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THE GRANDEUR OF GOD'S GLORY

Time to Look Up to the Glory of God

Looking Around

Man's glory is in two places: firstly it is in his own mind, where vanity, pride and erratic ignorance are produced by delusive substitutes for thought, inane ramblings obliterating logic, a tedium invented in defiance of truth. Secondly, it is in his construction, for it is without any hope of challenge, the most amazing technical and visible contrivance on this earth, so that if this were not design, it would be impossible, through exclusion of the main object fulfilling reasonable definition, to have any referent at all!

(cf. Ch. 4 above, with Delusive Drift ... Ch. 8, Repent or Perish Ch. 7,
Ineffable Peace... Ch. 5, Pride of Life ... Ch. 5, esp. *6, SMR pp. 252 Eff.,307ff., 211ff., 135ff.).

While the above references should be read in concert, one excerpt will suffice here, to remind readers of the point. It is from SMR pp. 252Eff..

Codes, Concepts and Chaos

As to various sequences, credited with various powers: if in the given case, intelligence confers them, that is well. It is not the case in point in this: that we do not SEE that happen. We act on what is already credited to our life accounts; we simply proceed.

If, then, intelligence seizing upon an ordered system with conceptual implications, with inherent conceptualisable laws, formulable codes, explicable in terms of concepts, wishes to address conceptualised considerations to it, from the case in point, it differs in this. We see it happen, are spectators.

Thus if one is writing, then one could talk of certain sequences of print dots which make up certain letters, and certain sequences of letters which make up certain words, and certain sequences of words which make up certain sentences, and certain sentences which make up certain paragraphs, and certain paragraphs which make up certain monographs, and start all over again on certain sequences of dots... and so on, which in the end make up certain words which make up the bibliography.

Again, as readers, we search it for the underlying defining intelligence; as writers there are underlying items which are managed to the point for our purpose by intelligence, using concepts which are researchable in Ph.D. theses or by Central Intelligence codal specialists, to show what they are; and then these are verified or otherwise and so on. Mind is searching for its prototype, or its parallel, as the case may be; its co-ordinative correlatives in matter. In the process, it often errs, which matter abhors, since it merely does - and error is irrelevant to it.

All this is well, but it is wholly beside the point if it or anything even remotely like it were surveyed in intellectual oblivion, and effort were made to 'explain' or ignore with simplistic reductionism the fact that in the actual case, product required thought and understanding and correlated concepts in ways which are not in the evidenced domain of matter; though matter can modally be manipulated to interpret chatter with the form intelligence chooses to give. In general, the confusion of such things and the facile failure to allow for the purpose-product, analysis-action, method-means distinctions are not really very heartening as an exercise in analysis.

It is the nature of apt means to be manipulable to ends; but they neither create the ends nor imply any, per se; only as instruments... Of what ? of intelligence which moves in the domain of thought where error and imagination alike can work outside the reference point of matter... which, in any case, is known only (or assumed) because of mind. This is what we habitually do; and to fail to note these distinctions in looking at other products is a failure which, though perhaps 'self-forgetful', is scarcely dutifully inclined to the whole field of the known. (Cf. p. 80 supra.)

iii) Products

Products ? For a moment, let us pursue that. Areas, then, of functionality, conceptualisability, integral and synthetic codal or procedural sequences in form or act, with symbolic outcomes of their results: this would seem near the norm for the term. To dispense with the term 'product', while observing the ingredients of what it is... is odd categorisation. If these human lives be not products, the world does not know any; for here is the acme of invention. The world however very well knows plenty of them; it has a certain... reluctance to talk about these in the terms the ingredients provide for definition. It knows precisely what it is to have products slowly slip from their high estate by the second law (hence law) of thermodynamics and to have to re-create them as a consequence. It does not know, find or observe non-products with the insignia of products, or how to provide formal logic by the movements of particles; only through them, from mind employing it, or having deployed it, expressing it in symbols.

To revert to the 'whole field of the known', to which we came before 'products'... if all the things which don't (I speak as a scientist, not a dreamer) happen, did happen, then the world would not be what it is. If the collocation of particles induced thought, it would be of much interest: both in terms of the nature of things and of our observations. However, it is the other way around. Thought can produce collocations of particles, and it is per thought that mind does so, using codes very often to symbolise what is in mind.

Thoughtless references to what contains systematic, articulable, symbolic, integrated, correlated and activated codes and their means of implementation, as if it were simply a matter of sequences, suggest blindness.

What is not seen is that neither do such codes arrive in practice (we speak of observation, that old hall-mark of science), nor does the machinery for its operation; nor as Professor Murray Eden of MIT points out, do we perceive anything linguistic capable even of enduring in time when subjected to chance, which (somehow or other) is currently a code. Code presupposes concept. Concept implies mind, and explains system. ( Cf. pp. 137-138, 140-145, 252B supra; 285-308 infra.)

It is most unfortunate, but of the very essence of the 'problem' of mankind, that the combination of a pride in his own nature (which is remarkable only because of its construction, in which man does not participate as an inventor at all), and the wonder of its ingenuity, which is donated to him at birth, help to create delusion. Forgetting where it comes from, he tends to grasp it to his possession like a baby with a particularly enchanting rattle. He becomes not a mandated creation with a mission from His composition by his Creator, but readily in his own sight, a manager of creation, a director of its ways, its lord and the greatest of all.

This illusion mankind, in its festering pockets,  sometimes seeks to summarise or focus in some one leader, like Stalin or Mao, whose little Red Book delusions were taken as if primary school chatter were the acme, like Hitler or Mussolini, like the Emperor in Japan in his heyday before World War II, like Buddha or like the to-be-worshipped Roman Emperors, who in their day, as the Japanese case not long ago, were disposed to inflict penalties on those who did not oblige! (cf. Aviary of Idolatry, News 97, 98, SMR pp. 995-1026).

In complete parallel to these undevout exploits of man's unmannerliness towards the Lord, by desire notionally dispossessing Him of His creation, by thoughtless errors, has been the false prophet syndrome. This has grown as Jeremiah predicted (Jeremiah 23:16-21), and Christ emphasised (Matthew 24:24), so that the category is now multiply populated by sects innumerable, old and new, by heresiarchs and later products of spiritual pollution; for while for long there was a simple, sample congregation of them, now they multiply into New Age, and almost anything is on the rampage^*1A. It is there time, as Christ so  clearly stated as one of the signals of His nearing return, and it is not a little one. It is indeed as if on the Admiral's Barge there were such a set of signals as had never before been seen, advertising the arrival of this barrage of blight on things spiritual.

Sometimes it is poetic, as when a thing strangely but witlessly called 'Nature' is invoked as if it were striving and arriving and sleekly seeking more ingenious things to do, filling gaps in its intelligent exhibits, and so on; and this often appears in what is ostensibly science. So profound and frequent is this irrational and flowery error in the works and words of some scientists, that it as though the deficiency of poetry from early youth in some specialist educational regimens, had left some of them vulnerable to later life pseudo-exuberance in the field.

It could even be seen as some sort of repression, breaking the bonds of restriction and the bounds of common sense, not to mention reason. Personification is a poetical device, not a logical ground! To forget this is to be the slave of imagination and to lack the salve of reason. It is as if the logical impasse which the materialist faces becomes an obsession and breaks through. As noted in News 98 of such a position:

 From mindless matter comes the determination of all mentality, to the effect that it is has no intrinsic reality. That is the theory. That is the province of matter. This is the basis and determinant. The real produces the unreal which is so real it tells the real what it is. In fact, the reality of mind is a pre-condition of the theory of matter being true; so that materialism is self-contradictory at the outset; and inadequate at the outcome.

Whatever however may be the impulsions to such ludicrous worship of Nature, they are mere vagaries of romance, for 'Nature' is almost treated like a goddess by a peculiar irony, by those seeking to make it appear in many cases, fit for a materialist construction^*1. Examples of this are noted in SMR pp. 211ff..

To be rational, one must be realistic, and consider what produces what, what exhibits it, what verifies it and what is comportable with all scientific law and rational procedure. As shown in SMR pp. 140ff., in TMR Chs. 1, 5, 8, as in Earth Spasm ... and Secular Myths and Sacred Truth and Swift Witness 6, for example:  it is precisely this rigorous procedure which requires, rather than suggests, creation, and rebuts the inanimate machinations of materialistic evolutionism which are as invalid in conception as unverified in execution, as invisible to observation (cf. SMR p.  312)^*2A.

This, creation,  is what performs in the required disciplines in the required way, with contradistinct and simple triumph over the magical desires for investing systems with self-elevating powers which they show neither on logical grounds (cf. SMR pp. 307ff., Repent or Perish Ch. 7), nor  in observation nor in demonstrable imagination, put to the test. The term 'chance' is a complete misnomer^*2B, for it bears within its verbal being, rank overtones of what in a highly personal and remarkable series of systems and persons such as this world, may come at very high levels without being sought. This does not produce such systems, but simply indicates the absence of intrusion in the impact of events.

The existence of such very high levels of possibilities in this world is correlative to what is already in it. When you designate however a particular system, created by order and method as systems must be, when magic is not invoked (which is merely a suppressed form of acknowledgement of the supernatural), and expect it to do all sorts of things not in its visible signature or determinate power, neither observable nor draftable by test or invasion: then this this is merely a misuse of the term where it is rationally irrelevant. The term 'chance' involves simply the non-intervention of intelligent purpose, and thus simply relays the thought that no one and nothing is going to interfere. In that case, the system will make precisely what are the species of productions for which it is adapted, and achieve just what is in its nature.

If intelligence is there, then intelligent types of consequences; if system is there, then systematic types of consequences, if matter is there, then material types of consequences, and whatever is the specifable, observable, verifable and explicable nature of the system: this, as it is,  it will do.

If it is highly complex, then it will the more obviously be subject in terms of the second law of thermodynamics, and the laws of information science, to no advance in systematic information, but to degeneration with many interesting results, such as the disappearance of most of the designs which, according to the late Professor Gould of Harvard, is what has happened since the Cambrian 'era'. What in heaven's name, he asks in effect  (cf. Wake Up World! ... Ch. 6), is this, that such an ebullience of designs has so come so 'early'  and so limped away. WHAT IS GOING ON!

These extravaganzas of emotion resulted from that desirable pursuit, that of evidence, and from Professor Gould’s own investigations in Cambrian 'era' deposits of shale in Canada. Vast domains of complexity with sub-groupings, to his view,  arose suddenly, and went slowly over time thereafter. It is indeed blatant, the endeavour to explain departures by an anti-verified theory about arrivals, something closely paralleled by the Wistar Symposium finding (cf. SMR pp. 128ff. 157ff.), where Professor Schützenberger of Paris University (Mathematics) experienced a parallel intellectual apoplexy.

In both cases, these realisms were highly commendable, since practical facts, in the latter case with artificial intelligence prototypes, were involved in what is called 'science' (cf. Scientific Method, Satanic Method and the Model of Salvation). The removal, quoth the Paris Professor, of what is excludable is not to be found initiating what is to arrive! Cast aways are not creation! So far from ridiculing the theories he found impractical, like Gould, he expostulated at the results, finding the strait-jacket of preconceived ideas appalling. So it is, so it is indeed. It is quite unnecessary, like those girdles which even some men in their vanity, used to wear, to their great detriment and confinement! Alas for the captives…

It is not in only one dimension that Christ delivers. His truth delivers on all sides.

Looking Up

Looking up to the concept that words of code such as in DNA did not speak themselves from non-intelligence, and that intelligence is not the product of matter which is not the product of nothing and that systems are the product of the systematically capable, that nothing is wholly unproductive and arrivals require potent sources correlative rationally to their outcomes, that products are proportional to the producer-equipment and power, we come to look past the book to the author, and past the words to the speaker and past the codes to the expert in symbolic logic, in whose domain our natures reside, and which they express.

There lies the multiple product source. Here is the beginner of visible system, which being delimited requires a cause sufficient for that circumstance; of mental system which being rational, requires a ground sufficient for that invention; and of spiritual system which being capable of error and wilfulness, requires a source beyond the slavish squalor, comparative, of the programmatic, for its perquisites^*2.

What is His wisdom (cf. Job 28), who exhibits in us, in our powers, not only His product but His capacity to enable us to spoil or roil, endue or rue, love or hate, and that with ground or contrary to any ground, at will. What is His grandeur who can set forth the ways of wisdom in grand designs, and give spirit its place in man, for abstract thought and ceaseless will, for splendour and for ruin, and that by plan or by careful avoidance of it, if such be the unhallowed preference of the individual, so enabling man to go on routes irrational if he will, or in channels wise and well thought-out!

How great is His forbearance, how enthusing is His patience, how amazing is the scope of His conception, even in this phase of our very beings.

How much more when one considers His predictions of so many details (cf. Pitter-Patter ....Ch. 4, SMR Chs. 8-9, and indexes on prophecy), so much of substance and perspective for eras millenia after He had His speech recorded, so that it might benefit the hearers, and give scope for investigation for the scientifically and rationally minded in the generations to come, to know that God is and has spoken His mind with eminent clarity to man!

What majesty is this which lifts its voice and sets down the thoughts for the amazing contrivance called man, for the spirit which He has placed in man, to enable roving thought and ruinous rebellion alike, if light is detested.

He does not drive; He draws (John 6:44). He does not reward crassly;  for many who follow Him are murdered, dismembered, imprisoned and hated; and the more so, if they are faithful and sincere, so not making dubious alliances of convenience with a woeful world; for the fact is that this world, in things called culture and regimes, has maximised folly and minimised wisdom. This it has done by leaving God out of its domains, if not always, yet nearly always, and if not in name, then in fact, serving mere idols of human invention or contention. Embroiled and roiled in its turmoils, its ignoble nescience announced with arrogance, it has fought within its cultures, races and places, as if madness were its chief occupation and pride its delirious device, better than any atomic bomb, for its own destruction, which it follows with a pseudo-hypnotic fascination, almost as if programmed.

Were it not that man's pride, pomp and imprecision and glorying in his unwisdom and self-exaltation as a race were visibly and testably reached by many vainglorious thoughts and combinations, by much talk and empty exhibition of its interstices, it might almost seem that it was the machine for self-destruction, giving displays for the interested, and seeking subscriptions for more observers for its destruction.

Yet all of this is but in this respect, the exhibit of the grandeur of the Creator; for who else can make the liberty wilfully to err, and the possibility to destroy itself, based on its own perceptions, observations and passions and malign misconceptions, with the added benefit of scope for self-control and rationality if it so desires!

Here is liberty (cf. Licence for Liberty, Predestination and Freewill, SMR pp. 348ff., It Bubbles... Ch. 9, Little Things ... Ch. 5); and here is therefore the scope for and meaning in love; for what is compelled CANNOT love, being the love or hatred of the programmer, or the products of the same. What however can love and have friendship with those of like mind, by election, this is a thing of wonder, bringing glory to the Creator of it all. It is neither programmatically superficial nor subjectivistically meaningless; yet it does have debasing limits when its basis in the Lord of Liberty is not realised, and even more so, when that basis is rejected, being then more like an island in a sea that is not there, seen as a phase or a phrase,  yet without depth and adequate surroundings.

This liberty to hate, or to love, this meaningful freedom, though it can be scanned by preoccupations and abused by intrigue, and above all, to prefer darkness or to be enlightened with the light, it is a thing prodigious, past the powers of man even to conceive as to method; for it is a thing of spirit, from the Spirit who is God.

Is it not small wonder that its abuse is the horror of this world ? With love and freedom unleashed for man - so that mere hatred and compulsion rear up as the creations of the debased, aspirants for the manipulation of man, their mishandling thrusts man out towards the crocodiles of his island home, which come from the nearby rivers of radioactive waste. The ruin of the splendour becomes the refuse of the sink. With such profound gifts as liberty and understanding, meaningfulness and profundity excluded, or impeded by will, man is left amidst mere systems driving, things which may be excellent for support, but virtually immaterial in their materiality, by comparison in significance to what uses them!

In such a fallen state, with lust for liberty removing its operational felicity, so cutting himself off from its very basis, man thus denuded finds his blessed environment, once like solid ground beneath the feet, becomes more like grit in the machinery, spoiling, foiling and defiling his personality into the realms of everyday psychopathology, which leads many to cynicism, thinking with the Psalmist in one of his passing moods of disgust, that all men  are liars. While the inspired prophet quickly shrugged off his spiritual shoulders such misconceptions (Psalm 116:11), and kindred thoughts, yet for many they remain and they allow their very hearts to operate in such realms of sad disjunction from the realities of created life available to man.

Thus, though the created universe in its material aspect, is  one of almost inarticulable brilliance, yet submersion in its interstices, instead of survey over its nature from the mind of God is a degradation of man so vital, that it is in itself one of the causes of the dereliction of duty, irresponsibly of thought, spurs to conflict and accelerating forces to aggression which disrupt the race. Its results move  speedily to disregard of consequences, giving place for dreams which, equipped with dynamic, are real mass murderers.

We have already mentioned many of these, and they are chief occupants of thought in this twenty first century for millions of devotees of their patter.

Avoiding these declivities,  yet may we  move to more of the splendour in the glory of God, when we look up to Him personally. It is sad to be mesmerised by the platform, and to ignore the passion and meaning of the play. It is disastrous to be  heedless of the conductor and the playwright,  fascinated by the stage, ebullient with rambunctious disregard.

Many hate meaning; but this too, it is to the glory of God, for to hate meaning means that it is a meaningful category, worthy of thought and operable to the point of major impact in the minds of those who despise or defame it.  Indeed, you cannot rationally say both that there is no meaning and that you are right. If there is no meaning, there is no meaning to your statement that there is no meaning: that is, if the purpose and plan, or the ground and method, or the point and nature of things CANNOT be found because this is systematically impossible, then to KNOW this IS to know the meaning.

It is something which in this case is deemed not to exist; and thus it is a dimension which MUST exist, since to declare, upon examination, that it is missing it to acknowledge this, that it MIGHT have existed, and if so, COULD have been detected. In this case, the message is, the competent human mind investigating, knowing what would indicate meaningfulness, finds it absent.

Hence it has the power to know the difference, and is among other things, a meaning meter.

WHAT could POSSIBLY induce such a power in the mentality of some man, as this, to KNOW whether the thing called meaning does or does not exist in the thing called the universe, into which many without thought simply place man as a component ?

This power MUST mean that the mind concerned has access to absolute truth, in order to be able to determine what is and is not present in the systems and spirits before it. Only thus, could its word have any significance at all, and in fact rise above mere self-contradiction. If it has this, however, then absolute truth must exist, and to do this, it must be beyond the interfaces of mere relativity, order and systems constrained, enabling one to see over them, to survey with accuracy, leaving nothing out and putting nothing in, and so KNOWING. Then what knows this Absolute Truth could, if it conveyed its knowledge, tell the mind concerned, about the meaning that really was or was not in this world.

Yet to have what is unique to God without bothering to allow Him to exist, or coming to know Him is without doubt as witless an enthusiasm as any other in the vast domain of the antics of man.

The meaning of man can, to be sure, be found only finally in the mind of God, whom to know is a precondition of affirming this meaning. For this to be known, the deity must be willing to give it, since the gaining of it as a mere adventure in experience is dependent on the absolute truth capacity of the enquirer, and hence his access to this, which is to beg the question.

Even if someone wanted to say that of course he did not know the true answer, but that for his two cents' worth, he felt there was no meaning in the universe: yet for that,  the case is ultimately the same. Thus this would mean that there is a viable option about the truth, which he relates to or relays by means of feeling; and if this were so, then the same preconditions are required as before. You cannot have such an option if there is nothing about which to opt. Your option is meaningless to the point, unless the truth is there, objective in kind, available in situation. Unless it is there, your statement is irrelevant, irrational and pointless.

When you find and know God, then meaning is the result; without it, the whole area and arena of thought is washed in antinomies, but never washed clean.

Rationality (carefully distinguishable from rationalism) means that you have to have adequate reason for your statements and concerns, and this is the death not only of evolutionism, but atheism and agnosticism as well, for the meaning equation is essential to the reality one.

Not only can it not be rationally affirmed that it cannot be known, what reality ultimately is, but that it is not known. If it is not known, then it is known that this is the case, and that implies absolute knowledge in order to make it a viable option. The only way to go rationally is to follow reason to its shores and to find the result; and this is precisely what was done in SMR, TMR. The result is simply that God is and He has spoken to His world of men; and from this word, that they are rebels. It is found that He is the greatest lover of all time, and made time in which to love, and has given to man the way home to reason, yes, but to much more, even to Himself of whom their thoughts are not in vain, though often vain. From Him,  there is provision not only  for knowing the truth, but for deliverance at His own will and in His own way, for those who receive it.

There is more of the glory of God in this,  that having created freedom, He does not abuse it; and having created those who can abuse their world and lives, He has not left man unable to find the style of the outcomes, nor yet in mercilessness, left those outcomes without contrary provision to cope with their contrariness.

Even without His word, it should have been obvious that since all is His creation, one ought to be careful about the way one treats other people, never hating, never inflicting harm vainly; but with His word, one learns that the love IN man is the love OF God, and although it can be ramped up by lust into something unrecognisable, possessive, self-gratifying, unclean, yet in its place it can mean care of the weak (such as babies), concern for the confused (such as the growing adolescent), putting of oneself in strength after the weak (as in caring for the afflicted). 

With the word of God, one finds far more of the nature of the qualities and conditions of life, and that there is one huge division between mankind in one category and in another, between those who are willing and strengthened by the Holy Spirit, to engage in enterprise for God in love, mercy and truth, and those who are not. They are the sand and the rock foundation divisions in builders, as described by Christ in Matthew 7:24ff..

With those of like mind on the rock, one ought to seek to co-operate; and for the good of all, to do good to all; though one must be discerning, for helping a murderer to fulfil his passion to kill his child is scarcely good, though it may seem helpful - to him. One therefore has to recognise pathology, especially of the spirit, and seek with due prudence to cause, whatever the misunderstanding, what is good as defined by God.

This does NOT include force in securing religious conviction, such is the way of some; but it DOES include courage in resisting endeavours to subvert. Force is in any case irrelevant to conviction; and those who so use it are shown false and  fraudulent in religion at the outset.

One finds also from the word of God, the Bible, that there is a more distinct moral code which applies to the containment of our wills, just as there are rules of the road, and for ships. The first of it is to love God, for our capacity to love, geared to freedom, has to have its due outcome, and hating one's own basis is merely a moral schizophrenia.

In this, society currently participates to more or less - but always growing, degree. That, it is one of the signs and signals that the end is approaching, as is that special case of the return of Israel to its promised land, which in 2000 years has happened once, in the raising up of the State of Israel in 1948, quite suddenly, as Isaiah predicted would be the case at the time of the end of the Age came near (Isaiah 66:8). As to that, the restored Israel, it is found in the setting prescribed in Zechariah 12, amid mighty victories and sustained tensions. It is located in its time, with the forthcoming prediction that the death of Christ, at Israel's hands, will receive a near national repentance, coming suddenly by divine illumination (12:10), a thing impending. Indeed, the very return of Israel in itself is near to the end of the Age (Luke 21:24). When the moment arrives, then will the restored Israel deplore bitterly its much earlier treatment of its glorious Messiah!

It is time then to look up, for that is where the action is, to the glory of God and His divine initiatives, which are coming near, like a ship to berth, its wake splashing on the pier. Let us consider the case of Israel, now, for perspective, in comparison with that for persons among the Gentiles, in a more general sense.

What is in scenic wonder the wholly predicted outline of history for the Israel the nation (cf. SMR Ch. 9, It Bubbles ... Chs. 10 and 11), is in personal impact recognisable for man, the individual.

There are several major points of similarity!

In that latter case, man in general,  the person has

	been manufactured by God;
	sinned in the face of direct, divine and obvious evidence (cf. Romans 1:17ff.);
	strayed instead of repenting;
	need to repent to find the bearings, moral, immortal, immoveable, that are for man, which give him known meaning. Coming to the message behind the morals, of love and favour, righteousness and pardon, peace and empowerment, of crucifixion in vicarious judgment wrought on God as man, the individual now has
	need to receive what God has done and the One whom He has offered like a cheque signed in blood, that of Jesus Christ according as the Father notified us all of its coming and the date for it (Highway of Holiness Ch. 4),  for millenia beforehand; and
	has opportunity to repent and receive this new creation from God,

that of restoration in kind to the place assigned at the first, 
and now ready to be confirmed to the last, to what now becomes the child through faith by grace,
of the living God.

 

LOOKING ON

Meanwhile, the world is moving by a centrifugal spiritual force into the blight of night, from which only the Messiah in His return can rescue it, since the solution to ungodliness is
godliness, and the only way to God is at the door provided, in Him who came, that we might
freely go to Him. Until He come, there is sad and even grievous revolt and pretension, but it will not because it cannot work, any more than man can work without oxygen.

The particular mode of government for which it may opt, is important; the ultimate Ruler is all-important, and the modes without Him are devitalised, increasingly lacking even the outward form of observance, and far more the inward spirit (cf. Journey to God or Fantasy's Flight to the Infernal Ch. 7).

In News 98, some of the underlying needs are outlined, as in News 97, with this result, until He comes.
 

The Penalty of Government without Vision, and with Vice

This question of the attitude of government to its nation like that of an individual to his quest, is as readily made amoral as it is in a commercial firm. The better question, for Australia as a nation,  is not so much whether government be led or rather safeguarded, by royalty or president, as this: What presides! What royal way, which no mortal king fully fulfils, is there to be chosen ? (Cf. Questions and Answers 7.)

Distancing from God, and the various sloppy authoritarian governmental or government sponsored ways in religion (see That Magnificent Rock Ch.8 and the  Volume 22 which is planned for production by early in the new year - Lead us not into Educational Temptation!) comprise no solution. They are mere provocation to the Almighty, just like the synthetic cretans of gods made by Israel of old. If there is one thing which it seems the Lord most monumentally condemns, it is this listless, this syncretistic, this verbosity of religion (cf. Isaiah 29;13), this friendly favour towards anything and everything (cf. Deuteronomy 32:15-22), and if possible, the more when it is mixed with His own name. Listen to the prophet Jeremiah in Chapter 32:33-34:

• "And they have turned to Me the back and not the face; though I taught them, rising up early and teaching them, yet they have not listened to receive instruction. But they set their abominations in the house which is called by My name, to defile it..."
   

The entire book of Hosea is built about the narrative of the unfaithful wife, a harlot to start with (expressly designating by this error  - Hosea 2:16-17, the spiritual reality of mixing the gods, unfaithful to the true and ruling one, who is there), who plays the harlot after being mercifully married.

From this, she has to be bought back, redeemed from her unfaithful dalliances, just as Israel was destroyed and Judah humbled for the same thing. USING the name of the Lord in vain is companion to murder, theft and false witness in the 10 commandments, and to mix it with the vanity of folly, the implements of spiritual disaster personified into gods, is insult, confusion, impudence and arrogant disdain. To put Einstein in a paper bag with a number of retarded children, for mathematics prowess, would be a compliment, sheer flattery compared with this!

In fact, however, if there is one lust which seeks to snare this land more than another, it is this patronage of the gods either as a religionist or patron of religions for social reasons. If this prevails as the old Commonwealth connection is dissolved, then not the later, but the former will be the active constituent in ruin.

Whether in the USA or in Australia, if you are to have a President, what you need is someone

	incorruptible, with clear vision of what he/she is about:
	not confusing national interests with national selfishness, or greed,
	but seeing them as principles of integrity;
	securing and maintaining liberty with justice,
	restraint of evil with stimulus to good, and
	the maintenance of continuity for life for the nation,
	against those who would enslave, invade or corrupt it.

 

What is needed is ...

	Not the clamant clangor of variable direction of thought,
	interweaving confusedly various COMPONENTS or INTERESTS,
	but the kindly mercies of restraint of what promotes intrusive physical violence as its aim, and the encouragement of the springs of inspiration.

 

These things follow from a Christian ethos, which is also eminently desirable even for a secular nation: for love of justice, non-vindictiveness, encouragement to mercy, to love one another and to be spirited in seeking and relishing truth, without trying to take control of people by human institutions, are nowhere so heartily and purely to be found as from that precise, pronounced and proclaimed basis. It has the ground for it, the requirement of it and the legislation for it.

NOT a Christian nation is it which currently must answer; for there is none such, nor will be any till Christ come and His special "nation" of actual believers is apparent to all (Psalm 96:13, 98:9, Revelation 14, Psalm 67:3-5, Micah 4:2-3, I Peter 2:9).

This therefore is not now the pure presidential aim: none is to be forced, nor any enticed by spurious rewards. Yet righteousness does exalt a nation, improving prosperity with peace and productivity with stability, whilst helping strength with security. Only in appreciation of these things, and the integrity to pursue them, without looking for selfish advantage for himself or his people, can any President do well.

In fact, this world's course is now, and has long been coming to the very height of its eminence, of moving from all approximation to the call, commands and quiet of God (cf.  News 121, 122).

 

A little later, it proceeds like this:

Have you noticed that PRECISELY the qualities needed of a President are FOUND in Christ; are never removable from Christ; are indelibly imprinted on history through Christ (SMR Ch.6,Appendix C, Repent or Perish Ch.  7); and have you realised that His word rules like that of a King (SMR Ch.8 ), which is what He is; and that God is on record that NO ONE will be able to rule this earth, at length, but He! (cf. SMR pp. 623ff., cf. 611ff.).That is being fulfilled with an exacting exactitude at this time! Blindness does not remove it, nor does irrationality exclude.

The confusions of delusion are the experiences of this world, and its glamour is routinely, as predicted, fading... The glory has departed and it will not return till He comes to whom it is due, and for those by whom He is given it. As a spectacle, it will appear; as a wonder, however, it is for those who have come to Him.

The children live in the house formed for them, each in his place  (cf. Daniel 12:12:13, II Corinthians 4-5, Revelation 1:7, John 14:1-14Matthew 24:30-51, I Thessalonians 4).

                            Children Can Be So Delightful

It is in the magnificence of God's nobility and liberality,  that man, that woman, that child can become changed, charged and confident, deprived of what depraves, but enlivened by what enables godliness, forbearance, virtue, love, brotherly love, patience, in fact all the things that Peter specifies as natural, normal and proper principles and qualities available to the people of God (I Peter 1:22ff.), and to be ADDED (II Peter 1:2ff.), as strength below the spiritual armor (Ephesians 6), with which every citizen of the kingdom of heaven is equipped (cf. The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 3).

It is then that the facility for frenzied clouting, racial, discriminatory, social, armed bouts diminishes, and while the Christian has a duty to protect the weak as enabled, and no less a responsibility to care for those dependent on him, against invasion and evils, yet force is not his preferred instrument of initiative, nor is it his lair of repose.

Indeed,  children, if unspoiled, can be delightful, because they still carry something of the image of God, being  not yet so molested as are many,  by such spiritual, moral, physical, social and economic sin as is customary in our race, sins often idolised, idealised and used for vamping, soul-sale and the like. Now, however, through premature educational ploys, and bad example many are seedy before their time, and knowledgeable before their capacities, making childhood already on lien. Yet despite all this, whatever man may do, by the grace and the power of God there is now a new sort of child: the child of God. This, it is of any age, since the Father in view, is the King of eternity!

It is Christ in them (Colossians 1:27) who is truly delightful, and as they follow His ways, being reborn and led, so they glow with something of His glory, as reflectors, as lights in dark places (Philippians 2:15), as examples, however imperfect, yet substantial, of His way.

The devil is never satisfied with clarity, so appears to deplore this fact. He moves in ways of his own (Dastardly Dynamics Ch.  6). Deceit is helped by his presence. Many now use the name 'Christian' for some sort of amalgam with the force and survival^*3 category of pride, such as is found in evolutionism, which has been a major ingredient in the thinking of Stalin, Mao and Hitler in the ravaging of tens of millions of persons, one leading to bankruptcy, one to inordinate cruelty in the Red Guards, one dying by his hand in a Berlin bunker: a fitting epitaph for an absurd theory (cf. Wake Up World! ... Chs. 4, 5, 6, TMR Chs. 1, 8, A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 5, SMR Ch. 1, incl. pp. 127ff., 925ff., Aviary of Idolatry, News 97, 98,).

Others use it for a social plank on which to stand, as subterfuge in effect, a tag on what is not true. They become prosperity 'christians' or 'liberal christians' or pseudo-christians, or chameleon christians, so long as they can utilise Christ for their work, ways and life, without having Him as Lord, God as God, they themselves remaining very much in control, distorting or rejecting His word as most convenient^*4.

All of these flights have nowhere to land. For one and for all, it is simply and entirely necessary to remove from the culture of vapidity, with rapidity, and find the Christ of eternity, where alone is truth both verified and validly displayed (cf. Celestial Harmony for the Terrestrial Host), where alone is a rule which being entirely worthy, is utterly irreplaceable and eternal, where the gift being deity Himself personally, there is neither superior nor replacement.

In Him, it is equally essential to become as a little child; for while reason can confer validity on nothing else (being given by Him as part of what exposes His glory), this being HIS gift must then arrive at revelation, which is from His own mouth, and learn anew what to do, in effect being born again into the kingdom of His righteousness, through faith, by His grace. He paid for it; we have it provided (I Peter 1:20-25, Titus 3:3-7).

Men can be so Mischievous,
but the Marvel is the Divine Patience

In gratitude to God, accordingly, one remains attached not to one's own definitions of His will, word and ways, but to what He has said, because no one but God can speak like that, just as none but Jesus Christ could speak on earth as He did, indeed, so that those sent to arrest Him, were themselves arrested by the signal light of truth and the aweful intensity of His authority, sublime but in human dress, unbreachable but willing to help what had been breached among men (John 7:45ff.). Yet is one grateful that He has given to us sure and steadfast, the reason for the faith with the reason He invented, and the faith He donated, in the Book He delivered through the Christ He sent.

If you alter what God has said, it is the same as transmutation worked on God, for His word, He has magnified it above all His ways (Psalm 138:2), and it represents His mind and will. He has not left it to us to muse; He has not vouchsafed it to philosopher, to pedant or king: He has spoken as He did in the DNA of our construction. The commands that make us and the commandments that make us wise to salvation (cf. Acts 4:11-12) alike, He has spoken them. We are not gods; HE is God!

It is not a mere question of this or that doctrine; it is HIS WORD; nor is it a matter of fundamentalism, therefore, but functional fidelity to what God has said. Do you, does anyone imagine that there is or could be any worth in what men make up, and try to splice into His word! If God is God, then follow Him; but where man is man, why bother to  spit! It is only pretence and lèse-majesté, combined with blasphemy and presumptuous arrogance.

From Him therefore has come that gracious, that spacious, that beautiful kindness which has pity and perseverance in goodwill, peace in its heart and courage in its spirit, fearlessness for the truth and no sham or shame in holding it: in short, that knowledge of the Creator by which alone can life among His creatures in His image possibly be one of endurance. It is not survival of the fittest but endurance of the best, that is to the point; and the best being God, what follows Him, in His kingdom is ready for eternity, for its ways, untruncated, but in truth.

The inglorious and the vainglorious alike do not work on this earth, for they offend the humility which lurks even amidst pride, in many hearts which realise if not their place, at least something of its dimensions; and thus many bruise by braggadocio the sense of fitness and seemliness which frequently fits in the human heart, even when depraved.

This often is allied with a crucial sense of utter rejection

	of the mounting arrogance of humanism with its engines that do not work,
	its arcane alienations that always talk, never proceed
	except to more ways of doing more
	things, while the same old things remain, like birth and death, disease and hatred,
	slaughter and senselessness, finished creation in kinds,
	yes and unfinished degeneration in downward dynamics in particulars,
	in things physical and spiritual, moral and ethical,
	linked to perils and vapid propaganda,
	hurled at the young, indoctrinated by the media,
	philosophies inducing more murder, seduction of spirit,
	abduction of persons, theft of property rights, intellectual and other,
	exploitation and domineering,
	amid the ruins that eat up wealth and health,
	leaving disease and death in teeming devastations,
	which constitute the startling rebuke to cultural anaesthesia.

It is the consummation of the fall and failure evident in the day of Micah, whose prophecy looked on toward the devastation of Jerusalem to come, together with its eventual restoration when it returned to the Lord, through the Messiah. Then to come, He showed Himself  triumphant over death, the manifest victor over every contingency, every attack, assault and test which mankind in its corruption could contrive; just as now He continues with those who know Him, to the end.

Then, the trials of man done, the resultants appear on judgment day, those covered by His protective graces, secured in covenantal constancy in the New Covenant in His blood, being His, immune, for the very barrister who represents them, has also paid the fee, making them free (cf. Isaiah 55, Hosea 13:14, Galatians 3, II Corinthians 5:17-21).

We have thus in Micah a foretaste both of the preceding condition for judgment, then to come to that city and nation, and of judgment itself, when it did come; and HOW it HAS come for Israel, who despite their recent return, have been treated by mankind with a bruising contempt which they might have better applied for their own sins. Yet so it has been, and there is in microcosm, though over a vast period of predicted history, that of Israel, what in macrocosm and in its own format, is for the  Gentile world, with its onrush of sin and the tumultuous thrust of judgment in store.

For even then, in that one nation of Micah's day and portrait, was it as it is now in the world, with its flags of defiance unfurled (7:2-9):

^"The good man is perished out of the earth: and there is none upright among men:
they all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man his brother with a net.

^"That they may do evil with both hands earnestly, the prince asks,
and the judge for a reward; and the great man, he utters his mischievous desire:
so they wrap it up.

^"The best of them is as a brier: the most upright is sharper than a thorn hedge:
the day of your watchmen and your visitation is coming; now will be their perplexity.

^"Trust not in a friend, do not put your confidence in a guide:
keep the doors of your mouth from her who lies in your bosom.
For the son dishonours the father, the daughter rises up against her mother,
the daughter in law against her mother in law; a man’s enemies are
the men of his own house.

^"Therefore I will look to the LORD;
I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me.

"Do not rejoice against me, O mine enemy:

when I fall, I shall arise;

when I sit in darkness, the LORD shall be a light to me.

^"I will bear the indignation of the LORD, because I have sinned against him,
until He plead my cause, and execute judgment for me:
He will bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold His righteousness."

This recurrence and amplification on the international scene  is now under way. It is exposing  these revoltingly unnatural disorders of family, justice and religion, of morality in seizures, as if the epileptic had invaded commerce, and lies had seized the reins of truth, the horses of the carriage of life stampeding.Moreover, it is now  just as foretold directly for our end of time antics, by Christ who quoted from this very prophecy in designating the last elements of our present Age (Matthew 10:34-39).

In just such things, this, the end of our Age  was to specialise, as indeed it has done; for do we not remember, to take but one part, the betrayals of parents by children in Nazi Germany; and do we need to forget the atrocities of unnaturalness to be found in arid wastelands, other than Siberian, to be found in the history rather than the geography of the former USSR! In such a time would these things be consummated; and that time is now, while the remaining embers of our lost Age burn their last.

Not merely is this so, but the nations contrive now to build their second tower of Babel, well represented by the UN building in New York, the tower that was not devastated in the al Qaeda attack; for it has things to come for its fraudulent religion and unfounded morals, this Moses without divine mandate, quarrelling with the law and word of God, and instituting its own sanctions and registering its own devices, as if a mouth were a substitute for a validation, and opinion became sanctified by unknown forces, as truth! (cf. Mystery of Iniquity).

It is in this regard, a fitting prelude to the antichrist assault in spirit and deception, marked at its end in II Thessalonians 2:3-8:

"Let no one deceive you by any means;
for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first,
and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition,
who opposes and exalts himself
above all that is called God or that is worshiped,
so that he sits as God in the temple of God,
showing himself that he is God.

"Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things?
And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time.

"For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work;
only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way.

"And then the lawless one will be revealed,
whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth
and destroy with the brightness of His coming."

While therefore, in these ways and many more (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5),  this backdrop is being prepared, there is more to see, as if in some evil Spiritual Show. There is for example,  Israel naturally, as part of the scenario: that nation being vilified, with every effort made to dispossess it of the small part of the League of Nations promised land of Palestine actually left it, after various grabbings since 1920, through the gift of land to Jordan and to the Palestinians by Israel (cf. It Bubbles ... Ch. 10).

The curtain for the last Act trembles on its rails, eager to fall. In the meantime, Israel has fought the triumphant wars against vast numerically superior enemies as predicted in Zechariah 12, in a context of approaching the next coming phase of a vast national repentance for the killing of the Messiah, which the prophet equally predicted. The whole setting is as foretold 5 centuries before Christ even came to die, at the predicted date likewise (Daniel 9).

The scene is rapidly changing, and the puppets of desire are belching their flames.

THE DAY OF THE LORD

God never was mocked; and the international wagers now being clearly unlimited in spirit, noxious in exaltation and ruthless in conception, the results are becoming more and more unbearable for an earth notable for stability, but now more and more tottering as it is predicted will be the case (Isaiah 24:19-20).

Indeed, let us hear Isaiah here:

                          And it will fall, and not rise again."

In Isaiah 2, we see further on the end of the Age, when the salvation of Christ having been broadcast to the world (as foretold in Matthew 24:12), His rule returns, patently, manifestly, so that the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14):

                           And it shall be brought low ... "

For that soon to come time, millenia can be waited as if they were what we would construe in our sense of timing, as mere days (II Peter 3:19). How long has been the night of might and corruption, seeking to capture history, corroding if it were possible the human soul, miseducating it, misdirecting it, seizing it for industries of selfishness, for armies of murder, for arrogance of might, rewarding vice and penalising virtue!

How poignant the follies which some urged and others undertook for them, only to be slain in judgments accelerated by folly, as implacable evils sought their targets, and found them. How long has the Lord waited, and how much has He shown to mankind, both through His mercies and His judgments, His predictions and His retrodictions, His promises and His presence, which is where it MAY be found (Isaiah 55).

But soon, the night is past and the light of Life will return to His creations (cf. Revelation 19 as below).

^"Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse.

"And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True,
and in righteousness He judges and makes war.
His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself.
He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood,
and His name is called The Word of God.

^"And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean,
followed Him on white horses.

^"Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations.
And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron.
He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.
And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written:
KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS."

What despises truth has at last to face it; and in freedom has it raved and ravaged, against that truth which,  by its very reality, in the end assuredly will condemn what but clutters the air of reality, with the duping duplicities of denial. The scale is vast.

Yet the real glory is this, that God is patient and loving in pity, kingly in compassion, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to a knowledge of the truth (I Timothy 2:1ff., II Peter 3:9, Colossians 1:19ff.); for His glory is to give, and His giving is glorious. Why ? Not least it is because it costs Him at His own level, what cannot be contained, even a form of self-humbling which stoops to envelop in Himself, on whom judgment is passed, the sin; and then rises, Victor over death through innocence and might,  to the dominion at the right hand of power, where He has always belonged, where He makes ready the habitation not for this earth of trial, but for its results (John 14), His people.

The grandeur of His glory is seen in His wisdom and heart, His truth untampered, His kindness and love unsullied , His pity and His nobility in their vital purity, displayed in His sacrificial splendour and His unremitting power, in His majesty. It is without domineering, but rather occupied deeply  in truly regal remission of sin to those of His subjects who call on Him, for it, and trust Him in it. With this sublime and humble majesty comes the glowing grace of sustaining what He remakes, granting it mission, meaning and magnitudes unknown before, so that their works might so shine that they may glorify Him, and their words so speak that others may find HOW He may be found.

HIS majesty is not made so by a word, but brings ground for the term! His kindness is the source of it, His pity the ground for it, His patience the guarantee of it, His forbearance the condition for it, His enabling power the testimony of it, in the love which this world neither understands nor shows nor knows.

NOTES

*1A

Cf. SMR pp. 867ff., Sects, Errors, Member Notes  31;
The  Frantic Millenium and the Peace of Faith Ch.   9 ,
Things Old and New Chs.  9,10 Epilogue, Appendix.
 

*1

On the folly of such reductionist misfits for treating the data, see Repent or Perish Ch. 7, SMR Chs. 1-3, 10, Little Things Ch. 5, It Bubbles ... Ch. 9. Zeroing in on the programmatic by personal powers which are subject to will and error, and trying to ignore by what you are acting in seeking to reduce yourself to material dimensions is like a diver proceeding to investigate the sea, and wondering why those who examine his reports are unimpressed by his notions that the marine environment is basically the same as his own.

What is co-ordinate with matter is not will and error, survey and mentally invented scenarios of folly or wisdom, of wit or woe, for it has no known, nor any exhibited or principially apparent means for doing so, any more than a platform has, when it gives a lift to the singers.

It does not sing.

*2A

In SMR p. 312, we find this, to the point:

As the eminent Professor W.R. Thompson put it (Introduction to Everyman edition of Darwin's The Origin of Species ):

This general tendency to eliminate, by means of unverifiable speculations, the limits of the categories Nature presents to us, is the inheritance of biology from The Origin of Species. To establish the continuity required by theory, historical arguments are invoked, even though historical evidence is lacking. Thus are engendered those fragile towers of hypotheses on hypotheses, where fact and fiction intermingle in inextricable confusion. That these constructions correspond to natural appetite, there can be no doubt. It is certain also that Darwin established what may be called the classical method of satisfying this appetite. We are beginning to realise now that the method is unsound and the satisfaction illusory.

 

*2B

See for example:

 Ancient Words, Modern Events Chs.   9 , 13;

It Bubbles ... Ch. 5 (News 132) - and chaos: 
cf. SMR pp. 264ff., 284ff, News  80,

Deliverance from Disorientation Ch.  1,   7,

Earth Spasm ... Ch.   1 (incl. ref. to the simplistic substitute for creative thought, 'blind watchmaker'),

Little Things Ch. 5;  and consult index.
 

*2

See :

Spiritual Refreshings  Ch.  9, incl. End-note 1
(esp. programmatic psychology and its ilk),

Marvels of Predestination and the Ways of Will Ch.   7,  including *1;

News  80,  44; SMR 4;

Repent or Perish Ch.   7, Extension 1 ;

The True God has Go, Gives Grace and Glory Ch.   2.

 

*3

See A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 6, Life What is It ? and  TMR Ch. 6, What is Life for ?

 

*4