CHAPTER  7

CALL to the COHORTS of the CONFUSED, CAPTURED AND CONDITIONED -

The STATE OF GRACE
 

IT IS STRANGE HOW LOGIC IS CRUCIFIED; BUT LESS SO WHEN ONE RECALLS
WHAT HAPPENED TO CHRIST.
IT IS REPENTANCE, NOT CAPRICE, WHICH IS VALID HERE.

 

 

CRUCIFIXION OF LOGIC

These realities may be helpfully introduced with so bleak and yet presaging a picture as this, and in our CD-ROM version, we place also an organ improvisation on 'Puer natus est' - a boy is born. It is so easy to forget both that we ARE human and that the correlation with the Creator is intense, though the chasm between both because of sin and of creatureliness can be catastrophic. As we shall see, as is the case in mountain climbing, chasms are not insuperable if you have the right equipment. The equipment for dealing with this with the Infinite and Eternal one is however sufficient only when provided by and from Him ... in a child in whom was planted the divine reality, so that God was His unique Father, and HE ? He, the eternal Word of God, came from above, to which He has returned, and from which He shall make all things clear, both in mercy and in judgment. As to the mercy, it is in the Gospel. But of all these things, we shall find the logical impetus as we proceed.

 

It is strange how logic is crucified, since the LOGOS is Christ. True, this word has far more meaning than mere logic; but not less. It involves the "word" and all that goes with that, logic and expression and meaning, and declaration and presentation and demonstration and application. Let us now consider the theme in a brief conspectus - much amplified elsewhere - with 3 EXTENSIONS, available at the end in order to prevent the pith from being diffused as you read the initial coverage.

1. It is crucified by the assumption that meaningless units in a meaningless universe can discern the meaning of it: viz. That it is meaningless.

2. It is crucified by the assumption that without absolute truth so much as existing, views on the topic of truth can be made, are meaningful, and not nonsensical. In fact, of course, for anyone to have access to absolute truth, it first must exist, for what is not absolute cannot create what is, any more than what is relative can create what is not. Fairy talk is useful at bed-time for children, at times, but for adults at noon.

3. It is crucified by the concept that series constitute a) reality and b) a way to know it and c) a substance or stand which is beyond occurrence, which assesses occurrence, for what it really is.

4. It is crucified by the concept that what keeps laws makes them, that what observes commands, issues them: that matter is mind and will, despite its refusal to yield evidence of such powers. Materialism is dependent on the prior concept of mental validity, which is not material, to exist.

5. It is crucified by the idea that what is descriptive, is prescriptive, as if there were some logical mandate for preferring some one thing among the multitude of events, and hence having any form of intellectual or vital morality: or having any valid view on anything mental or other, at the moral level, such as the rights and wrongs of teaching this and that, this way or that.

6. It is crucified by any concept of beauty as the artless derivative of meaningless series. Beauty then becomes a subjective reaction of no value, and its urge would be pleasure only, and not differentiable in value from eating an ice-cream: that is, it would be a reactionary occurrence, and nothing more.

7. It is crucified by the notion that will is a derivative of non-will. Not merely does the concept operate without interface, in the manner of science, but without cause. All ideas of "happening to happen" do not constitute scientific or logical grounds for anything, but constitute simply a verbal ploy, or confused noise, choose what you ... will, to avoid the fact that the cause is being sought by reason, and words are being used instead of an admitted failure to account for these things.

8. It is crucified by the nostrum that a man's spirit, his power to project in imagination whether to architecture or love, to religion or morals, to culture or to systems, is "the result" of its absence. The criticism is precisely the same as above, but yet more incongruous with reason, if possible.

9. It is crucified by the whole negligent concept of whole worlds of being - such as the above touches and such as are dealt with in more detail in SMR Chs. 3-4, esp. pp. 305ff, with 332Eff. - arising from their absence; and anything arising from nothing, a mere contradiction in terms.

10. It is equally crucified by empirical claims that evolutionary progress occurs, has occurred or should occur; since empirically this is not the case.

11. It is crucified by the idea that gradual occurrences give ground and reason for rising edifices of construction contained in no part or premiss of the original. Gradually becoming intelligent is a mere misnomer, in terms of creation of the facility. It is mere exercise of its deposit which is available. Gradual production of anything presupposes the entire capacity of what constructs to do so. "Give me time!" is reasonably relevant only when capacity is present.

12. Suddenly becoming intelligent, or possessing parallel properties, is no improvement on the gradual acquisition, causally, since a cause sufficient is required if one is to become proficient, and so efficient (cf. SMR pp. 210-211, 134ff., 252Eff.).. The artful avoidance of all that is required is the artless abandonment of reason. Irrationality however proves nothing but the incapacity of the debater who descends to it. That he is able so to descend attests spirit; that he does so, attests loss. Nothing may be argued on behalf of that which forsakes reason systematically in advance, and since language and logic are intermixed in rationality and coherence, thought and language alike are thereby dissociated from much of their basis, and so rendered inoperable. This is effectual un-creation, a sort of parody of hell, but no more than does hell, does it avoid its creator.

13. The crowd at the crucifixion includes those who break the empirical, intellectual, logical, moral, aesthetic, epistemological, aetiological, ontological, heuristic, analytical and volitional attestations in order to avoid God. One way is to murder the man, who presents it, Jesus Christ: this has been done already, thwarted by the resurrection. The other is to murder the truth in thought. In murdering it, however, you lose the power to appeal to it. Reason jettisoned is debate lost.
 
 

2. CONFUSION OF THE CRUCIFIERS

This crucifixion was not the beginning. In a vital sense, it is the end.

For centuries man had defied the truth, relied on God, used Him, abused His name; though many believers had indeed adorned the earth amidst this superficial fantasising without sincerity.

A. Initial

Man at length, through Rome and Jerusalem alike, in aweful wedlock of interests, crucified Christ Himself, and not merely the thought of God, the command of God and the kindness of God. It was God Himself in human form who was visited with this particular response.

The deadly and deluded devices of man had long preferred what one could see, to God, making, as Jeremiah declared, a stone one's father, a concrete illustration of the theory of organic evolution.

Such delusion as this is a kind of mental devastation on the one hand, and a mode of spiritual exhaustion and sickness on the other. Like much disease, its end is death. It cannot stand in life.

Let us review then some of this age-old fleeing from God, concerning His creation, and the age-old provision of God for its healing and the restoration of man... or those of them who are restored to His "image", according to design specifications, without which, of course, all discourse would be mere futile sharing of reactions.

Progress? Up the 'scale' of life? There is need in all progress for a number of additional features at the verification level.

Each time a cell-membrane 'arises' to make life environment proofed or covered, so that it may exist, or any species of 'improvement' over barren matter, there is not merely an event but an advent. One fallacy in the folly of the mere 'arising' of symbolism-performance-synthesis, contrivance-code-command integration, of worlds of new being with laws of their own, vitality of their own, characteristics of their own, characteristic features of their own, is this: it calls for what is not there to operate, to provide what is. While this is called 'chance', it is merely a tag for absence.

The farce of myriads of originations of codes, contrivances, quality, synthesis, imaginative modellings by the billions, of cohesion, systems, multitudes of inter-systematic syntheses, co-ordinations, co-operations, combinations, creative adaptations, applications and so on, almost for as long as one would care to write - of all these entities DOING IT, BEING, ARISING without an originating agent is obvious; but let it be said.

When a whole canvas displays just such things in its domain, with no signs of forsaken canvases on the way, we know this: an artist is at work - or a program devised in conjunction with one, which in the end, comes to the same requirement.

The reason is simple. When exhaustively the criteria of creation are displayed, it is farcical to act as if this were not the case - being obtuse, obfuscatory and obstructive. Quality called for is quality supplied, and in this domain of the world of creative thought, there is its characteristic expression requiring for the powers displayed, the a priori capacities.

When thousands, nay millions of pictures in a vast gallery 'arise' in concert, and they are moved - the movement 'arises' - to form part of an incredibly brilliant whole, being a kind of artistic mosaic, and then re-assembled to form other wholes, then we see something analogous to monocytes, small cellular aggregations, then trilobytes with their amazingly 'advanced' eyes, near the first, together with subsidiary styles of art, now shown in diversifications, at times indeed in divertimentos, of mutual involvement.

If these pictures were, each one, to live, and even reproduce within 'kind' specifications (found by seeing what happens, and then by investigated how it is done), we would see at work a creative artist in the world of life - a world of multitudes of domains, all synthetically correlated, all nevertheless individual.

The requirement is now architectural as well as artistic, supra-technical as well as creative, supervisory as well as original and originating.

According to the kind, calibre, quality, control, co-ordination, coded programming, diversification-allowances and constraints, allowances and limits, facilities to vary within these, to the breadth and scope of product differentiation and on the other extreme, integration, so is the call, the constraint for designating the cause, the base, basis, agent, artist, architect, mathematician, maestro - the creator.

There is simply no relevance to discussing nothing as the base, when the criteria, characteristics, codes and consequences are of a type exhibiting a sufficiency for these actions. Intelligence is what produces correlated, integrated, systematically conceived and coherently workable consequence, does so characteristically and not merely episodically. Products are results of its exercise. Domains are spheres of its influence. Worlds (that is, arenas of many domains, with laws, styles and conditions uniquely appropriate as a milieu for action and a provision for it) - these are structures of its main, with wisdom, art, brilliance, creativity, originality and qualities so numerous they would merely bemuse the reader: these are the field of its operations - with word power, command power, construction power, co-ordination power, wit and cleverness, it makes these worlds.

Hence as verification of the necessities which prove God from His works in mind, matter and spirit as seen in Chs. 1, 3, 10 of The Shadow of a Mighty Rock (SMR), we see these colossal, characterisable elements, aspects, components and members of a deposit, a dynamism and drive expressed in life. As verification they speak yet again with unmuted mouth, specifying the cause a posteriori, requisitioning it a priori, incapable*1 of any other declaration*2.
 
 

B. Logical Collisions

Similarly the collisions with the branches of logic as sketched above (in 1. Crucifixion of Logic) and dwelt on elsewhere (see That Magnificent Rock Chs. 5, 7, A Spiritual Potpourri Chs.1-8 et al, SMR Chs.3, 5,10): these are no longer present when characterisable qualities are associated with collated causes.

Indeed, the infamous 'wriggle' that 'survival' created it all is as absurd a proposition as ever passed the lips of man. Does good driving (or 'better') of a Volkswagen create a Rolls Royce, even in stages? Does non-death mean imaginative re-coding? Does creation consists in endurance? Is all language to be a puppet of pretence? Do billions of designs have to be added to billions of visible ones, as 'steps on the way' - always invisible? As if this made things 'easier' for a characterisable end-product called life - far less, one called the universe, the very name of which connotes the summing in sequential array, of some of creative components noted above. Or does their absence, these prodigious outpourings of imagined designs on the way (cf. Professors Thompson, Løvtrup, et al., SMR pp. 199-200, 252Aff.), after diligent delving, make their theoretically useless - indeed, pejorative - addition, please any better, any rational enquiry?

Creation, dear readers, like mathematics, art, is what it is - does what it does, and is characterisable by criteria which it, like other powers, displays. The display is variously, multitudinously, concertedly, co-ordinatively, discretely and synthetically present in a canvas reaching beyond measurement, figures and features beyond assessment, stretched before one of the products, called man, so that he can - if he will - show the sheer prodigality of the imagination used in creating him, by 'assessing' it all - with himself - as betokening, really, no creation at all, just specks of paint spattered on the canvas, that has no basis, from tins with no basis, by a hand that is not there with an art that is.

At odd times, he even imagines that despite the clarity of his logic, he may be deceived by his logic, and reasons with 'validity' that it is itself invalid, just to show the tantrum-esque follies of which he is capable, abusing logic - like an asinine trader, abusing as mutinous, another man's mule for not following him - before falling to the ground in a fit of irrationalism, matching rigor mortis. Next, schizoid but chastened, he returns to USE logic to escape logic, and then confused, he continues to speak as if the mere mouthing of words avoided issues.

The 'paint's' power to 'describe' its integrity of thought, just while it despises its creation and intelligent embodiment in this world of art, and the domain of man, meanwhile, mocks its pretensions; for the less it has in basis, the less its statements portend in truth. If, on the other hand, its merest thought is valid, so is its capacity to know truth, and the necessity for truth, not reaction merely, to exist - for it to be there; and so is the requisition of the ultra-system surveyor who knows what really is, as its illimitable creator-sustainer^{*1, *2, *3} ; and exactly likewise is the necessity to know Him, so that one's product status does not limit, far less its casual character distort or its intra-systematic nature abort with its summarily confined credentials. Even exalted capacities do not draw truth, unless it exists!

When the characteristics are faced, then, and the agent adequate realised, this is not all. It is then that man's greatest journey must commence. The alienation from God that these erratic, unscientific and irrational romanticisings exhibit, produces and attests problems, more than mental, than intellectual.

Alienation (cf. Ephesians 4:18ff.) of such a dimension as this is in a domain of its own - the human will, which suffers disease. Even realisation of God's existence is far from solving this problem. Not for truth alone, but that harmony with it, peace in it, and recognition of the Creator Himself that is more than perfunctory, is man's need if he is to be whole, real and cured. Sick minds at this level, betoken sick souls. The function of life itself is involved.
 
 

3. THE NECESSITIES OF SPIRIT
FOR THE VICTIMS OF THEIR OWN DEALINGS
 
 

Mercifully, the everlasting Gospel (cf. Item 17, Barbs, Arrows and Arrows) is and has been provided through one more, utterly basic work of the Creator, whose provisions, like His prophecies, cover all that is needed (cf. SMR Chs. 8-9).

Man needs to REPENT of his alienation from the God of His creation, whose response to his sins is quite as real as the planning of man to sin, in the firs place.

Man needs to RECEIVE the truth that sin brings judgment in such stages s God devises - He is very clever and deep; and the other truth, that we continue at all because He is merciful and this third, that the mercy, like the creation, has a domain of its own.

Expressed categorically in Jesus the Christ, crucified for the cover of sin, the satisfaction of justice in God's plan of salvation, this mercy is active utterly and finally when He as Lord and Saviour is received by faith. This is different from cultural acceptance, social conformity. It is an adoption more real than that of any child, an acquiescence deeper than in any marriage, an attunement more harmonious than any music, a capitulation more total than anything military, a devotion wrought in greater depth than any ocean.

It is commerce between a created being on earth and God in heaven accomplished through the One who exhibited the reality and power of God, His everlasting word made flesh, becoming man and doing for man what he needed. It is total in its embrace as to competence, and individual as to its grace in action. FAITH is the mode of acceptance, REPENTANCE is the path to the door, and the door is open to knocking, the knocking of need, in the path of return to that God who, having made the earth and the DNA specifications, also made peace in this way, for all who come to Him, not to something else and lesser, not in some admixture, according to the word of this same everlasting Gospel.  

God did not make man in order that He should be made the butt of the human proclivity to sin, misusing freedom, lust to defile liberty, as if HE made man in one way, and then endorsed his abuse of that way in another, and lacked either the power or the purpose to rectify things, covering the sin with justice and hence with the love willing to pay, to redeem. Nor did He make man upright as He is, in order that he should propagandise his innocence before all domains, as if God winked at folly and was subverted by His own inventions! To pile up works from a heart such as man’s is, is to pile up all the more condemnation; and to have no remedy for this degeneration, is to share its moral infamy. God is not thus, and in Christ alone in all religion, is the need met, the validity found. (Cf. Ch. 2 above, Beauty of Holiness Ch.  4, SMR Ch. 1). The everlasting Gospel (cf. Barbs… 17, That Magnificent Rock Ch. 3) is the only, and the unchanging, the age-old but never aged answer of God, to and for mankind.

The characterisability of its domain, as with other cases, is shown in its works, here those of heart, of healing, its procedures and power.

Christian life is the life of Christ within you (Colossians 1:27); for in the domain of personal power expressed on earth, God has raised Him from the dead, to the fury and frustration of sick minds: an act which not even the power of the Roman Empire versus Jesus Christ, could prevent, far less plausibly dismiss. Indeed, in one sense, he took it over, this Empire, which persecuted His people (cf. SMR Ch.6, pp. 931ff.).

It is necessary to repent, receive Him by His free Spirit, accept His word of living substitution, so that the offer becomes an enactment, assuring that your sin is borne - for it is received, this sin, not snatched away (cf. John 8:24). It is necessary to believe Him, and then as God's creation, in the first place, you become a new creation at the last (cf. Ephesians 4:24, Colossians 3:10).Then 'born of God', grow, for no live baby fails to grow... in grace, in faith, in knowledge, abiding in His words which set you free, and help to keep you clean (Psalm 19:9), just as the blood once for all shed (Hebrews 9), washes you from all sin (I John 1:7ff.).

The matter is BOTH propositional and personal. GOD SPEAKS (let no one else presume to share this prodigious enterprise from the powers and prerogatives of the King of Eternity), and we have His resultant word. GOD SENDS, and the world has crucified His incarnated Son. GOD commands REPENTANCE^*4, and we hear this personal call. It is ACCORDING to this word, this gospel, this instruction, these propositions, that we come; but we do not come TO the propositions as if they were God. THESE are what He has said, and we believe and receive them. They however TELL us to go to HIM. No division of the obvious is in place, for theology itself will often contrive with those escaping from one delusion, to lead them into the next. It is the word of God, read it yourself which informs, and the Son of God to whom, as person to person, you come. It is HE who saves, it is His word which instructs, and which operates, because He makes it to be so. Listen in conclusion then, to His own words:

"Search the scriptures; for in them you think you have eternal life; and they are they which testify of Me. And you will not come to Me, that you might have life" - John 5:39-40. The two remaining barriers therefore, put aside in a repentance not to be repented of, and BOTH follow His word, whoever else presumptuously and inanely may say what is more or beside, and COME to HIM, who spoke it, and trusting in Him, be His as you were planned to be, in your original specifications.

 
 

End-Notes and Excursions

1.

EXTENSION 1

This represents a very large excursion, in three stages, so take your lunch.

The State of the Data
and its derivatives
A Review of Earlier Relevant Materials - with Significant Extensions

We shall for the moment extend our thought into these interstices.

Below we reproduce from The Shadow of  Mighty Rock, pp. 332-G-H (in blue font), a small plan of a large work, that of the construction of the human body, in logical form.

PART 1
 

A PATTERN OF MAN - For Survey and Simple Mnemonics -

A Summary Structure (PSC).
This is envisaged as a skyscraper, and may be conceived upwards or construed downwards. (See pp. 140-145 supra.)

 

THE ELSEWHERE-EARNED EDIFICE,
 WITH OPTIONS PROVIDED FOR MAN

(View as one skyscraper: floors are in general in order of their management significance, though this may vary.)

1.  Principal (top floor)
2.  spirit
3. perspective
4-6.  personality-imagination-expression (PIE)
7.  principles
8-10.  priorities, penchants, affections (PPA)
11.  purpose and purposes
12-15.  comprehension-analysis-intelligence-mind (CAIM)
16.  proposals
17. corporicity
18.  procedure
19.  principial error
20.  plan
21.  performance error
22.  program
23.  unsuccess
24.  significance
25.  semantics
26.  syntax
27.  signification
28.  symbols
29.  cells (equipped as per 24-28, the 5 S - Words)
30.  system
31.  sequence
32.  series
33.  singularity
34.  subsistence (ground floor)

These are operational data relating to man.

Added to these, further functionalities could be noted, such as:

CREATIVITY, INTER-PERSONAL CONSTRUING; LOGIC, MEMORY, SYNTHESIS, SYSTEMS, DISCIPLINED-IMAGINATIVE-CONSTRUCTION; SURVEY - WITHIN AND WITHOUT.

While these extend our sight of the donated territories accorded to man, they can be understood in such terms as: mind, spirit and their intimate inter-relation. Here we see not only worlds within worlds in the construction called man - a multiplicity of cosmoi, but a disparity of components, duly combined and correlated to work as one unit: that is the art and essence of creation.

The splendour of the architecture that creates, together with the wonder of the elements in man, themselves creations -

the legally inert substructure; the vitally informed, the alert, the discerning, the comprehending;
and the volitionally directive, the spiritually profound, soaring inexorably:

these in their display and their unison attest and verify at work... the sublimity of divinity.
 
 

SURVEYING THE SCINTILLATING SCENE
OF THE UNITARY SKYSCRAPER

Now let us look from the top storey down.

At the top,
the spirit (q.v.) of man, as active but non-autonomous, and derivative (2),

is subsumed beneath its principal (properly God, but it may be contra-factually opted for or yielded to as the devil, self, self-sufficiency, self-satisfaction, self-fulfilment, ideological activism, existential angst...instead), whatever it may be (1);

just as
perspective (3), in turn, is set below spirit.

Then is seen the personality as functional upon this, with its principles, priorities and purpose, all functions of it, proceeding in turn to utilise the whole realm of the mental and engaging the physical, with all the errors which in practice may divorce purpose from results.

The structure in its course then moves through the purely programmed
to the anatomy of matter and the singularities of what subsists (ground floor).

As to the principal of man, on top, this may be subjective, merely existential; or the upward gateway to reality. It may be imagined to be diverse from what it is, or even disregarded, with the same sort of uncontrolled folly as should occur when a child elects to drive his father's car. He DOES drive it, it is NOT his own car, but he does not know HOW to drive it. What follows is the world. It both looks like it and is like it.It is not least for this reason that the Bible speaks in such dire terms about 'the world'. Thus James says this: "Whoever therefore wants to make himself a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God" - 4:4.

The control room for the whole is in the top floor; and as we have noted, the merely existential approach per se lacks what life requires. The reality incomparably and immovably attested, is the Lord Jesus Christ who, the only begotten Son of God, the Word of God, achieved the building and offers to restore the mismanaged to the designed holiness: at cost to Him, by sacrifice once made, and power, epochally shown in His bodily resurrection. This restoration comes through personal faith and repentance, including His actual top-level reception, where He belongs; and His free acceptance of the purpose-deflections and other errors, sins at any level, unburdened to Him and His waste management.
 
 

LET US NOW EXTEND THIS EARLIER MATERIAL

The substance of these things has been pursued in Ch.3 SMR, but we shall here add some aspects. Above, in the blue font, we have looked at the area of organisation, codification and command, in living matter, living mind and living spirit. We are not merely looking, even at the procedural level, at events. We are rather seeing a STRUCTURING of events, as when, for example, we use a tape-recorder, which does indeed include what will become events in our re-play, and refers to what were events in the original actions recorded, but for this very reason has a structure of command. Particles convey depths and heights of artistic activity, being merely a conveyer belt for what is built elsewhere, and composed entirely differently. (Cf. SMR pp. 316D-G.. ) The orders come, duly inscribed in code to that effect, because orders were made. When the agents acted the piece tape-recorded in the first place, their own spirits gave the commands to their bodies. Now the structure of the recording conveys commands in order to reproduce faithfully the results of THOSE orders at the purely and merely reproductive side for the listener. This is a representation of that.

Now, with the systematic structural elevation of things, put in the form of a skyscraper, set forth, we shall look at the same data in a more mobile manner, with a kinesthetic emphasis, not on what is beneath what, but on the whole movement, in tableau, like snapshots, seeing now this and now that functioning, moving, acting, and what it implies. We shall now consider the first which strikes the attention... in a sort of cosmic kinesthetics, assessing the perception of movement, interaction and the mutual involvement of what acts.

This then, to return to the body itself, is the COMMAND-EXECUTION phase. Then there is - parallel to that - the CODE-CONCEPT furrow (for convenience of thought, lodging it all together as so many furrows on a field). Here the considerations of code, which not merely addresses the inherent properties of the particles performing their physical rites, but commands them to perform the adventures derived from another domain, are correlative to concept, containing the structure of thought which transfers the one to the other, and elevates the merely episodic to the programmed performance procedure.

With all this is found of course not merely the DNA and the RNA but the variety of RNA in its various messenger and construction procedures, so that as we consider the enormous complexity and the astute beauty of the techniques employed (as Denton as ably exhibits in his Evolution: A Theory in Crisis), in their slender elegance of form, microscopic magnificence of compression and fail-safe procedures, editing and conserving (expressive to perfection of the Biblical command to reproduce after "their kind", and now unveiled in the continuing results of that Biblically recorded command experimentally before our own eyes in this most fortunate generation), we come to another furrow. It is the CONTRIVANCE-COMPOSITION furrow.

Next, merely noticing a hidden aspect of what has gone before, we come to the CREATIVITY-MULTIPLICITY furrow. While there is only ONE LANGUAGE for all these codes, commands, concepts and execution rites, that lead to building, so conserving life, there are many diversities in what that language says, exactly as with a human author, except that this is surpassingly ingenious, staggeringly compressed. It is indeed unexampled in sheer brilliance by any of man's creations on earth, even using the intelligence of MANY researchers, and the accumulated knowledge of many generations, and much equipment as an aid to action. Further, not merely, as has been noted in some detail in SMR Ch.2, is there even in the Cambrian Age (see SMR Index), a vast variety of creatures, but there are sub-categories exhibited with that sportive munificence, that disdain for penny-pinching which is so characteristic of great creation. Our own composers will do just so, not merely 'throwing off' a wonderful work, but giving variations and varied recompositions of it in this or that form, or flirtations with it, such is the thronging genius with which some are equipped.

The author of created creativity, such as that of man,  is in sheer abundance unmatchable, and the beauty of it is this: that the more we show our abundance, the more we attest His; for His is the creativity back of the symbol-code-command, contrivance, multi-plan integration of mind, matter and spirit with all the sub-categories inherent, which we call life, human life.The more impressive it is, the more surpassingly so is He.

We move to the ARCHITECTURE-CONTEXT  furrow. In computing there is a study called Computer Architecture, where the construction of domains and dynamics is melded into one whole. There are ways of doing these things, which belong of course to the realm of mental dynamics, codes, symbols, words, devices, directions. That is the discipline. That is the input for the output. That; is where it lives. These are the ingredients of this type of production, the arena of its discourse and the demand of its presence. This is how it goes. The facings, as it were, of the walls are of stone, the height is thus and the moulding is configured to this or that form; and so, in the pseudo-verbal context of assigned symbol-command creativity, it goes on with the deftness of electronic architecture. For precision and continuation, much is required; and in life, much in the editing and conserving, the energising and the actualising realms IS provided, in one synthetic whole, where the very plan is set forth eyeball to eyeball, for our inspection.

There is likewise, to take another aspect, the DOMAIN-DOMINION furrow. Here we see the provision in EACH field for the particular molecular 'arms' to reach and arrange in each part of the whole, which in turn is integrated in further involvements of other domains where other dominions are exercised in terms of the marshalling dominion over all.

This in turn relates to the ORGANISATION-ORGAN field, where there are to be considered the phases or segments of the operations, like the energy-production unit which is so necessary and discrete in its own right (mitochondria units), so that like chapters of a book, distinct and pseudo-autonomous, but really deeply integral to the whole, these contribute in their commanded place, their organised way and their settled locus in the team-work.

This in turn requires as it likewise exhibits the MELDING-MENTALITY aspect. Here we focus on the fact that such organs and organisations in human nucleated cells, require a melding to reduce all  not only to that one language which is one of the data of life, a commanded, conserved, commissioned unit which is just... ONE, but to the use of this language of life to DIRECT the overall, overarching composite concurrence of all, in timing, sequence, coding sufficiency, task-force proficiency and the like.

Then we consider the KNOWLEDGE-KNOWABILITY aspect. Thought itself, a product, is not internally self-sufficient, is aetiologically deficient, and leaves a causative gap, is not self-accounting. We are required to find its cause, as with all else, and that involves at least in the end, a mind. It could not be less, for the requirement is for what produces thought. (For detail in this phase, see SMR Ch.1, where the steps are set forth, as also from another aspect, in Ch.3, where we find that an eternally self-sufficient Being whose functionalities include and surpass all this is absolutely necessary.)

Just as knowledge to be known, requires mind, so the knowledge as shown exhibits it. Command with its concepts and knowledge with its savoir-units, as it were, inhere in the system; but it is more, for since all inter-connects with a roving beauty and a seemingly effortless facility, there is the comprehension-control phase likewise. All this is implicit, its works are explicit, and the means are observable, as the overall plan.(See SMR Ch.1 for the detailed exposition; also Ch.10.)

In all these things, of course, the concept of an iota advantage, a tiny 'progress upwards',  is merely superfluous, just as it is invisible (cf. That Magnificent Rock Chs.1,6). In such complexity as noted in Ch.2 SMR, as is seen FROM THE FIRST, or if you prefer, even in the "simplest" cells, there is no room for some rough-and-ready outdated pretence of simple 'advance'. In any advent there is a wall, a battery of considerations to allow for, just as in some computing composition of great complexity, the danger of bugs is enormous, and the requirements for streamlined, concurrence of the new and the old is most exacting, demanding that very specific and sophisticated command of the language of command, and that very knowledge that moves in the realm of the knowable, which is the requisite for such matters. The millenium bug is exquisitely simple in its ERROR, but incredibly complex in its CURE in the synthetic whole of a firm's computer programs. And that? it is producing no human body, believe it!It is moreover one simple matter, per se, of a childishly straightforward error. It is the consequences ... where lie the rub!

Naturally enough, the Stephen Jay Goulds of this world are noting with some vigour, if not venom in some cases, the Nilssons and the Goldsmiths, the incredible folly of PRETENDING (yes and the Løvtrups, all of whom are featured in Ch.2 SMR - see  Index) that the evidence is of gradualism. It is not. Not merely is the torrent of a vast percentage of life forms found in the so-called early Cambrian 'level', not only are most sophisticated exhibits like highly developed eyes found right there, and that in great abundance in trilobites, but successive phases, such as mammals also in their own place, appear to descend on the scene in overwhelming suddenness and complexity. All this is attested in SMR loc.cit..

That is what one would EXPECT if giving the matter thought. Since the domain is creativity, and the requirement is intensively complex and sui generis, we do well to look at what creativity IS and find that it is not a pettifogging matter, but requires and exhibits a mastery and overall overview of vast if not indeed prodigious dimensions.

Looking down our field, we then come to the COLLOCATION-CAUSATION furrow. We observe quite simply the requirements (cf. *3) of causation. Shown in Chs.3,5 in SMR to be irreducible and indefeasible, these proceed remorselessly on pain of capitulation of all logic, leaving the unfortunates who prefer that way, mentally unbuilt as the price of their preference. The causation requirements are currently being sketched in detail for life, and have been shown
(That Magnificent Rock, Chapter 1) to leave a hollow when neglected, requiring a cumulative filling which precisely conforms to the minimal approach to the Creator, God.

The BRILLIANCE-AMBIENCE furrow next claims our thoughts. The facility of the pianist who moves through myriads of  scales (as a theoretical background) to his seemingly effortless performance merely illustrates this. The very versatility of motion in and through endless domains, while creating with them and tossing them about like a kitten with a ball of wool: this requires is own basis and its own battery of causative enablement.

Somewhat similar is the furrow of WORLDS-WORKER. There are as seen in the 34+ member-list above, a whole series of domains, of worlds, of places, sites, activities, take whichever phase you will, which, each in turn, and all turned into integration together, require the expertise and the operational enablement. These are the cosmoi of consequence, the operational loci of ingenuity sui generis, the worlds of their own rules and ways, codes or comprehensions, symbolisms or meaning, which like electric generators and pistons, and drivers, being different each one, and of a different and sometimes totally different kind, yet are so designed that their co-operation is a marvel of inter-cosmos concert, a prodigy of logic and a wonder of management.

It is amazing to be able to manage such diversities in integrality; it is even more so to have it automated to be such, for the coherence of concept and code, symbol and significance, event and means, order and actuality is precisely what design is, but more, what creative design is defined to be, the ingenuities displaying the result not of moronic non-ability, but correlative imagination, intelligence and operative power. Such is the requirement of causality, not blithe references to what in the end, is this sort of system or that, for each system requires its systematiser, with the quality control for the cosmos of action concerned, and for each each correlation. (See Dig Deeper ... Ch.    2 ).  

They require first that which each world has for its own ambience, its existence, its movement and its exercise, together with the requirement for all: a strategic, supervisory, synthetic comprehension both of all the worlds and of how they may be masterminded into a unity that both preserves the reality of the diversity, and allows the same to be expressed and responded to, in each world. The 'astronomical' task of creating a 'universe" (the human cell and its architectural plan) which weds the worlds is one of the phases in realistic assessment of what we have and what is deployed in it.

PLATFORM-PLANS focusses another phase. For any plans as complex, neat and contrived, as brilliant and unified as our own in each nucleated cell in our bodies, containing the plan of all, there is needed not only knowledge and concept, designation for communication, but a basis for the operation to be functional for the operative dynamic. Mentality is mind at work; you need the mind for the mentality. You need minimally the person for the mind. You need the substance for the series, as we saw in examining Hume (SMR Ch.3), you require the viewer who can assess and ascertain, direct and maintain, as we do when we talk and consider as now.

A description or explanation does not happen; prescription is not description and the symbolic inter-relationship which contains the object and the subject, the assessor and the assessed, the possibility of error and the rigours of exactitude, the power for proper use and the facility for misuse of symbols, this neither is nor ever could be anything to do with mere series. They are, proceeding about their business; and for them,  inert activities, error is irrelevant. The dysfunction of man's mentality, intentional or other, however, is not and error lies there as  an extreme vulnerability.

Those, the inert,  proceed as they will; but this, it assesses what proceeds and seeks to ascertain what it will be, and was ... and why. The omission of the thinker in the thought of Hume made of him a creator, of sorts, of mankind. It is true it was a misnomer, and that what he created was Humian nature, and indeed humorously unhuman nature, a sort of unintentional burlesque. But he did create it! showing the nature of his omission by the errors which he made. This was no happening; it was wrong. He omitted the platform for assessment, its relevance and its logical structure by which it is fundamentally differentiated from happening, and becomes overview of happening, requiring not series but substance, not episode but basis, not dynamic merely but disposition. (See SMR Ch.3 for detailed criticism of Hume and what he stands for...)

This in turn reveals and exposes the ASSESSMENT-ASSESSOR furrow.

CONSTRUCTION-MOBILISATION is another furrow. It is not MERELY thought, any more than it is not merely series which is in view. There has to be more than command too. It must be OBEYED. This is not the province of matter which has its own exhibited facilities and form, plan and performance criteria, obeying its own matrix. What we see in life is the command USING matter to MAKE it copy or represent, perform, rather like a trained dog, what it is SHOWN it MUST do. The energy, yes, as we saw, in the cell, that is manufactured to the purpose. The code, symbol, command and all this entails; yes we saw it. But it must also be CAUSED to EXECUTE it with precision and permanency: it must be mobilised to the point of the plan and made to continue in that ... furrow.

Another way of seeing it, is down the EXECUTION-DELEGATION furrow.  There is a delegation of authority in terms of lower and lower levels of operational requirement, and down the line the message passes.

Again, there is the CONTRADICTION-CREATION furrow. If this were not creation it would be contradiction. ALL that creation is found here; and all that it is not is not. Interestingly, the facility to contradict the fastidiously obvious components and composition which constitutes creation is one of its chief marks; for a SYSTEMATIC if irrational approach to misconception is far more than series. It is anti-series, matching in intemperance and obduracy, what the series does with facility and obedience. This highlights the reality of the human spirit and its own necessity of creation that it might so belie creation by decrying it in the midst of its attestations, even though logic lies slain while it is being used for the purpose. The very facility to know, which is used, is impossible without the existence of the knowable truth, which being truth, is not subject to mere intrusive exercise of the human spirit, as if this were some absolute indicator and objective criterion, while yet basking in the meaninglessness assigned to it in monistic theories. The knowledge of Him who is that truth is the other pre-condition, for hearing of something is not knowing it, and even desiring it is not having it.

Then, like the MELDING-MENTALITY aspect, is this: the COMPLETENESS CO-ORDINATION. We are considering diverse aspects, and this encapsulates the surveying totality of the overarching spirit beyond it all, while the former dwells rather on the constructive aspect in the move from formulation to formation. It is not only the capacity but its vigorous exercise which is required.

The PROTECTION-PROGRAM aspect has been considered, but is here given a name - referring to the extensive and intensive editorial facilities in the cells, which enable the work to be rather like that of an assistant-Editor, reviewed in operation, so that mistakes are cut down and barriers are erected to limit change of type in that domain, to keep within the texture and the organisational requirements which are like the rest, sui generis. "After their kind", the dictate of Genesis, is here seen in objective symbolic format at the micro-biological level, after many centuries, thriving and conserved.

The INTELLIGIBILITY-ABILITY aspect is again, similar to the contrivance-composition furrow, but the formulation occasions focus on the ABILITY required. We talk of brilliance and execution, of melding and so forth; but we must keep in mind that what is involved is more than, but never less than ABILITY. Intelligence is merely one phase of it. Adaptability - not TO but WITH powers - is relevant. The IMAGINATION-MATRIX furrow is closely allied. Into reality there must be the ABILITY to drive, to force, to forge, to compose from imagination, rather like an architect (see SMR Ch. 8, initial cartoons).

This opens up the furrow of the FORMULATOR-FUNCTIONARY. There is a survey, construction, overview, imaginative totality at work in the performance of such things in such a setting as is our own. It not only does, but devises. It has its harassments, its complexions, its procedures and requires as computing so often reminds us at (in comparison) a rather low level of mere 'slavery', much ability to furnish plan to the domain, and make it work.

The WORLD-SOURCE - CONFORMER is another furrow. This sums up the above. In the world and over it is a source which makes the operational compulsions to be  compulsory from matter up, and then formulates and sends the intrusions in one language, effectual as commands, so that a whole ONE WORLD results, though its internal diversity is enough to contain a Hitler and a Freud, a Socrates and a William Wilberforce, to have love itself, along with its reductionist contrivances and theories, manipulated and manufactured by man, inept and debased, fitting nothing but the theorist's conception. Though this be so, yet  for all that, these results, however flagrant and foolish, also fit the creative munificence in creating the thinker,  who may for his own indulgence, misthink with such admittedly episodic skill.

As to man, however, his 'platform'  is so well-formed, that he even gives reasons for his work, using what he dismisses with great system and address. Thus Freud has the unhallowed effrontery to tell us of the unconscious drives which control, while himself supposedly being one of these Freudian-natured constructions which he makes, and confuses with the world of men.  Yet if that were really so, truth would not be so in the undeliverable medley of his initial assumptions which if not universal (so that he himself could be excepted) do not constitute a ground-plan for humanity; but which if universal, remove him from the knowledge of it, as we saw, inter alia, in SMR Ch.4. From  non-knowledge, however, he can give no knowledge, the initial capacity for his theory be ship-wrecked. (For more on Freud, see SMR Ch.4.)

We move now to the EXPRESSION-ARTICULATION area, where the function in view is the relationship of thought to word, or of knowledge to language, of formulation to expression and all the forms of action which, in their various systems, are required in the entire ambit of transcribing from spirit to mind to execution, through symbol and code and command and correlation and conservation. That is one focus and feature amidst the well-marshalled battalions of functions found in man.

Then we come to the EXISTENCE-FABRICATOR aspect. For things to be movable and mouldable, they must first BE. Existence has to happen. WHAT EXISTS with all its divergencies from nothing, requires institution if instituted it is to be. We have in That Magnificent Rock, Ch.7 dealt with the illusion that what is 'nothing' (which requires by definition the removal of any character or characteristic thinkable or non-thinkable, for even in the latter case, it would be designable as non-thinkable and hence have something which diverges from nothing as a feature or focus) should nevertheless be equipped with a not-nothing creative power. IF it could create, it would AT ONCE be NOT NOTHING, but SOMETHING-WHICH-CAN (and did) CREATE. This existence feature, then, is also necessarily present, and if we are thorough, it too requires its cause, and that the criteria as shown in SMR Ch.1, minimally necessary for such a cause.

The LAW-LEGISLATOR furrow is similarly brought into sharp focus in such a phase, for with non-nothing we have laws so multitudinous and enveloping (That Magnificent Rock, loc.cit., SMR Chs.1,3,10), that with the non-nothing creation from the non-nothing creator we need this phase of legislative prowess. It is always one of the most beautiful of the banalities of the nescient view (i.e. I do not know, I do not want to know, I do not think, I do not want to think) which substitutes for knowledge, that it cannot escape even in its degraded formulation, the reality of thinking and so the necessities which language itself enshrines, of logic, which being used, has its dictates. These present us with the creation, as we saw in SMR Chs.1-5.

The COMPOSITION-COMPOSER aspect is one which is like IMAGINATION-ACTION, but has the sense of the overview, the creative fusion, as distinct from 'mere' creative evocation,  and the delegation of powers and requirements prominent.

PERFORMANCE-POWER is similar to DOMAIN-DOMINION above, but has a more basic aspect before us. It is different too from EXECUTION, since all such things  presuppose  power. Mere power, however, is not small in this case and is demanded.

INHIBITION-INHIBITOR is another and opposite requisition. The systematic and sustained reality of cutting off by code, of undesired variants is a system in itself, and is - if less glamorous than the purely imaginative areas - no less important. It is like preserving yourself from plagiarisers. Genetic engineering is not a break-down of this code, for it merely means that having desired a being who could be blatant and colossally incompetent, as the other side of the ability to be loving and magnificently gracious and realistic, the Creator is prepared to suffer interference, whether for good purpose or ill, whether with a facility far beyond wisdom or with restraint, as men merely manipulate with some of the results of His creativity, some of the other results of His creativity.

The architecture and anatomy of reality, in this world, and not merely the material building blocks of the physical segment, are crucial ingredients in the data. Beyond even these units, and all they imply, are the intellectual and volitional, the affairs of mind and spirit of man per se. Directive for the architecture of this elaborate trilogy called man, collating 3 magnificent domains, divergent and diverse in the extreme, is the call for one integral ensemble; and beyond that is the Being whose call it is, whose powers are so deployed who, with all these creations, understands and surpasses them assembles or discards them.

Thus, on survey of the biological (and indeed the cosmic) scene, in terms of verification of what was demonstrated in Chs.1,3 of SMR, we find that not only do the data verify what we have shown to be the case, continually and eloquently, like good students always able to act and understanding their role, but they clamour for the original propositions themselves, exactingly demanding them all over again, so long as logic has place and thought has force; and where it does not have this, then dismissed, it has no capacity to argue. Reason admits, consents to and demands, exacts and requires, demonstrates and demonstrates anew the fact that God is, that we are merely among His works, though gifted in such an extreme way that the headiness of mad civilisations and woeful worldly self-preoccupation is both understandable and the more lamentable.

Now let us extend these concerns further and with some diversification, for review and simplification, as also for perspective.
 
 

Part II

THE FOUR BOOKS AND SIX DIMENSIONS

AMID ALL THIS TRAFFIC SURGING AROUND MANKIND, LET US BE BOOKED

At the outset in our site, we have first noted and then examined two "books" - and it is very close to LITERALLY two books. They are both exceptionally well-known, the Bible for the mind and the heart of man, and the DNA for his structure. Each is inscribed with efficiency, profound symbolic coherence and cohesion, intimate capacity for correlation with command, system to the finest point, and just that combination of meaning and symbolic method which constitutes design, direction and communication. If this is not communication, nothing could be.

This however is not all. There are two additional books, somewhat more figurative, but not in the least imaginary. The FUNCTIONS to which EACH OF THESE EXTRA 'BOOKS' REFERS are as real as any between two covers in our ambit and purvey of scholars.

The third then, or the first of the two extra books is this: the co-ordination of mental world and physical world, auditory reception and command execution, between the man whose bodily equipment is programmed, and the world which has its physical and botanical, biological equipment programmed. The programs intermesh well; their symbolic sub-structures are unitary in kind, so that the efforts of the one, avail in the other, the impacts of the one are understood in the other, and (cf. Predestination and Freewill, Part 4), there are no alogisms to be found: the logic is unitary.

More, the mind of man, using programmed sub-structures for its ultra-programmatic progressions and pursuits, can understand the products that surround him.

There is therefore an operational entity, and this is the fourth book, this second unit in our second series: the comprehension-combination that transcends. It goes far beyond the mere structural logical cohesion and synthesis. To emit and receive in terms of a common system is one thing, extremely magnificent though this created product undoubtedly is; but to be so prepared in spirit and mind, so that the raw materials, themselves coherent and cohesive between the two systems, within and without, are able to be grasped, intuited, subjected to imaginative incursions, brought into the scope of thought and will and analysis, yes of understanding for action by the non-material, purpose-proposing, imaginative dimension of the being called man, his spirit, this is the next generation of marvel. (Cf. SMR pp. 348ff..)

Yet it would seem indeed scapegrace in gratitude to God who performed this production with the necessary linguistic, mathematical, comprehensive, analytical skill to manufacture symbols and significances (symbol targets), intimations and executions, thought sub-structures in logic and meaning, and interaction with a subject also formed, if we did not notice a fifth book. This is the power to ruminate concerning the Maker Himself. This naturally is the copestone, to which the imaginary relationship of Pinocchio to his craftsman corresponds in reality. Right through to the inward realisation of the thrust of the logic, the communality of the communication, the direction of the design, the strategy of the construction, man can peer toward the God who made him.

He can do more. It is not necessary in this field to speak of a 5th book, although it would be perfectly meaningful. One prefers not to do so, as at the level we have now reached, the affair is inter-personal to such an extent that the term 'book', so fitting earlier, is somewhat distanced. Rather this is the intimacy-provision for creator and creature when that creature is man. This is what book No. 1 provides for (the Bible), book No.2 is sub-structured to enable (the cells DNA and allied phenomena, atomic parameters and provisions), book No. 3 ascends to substantiate, book No. 4 arises to confirm. We shall however give it a name: there is in this fifth dimension, a correlation that is spiritual in kind, so that it may be termed scope for spiritual communication, and for concord. We are moving from the concept of 'book' to that of 'look', or inter-personal interchange.

This allows testing of promises, assimilation of pronouncements, reaction to orders, comprehension of commands, in a SETTING of illumination of conspectus, like a search-light revealing from the nose of an aeroplane, the configuration of the land far below, and something of the ways of those who live there. This is an ultra-programmatic conspectus, and an inter-personal opening. It is a vista on the divine.

It is complicated by just one vital feature, which is equally a vital failure, such as one may get in a damaged automobile, or TV. There is a perverse streak which surfaces in man, so that the more the promises of God in the Bible are fulfilled, and objectively they all are always found to be of this kind, the less they are wanted; the more the prophecies are brought into history, like obedient little lambs in a fenced paddock, the more is the distaste; the more the disciplines for folly, the more the folly, or the less the concern. While this is not like rectilinear motion, a mere reciprocity, and is complicated by the resilience and capacity granted to the immaterial spirit of man, happily able to divorce itself in imagination and purposes proposed for itself, from almost anything real, at will, it nevertheless is a thrust, an historical trend.

It is one reaching high points at fairly regular stages of our history, as first one philosopher and then another, proposes some folly such as is shown in Chs. 2,3, and 10 of SMR. Many follow. It is modish to follow. Tomorrow, few follow, and there is a new modishness.

That occurs on one side of the actualities, the human.

On the other, there is a vastly different attestation, and we find this.

• The word of God, in simple, plain actuality and fact, does not do this.

·  It stays so fixed that the fixed stars almost seem variable by comparison.

·  It does not yield a micro-unit in its style, its proposals, its propositions, its claims and its results.

·  Like a great tennis player in a tournament in good form, it covers every contingency, all assault, and seems not at all to be fazed by any fiasco, however impudent,

·  whether that of the goddess of reason in the French Revolution, which did not seem to bequeath too many goodies,

·  or the god of forces in those so different systems, each devoid of reality,

·  such as those of Nazism and Communism.

As we have shown in great detail, the irrational inanities of organic evolution, a third force system for what far transcends it, like those of inalienable subjectivism, a sort of intellectual schizophrenia, cannot even stand up to routine rational enquiry. (Cf. A Spiritual Potpourri, Chs. 1-9, That Magnificent Rock, Chs. 1,8, SMR Chs. 1-2 etc.; and for the 'subjectivism', SMR Ch.3 and Barbs, Arrows and Balms, Item 7, for example.)

Yet it continues, this phase readily being replaced with almost knee-jerk reactionary relish, by that, in turn destroyed, so that generations pass and are sown in the muck, by the million ... on a regrettable error like Darwinism, which is contra-factual, or Freudianism (cf. SMR Ch.4, Section I), which is rationally not possible. Meanwhile, both failing, the next generation pays what the last did not - that is, those who did not meet the sod somewhat too early in illustration of the fanciful character of the mischiefs fashionably followed.

This quite naturally is the other side of being made in the image of God, that is, with a degree of capacity to formulate, postulate, propose, propound, create imaginary pathways and bypass God in mind, though not in destiny. It is necessarily so if we are to have something of that power, for nothing "determines" God. We cannot be like Him in this, that we are not increate, but on the contrary, creatures, products; but we can in the realm of designated inter-change, of spiritual arousing and dousing, arrival and departure, make furrows which when it rains, become a quagmire, into which the race habitually descends. Nor is it merely ideational; that is one facet. It is also behavioural, cultural, political and so forth, as different specialised consequences accrue, and then in turn, make their contributions to the disastrous mêlée.

This then merely illustrates the ACCURACY of that particular Biblical dictum concerning our meaning, position and, for that matter and as a result, our plight as mankind. This is for example found in Ephesians 4:18-19, 2:1-10, John 1, Jeremiah 17:9, with the corresponding advice of Jeremiah 9:23-24 - cf. The Biblical Workman Ch. 4, on the one side; and in history on the other. The third feature is that it is also reaching crescendo proportions of a specified dimension, in history, within the historical framework portrayed for this occurrence (namely now, in this generation - cf. SMR Ch.8).

The next phase of this 5th., this inter-personal dimension, after the inter-relation of the book from the mind of one to the mind of the other, from the life of one to the fallen life of the other, is this. BECAUSE that which has been enabled in the grandest invention of freedom (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri, Ch. 16, The Flashing Falls of Freedom), is the necessity of removal or remedy as shown so often earlier and elsewhere in this site (e.g. SMR Ch.1).

That is called the Gospel. That in turn was predicted thousands of years ago, and many hundreds before its basis in the excursion of God, the Son, into this world occurred (cf. The Everlasting Gospel, Item 17, Barbs, Arrows and Balms). In this, He made a platform for retrieval, in that the public defamation and physical anguish, the legal penalty of death and the social dismissal were all precisely what mankind's misuse of his equipment, all 5 grand phases of it, merited.

Catching up with this in sound style, spiritually, in justice, in judgment, in destiny, in doom, for this is no machine but an inter-personal reality (cf. That Magnificent Rock, Ch.5) , God has sounded the death of death (cf. Hosea 13:14, Hebrews 2, Acts 2, I Corinthians 15, Philippians 3:20-21) for His people, and all are called to come, while providing equally the remedy for quarantine, exclusion. This He did by actually bearing it in the physical format of a man, the scoffing and satire of the religious officials being most useful for the purpose as planned. This format was something made easier by that God who always knows the end from the beginning, through His being Himself a plurality in One, existing in persons as Speaker and Spoken, Father, Son and Spirit, Lover, Loved and Love, so that the despatch, like the problem, being foreseen, could readily be executed, resulting in the foretold execution of the Son. (Cf. Predestination and Freewill, SMR Ch.8, initial pages, and Ch.1).

Naturally, the Son being innocent, and all-powerful, although the vulnerability spoke of sin, the triumph spoke of His increate character, so that even in justice, no judgment could cling to Him, merely to His format. He died, but He rose (cf. SMR Ch.6, Biblical Blessings, Appendix IV, The Magnificence of the Messiah and . He went, but His spirit went immediately back to His Father.

This is the 6th dimension, the inter-personal donation, the remedial, and as it is personal in its process, so it is personal in its consequence. From this, an indissoluble union on a specialised basis occurs, open to one and one, not to many per se, so that a person among mankind can become a member of the kingdom of heaven, the commonwealth of grace through the purchase, the grace and the favour of Jesus Christ, the Lord.
 
 

PART III –

THE PLANES, THE FURROWS, THE BOOKS, THE RIMS,
THE EYES AND THE SPIRIT:

IN GRATITUDE TO EZEKIEL 1,
WHERE THE LORD DIVULGES MUCH IN VISION

It is of the most intense interest to note, after reviewing some 34 planes of operation,  29 furrows of management and the 6 books which are incorporated in the universe with its 3 major outthrusts from the creativity magnificence of God, mind, matter and spirit (cf. SMR Ch.1, and pp. 348ff.), to consider the symbolism in the vision of Ezekiel in Ch.1. We have studied this in general in Biblical Blessings, Ch.1, but here there is one specific item to focus on, relative to our current specialised topic of worlds within worlds, about worlds, interpenetrating worlds, super-imposed cosmoi, orders and thrust of intimate correlation, towers and layers of comprehensibility and creation.

Not only are there the physical planes of operation, in terms of assembled goods for cell construction, starting from embryos and proceeding into cell division for replacement and growth, continuing with vital blood flow or its reduction through abuse or depression, but to these are added the concert with nerve impulses and DNA directives, while in the mind are the layers of concern, concentration and analysis concerning such actions, their meaning and in the very spirit of man are the layers of rectitude or ruin, courage or desolation, as the whole is considered and its tone and vitality are arrested or dynamised, often with startling results. Rims of turning, heights of significance vary, and are not dizzy, but move in a straight way (1:17-20), indicative of order and composure; and eyes see, survey whether those aspects which are the programmatic sub-structures. inter-relating and proceeding under orders, or the pyscho-somatic interlays, or the spiritual stirrings which embrace and move more directly than any code.

Indeed, superimposed over all is the Spirit (1:20), ultimately that of God, but derivatively and subordinately that of man, so that the means of life proceed according to the intent and direction of the Maker, in the last analysis, whether it be for blessing (as in the construction of the Temple) from which realm the Spirit was soon to be moving, or in its destruction (towards which coming events in the day of Ezekiel moved swiftly). This came as the blessed protection of God, in multiple offence, moved away, His way straight and sure, undeviating in acute and continual knowledge amid complexity, directive amid events (8:4ff. 9:3ff, 9:11, 10:4ff.). The 'living creatures' summarising conscious life and its height in man, but concentrated as to spirit and its significance and control, move like flashes of light, as does the spirit of man, which can conceive a multitude of things in 5 seconds, and correlate, integrate and understand almost in no time at all!

The wheels are derivative, expressive of the subordinating of means to ends, before the throne of God (1:26), seen in the vision above it all, in brilliant light and magnificent clarity, personal and directive. It is from within Him that the creations are seen to have derived their being (1:5). As in Daniel 3:25, 7:13-14, there is the Messianic relationship to the children of men (cf. Ezekiel 16:60,34:11-24, Hosea 13:14), for one like the Son of Man is to be found astoundingly in this glory, from which man came, with which in the form of Israel, he had been dealing so devastatingly, to which and in which alone he finds meaning, and without which he is an orphan contemptibly concentrating on what is not there, and seeking to inhabit it with vacuous meaning, to his constant ruin.
 

A major arresting feature for our current realm is that  found in Ezekiel 1:16, first, in the nation of "the appearance of their workings was as it were, a wheel in the middle of a wheel". THIS was the look of the wheels, one each, which stood beside the four living creatures.

Here we see that there are living creatures, a sort of complex polyglot, to use an analogy from language, a figure suggesting the inter-relationship on the one hand, and the diversification in kind, on the other, of the items of the living creation. There are thus four faces, for each of the four "living creatures", the face of  an ox, eagle, lion and man. As to their movements, there are several notable features. First, there is a "straightforward" motion (1:12), as if there is an element of programming, discipline or both; but there is far more than any mere programming, for "they went wherever the spirit wanted to go, and they did not turn when they went" - 1:12.

In the "living creatures"
symbolising created life outthrust from God into its place in our world,
there is thus a spiritual, or spirited dimension,
expressive in the various contours and permissions,
according to instinct, or rational thought,
or spiritual understanding or some combination,
as the sovereignty of God is expressed
and... impressed.

In 1:14 we learn that there is a certain dimension of mobility, in terms of which "the living creatures ran back and forth, in appearance like a flash  of lightning". There is thus a dynamic beyond mere externality, such as we now associate with messages to or through nerve tissue, going around 70 miles an hour, for example, from head to toe, one gathers. Moreover this is only one of many modes of sending messages, glandular, chemical, indeed, more distantly by thought and eye, by look of the countenance, with great diversification.

The point to which we now come is this: the WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS, as the English idiom has now for so long come to express this very thing. This indicates the complexity, the realms, worlds, inter-play of system, diverse system, analogous system, parallel system (as in the sympathetic nervous system and the central nervous system), organs and sub-organs, as the brain and the cranial lobes and so on. It is not a question of spelling out all this, else where would symbol be. It IS a point of indicating the immense and awesome (1:18) character of the modalities available, the equipment which God has made, that it is far from simple, exceedingly complex, of staggering wonder and deft control.

More however than this symbolic index appears. We find that not merely are there wheels within wheels, so to render it, but that "as for their rims, they were so high they were awesome, and their rims were full of eyes, all around the four of them." We here recall that there were four living creatures with one of these awesome wheels, with its internal complexities and external measures of constraint, to each.

The eye of course would symbolise the conscious conceptualisation, the accessibility to and capacity for review, realisation, understanding, perception, conception and interplay of life with whatever constructions were deemed suitable for its existence, mobilisation and endurance, its dimensional relationships, whether with God (here pictured enthroned above it, in glory), or the environment, the physical world, or the biological world (such as DNA), the instinctive world or the world of cognition, comprehension or fellowship. The eyes are EVERYWHERE in the seat of action, the RIMS, where the concept of power to move is lodged. These are FULL of eyes.

One says that the concept of motion is lodged there, for there are limitations, in this, that the wheels "did not turn aside as they went".

This programmatic fact of wheels exists together with the spiritual fact that "wherever the spirit wanted to go, they went, because there the spirit went... for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels." There is thus a subordination of means to ends, of programs to purposes and in the end, as the ascent in the whole living civilisation occurs, there is a spiritual eminence, under the throne of God. In the end, past all the movements towards higher cognition in the divine deposition  of kinds in the day of creation, as one roves over them with the eye, there is man's gift of rational consciousness, spiritual interpretation, and capacity to exist knowingly in the very presence of the Almighty, though His glory is unreachable by any mere intrusion. Such is the figure.

These treble emphases:

1) on the wheels within wheels,

2) on the eyes widespread and abundant, so that they were "full of eyes" and

3) the subjection in the final analysis of these things to the dimension of spirit, under God, are a format of expression which may help some to realise what has been said in non-symbolic terms elsewhere. There are worlds of motion and thought, of cognition and comprehension, of comprehensibility and correlation, of program and liberty which inter-play like a massive, a spectacular, an extraordinary Jubilee Year fountain display with fireworks, vast in scale and scope, heavily and incredibly organised, with feet not turning aside programmatically as they go, and a capacity for wonder under the majesty of the Creator whose purposes are fulfilled, whose appearance upward was "as it were the colour of amber with the appearnace of fire all around within it" and downwards "as it were, the appearance of fire with brightness all around",  there being around Him "the appearance of a rainbow in a cloud on a rainy day" (cf. Genesis 9:13-16), just as over the heads of the living creatures, there was "awesome crystal".
 

Thus the inviolability of the Creator is expressed, the majesty of His glory, the incandescence of His brilliance, the crystalline character of His understanding and the clarity of His comprehension. At the first, indeed, the symbol is this: "a whirlwind coming out of the north, a great cloud with raging fire engulfing itself; and brightness was all around it and radiating out of its midst like the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire".
 

*2
EXTENSION 2

The State of the Mind

An Extension that is also an
Excursion into something better than Space

This is an edifying arena in which to observe the antics of the day, and seeing them, to depart from them.

You are not dealing with a "mysterious universe" to which to answer, but with the "declared God"! See Isaiah 45:19 -

“I have not spoken in secret,
In a dark place of the earth;
I did not say to the seed of Jacob,
’Seek Me in vain’;
I the Lord speak righteousness,
I declare  things that are right,”

and consider the following!

First, let us notice that as far as EXPERIMENT is concerned, the latent powers vested in the "mysterious" universe (try this language in any other area of science for size in your Ph.D.!), do not bother to do any actual thing. Like the grizzled, superstitious ideas of misled savages of old, they are looked to with awe ill-assorted with their actual capacities. They do NOTHING to the point. We have refuted the odd concept of 'nothing' as having power. Foisted on an often drooling academia by Davies, it was no difficult task in essence, being a device of irrationalism which is ill-equipped to fight logical battles, in default mode showing systematically the incapacity of his hypothesis on 'arising' to be any better than all the other no-no's of old, which sat, but not for long, on the inadequate note-books of science students. Red marks would quickly come from the Lecturer's pen on any such evasion, however much confusion may have been the cause. (See Models and Marvels, in That Magnificent Rock, Ch.7; and Item 29 in Barbs, Arrows and Balms.)

The illustrious concepts of time moving backwards and forwards in some scientist's idealised, ideational nostrum of a universe, in which such things may chance to happen, while it does credit perhaps to his powers of abstraction, is not for any real world. As to such things, it is better to see them where they are most nearly to be found, in the surveying scintillations of the divine mind, not in the creations which He has made (see SMR Ch.8, where this is expressed in detail). In the real world, conceptions do not so nimbly flow from the mind of man to the world of events. The world does not worry or flurry to conform! Words of man do not so readily flow into deeds, at the flick of a thought. A rooster being clumsily 'murdered' presents an illustration. Right, let's turn time 'backward' and what then? Then a neuro-surgeon of distinction might find his work rather impossible, given the suitable specialised equipment.

Time by itself is no such neuro-surgeon. It is time we dealt with the facts, as of yore, and ceased the musings of philosophy as the raw-material for science, re-joining in vain the ancient Greeks in their sadly comic litanies of all 'arising' from air, fire, water or some belaboured component (surreptitiously fitted with the womb of the morning), that neither spoke nor acted nor experimentally conformed to these, their fantasies. The flitting of fancy ran headlong from the work of facts. ANYTHING was said and nothing was done.

It is true this is precisely what organic evolution has been doing for long; it is true that familiarity can breed contempt, and this way of ASSUMING what is NOT seen, and making it the GROUND for inventing theories, the reverse of scientific method, and the stuff of dreams has long enough been deployed as these mental magicians show utter contempt, it would seem, for the realm of facts.

For those interested in the same, however, the case is ABSURDLY simple, a real, potent and cogent testimony to the clever pathologies of man without God. The creation perspective is simple, it is factual.

Whatever has happened to bring about what is, it is not showing itself at all now in so doing. Such labours are evidentially a thing of the past. In the usual way, what-is shows that what-was is not the same in the operations of this world. Standing orders have altered. As to institution, the end has come. The beginning lay elsewhere. Present process shows no evidence of past performance by which present process came into being. It is processive per se; not creative per se. The degree and manner of coming-to-be which brings in things such as mind, matter and spirit, is not around any more. That is the observational fact on which, in the end, the Second Law of Thermodynamics is built.

Things, in observation, do NOT grab creative prowess and start creating away like inventors. They do not do it fast, they do not do it slowly. Moreover, they do not show the capacities in any form, system, contrivance, power, dynamism or equipment. The more we find, the more we find that what we find is what is, not what makes. The more we analyse what we find, the more we find on analysis that it is coded, ordered, contrived, causatively compelled with current powers that do not even relate to its invention. We are seeing a construction; but we are not seeing it being constructed. This is the evidence. This is what is found.

It is found in casual inspection; in profound research; it is found in normal life; it is, indeed, found in the laboratory, and this with such rank profusion that it is proverbial. The case of 50 years of endeavour to coerce the poor, long-suffering fruit-fly drosophila into conformity to the organic evolutionary hypothesis have failed in a manner dour enough for any Scot, spectacular enough for the more excitable. For this, see That Magnificent Rock, Ch.1, pp. 29-31 - indeed that whole chapter is replete with the testimony of evidence, collected and compacted into the shape of its testimony by commission and... by omission, as focussed in pp. 32-41; cf. Repent or Perish Ch.4, pp. 79ff..

The concept that secretly, like conspirators, like Guy Fawkes crew working below the ground to blow up Parliament, these changes are somehow 'arising', these neural-chemical-coded-imploded visions and correlations are doing it, seems far less plausible than the 'Red under the bed' conceptions of the past, which at least related to some extent, to the declared 'Red' philosophy of corruption, disruption and take-over. There was in that case a rationale at last in some area of principle, to the concept; but here, not merely is there an absence of such observation-based rationale, it is the very opposite which declares itself with such monotonous regularity as to make itself into a law in the minds of men, who in the usual way have considered, coded, compared, correlated and conceptualised, tested and verified it over generations.

Accordingly, here there is no such philosophy, except in the arid minds of those whose thoughts are their directors, to whom evidence is a wholly inadequate topic for the affairs of science. It is a fantasy-based delusive philosophy, not an observation-based formulation. As to THIS, let us be clear, it is not by any means, always the DECLARED intention of those who so operate. It is merely the inductively assessable PROCEDURE. It may well not even be the INTENDED procedure; it is merely what happens. This is often the case with obsessive intrusion in any field, where, because of strong emotional constraints, the dream-world becomes more real than the actual one.

As, however, for the latter, this is the position. It does not do it; it is the site on which past labour is shown. It has no declaration of whatever intimacy to make, concerning powers, capacities, laws, provisions of ANY kind, for the construction of the sort of thing that is ... constructed. It is NOT CREATIVELY ORGANISED, with the obvious exception of the mind and spirit of man, which, however, is NOT RELEVANTLY creatively organised, as if to invent itself, merely organised so that it can be creative in making inventions outside itself. This is its forte, being constructed; this is like a Jaguar which, once built, can be very 'inventive' in the way it is drivable, but this BECAUSE it has been so well invented in the first place. It does NOT AT ALL invent itself.

EXTANT UPWARD LAWS, INSPECTABLE DEVICES, HISTORICAL ATTESTATIONS OF STAGES TO ACHIEVE SLOWLY, LOGICAL EXHIBITIONS OF MEANS TO ACHIEVE FAST: ALL ALIKE ARE EVIDENTIALLY LACKING. In short, we do not find them. We find very much indeed; and can characterise it with laws; specify it with equations; manipulate it in genetic engineering; but as to anything remotely connected with any actual power of self-invention, we find a blank so intense, so immense, so pervasive, so invasive, that the continuity of denial of this fact becomes precisely like some vain woman who refuses to admit the very possibility that... horror of horrors ... she is growing ... old.

(For the sake of die-hard feminists, who can be quite as intrusive into the logical scene and debate, as can macho-males, let us add a parallel picture: it is precisely like some macho-male, who despite endless failures of nerve, verve, spirit and mind in the midst of his macho-pursuits, continues to 'believe' that somehow, somewhere, contrary to all, he IS macho! Gender differences are not likely to be very helpful in scientific method, except when the topic is gender. And this? it is merely one example of the red-herrings that can cross the way, so plain that a child can see it, and often by the grace of God does so, lest, as Christ put it:

·       "they should see with their eyes, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them".

This He said, quoting from Isaiah, who so much earlier, had so accurately and amply outlined the Everlasting Gospel, noting its coming coverage of the earth, amidst multitudes believing and rejecting. See SMR pp. 763ff., Barbs, Arrows and Balms, Item 17.)

The laboratory facts, though chronically prodded, respond to heady hopes - like a corpse. Since lab. Experiment says 'No!', we can go further. We can perform an INTELLECTUAL experiment in the laboratory of the mind. This is one of the 'done' things, and let us do it! It is cost effective for our cash-strapped nation, or at any rate, State.

Suppose that, for instance, we took the millenial code situation, the time problem which is SO SIMPLE in itself, a failure to allow for a new century in the dating digits used on computers. It COULD have been done with one more digit in specifying dates; however it wasn't in very many cases, until the issue became intrusive, and people began to take account of it.

MILLIONS of lines of code can be present in relatively straightforward, non-esoteric seeming things like word-processing, or bank code provisions for our none-too-magnificent systematic procedures. People are actively talking of the possibility that numbers of LARGE firms will NOT BE ABLE to make necessary changes before the time is up, so that they may become bankrupt, and in the process disrupt very much of our often too self-satisfied 'brave new world' civilisation. The Stock Exchange has sought reports on millenial readiness! Many did not even reply.

So be it. This is beyond our intelligence, resources and know-how for very many cases, it seems, despite education, tradition, knowledgeability, teachers and training. It is not per se impossible; it is merely pragmatically being failed in multiplied instances. What is needed is 'someone with flair', someone not only with sound knowledge of relevant principles, but some capacity imaginatively to construe, conceive what has been going on, together with tests and subtle constructions, in looking at all the past procedures, patches, personnel and their ways from former times, and their products, and their current integration and mode of working.

If this is contrasted with the SIMPLEST BIOLOGICAL CELLS which, as we saw in That Magnificent Rock Ch.1 and SMR pp. 120, 208-211, Denton advises us are NEVER simple in their intrinsic complexity, but ALWAYS of high contrivance from the outset, so that NO evolutionary cell sequence is EVER to ANY extent disposable from the evidence, for the mind of man: then we see the situation more clearly.

What is needed, in the direct case of actual life, it is a vast array of coded, correlated, symbolic adjustments, not just one! What is needed is not merely this double creation, but a third. The result must instantly become, and be more apt than the original, and be so at once, with no further ado. Indeed, it must also achieve the power to reproduce itself in this format, and have the endurance to resist exposure of new vulnerabilities (which is no small thing in the matter of changing just one digit, not billions, in our intellectual experiment base, in the millenial bug).

What then? Like a magic fairy with wand intact, our non-intelligence must outdo the vastest of our intelligences, all at once, and simply do what so many firms would like done in the BASIC SIMPLICITY BY COMPARISON, of the one digit fault we now have in our so advanced century, with its so advanced knowledgeability. A touch here, a change there, an adjustment at this point, a concession at that, a slender change of minute precision in this area and a correlated symbolic renovation in that, complicated by billions, maestro-ed in absentia, that is all. ALL the criteria of creation are required, of logic and thought; and the assumption is this, that they are absent.

To request a masterpiece of Beethoven from the wind would be far more to the point, though admittedly, also irrational. Design is not the work of non-design, notation of non-mind and command of non-will. Integrated, correlated, symbolic, intensively and exhaustively logical things are NOT the work of exhaustively non-logical causes. There are similarities between paper in the chance-written smatterings of dirt on a manuscript left out in the rain, and one in the office with Beethoven at work on it; but the concept that given time, what lacks the pointed quality of relevant power, makes the product of what possesses this power is simply to deny operating procedures. (Cf. SMR pp. 316Dff., 329ff., 422Eff..)

Chance lacks the whole depth and dimension; for unmasked in this case, what really is it? ABSENCE of the sufficient grounds for the event, the committal to ONE lesser mode of what is the product of ANOTHER greater mode, with its own felicities, functions, procedures and UNDERSTANDING.

Indeed, in addition to this profound artistic capacity of genius, we are also asking a piece of wood to write the script for choreography, symphony orchestra, programs for visitors, contact owners of rentable buildings, conclude contracts, 'edit' rehearsal proceedings, orchestrate curtain call procedures, provide for requests for encores, do so in a thousand cities simultaneously, write insurance policies and provide for the defence in the event of any uprising, to do it all at once, once and for all, and to do so competitively so that it works splendidly, without failing to less ambitious projects. Let the piece of wood be ebony or what you will, it is what it is, commanded and chastened in its own formed corner. It does what it is good at and is not marshalled into performances of other domains, far less in synthetic immensity and intensity of both creative conception and executive wonder.

Domineering chance is merely another name for deficient causality, and nothing-itis, that embalmed substitute for vital causal procedures, which wants, simply wants, oh HOW it wants, figs from milk-thistles, blood from stone and builders from bricks. We are not considering the hand-writing speed of the piece of wood, but its competence in any time for any such thing.

The idea that WITHOUT any devices, any laws, any codes, any contrivances, and especially without any intelligence, this far greater work could be done effectively, when the milieu is conceptual, with concerted contrivance and synthesis at many levels, so that a new creation is achieved, NOT a mere most minor adjustment, is sufficient to shock the most obtuse stock. Do codes grow on trees? Does contrivance 'arise' in sophisticated aggregates, mutually dependent, equipped with form, order, organisation, correlation, symbolic logic, command, executive agencies to respond to command? Does invention of logical arrangement, conceptual symbolism, do effectual executors and synthetics slither, to intrude the novelty into the ESTABLISHED ORDER that preceded, and calling heavily upon nothing, just 'arise'?

In any other area, this is fatal science; it is the routinely mocked folly of the undeveloped mind, the just butt of the satire of the practical scientist. It is the high school or college lecturer's delight to bring the student up to real thought, instead of the fairy stories of his/her childhood, to point out that things do NOT just arise. Science is about WHY they do so, and about the EVIDENCE of HOW they do so, and about verifications of the HYPOTHESIS built from evidence, which do or do not appear. When such verification is not present in principle, the area is not science. When such verification is denied in practice - when it fails, then the hypothesis is routinely discarded.

THAT is what science is, the use of imagination to deal with the facts in order, as detectives, to find the key, with due respect to other keys and the way they turn, and how they hang together from the waste of the chatelaine, so that the secret of what is happening is linked to the secret of why it is happening; and this then is ruthlessly tested from any and every conceivable angle, until the result begins to acquire some dignity, like an old soldier of many campaigns, and the possibility that they hypothesis might be somewhere near the reality begins to claim just thought.

That is what science is, but it is not at all what is found here, in this raucously oppressive, delusive domain of organic evolution. (For a useful comparison in method between science, and what is found in this reckless scenario, see SMR pp. 154ff..)

Not merely does experiment NOT reveal ANYTHING TO BE EXPLAINED in the field of organic evolution (cf. That Magnificent Rock  Ch.1). Indeed, things do not so act as to require any such hypothesis, but restrain themselves (or if you like, are restrained) FROM ANYTHING REMOTELY LIKE IT; while experiment based on hypotheses unscientifically drawn up to explain what is not showing evidence needing explanation, fail to be verified, even when intelligence is - contrary to the theory - brought to bear!

Moreover, not merely is this so in the level of just experiment, or even outlandishly based experiment; it is so in intellectual experiment. Synthetic marvels of command-symbols inventing themselves is a matter of another world, domain, territory, enablement than the merely scientific. This is the work of thought, the field of direction, the domain of design. Coded design modules are not in the order of re-distribution of uncoded physical formats. Thought's domain is its own, and its field is valid where it acts. Non-thought as the creative, construction agent for thought is not merely awry as a concept; it is self-contradictory. It is to 'ask' for the vitality and vigour, the virtue and the capacities of one line of business from something which in all its ways displays itself other than this.

Symbolic logic is not the domain for the creative activities of non-logicians. Coherence and integrability of all things in understanding is not the work either of non-mind or a topic for demented mind. If the latter were assumed of a proponent who reasons, then that party would instantly be irrelevant to all debate, and presentation of hypotheses. What lacks reason, cannot reason; and if it be self-defined, so much the simpler! (cf. Wake Up World! ... Ch. 5). Moreover, to attribute mindlessness, whether by absence or by pathology, to the realities comprehensible would be like attributing penury to the philanthropist or poverty to the multi-billionaire. It would be a verbal unit in expression, but a collision with every attestation in designation. It would be to ignore the evidence, confuse the categories, define by contradiction and confine because of amplitude.

Whether this action be

	in the verification of validity in the Bible itself, to which reason points, and which reason confirms, but where revelation surpasses every power of reason, while validating it again, for its discovery;
	or in the intensity and immensity without any exception, of the rationale and cohesion of all things when seen with this biblical light, and duly tested: it is all one.

Every sphere and every dimension, every field and every facet confirms reason which attests the Bible which all over again exhibits in its plenipotentiary brilliance of seeing all beyond the impediments of time, the mind of the Maker.

There too we find that for man, not intellectual insanity but spiritual sin is the problem; and not intellectual dyslexia but spiritual understanding is the key, which tested, duly opens every door, solves every antinomy, removes each antilogy. (Cf. Calibrating Myths, Machining Dreams and Keeping Faith Chs.   3,    6, SMR pp.  3ff., It Bubbles ... Ch. 9.) Reason forces us to the revelation of God in the Bible (as in SMR Ch.  1), and this not merely validates rationality, but itself by its works, witness and control. Further, on reading it, we find who and what we are, who God is and what is pandemic disease of man, which is not insanity of mind, as his works abundantly attest, but insalubrity of spirit.

Man misuses reason, verification, evidence, glamorises unreality and imports antilogies, as for example in Kant (cf. Predestination and Freewill Section IV), or Hume (cf. SMR Ch. 3, pp. 257ff.), to the point that his disease declares itself. On the contrary, move in the parameters of the BIBLE, specifically, in its precise systematics, and you remove what confronts man over the ages in antilogies (cf. Great Execrations ... Ch. 9). It would be strange indeed to claim insanity for a mind which can find such pearls of logical harmony, divorcing claim from consequence. It is possible for man to lose his mind, but it is not necessary to join those who do.

What confronts him, sustained brilliance of composition, technique, correlation, exquisite capacities and irresistible truth in the word which works all things just as it says over the millennia: it is manifest. Even to limp after it in comprehension requires a wonder of creation and rational power to enable it, just as the rest of creation demands a skill beyond comparison in all that man can do, even at his uttermost. On all of this matter of method, reason and faith, see Brightlight Ch. 7 which serves as Appendix to this Chapter.

What then, shall we look in some celestial rubbish-tin for the bits and scraps putatively discarded of yore, in the work of creation, and see if by some combination of these we can make something, and then say, Look, creation is happening again! No such intellectual experiment is to the point, since such bits and pieces of code, command and symbolic logic would be dispersed because of inadequacy, not sufficiency for the purpose, whichever way you want it.

Or shall we gambol about looking for programs which engender screeds of codes, appallingly complex engenderers of that equivalent of the most complex military manoeuvres of human history, expanded millions of times, making the second front in 1944 look mere child's play by comparison, and then, finding these, see just how the whole upward, aggressively creative thrust came to be; and then, reflect on the intelligence on the maker of such codes as these. Moreover, they are not there! ... any of them.

But let us to the next line of experiment, the noetic.

A NOETIC EXPERIMENT is one in which the imaginative, comprehending capacities of our race are intruded into thought, to see if, beyond the mere observable and imaginable, there is any ground in understanding for a concept.

Here we ask ourselves some such question as this. WHAT is the background and basis, the nature and characteristic-profile of all that we are considering? In what fundamental way, realm of understanding are we in fact moving, and in what other way could we envisage movement in this sphere? We could envisage a place where causation does not happen. Indeed, this is the ONLY way in which the matter could be done.

In this imaginary world, characteristics do not rule, for if they did, their characteristics would be the other side of their operations, in terms of which we manage to characterise them. If they did rule, then causality would be in process. Since it is assumed absent, so that we can get something literally for nothing, we cannot have characteristics. Nothing is describable. No features are permissible. If the feature were a total continuity of change, then such continuity would be a characteristic. We are left with nothing.

This is simply another way of saying there is and can be no such world. And that, really, it is the end of our noetic experiment. If you would like to see it in some more detail, consult SMR pp. 264ff., 284-313; and Barbs, Arrows and Balms, Item 29.

In the end, it is as at the beginning. Mind, matter and spirit require a sufficient cause and the minimal attributes are as has been shown in SMR Chs. 1,3,5,10. Causality is indispensable to ANY language and thought (cf. SMR pp.3-10, and Ch.3), and what we have here attended to do is this: we have shown that EVEN WHEN LIFE IS CONSIDERED IN TERMS OF VERIFICATION ONLY, to see how well it conforms to what is first specified by the God to whom cogent argument required us to come, in mind, there is far more than a PERFECT VERIFICATION, in which all one could hope is precisely found.

It is again, much more than a mere failure of ALL the demands of organic evolution, matched by the success of all the implications of creation, with almost wearisome monotony, piling up in their respective files. It is, in other words, no mere case of an exhaustive and total failure scientifically of organic evolution and an overwhelming, childishly complete attestation of the reality of creation in the NORMAL SCIENTIFIC PROCEDURE OF TESTING WITH ACTUALITY WHAT FOLLOWS FROM EACH APPROACH. That is long past. Creation is the only scientific formulation in a no-contest total result, like that of Elijah on some modern Mt Carmel. The fire of success is for one only, and that is for creation.

That fact however, impressive as it is, is far from all. In Ch.5 of SMR we point out that it is also a PART of BIBLICAL CREATION that man WILL be MOST RELUCTANT to yield on this point, and for very good reason. One could read that chapter to find out this Biblical principle, which in turn, at the verificatory level, involves a PREDICTION, one well verified. Indeed, it is a CUMULATIVE CONSEQUENCE in which this reluctance is to become most obstructive indeed as certain features of the advance of history occur (see II Peter 3, II Timothy 2). THAT TOO is the case; it also is verified.

It is true that we are now moving into that NORMAL SCIENTIFIC FIELD of the capacity of a LAW, HYPOTHESIS or CONSTRUCTION BASED ON EVIDENCE to meet allied, close and other fields with its various implications. In other words, does it INTEGRATE at all, deftly or even BEAUTIFULLY with the EVIDENCE in other fields, so making it an augmented candidate for acceptance in any approach where REALITY COUNTS, that is, in one such as science is billed to be, and normally is, when such religious needs do not intrude. Needs? Those such as authoritative capacity

• to own what we did not create, and
• to become, as part of 'nature' ... whatever, in its extreme divergencies, that is,
• to be ... possessed of all rights
• to act JUST AS WE SEE FIT. (The case is old, so very old - Isaiah 14:13-15, Ezekiel 29:17).

It is not amusing - the case is too grave - but it is instructive to perceive that the more we ignore the realities of our design, as in perversion at the sexual level, the more the counter-attack of ... reality is felt. AIDS is grim, grimly humorous, but no laughing matter. The cause is not so either; and the consequence matches it.

It is simple: GOD SAYS what the case is, the realities DECLARE THEMSELVES IN NATURE, and the evidence and the sayings match with awe-inspiring perfection.

All this is so and a magnificent provision of the Almighty. But it still is not all that must be said even in a merely limited approach.

Our exploration into different dimensions of VERIFICATION in the area of life, of what we have found to be rationally impregnable, the reality of God, has led to something rather amazing, certainly outstanding. The verification is so overpowering in any and every dimension that we find, at the end, in our noetic experiment, that it commands with its own authority, the very necessity which we first met, in our initial approach, for the Creator.

Commanding verification is a genus of its own; but it is here present. When, indeed, God is present, that is the manner of it; and that is turn in one MORE VERIFICATION. When the BEING in view is infinite, and ALL ELSE IS NOT; when we are considering HIS EFFECTS and relating this to the effects of what is NOT GOD, then it would be EXPECTED that we would enter into domains which displayed some of this grandeur in ways not otherwise attained.

This they do.

God is attested not only in irrefragable logic, in unyielding rationality, but even in the area of scientific method, His attestation is so profound, just as He is, that it constitutes in itself even at this relatively lowly level, a constraint in itself, that must yield reason itself, before there can be any thought of 'yielding' God. But then, when there is no reason, there IS no thought.

Reason demands, and science echoes this demand, that God be recognised as creator. Crucified reason is merely ONE aspect, in turn, of the crucifixion of God's Son, the logos, whose love was no idle option, and whose actions in themselves likewise command with a power analogous to that in the DNA, acknowledgment.

In this case, failure by persons to acknowledge His Person

• whose words command history and
• whose prophecies control events both to the most minute(SMR Chs.8-9)
• and in the macro-movements, synthetically assembled in our contemporary history, and that most manifestly in this our generation,

 

when so met by HIS multiplied evidence in word and deed ...

it does NOT depersonalise; it merely discredits. The ultimate discredit in everlasting shame is called hell. It is the beauty of the everlasting Gospel (Barbs, Arrows and Balms,Item 17), that the love of God is such that to 'attain' to hell, one needs more than mere sin. One needs the disregard of the salvation from it which He offers; for He is not disposed towards the failure to be saved of any, though in love He does not force anyone, either.

The place of His grace is the only place for the human race: it was at the first and it is to the last. It is not God who is outfaced by the disgrace of man's chiding His grace; for He has already outfaced the worst than man can do, crying,

• "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing!"
   

The love of God, that flamed in the Incarnation, into history like light, is very wonderful. It is even more so than His works (cf. SMR Ch.2, Extension, pp. S1-S34); for it is yet more personal. It is unfrustratable, unintrusive, inelusive, cleanly commanding but never dictatorial. It laments (Luke 19:42, Jeremiah 9:1), but does not fail; it woos but does not arrantly seize. It knows all but this merely aids its effectuality. One signal thrust of beauty of this love, as Paul describes it, in speaking to Christians:

• "...that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height - to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fulness of God" -
   

Ephesians 3:17-18.

This is a marked thrust of speech; it is also that of operation in the living hearts that hallow Christ, as the "alpha and omega", the Creator with His Father, the "bright and morning star" (Revelation 22:12,13,16, Colossians 1:16. John 14:21-23).

Nor is this all, not even at that interesting level of verification. Those who know Him (cf. John 17:3), these find that the power of God is correlated with His love. Suffering is what love is willing for, but power to perform what is needed in the regime of love, in the kingdom of heaven, this is available, and at the personal level it is practically found to be so; and that, it is indeed in accord with Paul's same words, in the next verse:

• "Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church, by Christ Jesus to all generation forever and ever. Amen."
   

Words and deeds, words and deeds, they walk, move, cavort, fellowship and have pleasant company together. That is the way truth is.

This power is in turn correlated with that which raised Christ from the dead (cf. SMR Ch.6, pp. 931ff., Biblical Blessings, Appendix IV, pp. 265ff. ), and in experimental practice, one finds as is declared in this open note-book of the Kingdom of Heaven, where Paul prays that the Christians may know ...

• "what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power, which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come" ... from Ephesians 1:18-21.

 

*3
Cf. SMR pp. 25ff., 75ff., 307ff., 315A-G, 329ff., Ch.4, 424ff., 999-1002C; Barbs, Arrows and Balms, Items 29,18; A Spiritual Potpourri, Chs.1-9,12; Repent or Perish Ch.2; Biblical Blessings Ch.13; That MagnificentRock, Chs.1,5,7,8.
 

*4

EXTENSION 3

The State of the Threshold
 
 

REPENTANCE IS A MERCY

This excursion may seem only a step; but then so is that movement which leads from a precipice over Falls, often stained with blood.
 

1. BEING OBJECTIVE ABOUT THE OBJECTIONABLE

 
 

The statement in Acts 11:18 is singular.  Those concerned, hearing of Paul's labours, reflected in this way:

• "Then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life" -

• literally, into life.
   

It shows that it is a privilege to be granted the grace of repentance. It is not a pretence, but it is a mercy when one seeks to be rid of the offence, out of the desire to be godly, to be at peace with God, to belong to Him whose we are, but against whom the human race in the biggest racist program of all, habitually rebels.

It rebels with discord, with brutality, with plain selfishness, with incredible seeming thrust and killing, as by the Russians who, last century,  invaded the Aleutian Islands and so acted ... as to make the term 'barbaric' seem genteel, in terms of their treatment of the Aleuts who lacked guns and large ships. Indeed,  simple perfidy seems almost pleasant by comparison, when one reviews their treatment of the sacked and abused race, like aphids in the control of wasps. The Spanish treatment of the Aztecs, in their misguided zeal for gold and Mary - the invention which is not Biblical at all but some kind of redemptrix who adds to that blood which is sufficient for all, and polluted by any (I John 1, Matthew 12:48-50) - did not lack in atrocity of thought and deed; and  were humbled later, cast down from their eminence and soon a scene of Communist civil war and lost glory. The British with their slave trade, were scarcely admirable; but they repented with the aid of Wilberforce, that splendidly devoted Christian statesman and churchman; oh but we could continue at length, down the roll call of the nations.

The road turned. Then the Russians learned what it is like with the Communists internalised in force in their land, like cancer; the Spanish with the Romanists in their own midst, in their civil war and vastly diminished stature; while the British, with this and the inhumanities needlessly added to the Industrial Revolution,  were pillaged in two world wars of their needless extremes of time and conditions for many; and they helped to make America rich, which however, she did not desire, having a desire to rebuild Europe and to unbuild herself with her endless concoctions which replace sound theology.

While the Protestant movement in England helped attenuate these evils, through such as Wilberforce and Lord Shaftesbury, yet the national glory found its all too wrongful place, and was used to justify much which cannot well be justified, such as the invasion of Scottish churches, in order to force them to conform to authoritarian practices preferred by the State, removing their very freedom to call their own Ministers and forcing preachers into the woods, to be shot at, with Christians even incarcerated in cages, to be the sport of foe and weather...

It is then, a mercy when repentance is granted to a nation from its wild excesses, brutalities and follies, insensitivities, or on the other hand, wild tolerations of searing follies in its midst, and indeed, in our own case of Australia, subsidies granted so abundantly to support and hence extend them.

It is a mercy when an individual is given the grace to repent. It may be rebutted with pride, ignored through envy, dashed to pieces through self-will; but it is indeed a grace when it is received.

REPENTANCE INTO LIFE is the term used in Acts. You do not merely repent FROM something, you repent, when you are coming to God, INTO SOMETHING.

It is the Christ whom God objectively sent to objectively die, made an object of derision, a subject of assault, a victim - carefully prepared and abundantly willing, despite the heavy load it meant - Luke 22:40-43, Acts 2:23-31, to whom one repents. This is the case because it is HE who is the Redeemer: HE PAID! You get the receipt from Him.

To be covered by ANOTHER,  wounds the pride, makes sheepish self-will, inserts nobility into the spirit, grinds into the face of obstinacy and cracks the heart of self-sufficiency. It opens thereby the way to victory and to deliverance from the endless seeming pathogens of sin which render the soul sick and make right seem wrong, wrong right, leading to the brutalities, the  insensitivities and crass self-interests which mar the globe. These pretences which put oneself, or one's interests first, HAVE to lead to strife with others such, since it is not objectively true that either oneself or another sinner is the CENTRE, able to merit such an approach. The lie given the light leads to repentance.

It is good it is not to any MAN or PERSON who is a sinner, who is limited and capable of deceiving or being deceived, that one is to repent. It is INTO LIFE one repents, and as Christ made so clear in John 14:6 concerning Himself: "I am the way, the truth and the life" ...

Such repentance, known to God, is not subject to fallible assessment. Some want to be sure their repentance is GOOD enough; but this is hideously beside the point. If one is wrong, one either does or does not regret it. If one does, it is either a self-serving desire which merely uses 'regret' in order to gain something; or it is regret. If it is regret, it is either because one was so stupid and betrayed oneself, or because one betrayed one's Maker. If it is because one betrayed one's Maker, it is either a matter for regret because He found out (though He always knew, who knows all), or it is a matter for regret that THIS is the sort of thing that one has in folly contributed. If it is the latter, one either detests it because it is not up to His divine standards, or would have liked to do it a little better.

If the former, one is in confrontation with truth, and finding this,  one must capitulate and accept the awful facts about one's failures, wilfulnesses or weaknesses; while loathing these, turn to the Lord and INTO the life which is in Christ. You leave the road, the highway to hell, and take the entry to the narrow way, the road to heaven, accompanied (Psalm 23, Isaiah 40:10, 49:19) by Him to whose LIFE one has come, and what a road it is (Isaiah 35:8). Its end is certain and its provisions abundantly sufficient (John 10:9,27-28, I Peter 1:4ff.).
 
 

2. BEING OBJECTIVE ABOUT THE NEED

The REAL difficulty was for HIM. Thus we who repent to LIFE, come to the LIFE which was offered as sacrificial payment for our sins, make-weight for our deficiencies, that standards of justice and truth should be met, aided by mercy which, still not willing to be slack, paid for the judgment by the action of Christ voluntarily becoming a crucified victim, thus both portraying what sin looks like, what judgment feels like and the cost which, justice demanding, justice received. It is indeed ALL RIGHT in this universe, but only THROUGH REPENTANCE INTO LIFE. Without that, it is all wrong, not with the universe, but with that part of it which, refusing remedy, gains no remission and no admission.

On this turns the pivot of history, the direction of destiny, the calibre of life.

Hence we read well in advance in God's pre-coverage of history (cf. Amos 3:7, Isaiah 41:21ff., 43:5-14, 44:7, 45:11,19, 46:11, 48:1-11), of the actual payment for these things, the cost to cover the sins, the rebuilding and the judgments - like a rebuilding of Europe but on holy grounds - which would be paid for each and every individual who, repenting into life, found in the Lord, salvation.
 

Thus in Isaiah 43:11 we find, not surprisingly, that beside God there is NO SAVIOUR.

Such costs are too much for sinners to pay (cf. Psalm 49:7-8), and only God is both able and willing to pay (Psalm 49:15). In Isaiah, hundreds of years before the actual payment at Calvary, through the instrument of the Cross (Colossians 1:19-22), we find this (52:3):

"You have sold yourselves for nothing,
And you shall be redeemed without money."

The proportionality is beautiful!

Then in 52:10: "The Lord has made bare His holy arm,
In the eyes of all nations;
And all the ends of the earth shall see
The salvation of our God."

This is at once introduced (52:13). God-the-sent (Isaiah 48:16, Zechariah 2:8, Psalm 45) is shown in His self-humbling portfolio of "servant" ; and indeed, there IS no greater service than what is here. Pill-popping is no substitute, and psycho-analysis has long been ridiculed as too pretentious, too costly and too subject to vagaries. It does not deal with the real issue: GOD. As David put it in Psalm 51, 4:

"Against YOU, You only have I sinned."

God the source and owner of all, is the main and pivotal subject for repentance. The rest follows like light after sunrise.

The redemption (Isaiah 53:10-11) which is then shown in literally excruciating detail in this chapter, makes it clear that the Christ, the Messiah, actually BEARS our iniquities - OUR iniquities? those of the people who believe and HENCE receive what He has to offer, and who therefore "by His stripes ... are healed" (Isaiah 53:1,10, 5).

Here is the One who is then in a position to JUSTIFY, BECAUSE having borne the iniquities, accepted sentence for the sin, He grants the real absolution which comes from having paid already: for those who receive Him. It is not a Church, or a mission or a man who is himself a sinner who does it; it is Christ. He it is who died, who rose again, who returns, to whom glory is due. It is FROM HIM alone (I Timothy 2:5, II Timothy 2:9-10, Acts 4:10-11) that one must so receive, and as to that, it is by faith on the account of grace (Ephesians 2:8-10).

THERE is the one who as predicted, came seated on the colt of an ass: entering Jerusalem (which was to slay Him), amidst the exuberant and rejoicing plaudits and praise of so many (Zechariah 9:6); and as to Him, He was the One "having salvation". Hence (Isaiah 49:6), He IS the salvation of God, and as such is shown a light to the Gentiles, the non-Jewish people. HIS is the focus, HIS the name, HIS the fame (cf. Isaiah 9:6, 9:1-7).

It is of HIS kingdom there is no end, with peace eternal (Isaiah 9:7); and it is accordingly HIS NAME which is "prince of peace" (9:6), and for that matter, "the mighty God", as we there read, in perfect harmony with Psalm 45, and Hebrews 1:8, Philippians 2. The PRINCE OF PEACE designation requires the preceding names to be its company. The couples, or the sententious series in this name refrain are undivorceable, and this not only because if this were not so,   it would be peremptory, arbitrary and intrusive, as if to presume some lapse in divine concentration, some carelessness in composition, some abstruse and unevidenced complexity of speech.  They are undivorceable likewise because it is a person who is promoted, exposed and exhibited, who though a child in coming, is yet ‘Everlasting Father’, for that Father is to perfection exposed by Him, and moves by and through Him (cf. John 14). It is not per se a statement about the Father, but about the Son, His dealings and His advent, His Kingdom and His power, His future and His qualities.

The announcement in 9:6 is of HIM, and it is HIS NAME which is explicitly focussed, just as it is HIS WORKS which draw the eyes in 9:7, the latter the justification of the former, and both of the huge announcement in Isaiah 9, concerning the light which is great, which comes to overcome darkness, the great light which (49:6, 9:1-2) He is.

It is, moreover, to Him who is wonderful and Counsellor that we are introduced, as also exposed for us in Isaiah 11 and 53. There is no ambiguity about whose throne it is in 9:7, and none about the characterisation of the One to sit upon it, whose qualities are set forth like the sun. It is no wonderful thing that is counselled, as though we were dealing in the abstract. The case is wholly other.

Rather it is the wonderful counsellor who is provided. It is in HIM, and not in some other thing, that the name is found, located, lodged, with the qualities leading on to the power and the glory in 9:7. It is not the plan but the person, not the thought but the deed, not the idea but the actualisation, not the potential but the person. Only as wonderful, that name used of the LORD in His theophany to the parents of Samson, can we find a way to put together the Prince of Peace who is both Almighty God and child, everlasting Father and yet one forwarded by the LORD! As God in the flesh, God-the-sent (Isaiah 48:16), the Word, He can be both, and in no other way. (Cf. The Shadow of a Mighty Rock p. 773.)

As Isaiah 49:6,8,10 and 40:10 show, it is Christ who is the plenipotentiary in all functions of salvation, itself the unique prerogative of God (Isaiah 43:10) - He is the covenant, the leader, the giver of inheritance, the establisher of the earth, the deliverer of prisoners, the provider of mercy, guide; and as to God, there is NONE LIKE HIM (Psalm 89:6-8), no,

• not even in the heavens!
   

THERE is the Saviour, now shown on earth, for all eyes shall see His salvation (52:10). As to  GOD, He  is the only Saviour, while as to Christ, of necessity,  He is indeed God... for there is NO OTHER SAVIOUR (Isaiah 43:11, Acts 4:11-12). He is the Saviour from sin in the most personal way, even figured as a stone on which sin is ETCHED (Zechariah 3:9),

• so that the sin of the land is removed IN ONE DAY! It is Christ to whom GLORY is expressly given, even in the eyes of the Lord, and it is HE HIMSELF who as light and covenant, is focus and cynosure, of whom it is written,
   

"He has chosen you" (49:7), even though

"man despises" Him, and

"the nation abhors" Him!

Chosen to display God's divine prerogatives, He is as Colossians states, Creator and in bodily form, possessed of the fulness of the Godhead.

God did not do things by halves!

J.G. Machen expresses himself in WHAT IS FAITH? (from pp. 115ff. in substance - scriptures added) essentially like this:

If Christ had merely drawn us closer to some great beyond, however far beyond our own unaided powers that might be, however great an advance it might comprise; if He merely had done this, taking us to some shoal or bar with the great beyond still in place, and we still out of that place, we would be left as helpless as we had been, short-changed as it were, at the edge of eternity. But less than infinity can ONLY be infinitely less. If it is NOT infinity, it is infinitely less. That is the nature of infinity. Short of God is desperately, despairingly deprived. Yet Christ being from God, and being God, has not brought us to some journeyman's sand-bar within the oceans of the unknown. Not at all! Christ offers to bring, and for the Christian has brought us, to God, from whom He came (John 8:42, 5:19-23, 6:62, 17:1-3, 1:1-14, Philippians 2).

As Jesus Christ directly put it,

• "If God were your Father you would love Me, for I proceeded and came forth from Him!" (John 8:42) and , "Before Abraham was, I am";
   

and indeed, WHATEVER the Father did, HE did in the SAME WAY (John 5:19-23). Now if I were a champion golfer, you might "do" what I did, in your mutilated and cramped, crimped fashion; but you COULD NOT, if you were not of the same quality, do it in the SAME WAY! That is the prerogative of greatness. Hence the marvel, "He who has seen Me has seen the Father!" (John 14:9), and the force of the announcement in Isaiah 52, "All the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of God"...with "Behold My servant...", and that following report before the time came, on the method by which Christ was that salvation, victim, vicarious victor and triumphant sin-bearer (Isaiah 26:19) breaking death (cf. Hosea 13:14), this the very prerogative in turn, of God Himself.

How simple it all really is! God suffered it, God paid for it and to God repentance is made, in terms of the salvation which Christ IS: a light and a covenant, He is also the SALVATION of God, which He shows, declaring, "Behold My Servant" (Isaiah 53:13), and indeed then showing that beyond which there neither is nor could be any greater, higher or more essential salvation: the BEARING OF SIN TO DEATH. Similarly, He is shown as the REDEEMER, the paying party who recovers what is lost.

As Psalm 2:12 has it, it is in HIM that one is to trust, while to trust in "flesh" is a cursed perversion of faith (Jeremiah 17:5ff., Isaiah 30:1-3); it is to Him one renders that divinely commanded devotion (Deuteronomy 6:5). It is HE whom God delights to honour, to exalt, to make Judge of the peoples and focus of His salvation. It is to HIM, Christ, that every knee therefore shall bow (Philippians 2:9-11, Psalm 72), in that very act which God requires towards Himself (Isaiah 45:23), declaring it required for Himself as the only One who is God. It is this one and only God, who - as He so  greatly emphasises in His word - has no equal, there being none comparable, none to whom He gives His glory (Isaiah 42:8, 43:10-11, 13, 44:6,8,24, 45:12,18-19, 44:6, 46:5,13), who thus requires THIS acknowledgment of His Son (Psalms 2,72).

This is He, the Christ, the salvation shown (Psalm 72:11,15): it is He  to whom this homage will be paid! It is He who is the judge of all (Psalm 2:7ff., John 5:26-27,30). As for others than the Lord Himself, they do not even KNOW and CANNOT know the human heart; but this One judges (Isaiah 11:3ff.), and knows all, as only God does. It is HE and HE ONLY who is the effectual ONE (Isaiah 41:28-42:1) - and Isaiah 53:4 shows the intimacy of this, the  Lord Himself, in the interstices of flesh, which He assumed for a purpose, like a novelist coming to inhabit a novel for a purpose of grandeur indeed, pity and wonder.

It is HE likewise who is the Redeemer (Isaiah 55:2-4, 52:3, 53:11); and as to the Redeemer of humans, those image-bearing, image-defacing persons, it is GOD HIMSELF (Isaiah 44:6) one again, who takes this role, has this function, this capacity, this glory. As the ONLY ONE who is God, HE takes this service and nobility to Himself:

• "Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel,

And his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts:
I am the First and I am the Last;
Besides Me there is no God."

 

HE is the Redeemer, He the First and He the last, He beside whom there IS NO GOD; and this, redemption of sinners, it is His prerogative, His power, His identification criterion; and it is Christ's. As John puts it, "The Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world" (I John 4:4), as Isaiah, "By His knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many" - why and how? this way: "For He shall bear their iniquities!" (53:11). As the Psalmist declares it, "He shall redeem their life from oppression and violence" and "He will save the souls of the needy" (Psalm 72:13-14).

How it is so, even this is explained, for the inter-communion of the divinity is explicit, God being no loner, and all our society being expressive of this in Him, though in Him what has splendour of eternal wonder, in the sinfulness of the human heart often instead becomes oppression, delusion and deceit. Listen then to this His statement, which so mirrors, or rather is mirrored by parts of John 5:19-23, Colossians 1:19-23:

• "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."

• The Speaker? Isaiah 48:12 shows it to be the deity Himself:
   
• "Listen to Me, O Jacob,

And Israel, My called:
 I  am He, I am the First,
I am also the Last.
Indeed My hand has laid the foundations of the earth,
And My right hand has stretched out the heavens;
When I call to them
They stand up together....
I even I have spoken:
Yes, I have called him,
I have brought him, and his way will prosper."

 

The intimation concerning the Messiah, God-the-Sent in this context, then follows ...

 

"Come near to Me, hear this...", as we saw above. The ONE GOD is not isolated, but there is plurality in His Majesty: there is His Word, whom He sends, who says in Zechariah 2:8, in similar vein:

• "For thus says the Lord of hosts,
• 'He sent Me after glory, to the nations which plunder you; for he who touches you touches the apple of His eye' ."
   

In the New Testament (Hebrews 1:1-3), He is called "the express image of His Person", in Proverbs 8, Wisdom (cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms, Item 27, and

• to Him in Psalm 45 comes the address: "Thy throne O God is for ever and ever, a sceptre of righteousness", and

• in Him the nations are called to put their trust, give their devotion (Psalm 2:12),

• for Him all must bow (Psalm 2:8-12, cf. Isaiah 45:43-45, Philippians 2:10,6 - a divine prerogative, once more),  while

• of Him, pierced, comes the word, "They shall look upon Me whom they pierced" in Zechariah 12:10.
   

Bearing the divine prerogatives, He is God, and His unity has this diversity (Philippians 2:6, John 8:58, 5:17-23); and there is no other God but He who, God the Sender, God the Sent, with His Holy Spirit, so declares Himself (John 15:26, Zechariah 4:6, Psalm 104:30).

Despite the intense satire sometimes found in the Bible (as in Psalm 82, Ezekiel 28: 9), there is but one God, and this, as we have seen, is Biblically  stressed almost to infinity! Those who are interested in having some new one (Deuteronomy 32:30,3-5, 16-17), new-fangled, new-boy gods, gods "newly come up" as Moses put it, may do so; but they are not God, merely names for fictitious identities of the deluded mind, like those of Legion in the vast healing wrought on the troubled man in Gadara by the Lord Himself.

The Bible does not hesitate so to designate OTHER gods than He who IS God: Psalm 96:5 - "All the gods of the peoples are idols!" It is this ONE God, the only one recognised by God, the only one KNOWN by God, the God who has none formed before Him and will have none after (Isaiah 43:10), of whom John 1:1 writes: "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God." Thus to Thomas - talking of repentance, Christ gave the invitation to satisfy himself physically that the body had risen, and being satisfied, Thomas replied,

• "My Lord and my God!" - literally, the Lord of me and the God of me.

We have spoken of the need of repentance. There is an alternative. It is to defile, deface, caricature, crucify Christ, and so seek to grab the "vineyard" from the owner, and rule the earth "without God" (cf. Mark 12:1-10). In the way of any such procedure, however, is this, that Christ was

a) resurrected

b) invincible and is to be
 

1) returning to duties, on this earth and

2) judging those who prefer darkness to light (John 3:30-36, 5:19-23);

and look at the world, is it not dark!
 

The night comes when no man can work (cf. John 9:4, Isaiah 13; 21:11-12); today is the time to repent, receive, being redeemed, delight in the Lord; to wait upon Him, knowing this:

"Trust in the Lord, and do good;
Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.
Delight yourself also in the Lord,
And He shall give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the Lord,
Trust also in Him,
And He shall bring it to pass."

See also The Magnificence of the Messiah, Appendix IV,
Biblical Blessings;
Creating Waves, Ch. 3, That Magnificent Rock, and
The Everlasting Gospel, Item 17 of Barbs, Arrows and Balms.

 
 
  APPENDIX See Bright Light Ch. 7.