CHAPTER 5

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CHAPTER 5

THE NEED OF A CALM AND QUIET SPIRIT

THAT SAVOURS REALITY,
WHEN VIEWING THE TRUTH

(cf. Isaiah 66:2)

RESPONSE TO A CHALLENGE
THAT MAY HELP OTHERS -

CHANGES MAY BE MADE TO SOME SMALL EXTENT
FOR MORE GENERAL USE

Recently, a highly critical letter was received, concerning biblical Christianity. It was alleged that the amazing was the concept that educated people could possibly be so ill-advised as not to believe in an earth of billions of years in age, nor in multiplied universes splathering themselves in profusion, nor even in a ‘oneness’ of some kind mystically, among man in a religious cluster, it would seem, to be available in some combination or distillate, synthesise or revision of many religions.

It was asserted that we hated science, and were altogether, it would seem, about as relevant to the world of today, as polluted air.

Could not such things be corrected ? the letter seemed to ask. Could we not share the magnificent cultural conviction (obsession ?) of the writer of this summary and evidentially null letter ? What of the Inquisition, the Spanish invasion of Indian territory, in far off history, in the Americas! It asked. What barbarism! How could one believe in such a religion as that ? No, there was some christ or other to be found somewhere or other, chiefly it seems in the mind, and with such luminous creations, man was to be satisfied, using the name but rejecting the performances of the One who actually WAS Jesus the Christ, and so made the name famous.

It was thus a letter which did not show any concern to relate to our site, to our religion or to the facts of Jesus Christ, but there seemed an ill-considered animus to attack all of these, that made one think virtually of a cultural tic. Sad as is such a phenomenon, it is best that it be faced.

Because it may help some to see the realities of the matter, in fact and in empirically justified certainty, let us then supply for the interested reader, the correction given to this ardent but ill-informed critic.

The Mystery

Dear Correspondent,

Thank you for your mystic-seeming revelations, apparently to someone other than myself or ourselves, though addressed to this site.

One seems to be almost illicitly listening in, to a letter sent to someone else. Is that not often the way with stereotyping, when it replaces careful and accurate investigation of a particular situation!

Perhaps you have not bothered to read the 72 works currently on the Web, before responding to someone unknown to me, entirely, though you give this imaginary entity for some reason, my name! In short, you appear to confuse some mental construction of your own with myself. Science ? I have loved it, rejoiced in chemistry, felt the fascination of physics, studied its method, and am saddened when this is prostituted to philosophy, and illicitly combined with it.

The REALITY

Indeed, if you read even the first three volumes on our site, The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, you might divine this, that instead of being hostile to scientific method, this author loves it, endorses it, rejoices in it, and applies it, for example in SMR pp. 140ff., 941, with considerable care. There it is applied to the creation and to Christ’s resurrection respectively. In fact, taking a course on scientific method, along with physics and chemistry, at Melbourne University, the author topped the year in it, all the medical students of that year being in the course. This shows no more than this, that one is well-acquainted with this method; but this is to the point here.

If then you were to take the time to instruct yourself on that to which you seem to want to speak, namely our work on the Web, your might also choose to read That Magnificent Rock, and in it you would find a phase on dating, as indeed, you would see from the Index on SMR, itself, which also deals with it at length. All indexes are found at our site, at "search" which is specified near the start of the Home Page.

The place in TMR to find it is: The place in TMR to find it is: Models and Marvels at "antdat".

Also available on this topic is extensive work in SMR Ch. 2, including the End-notes.

You might also want to extend your knowledge, as appears necessary from the nature of your opinings, by referring to some recent scientific work, at Barbs, Arrows and Balms .. Ch. 15, and perhaps yet more so, at Calibrating Myths ... Ch. 1, and His Time is Near Ch. 9, with Answers to Questions
Ch. 5, at the Appendix.

Leaving then your straw man (one does not like being made of straw by someone else, when God has made one differently): one must note that on the scientific evidence available, especially now that the velocity of light (c) is on many sides from eminent scientists being discounted as NOT constant, but rather being considered for various models as once having been far faster (see refs. above), there is only one readout, if one follows scientific method rather than philosophical scientific crosses.

This is in thousands of years for the age of the earth. It is necessary to look at the facts, rather than at the contra-evidential hypotheses of some.

Such has been the unsophisticated but devious propaganda for long, that the matters noted in the above references, with the various scientific fields in view and cited, have led to much controversy, hundreds of Ph.D. scientists contending and contesting for long for creation, and a relatively early date for earth’s creation, and against the myth of organic evolution. Amongst these, of course, or rather in addition to them was like Cambridge University Astronomy Professor Fred Hoyle, who for long laughed at the vainglorious and ludicrous conceptions of a universe not formed by intelligence; and of course, once you realise this, the WAY He formed it is as far from the way it goes, as is the working of anything made, from the made it is made. The assembly line for a car, is one thing; the way the thing moves once it is made, this is quite another.

This fits perfectly with the increasingly popular scientific concept of a decline in the velocity of light; as of course it does with the Second Law of Thermodynamics which, whether you call it an increase in entropy, based on observation, or a decline in specificity, or a trend towards decay as occurs in ANY design, especially when it is placed in an environment not especially contrived for its endurance. On that, you could see Beyond the Curse; but it is any case, generic in the observable universe, just as is the FAILURE for NEW INFORMATION to be found in the generations of living things (cf. Beauty of Holiness Ch. 4, A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 9). These empirical facts are what design once made and now continuing requires; they are not what life forms being made requires. Information can be shared between bacteria for example, or adapted within parameters inbuilt; but new information is not found.

Again, on return to reality, the way our world works, this simply means that creation is then the model which fits; evolution is not. These are mere aspects of the enormously confirmed cases, such as you see in a little more detail, for example, in SMR pp. 140ff., TMR.

As shown in Overflight in Christ Ch. 4, organic evolution, the concept of self-making command centres called life, as in SMR pp. 252 H-I, is correctly called a myth, in terms of valid definition. On this topic, you may care to read Secular Myths and Sacred Truth, esp. Ch. 7, and Earth Spasm … esp. Ch. 1, Laughing Stock, Wake Up World! Chs. 4 - 5.

It is not possible for me, in reviewing the evidence scientifically, and logically, indeed, in accord with my training, to find any excuse for such a bizarre concept

- which would have us finding DNA intact after millions or even billions of years,

- tree-trunks, without roots, surviving for millions of years and moving vertically through strata supposedly of that age, in the form of one single tree, and this phenomenon available to sight again and again, the tree happily passing through one stratum to the other, and other nonsenses, if one adopts the evolutionary hypothesis. Once again, it is necessary to refer to anti-scientific philosophy to empirical fact, and to the approach which covers these facts, not its entire opposite. Scientific method MUST be followed, if you want science, not desire.

I am not in the habit of believing myths, rigorously unrealistic unburdenings of cultural preference. To me, truth is sacred.

The data requiring creation, as the material noted shows, include the cooling of the earth, the deformations of the moon, the magnetic field of the earth, the historic spread of supernovas, the rate of deposition of salts in the ocean, erosive rates and many more fields. They concur in one. They are found largely in TMR, Ch. 7, with the many references to other treatments on this site, there given, as noted. One of the fascinating features is the rank discord with observable fact, such as Dr Steve Austin uncovered in his Grand Canyon researches, which results from evolutionism (cf. Answers to Questions Ch 5 (at Appendix, and see all of that section for more detail on dates), and compare SMR pp. 164ff.,
News 1).

As to why there has been such dissension in science, TO one phase of which, married to an invalid philosophy, your view seems rather melded, for some reason or other, this is an interesting study, beautifully exposed long before it happened, in the Bible. This psychological area occurs in one of the Bible’s normative analyses, which always handle all data effectively, and these with its predictions, when it chooses to make them, always cover events and developments in ways which endure, and in advance of their appearance.

This biblical provision is unique, and is perfect for the due application of scientific method. It contrasts most massively with the normal work of men with their careful minds, in their own knowledge, or science, for theirs is not such enduring knowledge s that; and that, it is as one would expect from the mouth of God. That too, it is simple verification of the word of God, as well as reminder of the shifting slowness of man. It is never wise to trust in yourself, humility apart, whether as an individual or a race. We simply do not have what it takes, to cover a universe designed, created and covered by someone able even to MAKE us!

The OBFUSCATORY and the OBTRUSIVE

How amusing to find that secular ‘science’, especially when as is so usual, it is melded with unsustainable philosophies and indefensible metaphysics (cf. TMR, A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9, SMR Chs. 3, 4), becomes old and dated often in a mere 50 years, and that in a way sometimes comic; but the Bible is never dated. Its statements merely gain more confirmation as the years pass. You may care to look up archeology in the indexes provided for you, on the Home Page, if facts in this matter, interest you.

The word of God, the Bible, is alone valid, rational and verified as from God, and as one might expect, stands untouched over the millenia, though its statements are eminently testable (as shown in TMR Ch. 5, SMR Chs. 1, 3, 5, 10, Repent or Perish Chs. 2, 7, Beauty of Holiness Ch. 4, Barbs, Arrows and Balms 6 -7, and elsewhere on the site). Even in my own generation, almost endless and sometimes dramatic episodes in history have shown its inexorable truth, history itself as if on a string before it; and when you abstract the fallen philosophy with its confusion from the due realm of actual science, this too has magnificently confirmed the word of God with the vast scope of the word in the DNA and the commands everywhere in the living creation (cf. SMR pp. 129ff., 148ff., 211ff., Overflight in Christ
Ch. 3). It has indeed been COMMANDED, and so it exists.

These things are presented in systematic logical steps in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, Ch. 1, in verification mode in Chs. 2, 8 and 9, in retrospective confirmation in Ch. 10, in overview of the unique explicatory power of the Biblical perspective, in Ch. 5 and so on.

Evidently you have not duly considered that of which you write, namely our Web presentation, and in this respect regrettably are speaking to the air, which, while it may please you, is not profitable for me.

Might one suggest then that you acquaint yourself with the scientific, logical and empirical matters in the references above, before castigating the biblical position, or the team (one member of which has First Class Honours in his Science degree), with words and thoughts and ideas which appear directed to some straw man of your own creation, which, since you are not God, has really nothing to do with us, who are a creation of His.

It is, then, necessary to be aware of that to which you address yourself; and in this case, there are 72 volumes to consider; and in particular an initial four, all cited above (SMR, TMR). In general, whatever way you handle it, you must take care to be accurate when you attack something, if you wish to gain any attention at all. As far as you want to spread your wings, thus far you must acquire your knowledge. This is not at all so here, relative to your many assumptions, and simply incorrect attributions in your little sally.

When therefore you speak, ensure please that you are able to cite and quote the part of the text to which you object, and then give grounds, rational, coherent and precise, for such objection. Then it is profitable to reply, so that you may be helped. There is nothing too hard for the Lord, so we encourage questions; but on our site, they must be clear, relevant and sustainable from the area you want to criticise, or similarly apt if you want merely to learn. If you are in trouble, that is a special case, but you do not seem aware of the difficulties of your position.

How anyone could fail to find in the Bible, the unique expression requiring the deity, without the slightest rational competition, is once again a marvel of breach of reason. In making this statement, of course, I have 72 volumes of reason, evidence and testimony. They are all freely available on the Web, where there is abundant indexing, covering perhaps 250 pages, so that you can look up the topic of choice! This work has not been done so that it can be ignored when you discuss it, any more than a dinner is to be ignored, when you have words with the cook. Yet let us consider again, the failed position of evolutionism, and the irrational presentations so customarily made, by some (though this is corrected by numerous other scientists of top repute, of which again, you seem unaware).

Vast as is the breach of reason, for all that, this common human failing, when it comes to the thought of the Creator and His works, is one to which God in His word addresses Himself quite clearly. This is seen, for example in Romans 1, a chapter which would repay inspection here, because of its vast scope, close relevance and illuminating perspective concerning the topic you have addressed. In this, He shows us WHY such breaches occur of reason occur in this field, what they imply, how they relate to the other truths in His word, so that in entire consistency all matters relative to this irrational fad are covered.

There, from millennia ago, it is exposed, explained and judged. There is a reason for this default in reason! For this see SMR Ch. 5, in the relevant section.

Before we go further, one must note a salient point. IF you had sought instruction, of course, it would be different, and help could be given specifically for your understanding. Now it is best for you to study and contemplate until you are ready.

You words appear, one regrets to say, in your letter, to be guilty of various logical invalidities. Your ‘surely’ is merely begging the question, for it comes equipped with no evidence. The Bible, which is on our site shown demonstrably to be the word of God, shows that God has made man, and made this universe for him; and has instructed us on His works. ‘Surely’ does nothing to alter the grounds given on our site for this. If you are young, one can understand how, perhaps in the ebullience of youth, you have not taken time to think things through; but it is not yet too late for this. The Maker made and to intelligent creations, spoke of His work, of their place and of His purpose.

PRESCRIBING TO THE ALMIGHTY: Not Recommended

Is that then surprising that He should so act concerning His creation ? He has, as the Bible exhibits and experience confirms, made us able to survey things ludicrously or well, as will moves; and there is no reason why He should make some given number of universes, which without evidence, prima facie you seem one might almost say addicted to conceive. He can CONCEIVE results without action; and His actions have more than mere thought of maybe doing this or that! He KNOWS what He is about (cf. SMR Chs.1,3, 10).

Indeed, there is no reason to limit Him by your prevalent-seeming imagination in the things you have here presented, to universes, just as one may make one tennis court, or a swimming pool or things imaginable or scarcely imaginable at all. Telling God what to do or what He is to do is not very profitable, in general, since He is so much wiser than we!

Universes are one sort of thing. He has as many interests as He pleases, disposing His will and work as He will, not as someone else chooses to imagine.

This one, this universe, is not fully known as yet by man, and the concept of space as being in some mysterious way an incitement to consider various other material productions is lost on me. Size and significance are not the same. It is for US that the universe is vast and interesting, like a toy for a kid; for God, it is His creation, involving all-comprehending knowledge at the first.

Do not confuse the Creator with the creation, since this leads only to illusion and spurious imaginations as Romans 1 exposes, and life exhibits all too well, in theories which after a few years of being glorified, go like dead rats. It is not man but God who is great and knows all. Forgetting that endangers the very existence of man on this earth. Indeed, its end is as predicted in Matthew 24:35 and Isaiah 51:6. As with things that run down, as in our Second Law of Thermodynamics, and are placed there in toto, as in our Law of Conservation of Mass and Energy, they do not last forever.

The physical universe is large, to be sure, though its actual size is a matter now of highly sophisticated and controversial mathematics and options in theory – but so is a cattle station often exceedingly large in this, our country Australia, with perhaps one little house for life. There is no earthly or unearthly reason why the Lord should bother creating all sorts of other places. He does what He pleases, and one thing that pleases Him is to tell the mankind He made, having placed him in so vast a setting, one indicative of His majesty and power, what He is about and so instructive to the spirit of man as (or if) he looks for truth.

If you do not like that, it is your affair; it is nothing to do with Him, that you would appear loosely to attribute to Him what might appear a sort of splathering and spluttering, as if He could not control Himself, or as if He spilt speech of dubious value and much self-contradiction in various religions which are at odds on basic facts: indeed, as if He were a wholly incompetent being. Who would want to listen to mere verbiage, without demonstration, without authentication, without even validity! He is not a child, but the maker of child and adult alike. You can be as ‘one’ as you like in splutterings that do not agree, concur or even have basic concurrence. In an examination, most of the class can be as ‘one’ as it likes, in errors of a common kind; it is more important to be right, however few there be that come to the truth (cf. Matthew 7:13ff.).

What is this movement towards a virtual worship of creation, so often found in those circles, like, with all its endless propaganda and wild assumptions, so routinely falsified as years pass ? It is like a football crowd, cheering and roaring more and more for their ‘home’ team, but not creating a victory, merely a noise in the presence of defeat. The oneness of their cheering is not the oneness of result, which needs due testing on the field, empirically!

I do not conceive the Creator of the human body to be a fool, like that, nor do I find anything but contradiction for such a concept from the evidence before my eyes, ears and mind. But what ? It is always necessary to find not only what one holds, but also its implications, whether one has thought of them or not: and the more so, if one wishes to make attacks on the work of others.

FINDING LIMITLESS WISDOM

I find in God, by research, only infinite wisdom. My reasons are spread throughout the nearly seven millions of words presented on the Web site, and are available for detailed inspection. He has not left idiotic contradictions as so often does the wisdom of man, let alone does He sponsor what even contradicts itself, like vapid and clashing words of this and that ‘religion’; and He has not sprinkled, whose mind is so vast and enterprise so profound, little words here and there, like some insane wanderer, mind astray, wits loose. When GOD speaks, the quality is there, and it is found testably only in one place as SMR shows in detail.

His greatness is indeed unsearchable, but when He wishes to make a universe, that is His affair, and it is so whether it be angels or whatever else is His will. When He wishes to speak about it, that too is His affair. It is impossible to tell Him either what to say or where to say it: imagination simply cannot rule in these affairs, any more than in science. You have to test things with care, and have the evidence, unless of course you happen to prefer illusion; and if this should be so, for those who want it that way, they are welcome to it; it does not interest us.

We insist on truth. Evidence must be available, reason must function, false theories must be discarded, such as that of evolution (cf. TMR Ch. 1, SMR Ch. 2, Earth Spasm … Ch. 1, Wake Up World! … Chs. 4 - 5 , Spiritual Refreshings Chs. 6, 13, 16). When God speaks, He does not leave any doubt about it, and minds are provided for use, not for surrender to soaring imaginations.

You take the evidence and find what it portends, rather than declaring what it must be, and then bending theories to fit your imagination. That is the way for procedure if truth is to rule. So must one approach the things of God with all care. When one thus finds as in SMR, His word, it is necessary to remember one’s place, and follow it. When, as is the case, it solves all problems for those who believe, use and apply it, for all fields, then it fortifies the mind, enlightens the heart, establishes useful work instead of losing effort on futility, which this world is doing at such a rate, that its endless surmisings about making itself, are merely destroying it, more and more, before its very eyes.

That, in fact, is PRECISELY what Christ predicted in Matthew 24, just one more of the endless seeming verifications which spring up like geysers on all sides (cf. SMR Ch. 8, Answers to Questions Ch. 5).

It is also the case that when the Lord acts, it is wise to find the meaning from Him, rather than from imagination based on confusion of words and ideas, or on efforts as if to construct ideas, synthesise this and that at will, calling this a religion or that, and then seeking to amalgamate them, like mating a horse with a cat, and so make imagination king, and will not reality the determinant.

Man is not God, and to let him act like it, is simply unrealistic, like party parades.

Parties have their places; this is not one of them.

ONE IS EASY, BUT IT SHOULD BE THE RIGHT ONE

It is Similar in Marriage

You speak of all being one, then, but how could this possibly be so, the Moslem with a God minus His incarnation, the Christian not so, and others not so, in different ways. Jesus made it clear that those who rejected Him, as the truth incarnate, were of the devil (see for yourself in John 8:44), and the way in which God and the devil are one is ZERO!

You and Christ are then at odds, and I know who has the better accreditation, testimony and evidence. It is not at all a problem to me, that (cf. The Magnificence of the Messiah, with Christ, the Wisdom of God … Ch. 8)! If it is so with you, it is so with all, moreover.

There is a oneness of course, both of God and it is available for those who love Him, with Him and towards each other; but this is a selection of people, based not on caste, like that horrendously divisive Untouchable evil, where according to National Geographic, some 160,000,000 Indians are so consigned, and that, it appears clearly in terms of some misled religion which dares so to confine so many, by their birth.

The article also exposed the fact that Gandhi, using his fasting method, for religious reasons refused that deliverance for these afflicted people which one young Untouchable with two doctorates, came near to securing; and that while there are now some ameliorations, these are chiefly political. The case remains a tragic waste.

Not so is it with the Christian Church, the one which necessarily follows the Bible, not interested in creating gods and calling them ‘Christ’ in some inane not to say spurious manner, but acknowledging the One who came and EARNED His name on earth. In fact, it is based instead on FREELY RECEIVING HIM who came to us and acted vigorously, valiantly and precisely as He said, whether in healing or raising the dead, or dying precisely on time as predicted (Highway of Holiness Ch. 4), or being delivered from the hands of Rome and the Jew, so that they could neither produce nor retain Him, and He could return when the time was ready; and in doing so He fulfilled what was written hundreds, and in some cases thousands of years before (cf. TMR Ch. 3).

Statements of opinion are fine, provided always they first relate to empirical reality.

Whoever a person are, the way for that one is free, open and the invitation is costly, only to Him, who paid the price on the Cross, as a vicarious sacrifice (Galatians 3). The ‘cost’ to the Christian is knowing and following the Maker of all, the Redeemer of any who come (cf. John 1:12), and this - while it may occasion much expense, and the loss of being an autocrat, so that you can no longer be following your own imagination or life or desire as you please, as if it were king, commander or boss - is a cost which has great reward.

How is this so ?

First of all, it follows from even knowing such a One as God, which is delight beyond measure, secondly in seeing Him act as He promises, both personally and scientifically, historically and in principle, and thirdly, in being and doing what you are designed for. It is, as Christ said, like a seed which germinates. It seems to lose everything, but it becomes instead a plant with roots and shoots, by following its nature, not its pride, and rotting as it is, by refusing a better destiny.

Not money, not education (or the lack of it – I had to spend some ten years in Universities and tertiary institutions to cover my subject needs), not personal charm: nothing like that. That is not how God rules you in or out.

It is not based on birth or imaginary worth. It is based on Christ’s worth (Galatians 6:14, Romans 3:22-27). You come when you are willing to belong. It is then, and not till then, you have found the only God whose mind is equal to making the DNA of man, and all His codes and ways, his spirit and liberties as well, his will. Man making liberty for his own products ? He can scarcely make things move or see as magnificently as man can, with donated equipment from birth. Man in such things is not in the race, but as a race is in grave danger of pride bringing a fall which has no bottom. But instead God calls people to come… to Him.

Designed to relate, they need to do so, not talk about contradictory words as if this were in some way relevant to truth, without which you receive the due collision of reality itself!

Moreover, you do so on His invitation, which indeed is not to one but to all. It is only then that the spiritual oneness can come. It is based on truth, as from God, not imagination, or preference, or hideous cultures which oppress, or even supposedly fine ones, proud in their self-portraits like dreams.

Until then, sin is the division, and the death of Christ on the Cross, is the vicarious sacrifice to cover it, so that in justice, God in love might also receive those who receive Him (see Romans 3:23ff.), all of them without distinction in the entry, because of the gifts they may have: and who has what was not given! The distinction is the gift which HE has given, but it needs reception.

SUMMARY FINDING

Simply, I find in the Bible, with due and extensive test open to all to ponder, the only valid, logically coherent, self-explicatory, reason instructing, philosophically competent, empirically accurate, testable document purporting to come from God. The reasons for this finding are presented on the Web. If you were to read Repent or Perish Ch. 2, perhaps Great Execrations …Ch. 3, and simply The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, and That Magnificent Rock, you would be able to see how it is presented as demonstrated, that this is the case. By the mercy of God, I have found Him; but the power of God, one sees it demonstrated, as Romans 1:17ff. shows. Faith relishes what reason confirms, and indeed requires.

You may prefer not to study what you have attacked. That is your option. The other option is this. You are of course, when you have duly studied this, free to seek to criticise it. Reading becomes rather a necessary preliminary to knowing, and knowing to valuable criticism as a possibility.

It is not a question of anyone’s feeling or experience, as if that person were a director; but it is a matter of logical procedure and knowledgeably discussion of a topic.

A person may do that and follow the thing that pleases by all means, but it should never be confused with the truth: that belongs to One whose word meets all objective tests and criteria as no other claimant for truth does or can do (cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 6 -7, and SMR Ch. 3). To trust in yourself, the Bible declares, is the work of a fool. It is at all costs to be avoided, since only beyond one’s self is there that total confrontation with all reality which is necessary in any scientific approach; and you seem fond (rightly), at least in theory, of such an approach, which as a METHOD is a splendid thing, alas frequently more observed in the absence than the presence, and in talk than in action!

Moreover, when one comes to the truth, it is necessary to APPLY it.

No, I do not find it necessary to have my God on a string to my imagination, as if He had to bow to what I felt should be; I prefer to let Him tell me, test the word, apply it, find that nothing else stands logically AFTER due study, and not before it; and in applying it, one has the felicity that not only does it answer - SMR Ch. 5 - otherwise insoluble philosophical problems, but it provides promises which work, like any law of physics, yet personally, for one’s own life in the living of it. As far as scientific procedure is concerned, this is entirely in accord with it, which after all, is a matter of care and not allowing desire to master facts, or imagination to replace test.

This answer and key that unlocks, is of course not applicable to those who reject Him: for personal, He deals with persons as persons. This is admirable, since to take things as they are, and not as one merely dreams them to be, is more productive, not to say accurate.

It is apt time now to revert to your strange concept that if everyone clung only to the Bible, we would not have a Web site: for here one finds you to be making two logical errors. This is unfortunate, but it needs to be corrected. Thus, you appear to be loose in this topic, and fancy free.

Having been educated, as you suggest, the author has read books on chemistry, biology, logic, philosophy, economics, and five languages, with much in English literature and philosophy, scientific thought and so on, as you might imagine. In reading them, one does not make them the word of God; and indeed, in believing, as required by reason, that the Bible is the SOLE AUTHORISED WORD OF GOD TO MAN, as we state, we do not say that God has not given us work to do; for the Bible indicates that He has done so. When you see a map, rules, structure and history of a school, and find you are in it, you do not imagine that you have nothing to do as a student! What a bizarre idea that would be …

Thus the fact that this Bible is God’s sole, explicit manual for man, scarcely surprising, since He is not negligent, does not mean that with other men who think, one do not seek to explore His universe in various ways. We are told to work, and we do; we are invited to test His word, and we do (Isaiah 48). We are led to praise Him for His works, which are diligently sought out by those who revere Him, and thus we need to KNOW THEM! To do this, naturally we have to know various fields, and apply the tests. This in a very extensive measure this author has done, and reported in 72 works, readily available on the Web.

In company with men of similar conviction, which list actually includes some of the greatest scientists the world has ever known, with massively innovative ones in their field, such as Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Boyle, Linnaeus, Fleming of penicillin fame, Von Braun, Babbage, Lord Kelvin, Barnes, Cuvier and Kepler, and hundreds of Ph.D. scientists, some of whom are now banded in creationist scientific groupings, teams of which you seem unaware, whose works span the earth, in TV, in curriculum studies, in radio, in seminars, in lecture rooms, institutions: I do not find any problem about having a computer.

A Computer ? Its very genesis is from a biblical creationist, in the first place. It is these which need the Web, which with other science duly is fashioned. It is precisely from such men as Babbage that the computer in its initial concept of modern type actually comes, so that Christian creationist who founded the concepts in the beginning in this field is helping to provide for the Christian worker who uses these and other Christian discoveries in the field of science! Of course there are others, but these are among the foremost, especially in the greatest innovations in understanding what is there.

No, that is a truly odd remark of yours about having no site because we have the divine manual and follow no other god: and it exhibits a dual confusion. Firstly, you appear to promote the concept of a Christian who believes that God has spoken, as parents sometimes do, ONCE in ONE way to make Himself clear to ALL, as in some way providing a limit to the investigation of the universe. You speak as if, by this magnificent basis for knowledge, one would lack knowledge, rather than have a basis for it, logically, and from this possess a stimulus to thought for rapid development, such as great Christian scientists have very often provided.

It appears that this is just fuzzy thinking, as if the word of God made it unnecessary to think in our proper callings, rather than supplying the sole valid basis for thought (cf. TMR Ch. 5, SMR Ch. 3).

Again, to summarise, in your concept of scientists who are Christians, you would seem to have a considerable ignorance of their enormous scientific input in the past. Without them, science today would be massively diminished. The case is the very contrary of what you suppose, in fact, if you want facts.

Unfortunately, you also err in attributing to our religion, that of Jesus Christ, some appalling atrocities committed by those who disobey Him. In Luke 6:46, He makes it clear what He thinks of that sort of thing: WHY do you call Me, Lord, Lord, and not do the things that I say!

In apparently seeking to task Christianity with such things as the horrid violences of certain historical events, you merely are exhibiting an appalling, because so misleading an ignorance of the work you are apparently seeking vainly to attack. It is moreover appalling in this, that it is like firing cannons into a field, supposedly because of some enemy, when he has not even visited that field! At what are you directing this fire ? Apparently at Christianity and in particular, at the Web site of this body. Thus you ‘fire’ in vain, where we neither are, nor have visited, and where from our Home Page it is clearly seen, as indeed in the Bible itself (John 18:36) at a place that is not ours. Nor do we admire it; and indeed, past generations of believers in Christ and His word, have suffered vastly from such violent assaults as those which you mention.

MISFIRING AT THE WRONG ENEMY

You talk of the horrific Crusades of the past. How does that concern us in this matter ? Have you found in our site our approval of them ? or of their basis ? If you read it, you will have found extensive horror expressed at such things, on this site, and extensive exposure from the Bible of this, how far such heresies were from the Bible, how savagely they acted (cf. SMR pp. 946ff., 1032-1088H).

As well suggest to a mannequin, that perhaps she likes arthritis. There is a limit to such uninformed surmisings! It is necessary to read what you find, not what you think, and then suggest it might fit to others, in such a tendentious fashion.

You speak also of the equally horrific invasions in the Americas, evidently when the Spanish performed atrocities almost beyond belief, with their Roman Catholic missionary zeal. Yet we are neither Spanish nor Roman Catholic. What has this to do with anything relevant ?

For that matter, how the work of the Romanist popes, and those nations addicted to such ideas of idolatry, are supposed to relate to one who spend large amounts of work, on the site to which you so quaintly refer, exposing the anti-biblical error of that whole religion, which is no nearer to the Bible, than the moon to the sun, is conspicuously unclear!

Indeed, this Roman Catholic evil, exposed some hundreds of years ago in that massive, international and central historical event, the Reformation, has been condemned over that large time, as is exposed in great detail in SMR pp. 1032ff., and 930ff.. This is one of the major facts of history! Thousands of splendid writers have exposed it, churches have deplored it, nations have detested it, in terms of its distortion of Biblical truth.

Why then you relay and relate these things as if these people and their appalling deeds had anything other than contrariety to do with biblical Christianity, which our site most clearly depicts as its own religion, is not clear. It appears to be some cross between failure to study your topic and your intended butt!

Or again you speak as if in some way bible believing Christians enslaved Africans, not some nation which with many others, was daftly astray in this matter ? Nations are not Christian, because something is said by this or that person: they Christians are who obey Christ. That is His view: rebellion, says the book of the Lord (yes, it does mean book, it is the LORD's book, you see, that is the point, for books are of different kinds - Isaiah 8:20), is like witchcraft (I Samuel 15:23ff.).

TALKING OF BOOKS –
IT REALLY MATTERS WHOSE BOOK IT IS

It is, you see, not commended by the One whose BOOK you mention. Actually, if you want facts relevant, it was William Wilberforce, a bible-believing Christian, who made vast strides in delivering Britain from this colossal sin, using his time, opportunities and fortune to secure their deliverance, successfully. Christians have given their lives times without number, to deliver people from the gross violences which Islamic, Romanist, Communist and other desolatory religions or pseudo-religions have presented. They do not kill as a pastime; their Lord was crucified and refused to use force. They are "crucified with Christ".

If many are hypocrites, many are not. The cost is found when you pay it, not say it.

Man in fact, in the way God has organised it, does need a book to know God, though parts of it may help you find Him in the interim; but you MUST have the GOSPEL (TMR Ch. 3, Barbs ... 17), for there is not other way in to God but through the door provided ? Would you prefer a window, a testimony to your own enterprise ? Many do, in households as in religions, but it is mere presumption. You need an invitation to find God, far more than to the Queen or a President; and it needs to be authentic. That is why it is important to find, as demonstrated on our site, that the Bible is the only valid claimant to the position of the word of God.

THIS IS THE BOOK OF THE GOSPEL AND THE CHRIST, BOTH ESSENTIAL

There you find that you need CHRIST to find God; you need the GOSPEL concerning Him to find God, you need GOD to find God, and not your own energies or enthusiasm or guesses. This is the irreducible minimum. You need to find God in fact in the way God has provided, and thus not to play God, for this is not play-time.

It is hard, then, to follow such errors on your part, unless of course you simply have not read what you criticise, or have failed to know that to which you present your irrelevant assault. It would be like laughing at sun glasses when you neither understand their theory, nor their need, nor try them on.

We are, as is made most clear there, Presbyterians, a part of the Reformation, and nothing to do with the scourge which afflicted so many of our own people in historical times, a whip which came from Romanism. We do not relate to nationalistic pretences about pretences. The only Head of the Church is CHRIST, a fact for which our Presbyterian forbears suffered much from the English when their political arm used force against them.

Thus, not only we, but an ENTIRE VAST MOVEMENT OF HISTORY, has condemned both such actions, and the very form of a heresy of Christianity, which did these things, which dared to fight physically for its religion, and to kill, when Christ made it clear that His servants WOULD NOT FIGHT FOR HIM, as His kingdom is NOT of this world (John 18:36). Indeed, Romanism also murdered thousands of those who in former times, like myself now, have exposed it, in the blood-letting of their Inquisition (q.v. from indexes).

It is a little hard to be grouped with what has attacked one’s own beliefs, and killed many of those of the same faith as oneself, because of them! It is so topsy-turvy that it almost resembles some kind of comedy. In these things however, it is best not to be comic, at least in substance!

No, you who make this attack need to become aware of the facts, before speaking in this way, in order to avoid recklessness. No doubt, you did not intend this, but only knowledge of what you discuss, can readily prevent it. Moreover you need to realise what the Bible says about itself and its Gospel, thus avoiding the simple error about it which we have cited above. It is also necessary to read it with understanding, so that when it clearly states that it is the irreducible, immutable Gospel concerning Jesus Christ which people need to know, believe and act on, you do not confuse this with some other statement, as your words indicate. In that way, you indulge in criticism without actually making it.

Why then you should feel free to make such attacks, is again, an oddity. It would be like asking you to account for al Qaeda, as if you were in some way responsible, when on your Web site (if you have one), you had condemned this approach with hundreds of pages of detailed scholarship! Such a thing would approach the ridiculous.

As it really will not do, all this false accusation about important things, one based not least on ignorance of that to which you address yourself, there is therefore a necessary step before useful communication can proceed.

Perhaps you might do yourself the service, therefore, of READING what you wish to attack, so that your ASSUMPTIONS about its content, might be SCIENTIFICALLY TESTED. That is one of the first and chief works of any science, ACCURATELY to know the subject.

This will suffice for now, in all conscience, as reply; but I would reason with you to READ the references cited before being in grave danger of again making vain, because irrelevant and inapplicable attacks. It is much more useful to deal with what is, than with what is not; and when you reach that level, we could then usefully perhaps discuss from knowledge, what appeals to you for thought. Then you would be dealing with a body with our name, not a peg you have made, apparently, on which you hang some ideas of yours about people of some sort, whose ways you do not like.

Perhaps then, after a substantial time, we may hear from you again. In the meantime, we shall have to consider this conversation closed, since you have erred in so much so many times as to simple matters of fact, showing you have not carefully read what you are wishing to assault. As this is contrary to the rules which we have set up on the Web, for reasoned discourse, a change to such informed logical procedure is a way if you wish to proceed. Their chief point is to get places and not merely exchange words.

Please do not misunderstand: this is not an aversion to discussion, but to irrelevant discussion. By all means, feel free to write again, if you still wish to do so, after the time for informing yourself is past, not before March, 2004. In this way, if you are really interested, you will have time to do some justice to the materials you have inadvisedly and with such inaccuracies, unfortunately distorted.

Until then, we shall not be receiving further letters from you, or giving them attention; but then, when that time has come, why, one should look forward to it, if you can follow the needs of scientific accuracy, or indeed, careful response to what is there.

Incidentally, it is time to touch another of your critical topics. As to the testimony of Christ coming to this world, and dying, you might begin by studying The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, Appendix C (found from “Trilogy” in the margin of the site). For the biblical prediction of the date of His death, hundreds of years before He came, at approximately AD 30, see /hh4.html

Having fulfilled hundreds of predictions about Him, including dying on predicted time, in the midst of some of the most lethal critics the world has ever known, without being able to be faulted, He is not really available for imposture. It is in vain to talk about someone else to be called ‘christ’, someone who did not perform to specifications, or make fame by action to match. That would, in principle, be rather like having another Winston Churchill, a politician of today, using the name as if that in some way allowed him to touch the fame and name of the other: sheer imposture! In this world, you need to EARN a name, however glibly people may disdain it.

There is no other Jesus as Paul made so clear to those trying to USE His name and fame for their own trifling little productions (II Corinthians 11), and anyone who did not die at the time Christ did, or have the record Christ did, in fulfilling prophecy, is at once biblically excluded. Accuracy and detailed knowledge in such things are essential. In that respect, a scientific approach is valuable. You realise you have to cover ALL the parameters, not just that which appeal from time to time.

God, you see, has covered everything, warned of the wiles and ways, and has concluded everything in the most watertight way, with the very clarity of heaven. You take it or leave it; but as to those who want to use the name of Jesus the Christ, for something and someone else. This name, people cannot murder it, and carry it on their own shoulders. This is the position from the first, as it will be to the last; and it is for one, and for all. Name-grabbing, it is mere pretence.

Then again, for His resurrection, you might consult the Bible, if you look at it (since you do not accept it, presumably you have given attention to this field with some care!), and SMR Ch. 6, with other references found in the index (at /alphabetq-s.html). All these things verify continually the demonstration of the Bible as the only authorised word of God to man, having a stature which alone meets logic in the understanding of all things, and a scientific accessibility which is secure.

The testimony for His return, you may care to study in Answers to Questions Ch. 5. It is precise, unique and never contradicted, but only confirmed in history in every detail, and currently those details mount to the skies, including one vast unique events, that has happened once in nearly two millennia. I shall not however retell what you may read if you will. Scientifically this is unique verification without parallel or competitor, over millennia. Unique verification is always at a pinnacle in scientific method.

Having broken death, and despite a millennia of notice about His intention to do this on the third day after His death, in the very face of His enemies who would kill Him, and left no body to be found after His entombment, since after the third day, He was using it, He is on record that He will return.

The events concerned for that coming action of His, these are replete now: and while it is true that He has sent His Holy Spirit in the interim, it is equally true that as Christ declared, that Spirit does not speak of Himself (John 16:7-14), but as He hears, and that over all mankind Christ is Lord, whether they like it or not, no other name being given under heaven to man (Acts 4:11-12). As to that matter of ‘name’ and its singularity, that too is simple fact. Even scientifically, in terms of facing ALL facts by this, there is no competition, nothing able even rationally to stand and deliver what is needed for confirmation in the presence of the Bible and its central offer to man, Jesus Christ.

By many He was and may still be despised, though never on any valid grounds; and not for that reason, is anything concerning Him, untrue. Truth in fact is most frequently despised, and people are often recklessly disdainful about it. It is, for all that, to rule; and Christ as the way, the truth and the life, will do JUST THAT (Psalm 2, Matthew 24:36ff.), having attested Himself as nothing else has.

As in the occurrence of the flood, some will not listen; so be it. It will not alter one joy the event, any more than it did then (cf. News 1). In fact, Peter in I Peter 3:3-5 predicted that it would become unfashionable to much as to believe in the flood, or in the return of Christ (Joyful Jottings 8), which as with all other biblical prophecies, has or does come true. As predicted, such is the disdainful and ignorant disbelief of many gripped by cultural comedies of mistaken thought.

Nor will disdain alter the scientifically investigable facts, the testimony of personal power in His promises to those who receive Him, the pre-coverage of history or the impregnable testimony of truth, standing freely after millennia. It stands; what attacks it falls; that is a simple empirical fact over the last few hundred years to the point of being all but comic.

There is much more that could be said, but it would not seem that you are yet ready for it, so it will be left in case you should one day speak to us again.

Now, having said these things as one must, because they are true, and the Lord is sure, do not think that it is any concern personally, that you have been misled in this way and carved up a goose that is not in our yard, as far as our own work is concerned. It only shows the more your intense need, so that we shall plan the more to pray for you, over these months, because there is no liberty like the liberty of truth. Whether you choose to write further in March or not, in the ambit of our site and so after careful reading of relevant material in it, is up to you, but we will plan to pray for you.

Alas, man does not start right, and all have to find the One they lack (cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 18 -19), even to be coherent (It Bubbles … Ch. 9).

As to the liberty of truth (cf. John 8:30ff.), this, when one has found God who alone can know it, since He is it, provides the actual and testable resolution of all things and the refreshment of the heart that brings unspeakable joy, and that for His own reasons: His goodness.

In personal life, as in science, when it keeps to its own scientific method and is thus reputable and not falsely-so-called, this is a very happy outcome. As the references above show, there is ONE source of coherence in knowledge and understanding of ALL things, and there alone human knowledge can rest content, not in frenzied impoverishment and brash assertions, corrected sometimes quite severely by the realities so unwisely ignored (cf. Isaiah 11:10).

With all goodwill, and hope that you may be blessed,

Robert Donaldson

For World Wide Web Witness Inc.

UPDATE: The reader may now wish to see the Pair of Volumes on Naturalism and Truth, of many hundreds of pages.