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CHAPTER 7

THE VAINGLORY OF UNSPIRITUAL THINGS

IN HEAVEN, ON EARTH, IN THE PAST, IN THE FUTUR

The Work of Deceit and the Pangs of Frustrated Self-Deceit

The devil had a desire to scale the heights. Heaven itself was in his eye. Whatever was up, he would bring it down to being under himself, and whatever was down, he would rule it, subsume it under himself, until in all things and in all ways, he was dominant, lord of creation. That was the position as in Revelation 12.

There were a number of problems in this. First of all, he IS NOT the Lord of creation. To be that, you have to have MADE it. For that, you have to be UNCREATED, for if you are merely part, how can you be above all, in form and power ? Thus you need to be outside the imposed limits of time, and to be eternal.

You need infinite understanding (Psalm 147) to perform such a role, and a heart to deal aptly and righteously with your ... subjects, since if you are unrighteous, you and what is right, what is inherent in the design, what is an undergirding to the creation, the rightness of God, will clash. You will not in the end be ABLE to rule it, since you would be misruling it.

That is the trouble with mini-devils, like Mao, Hitler, Stalin, killing a few millions of their kinds for this or that absurd plan (cf. Aviary of Idolatry). You are perhaps a little sorry to extinguish these fellows, but well, your kind of life must go on and theirs must go off. All life is a play, you feel, and you are the dramatist. Let us pursue the point as if we were addressing someone of this ilk, kind, construction, desire, who, like the devil, or even the very devil, has such desires, latent or patent.

We come then, to the dramatist and the play, the ambitious devil-ilk, the dramatist.

However, you too, if a creature, are subject to the machinery, mind and oils of your construction, and if you choose to ignore these, in the interests of RULE, then they will merely chafe, chide or deride. Your internal substance will be at war with your will, and the result will be ruin at last. It is just a question of how long.

Some say, Ah well, it does not really matter how long. I'll hang out (or in, as the useless current idiom has it, hang in there), and when it is up, who care:  I shall have enjoyed myself, made something of myself and if it ends, if it is scrapped, so be it.

But what! what would you then make of yourself, in a froth of folly, where wisdom in your mind and in your construction are at war. The body knows its cancers, and the soul its cankers. Bodily disease has the parameters of the body, mental of the mind, spiritual of the spirit. You can never escape what you are, what you have come to be, what your spirit has turned into, where its site, place and destiny, companions all are, what is due to it. Cause and effect is not limited to material things, and just as each domain has its phases and ways, so none are without the operation of the relevant principles.

Yet for Satan, being a most beautiful creation (Ezekiel 29), and a most wilful (Revelation 12), most ruthless and most driven, a dynamo of rush and a highway of unruliness, where rules are discounted according to the reward for breaking them, and the long arm of the law is hacked whenever it comes near: this is not to be desired. Like Stalin, hoping to bring heaven to earth when 'class' divergencies were dealt with, it is not really so. More like hell is the result of impertinence, of simply ignoring the whole realm of mind and spirit, of Creator and justice. And justice ? it is not the residue when you have grabbed what you want, as is the Communist norm on the part of a few people who become the new unelected aristocracy in the most absolutist form of oppression ever known to man, swallowing up all principles and powers within themselves: it is what is applicable according to construction, design, reality, responsibility. In the end, it CAN be administered for eternity, only by God, for only He has infinite comprehension, wisdom and purity.

As to the devil, he is not indifferent, like an ordinary fool, to the time when his number is up, his internal limitations as a creature IN time, lead on to THE time when conflict and clash reach their epitome, their conclusion, and the interview with the Creator comes due.

Thus as we read in Revelation 12, the devil, failed aspirant for heavenly honours, desire without data,  is furious because he knows his time remaining is short. He is very deeply in debt. having sought to kill, lie, seduce, corrupt many, and not by any means always in vain. His dramatic, despotic, idiotic desire to rule, ruin the Creator's name and works, and to take them over, as shown in the war in heaven, when his great gifts were put to the test, is sustained by hoping against hope, and in the end, especially after the denouement in heaven, by a number of fallen spirits,  called angels, who are with him. Imagine being served, waited on by devils! He can have it. (Cf. Ezekiel 29, Matthew 4 - and note that the devil aspired to  GIVE to Christ all the kingdoms of this earth, in exchange for being WORSHIPPED BY CHRIST - that is his aspiration, and in this world, he is called 'the prince of this world' - by Christ, in John 14:30). This does not mean he controls all things, for God does (Ephesians 1:11, Isaiah 42:14); but it does mean that its present honour and glory and hope and way is of the devil. It lies in the wicked one (I John 5:19).

Thus, although he is aware of his inability to rule, doubtless he hopes, despite his awareness to the contrary, that he may in the end prevail. He might give lectures, for all one knows, on the unknown future, and building on mysticism and ignoring reality, and seek to imagine, at least for the troops, some kind of devil realm. Fiery though his words may be, fiery is the end and he knows it, as does a criminal in death row on the books, but still at large. Many are the lecturers who ape him in various forms of mysticism, humanism and glory-seeking goulash, a mixture of the irrational, hope, ambition and an ignoring of the ground of all limits confronting man, in the interests of taking them over: this is the very devil!

The devil may be eloquent in lecturers at times, but HE KNOWS that HIS TIME IS SHORT, we read! He is not quite so stupid as all that, however many may be the army of talkers who tout his cause.

Perhaps he could hide ? He is very good at imitating (II Corinthians 11:13-14). Imitating God is out of the question, for you need absolute power and knowledge, plan and foresight for that (Romans 11:36): so perhaps he could imitate a pastor ? He does this supremely, making the right noises, moves, diplomatic speeches, and is very knowing about manipulation of Assemblies, pandering, calling on principles that are not applicable, ignoring those that are, and his servants may be seen in many a church, as II Peter 2 and II Timothy 3 make so clear; and Christ foretells this time,  in Matthew 24:24, which not only must be the case, but alas, is (cf. News 121, 122). Many follow him with their doctrinal thingummies, devious, delinquent biblical borrowings and transmutations, with false christs and ideas, founded like paper on rock, making papier mâché constructions that scarcely can meet rain, far less reign. From these ephemeral bases (cf. SMR Ch. 8, 10), with the words which go with them,  they seek to blow some party line and ignoring the word of God, they aspire to think they are great, and others divisive.

In  fact, however, they merely imitate the Pharisees, whether in some cases, Protestant Pharisees with various traditions enthroned, or Romanist ones, their Canon Law masquerading as truth; or else the Sadducees, excluding this and that at will from their agenda and  creed,  as fancy takes them, like taking out this or that vertebra from the body, with rapacious assurance; or the Herodians, using religious ideas to seek political rule. Christ rejected rule as king on this earth (John 6, and Matthew 4), since THAT sort of rule is merely a devious device, when it aspires to absoluteness, or a stop-gap when it does not. Politics like philosophy is continually at war with itself for the very good reason that it rejects the only answer that there is. HE is coming in a little (Answers to Questions Ch. 5).

The Bible has made that clear for several millenia (cf. Psalm 2, 110), and Christ's coming to save has proceeded at the time and in the manner predicted already, to be followed by the rest, as always (cf. More Marvels ... Ch. 4, SMR Chs. 8-9, Biblical Blessings Ch. 2, SMR pp. 502ff.).

Perhaps the devil could try to prolong things ? Yes, he can try, and whenever Christians do NOT unite ON the word of God ONLY, by the grace of the Spirit of God and the Lord who sends Him, then this may help; but he knows that his time is short. God has foreknown all, foretold all the scenario, the terms and the conditions, the developments to the end, and works all things after the counsel of His own will, and even knows the end from the beginning (cf. Ephesians 1:11, Isaiah 46:10). You can fool men, but not God.

There then is the devil, having wrath as Revelation reveals, for having been cast out of heaven, and indeed Christ saw him fall like lightning^*1 from the skies as His disciples went out to heal and preach in His name, and the spirits obeyed them: his locale on earth is very limited! It is humbling, and low for such aspirations. High is his hope, low is his method, broad is his working, inane is his wisdom, dated is his ambition, for its date is sure!

Low is the result for his servants as you see in Ezekiel 32, where the slain in spirit in the real sense, those who in their own spirits have rebelled and now lie in the gloom of ruin, in the dimness of anguish, lie beaten and belittled by their own lack of vision when on earth.

Unlovely is their appearance, and is his whose ilk they are, for while the devil is well able to transform himself IN APPEARANCE  into an angel of light (II Corinthians 11), yet the internal darkness makes the light but moonshine, with no sun to give it credibility, a verbal moonshine and a dash in the night, glowing with irascible heat, pride and ambition.

An angel of light, now ? that is an elevation, surely. Yet to the devil, it may seem merely a transvestite sort of existence, in which the undesired basis is made plain, even if deviously and devilishly deceitful. Even to APPEAR good must be a harassment, for goodness is the nature of God, and anything resembling that is not merely as if to have a Ford executive drive a Holden, or a Port Adelaide supporter, wear the colours of the Crows; it is as if Churchill were to have a swastika on his arm. Hatred of all goodnesses is one of the fruits of the devil (as in II Timothy 3, cf. Galatians 5), in his opposition to the Lord (as in Ephesians 6); and the warfare which occurs continually is not exempt from his endeavours to foul, ruin, swamp, bring slithery and withered things into the freshness of life in Christ.

Yet if it serves his distorted way, the delusive and deceitful appearance the devil likes to assume, as if his inane ideas which seek to eliminate God, were workable, far less sound or solid ... or does it seem to ? Spies sometimes feel, it seems, as if their own identities are being lost, while for long periods they seek to live the lives of what they pretend to be; and if it is unpleasant, then they have this internal drain of dynamic, flushing out what they want with the constant input of what they have to be, yet loathe. One can pity them.

This, however, is merely one of the strains and stresses on the devil, who has not much to be thankful for, since all his hope is gone, and his incursion into time is merely humiliating, for he knows he does not have much of it left! He DID have so much to be thankful for, that in essence, we read that he, the power behind the dominions of worldly man as noted, was corrupted by reason of his brightness (Ezekiel 28:17 cf. 28:14).

Deep is his dark desire, high is his vast ambition, frustrated is his massive intellect, for it tells him what he does not care to know, and attests what he does not wish to find; and we know this because the Bible declares this, that he knows his time is short (Revelation 12).

How glorious may have seemed, the days of getting a significant percentage of angels from heaven, to follow him,  compared with the time now! How bandaging to pride, how elevating to power; and yet he was cast out. The place of power does not house him; and how can he, a creature, make another! Where then would he find eternity, or in what site infallibility, he whose failure is to be what he was made to be, and whose ambition is to be what he cannot be, since no creation can start except in time, and what starts in time does not know the whole reaches of eternity, but is delimited; and without God, there is no hope of sharing the wonders of it, so that his prefabricated spiritual housing is a lie, and his ostensible arrogance, a cover for a withering feeling of ... dismal despair.

In the meantime, how much havoc can be work ? in what BREADTH can he achieve dissolution, discrepancies, and with what relish he will seek to refer to ALL Christians as hypocrites, with what acumen study cases like that of David and Uriah, even if these be like one pebble in a life of paved road 100 miles in length! It serves to seek to humiliate humility in Christians, by PROVING their imperfections, then caricaturing them, exaggerating, making it appear that these are normal for the person, or for all Christians, and then exalting himself as better than these, even though his entire life is one of rebellion against what he is, how he is and where he is, by his own self-exaltation, liable to go.

He is in this like a cart trying to imitate a jet-liner. He is not going where the place is set, and what he sets his mind to, is precisely where, by the nature of the case, he cannot run. So he runs furiously in circles, and history tends to follow him, although it spirals downward to its grave, which is being dug with some assiduity (as in Matthew 24's line of ending, following the beginning of sorrows - Matthew 24:8,14).

He is liable for a liability which he cannot pay; and so he is certain to go, for his heart is as hard as a rock, and his tasting of the powers of the world to come, his awareness of the spiritual things is not small, and his is a perfect case of the ALMOST spiritual being, of Hebrews 6 and 10, indeed a veritable prototype. Just as the writer of Hebrews expressed the assurance that those to whom he wrote would not end in this appalling way (Hebrews 10:29-39, 6:9), triflers with Christ instead of imbibers of His truth kept by His divine anchorage (Hebrews 6:19, cf. I Peter 1:1-5), so the Bible expresses a counter-assurance that this is precisely the SORT of way in which the devil will end, with a certain fiery looking forward for his envisagement! (Hebrews 10:27,31).

The devil no doubt has long hoped for a different end, but to this line, this course, this career, this inveterate and determined thrust, there is a landing in the lower arena, attached.

To better things, perhaps, he is attracted, but no so much as to submit; he is drawn, but yet not to the extent that he yields; he is moved, but not to the point that he abandons his career constant, to RULE. His is that very treading underfoot of the blood of Christ (Hebrews 10:29), for he is very well aware of what he did when he entered into the heart of Judas (as in John 13, Judas being well known as one of his people - John 6:70), and how he himself was an active participant in that slaughter. After all, when you set your heard, by determinate desire and long held centuries of planning, on the despatch of the only Saviour from sin, which this world or the next has assigned to it, or ever will have (Isaiah 43:10-11, Daniel 7:25, Ephesians 1:10), then yours is a career uncareened, unclean, uncleansed, like the Challenger rocket, when it detached and fell.

That all things must be gathered up in one in Christ is exactly what he might like, if only his own name appeared instead of that of Christ! (Ephesians 1:10). Yet he would use it, as the Palestinians in Jordan used that nation in the 1960s, to attack. They attacked Israel instead of using their news homeland, which after all had been given most of Palestine, which in turn had been assigned to Israel by the League of Nations. Yet, they COULD not be content, but must crush and rule or ruin Israel.

So the devil himself CANNOT be content with a subordinate role, far less with the rule of the word of God, which in the case of Israel has appointed the land to them, whatever anyone says (Genesis 17, Psalm 105:8ff., Galloping Events Ch. 4), and in the case of the devil has subordination appointed to it, no less, for his place is as assigned, not as self-assigned in contradiction to the word of God.

There is ONLY ONE place for any creation to be, and that is where the assignment from the Maker provides (cf. I Corinthians 12:6), and if you do not like it, then you are not under the Lord, and if not, you have only the same option as that of the devil, to act as rebel, and self-assign what you want, which, since you are NOT in fact God, and do NOT of necessity have His wisdom, CANNOT be His will.

Indeed, a word to the Christian is à propos here. Whether it be the Lord's calling or gifts or assignment in life, this way or that, seek it, find it, and do not presume as if to prescribe to him what gift you want, but rather seek to be indeed gifted, but for service, not glory, just as Christ did not seek His own glory, but His mission and His service (cf. Matthew 20:28). Seek the one whom HE would appoint as wife, the career He directs, the gifts He assigns, to use them well, and avoid the glory which the devil so desires, as he defames the Lord.  

The devil is to some very attractive, and at times one sees what seems to be his queer leer, a sort of roving, raving, searing, seeking, glinting, unhumbled, devious look, come from the eyes or face of this or that person. However, the countless millions who have succumbed to his odious charms, and painful pleasures are in themselves mere mute (but at times, in their writings, eloquent) testimony to the power of delusion.

God is greater than the devil, and HIS is all height and depth and length and breadth for all creation, including that of time, space and thought; and to sacrifice that in order to live a lie, to be under an underling, is as attractive as it would be to become a rat, if you were an angel. It is painfully corrupt, corrosive and a blend of ruin for yourself and those whom you afflict, and breeds in a rich solution of  irrationality, as if you could take over from God, with or without the devil^*2.

In the end, as the Psalmist is shown and  declares (Psalm 111:10, cf. Proverbs 9:10), the fear of the Lord is the BEGINNING of wisdom. NOT to reverence God, but rather just to give place to your own idea of Him, which is irrelevant because inadequate, or twisted, or tortured, with personal input of your own (Romans 1:17ff., Ephesians 4:17ff., 2:12ff.): to fail in the godly fear of GOD HIMSELF as self-revealed and quintessentially exposed in Jesus Christ and His word (cf. Psalm 19:9), is like not fearing death, not through courage, but through a kind of impudent imprudence, which in the end, becomes laughable, and why is this ? It is because what you mock in this, is life, and all you have is life, so what you mock is yourself, and where is the delight, the dutifulness, the responsibility or the serviceability of that!

Proverbs 1 puts it all very sharply:

Wisdom calls aloud outside;

She raises her voice in the open squares.

She cries out in the chief concourses,

At the openings of the gates in the city

She speaks her words:

 

"How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity?

For scorners delight in their scorning,

And fools hate knowledge.

 

'Turn at my rebuke;

Surely I will pour out my spirit on you;

I will make my words known to you.

Because I have called and you refused,

I have stretched out my hand and no one regarded,

Because you disdained all my counsel,

And would have none of my rebuke,

26 I also will laugh at your calamity;

I will mock when your terror comes,

When your terror comes like a storm,

And your destruction comes like a whirlwind,

When distress and anguish come upon you.

28 "Then they will call on me, but I will not answer;

They will seek me diligently, but they will not find me.

 

^'Because they hated knowledge

And did not choose the fear of the Lord,

They would have none of my counsel

And despised my every rebuke.

Therefore they shall eat the fruit of their own way,

And be filled to the full with their own fancies.

32 For the turning away of the simple will slay them,

And the complacency of fools will destroy them;

But whoever listens to me will dwell safely,

                          And will be secure, without fear of evil."

 

Proverbs 8 puts the antidote no less sharply:

                             All those who hate me love death.'

Loving death ?

Can you imagine the cuddling. Let us picture a conversation, in fact a dialogue between death and someone who loves it.

Oh death, my dear, how irresistibly attractive you are tonight!

Do you really think so ...

says a pre-recorded clammy sounding voice, one which already felt the approaching pangs of what was to be, and, we imagine,  had been predestinatively prepared for instruction.

Your quiet is magic.

I cannot speak except by permission.

Your peacefulness is rapturous.

I have no peace, but am dispirited.

Your gloom is a quiet shade to my strained eyes.

It is insufferable to me, since I would like a little light on things.

Why worry about the light, my dear death, my delightful and capacious death, for you seem so vast, your realm so extensive, that light would almost be hard to bear.

Alas, it is hard to bear because without light,  my surrounds have no clear features, and vitality has no visa to enter.

What then, death, are you the one who has deceived me ?

I, but how can you exploit my tomb and gloom with any such words. I made no promises.

But your ally, the devil, did, and you are, as the outcast penalty for those who reject pardon in the Christ, the very epitome of all the Bible described.

I am certainly not the description deleter, am I ? And to be fair, how could I be, for you were told plainly by God from the start, concerning that upstart little creation, the devil, that he is a murderer and a liar (John 8:44 makes that clear!), and that from long ago, and indeed it should have been clear from the start, that when as at the first, a commandment of God is violated, there is no innocence to appeal to! As to the devil, his nature was perverted almost at birth, and his glorious brightness has been the misused ground of his dismal dejection to come.

Such might be the painful love affair with death.

It is better to avoid such amours, and to have the limitless height, and depth, and breadth and scope, the ultra-time eternity of God, as your Father, in whose realm you alight, in the light, than anything which pays anything per hour, per life, indeed: for the ways of deceit are fraudulent, and their promise is a false premiss.

It is time to find wisdom for whoever finds wisdom, finds life; and it is Christ who has attested in verification of prophecy, in verification of power, in meeting all tests and all criteria, human or divine, in covering all cases, in failing in nothing, in paying as innocent for the guilty and seeking as loving for the lost, who has wisdom. Acting without Him, proceeding minus the cover of God for the sin of man is merely to identify as a rebel, and to seek to save your life without the One whom God in His infinitude has sent from eternity, is obviously useless;  for shall time convert to eternity, or sin to perfection, guilt to innocence or weakness to strength!

Is the God of truth and evidence, and rationality and relevation (*2 below),  to be resisted, and plain ruin sought, as if crippling were triumph, and a lie the truth ? Very well, if this is the desire, then it is readily met.

However, to wait at the door of the Lord, yes and enter it, this is wisdom; for without God, man is constructed sod, and his end is less lovely than that of mere polluted clay, for he himself is more than this.

To be a sheep is not attractive ? I have seen sheep of an incredibly seeming intelligence, near a farm, alert, with bright eye and estimating look, considering, pleasant, groomed, with a certain joy in the eye. It is a matter of who the Shepherd is, for these sheep, who are men! It is a matter of desisting from the devil with his desire to circumvent and indeed circumnavigate God, whose vastness is not available for mere prying, but shown in revelation. It is a matter of life, the gift of which in the first was pure, in the last is purified; and of relating at all times, as a servant, yes and now a friend, to the Chief whose word is truth, whose way is peace, who knowing all things, neither misses anything, nor fails. Nor has He failed in the offices of spiritual authenticity, for far from dealing supinely from above, He has come below, to bring us up, not only as children of God, as if education were all, but as newly regenerated beings, then ready for teaching, training and development. In coming down, He reached the uttermost depths, bearing sin, and in taking us up, He brings to the uttermost height, even to behold the face of God (Revelation 22, Psalm 17, I John 3, Job 19, I Corinthians 13).

Triumph in the truth is peace, and pardon in the paths is joy, whilst life in the Lord, being eternal, is limitless, so that to be a creation, and then again, a creation re-created, whom God Himself became man to reach, becomes a privilege past all number, a naturalness past all comparison and an adventure past all delight.

NOTE

*1 Luke  10,17-24 shows the event:

^"And the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name. And he said unto them,

'I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.

^'Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.

^'Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.'

"In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said,

'I thank You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and have revealed them to babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in Your sight.

^'All things are delivered to me of my Father: and no man knows who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal him.'

And he turned him unto his disciples, and said privately,

'Blessed are the eyes which see the things that you see: For I tell you, that many prophets and kings have desired to see those things which you see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which you hear, and have not heard them."

The power of Christ THROUGH His disciples IN His name by the work of the Spirit is an equipment provided to His Church, as it abides in His word and in Him (John 15). It is not a comfort provision - the Cross was not comfortable cf. Luke 14:27ff. - but it IS a power provision (cf. Luke 21:15).

*2 See

Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer, and

Celestial Harmony for the Terrestrial Host.

with confirmations in the trilogy

The gods of naturalism have no go!

and the work

        Scientific Method, Satanic Method and the Model of Salvation.

*3 For this translation of this clause, see Proverbs 8.