NEWS 120

Water, Wickedness and Woe

The Background

The Advertiser August 22

It is not just a question of evil, nor is it merely inadequacy or imperfection. This world is hot with crime, folly and above all, the proud arrogance of dismissal of the divine, or else its cunning invention in mythical terms (cf. SMR pp. 378-385, Answers to Questions  3),  and the sanctimonious pretence that all is not clear, though Christ has come, His words are daily being fulfilled and His coming itself was on time (cf. SMR pp. 886ff.), for all time, the declaration of God. This world has not beheld His equal, nor has it seen anyone in any way comparable, for His power and glory, truth and purity eclipses all. With Him, 'incomparable' is merely literal fact (cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms, Appendix IV, Repent or Perish
Ch. 2).

But the world, for its part ?

ONE of the results of this unsavoury and grotesque unspirituality is trouble. What would one expect!

Even school boys know, or at least they used to do so, that the headmaster can only with profound indiscretion be absolutely ignored, and that the farce of dressing up one of them as headmaster, as a pretence mechanism, whether for group dynamics or more plainly, arrogant disdain and dismal contempt, is not likely to pass muster when the authorities sit.

ONE of the troubles, that is resulting for the actual orb of this world, comes with lack of water - in certain areas. It is one of the help-mates of famine, so liberally predicted in Matthew 24 as the closing years of the Age roll in like the end of Autumn, when the leaves fall... some of them are pretty too! Another however is superabundance of it. The latter is in connection with a specific and vast feature of the earth - the OCEANS. These are to exhibit two fascinating dynamics of their own.

They will be in splendid (or in what otherwise in the sheer spectacle of things might be so) commotion, powerful in force, intrusive in action, loud in their clamour. You find this, as we saw in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock Ch. 8, pp. 714ff. - cf. 682,  in 1992, and it has had enough of exhibitions since (cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 6, Scoop of the Universe 29). It has also been related to the Greenhouse Effect, SMR pp. 680, 711.

• It is also the Luke 21:25ff effect.

This Greenhouse point is applicable once more; but the disturbances are taking on some of the peripheral preliminaries which are of so much interest as we look at the word and the world. 
Actually they are both of God; but the word is definitive;  the world exhibitive. The word is effectual, and the effects so long afterwards, are becoming the news impressions, items of brain-storming agendas,  the stuff of scientific sessions aplenty.

God has prepared the plans and stated them; man is now seeing them take their place in his contemporary life ... style.
 

THE DEVELOPMENT

The Advertiser, August 22 (pp. 5, 19) speaks of the " Meltdown at the top of the world" .

This is not so glamorous, equipped with ponderous denials or falsetto promises, as it once was. It is now just a relatively simple fact, this: that at the North Pole some tourists evidently went for the sport or sight of the thing, in an ice-breaking vessel, and found no ice to break. They had to go 10 kilometres to FIND the thing - at the Pole.

Even the most phlegmatically gifted of the urbane would perhaps feel a quiver of realism at this. Not only so, in Antarctica, to come closer to ourselves, we find three "great sea-ice sheets - the Wordle, the Larsen and the Prince Gustave shelves - have disappeared in the past decade." As if this were a mere hors d'oeuvres, we have this: "Two more - the Larsen B and the Wilkins shelves - have shrunk in the past two years and are expected to break up soon." In fact, "ice is also melting from the land - glaciers are retreating and the ice caps of Greenland and Antarctica are shrinking, causing the oceans to swell, imperilling islands." Abruptly, it declares or indicates, such things could put an end to the climate of human civilisation's customs and habitat.

Again, to prevent the continued global warming, far beyond the Kyoto accord of 1997, "scientists say they would have to be slashed by at least 80 per cent to stabilise global warming". What would need this surgical seeming severance ? "Emissions of carbon dioxide". It is rather like slimming - why worry ? some cry. It is going to happen.

On p. 19, Professor Schwerdtfeger of Adelaide Flinders University is quoted. "If," we read, "there were to be any further significant loss of polar ice, you can forget about life in most of coastal Australia." The article proceeds to give forecasts of heat increases in climate expected, and of course, we are reminded that things can accelerate.

Enough! The point is well taken. THE PRE-CONDITIONS for the Biblical predictions of Luke 21:25ff. are being laid down like concrete in the morning. You cannot from this alone predict that by sunset there will be a hard surface, growing steadily more so. It is not that. It is rather that the pre-conditions for any such prediction are now EVIDENTLY IN PLACE. If someone had said that by evening there would be this result, a millenium ago, of such a future date, it would be impressive ... We would have by that time every expectation that it would be fulfilled. The word was there. The means are here. The means are to be expected by their nature to produce what the word said. It is all going according to plan.

When however the word is the word of God, and when the numerous other elements of the tapestry of truth are present likewise, and in force, and in ascending order of mental, philosophic, spiritual, moral, military, astronomical, anthropological, psychological, ecological and religious riot, some merely note the fact and glow with the suffused righteousness of God (which is anything but self-righteous, for it belongs to His self, and He humbles Himself), of Him who does all things well; or  others ? they glower with the diffused and confused self-righteousness of contrary spirits, or else the denigration of the frustrated infidel.

Infidel ... Odd term that ? It is not much used now. It was once a verbal bastion in reference to the unbelieving hordes not in the Empire, or its motherland and all that. The motherland as a Christian country was a concept not entirely true, though there were many elements of Christian things indeed to be found. However the designation 'infidel' is entirely true; but it does not apply to THOSE OUT THERE, as if it were an alien disgrace. It applies to ALL in WHATEVER land which, be it about to be submerged in

• ocean,
• cultural washes of wickedness,
• AIDS beyond all treatment in masses,
• watery psychological breakers,
• spiritual inundations from the witless sublimities of the unknowable (so convenient, feel a lot and do as you please),
• masses of dissatisfied humanity with guns, or
• ideological waves of oblivion dressed up with words,
• to exude a discrete foam.

If you do not believe in Jesus the Christ, you are redeemer-less, and in the final analysis, godless, since this, as He has declared is the ONLY WAY (John 14:6). Make-up gods do not count, any more than make-up marks when you sit an exam. Without a way, in the end, you have had your day.

God is not available for storm troopers, invaders, philosophers, politicians, surgeons of the spirit. He comes - guess what,  rather as you do. He comes to declare Himself and make Himself available at His OWN WILL. His door is at HIS OWN ADDRESS. While in Spirit He can move anywhere, in Person He is found at His own discretion. "SEEK THE LORD WHILE HE MAY BE FOUND" (Isaiah 55) is one essential ingredient. Also one should seek HOW He may be found. He looks to this man, we read:

"On him who is poor and of a contrite spirit,
And who trembles at My word" - Isaiah 66:2.
 

Indeed, from Jeremiah 29:13, we learn further on this point: "And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart."

But what do you find ? The Cross, what else ? the resurrection - what less ? The peace of pardon, what other ? The God of creation, how else! In fact, unless you GLORY in the cross of Christ (Galatians 6:14), the entirety of His plan of salvation and His redemption, the attestation of His love and the exhibition of His physical power over the world of His own creation (Ephesians 1:19, Romans 10:9), you are as far astray as a space station trying to dock with the earth by mistake, instead of another station, and doing so at 1000 m.p.h., with no brakes. Anyone can crash land. That is not the point. You need to dock, and that involves precision.

You need precisely to repent and precisely to receive the precise Christ of God (lUKE 2:36), AND NOT ANOTHER ONE, that same Jesus Christ whom He sent from His everlasting abode, and you need precisely to set your trust in Him more than in yourself, churches or fears, and to follow Him (Luke 14:27ff.).. You do NOT need to imagine and invent; God did NOT go to all the precise trouble of being precise in order that you should be vague.

Christians need to rejoice at the profound factuality of God. He makes facts (Acts 4:20 cf. SMR pp. 208ff., 145ff., 999ff. esp. endnote* East-West, God's Best). Facts! (cf. SMR Ch.3 ) - they are delightful creatures in this, that they are not at liberty to be just themselves; but just as mountains may be removed by a grain of mustard seed sized faith, so the good word of God directs events, and as to His people, He KNOWS their path (Psalm 1). It assuredly does depend on whether you are WITH and IN the way of the God who made you, how facts relate to you. Psalm 1 is so eloquent, so simply, on that.

BACK TO THE WATER

But let us back to the current happenings that stand out and are being noted from the newspaper.

These coastal developments may soon have an effect on real estate ? Coastal properties may lose something of their glamour ? Civilisations may come to suffer differential loss, as some peoples are more vulnerable than others. It may to some be eminently distressing: 'Poor old world, can it not just simply CONTINUE as it has 'since the creation' as some love to assert, mocking in their hearts, fear in their minds, folly in their spirits - and that too, just as Peter predicted (II Peter 3:1ff. - cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5, pp. 96ff., 125ff.).

Fear is another option to be exercised, we read in Luke 21:25-26, for the thing is to escalate, just as it already multiplies as we have seen on repeated occasions since the first review of the gathering storms, in 1992 in SMR Ch. 8, pp. 646ff. (cf. Scoop of the Universe  29) .

'Gloom and doom,' say the superficially invulnerable! Not really. It is true that the vast increases in oceanic water, the large increases projected in heat, the energy therefore in the system, on the one hand, and the extent of it on the other, in terms of vulnerability especially in coastal areas, much populated in fact: these things make the current projection of the exact oceanic prediction of Christ, in Luke, appear as near as the hills on a clear day.

It is true that this thing  is an imperilling performance, offering to embroil the world. It is better than the flood; but it is worse than a meek old world doing what humanism wants! It is actually fire which is to be the primary feature in the end of the world (II Peter 3); but that is not yet. The return of the Majesty of God, Jesus Christ the Saviour has temporal reminders to alert the unwary. Better the dire than death, when that death is eternal, contemptible and needless (Daniel 12, Matthew 23;37, I Timothy 2).

It may seem dire to the devious, the delinquent as to the rebellious; but, in another way, it is wonder and power, grandeur and commotion, peace and truth, precision and termination. It is a matter of being where you are supposed to be, having the spiritual address you are supposed to have, and doing what is the divine will at the chosen time, and getting it done. But this is not at all to the taste of many. What then ?
It is gloomy if you like that style of thing; and many warnings appear that way to those who heed them not at all. When however the case is covered, it is a matter of far more than gloom: it is that impenetrable darkness which is the PREFERENCE of the ungodly, since God is the light, in Himself unapproachable
(I Timothy 6:16), but brought near and available in Jesus Christ (John 1:1-14). Fear however is the available course for those who want things that way.
 

This option can be exercised in wars of prevention, wars of cure, wars of words in which lethal utterances are levelled, each one at the other, with analytical nightmares of contrived knowledgeability allied with vexatious spirits and unrepentant hearts. It may be instead merely psychologically acknowledged in depressions, with appropriate pills and side-effects and resultant anxieties, or religiously indulged in all sorts of New Age contrivances, which do not really alter anything except the pollution of the spirits of those caught in these meshes; or it may be spiritually implemented in various scrap-heap variants of Christianity, innovative from the very spirits of itch as predicted in II Timothy 4, doing their thing as it has been appointed to them. In this way, fear and apprehension, and guile and twisted contortions of abuse of reality may all conspire, like Guy Fawkes. The explosion, in this case, IS coming; but it is not quite the sort held in view by the pagan philosophers.

The world IS being exercised in just such ways. Indeed, if it were on its 'axis' to be wobbling like this, it would be like a drunken man.

Orgies are another outlet, verbal, political, national, of independence from something, someone, anything, anyone, from God above all; and they can involve the lining of the stomach, the reproductive equipment, the mentality, the escape hatch of endless television, and the bright new world of educated youngsters who, suitably indoctrinated, KNOW that nothing matters, and will SHOW it while those canny craftsmen of the illusions of nothing-itis, teachers of organic evolution (whose ministers are millions and whose pedants stampede in academia), try to tell them about the glory of survival and all that noble talk.

Waiter! Water!

Yes sir, oceans toiling and boiling with it ? sir ?

Impertinent idiot!

But no! sir - you see, you get what you ask for and you complain, and you do not get what you ask for and you complain; but sir, you see, it is only by the mercy of the management that you do not ALWAYS get what you ask for.

The meal of course is the dining of this world; and they tend to be dismissive to the waiter. However, you see, at a meal, it is the waiter who serves it up.

Our waiter is Christ. Merely to insult Him is not wise. Nor is it right, since He has ALREADY borne the insult portion in offering Himself for sin, and bearing all the uncivil commotion of splenetic verbiage that went with it, crowned with contempt. Listen:

·       "Now therefore, be wise, O kings;
Be instructed, you judges of the earth.
Serve the LORD with fear,
And rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the Son, lest He be angry,
And you perish in the way,
When His wrath is kindled but a little.
Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him" - Psalm 2:10-12.

THAT, incidentally, is part of the prediction manual of Christ (ff. Joyful Jottings Chs. 7,  8 ). The coming and collision is past as in Psalm 1, verses 1-6. This resultant above quoted, it continues. So does He (Hebrews 13:8) - the same. And He will return the same (Acts 1:7ff.). So does His Gospel also continue  (cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 17, That Magnificent Rock Ch. 3). So does His love in which He suffered (Colossians 1:19ff.).