CHAPTER SIX
THE BLUE HEELER AND THE
BLUE
SEA
CN July 12, TV July 31, Rising Waters
The
Australian, August 2 (slightly revised 2003)
SEA AND WAVES ROARING
The pitter-patter
of the Blue Heeler's feet was so very dim, because we were near the coastline.
Its nose quivered as it snuffed the wind. It looked thoughtfully out to sea,
head raised, tail crisped, then resumed its swift trot.
There was
undoubtedly something different. It had not been on the island long, since it
had been taken there on a year long excursion with a scientist, who brought it
with him. People could be seen looking out to sea, and with the field glasses,
it was observed that their brows were creased. The dog saw unaided. It howled a
little, but realising perhaps the loss of face and form in such a proceeding,
tempered it into a note of mere query. There was something wrong. He
realised as he went to the shore, for the sea had been rather too rough to be
inviting, but knowledge was necessary. The waters were unduly high. Nor was
this the first time.
Had he been
able to understand human speech in a fuller form than the few hundred words
committed to memory, he might have realised ... These Pacific Islands, such as
the Marshalls, were in danger of inundation. At the
6th Session of the Conference of the Parties (a sort of global weather cop ? for
COP is their acronym!), within the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change, recently
given significant news coverage, and this not without much reason,
Bonn had quite a stirring. In fact, for
the next meeting there appears to be definite plan to hold it somewhere very
different, near Banff in Canada, that splendid and arresting resort which, at
least when one visited it on the way to a Ministry in Prince Edward Island in
1963, was beautifully undisturbed, not much like a resort but more like a tent
in the wilderness. To be sure there was a 'palace' of several hundred rooms,
from which it seemed some could shoot the odd animal, if feeling the lust, but
this was not on one's agenda.
One was shown the track, so
narrow between the pines where the skiers could zoom on the skidding surfaces,
and wonder .... HOW they could do it safely! The driver gave a comment, never
forgotten. They did not, he indicated, do it safely. On such a track, so
efficient looking for shooting stars in the form of mankind on skis, there had
indeed been an error; for someone had moved into a tree. What, the question
arose with concern, what happened ? He stayed there, came the laconic reply.
This was scarcely attractive, but it fitted in the sense of loneliness and
grandeur, majesty and weight in the air; yet there was a weight in man's daring
as so often, when it accomplishes too little. It would be like crashing a
shuttle flight space vehicle in seeking to see how near one could go to some
building, or hollow in the moon.
Ah no! says some reader ?
But it is sure that the most sophisticated human-made vehicle of all time is but
nothing, or to be more precise, nearly a cipher, compared with the invention
and design and masterpiece work of artistry and art, method and depth,
mathematics and life called man's body. THAT, it still leaves out the liberties
of thought and the potencies of spirit, but for the moment it is enough. Yet
man moves his far more than space vehicle, with mind and spirit incorporated in
the total design, as if it were - little more than a toy.
He does it too in climatic
ways, as one learns so swiftly in the wake of the Bonn Conference just
finished, in late July 2001, on that topic. That was Part II of the Sixth
Session of the Conference of Parties (COP - it sounds, in acronym, almost like a weather cop!),
for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which has received substantial news
coverage, and not without good reasons. The US has refused to sign, and the reason
given is national interest. It is strange how a nation may say this, but at
least until recently, there would be few individuals who, asked for a reason
for action or inaction in some field, would simply say: personal selfishness!
The USA in some of its early political
State pronouncements, and indeed in the massive revivals of the post
mid-nineteenth century, gave some feeling of Christianity on a more than
individual level. What, one is inclined to ask with the prophet Jeremiah,
- "what injustice have your
fathers found in Me, that they have gone far from Me!" (2:5).
Theocracy,
to be sure, was the governmental form for Israel at that time, but it remains true
that:
- "Righteousness exalts a
nation, but sin is a reproach to any people" - Proverbs 14:34.
There may,
it is true, be questions of equity, and of this and that consideration to the
account, this contribution and that, but it seems imperative that something
better than abstention should soon adorn the ways of the nations. The NATIONAL
INTEREST code is neither moral, nor Biblical nor a wise alternative to the UN
style humanistic, slanted racial self-interest immorality.
Indeed, one pointed out in
one such climatic conference, that the alleged cost to the US could readily be,
and in the opinion of the speaker, was grossly over-stated; for if it would
mean that many industries would shut down, there would be correlative, parallel
pressure for new ones to arise or extend. For example, if there were to be a
sharp reduction in combustion car engines, then an increase in battery ones, or
if there were a sharp reduction in coal burning, then an increase in wind and
solar powered electricity production would require resources, create jobs and
invite research.
Nevertheless a cost there
will be.
Thus as our Blue Heeler
moves about on his temporary Pacific Island home, we can consider the plight of
these people. In an excellent production, what one saw of it, from SBS
television in Australia, one by title, Rising Waters, screened on
Tuesday, July 31 at 8.30 p.m., there was a considerable emphasis on the Pacific
Island aspect of the world conference and its various buzz groups, or segments
which were separated to discuss general issues and seek resolutions, as it
appears. From one of these came the anguished if not outraged cry that there
had been complications in the deliberations, negotiations
about agreed general principles from the main meeting, and
intentional complications or delays. Meanwhile, came the saddened call, what
about our islands!
Storms, it was urged, were
already making the islands more hazardous, for it seemed to require less
rigorous and vehement surges to wreck more havoc on the Islands. The combination of Arctic and
Antarctic ice melts in large amounts, increased heat through the green-house
effect, and of the dangers President Bush, who authorised a special study, has
been admonished, with the surge of energy and water involved, is indeed leading
in a direction of peril. In fact, Theodore W. Kheel, in the Conference News
Daily on this topic, cites the COP Chairman, Jan Pronk as follows: it was time
to decide how to implement the goals of the Kyoto Protocol "for the sake
of the credibility of the international community and, more importantly, to protect our planet
from developments that could totally disrupt life on earth."
- This international community
- (big
brother of the lesser community, see The Frantic
Millenium and the Peace of Faith Chs. 7 and 9, 2,
Galloping Events Ch. 7, The
Other News Appendix, Things Old
and the NewEpilogue, Benevolent Brightness or Brothy
Bane 71, It Bubbles, It Howls, He
Calls Ch. 10)
- is largely a fiction, since disunity is the core
of this world's procedures, one which, as we have seen in recent chapters
and in Beauty of Holiness, will gain a certain enforced
appearance to promote the fiction for a time, until the only unity
possible, that in the MASTER and MAKER whose we are, comes at the end.
Meanwhile our interest is in
the other clause, the protecting of this orb from a scenario "that could
totally disrupt life on earth."
No
longer do the inveterate optimists, whose credulity could lead to a greater
pessimism based on greater dangers through longer delays, sound their trumpets
to the verbally dancing midst of debates. It is how much and how soon, now.
THE CALL OF PROPHECY AND
THE CRY OF
CURRENT FACT
Meanwhile the Islanders!
Plans, said one delegate or associate of the Conference, preparations were
coming to mind if not indeed to hand, for the repatriation of the island(s) in
view. The tide power was rising, security was falling, viability was questioned
and in the meantime, conference delegates could talk of delays and difficulties
and indeed, it was alleged, various sections could intentionally involve
others in long complications and complexities. One is reminded of Neville
Chamberlain's great announcement of PEACE IN OUR TIME, on the political front,
months before World War II came from continued inaction in the face of a menace
that metaphorically almost clouded out the sun, just as Biblically, one comes
which will move in that direction literally!
In the 20th century case,
long had Churchill warned.
Now it is a global
catastrophe. It will not be avoided, or if it were reduced, there would be
others. The book of Revelation makes it clear that it is not only the foolishly
induced havocs but judgmental ones which are in store for this earth; and in
particular - but look, there are the feet of our prophetically related dog,
dancing airily along the cliff tops again, for he has pounced on a manuscript,
and without doubt, it is the book of Luke.
It is in 21:25:
"And
there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars, and on the earth
distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring, men's
hearts faliing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are
coming in the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they
will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when
these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your
redemption draws near."
We have in
SMR Ch. 8, dealt with details at
length, but for the moment, the obvious application of the rush of riot
depicted in the text is all about it, constantly reported in this way and that.
Our present concern, in the context, and indeed in the context of Jerusalem
being back in the control of Israel, the epochal and sure signal that this is
the milieu preparatory to Christ's return (as in Luke 21:24), is ONE THING at
this point.
It is the
sea situation, its cause and its consequence. The sea and the waves roaring was part of a tiny encapsulation of
the notorious or strident, the vigorous or inescapable features of the
predicted time, one set in a pattern of events which made it wholly unique in
history, Jerusalem under Jewish control being one part.
Now in such a short
predictive coverage, what would be signified by this, sea and waves
roaring ?
Clearly it would involve a
certain vigour, undesirable and threatening, a minatory mass of oceanic
disturbance, energy and activity thunderous and gripping, incursive and
turbulent. It is in precisely the environment of terms in Luke 21, that it
occurs. Thus, correlative features are these: MOON signs, SUN signs, NATIONAL
DISTRESS signs so widespread as to constitute INTERNATIONAL PERPLEXITY, a
PANDEMIC OF FEAR and EVIL EXPECTATION, the SHAKING OF THE POWERS OF THE
HEAVENS. Famines and earthquakes occur at the same time, as often noted (cf.
SMR loc.cit.).
A turbulence in many
dimensions was to be found increasing until the total impact would render
continued human life on earth as certainly doomed - and WITHOUT any exception,
UNLESS the Lord intervened - as in the flood (Matthew 24:22). This
scenario, Christ declared, would come, would be fulfilled and would not be
humanly deterrable. BUT He also indicated that for the sake of His own people,
this would be interrupted. The Lord Himself would will intervene in various
ways.
So He spoke and exactly so
it is coming to pass, with all the brio of Scene V of a Shakespearean tragedy,
one of the main features of which is often a keen sense of justice! Here it IS
justice. So does art attest in its own way, from some of its greatest, the
moral dimension; and it is at the hand of the Creator of EVERY dimension that
the end comes.
1) HE WILL COME to collect His family (I Thess. 4).
2) HE WILL
COME to judge the nations (II Thess. 4, Matthew 25, Revelation 19).
3) HE WILL
COME to rule the earth and vindicate His righteousness (Psalm 73, Revelation
20), even where His
salvation was despised.
All these things we have
seen in place, before. Now we merely put the sea and waves roaring in their
geographical and temporal PERSPECTIVE.
God is the
author. The book needs attention. It is receiving it now, not without
trepidation from many, who do not follow its prescription or accept its
diagnosis of their lives; and it will be taken thoroughly in hand, then when as
Revelation so pointedly indicated (in Revelation 5), the dynamics of
consummation are set in progress. Indeed, they have already begun as the events
of Revelation 6 abundantly attest. But let us return to the seas and their tax
on man.
Thus THE ISLANDERS at the
Conference were in notable cases, distraught. Would they have to flee their
threatened precincts ? Vested interests, it was alleged, heard and adjusted
their ways not at all, seeking delay, procrastinating ...
Others would cite this and
that statistic, and the call was clamant to Washington to heed and act and not hinder. So
far it appears unheeded, though one must hope that the national interest will
give way to the TERRESTRIAL NEED, even if not to the United Nations in its
versions of it.
One islander was taken, in
the dramatic account displayed in RISING WATERS, in a tour
of Manhattan Island's coast. What might befall
New York ? The waters were revealed as only
feet away from monstrous monoliths, assembled like a modern day Stonehenge, mighty in outline, dominant in
defiance, menaced nonetheless by rising waters. WHAT then would the US itself DO, if the waters rose, no
less for it than for the Pacific Islands ? Why, build sea-walls up higher!
It seems so futile, as if gradualistic approaches could remove total changes.
How does a great empire play and toy with its end, as in Rome's case! How does inertia sit stolid
on the assured brow of the great!
Meanwhile, some realism
came onto the scene. We were told of recent history for this notable island. In
1992 or so, there had been a massive storm which had inundated whole sections
of the transport system of Manhattan Island, and had caused massive disruption
to air and train travel. Waters simply rose and thrust themselves unfettered
down the stairways, no longer available for man, to the subway sections, and
water for swimmers, not trains for commuters, this was the available transport.
Yet
there is slowness in dealing with such things. The water however does not slow
because the brow of man is puckered in many thoughts about many things, and
national interests and the like.
THE RISING TEMPER OF THE TIMES
GIVEN ITS
COME-UPPANCE
The Biblical account is not
futuristic. It is not strange. History has at last caught up with it, if in one
thing, then in nearly all. The stage has been set in writing, like an
architect's plan for some new and vast construction, shelved for centuries and
now to be activated. This one had the distant time set upon it from the first,
and now it happens. Once man tried BABEL, evidently as a get-near program
for the celestial powers of imaginary gods to minister to its greatness
(Genesis 11); now it tries the UN and such bodies as monuments to its peace,
and indeed New York houses this once relieving body, to
help man get straight over World War II. Now it becomes a mammoth of
presumption, empowering itself to harass the globe with the mandates which only
God can give, in seemingly obsessive oblivion of what God wants, whose is the
globe and to whom man belongs.
Shirley Hazzard books on
the topic, People in Glass Houses and Defeat of an Ideal,
are of keen interest, from an inmate of the UN, or should one rather deem it, a
participant, and in the end, a horrified one at the pettiness, power seekings,
unwieldly and anomalous classifications that impel, the combination of lavish
words and mini-deeds within itself!
Man ? He belongs to
himself, seems the unending, erring message of provocative demission of the
dignity of God. Does he now ? Did he then make himself (SMR Ch.2, Stepping
out for Christ Chs. 2, 7 -10) ? Does
he provide for his mental, spiritual, moral and bodily peace ? Can he even
imitate his construction, given intelligence, from unintelligent items ? Does
he ? Or does he merely imitate, interfere and activate what is provided ! It is
in the mind he can create, and one of his chief and pet creations, a pet of
petulance, is this, that he was not himself created by creation, by the
Creator, even when he daily creates in his derivative sense, and often creates
misdemeanours with straight mien, as if his only resource were dilettante
discourse, contrary to fact, to logic, to life and to need. THAT, it is ONE of
the many grounds of his approaching judgment (cf. SMR pp. 99ff., 999ff.).
Is
this the case, that as god he stalks the earth and, filled with all knowledge
and sagacity, legitimately determines its innings and the innings of any
man or race that crosses his path ?
Or has His
Creator's law been so molested with human arrogance of misplaced aspiration
that only judgment remains ? And will the kind institution of the United
Nations, or some other goliath, help man mitigate it until the day is so late,
that there is no longer time to return ? Such appears his scenario from life,
and certainly it is so from prophecy, which man apes while he disregards it,
and which sets forth his progress as he progresses, from millenia before.
Invalid
without ground (Repent or Perish Ch. 7,
Barbs, Arrows and Balms 6 and 7, That
Magnificent Rock Ch. 5, Joyful
Jottings 3), by
his own philosophic pretensions disabled from truth, a mere
reactor-assessor, inconsequential without basis, dispossessed and
self-deprived, man blasts off into the logical space which is not there, and
for his presumption, is jolted back to earth constantly and routinely,
rapped for his rapt ignorance and vacuous delusion. Repent he will not (in the
mass), and learn he cannot being blind (John 9:39-41), the Gentiles in
their own way repeating the errors of ancient Israel; and alas, seeing is
not his milieu without the light, itself the Lord whom he rejects (SMR Ch. 1).
Thus man, emerging from the
20th century and the power of the British Empire (cf. Joyful Jottings 5 , 14), and
the erstwhile emphasis on truth in the US, is coming into the delirious seeming
joy of planting trees of sorrow, to bear fruit in their season. It seems that
already, Spring is here, a funereal season in things spiritual, for the
unwilling race.
While we read once again of
New York (Salt Shakers p. 15, July 2001) that a church has been harassed
by attentions relating to its BILL BOARD, one citing scriptural condemnation of
homosexuality, and officially investigated as to its doctrine, its board
removed so that the public could not see it, we perceive how in the land of the
free, the place where many Puritans and Protestants helped to found a nation,
so that men might worship God without the Statist constraints of kings and
emperors, popes and other impositions: there is degradation. Change is here.
There is coming a new
kingdom. Its claws are already striding, leaving their marks in the land, its
roar making a mockery of truth and a menace to its proclamation. The kingdom of
heaven is being actively assailed, as in the countries from which came the
progenitors of many of those now in the US! Is this to be the provocation
which is prelude to a judgment ? Is a land which did so much good to become an
enemy of peace, it also ?
It has done so much that is
admirable, sought so many good things, and helped in so many good causes, and
is it now to be seduced once and for all to foreign variants of the humanistic
secularism, the idolatry which is human racism, the fanfare of emptiness and
the fire of destruction which these burning aspirations breathe out: is it also
to go !
The trends of church
destruction from within, as in the Presbyterian dominions, when Princeton
seminary was first invaded in the twenties, in the Anglican-Roman involvements,
the Baptist embracements of Rome via the Graham association not disciplined,
and in all the endless seeming sects, the Romanist body itself brazen as
perhaps never before, Biblical beliefs on the wane in ecclesiastical behemoths
which move to homosexual permission, Biblical remission not of sins but of its
text, spiritual pathogens awash, existentialist humanism seeking ways to invade
the churches; all these have come, and not gone.
- Delusion, degradation, denudation
of the rich silts of cultural accommodations to Biblical truths,
dispersion, aversion, hostility, renegacy, internationalisation,
unification with various degrees of immersion (total) of unbiblical
humanism, political militancies, community molestations of the minds of
citizens, holy wars, spiritual ghetto wars of warring factions supporting
figments: the roll call for the dead rises.
- The world has outdone itself in
losing dignity, dismissing truth, making hollow noises as it empties the
heads and hearts of millions of life, and provides implants into the heads
and hearts of many millions more.
- Rampaging like a burst damn, even
like that feared for Mt Pinatubo, where a rim could break and lose vast
waters to imperil the lives of 40,000, its polluted philosophic waters
carry just that supply of broken fragments feared for the Philippines literally, to
excoriate what remains and overpower by suddenness and force.
The UN molestation of Biblical
morals gives drive, like an accompanying typhoon, to the disintegrative
process. The lusts of society for its various gurus and rock bands with their
anti-moral ethos join in, while drugs strip the restraints, children tote guns
in their schools, and schools can even be forced to have security guards well
in evidence to keep life intact: these are the filigree work of the new
building. But then ? Is it not just in this, that what has exalted what never
made more than havoc, and worshipped the curse the earth has received, daringly
maligning the creator as if this were His method of making, in total defiance
of all that law has ever been seen to say, and events to do, is now reaping
from the very young it has thronged to mis-teach, the misdeeds correlative to
its fraudulent instruction (cf. That Magnificent Rock Ch. 8, Spiritual Refreshings for
the Digital Millenium Ch. 13).
It is not all bad; but
then, neither is a body, stricken with lung cancer. The heart may be fine, the
bones a marvel, the muscles a masterpiece, but continuing life is threatened in
one phase. Here it is is the spiritual, the moral. There is a pollution far
worse than that of Evanston. Foundry fumes are healthy compared
with this.
Can the rising seas wash
this sin away ? While new power groupings grope for success, and China warns
with a high pseudo-moral tone, that it is WRONG for any OTHER power to seek to subdue Taiwan,
but RIGHT for it do so on demand, and the whole cicada-like chorus of programmatic
insistences seek to dominate the earth, power and not truth, propaganda and not
reality, commerce and not conscience, the seas are rising, the radiation
threatens, pollutions irreparable by man intensify in the waters, and the skies
team with invasive perils, able to pollute above as well as below. The war-like
wonders of man do not seem to mind if he is extinguished in the process; the
lust for money, for wealth, for prestige, by Communist or tycoon alike, seem
inveterate. Freedom becomes more and more defunct as people frankly put
unrighteousness above what is right, and reeling dances of destruction above
sobriety and truth.
But let us for a moment the
Taiwan case just noted. It would be profitable to pursue
the Chinese expression of the humanist hollow, passion, force and ideologies
from nowhere, continuing in a vacuum of thought and a thrust of desire. It is
but one of many such, but let us consider what it is telling us.
This imperious imperialism
was reported in The Australian, August 2, p. 6. The statement was
this: "China's top military
official urged preparations to reunify the rebel
province of
Taiwan by force, while
vowing to modernise the People's Liberation Army into a powerful high-tech
military force, state press said yesterday."
It is amusing to the point
almost of a sense of delirium, to hear of a liberation army taking
an economically more productive, rich and more freedom loving country by FORCE.
It is like giving someone a deliverance into prison, or a debt free status by
selling his soul! How such ironies are lost on those responsible is merely one
more aspect of the armoury of delusion! When the thoughts of yesteryear, so
long exhibited as mere tenuous dreams, built on nothing but greed, hope and
resentment, and whatever else is delusive and inconclusive except as to its
status in the subdued territory of sin, made into monuments of deception, not
least in the revelations in the Gorbachev era, concerning Lenin's own personal
thinking: when these are paraded today in such terms, what is it like ?
It is like a runaway youth,
who has delivered the family car to ruin in an escapade, a tornado of lust and
folly who has murdered and had his own youthful visions of putting things to
his pleasure, then, on release decades later, from prison, affirming that he
will now again take the family car and do what he had long planned, but only
partially fulfilled!
Does it differ from the
desire to thieve, to FORCE a free people to be ENCOMPASSED by your
soul-catching invasions of human personality, your inured relative indifference
to human imagination, your CORRECT thought and CORRECT ways in your incorrect
atheism, which spews human refuse on divine glory (cf. Repent or Perish
Ch. 7)! Has the world forgotten how in the
Truman era, there was military action to deliver Taiwan, and far more recently
in the presentation of US warships on the strait of Taiwan, so that the
liberating commands could not free themselves on the Island, and so in the
banal talk of freedom, compel one more human slave to its open maw!
Is commerce or some other
folly of pride (business may be good, but sale of soul for its glory is bad
business in the deepest sense!) now to ALLOW such arrant talk*1 , once characterisable as Communist imperialism,
and in the USSR case an an "evil empire", to proceed as if it were a
megaphone on a sports oval, directing events!
Quite possibly. We shall
see. Ideals are being lost, where once strong, in a world being enveloped by
immorality and vaunting, taunting and untruth far more rapidly than by any
seas.
However, give them time.
The action is delayed, but not without eventuation. Give it time, give it time.
There are more waves than waves of thought. Revelation makes it clear that
pollution of water resources from space is still to come( Rev. 8:8-11, cf.
16:4ff.). Give it a little time, and this human vaunting will be shown that it
is but a human void, where the heart should be, a dispirited denudation of the
soul, where vitality should be, strength where peace should reside, and
enforceable peace, the monument to a verbal effrontery which once would have
seen but guffaws, now taken almost as if it had something in it other than the
power-lust and the lust for control.
Chinese are to be loved,
and they are a people very dear to the author, and among them are some of my
close associates; but one does not love influenza because one's friend has it,
nor AIDS because it is next door. Vice will never redeem itself by new tags,
and task forces of immorality, whether in the US or in China, will not change sides because of
packaging.
The waters rise*2, the pollutions grow, the arms menaces expand as
Putin gives North Korea a few hundred millions worth of more arms and they talk
of the so peaceable nuclear reactor. Obviously they need arms more than food,
for to defend the dying is perhaps altruistic ? and who better qualified to
give such 'help' than the nation which has lived on foreign aid! The world is in
pyjamas, and asleep. Alas the nightmares it is espousing do not sleep with it.
It comes. God is not mocked. Every adventurer, remittance man from the morals
of the past abusing the present with uncouth power and small wisdom, is coming:
indeed even the birds are coming, in a little, to Armageddon's woes, and their
invitation is so strong:
"Then
I saw an angel standing in the sun, and he cried with a loud voice,
saying to all the birds that fly in the midst of heaven,
'Come and
gather together for the supper of the great God, that you may eat the flesh of
kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and
of those who sit on them, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, both
small and great.'
"And I
saw the beast, the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to
make war against Him who sat on the horse and against His army" - Rev. 19: 17-19.
He who sat on the horse in
this vision of the future ? "The word of God", "and on His head were many crowns..."
When He has finished, then
shall be brought to pass that saying of the prophet Zechariah:
"But He
who remains shall be for our God."
This precedes the
revelation of the inextinguishable God (9:9), the One of whom it is written,
just two verses later:
"Rejoice
greatly O daughter of Zion, Shout, O daughter of
Jerusalem!
Behold your King
is coming to you:
He is just and
having salvation,
Lowly and riding
on a donkey,
A colt, the foal
of a donkey."
And that ? It is followed in
the prophetic words of Zechariah, in Ch. 11 by the price of the sale of this
same Christ (11:11-13), then by the treachery (13:6), the restoration of
Jerusalem to its site, on which will occur its profound repentance of the
piercing of its own King (as also reflected in its assault on Him, in Micah
5:1ff., together with His deity). That is followed and preceded indeed, by
accounts of the final battles for the land, before the millenium (Zech. 12 and
14), which issue in His personal and physical return to His land (14:5), the
site of His slaying.
He
then comes to rule, precisely as prescribed in just the context of this rabbled
series of ruses and abuses, to take what is His due (cf. Revelation Chs. 5,
11:15, and 19 with Ezekiel 21:27). So does the programmed opera of man, with
its humanism and nihilism, theological revisionism, its subtly rebellious
renegacies, its shades of scepticism and cynicism, invalid beliefs invalidated
out logically, but adopted psychologically for convenience and desire, proceed
to its end*3.
YOU
Meanwhile you are an
individual. One person reads at a time. Nations are made up of one persons.
What is YOUR moral rule, YOUR force function, YOUR commitment to ideals not
broken, truth not invaded and peace that is operative because founded in truth,
and given by God ? The nations, like Israel of old, are exemplars. It is best
to learn from these historic events, and to avoid those thoughts and ways
which, dominating through individuals, pugnacious or delusively peaceful, control
many.
What are their fruits ?
What have they produced ?
To what do you commit
yourself ?
Do you find that the MEANS
may be forgiven provided the AIMS are just ? On what authority and with what
reason ? Is your own life then to be taken, perhaps, as a MEANS to some end ?
Is justice the spawn of writhing injustice ? Or is construction the daughter of
ruin ? NOT on the same premises. IF justice calls for death, that is one thing;
but if it deludes itself concerning life in order to gain some dream, then this
is playing God; and He, He is no plaything. He never has been, never will be
and is not set for such repugnant insolences as the race is beginning to face,
with all the deficient prowess of battling Babel (Genesis 11), which built and
built and built to reach what could not come that way.
God is not found in theft
and force, irrationality and mere boast. He is found where repentance of sin is
found, where a humble and a contrite heart is found, where His word is honoured
and He is worshipped in spirit and in truth (John 4, Isaiah 66, Luke 13). He
found where HE planted HIS answer to sin, not in some collective power play of
man, but in the integral action of His own planning. It is called the plan of
salvation, and if ever man delighted in ignorance, this seems its zenith.
Yet it remains. Not
deploying mere resources. He deployed His own Son, invested in flesh through a
virgin (Matthew 1), divested of life on earth by the machinations of religious
and political sin, the beast in training (I Cor. 2:8). In His wisdom, He
outwitted the glowering, lowering power of man, and USING the useless denial of
justice in the Pilate who had Christ thrashed, and then led Him forth as one in
whom he could find no fault, He exposed the evil with the good! Innocent, He took
guilt from those discarding it freely onto Himself. No sovereign could do it;
but ours did; and yet many deride in their delusion and divorce in their
distaste.
Yet He remains (Zechariah
9:7, Psalm 102, 90-91). His word is not even dinted; and by dint of it, the
world reels. It needs to be still (Psalm 46).
The beauty of Christ's
holiness, the dedication of His devotion, the love of His heart were all
munificently displayed IN THE PROCESS of His pre-announced plan, so that what
was meant for evil, served goodness. His words, "Father forgive them,
for they do not know what they are doing!" remind us in their love, of the
plight of the young school killer in the US, who now realises how his mind was
taken over by violent music and input, which he thought he could control, until
there was coolness in cruelty and elevation in murder. Now it seems, he has
sought the Lord, and to serve Him...
The case is not decisively
different for man or the nations. Whatever the delusion, the desire to do with
God, with what God has made, whatever takes the caprice or rouses the heart, it
is like the desire to do without lungs for breathing. If we had been made
differently, that might have been possible; but however we were made there is
now no way to escape the wisdom of our Maker. Make what He will, it is His; do
what the creations will, they are only losers by violating their manufactured
specifications, blanking out their handbook, ignoring their service
requirements, and pretending health when their health is a rising sea of
baseness, overwhelming them from the depths.
Their proclivities without
God are the seed of severance, and their enormities rock the globe so that it
is a marvel it still is on course. But what is the end of this course! Mercy
spilt like blood on the ground, with spitting and contempt, there is no other
end but ultimate justice.
What then is to be done by
the individual ? Call on the name of the Lord, trust in His mercy, accept His
provision in His only begotten Son, enshrined in flesh that He might be a
temple for sacrifice (I Timothy 3:16), where He as Priest also offered Himself
(John 10, Hebrews 8-010), and blessing God for His provision of salvation,
dependent on the ONLY MEDIATOR and on Him alone (I Timothy 2), THEN follow what
He says (Matthew 28:19-20). SO grow to know the beauty of the Lord (II Cor. 3:18), so that like the Psalmist you can
say:
"One
thing have I desired of the LORD,
That will I
seek:
That I may dwell
in the house of the LORD
All the days of
my life,
To behold the
beauty of the LORD,
And to enquire
in His temple.
For in the time
of trouble,
He shall hide me
in His pavilion"
(from Psalm 27:4-5).
Put no trust in the pictures
and technicalities of the triumph, like baptism, that symbol of what is already
DONE, or the manners of the life, like the Lord's supper, which displays what
is utterly useless unless and until by FAITH in the One whose death it depicts,
you have been saved through grace (Ephesians 2:1-12), and that not of
yourselves! However be careful to carry out His commandments, and to use what
He provided for what He has provided it (John 14:21-23)! Do not put oil in the water
for coolant, or water in the oil for the engine. Everything in place! It is not
at all burdensome when, having been saved by faith, you have the grace to
follow the Lord in what He orders, His commandments His kindness, His fruit
what follows.
Finally,
if you do not love HIM, then do not bother about it (I John 4:7ff). God is
love, and not loving Him is like not loving air when you must breathe, yet
there is none, or not desiring blood when you made man, are frankly free of
it... if it were possible! It is an impossible situation. Is your love
short, as those who threaten 'liberation by force' ? Then repent of THAT and
seek His forgiveness for THAT, and turn to the Lord and in His love, so using
your liberties for goodness, self-control, grace, kindness, courtesy, courage,
fearlessness for the faith, prayer for your oppressors, doing good to enemies.
THAT is something like pure air pouring into a prison.
NOTES
*1
See: SMR pp. 614, 925ff., 127,Spiritual Refreshings for the
Digital Millenium 3,
4, 16,
The Frantic Millenium and
the Peace of Truth 8.
*2
Climate change speeds up,
says U.N.
July 12, 2001 Posted: 1611 GMT
LONDON, England (CNN) --
Global warming is happening
at nearly twice the rate
predicted just six years ago, a
U.N. report says.
It warns that the planet is warming up faster than at any time
in the last 1,000 years and says the Earth is threatened with
catastrophe.
The report blames human activity for the rising global
temperatures that will bring increases in flooding and droughts
that could blight the 21st Century.
The most up-to-date research and forecasts contained within
the report predict that global mean temperatures could increase
by as much as 5.8C by the year 2100.
The key 2,600-page report is published by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the
eve of a 150-nation summit being held in Germany.
In it, hundreds of the world's leading scientists back the view
that global warming is a reality and that man-made gasses are
largely responsible.
It is expected to put further pressure on
President George W. Bush to commit
the U.S. to the Kyoto treaty on the
reduction of "greenhouse" gasses.
The IPCC was set up jointly by the
United Nations Environment
Programme and the World
Meteorological Organisation to provide
scientific consensus on climate change.
The scientists' report said: "The
increase in global temperatures
projected by the scientific data on
climate trends could bring about
significant changes to the world we
know today."
It warns of "increased flooding,
landslide and storm damage, increased
deaths from heat stroke, failures of
traditional agricultural systems through
droughts and a consequent failure of
traditional financial services to insure
against such losses.
It added: "These are all scenarios
which could be played out in different
parts of the world during the 21st
Century."
Poorer countries will be the most
vulnerable to the effect of climate
change, according to the authors.
The report said: "The ability of human
systems to adapt to climatic changes
depends on factors such as wealth, technology, education,
infrastructure and access to resources.
"The world's poorest societies depend more heavily on their
water and agriculture, the very systems most at risk from the
effects of climate change."
It added: "Many plants and animals, and many ways of human
life, however, will disappear forever over the next century as a
direct result of climate change caused by human activity."
In outlining possible scenarios for the future, the authors
stressed that the most positive effects were seen where effort
was made to stabilise carbon concentrations in the atmosphere
at certain given levels.
The report said: "It is possible to say, however, that certain
emissions controls can be achieved without net social cost, and
that climate control policies can have other ancillary benefits
such as reductions in pollution."
Kate Hampton, Friends of the Earth International's climate
co-ordinator, said: "This alarming report should be a wake-up
call to those nations that are failing to take this issue seriously.
"Urgent action is needed to avoid global catastrophe. Next
week, the world's politicians have the chance to act by
agreeing on rules to implement the Kyoto climate protocol."
She added: "There is still time to act, but only if countries like
the United States, the world's biggest polluter, bite
the bullet
*3
Cf. Benevolent Brightness or Brothy Bane 87.