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CHAPTER 24

DEPOSIT, DEVELOPMENT, DESTINY

from Christ, the Cumulative and the Culmination, Ch. 8

First let us ponder a little.

Coming to terms with the inventor of terminological power, verbal actualisation,
correlative capacities in man to match with word, the deed,
all within limits from the Illimitable,
for whom no creation perturbs the infinity, but whose creation evokes His action:

this is a necessary part of growing up,
which has no mere physical increase or mental polish,
cultural awareness or social grace,
for its domain,
but crucially involves

coming to know where you came from, go to and why,
in what you are responsible,
and in what way to respond to your responsibility.

While to be eternally young may be the desideratum for some,
to be eternally deprived of reality, if a clamant destiny, is not one to be desired.

PERSON, PROGRAM AND POGROM,

THE ETERNAL BEGINNER WHO IS FIRST OF ALL,
AND SPLENDOUR FOR ALL WHO NOW START WHERE HE IS:

THE WAY AND THE END OF IT ALL

INTRODUCTION

It is so easy, if you are a word in a book, to look at other words, yellowing pages, paragraphs, types of script, and never to let it enter your black-typed head that someone had to write the thing ... and you.

That is, if words could think within their milieu, as man  so often does in his own.

Man however can think, and sad it is that his thought tends to circle, like vultures over carrion, endlessly and almost mindlessly about the status quo, trying to extrapolate in the face of all contrary and adverse evidence, to make images in the mind of  things made without power, caused without performance, instituted without action, whether fast or slow, or at the very least, instituted in some unthinkable way so that they were always there, only coming to be from nowhere in particular for no particular reason; or simply that they came out of nothing in some self-contradictory manner.

To 'accomplish' such things in mind, in its inveterate imaginations, such as never are to be found in actuality, man ignores the principles of causality inherent in all his thought, without which it cannot even occur, since definition itself is a species of causality, recognising diverse powers and entities, qualities and conditions, and in words depicting the same in analytical elements (cf. Causes, SMR Ch. 5, Predestination and Freewill Section 4). The professional 'unbeliever' wants things to be the babies of literal nothing, though what has NO qualities certainly CANNOT at the same time have ANY POTENTIAL, so that this amounts to creation by self-contradiction, not a very pregnant mode!

Otherwise, it wants a law-girt series of elements and compounds in matter to be there by the absence of law; or wants to confuse the non-intrusion of purpose into any system, with something called 'chance', which simply means what it says, that nothing outside the system is acting (cf. Ancient  Words, Modern Deeds
Chs.  9, 13).

This however does not invent the system! merely limits it;  and such an assumption does not make it so, or even possible. The unintruded on working of a system is patently nothing to do with its arrival, and assumptions about its prowess once arrived, have nothing to do with what is to be found in practice. Imagination is the alternative to God, and since it contradicts the logic back of it, it is an abysmal alternative. .

Models do not make matter, nor mind, nor spirit. You need  POWER. You also need CONTROLLED POWER. You need in addition RELEVANT power. You need in short that non-arranged Being (independent of prescription and without its caused control), that non-conditioned reality, that in short eternal being, not products, for the arrival of products: and of production itself for that matter. Lack this, and nothing can account for them, since names are not powers, and models are not adequate background; more is needed.

Further, what is sufficient for these things must be present from the first, or else it would have nowhere to come from either in terms of 'nothing', or of anything inadequate for its own production. The inadequate cannot produce it; and the ultimate adequacy cannot be produced, for if it were, then it merely needs its own producer, which ignores the question, ignoratio elenchi being the invalidity.

Hence, then, the adequate is ALWAYS there or we do not come; yet we have come. This Adequate Creator has been considered in SMR Ch. 1, in TMR and in Swift Witness    6, Secular Myth and Sacred Truth Ch. 7, Little Things Ch. 5,  Coming King Ch. 3,for example, and here we merely remind the reader briefly of the inescapable reality back of the imprinted, the impelled and the ordered.

Meanwhile, we have come here for a purpose, so let us consider it.

POWER IN THE  PROPELLED UNIT CALLED EARTH

It is because of such confusion that people are led more and more to consider themselves the product of nothing, or of something which needs no accounting, and so in their confusion, imagine that RACE makes all, or GENES make all, or MATTER makes all or whatever other inadequate source, a mere product tied to the apron-strings of its Maker, is the alleged source. Naturally, nothing will permit or tolerate such a thing logically, either in principle or in practice.

Research continually finds, amazing as it is to some, who thus try to ignore it or dress it up in words of no relevance, but much propaganda expertise, that certain things are the case. Thus, it is discovered

	that alas nothing is never found making nothing or even anything, and indeed is never found;
	that matter does not produce life, and even if it did, it is in itself unable to think, to imagine or to construct what it is not, being controlled by its internal limits, conditions and construction; and even if man did produce some form of life, this is not matter doing it, but man doing it with matter, an entirely different matter!

 As to matter: Never do we find mind-making lurking in its parched premises, thought active in its sterile parameters or depositions of ideas exuded from its directed concourses (cf. SMR pp. 421ff., 80ff.).

Liberty is not found coming from limiting laws and governed formats; yet man has it in this, that he can make the most awful ass of himself in trying to think what does not work, to make what cannot be made and to model what is contrary to its own assumptions; and he can will to continue: ever challenged but never chastened. This is not necessary nor admirable, being clottish in character and contrary in spirit.
It is the expression of man's desire and imagination and his purposes in a form he prefers, not something inherent in the nature of his brain, the action of his DNA or the capabilities of his mentality.

His courage and desire, ideation and imagination, concepts and modelling are neither measurable nor colour-coded, and whatever their outward results, their inward realities are their own.  Reductionism is mere a childish ignoring of realities, without interface, without experimental confirmation, without means, without reason, and becomes the greatest oddity of modern science, a case where those extolling scientific method, actually and actively SEEK where there is NO indication, for what is NEVER seen or found to act.

	You want MIND, so you seek what lacks its qualities and has no indication of its parameters as the source.
	You want WILL, so you seek it where its potential is not to be seen, in interstices which are vacant of all relationship to such a concept.

Why is this done ? Is it the way in which science works ? Or rather is it not thus: Do you FIND a fact, a datum, a series of data, and organising them with care and sensitivity to their apparent form, order, law, force, direction, then envisage what could cause this. Then,  with due respect to all collatable theories and activities, you seek something harmonious with these to allow for the data, interpret it, account for it without self-contradiction or evidential lapse.

You do not seek in cow manure for the source of porcelain, or in a mechano set, for the basis of poetry. You seek these things in the known and allied areas, and study where artisanship comes and acts, or imagination grows and goes, and seeking these dynamics and forms, investigate for some indication of their nature and origin. As to origin, you do not seek for this where NO correlation is found, but where it is found. You do not pretend to be scientific by the antithesis of science. That is the theory of it all; but in practice, this supreme subversion of scientific method is precisely what is most frequently being done!

Thus you do not seek for liberty from direction in vagrancies of thought to which man is so liable, in the  set forms and formulae, plans and depictions in program (cf. Worn-Out World and Coming King Ch. 3, Ch. 5, Little Things Ch. 5). You seek it where such things ARE KNOWN and found, such as in mind, because of its analytical methods, its purposive orientation and its conscious capacities. Just as it is quite useless to seek for the information INPUT extant in matter, the information actuality, as if the car is the cause of the car, but in what is adequate for such a feat, so you do not seek for and expect to find the ORIENTATION OUTPUT of imagination in the merely imaged realities of matter, since this is product, not producer of its own interstices.

From such refusals, in the arena of the intellectual refusniks, we see merely a further demonstration of the activity of will which, refusing all rationality, insists on following the anti-scientific method, or if you prefer the a-scientific method, which is this.

If you find something for which you seek an explanation, do NOT seek this where the correlations occur, but where they are absent; do not find your research where reason requires adequacy, but where it attests inadequacy, and this above all, NEVER, repeat never allow yourself to be moved to seeking adequate causation for mind, matter and spirit, since this is to be harassed by fact, intimidated by actuality. Make your researches where the very definition and performance criteria of the things you investigate deny what you need.

Such is reductionism. However when we find the irreducible untouched by such antics, and  if we are to be rational at all,  continually commanding the inveterate and irreducible concept of adequate causation (Causes), for thought itself: then instead of trying endlessly to turn diverse types of operational entities, like mind, matter and spirit, into one another on a basis which is inadequate for each as for all, you seek what is adequate for all, and as shown in SMR Ch. 1 and Swift Witness   6, for example, you find what is NOT matter made it, what is NOT merely mind made it and what is NOT mere will made it, being CAPABLE in all these dimensions because imagination and intelligence, power and thought, in a word creation is a product of the very Adequate Being. In other words, what is necessary is found to be actual, so that ludicrous hypotheses which deny logical necessities are as needless as ungoverned, and we ponder the practical fact that to act in a dimension, you have to BE THERE to do it.

Once this reality is seen, and then found to be self-identifying in the Bible as in the above references and many others in this site, then all things change in your understanding of HISTORY.

POWER is back of mind, back of matter, back of spirit, and the dwindling impulsions of the universe, which draw on it, are not to be based on their decadence,  as a creation means, but on their invention. You do not wisely prescribe for what REDUCES order, the mode of its making, for what reduces biota, the manner of its advent, for what decreases in design, the thrust of the design's arrival (cf. SMR pp. 252Hff., Wake Up World ...  Ch. 6, Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 13).

Thus power is the presentation, indeed and of necessity,  ultra-universe power. God is the normal name for this source of intelligence, imagination and power. Once this is realised, and fuzzy fiascos are exchanged for clear thought so that a perspective which is internally consistent, evidentially insistent and always verified (cf. SMR Chs. 2-10,  TMR, Wake Up World! Secular Myths and  Sacred Truth),  being verified, then verifies itself again.

This is a fascinating aspect of the truth. Once you have it, it supplies, like oil, ease to the understanding, confirmation to the concepts, intermingling of the aspects, reinforcement of the realities, each with the other, sobriety of sequence and explication on all sides (cf. SMR Ch.5 ). When, on the other hand,  you do not have it, then you have mysticism, or muddle, depending on the sort of area involved, the ludicrous, the mutually destructive: you have hopes and maybe hallowings,  but not rational admixture and coverage to the uttermost of all aspects and all modes and procedures.

In this sense, verifications based in reality, these make for more of the same, and a visit becomes a highway;  understanding makes for further light, and dynamics instead of being mere names for the incomprehensible, come to be seen in a setting which, like a map, makes all things RELATIVELY easy to consider. This is thus obtained,  instead of a pit of pretence, filled with the struggling vipers of striving imaginations.

Thus POWER is present, as in a new book or bridge, at the MENTAL level and at the PURPOSIVE level, when the thing starts. This comes from what does not start; for if it did, it would have to have something to start from, adequate for it, as above, and this in the event, therefore involves either NEVER getting started, or ALWAYS being there. Man tends to be such a muddler in this area, because his will is involved, and his responsibility.

It is because as a product he is ANSWERABLE to the mind and imagination and purpose of his inventor. He is always wanting to have something that defies causation as the cause of the universe and himself, while using the causal concept even to think about, and although marked with the modelling tools of constraint and limits, he is adroit at shutting his eyes and taking the new Statesman in his garage as self-engendering, and not stolen goods! Thus he loves in  multiplied cases to ignore the facts of the One who made him, and literally steal himself away.

POWER, then,  caused creation of this universe, in alliance with the wit needed to transcend incomparably all the thought and power of man in the far beyond the state of the art devices apparent in creation (cf. Denton's presentation in SMR pp. 114ff.). This did not act as a quality, since power never does. In and of itself, it is mere the capacity to impart motion, at the material level, to give acceleration in particular to mass; but you need the mass, the purpose and the power to move it jointly to be 'around'. Power can of course be conceived in other terms, such as mental power and spiritual power when you get used to avoiding the follies of reductionism and thinking rationally.

Thus GOD WITH HIS POWER caused the creation of the universe. It is running down in all visible ways, or at least never building up. Man is building up information, but not creating the things about which he is being informed. This is so except in thought, and with his imagination by intelligence he is able to juggle powers and products already present, within the principles and procedures extant or inherent: such as DNA for example. Thus he is to some extent able to re-compose things according to these existing principles which control them, and those inherent workings and forms which comprise them.

This increases knowledge, as Daniel 12 predicted for the Age as it rushes to its end; but it does not make any new universes. It does not make any supermen. It does not give matter a new formulation, to mind a new logic, to spirit a new domain: it merely allows investment in the one that is there already.

It does not make any new power to author man or matter or mind. It DOES make ability to adjust and adapt, but only WITH the power man already has, at the level of its limits, and IN the interstices already present. You use what you have, not what you do not have; and making a new you or a new universe is not among the powers of the derivative intelligence and imagination granted to man.

Hence he SUFFERS in this one, this universe. He does this because he loves to ignore GOD, and the POWER, the divine dynamic which made him, anon recklessly, anon fecklessly pretending that it just happened, or some other verbal substitute for thought, given time:  like that Statesman in his garage, which of course unhappens if it should begin.

Why should it begin ? It would do so if the power to conceive were present so that matter could be collated and controlled in the desired directions, and built into the prescribed forms. Man has this, and so makes cars. Matter does not display such powers, or evidence such potencies in principle or construction; hence it does not. Even if, by some miracle, an input of this kind occurred, and a car arrived from above, the following situation would then collate corruption with irruption, so making for the observable interference; for when design meets environment not constructed for its conservation, or even the degradation of time in a processive world, it has limit to its endurance in adversity.

Even if other worlds were envisaged, unobserved and secret, the product not of scientific thought but of philosophic hope, worlds where things go up to match this one where they do down: the down must first have an up, the degradation must first have a gradation into being, before it can act, for what is not there, can go nowhere; so that have as many worlds as you will, always there is a net input, before degradation as in this one, and while aught remains, this must be so. While man remains to think, this he must think, or bomb reason itself, which indeed, giving reasons with his customary cultural occlusion, he sometimes essays! (cf. SMR Ch. 3, pp. 422Eff.).

As to imaginary rising worlds, this is simply the concept of creation, which of course requires precisely what has been shown above. Made rational, it involves the function of controlled power apt for the investigable result.

It is just that this sort of thing, self-operating,  is not found anywhere in our universe, which is a perfect match to the word of God which says that God finished His creation of the universe and kinds (Genesis 1-2). You would not expect, for that matter, to find means of creating the universe de novo in this one, when it is statedly FINISHED; and this is precisely verified. You do not find any such powers in this one. Magic may safely be left to the bespectacled wizards of fiction and the rejoicing of small minds to find their children's books so fascinating!

Reticulation of creation components is limited to spirit's equipment, and this, not for playing God, but for moving in the universe which He having created, has precisely those modes and manners, limits and provisions which He has granted. NOTHING ANYWHERE CAN EVER HAVE capacities without a capacitor, so that it is merely an idle question to imagine to what degree God might see fit to make other universe with other mediations of material elements, programs and the like; for the logical requirements never change, just as in this universe, its modes and manners, limits and paths are all in the field of subordinate matter, analytical mind and purposeful spirit, engendered each by adequate power, and limited each by adequate constraints.

In general, kinds of matter, mind, spirit, what you will: They either rise into being, continue sustained, or fall into destruction (cf. Hebrews 1:1-3, 11:1ff.). This one, this universe rose into being, so that it could fall, just as you mount a hill, so that you can slide down; and as its current behaviour indicates, it falls into diminution and undesign, as time wastes it. Assuredly the curse (cf. Biblical Blessings Ch. 7) as shown in Genesis 1-3, has a bearing; and the world we have proceeds accordingly. Let us articulate the simple factual proposition: everything goes as the word of God directs. Minds imagine, wills purpose, matter goes as designated, procedures as programmed, as written by the word of God; and curse operates in our systems, the Second Law of Thermodynamics being but one aspect of its impact in the field of human life. Thus is our starry universe found to be; and so is it said to be.

Creation stares at the stars with unblinking eyes; and its gradual diminution takes its toll, as the platform for man, in God's image, grows old as a garment, as Isaiah 51:6 puts it.

What then ?  first you have things. Having things, however,  has an inevitable load of having them first made; having them degrade merely makes it necessary to have more things if you want a good number as time marches on. There is nothing abstruse about creation. You have it or nothing; we have something, we have creation. Its source is always there, for nothing cannot produce anything. Its imposed constraints attest imposition and non-primary nature, for compulsion, unlike impulsion, requires what compels, magic excluded and might required. Creation has limited but mutually adjusted powers, and reason demands its source.

Eternal and always equipped with all power for all that would be, since nothing can not produce it or anything else for that matter, and what is lacking cannot secure its need from nothing, unlimited since limits imply law and law legislation, that source has the normal name of God, the Creator.

As to 'nature', which is actually many natures and a series of systems inter-connected in one overall system, which is not merely systematic, but rather allows for supra-systematic personal activities, its source is always adequate; for logic's demise prevents all reasoning, of this or that, pro or contra. On the other hand,  its pursuit makes for that coherence which the Word of God, the Reason indeed, having brought all things to be, enables us,  in our image-bearing status, with fascinating and ennobling consistency, to investigate.

While nothing explains nothing, God explains everything, and everything requires Him not only for its putting into its systematic, limited and personal place, but for the understanding of the same without antinomies, self-contradictions and clashes of concept, for assuredly results without a cause comprise a matter of magic indeed, and a cause for such results ultimately requires eternal sufficiency for each and for all of its products. Nor can it develop, since then there is a cause beyond it, which donates to it this potential. It is eternal, changeless, adequate for all, prior to all; and this person-maker, problem solver, Creator of all, deals with any in calling, confrontation or maintenance, as He sees fit. As Romans 11:33 puts it, "...of Him and through Him and for Him are all things."

Nor is there anything remarkable about the Second Law of  Thermodynamics, of increasing entropy, of decreasing specialisation. Things set in a world of action suffer the other things that it does, and in time they decrease what they were given. When a curse from the Creator operates, then species of degradation are under directive!

As to that Second Law,  it is not only observation of this never-observed-to-be-broken law, but reason itself which makes this demand. Nothing is unproductive. What is produced is a comment on the powers of what produced it. System, whatever it does, has to be constructed by non-nothing, that is by something, and something adequate. Not able to start with nothing, it is necessary to find the start in non-nothing, and in particular, an adequate non-nothing for the institution of the products. Then the constructee, the system,  COULD be made adequate, as is man, for some subsidiary constructions, but this is merely the outworking of what was inworked, the pulse of the power provided.

Let us put this rather differently. Since the correlation of so many concepts and keys for their implementation, like building blocks, as found in this creation, is not one of the features of the procedurally fixed, but of imagination, it is meaningless to conceive of this as if wrought without thought, which it not only exposes in directive commands by the million, but implements in created beings such as man; and useless to imagine its comprehensively construable and viewable integration without correlative purpose. Quite simply, as illustration of the principle, a car does not make its mutually integrated systems for service by indirection, but by what it requires for thoughtless stuff, metals and mouldings, to be directed to do what they must. Non-purpose does not create the purpose-built integration of multiplicity, and unity in function. The quality to be found requires the quality to found it.

Thus man, wilfully ignorant, suffers as all around, and despite his creativity, creation moves downward. So do the Greens lament, and the conservations become appalled. Designs decrease in number, they do not 'arise', since they have outside the Nursery, no magic to help. They depend on their Creator. As this occurs, there is pain. The suffering annoys man, in his rebellious and rambunctious mood, so that then often he decides NOT to believe in God, perhaps subliminally,  in order to teach Him a lesson, or for some allied reason. In his unrepentant magical world, the cultural man of today is likely to blame God for his punishments, and those of his milieu, very much like that ultra-tantrum child whom all find rather hard to love.

Repentance sails off on some odyssey and the futile fuming inherits its own just exposure in more suffering, which cyclotronic in aggregation, continues in the exasperated mind of rebellion. It is only the mercy of God, in the face of such inane assaults, which makes the world continue at all, and not the consignee to the dust-bin. That of course will come, for equally, though God be merciful, He is just.

So the tantrum of unbelief comes. This however only increases the suffering, since being irrational puts you into collision with reality, which hurts.

Let however for a moment, be rational and exclude the tantrums. The POWER OF GOD instituted this universe, and our powers of thought and will, so that we can knowingly deny what is obvious, if we want to, and do it at first slyly, then feyly, if it comes to that. We are so limited, but not in imagination to this extent; yet for all that, individuals can deliberately set out to deceive others, and then  by habit and that inuring of conscience and heart which corresponds, become self-deceived. Thus the power of God enables such a mind and such a spirit of conception and creation in man, whereby we can create new worlds, in our minds, rather than institute them. Limits confront the proud.

Mao and Stalin, Hitler and Augustus may have had new worlds or empires or principles in mind, but they did not make them. They being made, were too limited for that. Being like God has been a motive from Eden, but it does not produce that result, any more than a child wanting to act like daddy makes it possible, merely perilous.

Appropriate power is always necessary from the first. Divorce from its source is one double negative which is NOT a positive, for each decrement merely diminishess the other.

POWER IN HISTORY

Thus has this POWER moved the worlds into existence; and then it moves into history as desired: and this KNOWLEDGE of God moves upon this planet in terms of the Bible, where the Lord states what He will and then ALWAYS does what He is committed to, making it very clear that this is the case UNIQUELY, so that no 'god' or man can compete (Isaiah 41,43,48). This personal propagating power, this eternally realised intelligence brings created reality to be, that it may realise at its peak, in man, the communication of God, if by any means there may be communion with Him, rather than rearguard actions of disfaith or the wild recalcitrance of unbelief. Being unlimited, God needs nothing; being Creator He is disposed in fact to bring in love, the Gospel of grace.

Such is His word in the Bible, uniquely verified in all its words, expressly set up for testing (Isaiah 48), and uniquely valid, coming from a truth which is THERE, above mere reactions and responses, and anterior to creation, and which requires no force for its acceptance. Truth is like that. Force is wholly irrelevant for any to consent to it, and where force is used in such a way, there is no truth (cf. SMR pp. 50ff., 65ff.).

God enters this world because as in its first formation, He has a plan for the reformation, but not of the world, which like an old car gets battered and is better replaced than becoming a source of endless expense and break-downs (the author conceived such a course necessary recently, moving from a 33 year old car to a 3 plus year old one, and this has been the case).

For what then is this plan of reformation applicable ? This plan involves, as it often does even for us in our ways: a personal action. Thus one might have to change a tyre, get a new battery ... one acts as the case seems best to require.

This personal action of God  related to the nature of PERSONS. Persons are not at all like matter. They think. They create, NOT merely within the parameters of human predication.  Persons are a magnificent invention. They will conform to their culture, not conform, anti-conform, elect preference for a preceding culture, for some parts of it, make up cultures, replace all culture with concept and so on, almost ad infinitum. Man is very variable in thought, but very potent in imagination.

Unfortunately his imaginations, nearly always at the top level, conflicting with actuality, lead him into devastations and this first of all, at the spiritual level, by will, and then at the mental level, by wilting, where brain-washing as by Mao, fails; then at the physical level, where unwillingness to be brain-washed leads to blood-baths, as so often in China, Russia, Yugoslavia, Pakistan, Israel and the PLO and so forth.

Small wonder the Old Testament uses a term (hebel in transliteration) for BREATH, usable in the sense of vanity or vapour, for false gods; and as Harris, Archer and Waitke point out in their Theological Word Book of the Old Testament, this is seen in its implication both that man tends to take on the character of what he worships, and that his false gods tend to his destruction. Such faithless pseudo-divine figments, idols,  ARE indeed represented as vanity, emptiness, mere breath, and they reduce to vanity, emptiness, and hence destruction those sufficiently misled to indulge in such spiritual drugs.

Again, in II Kings 17:15 they cite (NIV):

"They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves."

There to be seen is the unauthorised licence to be moulded by the worthless, and the authorised result of becoming like the emptiness desired, the drab deities of the imagination only, so that one's reality becomes like them, an empty and worthless cipher. Small wonder man then clamours about the 'meaningless', confusing his self-imposed desert island with the lushness of divine creation.

Alas for man in revolt. He is more than mind, and more than mischief is the result of such excursions into the occult, evaporations into the heat of foolish desire.

Thus persons can kill, or maim others, and seek to play God to them, forcibly to re-make their thought or ignore the testimony of the evidence and seek to impose this on their spiritual prey,  craftily or openly. As an example, recently one heard from the Queensland government that their teaching in schools of creation/evolution had the latter enthroned IN ITS MODEL, in terms of a form of contemporary geology and evolutionary change. However, there IS NO CITABLE MODEL, since as pointed out in reply, there is in fact internecine dispute among evolutionists in their diverse dynamics of thought and conception.

In fact, VARIED models of the organic evolutionary myth become bases for each to shoot at the other. This is often aptly, since all are contrary to scientific method and to truth (cf. SMR pp. 140ff., TMR Ch. 1,   Ch. 8) and there is much to mock, as mock they do in their own camp^*1A.

How can you DECIDE (with consultation of course, and various authorities to make it sound good) on a model to be taught as the model, when there is no such thing in the universe in the field of organic evolutionism. Darwin is long dead, though many still attend the office daily, as if he were still there^*1  . Gould has some 90% of initial biota GONE, not gained, in his transfixed admissions about the Cambrian. That, says he, is how the present provisions of biological design compare with those oh so near to the beginning, in his observations. Designs are GOING and MOST have gone, is his dictum.

Does knowledge truly find a reason for DISAPPEARANCE in terms of appearance ? In science, do you give a theory for the OPPOSITE of what you find in order to explain it ? Is delusion becoming de rigueur, and confusion a necessary component of scholarly thought ! Is wanton tenacity to replace sensitivity to truth ? Is the contrary of methodology to parade, like Brezhnev  or  Gorbachev, with his tanks before the collapse of the system, as if the sheer effrontery to thought were a plus! Perhaps it is, as a fulfilment of the prophecy to this effect.

That is the way of it predicted in II Peter 3:3-5 (cf. Joyful Jottings   8). Yet its prediction does not acclaim its predication. If it was to come, in other words, its coming is not for that reason blameless! Thus the known plans of Lady Macbeth to kill the King made nothing better for her 'Out damned spot' episode of cancerous guilt!

The FACTS are as the WORD of God announces, and immovable, remain unafflicted by pretence, unsociable to spiritual seances, to gradualistic impossibilities and philosophical dishonourings of the name of God, in what ?  It is in intrusive imaginations, waves working out their own shame for universes unlike what this is shown and stated to be, made by others gods in other ways with illusory powers that create only confusion, which is the fitting shame for those who follow such anti-evidential ideas, and irrational ramblings.

Returning then from the rambunctious surrealisms of collapsing culture,  to reality, let us face things. Reality never allows you to cheat, as for example by having other (imaginary and so not very helpful) worlds which lend a hand to this one, and atone for the decline of this one in the imagined incline of their own, so that nothing really is ever gained: for if this were so, then the ABILITY to decline in those ones, would require the creation of the potential decline-stuff for the decline, and this would need the same source as before.

Strip it, tease it, make it in parts, it has the same requirement, as officiously insistent as any officer of the people; and it will not cease till recognised. Neither magic nor nothing made you, and for all there is cause, and that cause is eternal and adequate. It is true that you never get anything for nothing. You CAN receive something as a gift, but not from nothing, since nothing is not there to give, and in any case, has nothing to give if it were.

	Creation is not a mathematical lapse,
	or a self-contradictory paradise
	(which makes a new form of paradise, rather well deserving the adjective 'paradisiac', in that it is very reminiscent of the sound of para-dizzy-act),
	but a multi-disciplinary action.

POWER, the power of God in fact, MADE the universe. Its absence did not. It did not arrive unmade, nor is its making to be imagined away. Imagination is powerless against facts of an extant variety! Shutting the eyes does not remove the sight for others; nor does it depart when they are re-opened. Wishful thinking, like thoughtful wishing is a disease, and no paradise or even reality awaits it to succour its mood, or follow its mode. The word of God however continues, like the world, in perfect harmony with its realities, never old-fashioned, though science may be out-of-date in a decade.

As the creation limited realities by adequate power to what they were to be, and made place for each, so by His same word has God made the path for re-creation where it applies. It is not gross. It is not mere force. Power was never in the abstract, always requiring form for action, some nature for operation of it and for it. It is as personal as God is, and its outworking now is as always, according to His designs and His purposes.

The POWER of God MADE the solution to the misuse of liberty in which man is so expert, indeed often impassioned, to the point that some NEW MAN was to be created in China, via Communism; and yet, alas, the old man is all that can be seen in that slaughterous system, with disgusting pretences, lies, fraud, deception, defilement of truth, ruin of personality, with limping bodies, ruined physique abounding. The lawless adventurism of the cult of the lawless, the communist oppression speaks its own language no less than does Islam (cf. More Marvels Ch. 4). Indeed,  the great experiment in imagination went on confrontation with reality, violence and death is code words for 'adjustment'. It went on its degraded and degrading way, as if determined to plumb the bottomless pit. Jung Chang's WILD SWANS is an exemplar in excruciating detail of such towers of impious pretence.

Man's spirit, again verification of his source, was not made for man's devised gods, and force him as you will, he is not putty but person, and acts like it. Subverted some may be; sliced and tossed others; but the spirit of man finds neither rest nor reality without his Creator, as one would expect. History in no small measure is a book of misdeeds of the dribbling dreams of blood-letters whose god is their own force, whose insight is their own mind, and whose authority is the violence they induce, whose destiny is without hope, whose epitaph is their inhumanity. Man without God is without understanding; and the world is his formal reference! Man with God has God as his reference, and his staying power has been constructed by God, is maintained by God, as part of His program and provision for re-creation ... of fallen man into adopted man, the children of God.

It is ONE thing to be a creation of God, with spirit; it is another to be ADOPTED by God, through His Spirit. For that, He has, as in all creation, His own way.

But what of copy-cats of spirit ? What of communism's new man ? This anachronistic and loitering endeavour to mimic the New Testament emphasis on a new creation by the SAME Creator who made the first and now fouled one, mankind, in terms of those who return freely to their Creator, lacks all understanding and all testimony accordingly. It is phrase from the foolish, like inventions that do not work.

Communism is one more of the devil's unoriginal mayhems. It is like a child trying to create an atomic bomb by pressing levers. It is not helpful behaviour, and it is unproductive as well! As to the New Testament's logical order for a New Man, see Colossians 3:10, Ephesians 4:24, Titus 3:3-7, where the Supreme Creator restoring the supreme defilement, brings in a new creation which makes anew what was spiritually both foiled and fouled.

God, Creator, is now shown as Redeemer as well (as forecast by Him in Hosea 13:14, Micah 5:1-4, Psalm 45). It is the man He knows, having created him, whom He addresses; and man as he is, not as he might be or is imagined to be. That is why His work is effective, and His rule within. Thus we read this in Luke  17:21:

The only One who can do that is naturally the One who made what is 'within', the spirit of man, the heart of man, the person that is man as he is, and not as he is superficially imagined to be.

There is only one MAN, and there is only one way of putting him right, with the spiritual power and the mental processing which is required; and that is to be found in the ONLY ONE who understands man utterly, namely the One who invented him. What is required for his effectual restoration is precisely He who was required for his creation; and where He is denied, then man is source of his own demise, the Pinnochio of pride with the growing nose of the liar. As I John 2:22 puts it, "Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son."

The word and the work of God are inseparable, and His eternal Word is the sole path of His eternal redemption, salvation, restoration and adoption. What else ? He is not speechless, and His actions are wrought by His word.

His technology no man has equalled or come near to equalling, as men puddle around with the bits which as in a space rocket construction, are put there not with inherent significance in themselves, but in the interests of design, which alone gives them MEANING. His provision for redemption is no less, and no man can equal it; for the death of Christ, God expounded into flesh to show as man the way for man and to provide the way back for man, ONLY God can bring about. Death, I will be your plagues! He announced (Hosea 13:14), and so He was. For others, however death is THEIR plague, a distinctly grisly thing without the God of creation, who most mercifully, is also revealed in the Bible as the God of salvation.

He made the man. Man made the mess. Man did not have to do so; but so he chose. God made the solution, and gave the resolution; and most merciful of all, man need only receive it, but the 'it' is 'Him', for Christ is God in flesh, His word as man.

With Him, then, you have God; without Him, you do not. John declares (I John 5:12:):

"He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life."

God has provided this plan by POWER.

This is one of the IRRUPTIONS of power into this universe, involving Christ Jesus, the Lord as man, in intense focus of deity in His own eternal person, and the power of His Holy Spirit in application of His gift and enablement of His directions. It is the most personal, precious and central of His actions into this world.

His power on earth showed

	in healing, in word, in rising,
	in being killed at the time and in the manner predictively prescribed (Highway of Holiness Ch. 4, Heart and Soul, Mind and Strength Ch. 5, Joyful Jottings 22-25) ,
	in the Gospel which His deeds enabled (cf. SMR pp. 755ff.),
	and in the results which His presence ennobled.

THIS PERSON like the power of the prescription, that it should be DONE, was another divine irruption and the acme and summit of all. For man, without this, nothing good, and with it, all evil is swallowed up and all things work together for those who love God, the called according to HIS purpose (Romans 8:29). The Gospel itself, enshrining and applying these things, as predicted by Isaiah in particular as noted above, this too is a further irruption of deity into this world.

Thus we have four major incursions so far:

	creation,
	declaration in word,
	deity-manifestation in Christ and
	salvation in the Gospel.

Let us however add a little in place.

Thus there was the power of God in the flood (News 1), so vainly denied for so long in the face of evidences so amazingly clear that one can but admire the pertinacious and obtrusive tenacity of those who reject it, as an expression of the will of man! One admires it in this respect, however, not in terms of the truth. This universal flood was admittedly destructive, but it was also inventive, since it allowed a fresh beginning without a fresh world.

Again, there was the POWER of bringing Abraham into service and keeping his descendants intact, despite endless pillage and pogrom, ridicule and resistance. This man, God used as an example and founder of a nation, and through that nation, the source for the sending of the Word of God in definitive incarnation. It was a descendant, as predicted in Genesis 12, of this man who would be the source of decisive blessing in the world. It was to be so, and it has been so. It is always so with the Lord, for His yes is yes, and His no is no; and His word is the truth.

This same divine power latterly has brought back to their land as predicted (SMR Appendix A, It Bubbles ... Ch. 1), the nation which, when presented with this blessed incarnation - murdered Him.  This was admittedly according to plan, but then God thinks and plans, and tells us (as noted in Amos 3:7, a vast mercy), what He is about.

It is so nice to know that He tells us, see that He has told us and then to see Him make it happen, just as He said, with more security than that of any physical law; for that is mere program and procedure accorded to matter: but as to His word, this is work of divine mind and heart transcending all those operational minutiae that matter is moulded to provide. Nice, we say ? Rather it is an astounding condescension, marked by that passion of love and glory of kindness which being His, is both source of all love, and provision for all who receive Him as He is.

Nor is this all. If He has brought Israel back as He said, after the taunting, killing programs and pogroms (cf. Leviticus 26, Jeremiah 30, cf. The Biblical Workman Ch. 1, Ezekiel 36 including 36:15), He has not limited His action. In fact,  He has also operated as prescribed and predicted by His own word in the Bible, on the rest of the world!

The other nations, the Gentiles, are not doing noticeably better in principle, than Israel; for they are becoming increasingly determined to obliterate the word and ways of God from their national hearts ( cf. Of the Earth, Earthy... Ch. 11). As we have often seen, all this being predicted, occurred and much more (cf.  SMR Chs. 8  -  9, Answers to Questions Ch. 5); but here we look merely at some crassly obvious expressions of the power of God in terms of our universe, which is not really free-wheeling along, not at all!

You want power ? This is where it is. It is the power of God, delicious in conception, delightful in operation, but as with all enormous power, not to be idly trifled with. As to power, this one is infinite since nothing limits God, and when God works, WHO will restrain Him! (Isaiah 14:27).

It is the most magnificent thing that the most power in the universe, is OVER the entire universe, over man in particular, that it works in wisdom, fashions with knowledge, and has the fashion for man, however unfashionable it may be currently to acknowledge Him or it. And this ? it is a powerful tragedy, greatly enlightened and lightened by the fact that it is merely self-imposed by man, each one who is dead to it.
Here, no Hamlet goes to his sad death, asking Horatio to tell his story; for to the end, man is at liberty to receive the Gospel, and God loves and would have all (Colossians 1:19ff.), so there is no head-wind but sin, and no tragedy but denial of the truth. In all truth, love is there, and man is made for it, made with it, needs it and should give his programs of wretched self-reliance as a race, a parting with no kiss at all!

POWER IN ITS PLACE

CREATION, SELECTIVE DEVASTATION, SELECTIVE DESTINATION, PRESERVATION, REVELATION and its REALISATION, INCARNATION of Deity, MANIFESTATION, DIVINE LOVE: these have been a few major axes of POWER in this universe, starting with its formation. Freedom is not unfashioned by this power; and foolishness is not removed without it. It is creation, formation, information, revelation, realisation and reception or rejection which apply. The first are from God; the last is from mankind in general, although with no small number of exceptions, of which, nearer the first, Abraham was one, and nearer still to the first, Noah another. He was one. God is one. One and one make joy in this case, and the power of God makes a path. Rejection too has its paths. This you see with great emphasis in Proverbs 1:

                          And will be secure, without fear of evil."

Thus when a nation like Babylon is cited for devastation, or Assyria, and the cities follow the clime of revelation, and fall in the way described, or Tyre (cf. Pitter-Patter ... Ch. 4), this likewise is simply an expression of POWER, divine power to be sure, but power which is not inherent in our systems, but expressed by our Maker. It is good to get used to seeing things in their actual perspective, for it removes bruising not only to thought, but to understanding itself. It also helps make for the believer, the path of life more practical.

Always remember this, God is not limited, and if He limits you in any way, this is not by some worldly necessity, and may be undone at His own will and discretion. Thus I Corinthians 10:13 tells us what experience for the Christian illustrates, that He gives you nothing you cannot bear, no test past measure; and with the trial comes the way of escape, whether as Stephen in His glorious presence to fulfil your task and proceed to His side, or as John, to continue in Patmos, the Gospel and Revelation proceeding from his hand at God's continuing power.

The power of God then must be realised, recognised and applied, for life to be what it is designed to be (anyone can run his car into a tree, but this is not the design of the vehicle, its purpose).

Then you can understand at once two further aspects of reality: it DOES certainly help when you consider reason in general, and scientific method in particular, in your thinking. Thus the datum that prayers are answered in extraordinary fashions for many in terms of Christ's promises, NOT in such a way as to assist self-indulgence or weakness, but to ensure the performance of a mission - as in the writing by the present author of this library: this becomes merely the fulfilment of an expectation (cf. James 1:5-8, 4:2, 5:4,14).

The answers to prayer in Christ's name for the believer, to be sure, have all the originality and sovereignty of a mighty Power and Person; but they have, for all that, the covering of the case. The Rosalind Goforth volume, How I Know God Answers Prayer, or the description of the extraordinary and consistent answers to prayers of George Mueller in his orphanage work, and the accuracy of the answers where needed money was concerned: these do not appear as a contribution from mystery. They become simply a promise-performance instance, and enter that case book serenely.

Yet you say, What about the Jobs of this world, whose suffering intensifies ? Yes, such things occur, and mini-Job experiences may afflict us; but what of it ? This too is understandable, and if even in this world we often have the privilege of seeing the WHY of the WOE, it is not hard to conceive the way the rest will follow. In Job's case, incidentally, as in the book of that name, the man was righteous, perhaps a touch self-righteous, but not essentially so, and was used as a program piece in which answer was given to the devil's CHALLENGE to God to find someone who loved Him for who He is and not for gifts receivable.

It was a touching and terrible piece, but a triumphant and marvellous one also; and the point was made. HE DID! Shivering and suffering, troubled and vociferous, yet God could cry in the very midst of it all, I KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVES, and that He would come in the latter time to earth, that He Job, would see Him eye to eye!

Thus the INTER-PERSONAL side of reality - the Maker and the Made, the GOD and the MAN, the Creator and the Creature, the wide Maker and the enabled agent: this is part of the schema, and with this you find that it is not at all like a scientific case with stuff like matter. This is so,  since man has, but is not mere matter, being able, for that matter, to describe matter and to manipulate it by mind, which matter does not do, no matter what matters be brought into it, as if to persuade it.

In this interpersonal reality, then, there is POWER shown in answers to prayer. In the case, for example of writing such very books as this one which now you read. These could have been cut short many times, by eye injury, by hand upset, by financial stringency, by other labours, by confusion, by lack of memory and so on. In EACH case, the agent of interruption or halting was overcome by the power of God alone. At times, as in the miracle of the eye healing, this was made dramatically and medically obvious! This has been most refreshing, and works with all else, in showing the delightful simplicity of being a CHILD OF GOD, the God of all comfort. Suffering in this world for Him ? but of course. Inability ? no, not that. He specialises in the impossible.

One learns by experience, the impossible (to all thought confined to nature) becomes possible (in terms of the Supernatural God who administers things for persons, and most graciously for persons who are His children by faith in Jesus Christ, the actual way to Him, as distinct from the pretence of hope or the imagination of carelessness). One learns to see the amazing, the healing, the help, the clarity, the direction, to experience the guidance, simply to be AWARE of the presence of God with a beneficence difficult to describe, as blazing light is hard to see, but with an effect beautiful to behold.

Such was  the POWER of God that brought Moses and the company of Israel out of the power of that most dynamic monarch, the Pharaoh, proud in will, invisibly determined in heart, and brought them by His mercy and grace,  purposeful in disposition, to the very gate of the promised land. But man is personal also! Thus when there, after so much preliminary and preparation, they REFUSED by will. By modelling their desires for ulterior purposes, and getting a clash with the program of God, they declined to ENTER IT. You could scarcely believe this to be possible, until you know man! This however was how it happened.

Where now the power ? Oh, not a problem. They waited in the desert 40 years (what a time!) until the ones who had REFUSED BY WILL to enter that promised land, were dead. Now  their grown children entered the land, and in doing so, they would not have to leave their parents behind. As to them, they had by then passed on; though Joshua and Caleb, who had been willing to enter from the first, THEY were kept alive and DID enter!

THE POWER OF THE SOLUTION IN HIS PLACE

A solution ? Certainly. GOD BROUGHT THEM IN, and being personal and dealing with persons made in His image, He did it in a way which TOOK ACCOUNT of that aspect. They, the nation,  came in a little later. There had been no time limit on when they would enter, nor, and please note this, was there any mere FORCE to MAKE them enter. Those who  came later, came  freely. Indeed, they came gladly! This is another important aspect of the inter-personal relationship of God and man, and understanding this is another component or reality, which aids the departure of confusion. It is the REAL and not the simplistic which operates. 

Things are as they are, and not another thing. Imagination is discursive; God is purposive. He is the I AM WHO I AM, and when man tries the same, it is mere chatter of wilful children. Man is I AM WHO I AM FORMED TO BE. The wonder is this, that being personal, with aptitude to know God on HIS WAVE-LENGTH ONLY (surprise, surprise!), man is not a packaged programmee but a genuine person, able to love and will and choose and be meaningful, the very friend of God. What a privilege is this, infinite in conception, intimate in fulfilment!

The POWER of God and the NATURE of inter-personal relationship are various phases, facets if you will, of the jewel of understanding. Ignore them, and you simply clash with the facts; follow them, and as noted above, all things mutually reinforce and collate (cf. Proverbs 1 with Proverbs 8:32-36 and John 3:15-36). It is almost, then, like watching one of those amazing machines which spit out papers into piles, turn them around, staple them in sections without the least hesitation or error! Using them makes it ever so much easier, and you get the job done. When you work with the power of God, you work hard: but then the thing, it all works and it works PERSONALLY!

Your assistance which you receive then, is not based on air: it is not 'vanity'. Now it is no mere self-conceived product of ambition or frustration, exasperation or imagination: it is real, relished, adequate; for as to God, He is always adequate, or as with Abraham, the Eternal God, the Everlasting God (Genesis 21:33), the God who Sees or Provides (Genesis 22:14). As El Shaddai, the Almighty, also basic to Abraham's relationship with Him, God was the all knowing, all seeing, all disposing, all powerful One, able to destroy, to sustain, without parallel or limit. As it was, so it is. It is the wonder that He is faithful, as also shown to Abraham, inventive and without parallel in overcoming evil with good, indeed a friend surpassing all comparison for His children.

He is Jehovah-Jireh, the all seeing, providing, sustaining, wholly aware, manifest as Jesus Christ, to whom every knee will bow, for He is the truth and as God, the only Saviour (John 14:6, Isaiah 45:22-23, Philippians 2). Nothing is not there; and nothing else is there. He is sovereign, source and sufficiency, saviour, God and glorious. He knows who are His and what they do, and what He will do for them.

This too requires as do all things, power, directed power, whether directly or indirectly. Being His own, it is sufficient, however He may choose to deploy it. As Paul declares in II Corinthians 3:

"And we have such trust through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." The 'letter' was the law which induced conviction of sin (Romans 7:6,10-12); the Spirit of God, as the communing presence of God, works as it worked in Paul, mightily, and the sufficiency is vital, vigorous, and in rest (Philippians 4:6-7).

How wonderful is God's imparted gift of Christ, and how splendid His powerful working. As Paul declared:

"But by the grace of God I am what I am:
and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain;
but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I,
but the grace of God which was with me.
Therefore whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed."

So does God impart to whom He will, how He will among His children; and the working being from Him, His is the glory. It is delicious to have this divine enterprise at work with power to perform, that He may be glorified, shown to be WHO He is and the WONDER and COUNSELLOR that He is! So is there a sufficiency WITHIN the ways of the Lord for His people, within their hearts, minds, spirits and ways; and so is it found as He has said. Sufficient He is in all things, and sufficient is His way; but it is not sufficient to look on it, but rather to walk it!

A PURPOSE IN ITS PLACE

The purpose of this chapter has been merely this, to help realise the necessity of working in the context of DIVINE POWER if you want ANY understanding of life. It is a failure to do this which was predicted as a basic thrust of the end of the Age before the return of Christ, and it is certainly fulfilled; and if, dear reader, you find this rather a shock to the intellectual system or the spiritual life, this would simply be one more illustration of what God said would be. On this, you may wish to consult II Timothy 3:1-5, where we find that in the last days, a denial of the power of God, or rather a religion which does not operate with this: a form without this potent function, will be popular. It will indeed become something of cultural norm!

 Such was the prediction.

So now it is.

Some strain after mere mirrors of power, and make powerful their own ways in disobedience and presumption, even in churches of splash; but the power of God is in obedience (Acts 5:32), not in the invention of philosophies, seeking illegitimate matings with the word of God, which for its part, is pure and immiscible. His thoughts are not as ours, and we must learn from Him, not tell Him! This too is not the power of God, any more than sanctified indifference, masquerading as faith. Splash and crash or sold for cash, form and convention or meaningless invention, it is at base all one: godliness has no substitute in form or invention. It is to be with God AS HE IS, has declared Himself to be, and this by the ENTRY POINT in the person whom from eternity (Micah 5:1-3), He sent.

Not as some secretary or commissar came this Messiah, but as Saviour; and it is God alone who is this (Isaiah 43:10-11). Some may feel slighted to need to come to God by another; but this is NO OTHER. That is the whole point. GOD CAME AS GOD (cf. Isaiah 40:10, John 20:29, Philippians 2), and it is to Him that one comes. No other is good enough; no other is God. The false forms of man however, they are mere mirages of the day, fashioned in culture, fermented in philosophy, truancies from truth, daring to use its name!

It leads to confusions innumerable, love of witchcraft, whether of the organic evolutionary kind, or the more directly mystic kind, the debasing of life as in Communism and the crass and all but incredible follies of infantile kind which have resulted. Not infantile however have been the crushings of infants and the callousing of persons which have followed, as in China for example! There is judgment in the offing, and behold, it is here even now as the predicted earthquakes, raging waters, signs in the heavens (I found it around 5 years of age or so, a beautiful and amazing part of the life of the day to find an aeroplane scooting through the sky, and it made a type of monumental impact on the nascent mind at that stage - but now we have moon landings and space platforms!), wars of dynamic devilry and religions of imposing brutality seize the earth, and all this as if a teacher were taking a child by the scruff of the neck and ... SHAKING!

Indeed, God indicates perfectly clearly both in the Old and in the New Testament that He is going to SHAKE the earth! You find this in Hebrews 12:26, Haggai 2:6 cf. Isaiah 24. The earth is asking for even more shaking as it reviles Israel, brought back not only at God's plan reaches its summit (as in Romans 11, Ezekiel 36-37, cf, SMR Appendix A), but as an INDEX to the end of our Age (Luke 21:24)! There is shaking in that, in particular, as predicted also (Zechariah 12:1-12).

Man is trying to 'solve' in ways not spoken by God, even there, another form of religion without power. But power is of God, who has already shown it there, as in the crucifixion and the resurrection of the Messiah, predicted and performed, now in the restitution of Israel, its wars a triumph in 1948, 1967, 1973, as also predicted. Man has other ideas; this is the cultural norm! It is also the incendiary for divine fire (Micah 7:15). So does the forecast havoc make itself vigorous!

When things are shaken, you know, it does not FEEL the same as when they are not! That is another aspect of understanding which it is so helpful to have concerning the POWER of God. A slack class with a careless teacher might even begin to imagine that he/she did not exist, that it was class self-rule. When however the teacher arises to act, especially if with wrath, then any such illusion is dispelled promptly. If then the world is to be taken by the scruff of the neck (with any necessary apologies to those whose imagination flags) and shaken, it is easier to comprehend this  if you have the factual understanding of reality, of the power of God, and hence of His having His own purposes, as well as man having his. In this way,  what man proposes, it is not what God has to swallow. No, it is rather, what God disposes! (cf. Proverbs 16:33! Ephesians 1:11).

	While then, Stephen Jay Gould, in his Wonderful Life, was attending the funeral of Darwin, or if you do not like metonymy, Darwinism (although it loves to try to sneak back by virtue of cultural rigidity);
	while we, for our part, have to attend that of his own approach (not in its negation there, but in its proposed alternative) because punctuation does not provide what has to be punctuated, and pauses do not eliminate the need for causes, and sudden proliferation is not the same as natural glidings and waftings, however ludicrous these were in their imports of divine attributes - and decrease remains the opposite of increase;
	while we still rather sympathise with Nilsson whose orchids had to come IN ONE STEP (pretty realistic there, as well as pretty, since the irreducible minima of correlated items cannot be made bit by bit, never working till complete, never visible in things past or present in doing so, either: such a burden!*2 ): their floral beauty descending like a bride from above, and that without dressing room; and
	while can understand the desire of Løvtrup to get the thing moving in the genetic phase in some ontogenetic way, not specifiable in any demonstrable manner of course, for even the compression of starting points in programs does nothing to remove the necessity for their inclusion of the programs themselves, actually: there is nothing in all this, to be said about the real issue. The removal of these truancies removes mess, but does not create mass, invent personality or legislate freedom.
	The real issue remains as it has always remained where it can be based with reason, and verified with fact. Fact ? for this, a not so noticed reality in the furores of mere imagination:
	consult SMR pp. 140ff., TMR Ch. 1. It is even so. Creation is not by fiddling but by power. That is just the way it is. You find that in your own life. Even if some 'creation' floats effortlessly at times into your mind, it is not from nowhere, for your imagination and intuition and reason and enquiring spirit have been at work; or else the supernatural. No, you need what it takes to have what you get.

Nothing comes from nothing; but what does come comes from what is adequate. IT cannot come from nothing. IT has always to be there. And what it did is the universe, for example; and you and me. And what that means is this, as one eminent specialist relative of mine once said on realising the realities even of archeology .. Why if this is true, it is all true, and that means ...

 The removal of a bloc on a road, opens the way.

EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE IN PLACE, EVEN YOU AND I

These, or words to this effect, were the utterance. It is a good utterance. It means that God is not mocked, and that it is the POWER of God which is one of the ingredients of your life, whether you like it or not. Not LIKE IT! Why if there is any love, any mercy, any kindness, any understanding, any life, any light, any coverage of cases, any reliability in trouble, any watchfulness over one's weaknesses or working on one's character, it is there. Empirically, that is just the way it is, in the name of Jesus Christ, in the kingdom of heaven. Here it still can hurt; but so can fire. It is however so wonderful that 'living' without it is like naming one's preferred home site as the tip.

The end is now the point in sight: the beginnings have gone by some time ago. The beginning of the end (Matthew 24:8), or beginning of specialised sorrows associated with the end, this too has come. It escalates the way, for an egg in good condition, heat incubates. The heat is on, so that hatching of the End of the Age progresses. The culmination of all these fancies which are not so fancy in their outcomes, and all these profusions of contusions, which are not so lovable in their bodies, those so cumulatively smitten, and the sight of justice lying as if dead in the street, while fancy words and gruesome deeds compete for attention, often from the self-same source: it is near. It was for Israel as in Isaiah 59, and this vision shows equally what is coming for this present world, with the return of the Messiah, the Lord who comes to Jerusalem.

It is no use loitering there, any more than it was for JWs^*3 to have harbour seats or other contrivances for watching an impudently wrong assessment of His return (YOU CANNOT KNOW and HE SAYS SO - Acts 1). It is not where you are, but WHOSE you are that matters. If illusion is your God, so be it; it does not help. As Jeremiah put it, "The gods which did not make the heaven and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens." Reasonable is that! But you see, it does not help YOU if you rely on these cultural inventions, nor those whom you know, whose god is illusion, does it!

It is time for action. The author has a profoundly rich relative who admonished him about the need to ACT. It is not enough to surmise or envisage. This much is true. In these fields far more than in mere monetary matters, it is not enough to envision.

You must act. Did not Israel ACT in REFUSING to enter the promised land ? Did not Joshua ACT in entering it (on invitation, but as to Christ ALL are invited, however few may come! - Matthew 11:28ff.)! Did not the makers of the atomic bomb act in order to foil Hitler and the Rising Sun ? Whether it was wise so to act, is a question which merely accentuates the fact that when the POWER is not a mere part of nature, enshrined by program within its interstices, but the POWER OF GOD, then alone is it  both surely safe and essential to act.

You do not act, as did Ian Thorpe, by thinking you hear a noise for starting, either; for that is not productive. You act where the power of God indicates and His wisdom shows, where the ONLY Saviour came and the ONLY verified word of the infinite God is to be found, where verification concurs and scientific method insists, where archeology smiles and where validity is satisfied. You receive Christ as the PLAN of God in PERSON as God coming IN PERSON, and you take His ACTION in bearing guilt for the godless, or those caught in the sins of indifference, false dynamic or other, for yourself.

You do not want it ? This is the wonder of God's creation of freedom that you may so opt; and you insist, I WILL DO WHAT I WANT! There, it is the very nature of the reality that you can do this. You get then the other alternative, the universe you did not create (for a while before it goes) and the god who is not there (whether yourself, not really a god, or other - there is only one God); and this is not adequate for life.

That then is the culmination and curtains combined. It is the end of the Act. Yet Plays, however interesting, are not real life. For me and my house, give us the Real, the POWER OF GOD, and the God of all comfort. It is apposite for us, and we need Him.  We do not want a mere play, verbal or otherwise, but the very PERSON and POWER of God. God has provided with creation, restoration, and it is here and nowhere else, just as God is Who He is and none else. With truth, that is the way it is!

NOTES

*1A Some of the reply to the Queensland government spokesman is given below, illustrating this point. The interchange related to the change in the Queensland educational approach from something more comprehensive in coverage to the now more usual capitulation to the part in education, to one evolutionary model or another, without scientific coverage of the reality of creation at all: a gross misuse of information that deprives the young of adequate instruction.

Yet the data themselves appear far less pleasing. Certainly the position outlined by the Minister at that time seems far better coverage of the diverse views of hundreds of listable Ph.D. scientists in both categories, creation and evolution, than is now the case.

 

I do not know whether the famous differences, even between radically different schools of evolutionism, were or are represented at all in the curriculum: even though their proponents have long engaged in internecine disputes among themselves – not without reason! and this on the part of scientists of considerable eminence.

 

As a teacher and former Principal, I prefer things to be presented as they are, rather than as a culturally mandated model where voting or structural agreement (however well-intended), rather than rational imprimatur, can make selection by direction of authority. Accordingly, just as the actualities of the gravely diverse scientific models cannot rightly be removed by preference: no more can they be dispatched by various accords of those making policy.

 

In reality, agreement can remove neither the multiplicity of models; nor the famous lines of division promoted among evolutionists themselves; nor yet can it dispatch those between this internally sparring corpus and those notable creationist scientists past and present, who do not and cannot rationally share any such approaches as that one now selected and slated for the curriculum.

 

Nevertheless, thanks for this account of what is current; for after all, that is the core of the request made of your Office. There is no need to reply now. The former and  present Queensland Government positions, and their substantial disparity, are now documented.

 

Yours faithfully,

 

Rev. Dr. Robert E. Donaldson

 

P.S. A presentation of data, references and results relative to the above, and especially to scientific method, creation and evolution, is available in our 78 volume Web Page, at http://webwitness.org.au This may be found directly in many of the volumes there presented, such as the trilogy, and via the index volume, under the topical headings.

*1 An except from Overflight... Ch. 7 is given to this end, below. It is provided with its own end-notes, before *2 appears in its turn.

See also Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Chs.   2,   4.

Discarding the exhaustive testimony of all things, man is becoming a sort of manic-depressive in large numbers, manic about the magic of evolutionism, humanism, secularism, relativism, chauvinism, and depressive about the facts of spoliage, water, pollution, radioactivity, psychosis, neurosis, sexually transmitted disease, hunger and so on. Reality does not smile at this; but grave humour does exist. It is so like Psalm 2, where the Lord, having noted predictively, a millenium before the occurrence, the rejection of the Messiah, and the effort to discard God altogether, LAUGHS!

If you cannot see that judgment is near, is necessary and is sure, as was shown to Habakkuk when FAITH in  God's supervisory completeness and due justice is required, when children are treated in this anti-personnel fashion, in this dehumanised test-tube of junk, then examine just HOW near it is,
according to the Man's Manual, the Bible, that self-attesting and continually verified Book
(cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5, SMR Ch. 8).

 

OVERFLIGHT OF THINGS OVERLOOKED

The weary, bleary theory, it is very simply being put before the fact: it is rationalism, not empiricism, and irrationalism in the sense that the rationalistic dreams, defy the facts. They would like another universe, so that they could have empirical bases (Wake Up World! ... Ch. 5 , Secular Myths ... Ch. 7);
but they find it not; and if they could find it, logic would decease, and mind would be irrelevant,
since there magic is maestro, causation is a casualty and imagination rules. Thought is impossible; theories are noisy sounds.

Not a shred of support for such Darwinesque^*4 theories, says Gould, not even up for consideration. Correct! But then his own, though impressively superior to this dross of Darwin, in that it at least pays some attention to the empirical evidence, progresses by indirection, has no reason to go anywhere, and yet goes everywhere, as life in a meandering sort of way happens upon the very systematic, symbolically constrained, non-meandering marvel, which makes the punctuation^*5 theory of Gould as ludicrous as the making by breaking theory of Darwin. One goes by breaking up the old, with no need for the new; the other goes by meandering to mission. Is there any doubt that Darwin is dead ? Why even his undertaker is dead as well!

In fact, Naturalism is dead. The whole idea that without idea, ideas could be sown, and their equipment to have them in man, on a basis with no idea about ideas, is not ideal! It is in fact irrational rubbish, postulating as if it were in some remote sense 'science', what is contrary not only to the 3 major laws of science (cf. TMR Ch. 1), but to ALL empirical evidence for ANY gross change, in ANY dimension, or ANY information increment, in ANY case, while watching inertly, as MOST of the inventions, and FAR MORE than now exist, are spread in what is called the 'Cambrian era' near the first, in rank profusion of design, that made Gould marvel at its sheer virtuosity.

They watch, likewise, as inventions decrease, and the biota evaporate.

What is it like ? It is like a miser, watching his riches evaporate, but always re-assuring himself form his dreams, that they increase (cf. SMR pp.  252A, 252H).

Yet whoever heard of a virtuoso who wasn't there, playing in ghostly form, from the ruins of  annihilation, to the delight of concert goers. This sort of romancing is the contrary of scientific method, uses theories instead of facts, makes theories contrary to not only facts, but to law, and is inseparable from irrationalism, while arguing ostensibly by reason, for its own unreason. Alice in Wonderland would need classes on confusion in order to qualify, if she wanted to feature in this flimsy film! Chance, the mere omission of purpose, is the exact LACK in any system which exhibits in constant schema, the integrity of purpose, the unity of purpose, the comprehensive arrest of inferior realities to fulfil it, and does so with aplomb far past any need in competition, even if competition could create what is not there! (cf. Ancient Words... Ch. 9 and 13).

Not only then, are we being told that the reason for things is the absence of reason, but that the observable nature of things is 'going down', and that the greatest design irruption was near the FIRST. What then is the drift of it ? Theories that systematically ignore all the criteria have all the appearance of hypocrisy, for we might as well face it: they are mental rebellions, and since the only possible cause of such 'natural' containment is the not so natural misuse of will, customarily called spiritual, we are faced with the facts at last. It concerns the spirit of man, astray, wilfully, crooked as a stick. What is the cause of this ardent ferment, this acme of aberration, this fateful heart ? How CAN it be so free, and so foolish, both!

Man's  spirit is explained by the Spirit of God, secure in His own capacities, without limit or enduement, dowering this bounty to a creation, so that not program but personality can proceed. Freedom, including rebellion, is not a consequence of law, or order, or relationships of entities encoded (cf. Little Things Ch. 5, It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, SMR pp. 348ff.). It is beyond such little things. Its source, as we saw in SMR Ch. 1, is the God who made spirit, and law, and mind, and synthesised the trilogy called man.

 

*4

'Darwinian' has a 'win' whereas Darwin is a dead loss. In this context, Darwinesque seems better, the sheer comedy of the eminent Gould setting the audience ablaze with mirth, except of course when they dare not say good-bye to a miscreant religion of magic, that has well prepared the path for the new fad in witchcraft.

*5

'Punctuated equilibrium'. However, it is not so much punctuation that is needed, as for example the full stop of cessation. It is the SENTENCE IN BETWEEN which lacks. It is not brakes, but accelerator, not ending but starting, and not starting only, but getting it done which is the point at issue. Finesse with punctuation presumes that something is written. Alas it lacks!

See SMR pp. 315Aff..

 

* 2  cf. Stepping Out for Christ Ch. 9.

*3 See for example, Tender Times ... Ch. 8, Joyful Jottings  14, SMR pp. 532ff.,  Things Old and New Ch. 2.