it a sort of mini-Hiroshima. (See Barbs, Arrows and Balms 18, 19, 26, Appendix 1, SMR Ch. 4, Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium Ch. 13). From such sources discourses are prone to be radioactive. Destruction is their métier. It is however not imparted, so much as exhibited. It is sad, even poignant.
 
 

THINGS THAT SHOULD NOT HAPPEN:
WAR BY DECLARED NEUTRALS!

Indeed, you have in this sort of philosophical presuppositional milieu the quite delightful situation that the NEUTRALITY which some academics love to profess, becomes nothing less than a call to submerge religion in culture (or anything else you might prefer, mythical implications of culture will do, anything so long as MAN is in charge and his mind and spirit are FREE from the objectivities of their construction and of reality), and then profess they know nothing. Obviously they then could not teach ANYTHING, so it is often better on this way, to profess that NO ONE ELSE knows anything, while as for their part, THIS THEY KNOW, that this is so.

Thus you have in this disingenuous construction two classes. The teaching and the taught. The teacher KNOWS ONE FACT about religion, that no one knows what it really is, or what the end and beginning and middle and meaning REALLY is. THIS of course he/she COULD get only by KNOWING THE ABSOLUTE which is NOT so limited and obscured, clouded and controlled, disposed and dispossessed of knowledge of these things as man is SUPPOSED to be. It is not just that the teacher would have to KNOW that there WAS an absolute, but that it would have to divulge its nature in express and definitive terms.

Otherwise, of course, the absolute, when it arrived into the interstices of the mind of man,  would simply be muddled and muddied by all the limits, unconscious drives, prejudices and stark inabilities attributed to man in his relativised situation (another presupposition, these neutralities come to war in droves, all dressed as civilians). BUT IF, as required for knowledge of such things, the teacher did KNOW GOD in this way, then of course God would need to be THERE to be known, and to have the interest in DIVULGING this information definitively, escaping the derailing, pollution and distortions of man in the process.

Then scientifically we would naturally want to see its credentials. If a lecturer HAS such a divulgement so that he COULD know that there was nothing there, it could only come from SOMETHING there, articulate and definitive. The ONLY way there could be the removal of truth, would be by its presence. It is a difficult task, is it not! Yet they know, which implies this existence, which they then deny. Self-contradiction is the penalty of lèse-majesté to truth, in short order.

We are discussing a type of philosophic position, which tends naturally to discount any ABSOLUTE TRUTH, with the absence of it in order to do so. It is amusing ? It is disastrous. It is common.

But the ground ? The credentials for such knowledge, even though it be couched in negative
terms ? These unfortunately this kind of lecturer NEVER presents, for the very sufficient reason that it is SUPPOSED that whatever there is, for, by or through which everything is: this is not and CANNOT be known. Hence he/she is in a bind.

It is this. To present these presuppositions as a basis for thought (NATURALLY they are not STATED to be such, for the show could not then go on), is to present them as true. IF they are KNOWN to be true, then what they profess MUST be contradicted to enable such knowledge to be even possible. Indeed the impossibility of objective validity without the self-revealing God is dealt with in detail in That Magnificent Rock Ch. 5, extended in Ch. 7 and again presented in Barbs, Arrows and Balms 7 (cf. SMR Ch.3).

·       While they assure us that everything is relative,

·       they procure the absolute truth that this is so,

·       thereby contradicting themselves:

·       as they oppress with logical fallacies to match the magics of naturalism,

·       the reductionisms of humanism,

·       itself unmeasured,  measuring all,

·       and the fluencies of irrationalisms,

·       presented (of course) with reason,

·       just to complete the fiasco!

This MYTHOLOGY of the lecturers of so many of our bogged down tertiary institutions may not in the least resemble what they think; but from observation, in this genre of philosophy which rules so many tertiary halls, this is the way it frequently goes. Now to DEMYTHOLOGISE the demythologising in which they often think they are embarking: this is the pleasant task of the moment. Since this, their frequently found position, as demythologisers of the New Testament or the Old, for that matter, requires this base, and the base requires that the things presented would HAVE to be true, in the book they criticise, at least in kind, then the more they reject, the more they accept. In this mental splits situation, one would expect they may become a little strained. It is but natural.

What is less natural is the folly of students listening to such self-contradiction.

C.S. Lewis^*1A in his GOD IN THE DOCK has a delightful chapter (5) on the Myth Becomes Fact. Here he notes that the realities can stretch beyond our ken (for although the works of God attest His capacities, His heart must be revealed). Seeing may occur in ways less than adequate. People might put this in myth. When however God sees fit to unleash His Son on earth, send His eternal word in the flesh format for better instruction, inspection and the bearing of sin for those who do not LIKE or WANT the controls and constraints which SIN provides (for it is this, and not really society or the other brutalities ascribed to our situation, by the mechanists of psychology and the dilettantes of philosophy, which is the base and the elective dynamic):  what then ?

THEN says Lewis, the area which man seeks to interpret, interprets itself and presents itself. What was beyond man is now in his midst. What he sought in limited language/comprehension is now presented in unlimited actuality. God has spoken in flesh.

K.A. Kitchen provides a very different but equally applicable approach when in his Ancient Orient and Old Testament he points out that it is time the delusive, presumptuous, arrogantly distanced from reality philosophies stopped trying to ram their thoughts impotently into the Bible; and that instead, some severe and realistic study was made of its MILIEU. In the Middle East, he indicates, there are to be found the historical and geographical, the social and the political ways and proceedings in terms of which the Bible may the more aptly be understood, than in the presence of rashly intruded twentieth or nineteenth century philosophies. He illustrates with some finesse. These philosophic assumptions, used in place of actual and precise study of what is there, have of course been outrageously jejune and inapplicable, often based on the evolutionary theory which has bitten scientific dust to the point its very teeth are broken (as displayed in precise detail in That Magnificent Rock Ch. 1) . They are desolated to the point of being almost like a one act play. There is only one act, since the act does not work.

Thus arrived the infamous follies of the German scholar Welhausen, in which he sought to indicate that there could be no such literary and legal advancement as would make it POSSIBLE for Moses to KNOW so much as to write the laws and to include the lore which is to be found in the legal systems of the Pentateuch. He was of the genre of the evolutionary myth (correctly so-called as in SMR pp. 252Iff., and exhibited Wake Up World, Your Creator is Coming... Chs. 4 and  5, and That Magnificent Rock Ch. 8). The myth controlled his thought, but history did not; logic did not: it was an affront to fact to impose such concepts. This was of course shown when EBLA was discovered, in even more glamorous a way than had already been shown by the testimony of Hammurabi, with his marvellously complex laws.

As Dr Clifford Wilson shows so well in his 'the impact of ebla on bible records' (modishly titled in small print), around 2300 B.C., there was such a sophistication of legal, mathematical and commercial operations as to produce a vast library of erudite kind. This PRECEDED Moses by over 800 years! Abraham in all his development and mental agility, lived around those times, or a little later. Not only so, much of the ACTUAL Biblical nomenclature and implicit custom in Genesis, not to mention the words similar to Genesis 1:1, were there found. It fitted. It matched with amazing perfection. Names and places abounded in correlation between the discoveries of Ebla, and the implicit or explicit ways in Genesis.

This reinforced Kitchen's^*2 whole point: know what you are talking about it, and talk about it as it relates to what it is saying, not to some egregious philosophy. As we see, such philosophies ally themselves with nothing so well as irrationality, and live nowhere long (except in the minds of those for whom the severities of scientific method are not duly applied, for whatever reason, as shown in the above references).

Wilson, formerly a senior Lecturer at Monash University, has been personally involved with much archeological digging, with great and small.

When one considers the FINDING of the HITTITES who were for long not known to secular contemporary literature in our times, and this endorsement of Biblical records, the excavations of Professor Garstung and recently, Dr Bryant Wood at Jericho, and the prodigious correlation with Biblical statement ... and so on (but see SMR for these treats and similar, on pp. 68ff., 377-385, 712ff., 945ff., 1003ff., 1082ff., 1180-1186C), it is apparent that philosophy has indeed been a substitute for both simple logic and hard digging. The philosophies of mythology, which end up as a mythical novelty of the twentieth century, still clinging on like dying vines, abound; but it is time they were comprehensively demythologised. They are illogical, self-contradictory; they smuggle in propositions which they use to remove opposition, but which first remove themselves. This they fail almost routinely to notice, or if they notice, to acknowledge.
 

·       As we note in Repent or Perish Ch. 7, SMR 999-1003,  pp. 374-385 and indeed in the entirety of Ch. 3, in SMR pp. 422Eff., and in Answers to Questions 5, pp. 116ff., Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming...Chs. 4 and 5, and numerous other places:

·       it is ONLY the logical realities of a creator who is ADEQUATE for what happens -

·       and not the naturalistic mythology which talks demurely in terms of what neither in form, in force, in structure nor in observation CAN or DOES create itself (a difficult task, in any case, and nothing is first itself debarred by definition alone! cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 29) -

·       which suffices.

All else is exactly and precisely myth: the development of a scene and scenario of thought, with or without historical association, but with a certain vivid or hopeful note of action, which is neither logically adequate for what it portends, nor equipped with technical interface to produce it. It is a musing, a roving, an imaginative reflectiveness, filled with action, here non-persons, 'forces' apparently real or conceivably once extant, which without any evidence to support it, stir thought and makes the ignorant happy, or sad, or in some way contented with the innovation. It serves its clientele; but it is NOT a logical structure. THIS is the nature of the myth which avoids the Creator, and would make a magical power to descend, unobserved and unobservable, without ground or testable element, onto the scene to ...
"explain" it.
 
 

WHAT DOES HAPPEN

When however we have a book which is eminently testable in detail of spade and conspectus, in hundreds of thousands of words of depictions of the past, present and future, filled with predictions and principles in the best manner that is so fitting for that other model, a SCIENTIFIC hypothesis, and without descending to that level as a PRODUCT, which performs at that level as a PRESENTATION, then of course this must be tested. It must be seen if it will validate itself or not; whether its claims are consistent with its performance or not. In the Biblical religion of revelation ONLY is such a privilege accorded in vast and unflinching multitudes of manners. If then that is from God, then of course we are out of the purlieus of philosophical confinement. First, methodically, people can TEST it.

It has lasted for some 3 and one half millenia unwounded, and HISTORY is its laboratory which shows as we watch, thousand year stride by thousand, what it says happening. It predicts that God (Psalm 45) is to send the One who is to be sacrificed for sin (Isaiah 53), and indeed the basic course with numerous precise details, of the history of the race. It focusses on the end of the Age, which by its words is ours; and it discusses this in just that detail which any testable item needs, to be validatable^*3.

This we see in SMR Chs. 8-  9, and in numerous other places.

It presents a CHRIST to come who HAD to perform miracles, rise from the dead, be slain by His own people, in the process piercing His hands and feet, who would produce a GOSPEL which is specified in advance, which would circuit the Gentile world which in turn would provide its own predicted procedures to doom, for its neglect, as similarly earlier shown for the Jews. Like an operation, it is useless as a basis for blaming the doctor if you do not have it.

All this is found in the above reference to prophecy and principle, and far more. Hence, available for test is the PERSON of Christ, for whom ONE slip in behaviour, in morals, in knowledge, in error on any topic of life, when under scrutiny as the Messiah would instantly have ended His unassailable career. This test for Him,  as God in flesh, was a stinging opportunity and it was used to the full, even to the point of seeing what happened ... when He was literally stinging when metal pierced, as predicted, His hands and feet.  What happened HAD to be like that; the environment of people, of terms, of truth, of rejection, of power, of willingness, of place and so on: it all had to be or the Bible was wrong.

It has never been impugned by reason. Indeed, not only this, but the subsequent developments in deep and often detailed measure, and profoundly so for our own generation (see SMR Chs. 8-9), had to be. They were and are testable. They pass with honours. What happens is in the tone and tenor as well as in the detail of the predictions. The principles apply. The results accrue, and we are living them.

Hence the projections of world history are as open as a book. It is all shown. It could be prevented by powerful man trying to show God wrong; but it is not. The resurrection could have been rubbished, though predicted for a millenium. He could have been smashed into small pieces; kept in irons, exhibited as a corpse. But it was not se (cf. SMR pp. 931ff.).
 
 

THINGS THAT DO NOT HAPPEN

NOTHING is EVER carried off against the Bible, which serenely smiles while the vilification and demythologisings proceed from those whose inadequacy of thought, infelicity of logic, contradiction of concept make it ESSENTIAL that their demythologising be demythologised. Theirs is the myth, and the word of God is the ONLY LOGICALLY POSSIBLE source of truth. Its actuality is shown moreover not merely by its millenial invulnerability, its constant confirmation and that the more dramatic in the midst of endless endeavours of wits to invest it with error, but by the necessity that that God whose being is assured from His words (as in SMR Chs. 1, 3), should have divulged His answer to the world so constructed in behaviour and spirit, as it now is (as also shown in the above chapters on Biblical prophecy, 8-9).

It is found (as likewise shown in detail in SMR Chs. 1,3, 10) in ONLY one place which meets the specifications of the case. THAT place confirms itself in the concerted, programmatic performances of Christ and history, which have had, in science, in any art or endeavour, almost limitless opportunities to find a refutation, a sustainable criticism; but these have failed, and it has stood. In Barbs, Arrows and Balms Chs. 1-3, we see some of the all but incredible antilogisms indulged in by those who seek to escape. There is systematically, however, no escape; except in myths. These are fine so long as they are not believed to be true: as an art form or poem. Logic requires something better for truth.

The Bible moreover divorces its account of the creation from just such things as those mythical wanderings,  with a rigour and vigour so great, that one has had to memorialise and demonstrate it in The Biblical Workman Ch. 7, A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 9, SMR pp. 485-498 (cf. a useful additive in Creation, Vol. 19, No. 1, Dec. 1996-Feb. 1997, pp. 23ff., dealing with alternative writing that could have been used).

C.S. Lewis shows similar things concerning the New Testament presentation of Christ, also at the literary level which, in terms of myths and non-myths, was his field at Cambridge University (SMR pp. 380ff.), and notes the great divorce between this literary presentation and the contemporary methodology for fiction, the difference like that between sun and moon. Again, in SMR pp. 857

ff., we see something of the New Zealand scholar, Professor Blaiklock in his assessment in the same arena, and of Lewis's exposure of the artless subjectivity which presumes to re-create without knowledge on the basis of mere philosophic preference, a character whom the records do not attest, no nor history, secular or otherwise.

The endless endeavour to make a Christ who was to be raised from the dead by imagination, perform miracle by imagination, impress thousands by imagination, inspire death-defying and fearless conviction on the part of those who, seeking the Messiah, were satisfied they had met Him (as required in Isaiah 29, 35, 11) in some of His illimitable healing and truth presentations, never seem to cease. These mythologies of the mind, which seek to displace the testimony of literature, of history, of the manuscripts (see SMR Appendix C), of Paul in living memory of the crucifixion and the profound preliminary events, and to make of Jerusalem a city of idiots, moved by desire, incapable of performing it: these need to be laid not to rest, for to them no rest can be accorded, but to their just doom.

Worse then this, if possible is a further consideration. What such antics represent is plagiarism of personality, propositioning without possibility of procurement, invented persons, wrapping them in the papers of the mind,  and using the name of an actual one. Dummies thus are made; but they do not live. They are the services of the imagination, delving inebriately into history, forgetting their place. C.S. Lewis makes a mockery of the very idea of seeking to determine past the writer, his intent and his forces operative from life, on his mind, so that one could see back of it, invent. Making minds is  God's business. Man was never good at it. It is beyond his domain. NOT ONCE has any commentator rightly done this to him, Lewis notes! (cf. SMR pp. 858- 859).

 

• "Reviewers both friendly and hostile, will dash you off such histories with great confidence; will tell you what public events had directed the author's mind to this or that, what other authors had influenced him, what his over-all intention was, what sort of audience he principally addressed, why - and when - he did everything... ... " ;
  and he adds:

• "not one of these guesses has on any one point been right."

This has not only been his observation concerning HIMSELF and his own books, but concerning those of his friends. NIL score. What is absurd also does not work! This too one would expect.
 
 

THINGS THAT DID HAPPEN ...EVEN THEN!

We are not the only people who are benefited by the possession of minds. One has only to read St Chrysostom's sermons, Augustine's works, or sundry other things in ancient literature, to realise that profundity and wit of the ancients, which their architectural works alike attest. The evolutionary myth, or its implication, that they of Jerusalem were so dumb, devious and puny, who produced and listened to Cicero of Rome in his day, that they playfully dismissed eternal damnation as liars for the mere joy of the thing, or unaccustomed as the grieving relatives may be, engaged in delusions of grandeur, making Christ rise and convince even Thomas by some floating experience, and then acted on these: this is as inept as other romancing, when fact is the aim. Seriously, they COULD not tell the difference!

Would fans of Tiger Woods invent a hole of 18 hops in ONE, when his power left, and he could only totter with arthritis about the course! Is THIS the troop who ADMIRE and are CONVINCED by performance, after severe test, who so act when the performance is gone, and gone while the sun is still at noon! Hardly. It is not we alone who have heads on our shoulders. THIS myth of making anyone fools if they lived a while ago, is one of the leading edges of the demythologising of demythology.

The further myth that people would LIE in order to MAKE their preference into what it was not, to invent a Christ, in order to inhabit hell AS liars, and without the presence or peace of the GOD who defines Himself in the Scriptures they lived and preach and taught by, is another edge to be applied. (See SMR Ch. 6.)

	When however we resume normal testing, we find that
	the power and the successful proclamation in Jerusalem
	of the precise things which, were they untrue,
	would have been instantly dismissed as mere verbal garbage from a collection of obviously lying rotters,
	but being true would be expected to draw many thousands; and that, men who would not budge, when they declared the resurrection of His body:

this is in entire factual agreement with both expectation from such a base, and every record.
 

That, being invulnerable to refutation, because the facts would not admit of it, and the proponents constantly asserting it  with all frankness, fervour and practical factuality of mode, assuring with simple exhortation and careful speech that it was founded on evidence (as in John 3:11, Acts 4:19-20, 5:29ff., in parallel with Isaiah 41,43,48 where God insists: TEST ME OUT, and TRY MY WORD and SEE if you can show ANYTHING to compare, even to touch its accurate depiction, inviolable performance), the fact of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ proceeds with that same contented continuance one would expect of the word of God. It MAY be hated; it MAY be assailed; but then Christ was. If it WERE not, then how could it be His! Indeed, it was HE who said, Like servant, like master. That is, the servant is not greater than the master; if they have done it to me, they will do it to you.

"Remember the word that I said to you,
‘A servant is not greater than his master.’

"If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.
If they kept My word, they will keep yours also" (John 15:20-21).

Indeed, the parallel does not cease there. As in John 16:2, He declares that the time will come when he who kills you will conceive that he does God service.

	From the Roman Empire, to the Holy Roman  Empire,
	from the Inquisition to the exposition of Islamic violence over the centuries, almost leading to the subjugation of Europe, even to this fastidious fanciful exposition*4 from over 6 centuries after Jesus Christ of some new christ, accommodated in the Koran, founded on no empirical evidence and not adhering to the better test of truth there has been the prelude;
	in Communism with its sub-human conceptions and actions to the new militant Islam and even now in India, a militant Buddhism, it has been so.

With Christ however, God's empirical exposition in the flesh, through the flesh, in Person and on the spot, it has been different; for here,

there was

	not violence but virtue, for violence is not needed when truth speaks, and that things of beauty, it has ways of its own;
	not lashings but logic,
	not spiritual direction by earthly power, as in Romanism and Islam in so much and so often,
	not an untested, untalking, untried, unempirical christ of the imagination, as in the Koran, but instead there was
	One who spoke and did what was prescribed for His identification for centuries, and met each occasion with the full assurance that deity needs, the power thus uniquely to be exhibited with the precision which knows no rebuttal.

Yes not only persecution but death has been grossly and fluently provided for Christians, for the servant indeed is not greater than the master, as Christ proclaimed.  

 

That is abundantly fulfilled.

 

CEASE, in effect, God indicates in these passages in Isaiah, stop making myths out of your minds, and OBSERVE what is written and CONSIDER its impact on history, and then REALISE that this is the product of the ONE WHO KNOWS. Then believe. STOP using idols of the imagination in order to pretend. Be practical and observe. See who says what and what happens. Do not writhe or contort. Indeed, God is clearly stating that they were so devious that He was keeping back some data to the present point, so that they could not claim their idols had told them. Such it was; such it is. This is the way with myth immersion, and in particular, nature myth immersion. On nature myths, you may care especially to read

Thus in the New Testament there are many who try to make Christ a result of legendary accumulation which, when it has its issue, becomes myth, since Christ is presented as the ultimate acme and alpha, the Lord of creation and the God of judgment. Indeed in HIM, is all mystery answered, all power expressed, all depiction performed for the mind and testing of man.

 

Mere myths of the twentieth century mind (carried over  into this century by permission of philosophy, which does not care much, for it is ever innovating, and has many spare cars lying about), then seek by such means, their own expression as we noted at the commencement of this exercise. Thus they create their MYTHS, even while seeking to evacuate history from factuality so as to enable a mythology of the imagination to arise and create Christ. Thus while the Old Testament requirements had to be met (as in Isaiah 11, 29, 35, 52-53, Psalm 16, 2, Zechariah 3:9, 9:6ff. and so on), involving a plenipotentiary of the standing of God Almighty Himself, God the sent (Isaiah 49:16) as the prophet indicated, the PERFORMANCE could not take time to distil. The wine could not ripen.

 

It was all or nothing. He did it or He did not. He met the questioners, did the miracles, could not be trapped, had the intrinsic and mediated power to overcome ANYTHING which was contrary to such an identity, OR HE DID NOT. ONE error was more than enough. Death was the lot of the pretender (Deuteronomy 13). THAT was the mere legal penalty. The abhorrence of the imposture was a far more vital and deadly thing.

 

In this performance based milieu He came; to those who looked He came; as to those who tested, both friend who watched and believed, and foe, who watched but could only by murder unseat. It was a fait accompli by the time of the resurrection. As Albert Schweitzer (cf. SMR ), for all his own errors, so well points out, it is impossible to dissever Christ from His supernatural background, scriptural eminence and role. Remove from the total assemblage, ensemble, and there is nothing left. It comes from behind, interprets every phrase or symbol of weight, is illustrated, applied, reinforced at every level. It is cardinal, critical, long standing, clearly defined, elaborately confessed.

 

THIS was that Christ. There WAS nothing to grow, except this: that when HIS BODY was dead, so that NO mediation of power through His LIFE was still possible on this earth, YET God the Father would act to sustain, verify and validate, authenticate and FULFIL Psalm 16. The FLESH of the prophet, the body of the Master, the corpus of the Son of God would arise from the grave without life lost, and He would resume in bodily format, physical and capable of physical touching, handling and clinging, eating, or it would lapse. He would thus rise, as depicted and predictively required in the bluntest of terms (rotting was not to occur):  or He would not. It was a matter to discover by the doing.

 

Legend was out of the question. God is the God who does. So He says; so He claims, so He asks us to check. COULD Rome, could JERUSALEM STOP HIM! In fact, no. That is the point. His body was not available on demand. For murder, yes; since He came as a sacrifice and this was part of the plan. For post-murder trifling ?  No. That was not in the long predicted scenario. GOD WOULD RAISE HIM as in Psalm 2, 16. COULD they stop it ? GOD WOULD LAUGH (Psalm 2), He said, in the face of this bare-faced and barren assault on His power, and on His Messiah. Was this annulled ? Did He overcome all the powers of the world and simply DO IT!

 

Could the enemy, then, stop Him, from acting, and ... from laughing ?

 

They did not. That is all. Christ walked off. He was not available for morbid display AFTER He finished the display on the cross and was buried.

 

Thus the legendary approach to the mythology manufacturers (for Christ being alpha and omega, creator and king, explained everything, and surpassed all myth), is like the student who does not realise yet that he is in high school, and that there is a thing called a laboratory where things happen ( or do not happen). You have to study the case, and ... see. You have to examine the verifications and the scope for them, and the confirmations and the scope of them.

·         Leaving however the rational requisition that the word of God must be present and  true, as demonstrated in SMR Chs. 1,3,10, and the historical, literary, paleontological, biological, chemical, physical, archeological and social confirmations, the teachers of myth proceed with their own manufacture, with the smoke screen

·         of calling that myth which lacks EVERY ingredient of myth,

·         and using for their own part,

·         what has EVERY PHASE of it, as they present.

YOU COWARD! says the bully while he runs! It is rather like that. Calling names, however, does not create facts. It merely creates a peal of laughter as the bully runs. Myth-makers do not escape by alleging this of what lacks the ingredients, and performing for their own part, with what has them.

But what DO they say, those who so teach ?

It is in effect, just THIS.  

WE DO NOT KNOW (that is, all people), but this WE know (ourselves who teach)
that you CANNOT know and we know that nothing can stand but our myths,
new or to be begotten yet, which with ever inadequate bases and resources,
ever and anon, will produce worlds out of various whirlings of things
too obscure to be named,
too unavailable to be imagined,
too removed to be reconstructed, which,
with various processes
too distant to be observable,
and various laws
too hard to be formulated,
performed various things which are never seen.
As a result of this travail of 'Nature' which came from nowhere in particular,
and nothing, there have 'arisen' all the things that are.
Thus did disorder produce order, nothing produce something,
disorganisation produce organisation
and dead inertia produce brilliant thought.

But that ?

IT IS A MYTH. That is precisely what a myth is, except for one thing: this is a very dull and barren myth which scarcely deserves the name. There is only a lot of mixed up verbiage signifying that if logic were dead, then the world might have lived in that way. In that case, however, even speech would not be possible, for it presupposes logic in its grammar and conceptual symbolising and inter-relationships. In that case, even the myth could not be uttered. On the whole, it may be the worst myth ever invented, so lacking in ingenuity, possibility, consistency AND imagination, colour and personality.

It is better dead. It is best buried. Its demythologisation is a service to all.

Let it rot.

 

The body of Christ, however, it arose, and it did not rot,
but to dabblers in death it provided the spice of life,
not really a frustratingly unavailable result of the greatest work of construction
ever seen on this earth, in physical format as a structure, but a challenging opportunity
to be allied to the Almighty who made us able to think about Him,
seek Him and find Him, or being averse to reality and necessity alike,
to maunder as those lost, meander as those witless,
or seek to extinguish the people of Christ, by various laws on information and expression,
or by knives or ... indeed, whatever is convenient.

It lasts a little while. HE and HIS last for ever. That is such a simplicity, the hosts of darkness and of light, following culture, ideas, frustratingly incapable logical failures, or the Lord of life, identified, exhibited, demonstrated, not in the flash of a moment, but over the millenia in forecast and fulfilment, in personal action over years on this earth, and in His own words to that generation as to this, which now feels the vigour, the rigour and the rigors of reality, as what He has said, all too evidently, afflicts a world that whirls in thought, and wallows in iniquity. It is well He is still available on His age-old terms, as predicted, predicated of Christ, empowered by His word (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5).

It is good of the Lord so to continue His opportunities. Jerusalem as in Luke 19:42ff., lost its own opportunity, before suffering a 1900 year exclusion from its land, prior to its predicted return to it (cf. It Bubbles... Ch. 10, SMR Appendix A, Ch. 9). Gentile nations similarly have their own opportunity. It is the same God, the same Gospel; it never changes whether as foretold by Isaiah or propounded by thousands to this day. It is enshrined in His word which endures for ever (I Peter 1).

It is a great kindness of God that in Christ there is always room for more, till the time comes, as it did to ancient Jerusalem in A.D. 70, when judgment sits (II Corinthians 5:17ff.).