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CHAPTER 9

WILLOWY WORSHIP WEARS WOEFULLY

Worship beings up many questions, but one answer. In considering both the liberty of man and the remedy of God, it is necessary to ponder this path. It determines much of the conduct of man, for when he is not worshipping himself, his knowledge, his power, his ways and his wisdom, which is humanism, he is busy worshipping idols or matter or method or some silly idea which has its throes then examines its toes ever afterwards, when its impure folly becomes more evident, while some, perhaps with nostalgia, seek to re-invent it differently, with the same result.

 

An Excerpt from Beauty of Holiness Ch. 4

 

THE PRIMACY OF WORSHIP

So the world moves exactly as the word of God said, and back of it is the devil - not just money, or guns, atomic warfare or tanks, planes or biological warfare: the devil himself is at it. It is a spiritual phenomenon, this rebellion against God: it has to be. God is a Spirit, and it is a spiritual mockery, a spiritual war on spirit which is made, an assault on Spirit Eternal, the everlasting God. The means matter; but the end is spiritual. Ends and aims are not one; the atomic bomb was not the aim of the war, nor was it alone its end; but chosen for its power to find the purpose in view, it was used. So spiritually, it is not at all that the power of this or that phenomenon which is sought, is crucial; but it is the result.

Thus the beast insists at ALL costs on WORSHIP of the beast (Revelation 13:15). NOT THAT ? Death! It was so in the preliminary murders and massacres that devolved around the Mass (which had to be WORSHIPPED), and around the Communist State (the will of which was not to be differentiated from rightness, this amusingly in view of the alleged absence of morals), thus also worshipped. NO ONE could alter it, and special imaginary laws of history were invented to give it a feeling of the spectacular, which, though often broken as noted above, were still an authoritative sounding thing. What began in ignorant confusion, ended in fatal collusion. Nothing worked, only the people!

Whatever seeks to take over man is a spiritual idol, and its power source is the one whose aim is just that, the devil, called "the god of this world" by Paul (II Cor. 4:14). Whatever this world and the spirit of it wants, is bound not to be spiritual, but in its delusion and contempt, it elevates itself to the heights of the spiritual and will not, cannot rest until it deludes itself into the expression of these things.

The penalties are high; the opportunities are great. The pilgrimage is a wonderful thing. Small wonder then that the 144,000 'troopers' if you will, seen in Revelation 14:1, those who did not yield as the Great Tribulation rolled on as specified at the end of Revelation 13, are received with such joy in heaven, as in Revelation 14:2,4. These are spiritual virgins, for the Bible gives no greater glory to physical ones (as in I Cor. 7). They are, moreover, the direct antithesis of the spiritual Harlot (Revelation 17:1-5), and avoiding the spiritual fornications noted in Revelation 2:20ff., with whatever other outrageous practices, and paralleling the idolatries of Jezebel, they live in the pure air of the priceless Prince of Life. This vignette in Revelation 14 supplements the other one, the tableau in fact of Rev. 7, where an innumerable multitude supplement the Jewish saved souls, among the Gentiles, all in the uttermost blessedness of divine acceptance in heaven.

W e referred earlier to Communism in terms of false religion, one contrasting with this vignette of victories in Revelation 14. The work of Lester de Koster, Communism and Christian Faith, handles this well. In this sort of vein, we see that the proletariat or commoners, are the place-fillers for the Messiah; the CLASS situation is the SIN; the overthrow of this is the overthrow of the DEVIL, and the dictatorship of the proletariat, is the HEAVEN. The LAW of Communism, we must add, though it does not work, has been imagined: that by which history has no choice but to follow on to produce a world communism; and while this failure is seen in this only covertly religious system, the movement towards mimicry of the actual situation under Almighty God with His law, is notable!

While this of course provides precisely the opposite of the case for the Marxist decidedly NON-paradise of decidedly RIFE repression in a decidedly NON-liberated situation, just as do the ways in which it comes fail to meet the case (as in SMR pp. 925-926), yet the direction of thought is clear. GOD is to be displaced, preferably with a sort of mimicry of style, at last, which however futilely, is designed to hold some semblance of conceivability.  Such is the path of delusion, a little spice in a sordid mass. Indeed, it is decidedly humiliating to be told thousands of years in advance the very character and unviability of your so intelligent schemings!

But let us proceed with the spiritual parallel which Communism provides, to Christianity.

The SACRIFICE is of the kulaks is then to be considered, that is, of the land holders who were given Siberia for payment, and prison or labour camp as receipt; though this is not strictly in the bookish version, only in that of history. The power to propel matter into man, man into politics, politics into a classless society (except for the rulers of course), and this into heaven, this law in what has to be a ludicrously lawless chaos (cf. SMR pp. 284-315C), is merely one of the side-shows to the Communist fair, this covertly religious atheism, which draws many to its execution squads, not all willingly. Without any possible access to truth, since no absolute (ostensibly) is permitted, Communist tells it anyway, and it does not happen that way, anyway.

Yet it TELLS Falun Gong as if a LORD, what to do, and where to die in many cases, by report. So you have the sense of LORD in their system too! This 'lord', he kills; the Lord of truth, brings life. They are antithetical, like heaven and hell, like verification and falsification, like God and the devil; and their source is antithetical, truth and lie, and their results are antithetical, liberty and bondage. As to the latter, it can be extended, if you want to press the image, into the lingering prisons of 're-education' and the resourceful endeavours so well exhibited by Arthur Koestler in his Darkness at Noon, and by Solzhenitsyn in his Gulag Archipelago, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, and First Circle. This becomes their version of hell.

In one sense, then, Communism too is a perversion of Christianity, using its categories and abandoning its logic in irrational insistences made to history, which does not, simply does not hear! It is a reductionism applied to Christianity, a removal of the substance in the interests of a poor, depleted and denuded caricature of it. Its smuggled in god, a mimicry who is quite inept, cannot do what the real One does; and so it fails to function. What does not exist cannot do anything; and miracles would be needed to make communism work, its laws operate and its thoughts cohere.

Miracles however are not performed for unreason, by truth; but by truth for a reason.

Thus there has been a flurry in the skies of Mystery Babylon, as Revelation 17 calls it. Communism has taken its due place in the spiritually subversive pretences of man, the political-social-spiritual-moral-economic-military complexes of power that oppress man, acting as if to imitate if not take over from God Himself! However, it was long preceded by another, and it is this other which continues in its pride of place to the end. What then is the final form for the dying folly of Mystery Babylon, that derivative and type found in ancient Babylon, that collector of religions, that idolatrous power, that earlier assailant on sinning Jerusalem! (cf. Jeremiah 25, 50-51).

What is its death mask of this 'Babylon' of seven hills ? What is the final look of the thing, before it goes, to be superseded by the beast himself (as in Revelation 17:9-10,16) ? Prior to its destruction and the final outrage of the beast direct (17:16), what is it ? and what is its name ?

This death mask of Mystery Babylon, the final form of this long standing world empire and religion dictating model, it is Rome as SMR pp. 946ff.   shows. It is indeed the city of the 7 hills (Revelation 17:9). It is none other and nothing else. It has collected, after the manner of harlotry, many subsidiaries and associates to be sure, and hence the name and the 'mystery' (cf. SMR p. 729, Biblical Blessings Chs. 2 and 6), but it is for all that, its very own self. At the time of John's writing, the whole final contraption was future (Revelation 17:12); but as to our own present time, our contemporary situation, the 'ten' have now long been present. Things progress, and the word of God prospers exceedingly!

The 4th and final Empire of Daniel 7:7-8,23-25, this continues till the NEAR end, when it is displaced by the final form of beastliness itself, as in Revelation 17:14ff.. We trace it in some detail in SMR pp. 886ff., 902ff. Then this city of the seven hills is to find what it has given. Revelation 14:8 announces this salient event, and Revelation 17-18 deals with the fiery details.

It goes, being removed, the 'harlot' disestablished; but the beast itself has a little further to go. It has to take its last change of tactics, its more direct approach, and not to try to make it universal, not at all: the decision is to ENSURE that it is so. It may involve deceit, fraud, pretence, and diversion of thought by ingenious means, but the world has to be INDUCED to follow folly, so that the result can be PRODUCED. Alas as for all folly, all irrationality and all irreverence towards God, the time is merely an occasion of demonstration of the pride and price of folly, the significance of sin, the meaning*1 of lie, and it goes with a fury which matches the folly of its intentions.

That is kept till Revelation 19, but the intensity of the efforts to CONTROL ALL THINGS IN ALL WAYS, is seen not only in the economic stringencies, so that all transactions can be monitored, in intention anyway (as in Rev. 13:16-17), but in the spiritual, the end and aim of the whole matter, in WORSHIP (as in Rev. 13:15), on pain of death. Some worship! It is of course aided by the credulous confusion, which, as so often in the FIRST stages of some inane revolution, or perhaps even some partly justified one, declares its wonder at the new thing. Thus in Revelation 13:3ff., we read that "all the world marvelled and followed the beast." Its deadly wound was healed!

Rome of course, the civic city, fell to insurgent tribes, Goths, Visigoths, Vandals, and how could it continue ? What a deadly wound! (Revelation 13:3-4 cf. SMR pp. 886ff., 902ff.). But it continued as we see in the SMR references above, in the Holy Roman Empire, and of course in its Eastern Extension, later to separate but not for a long period, and in various other alignments, of which not the least were the aspirations of Adolf Hitler, with Romanist support of an extreme kind at the very outset, indeed apparently actually giving him his place, while Rome made its arrangements for priestly submission to the State and Concordat delectable (SMR pp. 968-969). Now it is healed! Now the Europe that lost its role has regained it! This then is the sense to come, when the rule begins to grow.

In this connection it is rather fascinating to notice that the time of the predicted ten kingdoms, as for the Common Market - European Union (the relevant number noted, and detail given  in SMR pp. 930ff.), is seen not only in the POLITICAL aspect as there. It is found also in the MILITARY arrangement of power, as displayed in pp. 957-958 (the 'ten' of the Western European Union, bristling with autonomy and power). In this Benelux - by treaty able to act as one - figures, as it does also in the latest expression of European unity, the FINANCIAL. As to this last, in The Advertiser, July 11, in Insight, at p. 67, we find that with Britain, Sweden and Denmark opting out of the new EURO currency, there are ten units left, Benelux being one (cf. SMR p. 930, 972). Of this development, we read this in the news report, concerning the financial unity called EUROLAND:

·       "For the first time since the Roman Empire introduced a single currency across Europe 17 centuries ago,"  these "nations with a history of warfare and jealousy guarded sovereignty have agreed to abandon their currencies in favour of a single monetary unit they hope will compete with the US dollar for power and prestige.

·       "Its supporters are convinced the euro will help forge an economic powerhouse larger than the sum of its parts..."

That is to come. Indeed, the European Parliament and its atomic establishment, as well as its core in Brussels, interesting capital  of one of the three (cf. Daniel 7:20), these things are long in place. Fittingly started in 1957 with the Treaty of Rome, it plans to roam no more. The restored entity, its deadly wound healed,  is already fast coming, shaping itself like the outline of a man, seen at a little distance, in a fog, as he draws nearer.

Thus Communism, humanism, relativism, secularism, religious syncretism and 'multicultural' internationalism*2,  plus created religion being moulded by many forces, are working towards a new religious look. Though it MUST be specifically religious, Rome is no longer needed, the beast finds; no more is it attractive to 'the god of this world', who is to have the image of the beast direct,  complete with false prophet, stuck in the mouth of man, like religious tooth-paste, by power and authority.
 

 

REVELATION 13-14 DEVELOPMENTS

So we find in Revelation 13 and 14, the developments*3 which increasingly, we find in the news.

Thus, and this is most important, Communism, yes, it may not be quite as lethal as Romanism, but it is a religious movement, a sort of topsy-turvy pretence to avoid what it in fact affirms and requires. It is obverse religion, in which you see one side, but the facts are on the other. Romanism is perverse religion, in which one thing is written in what it acknowledges, and the opposite is done very often as so too believed (cf. SMR pp. 1042-1088H), so that it all fits into what Revelation 17 indicates as BABYLON, the MYSTERY of the same.

Though both of these movements, the Rome and the Moscow or Beijing ones,  are becoming obsolete, through initial failure and later application failure, as in the birth control movement in Rome, and the non-marriage of priests, that predicted fallacy (I Timothy 4), they are part of that totality of the synthetic religious movements which have used power to insist on killing men or having them OBEY their demonstrably false prophetic dictates.

Rome remains by any informed estimate, the biggest killer, when all the features and facets down the ages are considered. It is also the death mask of Babylon, that repository of lakes of martyr blood; for represented as the harlot, Rome is also to be seen, as it is foreseen in Revelation 17,  as to be removed from the total beast structure: that political, social, religious and economic totality of world rule by man over man. In other words, Rome is the place where the Bible places the END of the "Mystery Babylon" feature, one which has endured in association with Rome for long, but is not limited to it (see SMR pp. 729ff., Biblical Blessings Ch. 2).

The death mask concept, that of Romanism relative to mystery Babylon ? It is what the thing looks like when old, its appearance at its terminus, when the beast becomes not any more an era and an imposition, but the most direct possible arrogation of divine power, so that even Rome is inadequate for the task. This is so, though her efforts were long and her words set a precedent that any final beast could 'well' follow, for the temporary expediency of world rule, something expressly sought by Rome in words long written (cf. SMR pp. 912ff., 902ff.). The image of the beast replaces the Mass (SMR pp. 1046ff., 1088Bff.), and is no more idolatry than that, but more modish for the times, more obviously humanistically, idolatrously man-exalting (cf. The Other News 5, re Revelation 13:15, and the manipulation of the 'image').

After that, it is PURE beast, that is, that medley of magic and manipulation, lie and fraud, power hunger and blasphemy to which we have become accustomed (cf. Revelation 13:13, II Thess. 2:10, Matthew 24:24 with John 14:30, 8:44-47). Now, however, it is headed by more power, international commandeering of the very earth, and more potent mockery of God than ever. It will mount to the skies, as did Babel, and be brought to the dust as nothing else has been.

Its end is however a beginning of wonder for the Christian family, who knowing God, are with Him when this world dominion ends, and His kingdom comes (cf. I Corinthians 15:50ff.).
 
 

THE CONTRAST OF THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
WITH THE HARROWING OF HOLLOWNESS

As one reads of these things, and in particular consults John 8 concerning the ethical and moral nature of the devil (cf. SMR pp. 590ff.), one recalls the contrast of the missionary program of Christ, its nature, its source, its sending, its modes and its beauty.

From the start the contrast is complete. Christ is the TRUTH, and the centre of it, the evil one is a LIAR and so from the beginning. Christ proceeded and came forth from God, earnest in entreaty, Himself the very salvation, and the one who PAYS (Matthew 20:28, Galatians 3); the devil seceded and went forth from heaven to earth, boiling with rage, the one who exacts and extracts (Revelation 12). The one loves to accuse (Revelation 12:10), the other loves to excuse. This, however, could not be done lightly, for it is He who has to pay the difference between performance and pardon, make up the debt by sacrifice, and ensure it is negotiable by living on the way to it, a sinless death (I Peter 2:23-25). He, as Peter there notes, did not revile, but the revilings of the devil are legion, multiplied in his accusations, often merely false and in intention far from beatific (as in Job 1:9-10), the work of a sneerer, a leerer, a purveyor of pollution, fierce and arrogant (I Peter 5:8).

Christ prayed to forgive (Luke 24:23:34), but the evil one frequently is prone even to punish when he has lured his prey (cf. SMR p. 950-952). Thus we find from Romanist, de Luca in his Institution of Public Ecclesiastical Law, personally commended by Leo XIII, that as far as 'heretics' are concerned, "The only recourse is to put them to death," since they can "corrupt others" even if imprisoned. Further, "Repentance cannot be allowed to save them, just as repentance is not allowed to save civil criminals". Such has been the savagery of presuming to judge what Christ died for, in the interests of what acts as if to put Him to death in the Mass, and insists this has every bit as much reality as the visit of Christ to death itself in history, while judging as heretics, those who cannot be co-conspirators with such a forbidden 'sacrifice" (Hebrews 10:12-14, 9:23ff.), and at that, one contrary to all effectiveness by Biblical standards (Hebrews 9:22): an ignominy for Him who insisted that NO MAN TAKES His life from Him (John 10 cf. SMR pp. 1088Bff.).

To express regret for those Romanists who applied the truth as being at times excessive, in view of


it is mere wastage of words (see The Frantic Millenium and the Peace of Faith Ch. 6).

Christ did not wait but repeatedly was praying, "Father forgive them... " even when they directly assaulted Him in a fashion so cruel that evil imagination could scarcely improve on it. There is the contrast.

Christ did not proceed to imprison you,  if you left Him out; but went to others who would take Him in (cf. John 9:51-56). He did not requisition land for His program as the Communists did with a cruelty which was a sort of living crucifixion, sending the owners off as criminals to slave virtually unpaid for the State in maximally horrid conditions, dying by degrees; but rather declared -  "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head."

§      His kingdom is giving;

§      the distortions of various kinds, diverse, obverse, converse, perverse,

§       amount to TAKING.

These kingdoms of force, whether Moslem, Communist or Romanist (cf. SMR pp. 1079ff., Barbs, Arrows and Balms 30), Holy Roman Empire or Hitleresque, Fascist or Chinese, as in Tibet, alas the land, do not realise one crucial thing. Man is made by God for God and THEREFORE his ultimate allegiance is to God ALONE. What seeks to get between or operate with mere force at the level of faith is an intrusion, an abuse and an evil. Where people choose to live, as in Israel of old, where God is the known ruler, that is one thing (as in Joshua 24); where the people have not so sought, it is another.

Where however, as now, there is no one nation, and there is no State authorised or enabled, called or chosen for this purpose, it is merely worse than heresy: it is futile refashioning of man as if man were God. Indeed, violence concerning faith and the terrain of such conviction is like teaching a baby to walk with a cat and nine tails, scorpions or an electric  screw-driver (cf. SMR pp. 1186Aff.).

These little gods act without authority and without truth, in a guise they cannot make real, and their follies of force, cruelty, compassionless flamboyance are like flames from hell. They torture and roar into the faces of men. This is the end of many, to be sure, the flames of their own follies torturing their rebellious souls; but to God be the things of God, and God knows mercy even where men may not see it. The tender mercies of the wicked, as Proverbs 12:10 declares, are however cruel.

Cruelty ? He took it. Compassion ? He has it. Knowledge of the heart of man ? He displayed it. He followers are volunteers (Psalm 110). NO ONE else ever manages that and invests a multitude world-wide with peace, while truth confirms itself and is verified on all sides. Fear and force replace genuine faith, and manipulation takes the place of loyalty and love. Not fanaticism but delight is the flavour of truth; and it has no need of force, for it speaks for itself. When all the lies are done, then the sentences will indeed be set in judgment; but what patience has God, and what love, that for centuries since the murder of Christ, while He shows so clearly He has all in control (cf. II Peter 2:19, and see SMR Chs. 8 -  9), He yet predicts and permits the endless heresies that put human power or distortion in His very own name, and abuse the glory of the Christ. Each such contender contends; none amends. All fall together. Only the word of God stands.

As to God, He is not vindictive; He is not selfish; He is sovereign and He is sacrificial and if, in the end, lies are ruled out, and those who love them must inhabit the land of their own choice, He has done the uttermost both in practice in the Cross and resurrection, and all the following miracles (cf. Hebrews 2), while in patience, allowing here this one and here that one to forsake the idolatries of the flesh, including that of atheism where the self becomes the puny god and useless arbiter, ex-truth, of truth, in hopeless confusion (cf. That Magnificent Rock Ch. 5, Barbs, Arrows and Balms 6 and  7, Repent or Perish Chs.  2 and  7).

His glory is not a piquish one, not a power dazzled one in which compulsion is the meaning and illiberal compression is the method; but it is something which being lovely, is loved. It is pure, without deceit, without mere force as its criterion, authoritative with the authority of truth, intrinsic and not merely extrinsic, patient with persons as persons, and willing as a person to die for persons that something personable and pure might arise from the salvation. It is just and justice being heavy, HE has personally met it (Romans 3:23ff.), so that when justifying the ungodly (Romans 5:1-12, 4:5), who come to Him, He may still be JUST. 

If He had not, then having power and all knowledge of all things for all time, He would have been implicated in the evils that swarm like some mental patient, vexed and impotent, making and destroying; but having met it, He is exhibiting His purity, for from His exhaustively created universe, there is not blade or a spirit which is unknown to Him, there is nothing which can contribute to Him, but much that can confront His creation to defile it: so that it attacks Him, spoils itself, soils its spirit, shames its name.

bullet Having made man free to love, He has made him free to sin, and having made man,
He makes Him free if he will, from the spoliage to which he seems now so utterly addicted,
whether in mind, body or spirit, or all three. It was ruin or remedy; and God chose remedy;
but this discounted, it is only ruin.

Hell is not some amazing judgment; it is merely the result of failing to let God pick up the tab. Not that it is within our power; but it is within His to make the offer effectual, and knowing all, His choice reaches to the uttermost (Romans 9:16), since He would that ALL should be reconciled (Colossians 1:19ff.), but not at the cost of the  validity of the nature which He made for man. Hence did He weep over Jerusalem, that it did not recognise the day of its visitation from God, its vast and ample opportunity (Luke 19:42ff). He wept because He would it were otherwise, but would not smash reality in order to achieve mere plausible results.

THIS is the condemnation (and NOT something else) that light has come and men have preferred darkness (John 3:19), not GOD!  The light of His living suffers no shadow of contrariety, but where others prefer it, in the eyes of Him who knows all but would deliver all (I Timothy 2), then into their own darkness, without Him, do they go.

If man wants to live in a spiritual glass-house, made of pretence and pretension, so be it; the stones of reality will assuredly ruin it; but man is suffered so to do.

For the Lord, expediency is no rule, but truth and peace in love, like a river in its splendid courses, cohering and continuing (cf. Isaiah 48:18ff.). It is, in fact in view of this love and peace like a river, this justice and truth, alas then so vastly rejected by so many, yes then as now, that He appeals in that very place relative to the prototype Babylon itself,


It is precisely this which is said in Revelation 18:4, of the finale of Mystery Babylon: "Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues. For her sins have reached to heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. Render to her just as she rendered to you and repay her double according to her works; in the cup which she has mixed, mix double for her." On this see The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 7, for it has relevance to all idolatry, all confusion and addition to the word of God, and deals with the spirit of the thing.

It is necessary to follow in the beauty of holiness, not in the self-imposed pollutions of impurity. BE "YE HOLY FOR I AM HOLY" (I Peter 1:16), remains part of the beauty; and if anything approaching perfection is not found among the redeemed in this earth, yet a complete consecration, dedication and desire should be the testimony of every believing heart (Luke 14:27ff.). There is in that a beauty, for then the surface clean, like that of a reflector in a great light house, something of the glory of the Lord may be reflected (cf. II Cor. 3:18 and Philippians 2:15). It then can also warn the unwary, in sharp definition of light.

His is grace, and His governance is competent, complete and free. In Him, people can grow, for in truth there is no limit (II Peter 3:18, 2:1ff.). What is otherwise, like Romanism (cf. SMR pp.1032ff., 946ff., The Frantic Millenium Ch. 6), Islam (Divine Agenda Ch. 6, More Marvels Ch. 4), and all the furore of force in faith, laying claim to inveterate conquest, illimitable submission with human thrust in the arena of faith: it is invalid, impossible, not only on earth, but in heaven.

As to the Lord, He is in no hurry; but when the time comes, then events flow like a stream. That is, as we have been seeing, now.

For more on the contrast between the loveliness of truth and the polluted complexities of error, see
SMR pp. 582ff.,

The latter part of this reading in SMR, deals with the contrast, and considers the nature of evil, of judgment and the Gospel.

Again, the reader may wish to consider with interest, another treatment, in The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 8, where The Spirit of Envy and the 'God of this World' are considered, in vigorous contrast with the tenderness of truth and the beauty of holiness.

 

NOTE

*1

When acting, you need meaning for your mentality. Without God it is not there. You first need God for any meaning, and then validity for any consequence to it.

As to validity, see Ch. 10 and Ch. 11 below, as also Ch. 8 above.

 

Excerpt from Let  God be God, Ch. 4, *2

See It Bubbles, It Howls, He Calls Ch. 9, Little Things Ch. 5, Divine Deliverance Ch. 8, and Calibrating Myths ... Ch. 3. Appositely to our present concern is the following quotation from the last reference just noted.

Man WILL not have, by a sort of bravado and bluster, increasingly, any meaning EXCEPT what he chooses to assert, and increasingly, in the end, this is that he is a great old soul, a find contender,  a wonder amender of life,  and will PUT from his infinite resources of knowledge and skill, into this life a meaning it will bear from HIS CREATION OF IT. Playing God, however, is hard work, and the results are not playful. To give an opinion of the meaning of all things is not meaningful unless the soul itself has meaning, which it then manages to impart, in conformity to reality. At once that abandons the concept of the meaningless. HE or SHE makes sense, and because this makes sense, the thoughts of this sense-making and so eminently meaningful person makes sense, so that here is the very height of sense, its depth, its stay.

 

Further, to give something its TRUE meaning, you need truth which, without God, is simply not available, for the destruction of the absolute by the whim of caprice does two things: it removes appeal to it for truth and prevents its impartation to you in truth. What is not there, is not admissible as a model ploy, for action! Thus, in such parameters, the concept is meaningless by being a contradiction in terms. (Cf. Preface above.) Even hoping it might be true, is no different, for the same reality of God is a necessary preliminary even for the admission of the possibility, for a relativistic world admits no absolutes, and impressions of flitting imagination are not to the point, but the truth, the question at issue alone here relevant.  Knowing what is not there to be known may be classed a miracle, but it is certainly a self-contradiction, and without God, miracles are the same!

 

If a man, however, is simply to declare it, then that man is deploying what God only knows, and is not merely acting as God, but equally denying Him, making himself, his own little self,  into an apotheosis, a fine outcome for the majesty of man, but unimpressive when you are born without consent, die without consultation and are equipped with DNA without giving your advice first about its composition. Fairy tales are always best left for children.