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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 Balmsand 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.