CHAPTER 2
EXCEPT YOU REPENT YOU WILL PERISH
These
words, found in Luke 13:1-3, are taken from the declaration of
Jesus Christ.
It was
one given where, asked what was the special sin which people on whom a tower
had fallen, must have committed, or what their parents ... Christ replied this:
"Do you suppose
that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans, because they
suffered such things? I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all
likewise perish"
- Luke 13:2.
- 1. BETTER
THAN GOD! BLIGHT OF THE SUPERB...
There are
nowadays disasters and devastations, mass murder and mayhem, folly and fiasco of
dauntless visionaries, whose vision is death, though they call it life.
London is like one of many cities in an
allegory which we could map, on the face of the earth. Here, capital of the
country which spawned Charles Darwin, with whom they visited the world, near
where he studied, they are as the national centre which proceeded in his name,
to MASK
THE INVISIBLE.
Small wonder Darwin became so blind to beauty that he
mourned the decline. Imagining what does not happen, and happening to declare
what is never found, with doubts and admissions he formulated a faith which is
founded on nothing but blasphemy or unbelief or both, as if God were guilty of
making a world by such means as he, Darwin envisaged; or as if he, Darwin could
know it if He did.
How would a man be better
than God, or see through the vile violences of his Maker, who with excruciating
horrors in that model, invented a world by means of vice, viciousness and
folly, where those who pride themselves on their being better, are better than
God! How could you even know God when you were yourself a part of His violences
and idiocies, while PRETENDING to be better, a cog in His mechano set, a unit
in His atomic structurings, a pulse in His contrivances? Did He tell you? Alas,
He has told something very different!
Will God create a world of
madness by sobriety? Or will you be sober and He mad? Or will you be good and
He bad? Can you have knowledge which He lacks? Or has God evolved? And by what
system and who made it? Could you penetrate to the heart of the Most High, and
tell Him? or are you part of this world and its ways, and have you come to even
exist by the whole parody of surviving first, and doing the worst as the case
may require? And if so how are you better? and if you are better, where did you
obtain it? and if you are better than God, how did it grow? And how could
anything be good if God were bad? Or are you enlightened while He is in the
dark? Has His handiwork outwitted Him, left Him wallowing in stupidity and
aridity and vacuity and outlandish follies which simply do not work, and
threaten this benighted globe, while the world has such as you who both see and
know better?
Better than God? It is no
small assumption. It is to make of yourself your God, and to fail to have the advantage
of being divine! It is to be your own maker, and to assess favourably what you
have made, or your family or your school, your nation, your race or your
culture, of which you are so fine a member! Do you remember the story of the
publican (quisling tax-gatherer on behalf of the Romans, grabbing from your
defeated co-nationals for gain, as administrator) and the Pharisee? This also
is found in Luke. In 7:29ff. we see that many publicans repented and "justified
God", being baptised.
What does this mean? It
shows that they acknowledged their sins, in that being baptised is symbolic of
washing, a sprinkling such as the Bible prescribed to "cover",
formerly in blood but now in water, since the only blood that counts was that of Christ, now once for all shed (see Questions
and Answers 11, 9).
But how did they JUSTIFY
God? It was this: THEY had sinned, not God! They were RESPONSIBLE for their
sins, not God. GOD had acted for their deliverance, not they! God in Christ had
PROVIDED for their relief from the mischiefs of flesh, carnal imaginings,
gainless profit and selfish advantage. Their insane putting of themselves in
the cockpit of life, to drive the aeroplane of their selves as if they made it,
making themselves the centre of operations and imagining and imaging what they
would, clearly irrational and contrary to reality, was not the end. God had not
created them mad and then turned His back on them. HE HAD ACTED.
CHRIST was the culmination
of the action, and His salvation was the heart of the culmination, His
self-declaration being the exposition of God, the manifestation of truth (John
14:6). As to that, they received Him for who He was and for what He had done.
Hence in acknowledging
their OWN sin, they justified God. They did not blame HIM for their own faults,
or the world's follies, but admitting their own errors, they acknowledged God,
that He had provided not only the power to sin, a part of the power to love, something
which arose by their own misuse of freedom, not as a gift, but as a molestation
of His gifts: but He had provided equally the power of salvation.
They were not Darwinists,
and this not only because he had not as yet managed to arrive on the scene.
They justified God, not by blaming Him for the calamities, personal or
national, processive or philosophic, judgments and warnings: but blaming
themselves for their own sin, acknowledged the purity of Him who forgave sin,
and His provisions.
In A Spiritual
Potpourri Chs.1-9, and That
Magnificent Rock Ch.1 as in The
Shadow of a Mighty Rock, Chs.1-3,
we show the IMPOSSIBILITY of the Darwinian concept, and any like it, of the
whole organic evolutionary concept for the making of life and its basic forms
and formats; as equally the necessity of the righteous God, by logic. Here
however, our concern is to see some of the moral follies of the
application of the truth to the personal life of man, to the arrogance and
spiritual idiocy (Hosea 9:7, Psalm 53) when God is not justified, but people
instead would justify themselves. Indeed, let us revisit the last named book,
p. 100, and consider the matter a little further. We shall somewhat adapt it,
add to it, and for all that, let it appear indented below.
Perhaps it may not hurt if we
toss this aspect this way and that, a little more, the better to appreciate
what may be obvious to many, since it is for many, critical to life itself to
realise what is happening.
- One further element, which follows
from the others, is this. If it were felt that God, the Almighty, the
Creator had in fact not spoken, it would not merely be contrary to the justice which is from Him,
who made all things in their relationships as they ought to be, according
to His desire.
- It would not merely similarly
conflict with His truth, by which all reality has an owner and a
word, called into being by His direction which constitutes it as it is, so
that for Him to lie is self-affront, and self-affront is conflict and
conflict is warring between what is desired, and what is: which is only
for beings who have some endowment from outside. It would mean the topic
was NOT GOD.
- It would actually further mean that He for whom
lie is self-affront, is willing to be affronted through lie, by those who
are not even part of Himself, while the evil is outrageously contrary to
His own being and excluded by it. Truth is what is CONSTITUTED by His
nature, what is. Lie therefore is what attacks His nature.
- To invent what contradicts what you are, at your
pleasure, and this without remedy, or need, which is excluded, is to be of
two minds, living simultaneously two lives, contrary to one another; and
this entails that such a being as this portends, would be of two-fold
construction, and hence of a planned and apportioned nature, a thing of
creation.
- To suffer such things as lies without remedy,
this would represent a funereal lust, an arbitrary invasion of His Being,
denial of it, and departure from it. Remedy is destruction or revelation:
removal or cure. It is necessary, it is found. His word is. His expression
has been presented over the millenia, is found in book format, and in
eternal majesty, in Christ, the living word of God.
- But what if it were not found, what if He had
not spoken, were not expressed, had provided no remedy for this world,
while it yet continued ? The result ? It would be this. Contrary to His
life, and hence contrary to the One who knowing all exhaustively, and
leasing life out in creation at His exclusive will, is always what He
would be, cannot die or change, and by being what He is, and doing and
speaking it, constitutes truth: such an imagination has drifted into
dealing with some demi-urge, which is not the subject. It is of God whom
we speak.
- Therefore, to distil such a thought about God is
libel on divinity, folly in conception and rebellion in unreason. As to
God, it is certain that His speech adorns the earth, and it follows
rigorously from His very existence.
- Far from surprising therefore is His statement
that He has not left Himself without a witness! (Acts 14:17, Psalm 50:19ff., Amos 4:13,
Isaiah 45:18-19). It would be thinkable that He would, just as the square
root of minus one, is thinkable; but it is inconceivable that it should be
so, for it is a mere contradiction in expression, of what logic faithfully
requires; for even reason will not suffer it, which God has given to
us (cf. Romans 1:19-12).
- But let us look further once again, at lies.
Indeed, to be in internal conflict is not to be God, whose nature is
eternal and without intrusion from without, who is as He would be, whom
nothing can hinder and who gains nothing from what is His exhaustive
construction, the creation; who lacks nothing, and for whom nothing is
required. In Him, no conflict energises distortion, for conflict bespeaks
inner contraries unresolved and hence delimitation and hence being a
creature; and in Him, no desire disturbs what He is and does, for His
desire is what is, as in the case of His creation, which He mercifully
enables to meet His desire and His truth, or to be banished.
- Further, what is in Him, IS His desire, and
hence it is that He is it. Accordingly, as to lie, nothing allows it, for
it would represent a disclaimer of what is His desire, and hence a verbal
assault on Himself, or equally, on what He has done, which being the
unqualified outcome of His wishes, similarly is representative of Himself:
so that a clash between word and deed or intention, even if freely
desired, would amount to war between parts, past and present or future,
one or all. As to this, even if it were strategically planned, it entails
the concept of clash, disruption or dispersion in part or whole, of one
thing by something else, or striving to this end; and hence the reality of
dissidence within, contraries in operation.
- Contraries however to what ? To each other. If
God harboured that, He would be a constituted entity, dealing with what He
would as He could within, to secure what was not yet the case. He would
have failed entirely to have become what He would, since internal and
contradictory agitation would signify irresolution, which is
non-achievement of the end, and hence the heritage of a creation, not of
God. That, once again, as a mere creation, is entirely irrelevant to our
concern: the speech of the one rightly called GOD.
- Indeed, such contrarieties bespeak inadequate
power to obtain, to envisage or to perform, an internal collision of
categories: impossible for God, being a flat contradiction of God. Such
things are attributable only to what is created, which hence may be so
limited, delimited and enmeshed!
- This then is the nature of lie, wherever and in
whomever.
- For man to lie or be
unjust is thus also assault on the Almighty's ways and on His
constructions, which move and live and act and interact, some of which
love and desire Him, some seeking to disrupt the same!
It is assault on Him, whether on the part of those who so lie to
one another and to Him - or indeed ABOUT HIM. Ignorant of nothing, alert to the
alive, sustaining all things, it is to Him the invasion of His property, His
principles and His power mounts its thrust. A contrary spirit as well as a
contrary quest proceeds. Not merely is it contrary; it is antagonistic,
militant and machinates. Of this, He knows the end, before it begins, and He?
He has no place for the learning by misfortune who invented events.
- And yet the world has
abundance of it: of injustice, suffering as a result, of disruption of
justice, disturbance of truth, seizing by violence of what is due, of lies
and fraud, religious pretension, often for gain; and
being His, is it then left senseless and dead with no correction?
- If this did not disturb Him, those
principles are not His; and if not His, then he is not God, but rather is
it He whose principles they are, and whose concern is not divorced from
reality.
- What then? To accept and disregard in silence,
all this, it is not God, who in such a case would be One who voluntarily
invents His assailant, creates His caricaturist and the violator of His
principles, and then "ignores" it all, as if He were dead,
though it attacks His system, abuses His provisions and usurps His
prerogatives. Not dead, but a miasmic myth is such a profound
minister of His own overthrow, defilement of His own purpose-built
property and mutilation of His own operational name, invasion of His own
realm. Since He is, then His silence is impossible.
- He has no need to "learn", since He
invented our learning-growth devices, whose is all;
has no potential to develop,
since there is none to endow Him with it, nor growth membrane to confer, nor is
there deception to assist who needs no assistance, nor abuse to misuse, who has
all, and for whom what is arises from He who is, so that it is in itself, His
desire. Moreover, if He were deficient, and needed the sight of suffering for
His comfort, deficiency is the lack of what is needed for a purpose, and such a
lack at once entails an endowment of what does not match in one thing, what is
present in another.
That
however is the nature of creation which comes to be, and is not its own
self-sufficiency.
Again,
had He ignorance of developments, so that He needed to find out, and hence
suffered things to 'go awry', this is merely one of the endless seeming
contradictory propositions which might be made, all irrelevant, for they all
start by assuming what the necessities of the case have been shown to require:
HE HAS NO NEED. HE IS FREE ENTIRELY. Knowledge moreover takes derivation from
Him, and strictly, without Him, is not possible, merely instead leaving the
vacancy to reaction-response involvement. Exhaustively, utterly and always, He
knows all that is, having invented all that is, with no other place from which
anything at all could be drawn.
- Let us consider further. No constraints could
have required anything of Him, no system could have contained Him whose is
the beginning the cause of it all (SMR Chs.1,3), and no character or desire
within is capable of frustrating Him, either in itself or in any
combination or synthesis with other desires; for nothing is,
with precision, what He cannot deal with, and nothing, again with
precision, is His inheritance from before, for there is no 'before' for
the ground and cause of what is.
- He is stopped and curtailed... by NOTHING! HE
IS, curbed by NOTHING, constrained and controlled by NOTHING, has need of
NOTHING, inventing as He will and dealing with His inventions in entire
accord with what is His desire. What He is, is His desire; and what He
does, is representative of His nature. What contradicts it is representative
of war on Him, attack on what He is, and hence a contest of strength
proceeds: CAN GOD dissipate or remove what is so contrary ? or distil from
it what He wishes as through redemption, which both exhibits the wisdom
and removes the blot ? Assuredly He can. If He did not, He would by an
indirection, in creation's nature, unredeemed, be at war with Himself, the
very ultimate in contrariety, non-resolution, inability.
- If it is hard for warped souls to construe
purity, this is not to the point, except for the advancement of those who
have learning difficulties. The matter remains the same. Such beings as
those, are not God. Since at this point our interest however our interest
is with the Almighty, they need not concern us.
- Some, then, may wish a schizophrenic
'god', but the demonstrated logical need is for an operative one, whom
Ø
a) nothing can embarrass,
Ø
b) nothing resist in the end, in the fulfilment of His plans for
His purposes, and
Ø
c) none may disregard,
o
to the abortion of His
ways,
o
to the submersion of
His principles,
o
the harassment of His
nature,
o
the compromise of His
operations,
o
the invasion of His
purity, or
o
to the abuse of His
desires, designs and deliverances.
- It is not He who is left as if dead
while His creations are free to insult Him who made it all, free to
scarify His productions, and distort with lies and fraud about Himself,
this also, cheating, abetting what is contrary to Him, and that while even
acting in His name. In such a situation, in
principle, and according to the One who He is, action is sure. The fact
that the Bible indicates that this is the case, does not alter the logical
certainty which attaches to such an action in such a case as this current
world represents (cf. Psalm 50:21-23, Isaiah 59:14-19; That
Magnificent Rock Ch. 5,
SMR pp. 25ff.).
- The Being, then, who would sit about or lounge
in spirit while such incredible abuse of His principles, properties and
name occurred, is not God (cf. Acme, Alpha and Omega - Jesus
Christ Ch. 11, Barbs, Arrows and
Balm 6,
7). Since God, as we have demonstrated as noted above, IS, then HE HAS
ACTED to REMEDY the situation, and since it is so contrary to Him in
so much in deed, then the action must include words. Where man has
spoken, HE HAS SPOKEN; where man has acted, HE HAS ACTED. Where false
principles are in view, He has produced pure and adequate ones, ones
including remedy, so that reality is realised. As we traced in
detail in Ch. 1 SMR, that is definitively in the Bible,
operationally in Jesus Christ, its focus, history's paragon...
To create liberty is wonderful, though its results can be strong. It implies the
possible expression of things contrary to Him, blatantly or wantonly; and it
enables the securing of persons in His image, who can love and respond to Him, to
each other and to trial, test and reality. (Cf. Job 1.) Liberty is readily
understandable, and for my part, intensely desirable, a massif of life,
profound like the heavens, deep like the lakes, a magnificence in His image,
astonishing to the mind, stirring to the heart, enlivening to the spirit.
To let such liberty play
'God', however: that is something else; and since He lives, it is He who is
God, that infinite all-surveying Spirit, so that the confused whirring of
contrary procedures and principles as the status quo, in the established
pattern of what lives and relates to Him, would compromise Him, contradict His
speech, annul His provisions, would meld with His plans, meddle with His
life-projects and master the performances of Him who knows all things - unless
He acts to invest it with His being, to qualify it with His power. And He lives
forever.
Indeed, He who has created
liberty has known its exercise and provided for its abuse, His principles
upheld, His procedures ample, His remedy for this foreknown development, in
place (see The Everlasting Gospel, Item
17, Barbs, Arrows and Balms), so that His people are within
its hold, His enemies within its control and His plans perfect. At the
direction of His word, which brings authority into the melee, all is accounted
for without remainder, and the love of liberty with the liberty of love, His
own sacrifice the make-weight, His own Being the source and the focus, is
consummated in a redemption which leaves the original liberty a mere
preliminary here perfected (cf. Hebrews 12:23-29).
Further: Death indeed is
not apt for the Almighty whose life made it all, whose knowledge sees the end
and creates the beginning, and who is always as He would be, nothing delaying
or compromising: the "I am" behind all that grows and goes. Ever what
He would be, He is without end, as without beginning; and as to death - it
would be... a change!
But not for Him: who being
always what He would be, and knowing all things, subject to no plans for
Him (for there is none to make them), all depending on Him - has no change.
When, as planned in love, therefore, it took the body of Christ, His Spirit at
once returned home, and on earth He simply broke death (Hebrews 2), in a deep
and vastly ramifying sovereign deed. This fundamental miracle of the Creator of
life, He took care to do with mathematical precision (in 3 days, Matthew 16:23,
I Cor. 15:1-3, Acts 10:40, Luke 24:21 cf. SMR Ch. 6)
and geographical consummation (Matthew 26:32, John 21, cf. SMR Ch. 6, pp. 473ff.), indeed further prophetic
felicity in that this last was done in Galilee, the predicted site of sovereign
splendour of light from the Lord, for some 7 centuries, when the Messiah would
come (Isaiah 8:21-9:7 cf. Divine Agenda Ch. 5).
HIS Agenda never fails.
Plans are from
Him, not for Him. Things of process change, limited, conditioned; but the
Inventor of process, for whom all process which moves on the way somewhere is
creation, He does not change and arranges all things after the counsel of His
own will.
Neither does He change for
the better, being always what in all knowledge, is best; nor does it
occur for the worse, lest being the best, He acknowledge it was not so, who yet
knows all. Both change and death are simply self-contradictory for God, but
those who contradict Him, it is they who will change.
THEREFORE:
- Alive and judge, God sees the
contradiction of His being and of His principles and of His provisions: He
from whom life is a gift, and for whom death is merely the intrusive
penalty He imposes on life astray.
- Speak? If God did
not then SPEAK to this race, not only would justice and truth
lie dead, while injustice and lies and fraud abounded.*1If possible, worse would be implied.
- If, then, it were conceived that God
had not spoken, while the world remained as it is, then God
would also be insulted by the very thought that He would remain
inactive in speech to direct and resolve the problems in His world,
leaving in silence the insolence and madness of man, assaulting and
offending each one the other.
- It is not only blasphemy, that is, a misuse of the
very assured, minimal character of His glory; it would also be a
denigration, a travesty and a direct personal offence so to speak or to
think.
A problem out of the power of
God! a problem in the very world which He created, out of His depth, beyond His
scope, when He had freely created all things, the whole set of abilities and of
circumstances for all created life! It would be like telling a film star that
she had no face, or a financier that he had no funds, or a real estate agent
that he would not know a house if he saw one! Since God Almighty has been shown
a logical necessity, this is not merely insulting, blasphemous, but impossible.
- The concept that He would be willing, moreover,
to let be such folly and filth, such wilful, wanton pain as we have just
seen in Kuwait and with the Kurds, when, having a solution, He did not use
it: this would be like telling a social hostess that she couldn't care
less if her guests starved!
- Thus there is not only the metaphysical madness
of such assertions, such views, such positions (cf. SMR Chs.1, 3, 10, That Magnificent Rock,
Ch.5): there is also the moral
assault on God which is involved*2. If,
indeed, we his creatures would be amazed at the madness of anyone
suggesting such things about us, how much more should we be ashamed even
to think such things about God, who gave us the power to think and the
knowledge with which to know (cf. Psalm 94:8-11; SMR Ch.3), without whom
we are merely reactors, for whom truth is not an option, though it be
'spouted' and views upon Him latheringly expressed.
- A solution He has indeed shown, and
evidenced it so voluminously that even the greatest tomes can scarcely do
justice to the overwhelming grandeur and scope of His verifications (SMR
is merely ONE of the works by this one author, on that topic!). But man
ignoring God in vast numbers, disdaining His word and wanting to hear and
know nothing of His speech, indeed even often denying it, so willing to
move the blame for undoubtedly high-level immorality and actual agony,
often sustained, onto God, wants Him a dumb dog, lying down and snoozing.
It wants Him so, or it implies Him so; or else it is in conscious and
manifest rebellion. Either way, it is much the same: arrogant disregard
or rebellion.
- Thus
we, whom He created, are active, we think, we look for solutions,
we can
feel the horror of so much pain for others...
but He, who made our hearts and
our feelings and our moral thoughts
in the beginning
(however we misuse this PART OF OUR equipment, yet it is there, in our hearts -
however spoiled, leaving its residue at the worst),
He does not feel ?
God who
made the heart, does He not feel?
God who
made the mouth, does not speak ?
God who
made the mind, does not think? He is incompetent who contrived creatures with
the power! To ask is to answer.
- We have considered, and elsewhere in depth
traced the impossibility ontologically, the frank contradiction in having
the all-powerful author of justice and ground of truth needlessly allowing
flat and continual contradiction, when merely to apply His power removes
the problem, the violation in principle as well as in practice, by
removing the people who make it! Now we dwell on the incredible cheek, the
irrational implicit assumptions on which any such notion is built.
- The solution is available; has been shown
from the first, predicted for centuries, performed by Jesus Christ,
published, proclaimed and preached for thousands of years concerning this
same Jesus Christ, concerning whom no one has been able to show even one
sin, and of whom even Muhammad had to admit the righteousness.
- Moreover, to suggest that God has not
spoken when His word circles the earth, His predictions noticeably control
the whole direction and character of history, uniquely and utterly, and
His Son went to the pain and anguish of bearing the sins of those who will
forsake their own: this is to sustain, reinforce and add to the insults of
the Cross, the calumnies of Calvary, the madness of the priests. It is to
stand, arrogant and upright, in the presence of love, and call it hate or
indifference; it is to look, princely and pure, at one's Creator and call
Him dumb; it is to find oneself compassionate and sensitive (courtesy of
being created by one's Creator) and to call Him heartless... this while
all the time, ignoring the solution which He has constructed, the
sacrifice which He has made, the pardon which is so needed, but so
ignored.
- What is it like ? It is like prisoners in a
prison, cut-throats, immoral and dead in spirit, raging at their victims, buried
as a result of their crimes against them. Thus Jesus Christ was made a
sin-offering to take the burden, the blight and the bane of sin from all
who come by faith to receive Him. But He is not dead, and this insult to
the moral nature of God is similar to the studious blindness which also
slanders His power, by which His people have for centuries lived, their
hearts in His peace and their persons alight with His love and presence.
- It is like a child, rescued from fire by its
mother, and duly instructed of this event, looking at her scarred hands
and saying, 'I sometimes wonder how you got these hands, mother...' Yet in
the case of this world, the rescue itself can be RECEIVED only by faith,
otherwise being discarded, or even derided, discounted, distanced or
dumped. On such decadent terms, it is not receivable at all, while those
who might have been saved, boast insight in the very act of their folly...
- It is therefore one more sin, that God is so
'sentenced', as C.S. Lewis phrases it, God in the Dock, at the
hands of man, His judges. But let us add this: He is being `sentenced' by
those sinners to whom He is offering pardon, who are meanwhile slandering
His sacrifice and sentencing themselves. In their hearts, truth is
contaminated twice: once by sin, and then by sneering at its solution! For
all this, the Bible has provided.
2. LEAVE HIM ALONE: ILLUSION OF THE
DELUDED
But some
may want to leave God 'alone', or simply disregard Him, idly discount or even
emptily deny Him. Will they then instruct us in their 'truth'? Let us quote
again, this time from SMR p. 101:
It is unwise
and indeed the utmost in arrogant presumption if derivative man, with unmoored
mind, man who does not accept the specific, identified and rationally necessary
revelation of God, comes to pontificate on `truth', on the reality of things.
Will a
conditioned or limited man, reacting and being able to do only what has been
given him to do, erect himself as a founder of truth, a source of criticism of
the God who made his little mind ? Will a cog discuss the design with the
designer ? Will a man without the revelation of God, tell Him what it would be
? Will man show God His own mind!
Will a limited
and sinful man without knowledge of absolute truth, even as a perspective, say
that something is absolutely true, or work on bases and ideas as if they were
valid and worth arguing from, when he does not yet have the knowledge of
absolute truth, on which to start and on which to proceed: either not knowing
God, or if knowing something of that, not believing it; or in any case, not
having access to this absolute truth in the mind of God, who speaks when He
will, as He will...
The case is
hardly improved if man does not believe there is such a thing as absolute
truth, while making various statements in which such a property is assumed to
inhere, or presumed to be possible! Surely the Primary School student is
scarcely guilty in his first beginnings of such enormities, through sheer
immaturity, as beset the mind of mature man, through rebellion. (Cf. SMR Chs.
3-4; pp. 1, in so doing you invoke logic which
in turn requires the God who has made both it and you.
·
3. ABSTRACT
ONESELF LIKE AN ATOM ?
But someone may say, ‘I neither deny God nor affirm
ANYTHING.’ But this is
self-contradictory. In so stating what you are and are not doing, you are
indeed making ‘meaningful’
affirmation, and as shown SMR Ch. 1,
in so doing you invoke logic which in tgurn requires the God who has made both
it and you.
IGNORING, DENYING or
EVADING GOD is alike useless and irrational. REPENTING is both necessary and
provided for, BY GOD. The publicans justified God, do you! or are you His
critic by ignoring what He is and has done, not responding to the most complete
and staggering attestations which he has provided in Nature, in the Bible and
in Christ!
(See The Aviary of Idolatry, Highway to Hell, The Everlasting Gospel, Generation of the Dispossessed - Barbs,
Arrows and Balms; Magnificence
of the Messiah - Biblical Blessings; A&F Schools - A Spiritual Potpourri.)
·
4. FACE CHRIST LIKE A REALIST ?
- As to the Bible, it is full of its own
verifications a