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Many things in the world of mankind are sad. Some are truly pathetic. They evoke the tear, invest the heart with heaviness. They seem too futile to believe, too foolish to consider, too vain to be. But they are! Equipped with power like a Boeing, and far beyond it, man can act like a plummeting meteor, intent only on being buried as fast as possible. He can quite often see the ground approaching at a great rate, but continues steadfast in his delusions, confusions and desire.

Such a case have we here. In Time Magazine's Special Issue , Summer 1997, intent on man as inventor, we find the ocean's bottom in high creative mode. Rocked in the cradle of the deep - this acquires a new meaning. On p.39 of this aspiring magazine, which so delighted its producer, we hear, we are led to the very bottom.

"There isn't a lot of physical structure to the ocean bottom and it's not obvious what is driving the system to fragment in different species like this" - says the writer, from the Scottish Association for Material Science.

"It is," he continues, "a big puzzle." Considering the hundreds of creatures found in the ooze at the bottom, he is indeed puzzled. What is even more puzzling, at least superficially, is this. Why is he expecting things material to fragment into life? and if he is not expecting it, why does he so speak? Puzzle? One should have thought it would be the sort of puzzle one would find in wondering why desert flowers appeared in both magnificence, at microscopic level, and multitude, in the desert - as they can and often do.

Did the sand think them up? Did the grains fragment into flowers? Did one's garden fragment into blooms? There were of course seeds, water, a suitable environment for whatever it was that the seed contained to do whatever it is that it is programmed to perform, and does so well. But that? It is not a puzzle. It is merely a matter of someone putting the seed into the earth, and someone making both beforehand..

In that case, the someone is the one who has what it takes, not to fragment, but to fashion. His name is God. His other words parallel these, and are exceedingly abundant in written code, in our own flesh, and in written book, for our own eyes, though we may shut them and have ... puzzles.

Puzzle! This then is the comment of one scientist after reference to hundreds of ocean bottom microscopic creatures dredged from the ocean bottom, and perhaps as many as 100 million that might be separated through filter paper, instead of mesh. Multitude of differentials? Of course. Any author knows the tendency to multiply words, books. It is a result of imagination and hands. Our Author has it all written from the first:

"God created great whales, and every living creature that moves, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind... and God blessed them saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas..."
That is found in Genesis 1:21-22.

Multiplication and abundance, when God is involved and so speaks, mean multitude and abundance. The scale is unlikely to be small, just as the words are evocative of vast enterprise, such as of course now found in this phase.
 
 

There then it was, this massive multiplication of variety. Diverse? Large, small, exuberant with special, specialised, extraordinary features, these creatures in the bottom, these "puzzle" the man who sees the "system" subject to "driving" to "fragment" into such species.

It is always a "big puzzle" when what has no call, cause, core or commission "produces" elaborate symbolic and operative codes, equipped with system engineering executives to implement them, each graded and apposite to the task, all in unison with overview and schema, all expressed in one language. It is always remarkable when there is a profusion of them to laugh at the sheer, idle (idol?) folly of gradualism, and similarly to shock by superabundance the magic twinkling of "punctuated equilibrium".

What IS it that draws a deep breath to punctuate the stasis with oasis!! In fact, the Bible which described something of the heart and depicts the power of the Creator - abounds in its testimony of His exuberance of production as to the wittiness of His inventions (Proverbs 8 has this last). And wittiness, this is precisely what this extraordinary assortment of exotic creatures attests in its noteworthy originality and precision of design. Like the minds of mankind and their bodies, it has a wonderful variety on an original theme, sub-systems 'sprouting" as sprouts normally do, from the basis of the creation according to plan. In this case, the plans are numerous, and the sub-systems are there as well.

It is always a puzzle for earth to erect hi-tech factories called life and to codify them, while it is at ti, into superior robotic, over-the-top robotic premises that then go on to reproduce themselves, as our own factories alas do not.
 
 

Puzzles? Yes, all is always "puzzles" when necessity is avoided and vain myth parades its catastrophic contradictions of science, law and logic.

Another "puzzle"? Why do they do it, merely scratching the head when they ignore the person who made their heads and enabled validity at the outset in their thoughts, so that anything could be thought of as assessing rather than existing only? The Bible answers this also.

The "system" of course did not "fragment" to "make" millions of designs on the relatively featureless "ocean bottom". It as invented by another, like relatively featureless paper to my pen, and so became a base for symbolic logic in the form of life, which in man has a conscious component, and an analytical one, and a steering wheel for the person concerned, so that he can steer with it; or even against it, or even against God , his Creator.

Since when is the invention of symbolic logic in a person a "fragmenting"? Does blotting paper "fragment" into fleas? Or is someone, a system-component or else provider, to write, apart from blotting paper, merely the medium on which to do it, and be active in placing upon it what it then receives: a book? Observation and logic alike have only one answer.

Is this combination so astonishing since the one who writes exemplifies it even while writing, even of "puzzles" on a "fragmenting" ocean floor? Does ink fragment into code? Does paper release inward tensions in the form of words? Is nothing the source of anything? Is anything filled with features created by what lacks all feature? Is understanding the recourse of unconsciousness? Is matter mind? Is mind will? Is inertia a concert? Is death life? Why is it that in bank accounts man may be most cautious in realising the precise cause of each step, while when he studies things not his own, he can be so oblivious of the very heart of science, adequate cause for adequate effect!

The Bible makes it clear that this is no mere individual disease, paradigm or pattern. Rather there is an epidemic in the race which leads to systematic results just as does false addition in mathematics, or the presence of physical viruses in the body: it is "having understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart" (Ephesians 4:19). As common as the cold, it has, similarly, discernible symptoms. Not research but cost paid is the basis of its cure. For God already has known of the disease before it happened (Ephesians 1:4), providing for it before the world was so much as created. Inventors can move in that brilliant direction, seeing the vulnerability and providing against it.

God, having no limits, did it wholly - and His holiness was in it. Christ died for us while we yet sinners, to bring us to God, the just for the unjust, so that He became sin for us - as many as received Him - He, who knew no sin, that we might in Him become the righteousness of God. A transactional analysis reveals the plight of the sick, the power of the rescuer, and the price of the remedy, exclusively paid by the Physician.

Colds can be puzzling, and also uncomfortable, and can interfere with normal living. They are MILD. Diseases can be life threatening and even fatal. This one is always fatal unless remedied (Romans 6:23).

But let us return to the bottom of the ocean. The Bible talks of that also. Thus Micah in Ch.7 has this to say: "He will turn again, He will have compassion upon us; He will subdue our iniquities; and You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. You will perform the truth to Jacob, and the mercy to Abraham"... and Romans 4 shows us that this Jesus Christ is that truth. (For demonstration, see SMR Chs.1,6,9.) There now, there is a feature for the (symbolic) bottom of the ocean. It is one to activate by faith and repentance, towards Christ.
 
 

We were asking whether blotting paper "fragments" into fleas, or indeed even into words. Let us pursue this point. Does contrivance multiplied by billions in the cells of a living creature result from breaking up what lacks it? or will machinery arise from metal? Or intelligence from no source?

The metaphors merely mask the absence of thought, just as the words in their elements depict mere magic. Such is not any scientific "arising". You must specify the interfaces, evoke the laws and confirm by experiment. Not lax pseudo-science but rigorous science is what exposes myth for what it is.

The only alternative to such magic by metaphor is this: what has what it takes to provide what you get, this is what we have... or rather, has us!

The name? Not puzzle: but the Lord of Life and Prince of it, who had more logic to impart on His visit to earth, an alienated earth, in the main, than this. No alien, He was treated as one. The owner He was provided prayerfully with an eviction notice. Despitefully used as love allowed hate to meet it in its own shallow way, but not beaten by it, He provides friendship for life which is willing to receive His design, the final design, aborted by sin, but restored and available for rebirth in the heats of His creatures called mankind (Colossians 3:10).

Isn't God wonderful! His creatures are wonderfully made, as one would expect from One whose name IS Wonderful, and His redemption reaches to the heights of the heavens which also He made, to the heart of God, and from this, to the ocean depths of man's sin. Vertiginous is the incline from destruction to life eternal, and steep the slope to the ways of life; but they are in the end natural for man, though he has in masses forsaken them; and their restoration process is powered also - by God.

For to us, says the prophet Isaiah, a child is born, a son is given, and His name shall be called: Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government there shall be no end...." - 9:6-7. This prince whose government is "endless" and without limit, infinite, is yet born a Jew, Jesus Christ of the house of David. No one else came at the specified time (Daniel 9:24-27 , SMR pp. 886ff.) No one else has a record indestructible despite the milling scholars who seek to destroy it, as Herod the children of His time; no one else managed to avoid any exposure when directly assaying the task of power and miracle, grace and humility, healing and help, redemption and death, resurrection and redemption, that was His.

Examined by hostility, He overcame in holiness. Affronted by reason, He was devastating in logic. On the Cross, embalmed in hate, He reiterated love. His death, forecast from of old, He also forecast, that He might the more potently evidence in the unavailability to man of His body, the reason for its departure. He took it. It was His. God is not mocked, though He elected to endure mockery on the way to propounding and executing the cure for man, like a doctor allowing His body a base for a vaccine. This however was not at the risk of His life, but as the prophets showed (Daniel 9, Isaiah 52-53, Psalm 2,22), at the assured cost of it.

Of the increase of His government and of peace, says the prophet, NO END. There is only one whose increase of supervision knows no end, for there is no limit to God. The PRINCE of PEACE is one name of the one on whom the government is laid, even on His shoulder. Name? We are told this is the name to come, and it is to Him this function is attributed, so that this name is His; and with this one, all the rest. Is He however the prince of peace in your life, one of those multitudinous, specialised millions of creation from His heart and mind and power, the ONE TO WHICH HE OFFERS REDEMPTION THROUGH HIS BLOOD (Ephesians 1).

Is HIS PEACE which passes all understanding (Philippians 2), yours ? It should be. You are made for it. It seems a puzzle when it is missing since it is a design specific. At this level, you can abort it. Restored, it is then in its place in that greatest marvel, the freedom of man. Too sick to find Him, you are sought out by Him; but if you wish Him, take Him; for He is too great a surgeon to be disenabled by mere disease.

This Prince whose government is endless and without limit, infinite, is yet born a Jew, Jesus Christ of the house of David. Jew and Gentile, alike, have turned from Him, each in his Age, but to whoever receives Him, He is glory - authorising entry into His eternal kingdom for those who become, in Him, through new birth, at once the children of God, and citizens of the kingdom of heaven (John 1; Colossians 3, Philippians 3:20-21).

Merry Christmas! For the purist, this means: May this world-wide rejoicing season which is no more than is His due, but which is so often glamorising into contemptible trash and popularised into mere vacation: may this focus be in the providence of God, a focus for you on the only life which can bring what the season claims. And that ? justified peace in pre sented pardon.