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Chapter
4
ON LOVE AND IGNORANCE
Ignorance is never bliss,
But Judgment is more than this
Ignorance is
no excuse, for the very light of nature and reason indicates God, the treatment
of His equipment and the respect due to His other creatures. Thus is it made
clear in Romans 1:17ff..
On the
other hand, sin against the categorical light of God in the Gospel, in Christ,
is even permanently fatal, except there be repentance in that manifest realm
where the rejection occurred (John
Great
Execrations, Great Enervations, Greater Grace Chs. 7 and 9, and
the profundity of the love in Ch. 8), though not
excuse (Romans 1-2), when they do not know the Gospel (Romans 3,5), are the
more summary in execution for those who are not ignorant, but reject the light
which came into the world (John 3:19, 15:21-23).
In II
Corinthians 5:10 we see the necessity to appear before the judgment seat of
Christ, even apostles ( “we” ), in accord with
the teaching in Revelation 20:11ff., where both the Book of Life and the Book
of judgment appear, and what is written is definitive (John 6:65): so that not
only is it true that no one can come to Christ except the Father draw that
person (John 6:44), but unless it is GRANTED to the Saviour to receive that
one. Indeed, as in John
Thus
this delicious certainty is wholly apposite in the beautiful companionship of
the equally authoritative but impelling passion and the consequences of its
willful rejection as attested in Colossians 1:19 and II Timothy 2, with II
Peter 3:9 and Matthew 23:37, Luke 19:42ff., John 3:16-19, Luke 19:42ff., Isaiah
30:15, Matthew 23:37 – SMR Appendix B, II
Chronicles 36:15, Luke 15, Hosea 7:1 with 7:14-16, Deuteronomy 28:62-63,
Matthew 21:28-32, Jeremiah 13:17, Zechariah 7:11-13, Ezekiel 3:27). (cf. SMR Appendix B, Great Execrations Ch. 9 where indicated). As to these assured
results and primary causes, with this comprehensive love moving to signaled
certainties, they match better than any tartan, are more beautiful than any
landscape, more compelling than any tenderness of dawn, more impelling than any
affection. They surpass it, contain it and are pure.
Thus
there is that vast swath of love in Colossians 1, for ALL, as note in the last
reference above, and there is NO HOPE of being lost forever because of any
limitation in it; for it is not limited; yet it does not abuse itself into mere
cajoling or manipulation.
Thus
ALL will come to the judgment seat of Christ to receive what they have done in
the body; and the consciences of ALL the Gentiles will accuse or excuse
themselves as that Day of Reckoning arises! (Romans 2 with II Corinthians 5).
But as Paul shows in Romans 1-3, ALL men are judgeable, none is exempt, all
have fallen short; and as Paul continues, WE must all appear
before that judgment. There are simply no exemptions.
None,
that is, except in the pardon of Christ, the procurer of pardon and Prince of
peace. Thus the question before one as all these universals, of love and
judgment, appear, is this: WHAT HAPPENS for the soul brought to such a
judgment. Clearly, then there is an INTERPOSITION, for there is now no
condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8, Micah 7:19ff., Romans
5:1-11).
Thus
when we read in I Peter 3:21ff. of Christ in the scope of His saving carriage
and sweep, come to earth, next designated as proceeding to preach to those lost
in the flood, the souls of the departed, the spirits in prison, a term never
used of the flesh in the Bible, and most expressive in terms of Jude and II
Peter’s delineations of judgment; and when we read in I Peter 4 of the Gospel
being preached to the dead (in this case possibly indeed to those formerly on
earth and hearing it, but there is no limitation imposable), together with the
confrontation with conscience active in Romans 2, we discern a most significant
feature.
While as in
Romans 10, we must ask this, HOW shall they hear without a preacher ? yet as in
the scope of the love of God, WHO shall say that God will systematically
exclude those, being ignorant of the Gospel of His grace, whom He may have
predestined in His foreknowledge ? Will man dictate to God ? Will man limit the
Holy One of Israel ? (Psalm 78:40-41). It is true that the Westminster
Confession of faith does note that those denied the ordinary means of grace God
may in His own wisdom by the Gospel save (as shown in Chapter 4 above in loc.). This is true. He may: man is not sovereign but God.
The interposition between appearing before the face of the Judge and
that impending and just Judgment which could be imparted to all,
is for ALL in Christ, in terms of II Corinthians 5. Who then can add or
subtract ? It is in the Lamb’s book of life, and not in the mind of man, who is
to be there and delivered. ALL who believe are there, and whether this work of
salvation is wrought in this stratum of time or another way in Christ, only presumption can declare. As Day of
Judgment occurs following the general resurrection in Revelation, Christ’s
people at that time will already, having been at the marriage feast of the Lamb
(Revelation 19:8), be covered in the robes of investiture (cf. Matthew 22 where
one man presumptuously was NOT! with terrible consequences), and be at rest.
Indeed, they are so now, who already know Him, but then perfectly (Hebrews 4,
Matthew
Thus does
He save by His own hand in His own
Saviour, whom He will. On the other hand, one cannot declare categorically that
it is the case that any who do not hear the Gospel on earth WILL and MUST CERTAINLY
be saved by that Gospel in the work of God from predestination; for the Lord
COULD have ensured that His elect would be those whom He exposed to this Gospel
while on earth. For reasons to be noted, it does not appear that this is the
case, but it cannot utterly be excluded.
It is
therefore in no way detrimental to the passion for souls to pronounce this fact
against presumption, one way or the other. It is the business of God Himself,
the Lord. For Apologetics however it is entirely relevant to note that there is
NO CASE for the view that if someone being lazy, for example, does not bear the Gospel to some
dying soul in time, then that soul, who might have believed, will be damned for
the special additive sin of the failing ministry of someone else! If anything
is contrary to scripture, to Colossians 1, I John 4:7ff., I Timothy 2, that is!
MAN will
never be exalted; and there is no way in which some man in doing or not doing
his duty will bring a soul to hell! God seeks WITH PASSION for all, and man is
no limit, but he IS an avenue; and when you read in Luke 12:35ff, you perceive
the extraordinary and contemptible horror of those “servants” who knowing their
duty, do not do it! On the other hand, those who are less informed, but still
His servants, though less culpable, do not at all escape. Love is nothing
whatever to do with formality. It is functional, by faith, through the power of
God resident in the believer and His compassion seizing his members, his
functions, his capacities, and using them! That is resultant to be sure; but it
is an outcome in the end.
But what
are the indications of what the Lord does want in this field ? In Matthew 12,
we read of the case of the people of
If THEY had
had what YOU,
If so, then
this is attestation that SOME MAY not receive the Gospel, being in ignorance of
it, whom God in His predestinative certainties and foreknowledge may have
elected. In view of Colossians 1, for
example, if mere circumstance could win any, it will be; if any
historical placement could reach them, it will be: OR something equally
effective. HE is on record as to the uttermost passion of His desire, and the
uttermost sovereignty He has over history, so that should this be the case,
then the election of such would be sure.
It is after
all, HIS and not our predestination; His by His life, not ours by our
presumption. Again as noted, in I Peter 3:21ff., attested and expounded*1 in Ch.
4 above, there is prima facie
thrust and evidence that Christ preached to those awaiting unrelieved judgment,
parallel to the attestation in I Peter 4, but far more declarative than that.
With such consideration of Tyre and the scope of Christ’s love, with this also,
we are unable to do more than to state categorically (just as we do to the
pseudo-scientific pre-occupation with KNOWING the age of the earth, in
ludicrous transgression of the actual scientific evidence), that WE DO NOT
KNOW.
That is
authoritative! It is both vain and futile to know what God has not declared
categorically: all we know categorically in this field is this, that if there
is a way for love to find them, they are sure to be found. That is the crucial
feature and it is more certain than anything in this world.
v
God
has left enough in what He has declared, to create a certainty that only
prejudice or extrapolation will allow the declaration that none can or will be
found outside the normal means of grace, as the Confession so rightly declares,
though it be but a subordinate document of man: though of course NOT in the
least outside the Gospel! Nor may it determine that some certainly will, though
the texts in view make it extraordinarily difficult to resist such a case.
Thus there
is doubly, no problem. First the love of God is sufficient and passionate and
all availing, without ceasing to be love; and so stops where it wishes.
Secondly, the word of God allows and seems to impel to the view that some may
indeed be found like those of Tyre, who were not in history, but yet were
known by the same Gospel, and that in
terms of the same predestinative love which knowing all things before anything
happened, and being far beyond mere history, KNOWS HIS OWN! It is, as in Romans
Whose
foreknowledge then is it ? Is it that of some tyrant ? of some impelling
personality without understanding ? Man tends to forget, just as He seems
vulnerable to omission of God’s solicitude in the days of the Roman Inquisition
and tyranny, that while love is no excuse for licence, and while the Gospel is
a transforming reality, yet back of it all is GOD HIMSELF. How love could fail
to love is to be left to the jackals! It is disjointed food …How transformation
could not transform could be left to the jesuitically inclined. If we follow
the word of God and the impact of its power however, we find that love will
lose nothing, is back of all election, and knows before all time (Ephesians
1:4) who belongs, on the exclusive merits of Christ, and not in some mystery of
mysteries which is supposedly to explain some lapse in love, or some indolence
in its impact, when the salvation has occurred.
Let us then
leave to the furies of man, the joint frustrations of leaving the Bible in
either direction, for it neither tolerates any limit to the love of God, any
intrusion into His sovereignty; any trifling with His heart or with His power.
In such a sovereign, those who being His, love, do not cease to seek for the
lost. This love impels, and nothing is sure without His hand, His word and His
arrest; but the Gospel is His and He has wrought the work to make it available
freely. It is neither to be truncated in terms of some contra-biblical plan,
nor exalted to equate with some slack effrontery, as if its words lacked power.
What is GIVEN to the Son for salvation in particular souls, this is given by
that triune God who never changes, and as He was seen in Christ, so He is; and
as He pled, so in any mode or movement, form or time, so is His mind towards His
people. His years are the same, and He changes not.
END-NOTE
Excursion into Elements of the Epistles of Peter
And the Scope of the Territory of the Extraordinary
Excursion of Christ
*1 This passage, referred
to in the text above, has been slightly revised and considerably extended
below, in order that far more helpfulness to the reader may be achieved.
Another index which prima
facie holds the suggestion that some who have been ignorant of Christ in this
world, in this sphere of operations, may yet be found, by sovereign and
predestinate determination, after life just as they were foreknown before it,
is found in I Peter 3:17-19. Here we read in a sequence of historical steps, of
Christ visiting the spirits in prison.
In earthly prison, as servants of sin, sinners are without
the Lordship of Christ exercised on them. "Spirits in prison" however
is a phrase not found, to my knowledge, in the Bible anywhere, OR SUGGESTED, of
those alive on this earth and clad still in the flesh.
The figure Christ employed in John 8 for example, as seen
likewise in Isaiah 61 in Messianic prophecy,
is other. It is one of being enslaved by sin and prisoners in the flesh,
by virtue of its pseudo-autonomous powers, its wiles, the ways of this world
and of its prince; and so enslaved, perhaps glorying in their lusts as did His
opponents described in John 8, seemingly taking pleasure in them. It was and is
for such today, as if lust, spiritual,
mental or physical, or any combination of these, carried them on the winds. Prisoners they are
to sin; but they are not expressed as
spirits in prison. That figure gives the awareness of objective
restraint, objective circumstances that deny them their liberty, though they
might wish it; not subjective ones which allow them to seize their own ways in
majestic pretension like that of the Pharisees (Matthew 23), just as they might
wish!
Not only so, but the dichotomy is made clearer in Jude’s
emphasis.
Here we find first (Jude 4), that certain people crept in
unnoticed . That, it is now an epidemic in some falling churches as in II
Thess. 2:3, I Peter 2:1, relevant in this our own day on this sphere, the earth
in its wanton woes augmenting continuously cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5, SMR Ch. 8).
Such was to be, and it is; but even then it had its preliminaries!
What then is to become of those who unrepentant, pursue
wantonly such unspiritual paths, in spiritual fields ? These, for the future,
for the judgment, for the outcome, are “reserved in everlasting chains under darkness
for the judgment of the great day” (Jude 6). That is “spirits in prison”, arraigned, under arrest, are in here in EXEMPLARY
ways, devoted to one thing, the judgment.
Like Sodom and Gomorrah, in their unnatural SPIRITUAL actions this time
(with whatever additions), we learn from Jude’s revelation, they are “set forth as an example”. To be so “set forth” you need to
be in a position where your judgment IS exemplary and clear. For that, you do not disport yourself in nice
cars with large salaries and waiting people guru-ising
you, as happens to so many of these in our generation. No, it is quite clear
that this is the objective condition, this is the time in waiting for the full
fire of divine wrath, reserved indeed as declared, for judgment. Examples under
arrest, they await. That is the sense of spirits
in prison.
What then ? Christ is shown in I Peter 3:18ff. as SUFFERING
for sins, being PUT TO DEATH in the FLESH, and THEN, having done this to bring
US to God, Himself made alive through the Spirit (Romans 1:4), “by Whom He also went and
preached to the spirits in prison”. The process moves, the practice surges with life, with
continuity, with assiduity.
There is the divine sequence: the coming in flesh, the
suffering in the same, the being made alive through the Spirit, and by Him
going to preach in this entire diversified but planned tour of salvation, to
the spirits in prison. These, the product of an earlier unbelief and immorality
pandemic of the day, in their entire region, famed examples, stand out as
suitable exemplification of the love of God, the thoroughness of Christ and the
scope of His salvation as in Colossians 1.
Nothing is left undone. His mandate is clear to all. Just as
people in Tyre WOULD have repented had He there done the works done in Israel
in His own day on earth (Matthew 12), so now is this classic example seen, and
confrontation duly and sequentially occurs with those who NOW see Him not
merely doing such works, but resurrected and bearing the signals of it upon His
person! Thus the Apostle’s Creed proceeds following the resurrection, to note
that “He descended into hell”, and this not without scriptural ground. The final
judgment as in Revelation 20, follows the general resurrection there given
prior notation.
NOTHING is outside His scope; NO technical hitch, historical
circumstance is permitted to impinge on that universality of His love which is
so often and so dramatically attested in the Bible, in laments, in
protestations, in inspirations, in figures, in sacrifices, in longings, in
yearnings in the prophets, in Christ’s lament. This descending then to those
spirits in prison, this is what allows the historical sequence together with
the doctrinal thrust of dying, the just for the unjust, to be fully unleashed.
Sad as the misconception of universal redemption is, and
wholly unscriptural as it has repeatedly on this site been shown to be,
disruptive of biblical theology (see Index), it nevertheless is an orphan of
what is the correct and sound fact, that it is the LOVE of God, not the
redemption, which is universal in its outgoing spring and suffusion that
Colossians 1 so amply and so vividly attests. There are results; but this is
the outset.
In predestination, all is wrought out; and is it so fearful
a thing that in eventuation God has His own ways of attesting the realities,
that every mouth be shut, and all eyes might see!
As to the statement that Christ went by the Spirit, then, to
preach to the spirits in prison, it is worth noting this: the Bible is indeed
entirely devoid of Platonic philosophy. This sort of statement would not appear
to be in the perspective portrayed Biblically, if it means He went to people
living on earth. This point too is pregnantly and discordantly suggestive, just
as the alien nature of such terminology must be so.
What then ? The 'spirit' may here be described as being in
prison, but it is the person who on this earth is the servant of sin. We are
not disembodied, and although certain forms of speech are conceivable, they are
not biblically not found or exemplified as pattern.
Spirits in chains awaiting judgment we find in Jude; but
these are not on this earth. They are angels who left their first estate. Jude
is talking of spirits as spirits. The language of spirits in prison
specifically is then employed in I Peter 3:1:18ff. and its uncontorted and
clear message is one concerning the preaching of Christ, the resurrection
following His suffering now past, in an historically traced tour of triumph to
all domains.
Of course, it could be claimed that this preaching which
Peter notes in this passage, was not to
men at all; but this is also excluded by the almost identical phrasing in Jude,
in a context intensively parallel to the relevant section of II Peter 2, which
makes the whole thrust of the reference to angels, one to provide a COMPARISON,
with the word “likewise” (Jude 8), between the fallen angels and the fallen
religionists of this earth.
Indeed, in Jude, there is a most disastrous and intimate
parallel drawn, between such angels fallen and men doubly fallen, fallen first
into sin, and then into parading themselves with a spurious salvation, so that
while being bound, they bind others, as with so many of the sects. It is in
that passage that the Bible speaks incontrovertibly of spirits in chains, in
prison; and they are not in this world, and not in the realm where the light is
still present! They are a prior angelic remnant, dispersed, finished, disposed
to coming judgment, sitting in a darkness that has already reserved them. For
them, the case is past; it is history; their present condition is resultant of
their famed, finished and infamous conduct.
In summary then, what do we find ? This. From a verbal point
of view, then, this language is that of the after-life in the Bible.
Releasing the captives in Isaiah 61, is people on earth, not
spirits in prison. There are times and places of being captive, and the
Biblical mode of referring to the one and to the other is distinctive and apt.
From the point of view of sequence, naturalness of progress in I Peter 3:17-19,
we move from Christ suffering for sins, to bring us to God, being put to death,
quickened by the Spirit: and from there we launch into the excursion noted in
vv. 19-20.
Do we then move back a few thousand years in time in
a sort of time jump? Or are we pursuing the point to the environs of judgment
to which He wished to relate? Are we finding the other vast judgment which
covered the earth so that almost all people were physically extinguished one
earth; and here seeing Christ visit those arrested as a result, in a giant
illustration and indication of the Colossians 1:19-23 scope and grandeur of His
magnificent love and outreach and desire to "reconcile all things to
Himself? The match is a marvel*1B.
And with what power and force does Paul speak of this
reconciling passion on the part of the Almighty? This: "and having made
peace by the blood of the Cross, by Him to reconcile all things to Himself: by
Him, I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven", in just collaboration with I
Timothy 2 and John
MERCY IMMENSE AND INTENSE
Must we learn the lesson of Jonah again! God is intensely merciful,
and does not concede to some 'system' the souls of men, but would have them all
to be saved, and so does whatever seems good to that end. CERTAIN it is that no
one will be lost for some technical hitch, problem or omission, who MIGHT have
been saved. This is NOT to consider the will of man, as operative in salvation
to determine or even to sway it: it IS to notice that man being in the image of
God is treated accordingly, but BY God, who alone knows His own.
There is neither first nor second “chance” for chance has no
bearing in that elegant and eloquent predestination which is wrought before our
time began (Ephesians 1:4) by the Lord, who foreknowing with His heart, our
own, knows who are come to Him and who are forever alienated. What there is, is
this, a passionate, prevailing, loving, one that is unimpeded, but yet for all
that, beautifully restrained. It is a movement of the divine love to mankind,
which misses nothing, lacks nothing, but refuses to prostitute itself into mere
manipulation or to pass the bounds of liberty, to make new bondages by mere
dictation. He is Lord, but a loving Lord and His ways are His own.
What then do we find ? Peter in I Peter 3, under divine
inspiration having in terms of sequence seemingly gone from Calvary to the
condemned in the same sort of scope as Colossians indicates, follows the work
of Christ, then applies it back to us again, relating the ark of those times
which led to such mass extinction to its use as a figure of baptism now - but
not the sacrament, rather the salvation which it connotes (I Peter 3:21). In
this way is symbol and reality combined, and so is the thrust and its meaning
collocated.
The intense meaning and depth of the passage is thus
preserved, rather than what at least would appear a somewhat jolting movement
about, here and there, without a clear time line, aborting the thrust of his
words, if it were taken as being some sort of atomic, particle by particle
ambulation! Such an approach seems to do neither justice to the theme nor its beauty
and dignity.
The thrust of this principle and the contextual study of the
thrust and sequence of the Biblical passage before us is illustrative then of
an option which, not to secure but to express predestination, God may employ at
His pleasure.(Cf. The Kingdom of Heaven 2, pp. 30ff., at Being 'Natural' or in the Kingdom
of Heaven.) We do not know with any degree of certainty, the mode chosen in
predestination, though it might for the purposes of Christian Apologetics be
envisaged; but we do know that it is by divine foreknowledge not of mere
history but of persons (because of Romans 9:16 with 8:28ff. etc.). This is of
small concern, since we also know the stated, blessed and assured principles of
divine operation and the charges laid by God against man (John 3:19), despite
these principles, in bringing about his own damnation in so many sad cases.
For his own part, this author does not value the wonderful
knowledge of those who assert awareness of a terrible sovereignty, asserting
‘mystery’ not love, and effectually dallying with alien concepts, whereas the
mystery is this, the intensity of the wonder and the glorious form of God, the
way in which deity Himself actually applies His own STATED principles before
time, and that He should love with such passion and such sacrifice as He does:
not in partiality but in consummate grace.
These things constitute no logical problem, but instead a
marvel of harmony with an intense focus of reasonableness. They attest a
magnificence that is God’s very own, like mountains or waterfalls sublime,
arresting in their intensity, and so far from being strange in mystery as to
constitute a blaze of beauty of which a border of massed floral display is a
botanical symbol. Here is a divine display of wonder where and where alone, in
original integrity, do beauty, truth and love provide an aura in unison, does
peace a depth and goodwill a benediction of engulfing grace. It is this which
sin in its folly finds insufferable. Yet this, God in His wisdom has granted to
all who believe in His Son, through
vicarious suffering a sufficient, manifest and effectual offering where it is
in faith received. Thus is the sublimity of divinity approached, and His
friendship for ever, to be found.
PRAISE TO GOD
How one is impelled to praise the Lord for the sheer
splendour of His revelation, a relish to reason and a joy to the heart; for who
has proposed words, but God has foreclosed; and who has sought to understand,
but the Lord has declared; and in His declaration there is balm to thought and
grace to wisdom, which without Him merely wallows.
It is in His word, the Bible, and in no other writing, that
one finds treasures and riches of clarity, a fullness and composition to which
all else is alien among the words of man. Here not only is there escape from
contradiction, but a commanding presence, a consistent Person whose Spirit
secures the words, opens the eyes of His servants the prophets, while in
Christ, the living word of God, there is more than words and more than striving
with the hearts of man. Here is the King! It is He who, as Isaiah predicted and
disclosed, is a witness to the peoples, to the world, a commander to them and
here, it is here that is to be found their leader.
Not in the confused sentiments of partisan politics, in the
torrid turmoil of conflicting psychologies or in the exalted pretensions of
puffed personalities is to be found the truth, the leadership, the command and
the meaning for man: personality is not invented for floundering without faith,
but for delight in its source who Himself, personal can and does speak; but if
His word is ignored, and human leaders, often with murder on their hands, or
adultery, or convenience placed above truth in their hearts, attempt to sway
the populace and appeal to a falling world, it merely falls the faster.
Now it is fallen to the point where it will accept “Peace!
peace!” at almost any price, so long as it can eat and live and carry on with
its carnalities and frivolities, cultural patterns and preferences. That is
part of the current cry for peace! It was not so strong when Hitler ruled
Now many are the hearts that weary of it all, and as in II
Thessalonians 2, have believed the lie, and stand ready to cry, “Peace and safety!” as in I Thessalonians 5:3, a
specific prediction for the onset of the End, which for the Christian is a most
merciful approach to the Beginning of Bliss in the body redeemed (Romans 8:23),
when this Leader, this Messiah, this Jesus, this Christ returns for HIS people
and collects them as a miser collects His monies (cf. Malachi 3:17), or a King
makes up his jewels in a pageant of beauty. Yet this is no miser, for HE has
paid for His people, and the beauty is His, for it is at His own creation, the
new creation (II Corinthians 5:17ff.).
¨
And what of those who reject Him ? These receive no payment,
despising His riches and so are not healed, as those whose griefs HE has borne
are all healed !
(Isaiah 53:3-6).
¨
As He is the truth, it follows that what is left is abandoned to
the lie, to the command of men, not the governance of God. But by whom are they
to be so abandoned
(Matthew 24:45) ?
¨
It is first by their own hearts which have chosen this world,
and not its Maker, whether by religious subterfuge: following desire not truth,
lust not the Lord, will not wisdom, cultural gods not the Creator, even high
gods, but they are all idols (Psalm 96); for yes, every one of them and all
their followers fail even at the bar of reason; and if there, what will be the
devastation when they come with their creators to the bar of divine judgment at
the last!
¨
What will be their recompense when they lie, headless idols, the
work of idle imagination!
¨
Is it then for this, and the composition of the minds of men,
not even in the created light of reason, far less the uncreated brilliance of
revelation, but in ignorance and ignominy, that men are to live without Christ,
without hope, without God (Ephesians 2:12), on groundless grounds, erected in
the imagination, more fanciful than clouds, in an atmosphere which will bring
no rain!
¨
Let them if they will: for it is nothing but delusion that draws
them (II Thess. 2:10-12), the pale face of terror their address, as will works
havoc with the heart of man, in place of the peace wrought in holiness (Isaiah
26:1-3, Ephesians 2:17-18). It is this which comes as the gift of grace, and by
grace (Romans