CHAPTER 11,

NEWS 152

The Australian, April 17

ROYALTY WITHOUT TIERS

Royalty is NOT the subject, in terms of Britain or Europe, of this item.

Why then is it found in the title ?

Such a question would underline the mischief of centuries. WHOEVER thought that royal MEANT some distinction of men from men for men! Many!

Actually, the only royalty which is not delivering its nation from RELATIVE soundness to more entanglement with evil, never has done so, or would, is that of Christ. There is a royalty not dependent on the work of men, their opinions, conceptions of distinction, or on the vagaries of love affairs outside marriage, whether with popes or women, on spending sprees, or the declining resources of spent nations. They are not so fashionable now in Europe, as once: that is, kings.

Kings can be excellent, dubious or disastrous... and many have occupied places in such categories as to their rule. But Christ is of a quality which gives calibre a spent feeling, being outside its domain as sunsets are beyond torch-light, and dawns past fluorescent achievements, as the sun is past starlight, and Autumn colours are beyond paper products, as indeed, life is beyond death, however skilful the beautician, latent or patent in the work of the mortician.

Now the 'king' is being considered, and is the replacement for now to be some kinky king :
the community, the moral values of the people, the social culture, the popular trend, the democratic conceptions. Is this to be an absolute sovereignty ? To be sure, it is better to be free from dictators and dictatorial juntas, who clout their pitiful victims, steal the nation's wealth or pollute the inheritance with untold blood, as in Cambodia, crush as in Vietnam, seek to put chains on their wings, as in China, encircle their freedom of expression as in Russia, terrorise as in the Sudan, or brutalise as in parts of Africa, or in Tibet, where the gossamer of desire is met by the steel of subjection, as if a larger neighbour has every right to occupy in force and subjugate a people of a distinctive preference of their own, through an atheism at once irrational, and contradictory (cf. SMR Ch.  10, Chs.  1,  3).

What then of this bane of Communism for example ? Pouncing on a people, with pseudo-scientific pretensions (cf. SMR pp. 925-926), it is this whose glory has been subjection, whose liberation one of the most brutal enslavements of all time, whose strength has been to be supported or enabled by democracies, whose shame has been beyond oblivion: such atheisms as this have shown their glory to be of a mound with Hitler's shame, their understanding to be a pit of corruption, their ability to run the affairs of men, to be neither perceptible in practice nor allowable in theory, their failure so great that only awe, as at some vast chasm, can be the result. It is like student whose examination result requires letters beyond Z, for its grading - at the bottom of the alphabet.

Such mere folly of man will doubtless not be the final model. It will be more personal (II Thess. 2:4), and will not last long, like black lightning, seen against the light. Following any modelling from Daniel (cf. Biblical Blessings Ch. 2), the new model would be expected to have something of charm, deviousness, entrapment, rather initially at least, than mere power, though the latter would be a resultant of its ruses.

But now ? NOW the rage is the people. Liberty, equality, fraternity, cried the French as a foretaste. It would a squalid revolution, following a vicious aristocratic rule, which yet was not uniform, so that the revenge was sometimes a pitiful extension of the earlier outrages, now in the name of the people, as though that in itself could ever make it moral! The fever is coming back. Democracy, as in the USA at the first, for all its errors, had a STANDARD which is partly reflected in the constitution. There are considerations quite explicit. Church, Protestantism and liberty were major forces, even reaching in one early State, almost to the point of being the Establishment! For long the impact of masses of relatively sound churches made the tenor, the moral atmosphere at least, whatever excesses and follies in a people not as such Christian, to be one of uplift and moral, whatever Presidents were too small, and whatever evils too long tolerated. The Civil War made its own commentary on that!

There was a thematic development in thought, Princeton started as a religious body, and many were, are and have been the seminaries, some notoriously adrift and beleaguering their victims, some an adornment, yes and Bible Colleges. Popular elections had SOME basis in a generic concept of moral righteousness, often Christian. There was a dynamic of Biblical portent, which did not rule, but deeply influenced the nation. This is not to idealise, but to contrast.

Now it is not so. Even in the large Southern Baptist body, the Graham position on Romanism is not unacceptable. There has been no divorce. Bodies of nearly every and any description, thinkable and unthinkable in any rational terms, revelatory forces and farces, fiascos and fumes, mingle like vile cocktails, with truth; fiction rises like a ferment and spews over the glasses. Spectacles of spiritual kind are used to obscure, not for vision. The land is in the grip of multitudinous sects and species of spirituality so lacking in rational force, moral basis or truth, that they are like viruses; and the result is a much weakened nation, where its very security is at risk, and this is demonstrated with tedious repetition, in many disasters.

It is not that other nations can look down in contempt; few could manage a work of admirable kind in their own midst. Loss of standards is the order of the day.

Our point now however is this: NEW STANDARDS are arising. The French Revolution is being given the champagne touch. Liberty without basis, fraternity of all without ground, equality without definition, all mix like some soccer crowed breaking down the fences, while many suffer in the squash. It is exciting ? the game ... it is deadly.
 
 

THE REPUBLICAN RUSES

It is true that the author is a royalist; but in only way: Christ is KING! 

Otherwise, it is not so much a question of WHO rules, but WHAT is ruling! That is the point. In Australia we have seen,  both in the case of Victoria and South Australia, the fatal trends, like two hundred foot breakers suddenly rolling in the ocean's mist as the liner approaches; and we have noted the Commonwealth contribution to the arrest of liberty in progress (cf. Pall of Smoke and Diamond of Joy, starting at Ch. 1, and  and End-Note *2 in Galloping Events Ch. 7).

All this we have considered at length. Now we find in The Australian, Tuesday April 17, p. 11, an article by George Williams: ENERGIES BETTER SPENT ON RIGHTS THAN A REPUBLIC.

There are here several concepts of interest our present review and purpose. One is this: it is better to start small with change in the nation's 'rights'. It is wiser to use mere law, at first, as happened in Canada in its movement from law to constitutional change, from 1960's passing of the Constitution Bill, to the establishment of change in the Canadian Charter, in 1982. It is important, this sagacity of care continues, not to rush. This is the message.

After all, the appeal made in that article is to be people, and figures of 77 per cent "community support" for the changed status quo appear at one point.
 

 

THE POPULAR ?
POPULIST 'GOD',
the Wreck and Rack of Ages

The concept seems to be this: you are dealing with the people for the people, and what the people think and find and consider and how they react and respond, and evaluate, this needs time, and people need opportunity to assess. Hence then, the encomium proceeds,  first use law and then constitutional change.

There is some wisdom, then, in such a thought. As the Bible has it, He who hastens with his feet, sins. It is a question of being sure, not sorry.

But now the weakness appears, and it is one of the very spirit of the Age. "We should," it proceeds in terms of the Australian optimum, "draft a bill of rights based upon our cultural values that adopts the best of the overseas models." Indeed, it is felt that this is "a necessary step in the continuing development of our democratic system."

This brings us into considerable parallel with two things:

• 1) the laws in process or enactment, in Victoria and South Australia, mentioned above; and
• 2) the UN approach, in its anti-discrimination legislation, or impetus to legislation for the nations, concerning religion.

 

All these approaches, however,  have one horrendous error, one which is necessary, this or a close parallel, for the Biblical fulfilment of prophecy. They are all non-absolutist in verbiage, and absolutist in implication; and the absolute in view is absolutely not God. Whatever any given person may feel or find, this is the case in the propositions presented.

That is what makes it all so absolutely appalling. It is like making absolute zero any popular number; or absolute truth any assignable substance, or absolution a relative matter, depending on some priest, guru or psychiatric trick. The trappings of eternity mount, like old saddles carried on wings, to the tip of the parabola in man-made propulsion into space, only to fall dimly and dismally, their ludicrous pretensions more comedy than mockery, into some ill-conceived and unplanned destiny (being both muddle and fiddle), a tired load of much fanfare and no glory.

If you want to make God, it is impossible. He is eternal; you have left it too late and as a product yourself, lack the increate situation for the scenario.

If you want to dismiss Him, it is both tiresomely irrational and outrageously comical (cf. Acme, Alpha and Omega - Jesus Christ, Ch. 8);  if you want to take His place, it is tired slapstick (cf. Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium Ch. 16); and if you want to ignore Him, and just act as if you could bypass Him (as in Eden, Babel and both the Sadducaism and Pharisaism of Christ's day, using alternately the dispense and the add methods), it is a seedy substitute for candour and no substitute for truth. It does not, cannot, will not work (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9); but what works is the mystery of iniquity (II Thess. 2:7) which likes to experiment (a Ph.D. surely on the topic ?) in its disgraces, with the heavenly graces; just as it makes poutings and strivings and contrivings, as indeed in the evolutionary fiasco, till failure becomes the very name of the game, fiasco its licence to operate, and doom its mentor. It is so old; and so very new.

People turning into gods in order to achieve their desires (cf. Psalm 82, Ezekiel 28:9), and calling it moral, religious, right, appropriate or whatever else (one whom I know called it 'honourable' trying in vain to hide that this is merely his own erected moral system, by seeking to make it appear just his desire - yet "honourable" MEANS worthy of honour, and what is WORTHY of honour has a moral placement, a ground for accolade, and hence is moral^*1):

• it is the rack of human nature by humanism,
• the sickness of human nature via secularism,
• the corruption of human nature through communalism,
• the same thing precisely as in Genesis 11, at the tower of Babel.

Numbers however, neither in mathematics, science nor in history, in metaphysics nor physics, make truth. Popularity is not precision. Desire is not a draft for dutiful facts to follow.

The facts ? they are in this aspect, of relatively independent means, no longer subject to the thought of man. If he errs from them, they accrue and inveigh against him, be the error popular, populist, communist, irrationalist, psychic, gurual (that deserves a coinage, and should not be at all confused with guttural), militant left, militant right, abysmally construed, or supernally imbued from the thought realms of autonomous man, whose very giddy ascent to the heights is the depravity of ages, given a powder for its hag's face. The direction in that case is mistaken, and Verne's journey to the centre of the earth is misconceived as an astral proceeding.

The moral dimension is no more manipulable than the physical, and less so, since it is in the heart of man as well as in the mind of God. What OUGHT to be CANNOT be governed or engendered from WHAT IS, from man's constructions of the way nature works, or what is sentimentally desired, psychologically lusted after. If it is wanted, that is preference, not principle. If the principle is PREFERENCE, that is desire, and nothing to do with either reason or righteousness. If it is obvious, it is still empty of ground. If it is high, beyond normal comprehension, as with Plato's wise guys, it is still but of man. If it is SOMETHING you reach, as Plato with perhaps some vacillation (at last dumped beneficially in the Timaeus) construed, yet the thing is not to be merely mental, or else it is still the preference of man, the proceedings of his mind, the vagaries of his social consensus or guru leadership from time to time.

WHAT OUGHT TO BE can have no other basis than WHAT IS, WHEN what is is the source, and the source is personal and the person is designer, creator and God. More than one 'god' would lead to moral questions of emplacement and preference among the gods. Since there cannot be more than one (SMR Ch. 1) in any case, the case is simple.

The DESIRE for OUGHTNESS, for obligation, not oblivion, is one which is inherent in man; and that is why, as C.S. Lewis pointed out so well in his Mere Christianity, there is such a relative basic consensus in many moral matters, across a large swathe of peoples. It is inherent because God made man. Man in his historic fall has made "many devices" (Ecclesiastes 7:29), spiritual, mental, moral, and hence the confusion, partly from the history of philosophy, and partly from the odyssey of an understanding OF God but DIVORCED FROM God. That is the ground of the profusion (of attempts) on the one hand, and the confusion (of results) on the other, morally, spiritually, and in the end, social and politically.

WHY it ought to be when GOD IS THE CREATOR is simple: it is the design. WHY the design OUGHT to be followed, even so, depends on the capacity of man to improve on his Creator, without even understanding the design (demonstrably the case, the very working of the brain, let alone the spirit, soaring as far beyond the current conceptions of man, as heaven from earth cf. SMR pp. 112ff., 209-211, Ch. 5, Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium Ch. 13, Repent or Perish Ch. 7). Even when the physical may be better grasped, its spiritual employments are often so divorced even from the conceptions of the mighty, that Paul Brand^*2, that super-active medical specialist in leprosy whose works are so acclaimed and whose devotion to Christ appears so intense, has had to follow the realities. It is these which were so emphasised in SMR in its publication in 1992, and in Predestination and Freewill, in 1964. Thus he has noted the trend of some to speak not merely of the psycho-somatic, but the pneumo-psycho-somatic.
 

When a whole dimension is left out, it is a very comical thing to regard as exhibiting an  understanding. It is rather like considering the complexities of space travel, without realising that space is THERE! It is scarcely reassuring to find a medical innovation in terminology and concept (in terms of the normal secular propagandising) come thundering late on the field, several millenia after it was judiciously proclaimed by God!

This outflung thing, this creation, mankind, this fantasy from imagination cast into actuality, is he now to be found flying into reality as if it were his domain, because he is equipped with a critical faculty, and a zest for research ? This being in the image of God, will he then advance beyond the original, and is he to understand more than his source whose comprehensively construed and invented product he is! Is this not both often the concept and normatively the implication in such affairs, when people are even aware of God's existence!

This folly is noted for example in SMR pp. 99-101 and 999ff.. When you are constitutively constructed from zero, with all components and every member, mind, matter, spirit, all designations and interactions duly arranged, from the One whose compiled consequence in creative industry you are: then to imagine that your mind can outreach the source is like a robot mocking man, while constructing mayhem with the resources limited by his construction, and wishing man dead, invading the world with wooden feet and dazzled mind, a mere contribution to pride, if it were possible. Is this to be the dominant and even domineering illusion, garbed now in this, now in that Spring costume, and to be made fashionable at all costs ?

With the robot, possible it is not, since it is spiritless; with man it is, since his spiritedness can so readily become ephemeral, his limitations becoming his enticement and his origin his hatred. Hence evolution's most populist appeal, though its doom is demonstrable readily (cf. That Magnificent Rock,  Wake Up World, Your Creator is Coming...  A Spiritual Potpourri etc.).

Without God, man cannot EVEN KNOW THE TRUTH (Barbs, Arrows and Balms   6, and  7 with Repent or Perish Ch. 7 and  Ch. 16, A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 12). How much less can he operate in the absence of God from his awareness, from his comprehension, from his ambitions, from his ethics, from his morals!

Now it would be theoretically possible for man to gain an understanding of the truth from understanding something of the mind of God, by revelation, and then to decide he did not like it.
TO JUSTIFY IT WOULD BE SOMETHING ELSE!

That has nothing to do with what ought to be done, any more than a child of 3 finding he does not like orange ice-cream, although his mother insists on giving it to him. The devious concepts of deceitful deity are sheer fantasy, irrational and disastrous misconstructions (cf. SMR pp. 25ff., Repent or Perish Ch. 2, Acme, Alpha and Omega Ch. 11), all based on the concept that God is without something He needs or wants, which as shown in SMR Chs. 3, 10 is fantasy, a contradiction in terms, once the terms are established by necessary reason. Hence the concept of wanting, a deficiency of power relative to desire in God, is mere excursion into desire. He needs no contribution from creation, His exhaustively prepared exhibit, for Himself; and what He would for creation He is able to present within whatever principles and considerations He desires. It is giving only.

The truth however is His, and cannot be extracted by force or manipulation; and without knowing Him, it is subject to the utmost in distortion factor. Persons not known are not subject to precise understanding, except from another, when this is accepted; and even then it is not at all the same. It is the living who can imbue with a living understanding correlative to the subject, not the dead. Hence in dealing with the living God, there is the utmost in limit to understanding, even when revelation is being dealt with, until you know Him. IF you believe in Him by faith and in repentance through His ransom and redeemer, Jesus Christ, then you know Him (John 17:1-3); if you do not, then you fail to be comprehending.

Moreover, you CANNOT know the truth without Him (A Spiritual Potpourri  Ch. 12, That Magnificent Rock Ch. 7, SMR Chs. 1-3,10; for it does not exist outside Him. Relativities of domain and apparatus are not, and cannot be a criterion. As for Him, HE cannot lie (Repent or Perish 2 , Barbs, Arrows and Balms   6, and  7 ) and His need CANNOT encompass what you can withhold. He gains what HE wants, not what somebody else would want to want FOR Him!

His LOVE may desire for you what you do not take; but His decision cannot be thwarted, since His love is not possessive or domineering, as if it were to be a prop to a psychological insufficiency. Such would represent merely a divorce between His desire and His power, which implies a limit, which is contrary to the necessities of reason concerning the power and place of God as demonstrated from the first in SMR.

Little populist gods may indeed be criticised; the actual One is beyond it.

Nor is this all. It is IMPOSSIBLE, even by the abuse of privilege, and even empirically disregarding the systematic impossibility, to find fault with God. We traced sufficient of this in Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium Ch. 16. What do you want ? to have the capacity to know the truth ? It is yours, in Him. To be God ? Impossible a priori, since you have begun. To be, then,  a counter and revolutionary force in the kingdom of heaven ? Out of the question: it is WHERE God rules. To be outside God ? Then no moral criteria are possible, even though you may feel you OUGHT to be there, and blessed with it. There is then NO POSSIBLE OUGHT. You get what comes. That is all. Psalm 1, as a matter of fact, in verse 6 gives your status.

To have an end of suffering: this is your desire ? Fine, end sin. It is the cause. Then is the desire ... To stop the spread of suffering, like plagues, and horrors like drunken fathers of little children, or women smoking marijuana while pregnant ? This ? only if you remove the image of God in man. Freedom is part of the show, part of being you, which, if you wish to retain the thing, implies all this. To lose freedom ? then there is no question of any morality, and it COULD not a priori, become an issue. Morality implies capacity to do other.

To have freedom without God ? is this it then ? Yet, as shown in Predestination and Freewill and Tender Times for Timely Truths Ch. 11, this is not rationally even possible. You end, as far as you can get, in more endless surrounds, all contributed. It is because of God that the subject even arises, since only then can you BE something different from what you ARE, and so have any actual liberty other than instituting what you WANT. And you ? who are you ? a god ? But even a god is a creation, and of God, there is as demonstrated, only one. If a god, created, what then ? you want to contend with God ? same result as for man. You have more freedom, perhaps, in that the body does not cry out; but then the spirit is the most ardent crier of all!

To have freedom more limited, is this then the desire: to have it like that, so that only good decisions can be made ? We traced the impossibility of this in A Spiritual Potpourri,  The Flashing Falls of Freedom, cf. Little Things Chapter 7. Limited freedom, in which bad is excluded, is not actually freedom but a contrivance of control.

To have penalties reduced ? This makes the reality of which we are composed by creation, to need parallel reduction, for the nature of the case is the case of the nature.

In the end, if you want to lose the things which disquiet you, then you opt for NOT being man, and that is often accomplished, as far as the physical is concerned, by suicide; but it does not sever the spirit, the significance of what you have done, or the ignominy. If you do not so futilely act to remove a part of your being, then you must fully face the reality of what you are: something infinitely less than God, by His grace and placement of you, infinitely above your deserts IF you take His way home from the ditches of delusions, the flights of fantasy, alternating unhappily.

If you do not WANT to be SUBJECT TO ANYONE, God included, then you are merely irrational, for such would be an option which contradicts your status. If nevertheless, you wish you could have been made NOT and NEVER subject to anyone, the question might possibly arise, WHY ? So that you could explore your 'glorious' and 'sacred' self to the uttermost and find then, in truth, that it was NOT lacking subjection to its Maker by simple virtue of its construction in the first place, having been at HIS choice, not yours: so you pursue an impossible dream. It is not even rationally possible. Morally it is ludicrous; you who can have no morals without God, would like to be free of Him in order to have them!

You might want more time, in case you err in decision, but then God in His predestining infinity has already known who are His own (cf. Tender Times for Timely Truths Ch. 11), so that there is nothing this way to be gained. You want to act now, but do not feel like it, lack the inspiration, and just languish in unfulfilled spiritual desire ? Then simply act. It is not said that he who feels like calling on the Lord, and THEN does so, will be saved; but he who calls on the name of the Lord (Acts 2:21).

You might want to ensure you do not go to hell on errors of judgment in yourself, but then the answer is simple: Cast yourself on the mercy of God in Christ and ensure what may be ensured, which is all you have desired (John 6:47, 51, John 10:9, Luke 13:1-2). But you do not know if you could repent well enough ? Look, if someone drove a truck through my house, it would not be a question of how much he repented. If he realised what he had done, he would be a complete rogue or sorry. If he was drunk, he would be sorry for BOTH being drunk when driving, AND for the action re my house.

It would not be question of HOW sorry. It would be a complete fact, and he would respond by doing all in his power to remedy it. If I forgave him freely, fine; but if he were in any way willing to do well, he would repent. How much, it would seem ludicrous to ask. If it were the death of an infant at the same time, this would be, if possible, more ludicrous. The only way a question could arise for anyone sane, would be this: that he doubted whether he really had done it. That is where it all returns. Incidentally, in the above illustration, if you are not yet Christ's, then it is YOUR fault you have not returned to your Maker, and it is YOU who are the 'infant' killed and you who have driven into your 'house'. You are both victim and author of the evil. If you want less inculpation, you would have to re-write history, which, while always a fascinating proposition, is not material to the point. It IS written!

IF you are not clear that NOT knowing God is a sin horrendous out of all scope and dimension, then you do not know what you have done. Repentance fails since reality is not known. In that case, you are not missing what you want ? But if you see it, then do it.

Yet, once again, you may not want mercy: simple, then live without it. Nothing needs to be done for that.  (Cf. Questions and Answers  1, Why Should I Want Eternal Life ? and Barbs, Arrows and Balms 14.)
 
 

The Vulnerable but Victorious
Functional FORMAT
Taken by GOD:

Becoming
A PERSON ON EARTH

You do not really need to be so fretful, if this is your problem; and mankind, societal constructions, political aggregations have no such need, likewise. GOD HAS DONE IT. HE became man so that you could see, know and follow and following reach Him, whose you are in any case by construction, and reaching Him, be at rest. In so doing, He showed the epitome of love, in being Creator, He sacrificed Himself for His creation, not wallowing in meaningless mercy, but working in precision of power, paying for those who should be His, whom He chose (Ephesians 1:4, John 15) and  foreknew with the love which as He states, would have all men to be saved (I Timothy 2) and come to a knowledge of the truth, and with the restraint, which uses no violence.

YOU CANNOT invent ANY moral system; you can only ABORT the actual one as far as you are concerned; and at that, the abortion, like that of a mother against her own child, concerns only yourself. The morality does not die; you die by it. That is all. MAN cannot invent any moral system; he can only more or less implement the actual one, necessarily the word of GOD. (Cf. The Other News19 for a review of morality.)

Thus, to return to our beginning, when SOCIETY, and CULTURAL VALUES and LIMITS ON LIBERTY such as the Canadian case allows, with society the criterion, when these things rule, then God is mocked. It is an unfruitful operation, as the Japanese found after Pearl Harbour, as Hitler found after his Jewish escapade, as the lost find in their lostness, when its implications become applications, in the end. WHAT human government should do (cf. Questions and Answers Ch. 7) is implement God's righteousness WITHOUT forcing people to believe this or that, while allowing the full orb of righteousness proper freedom.

This was an interesting approximation in Scotland when in 1560 the Parliament approved the Scotch Confession of Faith as being soundly based on the infallible word of God, the Bible; but it did not require faith in it. It set the moral tone, made provisions for the people in education and religious opportunities, and showed the direction of faith in the nation, but did not in itself, as an action, requisition like Pol Pot, or terrorise like the pope of the day.

Righteousness still exalts a nation, and sin is still a shame to any people (Proverbs 14:34).
We have considered something of this in our present volume, in practical terms. When a nation makes vilification an undefined dynamic which can arrest those deemed guilty of disturbing someone in something, culturally contrary to the anaesthesia found so desirable, then truth itself is stricken. So in Victoria. When people are to cater for under 18 year olds, as proposed in South Australia, on the internet to such an extent, that they may become criminals, if any matters of depth and stress appear, should these not seem acceptable in terms of  CULTURAL RULES CONSTANTLY CHANGING to meet the pulse of society, and be judged so by some tribunal:  then with a measure of outrage, truth is slapped, preferably strapped, and folly is made king.

It reminds one crucially of Psalm 2: WE WILL NOT HAVE this man to rule over us, and SO they break the cords in sunder, and cast them aside. It is a progressive regression; it is a cumulative rebellion. INSTEAD, they will rule by misrule and direct by indirection, following the chameleon who follows the colour he finds. That is the program. It is not however, as you see on the one hand in this Psalm, and on the other, in history, the result!

But let us look in this light at the South Australian Classification matter, the Internet interdict, as in part it may become. The sheer delusion of trying so to tame truth into conformity to such ludicrously conceived 'brief' treatment, lest any who are immature should be phased, lest the social feeling of society be displeased, it is so like the ridicule of Nietzsche upon the deadened human by-products of delusion, though his contentions were as far astray as his own intellect when he became literally insane in due course:  that it is a fitting rebuke. If even a madman could see the folly of anaesthetised complacency, then how deep is the pit already!

Nietzsche wanted raw power, and he got it, and his nation got it, and it profited nothing. Power does not make either precision or truth, but is fine in the service of both! It has its place. It is not first.

However, even Nietzsche,  the fantasising philosopher could at least see how they would blink, and go on in a trance of self-serving pseudo-security. Self-hypnotised, they doom themselves, not with meekness, but with diversionary tactics, avoiding the truth; and this, it is the worse, when it is this, that God is love, and not manipulable, and requires a cleansing and return to truth, in Himself, so that the prodigious creation which in man He made, can be what it is meant to be: not deluded in obviously fake self-sufficiency, but included in the homeland of truth, as children of God.

In reality, then, the necessity is neither this sordid serendipitous substitute for acuity and vision, nor the dynamic of guns to secure land. Both fail to meet the point. The guns have failed. As to the rest ? the spiritual conditioning is now becoming paramount, and the deception of the spirit of man is the new thing which though old in kind, is the intense focus in communications and crisis control. In fact, such methods as these are like trying to control a house fire by having molten slag poured on the mess.

Now in century 21, we are looking towards the deceptions that dynamic must serve, based on some novel seeming emphasis, like community, whether of man, nations or thought, so that the world might be tamed to force, inflamed to folly and find its receptacle in the torrent of history, neatly prepared, long tabbed, and utterly capacious, from the word of God. Estranged from God, the world becomes servile to itself, afraid of the truth, and as is normal in late stages of spiritual decay, increasingly hostile to those who too valiantly propound truth. It is fine whatever you have, so long as you do not believe it true; and you can even call it true, or say you believe it true, so long as it may be false.

Thus, squalor in place of spirituality is readily socially conceived, both in thought and placement of the squalling infant of the twenty first century, into the cradle of corrupted civilisation.

When, however, God became man, as shown in the Bible, demonstrably the word of the only Being truly moral, without derivation, then LOVE was shown to be what God is. Indissoluble with it, heart, help and holiness appeared, Christ delighting to cover the ghastly task of sin-bearing, the necessary wonder of purity in life to perfection, the exposition of God, in flesh.

Heart was in His coming (Psalm 40 cf. Joyful Jottings 22), and heart is commanded for man's following of Him: NO worship that is not, in intent,  with heart and soul and mind and strength relates wisely to our God (John 4:23, Matthew 22:37). His purity and magnificence, morally and spiritually, makes intentional compromise like a mud puddle talking to an ocean. It is one thing to be cleansed; another to play in the dirt, whether of spirit, mind or body! The love of God has spanned the gap; the power of God conveys the disciples to Himself. It is no small thing, but higher than the universe, and deeper; and its purchase has been monumental. It covers all the life of His people, each one (Romans Chs. 5:1-12; 8); and in Him is that indispensable, inalienable resource for His children, so that His guidance, grace, pardon and discipline are all assured (John 6:37, I John 1:7-2:2). He never fails (Lamentations 3:22ff., Hebrews 7:25ff., Zephaniah 3:5, II Peter 1:4, I Peter 1:3-5).

Those adopted are His children, and as His, owned and kept for ever (Titus 3:7, Ephesians 1:1-11). They were in fact chosen before the world began (Ephesians 1:4), and all justified in Him, are glorified (Romans 8:29ff.); and those who drink of the water He gives, NEVER thirst again, those eating of the bread He gives, just once, live for ever (John 6:51ff.), whilst those who believe in Him who sent Him, who hear His word, HAVE eternal life, shall not come into condemnation (it is contrary to the condition, position and grant given), and have passed from the very state and stage of death, to that of life (John 5:24). The bridge which is Christ is unbreakable, He being the One who WAS dead and is alive for ever, in whose hands are placed securely the keys of hell and of death: HE is the key of life, the avenue of it; and if it is not made of roses, yet it is surrounded by a savour, that of the saviour, which is even better.

On this bridge of Christ and Him crucified, yes rather risen, is the highway of holiness; and in it imperfection is covered, just as salvation has been granted (I Thess. 5:9-10, Titus 3:3-7); but insurrection is incompatible. Even flashes of foolishness are contained, as with David and Bathsheba, as with Peter at the arrest of Christ and thereafter in that episode; but the way IS that of holiness (Isaiah 35, II Cor. 7:1). It covers the redeemed, and the redeemed are regenerated, and in their lives, the seed of their begetting remains (I John 3:9), the ontological correlate of their adoption (Ephesians 1:4-5).

Here even Job in his sufferings of beauty to the glory of God, acute in trial as they were, acted as a testimony to display truth in love, and to expose the fact that it was not selfishness and gain which moved him, but God (Job 1): here he stayed, here he was corrected (Job 40-41), yes and rewarded for all his testimonial. Rebuked for his errors on the way ? yes of course; but with what grace and munificence was his faith rewarded, past all disclaimer, slander and evil to which he was subjected (Job 19:25-27, Job 42 cf. SMR pp. 358, 372 ff.).

The task is profound; its scope celestial: but the Lord has fulfilled the requirements, Himself (Hebrews 7:25ff., 9:12-28, 10:10-14, 6:18, John 10:9,27-28, I John 5:12-13). For those receiving Him in repentance and faith, as He is Biblically presented, it means as John puts it in 1:12, that "to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."

Decision? Yes, but of course: HIS (cf. John 15, Romans 9:15ff.). That is what it says. His love and His power ally to assure His own are found. To this we have often referred and its implications have been pondered above;  but consider His love. HE WOULD HAVE all men to be saved (I Tim 2)... Get with it, one might almost say: it is not His lagging, but that of others. Each is answerable.

God has His ways, and it is He who created the earth, who has provided the "good news" (Isaiah 52:7), which is translated in peace and pardon: neither indecisive, nor tyrannical, it is He who gave all that some might come. But it is HE who knows (Romans 8:27ff.); and if HE is not trusted, there it all is: the soul is still in rebellion. If He IS trusted, then there it is, God is 'permitted' to remain sovereign, but NOT to be pilloried as without pity because He ENSURES what the vagaries of flesh cannot do: that there is none that His love fails to reach through circumstance. ALL HIS FLOCK are FOUND. IF YOU ARE DESIROUS OF BEING ONE, COME! Receive Him by faith (John 1:12, 6:37). IF NOT, DO NOT COMPLAIN.

When, then, God became man,  LOVE was categorically shown to be what God is (cf. Colossians 1:19-23, I John 4:7ff., John 3:16). It is both definitive, and by nature, alone. It can be imitated, as the moon can reflect something of the light of the sun; but it cannot serve again in this way: for the redemption ceases for ever, having been once gained (Psalm 49:8,15, Hebrews 9:25-10:14). Only the perfect can so love the imperfect; only the infinitude of The Perfect One, can so pay for the multitudes of the imperfect; and only He who has no need of any kind, in the doing of it, can so display it!

It is not love that defines love, but God who defines love (I John 4), and the love is such that there is no depth too low for penalty bearing, no depravity too despicable for guilt removal, provided only there be repentance in faith and faith in the Lord, so that the Lord is found and the salvation He came to present, is received.

There is no limit on the love which does that; but the limit is in sin.

One of the sins is the construction of quasi-moral system, to anaesthetise the complacent, to protect the truth-weary, to reject God as Man, and to implement MAN AS GOD, pretender that he is, legislating what is contrary to truth, as the criterion of society, so that even the Gospels could become the work of 'criminals' and this ? because they deal with areas of tension, which could provoke stress, and this in a way which is neither brief nor superficial. That is the threatened local way! Poor South Australia, is she to fall to such blandishments ? If so, surely not without knowledge (cf. Pall of Smoke or Diamond of Joy, Ch. 1).

She has been well warned. Surely in the history of Hitler, there is  little more idiotically protectionist, obliterative and prejudicial to truth, than this folly of our time, in danger of implementation in this State of S.A..

Neither South Australia, nor in the overview on this Classification matter, simple in tone, rampant in potential,  Australia,  is of course alone. ALL the efforts to make society, in Europe, Russia, China, America or elsewhere, whether in this way or that, the criterion of morals, are just such an anti-God frenzy and extravanganza of fiction, a folly and a folie,  making truth pay, as it has been made to pay by countless popes, Inquisitions, dictators of pure politics, impure in conception and corrupt in application, and through all the other dreams, like that of France in the eighteenth century, Liberty, Fraternity, Equality.

What was then so free as the blade of the guillotine, that sharp tongued woman, as Dickens might have it, that biting performer, that arrant barrister of hate, which with whatever justice at times, as she exploded onto the stained stone, could scarcely be equalled in her indiscriminate fury.

Liberty ? to die ? Fraternity, when even Robespierres could perish on earth at the sharpened tongue, not in the debating chamber, but at the block; and those in became out, and those out became dead, as passions flared, schemes hatched, and jostling for power continued.

Equality ?  of bodies in the dust ? New power sources always replace old, and it is only when the new has the MORALS OF THE CREATOR that there is anything really worth while. The rest ?

These will be at the uttermost, partly true and partly false; and its spirit more or less antagonistic, aberrational or misled, as the case may be. Of truth itself, in spirit divorced, it can have no part at all.
 
 

THE UNITED NATIONS' EFFORT

• But the United Nations
• in its DECLARATION ON THE ELIMINATION OF ALL
• FORMS OF INTOLERANCE AND OF DISCRIMINATION BASED ON RELIGION OR BELIEF
• (cf. Mystery of Iniquity, The Other News Appendix)
• has its own ways.
  
  

First it assures us that it is so bad to have discrimination in this sort of area, arena. How wrong! How very injurious to the human race! It really ought not to be, and a law should be devised to prevent it. Freedom ? Of course. In religion ? Naturally, necessarily, but of course, loads of it.
We will not SUFFER this scandalous profusion of wrongful force! Let it stop, right now, preferably.
That appears to be the liberating method, just as Communism talks of liberation, before enslavement.

• What then is to be seen in this UN Declaration in its immediate vision ?

 

• This:

"Considering that one of the basic principles of the Charter of the United Nations is that of the dignity and equality inherent in all human beings, and that all Member States have pledged themselves to take joint and separate action in co-operation with the United Nations to promote and encourage universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion..."

 

This is seemingly clear ?

Further is later found:

• "Considering that the disregard and infringement of human rights and fundamental freedoms, in particular of the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion or whatever belief, have brought, directly or indirectly, wars and great suffering to mankind, especially where they  serve as a means of foreign interference in the internal affairs of other States and amount to kindling hatred between peoples and nations..."

Infringement of religious rights ? Sounds good ? But what if it is being presented that opportunity to change religion is an infringement, and that States with one religion predominant might make it an infringement, an interference with their so peaceful status quo, to allow anyone to present anything which does, or might seem to be contrary to all the tenets of some percentage rich religion in the land ? What is the "disregard ... of human rights ... the right to freedom of thought... religion" ? Does it mean the 'right' to be able to think, and hence to learn that of which you stand curious, or in which you find yourself to have an interest ? It is difficult to see how one could even speak of freedom if you are forced to abide by some governmental institution which incriminates you if you wish to think, hence learn, assess, and listen to those who present, whether it be what is common in your own land, at any given time, or not!

Yet if presentation of religion were really construed to amount to a kindling of hatred between peoples, then it should cease perhaps ? If to promote one religion where there are others in some society is promoting hatred, what if the purpose is love ? In that case is the UN in fact exercising the promotion of hatred between religions, and exercising a haughty power to discriminate and intimidate and limit freedom, in the premise that if many, such as the government,  do not really like something, or it is culturally or religious different from what you happen at the moment to have in your country, exclusively or predominantly, then the people who would like to present something not currently dominant are really odious ?

The apostles, then, in Greece, they were odious ? But perhaps they merely mean 'interference' in the sense of seeking to manipulate, not in the sense of providing options ? It is to be hoped, but the language gives no security in the thought. Relativity, when as here, it becomes an absolute god, is quite merciless, both discriminating and excluding, misrepresenting and forcing with the best. If this is what the UN means, then its provisions for preventing discrimination in the field of religion, become a process for performing that very thing.

If however, as one hopes, this is not here the meaning, then one can revert to its ostensible intention of preventing this thing. After all, if this IS the intention, presumably the means do not constitute one of the most flagrant example of breaking it! We shall see.

At all events, the UN document proceeds in Article 1 to declare this:

• "Everyone shall have the right to freedom of conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom to have a religion or whatever belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching."

TO 'PRACTICE' is part of the liberty. While this may not embrace impartation to the unwilling, it certainly would have to include it for the willing, and this without explicit or implicit intimidation, penalty or punitive procedures.
 

• Article 2 includes this:
• "For the purposes of the present Declaration, the expression 'intolerance and discrimination based on religion or belief' means  any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on religion or belief and having  as it s purpose or as its effect nullification or impairment of the recognition, enjoyment or exercise of human rights and fundamental freedoms on an equal basis."

That is quite clear.

The intention of the declaration is freedom of religion. Its statements should be implemented then, as this Declaration is law in Australia, to prevent the intention of the Classification Bill, which so limits and impairs freedom of expression, indeed would impair obedience to the commands of Christ in a discriminatory fashion, and a compulsive one, in this State.

What then ? This, the declaration also intimates its concern in Article 5 of this UN Declaration,
and in paras 3 and 5, advises us that

• " the CHILD SHALL BE PROTECTED FROM ANY FORM OF DISCRIMINATION ON THE GROUND OF RELIGION OR BELIEF.
• "HE (sic) SHALL BE BROUGHT UP IN A SPIRIT OF... UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD,
• RESPECT FOR FREEDOM OF RELIGION OR BELIEF OF OTHERS, AND
• IN FULL CONSCIOUSNESS THAT HIS (sic) ENERGY AND TALENTS
• SHOULD BE DEVOTED TO THE
• SERVICE OF HIS FELLOWMAN."

 

This means that the religion of universal brotherhood of man ...

contrary to

the freely enterable but spiritually definitive
society of the saints;
the citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven (Philippians 3:20ff.),
as that brotherhood, based on regeneration in the name of Christ,
that forms  part of the Christian religion;
the body of Christ,
so that there is NO brotherhood with the children of the devil, for example, as Christ called some in John 8, and with unbelievers as if they were brethren, as in II Cor. 6:

this is the one to be installed.

It is apparent that if some are in fact the children of the devil (John 8:44) and some are the children of God, then it is not possible to reconcile this with a concept of universal brotherhood, respect for the religion of others and so on. THAT implies NO truth, or that it does not separate those created from one God. In fact, Christianity teaches the exact opposite. Although man is one, yet his allegiance brings about two, these two sets of children, and the one set is "alienated from the life of God" (Ephesians 4:17ff.)... to the point of being ready for the tag, "children of your father, the devil".

So far were these of one brotherhood from the others, that they could not even understand Christ's speech (John 8:43), He declared, because they were not ABLE to listen to His word, being born rather of that Devil who is the father of lies. Children of truth are not brothers of children of lies, when the spiritual is the criterion. Nothing could be more contrary than this, no cleavage more massive, no demarcation more total, absolute and vital. Does God respect the devil ? or does truth respect lie ? One respects the persons, not the pollutants.

However the actual UN statement re respect, is more moderate, being respect for FREEDOM of religion, which of course would imply acknowledgment that such official dogma as that of the UN at this point, being contrary to freedom of religion, does not deserve respect, a correct analysis.

Thus the young are to be brought up on this anti-Christian premiss concerning universal brotherhood. Indeed, we read:

• "it is essential to promote understanding, tolerance and respect in matters relating to feedom of religion or belief and to ensure that the use of religion or belief for ends inconsistent with the Charter, other relevant instruments of the United Nations and the purposes and principles of the present Declaration is inadmissible..."

Thus Christianity would become inadmissible, O gentle tyrant ? Some liberty do we have; some document against religious apartheid, against discrimination giving favour and privilege, and that which tends to forward the one, and harass thes other, do we have in this Declaration, in this, that it is in this so acting as to INSTAL PRECISELY THAT!

But this is manifestly NOT freedom of religion; it is manifestly to impair this liberty in the Christians, or to deprive them of it,  in that they are adversatively confronted by this alien requirement.

This would mean, then,  that the UN is - in some measure - INSTITUTING the criteria of religion as a limiting factor, in the very face of making it clear that there is to be PRECISELY no discrimination in favour of one rather than another. IF it adheres to its preliminary statement, this simply appears as a distortion not realised, and one which must, unless the entire purpose of the UN Declaration be dismissed, be removed. It is an excrescence, and an indication of the religious nature of the religious effort to remove religious discrimination, in imposing its own.

Excluding hypocrisy, this simply goes. IF AND WHEN specifically religious dogma, as here, is the ruling force to limit, restraint, restrict, impose, compel, impair, some for the sake of others, and as here, it is a dogmatic issue that is in view, then if the UN Declaration means anything, other than the rather too usual technique of excluding everybody from some field, in order to possess it yourself, seemingly as arbiter, actually as invader: the UN must overturn its own incursion.

If it does not like the methods of papacy, it must not institute a new exponent of the same thing, itself. This is merely a matter of consistency.

Similarly, it can be seen that the grossest forms of intrusion can occur on the spurious grounds of the health of the child, by simply removing, as if for care, the child from households which do NOT, repeat NOT, follow this form of approach to mankind, but do instead, follow the Lord Jesus Christ, and adhere to His teaching. That would of course merely aggravate the hypocrisy, by force following other limitations. In this way, the UN would become in word and deed so like Communism: the pretence in verbiage, the self-contradiction, the presumptuous assertions, the degrading of opposition, the use of the methods of the opposition, but more also, and then the use of force to impose these spectacular 'liberties' for the sake of which people must be 'liberated'.

Whether Society, or Stalking Philosophical Princes, or the United Nations are moral arbiters, these always tend to forget THEMSELVES. Without glory, gods in human form, they legislate with luxury, and speak with confusion, contradiction and impotence. Their end is not lustrous, when these are their means (Revelation 19:19).

That such forces do this so frequently is simply one more verification of Christianity, for which such conduct is neither natural, necessary nor expedient, and which indicates the arrant irrationalism and instability of the positions which either deny or seek to replace the living God, with false prophets who do not secure results, or false imaginings, which do no better; and then to concentrate the whole, with force which does not prevail, but normally does murder, and in the last century, made it a feature, like a bird-bath in a garden!

Truth however does not invade; yet it offers. It does not employ mere violence. It is precisely here that Communism, Islam and Rome have transgressed in practice and principle to the uttermost; and now the UN is in grave danger of simply following them. The babble of Babels is so very old, so devastatingly new. Learning seems forgotten; repetitious history is grasped as if it were the sacred flame; and new vainglories offer, like Pokies to the ardent gambler, 'yet another day'. (Cf. Biblical Blessings Ch. 2, SMR pp. 750Bff..)
 
 

GOING WEST IN THE "WEST" ?

Having survived brutalities of war, and in the last centuries, these concentrated, implacable and at last resolved, then repeated as if to indicate that it is not a question of some extraneous night-mare, but integumental rather: it seems as if some of the 'Western' democracies are now intent on dying of a self-inflicted wound. The God they claimed, in many of their people, to trust, and to whom multitudes made sincere application in their former distresses, is now being passed by, as if the secular were God, and its choices were divine, by nature, though not by reason; and their inglorious, vainglorious selves are to become, by virtue of vice, the incumbents.

When the wound has been fully inflicted, be sure the bacteria will come. And they will have a name.
 
 

NOTES

*1
Morals have been considered at some length, in The Other News 19.

At one point there, we find this:

• "It is a moral residue of nature-as-created-and-related-to-its-defining-Creator, in man. Active in desire as potential design, it is expressible, repressible (with the limits Lady Macbeth dramatises but does not create), divertible but not convertible in the realms of conscience.

 

• "Forlorn, lost, a memory and a residue, girt by conscience, then, that bark of nature ship-wrecked in the stream of life - without God ... it floats around like flotsam and jetsam, with a yearning or burning on the last ship as it sinks, but never turning to God. Like an aborted child, an ulcerated organ of nature, the very beauty of goodness is lost with abortive convulsions in the individual or race that turns its back on its origins and responsibilities - not to Nature, which created nothing, a hold-all, but to God.

 

• The sense of 'goodness' then becomes orphaned, or sick, dying, dismembered, a testimony to a lost nation, a peculiar people whose peculiarities are their grasping at details without the heart of life, at its applications without the laws to apply for its voyagings without travel definitions, on a sea without shore."

This was under the heading of "Agnostic Morals". One could here consult the Bible in Romans 2:14-15, and 1:18-22. This shows both the origin and the defilement in the spirit of man, in morals.

Other types of morals, such as the synthetic, are noted. All lack the reality which comes from actuality: from being what GOD has provided, what applies whether you like it or not. Trying to 'create' your own morals is like trying to create your own body, except that the impure folly of the vaunting pride back of it, is less obvious at first. In the end, visible or invisible, man can to some extent create by imagination, and put his dreams into some measure of practice, when it comes to the domain over which he has been given, in his best state, some measure of control; but that domain does not include himself. He himself, a created being, is neither fit nor understanding enough to create for himself, being already made.

In the realm of morals, there is an imprint in his mind, in his spirit, which while not dominating, is impactive. It can be disturbed, diverted, contorted, twisted, numbed or virtually defunct; but it is there. On this object of heart, dynamic of thought, aura of the creative act from which he began, morality, there are overlays of cultural preference, ostensibly right and wrong, or the outworkings of some purpose, such as wealth or advancement, popularity or acceptance, which may presume to take the same name.

Morals however, while in dimension they may be approached by these various means, and more, are not actual except where applicable. Man cannot MAKE what is right, merely attest it. When he tries to make, not something for social convenience or for the careful fulfilment of some purpose, but actual, absolute, applicable morals, he is merely daft (cf. Hosea 9:7), spiritually. You can no more CREATE morals than create God, or yourself for that matter. The laws of physics, as an object of man's creation would be ease itself, by comparison, for 'creation' by man, with any attempt to make SPIRITUAL right and wrong, regulative for the conscience and conduct of man, at the final level.

Sometimes, evocative in a deadened heart, some stirrings of that creation stamp, of moral feeling reach to the mind of man, and he attempts to synthesise some system of morals; or some rebellion stirring, which he may on occasion even recognise, he tries to divert or convert the moral splendour of God into the dim desires of his twisted heart. In some ways, it is like an accident community, where nearly all have their cars twisted by various accidents and touched by rust. The idea that there could be a SOUND car would seem absurd, perhaps. So it is with morals. Man tries to make his own and makes his moan, the writhings in battle, the conflicts with no conclusion, the aspirations as at Jerusalem, that WE should control it (moral right), or that WE, or WE, as they all fight it out. It is what GOD has provided that counts. HE made it. Nobody else did.

Occupancy is significant; the word of God is final. Hence there is ONLY ONE ANSWER (see, for example, Galloping Events and Divine Agenda, SMR Ch. 9). It is complicated, but not altered, in practice by the fact as shown in the above, that ONE PARTY has the right to the land, but is wrong in its current approach as a nation, to God. This takes a resolution, and the way it is to happen is even traced out from millenia ago, in the Bible. Meanwhile all the wars in the world will not alter this.

This is a good illustration of morals. GOD MAKES THEM FOR MAN, and they derive from His own Being, in the image of whom man consists, as a product. Mankind is a very SPECIAL PRODUCT, for the simple reason that the 'image' bearing component in him, which means his spiritual complement, is designed for consorting, for company with God. When without this, it is rather like a car without a driver, but with the engine switched on, or with a child at the wheel. It DOES things, but it is vulnerable to disaster (cf. Psalm 1:6) all the time, and is a very prodigy of unwisdom in its performance.

There is a panel beater, there is a way and there is a door to it. Many cars have received this treatment, and now have their drivers, clothed and in their right minds, proceeding with due respect to traffic control and the rules of the road, and indeed, the purpose for which they themselves were 'built'. Most do not. The road is very dangerous. Near the road, there is a narrow track which while much harder, is far safer, and is appointed while the follies continue...

"Enter in by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it:

"Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it" - Matthew 7:13-14.

With this go Matthew 7:21, the rebuke to those who imagine they serve well, but omit the will of God in their strivings; and Romans 3:21ff., where one sees the way into the narrow way, and Romans 5:1-12, where is found the security of the same in the Saviour, the panel-beater, yes the redeemer of the spirit of man, when he comes to the shop, which is remarkable in this, that there is no payment required, and this for more than one reason! There is no payment adequate for the task, and the one required has already been paid for all those who come: Matthew 20:28, Galatians 3:1-13. It is however necessary to enter this free shop (John 10:9), and to do so with faith in its Management, the Lord Jesus Christ.

 
 

*2

• Dr Paul Brand speaks thus in his Forever Feast, p. 169. The first British Edition was in 1996.