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NEWS 74
ANIMALS, INSECTS, MICROBES,
CURSE, BLESSING,
PAIN, PURITY,
THERE IS ALWAYS A REASON
(cf. News 81)
 

The Australian August 1, '99
 

WHEN YOU SHUT YOUR EYES, YOU SEE SO LITTLE

But when you look at our race, you begin to understand,
and when you look at the word of God, you see the answer




There is no point in blaming God because your toe is sore with ill-fitting shoes which you chose, because your universe is upset, less delightful than it might be, with space junk to which may be added nuclear waste by your graces, your environment is polluted by your casual assumptions, your society is sick with sodden food of mind and spirit, your soul is upset and you do not even know it is there, to treat it!

There is a reason. There is always a reason (cf. News 80!). Your peculiar abilities to UNDERSTAND are yours only, whether you are led -

The Week-End Australian this last week-end (August 14-15 - so delightfully near to Spring, for which also there is a reason) had an interesting article on microbes, their variety, their mutability within type (such as influenza), their indisputable dangers, lurking threats, potential for disruption*1 and brilliant capacity to wreak havoc in this pulsating planet of power and vainglory, of virtue and vigour. Like the asteroids, they stand as it were, ready. Carl Wieland has often enough in the CREATION magazine series expatiated medically on the modes of transfer of genetic information from one species to another, the capacities under wonder drugs, for the weaker strains to survive because of defects, in the midst of humanly designed means of bringing them to extinction: it is as if someone designed a weapon to remove legs, and this favoured those like the famed and courageous Baders of this world, who had already lost them.

All these things are long done, and the special effects division works them out. The generic information of the kinds of creatures does not grow.

The hazards, however, DO!

And what might they be called more readily than the wormwood effects, the bitterness with the blight, like companions at arms: the spiritual decline with the scourge, like cause and effect Yet this effect has no small cause.

The wormwood effects, in the classical and predicted Biblical case, relate to the bitterness to come in widespread terrestrial waters, so fitting for this warring world as - if you like - a box over the ears for its follies: and it is this that will come when an asteroid or some such heavenly body strikes the earth, as long since indicated in the Bible will be the case (Revelation 8:8-11). The undue heat of the sun is also to come (Revelation 16:8), like the evil propagandas famous in Dr Goebbels in World War II, but infamous to this day in the democracies. Now they propagate pugnaciously their own fallen and feinting philosophies (cf. That Magnificent Rock Chs. 7, 8, SMR Ch.3), often forced on children or youth as if there was need for new Hitler camps, though Hitler be gone.

The bitterness, the pugnacity, it all has a reason; and for the consequences likewise, there is a reason. God is not mocked. It all has a reason, blessing or cursing; and some find this hard at times to accept, since it exposes folly past with pain present.

For example, Revelation 16:5-6 gives some of the reason for the world catastrophes to come:

"You are righteous, O Lord,
The One who is and who was and who is to be,
Because You have judged these things.
For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets,
And You have given them blood to drink,
For it is their just due."

Thus there may even be what might perhaps be called a 'poetic justice' added to the rebuke. There are many grounds for the divine action. Brusque oblivion to all morality in the multiplying millions of deceased, the faithless flinging death like fly spray in the face of the martyrs, is not least. And it spreads to the whole warped warring ways of the nations, grabbing for dignity, land, superiority, while people, mere people are for many of them, like dirt before the street sweeper. Of no consequence is the widow, the amputee without hands, the family without house, the slow starvation in hills, the terrorised remnants pursued with the fevered follies of flesh on the rampage.

To this rage, CHRIST, the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:1-7) is not acceptable. He was murdered, and many fail to repent to this hour, so that His death provides them no cover; and man is now warring on man to the point that the basic rejection of Him who is our proper peace, becomes self-rejection, a stultified frenzy of slaughter as if it were a game, and many now have become its patrons.

If you want to see JUST HOW MUCH BLOOD is shed, blood of the martyrs, perhaps a glance or two at THEIR BLOOD CRIES OUT, by Paul Marshall, world acclaimed specialist in the field, would help! It is not little. God does not like this. He is very patient. Indeed, at times, the atheist winks, as maybe 10,000,000 perish in China, and many saints among them, through the hand of that "leader" as Malcolm Fraser seemed to regard him at his death, that 'leader' of men, Mao. Well, perhaps he led, but where ? Slaughter for simplicity of wild philosophic dreams is a species of leadership, perhaps, even 'great' ? Yes, great in folly.

Blood sovereignly shed by philosophically inebriated (officially) godless men, in their provocations to the Almighty ?

The amount which was spilled in Russia is amply documented for our purpose by Solzhenitsyn (as in the Gulag Archipelago) for Russia, site of ruin in the atheist blast which managed even significantly to pollute the Arctic Ocean with its DON'T CARE, pseudo-adolescent moods. Far worse was this bloody blight, he indicates, than it managed to be under the Csars (from whom of course the Communists 'liberated' the people, while managing in their higher echelons,  to survive with their Black Sea villas). It continues in its vicious course all over the world.

Winks ? you say: WHY does the atheist sometimes then wink ? It is because he devises it thus in his heart: O they are fallen, these mighty Christians, fallen by the wayside, their blood for fertiliser. Does God care - which God ? But then the reason for the result comes, and Russia falls into an almost ludicrous abasement, blustering while being given pocket money. There is always a reason. Sometimes the result seems to bustle, at other times, there is more leisure while the pagan extravaganzas of some erring civilisation like that of ancient Egypt (oh yes! there were many wonders in it too), comes to rest largely in the dust. One must look beyond the dreams of man to the word of God for endurance.

Sometimes it is the pure appearance of NO INTERVENTION which is the rebuke (as in Psalm 1:6). Yet God, though mercifully patient (II Peter 3:9), has His programs even for the foulest, and is able to deliver any who comes to Him on His terms in Jesus the Christ (John 6:37); whilst unimpressed with the use of patience as ground for abuse, and propaganda to augment the plight of the foolish (Psalm 50:19-23).

It all seems to happen almost impersonally, almost automatically, in its own way. There is no guarantee except that of its absence, when man walks, thinks and walks without God. After all if you INSIST on driving on the right-hand side of the road when in Australia, or on the left, in the US, there will be a reason for the accident, even if the 'other fella' seems obstinate! it is possible, you see, to forget the rules ... to resent them.

Possible. With man, it is endemic, pandemic, it would almost seem.

But let us to our more immediate topic: the reason for things in this world at the animal level. It is most interesting. It has been well to begin with ourselves.
 
 

ANIMAL ANTICS, INSECT PERFORMANCES


Character Sketches is a most distinguished, and amazingly erudite American work in two volumes which is a delight to read, large, abundantly illustrated and altogether a distinguished production from  the INSTITUTE IN BASIC LIFE PRINCIPLES, INC. It traces the peculiar features of probably hundreds of birds and animals, creatures biologically exposed with specialist knowledge, with this additional feature: their characteristics are seen as one whole, the purpose or power or flair of the creature is focussed, as a unit.

Indeed, these features are then PARALLELED to man's facilities of character, man who is so mercurial, so adaptable, whose purposes may be CHOSEN in many respects, and the results are compared: the lessons from the creation shown as we exhibit this strength, or show that vulnerability. Further, these things are compared with Biblical examples, where the fall or rise of many is shown in terms of these very qualities.

For example, the sheer determination of the weasel, its small size, its persistence, its teeth for clinging, its refusal to give in, its fearless thrusts, when aroused: these things may remind one of a Biblical example. Did not Jonathan, David's friend, and his armour bearer, with manly fortitude, amazing initiative and almost fearless persistence challenge the Philistine army up on the heights, just two calling out to them, above, when Israel was in disarray below, and scattered about. By faith, they interpreted the response of the enemy, and arose in a narrow place, doubtless not taken at all seriously; but in the small pass, they slew many. In fact, an earthquake at the time undoubtedly helped, as do the teeth of the weasel. The results were amplified enormously, as by faith they co-operated with the gracious Lord (I Samuel 14).
 

There is reason for the sloth, that gorgeously lazy piece of almost total inertia; for the beaver, that stimulating delight of rugged endeavour, engineering skill, composed workmanship, with teeth to prepare this and that timber for suitable dams, hideaways and procedures, and a whole hand-book of methods inbuilt; for the swallow with its grace in flight and soaring expression of liberty; for the whale, which did not learn slowly how to have a submarine suckling of its young, while they drowned, but gained its brilliant equipment the way the records show for all things, NOT in stages or instalments, but direct.

As with other devices, it came at the hand of the Creator. It is always amusing to see the spirit of man kidnap his mind and try to imagine things (almost too hilarious for words when he calls it science, as if fatally intoxicated cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9) - things coming in neat little stages, useless and unworkable, not evidenced in the record, information from nowhere in particular, as is never seen without reason on earth. This fantasy, he calls it organic evolution, but dilution by devilution is better. It cannot work, does not work, shows no sign of working, is founded on hope, lost in failure, leads to endless wars of pride and tribe, led to one form of derogation of the aborigines in this country, where their due development like that of everyone else is the need.

In fact, we see the actual process, scientifically all the time. It is called creation and I am doing it right now! It is as natural as breathing, as common as dirt, as numerous as the stars perhaps, and it lights up the skies of human endeavour. It needs but imagination and knowledge, understanding and thought, mind and spirit, and its own species of energy, vitality and zest.

God created also the sea-gulls which soar seemingly effortlessly in the teeth of the wind, the hawk which teaches of rapacity and cleanliness both, the eagle in its sovereign seeming power and high hide-aways, the slug in its lowliness and relative inertia, the frog in its noisiness and fascinating reproductive methods, its pattern for development laid out from the first and utilised to the last, like some theme with variations from an exuberant composer for the piano, some Beethoven or Chopin, its hopping reminding of the kangaroo with its startling strides that are not entirely earth-bound.

This last, it is like  a word to imagination and a stirring to rapid progress, its joeys in the pouch of mother, a symbol of maternal intimacy with the young, as well as a means of soaring over difficulties, even when with child. (On the creation’s characteristics of conscious/intelligent/instinctive responses, outside the consciously logical, symbolically comprehending capacities of man, see SMR 140-144).

The ant suggests the workaholic; the bee the team-man, with mutually adapted industry and a whole communications modality. With its marvellous methodology in sharing information by dance, it suggests that ingenious  work force which is happy in co-operation and achieves much sweetness, reminding one of Le Tourneau, that amazing Canadian whose works of originality of design led to such mighty earth moving machines in the earth. This man, a Christian, sought a method of grace and kindness with employes, reasonable righteous care, and had no trouble getting employes, but rather a list of those wanting to become workers in his toils.

The spider, as Proverbs indeed tells us (30:28*2), gets into king's houses, speaking of being small enough to move where you can use your capacities, and not needing to blow a trumpet before you until you are crushed. Its venom reminds of sin, small though it be, which can kill a man like a needle. The cruelty evoked in our minds at the thought of the wasp which milks captive aphids, reminds of Indian interest rates and poor farmers, USED by the rich; the goat in its hazy craziness, initiative and enterprise, teaches through humour the need to disregard, at times, the normal restraints on achievement, while warning of the follies which can result if this is done not only without reason, minus understanding. The 'silly goat' becomes proverbial.

The ostrich, as the book of Job advises us, God "has deprived ... of wisdom"  (Job 34:17) in this, that "she leaves her eggs on the ground, and warms them in the dust: She forgets that a foot may crush them, or that a wild beat may break them. She treats her young harshly, as though they were not hers" - from (Job 39:14-15).

So does God indicate quite clearly the lessons of His creation, manifold in purpose and instruction. It is purposive in its power to correct error, technologically magnificent in displaying these things; but it is replete with wisdom endued by the Almighty, not least that man might learn by seeing, and seeing be advised. There are tragedies and comedies, there is curse and consequence, there is the labour of life to watch and ponder, the devices of the Lord to witness. How His ironies distil to man, and His messages lampoon the follies of sin, just as they teach the necessities of being teachable and finding one's place in the Lord (cf. Proverbs 6:6, 30:25, Jeremiah 8:7, Isaiah 1:3).

The 'great ape' becomes a term of abuse, telling us of the boastful, chest-thumping hugeness of the dolt, swollen with pride, but without reason!

There is more, and there is of course far more even to what we consider, than we say; for it might take even the computer some effort, to match what could be said of these creatures, though much IS said in the two volumes noted.*3  "Does the hawk fly by your wisdom, and spread its wings toward the south ? " (Job 39:26). The vast patterns and enormous distances of bird migration have been the subject of much research, and continued development of knowledge on this topic has occurred, showing the amazing technicalities incorporated into the facilities of birds, relating it seems both to celestial objects and magnetic forces, enabling their migrating thousands of miles, and yet returning to the same garden.

The adjustments and multiple methodologies enabling this migratory marvel are as advanced as one might imagine, to secure such results! (Cf. SMR p. 143, Acme, Alpha and Omega: Jesus Christ Ch. 4).

There is a reason for the skill, for the display, for the drama, for the ironies; and for the blight!
 
 

A CAUSE EVEN FOR CURSE

There is a reason.

There is also a reason when the complacent, who bypass God as if they had had a tripe bypass operation on the heart of their beings, spiritual not physiological, find their limits like death, arising seemingly without cause. Yet what they are wilfully blind to, shutting their eyes like child in the dark (cf. Matthew 13:14-15 and its background in Isaiah 6:9-10), is this: that God is not mocked. That of course means that it is technically possible, but in the end, the rebuke is such that the practice is a forlorn failure, mere whistling in the dark. "They have sown the wind,  and they shall reap the whirlwind" (Hosea  8:7) comes readily to be applicable when the torment of folly rises like a crescendo to its gushing streams of self-will, pride, self-release and squanders its hope, reason in abeyance, reality hopefully, but not actually in tow!

IF you WANT to work as if you were your own product, contrary to reason, then, with good reason, you may be reminded as the garbage truck seems to have designs on you (how awful! disgraceful! why do these things happen!), that your disengagement from reason as from God, is not without result. As to its cause ? Who but the Lord can know the desperate trickiness, devious, self-deception of the human heart when it is astray (cf. Jeremiah 17:9-10)!

It may be pride, fear of limitation, aspiration for glory, short-cut mania to get somewhere quickly without right, to impress others, to impress oneself, a modality of rebellion adopted even unconsciously because of this or that, the false and perhaps falsetto hopes of strength in company, one's faithless mates as they pursue their proud course, for their approval ... whatever in the kaleidoscopic realms of human invention comes to be. But there is a cause for the curse.

Causeless, it does not come.

There is a result for effrontery, impudence, irrationality and pride. It can come with great originality too. The ONE who gave us power for original thought, which is a gift of solemn magnitude, also thinks; the ONE who made two to communicate, also understands. One of the things one finds not always liked is this: if the REBEL can think and opt and decide to do this or that, in a flamboyance and flair of spirit, soaring independent as if bereft of reason, so too and much more also, the LORD can soar and invent, and NOT AT ALL bereft of reason, bring about the result.
 
 

THAT MERCIFUL SPIRIT, THE ALMIGHTY GOD
WHO OFFERS PEACE IN CHRIST, HIS ETERNAL SON


Let us not however short-circuit in our understandings that movement of His gracious Spirit. God IS a Spirit, of necessity (cf. SMR pp. 29ff. and index) and even here, we get that delicious confusion which spiritual blindness can create. This is a necessity which reason sees, matter having laws which require a formulator, and being without exposable capacity to make them; but of that, more elsewhere. But the necessity is for HIS FREEDOM. Necessity of a certain result does not make necessity IN the mode of working of that result. Necessity for a breakage in a stick does not imply that the one breaking it had to do so! What HE is - this is an entirely different question; and in the case in hand, sin, he may be a simple fool, wanting like an infant unweaned, to do what comes naturally to mind.

Sin is like that. It WANTS and WAILS and does not choose to LIKE being corrected. Yet in the empires, the philosophies and the political philanderers, it is. Their wares grow gross, like Nazism, fallen Communism, the delightful world of mankind governing itself without God. The United Nations with its godless aspirations, clothed in morals from nowhere, has been exposed in its cumbrous self-consolidations by Shirley Hazzard in her works, with great insight. SO much is so ludicrous when it is exposed, and yesterday's godless dream can seem like steak beautiful two days ago, but now, still in the uncleaned frying pan, a disaster, a grisly question-mark: HOW could this ever have appealed! (cf. Jeremiah 4:22, Proverbs 23:29ff.).

For it all there is reason; and it is well that the God who made us to have this gift, is merciful, as we find from the word of God, which we have demonstrated to be so (SMR Chs. 1-3 etc.). We have shown its verifications almost without number, in any field we come to; and it is so also here. Sin is a reproach to any people (Proverbs 14:34) - and brilliant, free, USA, glorying in liberty, liberty to sue for many millions for comparatively minor seeming offences, liberty to indulge in almost any sort of morality and this in the President who continues, liberty for speech and liberty for searching by the billion for life without understanding, instead of amending its own life: USA is no exception.

Children take to guns, automatic weapons are used with glee, death becomes a release for the pent-up soul, but not suicide as such, no, the death of others is the enticement. It is a game, a virtual reality; but of course it is nothing to do with the mode of violence on TV, or the increasingly business run sports and the ferocities and methods they may display; oh no! it is nothing to do with the prepared foods for public consumption with violence. Of course not, what a thought! How can people be so foolish! goes the popular mythology. SO blindness begets blindness, and death.

Yet it is far from the case that that nation is all by itself in such things. Like Britain, it has in some ways had a glorious past with the religion of so many now corrupted; and the principle remains, "For everyone to whom much is given, from him much shall be required, " (Luke 12:48), which after all is eminently just. Like Britain (till more recently), it has had wealth of the highest order, so that its actions bespeak more of liberty and choice (cf. Jeremiah 6:8,10; 3:22!), than is the case with some other nations, which long ago settled into their strides of sin and weakness, followed by lassitude and sin, in their own proportions. So they have stridden.

The nations have indeed had their opportunities as shown earlier from Acts 17:26-27.

SO has the world. It too has had its overall opportunities. It is all for a reason.

The results have reason. God is merciful, we were saying (Psalm, 103:8, Micah 7:18ff.).

At such time as a people truly seek Him, He hears; when someone comes to Him by His appointed communications medium, His Son Jesus Christ, His word (you have to have the relevant equipment installed of course, for one to hear, as Telecom for its part, knows), He is pledged to mercy (Jeremiah 29:13, Jonah 3:7ff., 4:10-11).
 
 

EQUIPMENT ?

But what is that equipment ? It too is free, and must include:

It is the most profound and wonderful thing that the reason is simple: God created and gave us spirits with which to err or be erratic, dramatic, ecstatic, voluble or taciturn, to turn away and in which by His grace to find HIM, and then - soaring in the spiritual heavens like the seagull by the sea, freed as if by the ocean from sin, and through the blood of Christ, like sunlight reflecting from the dying sun at gloaming, covered and pardoned - to move on the winds of truth with facility. Life ? It is diverse. Spiritual life ? It is one. Yet even IN IT, there is room for the individual, and God has made individuals. All things have a reason.

To know God, individual in fellowship with one Being, it is to make all else seem immeasurably small, like desert flowers microscopic, next to the beautiful wrought blooms of the specialist gardener (John 17:1-3,13); and knowing God involves equally eternal life, the Eternal One knowing His friends, and giving them eternal life for a reason. He loved them, found them and paid for them (Ephesians 1:7, Matthew 20:28, Galatians 3:1-13) and they are His friends.
 
 

NOTEs

*1

PHYSICAL PLAGUES

The Australian's article, p. 29 of the Magazine, noted this piece of recent history: US Surgeon-General, William Stewart, in 1967 declared this, that the microbes were overcome, vaccines and wonder antibiotics had set viruses and bacteria into retreat phase. 'Man,' summarised the Australian, 'in his all-conquering way, had mastered nature.'

It proceeds to note that this declaration was 'bunkum'. Ebola, HIV, mad cow disease, H5N1 Niphay virus are warnings. Japanese encephalitis is no less. The Cape York feral pig population could well become a reservoir to transmit with bats, mosquitoes or other moving biological parts, to further South.  Further, malaria, cholera, tuberculosis and others are returning to circulation.

Meanwhile, Richard Preston in The Hot Zone, documented horrific details on Ebola. Global warming and declining antibiotic effectiveness together with recycling in air-conditioning, air and water pollution, not to mention bio-terrorism in the spreading cities, or even their disease concentration without it, in the "third world" posed two problems. Their health, firstly,  and then their contribution through air travel and rapid transit, to spreading world-wide what they produce or induce. The Chinese unemployment contributes with perhaps 100 million moving about, ready to transmit things far off, to hubs for infestation world-wide.  Mexico City with 20 million is a potential bastion of disease. More readily transmissible diseases, or conditions facilitating the spread of the existing, relative to humans, are by no means excluded. Further, forest removal and increasing paddy fields, for example, amplify breeding and carrying capacities. In fact, one might add, global warming, here or elsewhere could increase mosquito mobility for example, and penetration into territories of whatever they might ... carry.
 
 

APOLOGETIC INTEREST

Our Apologetic interest therefore in biota of various kinds,  in this phase of things, is twofold:

Man has had some respite during his prodigious self-destructions of this century. THESE themselves, however, are amongst  the predicted terminal fevers (Revelation 6:3-11), and it includes selective elimination of the Christian martyrs. Other fevers  more literal are also predicted, and all three of these phases, death by war and deadly behaviour, by multiply formatted plague and by divinely predicted astronomical reduction of protection, are coming. Conditions are meet. The acquaintance is coming.

Of particular interest is Revelation 8:8 - 'something like a great burning mountain' falling to meet the sea. It is distinct from the astronomical prediction, relating to a massive destruction of its own (Revelation 8:10). It does of course relate suggestively to atomic explosion, as does in some detail, Joel 2:30 - the 'columns of smoke',  reflected in Acts 2:19. With this, there is  'blood and fire'.

Such vast afflictions, mounting exhibits to man of his 'wrong way' signals so long dismissed with relish, renegacy or disdain,  we see in particular in Revelation 5:1-6; 6:1-16; 8:8-11; 9:9ff., 20-21 to 10:7; and in this last verse, there is the announcement that there would be "delay no longer". In these times, it is well not to be spiritually asleep. It may seem cool, but perhaps the better word for it would be 'cold'.

The world however is not going to share this thermal condition, physically speaking. In the end, it will be a very different scene (Isaiah 51:6, II Peter 3:4-10), as God has said for a very long time indeed, just as He predicted for just this time (esp. see II Peter 3:3-7). Striking to the eye, arresting to the mind is the coverage: there was to come for just this last time, as we have shown it to be, in Biblical terms:

1) the contempt for the creation, that officer of realism,  and

2) for the universal flood, which bears the hallmarks of past judgment (cf. II Timothy 3:5, Jude 10, Revelation 13:6, II Peter 3:3-5; and see SMR Chs.2-3, and in particular, pp. 252Hff., 315Aff., 422Eff., 234-241, 226ff., 208ff., A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9, That Magnificent Rock Chs. 1,8, Joyful Jottings 2, 3, 5.).
In the former case, relative to the creation: the prediction (specifically in II Peter 3) is not only for a WILFUL ignorance of the creation, just such as has been so popular in the teeth of the facts, for more than a century; but specified further is a further fascinating feature.

3) the use of the term 'creation' , as a verbal legerdemain or, consciously or unconsciously,  something closely resembling a slick propaganda trick. It double deals with names, fudges concepts, nudges nomenclature without adding to thought, and confuses the issue with sliding definition of the term (cf. Scoop of the Universe 57). Thus they are said to be wilfully IGNORANT of the fact that by the word of God the heavens and earth were brought into existence, so that they are against God as Creator; and yet at the same time, here they are talking of all things continuing "as they were from the beginning of the creation."

As to that negation of the 'creation' feature, equipped with the legerdemain, equally disdainful and irrational as has often been shown on this site: that is something of our own time, a feature of the current decade  (II Peter 3:5 with 3:4; cf. SMR Ch.2 passim, Ch.8, e.g. pp. 674ff., Ch. 9 e.g. pp. 842ff., 867ff., with News 82). It is however only adding sauce to the gander.

In the latter example, the often frenzied-seeming  reactions to the flood: more and more indications of rapid-production techniques for the sort of strata on earth's often so sedimentary surface are being found, limiting the erratic imagination of the past by the patient findings of the present; while the non-flood concept is inundated with contrary evidence, as indicated in the above references (and note the important Melbourne Professor case, as in The Other News 1), to the point of the comic. It was not merely a lack of humour which activated Professor Nilsson as noted in SMR pp. 244ff., in his vast evidential output.

An academic, he became weary of blindness, dogged continuance with dogma,  and reached the dramatic point of preferring to face the inundatory facts, at least about what happened with water on this earth! His eruption like that of Hoyle on intelligent creation (e.g. The Intelligent Universe), so long repressed  in some circles, was rather like that of a volcano, suppressed too long by ineffectual containment. The vents, in this case are verbal, and the results of release are found in such writings as Synthetische Artbildung (Synthetic Speciation).
 

The race, it progresses, then, but towards disaster. It is therefore the more marvellous, fascinating, intriguing and delightful that the Gospel remains the same, the call is as clear as ever, the necessity of repentance as incisive as before (Luke 13:1-3), the opportunity as real as when first the Gospel sounded, that everlasting Gospel (cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 17) which is to proceed till the earth has had its ears met with it (Matthew 24:7-14), and its times of resolution occur. What was the use of the ark when there was no ocean there; and what is the use of the Gospel when the world is not QUITE over ?
Why not push it to the end ?

Because, quite simply it is untrue, the whole imaginary smorgasbord of God-substitutes and pretenders; and God is the truth, and without the truth man becomes rather worse than animals, like a sports car run amok. A bicycle then is better. We are however what we are, and there is no excuse for ignoring the profundity and wonder of the love of God (II Cor. 5:17ff.). Who needs an excuse when GOD IS THERE!
 
 

*2 In fact, Proverbs 30:24-33 gives a short exposé in this very area of our interest; while Jeremiah with great poignancy, evocatively applies much more (Jeremiah 8:9):

"Even the stork in the heavens
Knows her appointed times;
And the turtledove, the swift, and the swallow
Observe the time of their coming.
But My people do not know the judgment of the Lord.

"How can you say, 'We are wise
And the law of the Lord is with us'?
Look, the false pen of the scribe certainly works falsehood.
The wise men are ashamed,
They are dismayed and taken.
Behold, they have rejected the word of the Lord,
So what wisdom do they have."

Isaiah speaks with similar solemnity, with a message from the other creation:

"Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth,
For the LORD has spoken:
'I have nourished and brought up children,
And they have; rebelled against Me;
The ox knows its owner,
And the donkey its master's crib;
But Israel does not know,
My people do not consider.' "

So you see, even the donkey has its place in the materials for teaching our race! With a little humour, its very beastiness, to coin a word, not to mention its occasionally feisty fervour, with its demeaned understanding, loud parade of uproar in some of its more lusty cries, and parody of the greatness of the horse, has much to say. It may be that at times man will listen to creations ... that are not his own! They can be most eloquent, and stir to some wisdom.
 

FOR THESE TOPICS, SEE ALSO News 55, and Biblical Blessings Ch.7, Beyond the Curse. The latter brings this aspect into a broader scope of overview, just as News 74 specialises on its sub-topic.

In *3 below we shall use - but extend, these same references to the prophets, in another connection. However we always need to remember, that NOT ONLY does the creation evidence and attest the WISDOM and WIT of that brilliance beyond all measure, that of the Creator (Psalm 147:5), but also the same wit applied to our instruction AS SINNERS. Alas the need; but it is not without warrant that He has so acted, acts and is statedly continuing to act.

Why ? It is most closely related to this fact: the coping stone of this creation, equipped with facilities to correspond with the very Maker Himself, in ways of thought and conception, overview and survey, analysis and symbolic logic and language, has wandered in witless pride, proud invention, proud contention, dismal blindness to the Lord, afflicting by the million, each one the other, misdirecting divinely created human energies to tasks often more worthy of devils, that might make the afflicted animal creation blush.

Man thus needs and gains rebuke, even in the parodies of creation, the illustrative lessons in other creations, as well as in plagues and scourges, environmental lessenings of protection, all as quite expressly taught in such places as the book of Revelation, Exodus, Amos 4, and indeed in the first-named, the cyclotronic effect, the mounting campaign of using even astronomical elements to make the point, a whole universe of accord more and more deeply echoing man's profanities and rebuking them till the end comes. See here Appendix 2 and Appendix 3 in The Other News. See also Curse in Index.
 

*3 Mini-Excursion on: MAN AND THE LOWER CREATION

In view:

THE STRATIFICATION OF THE LOWER CREATION AND THE PINNACLE, MAN,
WHOSE ARE THE OPPORTUNITIES
AND WHOSE ALONE,
THROUGH THE POWERS CONFERRED ON MIND AND THE CHARACTER OF HIS ROVING SPIRIT,
BY THE MERCIES OF  GOD, TO KNOW HIM, AND HENCE TO RULE WELL IN THE DOMINION THAT HE IS CURRENTLY WRECKING, LARGELY ALONG WITH HIMSELF.

There may be value for some in having at hand here, FOR THIS SITE, the Index survey of materials on the topic of life in terms of the lower creation.

And what terms these are! We see:

Its scope of sheer variety, intense complexity, graded qualities each superb in technical brilliance;
its games, deployments and wit;
its rebukes to our complacency and parodies of our pride;
its consciousness modes, dowered, conferred with a form that allows some individuality, depending on the height of the creation concerned, within the other parameters laid down for each;
its limitations and its programmatic heights;
the vitalised kindreds of computing procedures, leaving these 'modern' inventions of ours by comparison  in the wilderness of kindergarten, mere simplicities, when compared with the sophistication and the manoeuvrings of the lower orders of life as if it were putty.

God can and does use LIFE as a lecturer might use mere physical apparatus, to teach and to reach, to exhibit and to show the zest and the follies which can come.

As to the lower creation:  in the materials indicated below, we see something of -

The intelligence of the Maker of intelligence, in all its varieties, whether as mere conscious parallels to instincts, with powers of judicious application not discerned, but merely sensed; or those which allow a specialised application to the areas of expertise as with the beaver and his power to thwack his tail on the river surface as a warning to the others, while his engineering proceeds in its channels of marvel; or those which allow strategies within the limits of conceived vitalised instinctive donations from the Creator and much more: they are all there as a testimony to His knowledge and power, His effusive brilliance of creative power, His scalding ironies to our fallen race and His exhibition by contrast, of all the gifts which we have been given, and yet as a race use so poorly, that the specialised fixtures of the other mentalities, shorn of our splendour, can yet act as so many rebukes. Yes, they can be used to the point of becoming actual and recognised plagues.
 


MAN'S PRIVILEGES FORTIFY HIS RESPONSIBILITIES