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Jerusalem ? What thoughts does this name evoke within you ? Is it peace ? Is it sanctity ? Is it a delightful sense of marvellous history ? Or perhaps you think of it as the place where Christ was crucified, was resurrected, where He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, where the mock trial was held, where God was told that He did not satisfy man, and appearing as man and accessible to man, was just as He had long predicted of this passionate time, mauled as man so that His body became a corpse; and this not only as a sacrifice for sin, but so that the corpse could be made a test piece, and resurrected. How blighted was THAT work in Israel.

Even with a millenium to prepare, from the time when God foretold these things (cf. Joyful Jottings 21-25), the world could not eliminate the One whose body they killed; for irrepressible in form as indefeasible in truth, He removed His own body from the tomb for His own purposes, so making it wholly inaccessible to the soldiers on guard, the priests on the war path, or the official of the government  who connived with the murder. Instead, He appeared exactly as promised, after precisely 3 days,  to His own people (cf. SMR Ch. 6, pp. 931ff., I Cor. 156, Luke 24, John 20-21, Luke 24), then, after 40 days, leaving the world to become exactly what it has become, is becoming, will become and in turn was predicted to become; until He returns for Judgment, now quite near (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5).

Is it all or none of these, reader, that the city means to you ? Has its portent sunk in ? Has the pivotal role of Jerusalem, in all history, been seen ? Play with this and you play with fire: not because it is judged important by us, but because as in Zech. 12, this is the position predicted, the situation now being found: precisely, once again! (Cf. SMR Ch. 9.) Did you realise that nowhere else on earth did God give to man an opportunity to kill the format, as man, that He took, the Messiah whom He sent ? nowhere else did the heart of man have so golden an opportunity to expose itself, like a chest X-rayed, to one, and to all ?

Or did you further realise that here, this being so, there is a divine investment of the highest
order ? If the ONE GOD, once only, sent into human form as His only begotten Son, the Prince of Peace, His eternal companion (Micah 5:1-3, Zechariah 13:7, Isaiah 48:16, Psalm 45, Isaiah 43:10-11 with 52-53, Hebrews 1:1-3, John 8:58, Ephesians 1;10), then what would you expect ? That it would not matter what man did ?

Do not revile the Jewish nation: it failed.

Did your nation do any better ? Does it now condone homosexuality, like Sodom and Gomorrah, of which God says this:

• "Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire" (Jude 7) ?

Or does your nation engage in self-interest as a government, making nice little declarations from time to time, that this or that is not in the national interest, as if blatant, irrational selfishness is fine so long as it is at the national level, without any intelligent concern at the fact that peace is not found by pushing your barrow, just because it is yours! and does your nation then lament that there is so much war!

Is your people any better than Israel, and does it not murder Christ in its secular ways, worldliness and selfishness, and does it in any case enshrine Christ as Lord for its people ? And even the individuals of your nation, how many of these are Christians in the sense that Christ is their all, they forsake all for Him, they follow His word, they suffer for righteousness' sake, which is the Biblical depiction of the matter ? (Luke 14).

Indeed, there is NO OTHER WAY to be His disciple, we find Christ has declared!

How many then ? Some ? Then in Israel some also. This is in no way to minimise their explicit national error in word and in deed, which is not yet nationally repented of; but it is to put the thing in perspective in terms of those who are swift to condemn, as if the foul conduct of Europe against Jewish people for centuries, something merely capped by Hitler, rather than commenced, were some sort of invitation to its continuance.
 
 

Take the Palestinian Authority, which Annan of the UN is so keen to reconstitute: what is it ? It is a form of government, tolerated until recently murders rose to soak the land from its region, in an area consigned to Israel in 1919, by the Allies, following World War I, ratifying the Balfour Declaration of Britain made in 1917! Why is it necessary to have such a counter-Jewish authority, led by one REFUSING to countermand terror, when recently asked, though often talking about it ? In order to rob from Israel the land assigned to it ? Why was so little accorded to Israel in the UN 'solution', and that not even including Jerusalem, but consisting of  various separate tracts, after World War II ? and even that solution, it was not accepted by the Arabs!

Is it possible ? you ask. Yes it is: they were offered this and they refused. Now they want for themselves half of Jerusalem, kill civilians to get it, and the PLO authority does not put a stop to it, deems it acceptable from time to time, it seems, and this use of part of the land of Israel, it is so fine and fragrant that the UN would like to re-constitute the authority under whose auspices these 20th-21st century atrocities, aping Hitler more and more, have occurred. Is it repentant ? Has it condemned the whole godless folly of jihad as a method of preying on civilisation to get what they want ? Has it deplored the methods ? Has it made it clear that murder is not the way, suicide bombings of civilians is an outrage, and has it entered such a finding in the UN ?

Even if it had, it would be rather like trusting Hitler after the Chamberlain agreement at Munich! The philosophy, has it changed ? the book, the Koran, has it changed ? the things in it (cf. More Marvels Ch. 4), have they been excised where this is the result ? Is then civilian murder to be expressly sanctioned by the UN ? Why - if not - do they talk of reconstituting the Palestinian Authority instead of removing forever anything which so reeks of blood, murder and atrocity.

You say, But Israel hit back! So did Bush! Has the USA been ostracised ? Would the UN like to invade the US ? Or have an Islamic authority sharing the nation ? one with jihad intact as a philosophy ? Why then does it not make such wishes clear. But where will the Palestinians go ? Why into Israel as citizens if they are willing to live by the Allied Agreement following World War I, made and now broken ? Into Israel, let those who do not make murder their mark, go as citizens, as indeed many of them have already done.

But you say, "Into Israel ? Why some of these could scarcely live at all if they are not contesting and bombing and murdering and seeking by every method, as the Islamic conferences have made clear from time to time, to destroy Israel!" If this be so, why propose such a preposterous load of dynamite as having the PLO reconstituted! If it be not so, let them become citizens, already plushly treated with their Mosque in Jerusalem, a topic which would need some examination if Israel is REALLY to be given the former Palestine for a homeland! Perhaps those who prefer murder could go into Arab nations that want that sort of thing, or practise it, or declare they want it, or who want to make war on Israel, and find their desired base ?

For that, Israel is scarcely suitable. You might as well have invited the SS to locate in Britain, during the war, and have the UN (if it were there then), supervise the operation!

Is it not observed that the Arab cause is NEVER satisfied ? All they were to be given in 1947, with so little for Israel, not even ANY of Jerusalem, was on offer  from the UN; and they did not ACCEPT it! Where is the poverty in this! Is the UN rather more concerned to remove from Palestine that was, Israel that is, the incendiary elements, and to insist that this Islamic submission is inapplicable to any field where they are involved!

Is it that a certain madness is gripping the world, that it talks of peace and makes war on the nation it has oppressed when it was in exile, to the last degree! Is the red heart of human advantage to become wedded to the dead heart of human murder, as if the killing machine mentality predicted in Revelation 6:4 and 8 were being fulfilled by an obsessive tribe of varied humans!^*1

Is it expected that God will smile at such folly, selfishness and infidelity, such persecution so inveterate for so long ? In fact, He has, as in the resurrection of Christ, already made clear what He is going to do, in His own time, as events now moving so fast since 1948 and the predicted return of the Jews, has happened.
 

• Despite the blindness of the nation (as in Isaiah 42:18-19),
• and not because of any merit in it
• (as in Ezekiel 36:22 cf. Acme, Alpha and Omega: Jesus Christ Ch. 10, SMR Appendix A, The Impregnable Tower Ch. 6, and see Scriptural Index),
• but because of His "holy name", God has other plans which have been duly announced
• (as in Amos 3:7).

He does not leave out His calling card, be the will of mankind what it may! Thus in Isaiah 49:25-26 (cf. the Isaiah coverage in With Heart and Soul, Mind and Strength Chs. 4 and following), God declares this:

"Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away;
And the prey of the terrible be delivered:
For I will contend with him who contends with you,
And I will save your children.
I will feed those who oppress you with their own flesh,
And they shall be drunk with their own blood as with sweet wine.
All flesh shall know
That I, the LORD, am your Saviour,
And your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Israel" -  Isaiah 49:25-26.

The restoration is two stage ? we have looked at this previously, as in Ezekiel 37, where the first command is for the restoration of the people PHYSICALLY to Israel, and then subsequently, the movement SPIRITUALLY which gives them life, so that, in large numbers (as in Romans 11:25ff.), they come to Christ and this becomes a national phenomenon (as in Zech. 12:10ff.). Cleansed, they then recognise their King.

You find the divine disinclination for the sort of rabid persecution which has been so popular with so many for so long way back as far as in Obadiah (10-18):

“For violence against your brother Jacob,
Shame shall cover you,
And you shall be cut off forever.
In the day that you stood on the other side—
In the day that strangers carried captive his forces,
When foreigners entered his gates
And cast lots for Jerusalem—
Even you were as one of them.

"But you should not have gazed on the day of your brother
In the day of his captivity;
Nor should you have rejoiced over the children of Judah
In the day of their destruction;
Nor should you have spoken proudly
In the day of distress.

"You should not have entered the gate of My people
In the day of their calamity.
Indeed, you should not have gazed on their affliction
In the day of their calamity,
Nor laid hands on their substance
In the day of their calamity.

"You should not have stood at the cross-roads
To cut off those among them who escaped;
Nor should you have delivered up those among them who remained
In the day of distress.

“For the day of the Lord upon all the nations is near;
As you have done, it shall be done to you;
Your reprisal shall return upon your own head.
For as you drank on my holy mountain,
So shall all the nations drink continually;
Yes, they shall drink, and swallow,
And they shall be as though they had never been.

“But on Mount Zion there shall be deliverance,
And there shall be holiness;
The house of Jacob shall possess their possessions.
The house of Jacob shall be a fire,
And the house of Joseph a flame;
But the house of Esau shall be stubble;
They shall kindle them and devour them,
And no survivor shall remain of the house of Esau,”

For the Lord has spoken.

What then ? If only it can be taken and the thing swept away, then God would not looking so great is He ? And how many want such a thing, may be seen just by looking at the peculiarities of organic evolution, thrust dictatorially into many a class-room, indeed by the thousand, without so much as a vestige of reality to its arbitrary thrusts, its counter-law imaginations or its evidential bankruptcy, when even in the so-called Cambrian or pre-Cambrian, we find nothing comfortable to it, but only MORE designs than now, according to Stephen Gould of Harvard. (Cf. Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming... Chs.   4,  5 and   6.)

It is fun, is it not, to regale the Almighty with OTHER laws about sexuality, ignoring design, and inheriting every sort of horror physically, and medically, as a result! It is SUCH fun to attack the Bible, as the author has audited long enough; and to make such attacks without the slightest basis in reason, only to be thrown back ceaselessly, but still to continue without cease, as if reason were on holiday! or the repetitive strain syndrome had invaded the alienated mind of man as well as his body!

But the word of God continues. It is, precisely as it has so often said, BECAUSE of the sins of Israel that it was exiled. MOSES himself told of this scenario from the first (as in Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 29-32). It is WHEN He is ready that He brings them back (He was ready in 1948, with various preliminaries), and it is WHEN He is ready that He performs the second phase of the campaign regarding Israel. It is indeed  in our time, that we seen the first phase (one says 'in our time', but that really means for people, like the author, over some 54 years old to allow for 1948) brilliantly successful as traced in SMR Ch. 9.

HOW unbelief desires to undo the command. What then instead of the divine declaration ?
 

What ? Why this, Islamic powers have said often enough: Israel into the sea! have said followers of the false prophet Muhammad (cf. More Marvels... Ch. 4), more than once, into this or some other rather uncomfortable environment (Arafat not long ago suggested hell!); but Nasser, a specialist in this sort of thing had something to learn. He found that it was OVER the sea, instead, that the Israeli jets skimmed, to escape radar, when destroying much of the Egyptian air force. This was not the redoubtable marvel of Israel, like some midget super-power, for God has an interest. This triumph, like some of the others of like kind,  merely had this appearance (precisely as predicted - Zechariah 12:6,8).

God Himself had an interest, and that is why He resolved to act, in His own wisdom, to predict and then to do. As however to Israel, this is a divine grace provided; and it is explicitly DESPITE their unbelief and unworthiness, as we see in Ezekiel 36 and implied in Zechariah 12, that the Lord has done this, being faithful to His initial undertakings (cf. Galloping Events, esp. Ch. 4), and later prophetic announcement. In fact, the scope and triumph in successive wars of 1948, 1967and 1973, as one ensemble,  is merely an accurate and precise fulfilment of Zechariah 12's statements about the Lord's intentions, actions and resolve, in the stated scenario leading up to the repentance of many in Israel for the murder of Christ as cited in Zech. 12:10.

Unbelief would doubtless love to have had it otherwise. What worse COULD have happened for the rancid acids of incredulity that the world loves to present to the word of God, than this, not merely the return of Israel (the Islamic response of many, 'catastrophe'), but SUCH a return! It was to be against all odds, all of the surrounding nations, all the power of the UN in its ludicrous imagined settlement of Jerusalem outside the Jewish control entirely, against the betrayal of Britain, in its obstruction of Jewish return, using the Royal Navy for the purpose! It succeeded over treachery, conspiratorial assault, multitudinous arms, many nations, itself hardly born (just as in Isaiah 66:9-11). Again, what worse then this: not merely a victory in such wars, but one in such a savour and flavour that military experts were amazed (1967 in particular), and the world had to change its prepared outcome sheet entirely!

Unbelief is having a hard time, because, and simply because, you CANNOT fight successfully with God. It sometimes may seem so, if you do not think, and are busy murdering Christians, one of this world's special foci and features and interests from the Inquisition on, and long before; but that, it is part of His plan as so clearly announced, with such vivid graphics and detail, in the divine drama (cf News 87). You have merely to cast an interested eye at John 16:2, Matthew 10:19ff., Revelation 12:11 and so on, to see that unholy dissidence from God leads to the ultimate intolerance to His people.

Since the object of dissidence is God, then of course a nation that has had a major part in His plans, and is to have one, would do almost as well for persecution. It has assuredly received it, stretched abroad these many centuries of discipline; but this is not the end, but merely the end of the beginning, as Romans 11:25ff. makes clear (cf. The Biblical Workman Chs.  1,  *3 and  3   *1).

Paul puts it this way, in II Timothy 3:13: "Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution."

Had it been otherwise, the word of God would be contradicted; but it is in NOTHING contradicted, but most liberally fulfilled in ALL points, not least in this! Who would have thought that the Russians breaking the cheek bones of people at prayer meetings, or imprisoning Christians who would not forsake God for the mere human muddle of the State, seeking to glorify its humanistic little self, that these tyrants were fulfilling the word of God! but it is so.

This world however is by no means done yet! It has more in mind. It is seeking now to rifle Israel again, and the UN, per Annan^*2, is trying now to re-establish the Palestinian Authority, which means that Arab governing power which has long been bent on removing from Israel no mean part of its territory,  a section having been envisaged to be grabbed from the original grant of the Allies, so that residual Israel, what would then be left of the place, might become even more indefensible (miracles apart) than it is now, even more ludicrously exposed in even more slender scrapings of inheritance.

This ? and more: it could be so that its Mosque, already disadorning the capital city of a non-Islamic nation, in pride of place, and this despite the victory of Israel over the Islamic foes, to which it did NOT submit, despite the submission tag of that religion, might have not merely large grounds for its enjoyment on the Temple mount, but half the city for its domination!

As to that, would that - even that, suffice ? It is not enough. It is never enough. Is it to be imagined that if HALF of Jerusalem again (as in 1948, when Israel as it then became, took the first half, as in Zech. 14:1) were given to the Islamic forces, that this would be sufficient ? Merely to have half ? Is not some murder under the title of jihad to come and seek the rest ? Is the method to get what arms failed to take, by mere murder, now to cease ? Why on earth should it do so ? Is it not the stated desire of many to push Israel into the sea ? Is not their very presence as a nation regarded as the CALAMITY! does it cease to be so when it is mauled a little more ?

Did not Teheran in 1991, and has not Arab summit since, made it clear that the assault on Israel is a DOCTRINE! Is Israel then to give up some freely so that the rest should be taken by FORCE, the thing thus becoming easier to perform!

One is not persuaded that brilliant people have forgotten their intelligence. It is not that. It is a religious insomnia, or somnolence; and it is perhaps made the easier by oil, by Arab power and lands and markets, and by an intolerance for God having anything to say; for if there is one thing that arrogance in man cannot STAND,

• it is somebody ELSE saying something,
• let alone GOD who made them, doing so:
• let alone this  on a freely evidenced basis, a testimony impossible rationally to deny!

(cf. SMR).

Thus it is merely fictional and factitious, to imagine that Israel, set up to be rifled with UN 'help' of some of her territories which she took when threatened - as earlier by Hitler - with extinction, would then find peace. Peace ?do you then see this, with the hunger for glory for Allah and jihad methods and such weapons of destruction, and such a proclivity for murder already so remorselessly, so ceaselessly, so impenitently shown by so MANY Arab organisations, which condone or endorse, sometimes even with ill-concealed jubilation, sometimes with dancing, the repetitive domestic murder method of Islam towards Israel.

You see the societies of assassins, with religious zeal and inhuman indifference, setting their faces to peace ? You read their statements as one government  or as many. You see the societies of assassins, with religious zeal and inhuman indifference, setting their faces to
peace ? You read their statements as one government  or as many, and you perceive ... this ? You see this and say that, No problems, just set it up again! as if it were dispensable verbiage, defused religion or ephemeral enterprise ?

It was C.S. Lewis who once pointed out the importance and not reading more between the lines than appears on them!

Much more certain is this, that a terrible multinational effort to dispossess Israel is predicted, and is given zero marks, for it is one to be met by divine intervention.

Armageddon is the final phrasing of the piece. (See Revelation 16, Ezekiel 36-39 and references noted above and in the scriptural index.)

Thus man, though thinking himself secure, or hoping it, or willing it, or consulting his idols concerning it, is not. The word of God strips his meretricious glory from him. Zechariah 12  SAID that Jerusalem would be a heavy stone, a burdensome one to those aligned against her, who seek to strip her; and so she has become. It is a long story, but this is a short ending. Madeleine Albright found it so; Secretary of State Colin Powell has found it so. Iraq found it so in 1991, when declaring its continuing war on Israel. Egypt and Jordan, Lebanon and Syria have all found it so in their various wars and assaults, terrorist or other, as the case may be for each individual.

It is heavy. It will remain so. The gravity of God has made it so. As to the case, it is so written.
 
 

Then there is the return to reason by some. Thus President Bush has declared that murder is murder. A mere civil assault wrought by individuals on children and super-markets, pizzerias, seaside resorts, on holy days, or whatever other way or place may appeal, is mere murder.

WHERE is the stunned UN outcry at this ? Where has been the outrage, the wrath, the intensity of feeling against this! How many ultimata have been given because of it ? How many speeches deploring the infamous inhumanity of these things, the incredible barbarity, the zestful slaughter of new 'innocents' continually, for the sake of Allah and of land!

Is the world forgetting its vocal cords, then, selectively, for the media, in particular, scarcely seem to find words for these things. There may be exceptions, but one has to look rather hard.

It is however almost uniformly seen as FOUL when Israel seeks to PREVENT THESE MURDERS. How shocking that it should do what Britain did, in bombing Germany, when that nation under Hitler felt a calling to seize the English shores ! How completely morally devastating that Israel should follow the US example after Pearl Harbour, and take steps to reduce the likelihood that the US might be invaded, Australia taken, England gutted!

It is fine that President Bush has made, or is reported to have made this sensationally correct remark concerning Palestinian murders against Israel, occasioning many hundreds of casualties, carried out not only impenitently, but with arrogant assurance, inhuman disregard of any sensibilities, occasioning lives of anguish, emotionally or physically, to many, because they refuse to become peaceable citizens. It is to be sure, a tall order to ask Israel to ACCEPT murderers; but thought might be given if there be repentance, and if there be assurance, and if there be disbanding of the ferocious organisations responsible, and if there be a universal declaration of support for the repulse of ALL terrorism, and a realistic approach to what the thing is (as expressed  in Cascade of Truth, Torrent of Mercy Ch. 4). Otherwise if you despise mere murder, what is there left  to think about ... ?

Thus the President's insistence that this rabid rush into the arena of revulsion in the form of an endless parade of proudly acclaimed murders, is still just a matter murder, is good. Glorifying it, does not alter it. Similarly, terrorism is just terrorism. You can have as many grounds, true or illusory, as you wish; but killing the innocent in order to twist the arm of the guilty (if they ARE guilty) or the other innocent parties (if they are NOT guilty) is just terrorism, give it what grubby angel's wings you will.

Similarly it is just REPUDIATION to give the Jews a land after a successful war, in the name of the Allies, and then to allow it to be ripped away  from them, Britain in 1948 even using the ROYAL NAVY to redirect Jewish hulks, brought to bear in a post-Hitler effort to inhabit what had been accorded to them. There was no conceivable ambiguity about the minimal limits of 'Palestine'.

Again, it is PERSECUTION to expect an international body to come and force the Jews out, by various words and sanctions, enterprises and so forth, so that they CANNOT have the land they got when the Arab world was seeking their entire destruction in that land. This is so gross and outrageous an intention that it is only when you see the proposals of the UN in 1947 and allied years, that you can realise how such an enormity could even fit itself into the framework of a mouth, and gain utterance.

However, it is not a matter of human outrage. The significant one is divine. God is on record as to intentions, their grounds and stages in this matter, and playing with fire would be a far less perilous proceeding than contesting HIS allocations from HIS mind according to HIS word, with mere human weapons, like dishonour, murder, the inherent and implicit threat of it,  and varied mouthings. The UN is just some of the NATIONS, and the nations are just those who WILL not accept the Messiah; and Psalm 2 is the place where you see the confrontation, and the outcome. Be warned, you judges, says the Almighty! He even traces out the results!

It is not Israel, however, which is to be vindicated, but the word of God, for His has spoken (as He makes so clear in Ezekiel 36 and 39). He has declared it unequivocally, and He will do it. He always performs His word (Isaiah 40:25-26), and always frustrates the babbling, the blithering of those who oppose it. It is not that He is unmerciful; He is ever willing to revoke an intention forming, when the repentance comes; but when the thing is sure, and the word is certain, so that no more time is allocated for repentance, and the fact is not posited but cited, then it happens.

Is it then merciless to WARN ? Is it grasping to allocate what you MADE ? Is it dishonourable to fulfil PROMISES ? If so, it is not God who is so, but the nations, who have smitten the Allied promise, and now wish to make something new, to the detriment as so often, of the Jew, and to the glory of the ungodly, the false gods, the gods of humanism and the spurious aspirants for greatness.

When it comes however to the greatness of God, comparison is a spiritually grotesque masterpiece of error (cf. Psalm 89:6-9, 72:18, Ezekiel 28:9, Isaiah 37:21ff., Deuteronomy 32:15-21,39ff., Psalm 82). It is, as in Psalm 2, necessary in all compassion and concern, to warn the nations, to warn the assailants, to warn the workers of oppression, the warn those who break honour, that as to God, HE DOES NOT DO SO. He is going to do what He has said.

• "Be wise now, therefore, O you kings, be instructed, you judges of the earth.

 
• Serve the LORD with fear and rejoice with trembling.

 
• Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little.

 
• Blessed are all they who put their trust in Him."

And this, remember from the earlier part of Psalm 2, it is addressed to those who UNHEEDING of the establishment of the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God in the face of their revolt, imagine a foolish and vain thing, which though they enterprising in aspiration, seek to MAKE it work, face with it their own destruction. The Arabs in general (with significant exceptions) follow Islam, which has no Son; the world (with significant exceptions) follows NO GOD, but itself, which involves no worship of the Son of God. Other idolators have the same problem: the self-revealing God who sent His Son at the time stated, is not another. It is He who speaks, and who has acted, and will act. It is not another action. As He says in Lamentations 3:37,

• "Who is he who speaks and it comes to pass,
• When the LORD has not commanded it ?"

One of the great marvels, however, is this: that it is not necessary for any man to be a Jew or an Arab, or a Japanese, or Chinese, or European PRIMARILY. It is always possible to be so conjoined to CHRIST JESUS THE LORD, as your Saviour and King, that national restrictions take second place. In repenting of whatever your own nation has done, it is always possible for the one who has faith in Christ, to be a citizen of the kingdom of heaven (John 3:3-5, Galatians 3:28). It is not a matter of John Smith or Albert Kovhovo, or any other individual, being in trouble by virtue of his alliance or culture or nation. This is HIS DECISION, to neglect God in the interests of his false prophets or idols, be these nationalistic, cultural, academic or other.

When God gives to your heart faith, you become His child, through Jesus Christ the One whom He has deputed from heaven to bear the glory (Zechariah 6:12, 3:9, 12:10), the only Saviour (Isaiah 52-53, 43:10-11). Then you are a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven, these your credentials, this your visa, this your background, foreground and ground in Christ (cf. Philippians 3:20).

It is not as an Arab that you fall, or as a German in World War II: it is ONLY if your heart's faith is set, or your words are set, in evil, not in Christ, in the errors of your culture, your nation, your academic background, your psychic follies or your imagined idols. The CAMPS are not your destiny; it is the Christ. If you receive Him, it is the grace of God. If you want Him, receive Him. If you do not, do not blame any other than yourself! See Tender Times for Timely Truths Ch. 11 and The Kingdom of Heaven ... Ch. 4, Lord of Life Ch. 1, with SMR Appendix B.

The realities do not tremble because the heart of man does, or does not. They stay (cf. Galatians 1), and the willingness of God to 'negotiate' arithmetically might best be expressed as minus infinity. EVEN IF PAUL himself had preached another gospel, or an angel like Moroni, allegedly, then it is the same: that party is accursed. That is what Galatians 1 tells us (cf. That Magnificent Rock Chs.  2  and  3). God is on record that He has sent the fulness of His Godhead in Christ, because He would reconcile ALL things in heaven or on earth to Himself by Him (Colossians 1:19ff.). This was His willingness, His provision and the scope of His kindness. As Titus 3:4-5 puts it,

• "But when the kindness and the love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit..."

• "the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men... looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us..."

His is not a dictatorship; but the ONLY way you can avoid Him is by using your own will to refuse; for this IS the CONDEMNATION that men have preferred darkness to light, when the light has come! YOU WOULD NOT, is the long-standing and oft-repeated scriptural designation for condemnation (John 3:19). It could not be clearer! As to God, He would have healed Israel, and even Babylon!^*3  (Hosea 7:1, Jeremiah 51:9).

• Oh that you had heeded My commandments! He laments in Isaiah 48:18^*4,
• or known the day of your visitation, in the Person of Christ, as seen in Luke 19:42ff.

Murder is still murder; Israel is still Israel; God is still God. Nothing deceives Him. He knows and foreknows His own (Ephesians 1:4). Nothing changes here; and the Gospel, it does not change, but continues as always (cf. That Magnificent Rock Ch. 3). There is no other nor will there ever be; for God knows man, his disease and its solution. He knows what resolves it and has provided, and for the time, will provide while the day of salvation lasts. The scene is moving swiftly; the word of God remains unhurried. Truth is like that.
 
 

*1 The fulfilment of this prophecy has been prodigious since World War I, when the reported 40,000 nightly new troops as ... replacements was a work in vogue at Verdun, for example, and the following influenza epidemic of 1919, apparently more lethal than the war; since, more recently, the millions milling into death in World War II, the millions slaughtered by the earlier madness of Communism, which seemed to revere human life in a manner reminiscent of the current jihads of Islam, whether in the infamous kulak and gulag treatments of that insufferable regime, as heartless as godless, in the USSR or in Cambodia; since the Japanese thought not too much about China's people in 1937 and following years; since the Tutsi and Hutu wickedness in genocide, the appalling ruthlessness of Hussein of Iraq, towards the Kurds and others; right into the expectant arms of the arms of Islam, and its gracious thoughtfulness of Al Qaeda, now specialising in other countries, to slaughter domestically.

So does the wrath of man serve God, as in His wisdom, He suffers it to do; while the judgment mounts, and the day for it draws ever nearer, and nearer, like a tsunami of appalling proportions, incited by an atomic bomb.

A SIGHT TO SEE

It may be useful to the reader to see these predictions, and the accompanying scene, in the broader scenario, in heaven, in Revelation 6:3-4,6-11 below.

6: 3-4:

 
When He opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, “Come and see.” Another horse, fiery red, went out. And it was granted to the one who sat on it to take peace from the earth, and that people should kill one another; and there was given to him a great sword.

6:6-11
 

When He opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, “Come and see.”

So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades followed with him. And power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth.

When He opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” Then a white robe was given to each of them; and it was said to them that they should rest a little while longer, until both the number of their fellow servants and their brethren, who would be killed as they were, was completed.

Note that patience IS involved in all these things. It has its eventual outcome in the midst of transformed heroism, deep courage and undying love from and for the Lord of creation, the God of redemption and of all comfort, who purifies and exhibits to man, that he may learn; and for all eternity, the case is closed.
 

*2
See for other utterance, Cascade of Truth, Torrent of Mercy, Ch. 4.

*3
Babylon, that cynosure of religions, that sophisticate of idolatry, that reversion to Babel, that type of all apostate religion (cf. SMR pp. 955, 1031C, 946, Biblical Blessings Ch. 2), is well exemplified in the World Council of Churches (cf. SMR pp. 743ff.), today. It was not always what it has now long since become. This too might have been healed if it had heeded in its time, the day of its visitation; for many and long have been the times, and the duration, of its decline; and much has been the scope for its rectification. However, like Babylon of yore (for its fate, see Isaiah 14), it has lifted itself, the better to fall.

*4
Isaiah 48:16-18 is most expressive of the divine heart, and human need simultaneously.

•  “Come near to Me, hear this:

I have not spoken in secret from the beginning;
From the time that it was, I was there.
And now the Lord God and His Spirit
Have sent Me.”

Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer,
The Holy One of Israel:
“I am the Lord your God,
Who teaches you to profit,
Who leads you by the way you should go.
 

• Oh, that you had heeded My commandments!

Then your peace would have been like a river,
And your righteousness like the waves of the sea.
Your descendants also would have been like the sand,
And the offspring of your body like the grains of sand;
His name would not have been cut off
Nor destroyed from before Me.”

“Ho! Everyone who thirsts,
Come to the waters;
And you who have no money,
Come, buy and eat.
Yes, come, buy wine and milk
Without money and without price.

"Why do you spend money for what is not bread,
And your wages for what does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good,
And let your soul delight itself in abundance.

"Incline your ear, and come to Me.
Hear, and your soul shall live;
And I will make an everlasting covenant with you—
The sure mercies of David.
Indeed I have given him as a witness to the people,
A leader and commander for the people.
Surely you shall call a nation you do not know,
And nations who do not know you shall run to you,
Because of the Lord your God,
And the Holy One of Israel;
For He has glorified you.

"Seek the Lord while He may be found,
Call upon Him while He is near.
Let the wicked forsake his way,
And the unrighteous man his thoughts;
Let him return to the Lord,
And He will have mercy on him;
And to our God,
For He will abundantly pardon.

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts."