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There was the young magpie. There was no doubt that it was grown, or nearly so, though the lack of sheen on the feathers, of address in the attitude and the appearance of amazing dependence, almost servility towards its parent, MOST present, active and involved marked it out as adolescent merely.

When you compared its growing competence, the feature that impressed was not its amount, but the amount it still had to grow to be remotely like its active ancestor. One could all but have thought it ... avinely handicapped, lacking in the mould and form of a magpie, if many other such cases had not shown conclusively enough, that there is a period of tutelage and humility, of long exposure to discipline - but look! There is this youngster, now on its back, receiving a sharp, short and effective chastening. It was not so much a chastisement as an utter yielding to parental authority, imposed with decisive and unelaborate thrust, or perhaps better, thrusts!

Where now that swooping piece of aeronautical majesty, that dynamic and decisive bird for which many sea-gulls make way as if to majesty! Where now the carolling, warbling, the gleaming eye, the resolute attacks on those who would interfere, the intelligent assessment and the unvanquished resolve! THESE things await adulthood. Long is the process of learning. Long is the humility before honour. Long is the wind tunnel, and strong the gust it brings to test the capacities of the bird-to-be, of the youngster in training.

How much and how often is the interference, the intervention which accosts weakness, teaches manners, instils methods! Baby maggie is nothing in the merely physical, for he can appear the very size of his mouth-feeding mother, helping him as if he were a toddler. Wisdom for the bird is not easy to gain. Once gained, it is not easy to miss! The bird is a vanquisher of assault, an assailant like those old Mosquito bombers of World War II that would come in fast and low and depart. Not in a moment, or by some easy practice does that eminence come!

Now we move down the scale in size, to wholly other dramas. The termite is not an ant, we learn, and is mostly blind, relying on taste and touch to build miles of interlocking, specialty tunnels for eggs, the queen, the neatly cut pieces of grass, taken at night, the disposal of waste, the nurseries and so on. Just as it is in space, so in time. The new campus is found by a mating pair, this time with eyes since they serve the purposes in hand, such as site selection. When all is ready, and reproduction occurs, the worker termites appear, and work. It is only much later when the civic situation allows such specialisation, that solider termites appear with new mandible construction to enable their ferocious if tiny work to be done, on any invading ants which, if not to be slain in droves, yet can be impeded, should they attack the mound or tunnel, enough for other termites to use the time so gained.

To do what ? Why, to seal off the broken tunnel, the invasion site, so that the ants can no longer get it and overpower the smaller termites. What happens to the solder termites who repel for a little time, the invading ants ? Why they die, surrounded and outnumbered, desperately saving by their own self-sacrifice, the hive from which they come, for which they fight.

But what of the sexless character of the workers ? How does the thing go on ? Like this: sexually equipped varieties arise when the time is ... right. THEN the workers in droves perform their next team play for which, unlike the magpie case, there is no obvious preparation. Instinct ? We shall look at that shortly. They prepare little launch ramps for the mating couples, equipped unlike themselves with reproductive capacity, to use their temporary and relatively feeble wings to fly from, being thus helped the more to go further from the original mound or tunnelling.

But efficient planning is here. When any couple that is not eaten on their honeymoon preparations, lives long enough to land and find the place for a city, they shrug off their wings, and attack the soil.

The odds against their living long enough for this are great; so the queen can live up to 100 years or more, popping out pills, or rather termite eggs in a profusion of thousands upon thousands, in a specialty piece of team work which is notable. When scarcity strikes, eggs from this fertile source are eaten for food; when times permit, they swell the multitude on maturity!

Eating their way through miles of tunnels with a strategic apportionment of places for tasks, workers for tasks and operation management worthy of the best hotels, they aerate the soil and prevent or rather inhibit occlusion from massed substances clogging it. Capable of blessing, they can also curse: thus eating even lead from wires, and destroying houses. It is the old story: there is an intelligent concourse of specialisation and plan, program and performance which meets needful specifications with acumen and thrust; there is provision for chastisement from the same source. As with water, it quenches thirst and floods domains.

Here however there is this difference. The features keep their type, kind, format, within a special identifiable version control. They are a kind. There is a full-stop finality about these touchingly deprived and admirably acute workers. That is what is found. Indeed, there is much that is found in the biological domain which is well to watch. Let us see what we have most obviously.

First there is FULL STOP FINALITY. The "kind" is spoken. It is useless to pretend that things "just happen", when our computing shows us so clearly and with such reason, that they JUST DON'T! Complex, controlled, sustained performance criteria require immense care and consideration to enable action to be in the right sequence, to be analysed so that their inter-relationships do not intrude, one into another through careless programming; and bugs are so common and can be such a near night-mare, that their removal can take almost unnumbered hours while the program is analysed and re-analysed, till there appears some apparently inconsequential oversight which did NOT allow for the fact that on certain occasions this and that can occur together, and an ambiguity was left which was not determined, so that the thing... WOULD NOT operate!

To teach a robot to walk, to drive a car is a work requiring near genius. ANY level of conceptual continuity, behavioural complexity, sequential performance of a specifiable purpose with a determinate integrated payload, leading to the next, assembly line if you will, with inputs and outputs which lead on to the throughput, and this to its integration with an allied and parallel performance which, with this, makes a pair in a near army of other such cases, all proceeding to one overall complex but simple conclusion, will need a mental agility and formulating capacity that is not easily discouraged, or dulled in perception. Likewise, it needs an oversight facility which is susceptible to conceiving the arena so sharply that a failure of composition is removable, when it evidences itself, by the apt incision into the framework of the necessary symbolical thought concerned.

And this ? It is correlative to what is SPOKEN. Symbolism implies thought and thought implies intelligence and intelligence requires a site and correlation with the practical performance criteria and assessive faculties, and mind is the name. But not of all of it! With mind there is a synthesis with a métier, a skilful facility to implement. They are not the same, as the absent-minded professor case shows so well. There is thought and there is its implementation. Some are good at one, some at another. Some have both gifts.

Nor is this all. There is the capacity to conserve what is implemented and to fashion its maintenance program - if indeed it is to be maintained. In the case in hand, it is, over enormous numbers of years, many thousands. THAT IS MAINTENANCE! Compare it with my Holden, a mere 29 years old! It does well. But it is not yet into the thousands, without a mechanic, to boot! No, it does not BEGIN TO COMPARE WITH THAT PERFORMANCE.

It is thus necessary to consider performance criteria in evaluating any construction. FULL STOP FINALITY is what we find. The things continue. They are not worked out in endlessly aborted missions; they do not leave countless miscarriages of endeavour on the tarmac. They come and their mode of continuance is this: it is as if they were addressed by the Sergeant Major: AS YOU WERE! That is the evidence which a huge series of finds of creations continuing unchanged for time immemorial.

That however is not all.

  With
1) FULL STOP FINALITY, comes

2) FUGAL FACILITY. The species have a fixed relationship to the "kind" theme, like musical composition, strict laws governing the display this way and that, of the inventive genius, and these are  enshrined in the original. There is an arrangement which makes an inter-relation, and there is a theme towards which the inter-relation exhibits itself. The unity is a delight, the variation a rapture in some cases; the interaction is sheer delight. It is ordered; it is governed; that is why there IS the unity, which otherwise would irrationally intrude. It is flexible in detail, governed in kind, developmental in aspect, but only on the original theme, with the criteria for conformity mixed with those for relationship. The sheer exuberance of life, as Jay Gould^*1 rightly noted in his Wonderful Life, is almost overpowering. It is sudden, it is vast, it is however thematically conserved. It can adapt within its specifications, like new fugal forms; but its adaptations are kept in theme, like the varieties which fascinate because the more they differ, the more they are the same.

Indeed, as with much of art, you can see the same DEVICE used over and over, with perhaps some modification, in diverse places; and you see it in speeches; and indeed in the New Testament you see adaptations of formulations to situations from the mouth of Jesus. There are the criteria, the characteristics of mind: there is NOT a slavish mentality, as if it could only be that once an idea was worked one way for one decided purpose, it could not be adapted skilfully to a related one; mechanics as well as musicians are aware of such intelligent adaptations. Yet it is an adaptation, and the purpose of creation allows the performance criteria met in one way, to be met in a way which meets variant criteria, through penetrating analysis. This we covered in SMR pp. 252Lff., under the heading of DELIBERATIVE DESIGN.

3) We find also what one might call WATERFALL WISDOM.

Vast complexity with a feeling of freedom, is impressed into the way the myriad steps in instincts and scenarios for individual and group life performance. The steps can even less be isolated and re-drafted, like separate atoms, than can the drops associated with the beautiful splendour of a waterfall be caught in a bucket, and then re-composed into the original form. They have a coherence significance. Their meaning is in their production situation, with the meanings inherent in each of these elements, up to the rain, down to the rocks, with all the greeneries and currents in the intervals. To set their individual place and size and reproduce it, together with the exact composition of the air, is irrelevant. For one thing, that changes in terms of its total relationship to the whole, its sources and resources. But as it changes, it is that thing: the waterfall in its setting.

Even if it were possible to gain EVERY nuance by simple copying, THAT is a mere recording facility. The point is their production which gives you something to record. In the same way, a photograph can 'capture' what it is quite powerless to institute; for the reproduction of a scene varies from its production, just as its mode can come indirectly from its natural setting or be made by the furious contrivings of engineers, by artificial intelligence, a mere substitute of great limitations.

In the waterfall, the site and ingredients are all structured, so that the results flow with amassed controls, changing constantly, but with a thematic constancy which allows mere aping efforts to reproduce without the scene in its totality, to appear merely comic.

Much more is this consideration relevant in life. Here it is an integration which is minute, modulated, assessable in visible controls, which is at work. It is provided for not in the meteorological vastnesses, but in the atomic minuteness, coded into composition and controlled into performance. The supervention of conception and control over the raw materials which allow for but do not possess it (like tin-openers, mere ordered matter, but capable of 'higher' uses by intelligence), enables instinct. Beyond that, comes reason and spirit, will and the power to abort reason.

Even, however, at the level of instinct, with it there is commonly the amazing collation of consciousness which, USING the facilities which are available and organised and in working condition, can adapt them with some measure of perceptive (as distinct from conceptual) intelligence, to meet obvious needs which press, and to which the instinctive procedure can be made to relate. Whether in termites or magpies it is there; in magpies, it is there with aplomb, panache and distinction, as if it were a victorious tribute to efficiency, a verve with zest, a seeming delight in using with facility and manoeuvre, the flight and strategy considerations in a happy blend and mix. The distinction as we move beyond that in understanding, comes to the operational difference between practical analysis with intelligence and its mere use, and selective disposition of many layered capacities and the understanding of their nature.

This then is the dynamic whole, and it relates not least to the integral relationships between faculties and facilities, instincts and challenges, intelligence and the product of intelligence which intelligence deploys: made, it acts; fashioned, it works, and working, it individualises its applications with conscious involvement.

4) There is TESSELLATED STABILITY.

As outcomes are contained, so their inter-relationships are maintained. Structure, like action, has its own symphonies. It is not only one of time, it is one of place: it gives place meaning and time place.

The termite  that "develops" sex in some cases, when the community is stable, in co-ordinated, specialised work, makes flight ramps for the occasion, to allow mating flights to overcome multiple mission failures, with singular success; that provides for auto-detachment of wings before mating and so on, is a tessellated mutual fixing that needs total presence of each working part in the series, for the play, the ploy, the program of disposition to work.

This is maintained over ages. It is never found in process. It is not that kind of thing. To change the image: the first Boeing 737 wheel is no use in a preceding tiger moth aircraft. The assemblage is total or nothing; it is sui generis overall, and its overall reality is as much part of it as its atom-by-atom substructures.

To revert to our imagery: the floor is wedged together in a perfect fit, like tessellation, with the parts also operative in time-series in the biological reality, rather than mere spatial outline, as in the image of tessellation. Even at comparatively lowly levels, there is not only coherence, cohesion and sequence; there is maintenance of the same, order and symbolic citation to secure this in the DNA, external formulation to secure internal performance, a 'world' of understanding to secure a world of performance, an oversight of knowledge and data formulated with the penetration of the impresario, the developmental STABILITY of the scenario, which co-exists with and FORCES the outline of the performance.

As seen and shown in Repent or Perish 7, Excursions 1-3 (cf. also SMR pp. 140ff., 315Aff.,
A Spiritual Potpourri Ch.6, in all of which places, it is put more formally),

§ there are worlds upon worlds,
§ principles and penetrations one on another, like living strata in rock,
§ all operative, operative in myriad and in singularity,
§ words in worlds and worlds in words,
§ mind and matter,
§ intelligence’s acute ingenuity with its material cohorts,
§ those neither capable of nor susceptible to the elaboration of symbols, or
§ the concatenation of the same with executor staff.

The outcomes in terms of purpose are as clear as the lack of frustrated semi-outcomes from inadequate formulations. The synthesis is as clear as the analysis of matter can show, thorough its lack in mere matter. It is all there; and it is there to be accounted for, rather than - with reductionist passion, ignored like some girl friend who has dumped you, or boyfriend, depending on the case. The theme is similar for either. It is better in science to face the facts, rather than practice hurrumph!

It could almost seem, however, that the concept of matching the fact with the words is "novel" in some parts, for much of a whole a generation of biologists, as in some ways noted earlier, Løvtrup has also lamented. This seems to happen, in fact, just as soon as their secular passions are aroused. They WILL not lay down their grudge against vital realities, and the need for accounting for material, mental and vital, not to say spiritual power and performance, it might in many cases seem, UNLESS it is GUARANTEED to lead to NOTHING and to NO ONE who could CONCEIVABLY give ORDERS on how to live! THAT! that we who are "free" should be like ants, governed by codes, it is unthinkable! Does it not remove our whole dignity, they storm, our very existential nobility and so forth! (The 'so forth' is mine, not theirs! The thoughts are theirs, not mine.)

No, not really. If they do not want the God of their creation, the mind of their origination, the Spirit of their origination, who made derivative matter as a conformist and them as possible non-conformists, so be it. It is nothing to do with science. THAT little lad should keep to his job, and not wallow in superstitious Nature worship, against logical constraint and observation insert, alike.

Many doubtless prefer hell with liberty, to the Lord with truth; and many more, just react without realising the severity of their entanglement against the truth. It becomes, perhaps for some, a nice little habit, like marijuana ('it can't hurt you' comes the delusive cry). However, justice to the realm of the forbidden, despite that cultural cult of the forbidden (SMR pp. 85, 150ff.): justice which with certitude asserts itself against "nature" by all evidence, as by the necessities of logic, and realism towards the Creator, this demands otherwise. The 'teen-ager does not remove Dad from the house by ignoring him (cf. Psalm 50:21ff.), though it is assuredly true that he may with some inadvertent 'stick' of some smoking material, remove the house. That little caper is proceeding quite to order and plan; and while he will not quite manage that, he will go far towards it. When the house goes, it is the day of God, and its time has come (II Peter 3, Isaiah 51:6, Revelation 21:1).

In the interim, however, let us return to the current house, this present universe.

Phrases and explanation alike need to draw on actual description, not philosophical PREscription. THAT in silence should be PROscribed. Otherwise, science is no more science, and philosophy is no more philosophy. Mutant philosophy is false science and mutant science is foolish philosophy.
 
 

There is no limit to the formulation of causes, etiological constraint, obligations of intelligence, design (SMR 211, 251ff.) and order. When internal sources lack, in logic, observation and systematisation, external sources to "Nature" MUST be invoked for its formation, and for that matter, its formulation. The cult of the forbidden is logically excluded as merely a peremptory and crass invasion of reality, by preference.

When we return to the real world, the waterfall launch, creation, the tessellated stability, the interactive cohesions and contiguity of measured purposes in overall ascending scales of application synthetically, to the marvellous continuation, the fugal facility, a joyous, exuberant, expansive but strictly ordered variation, for a theme, and with this, to the full-stop finality for the syncretic, synthetic wholes: then we revert to the  observable. Not to ignore but to account; not to remove from thought by pretending it is not what it does, or not accountable in terms of the requisition which in any other circumstance would patently be required; not to irrationalism with effrontery or logical suicide with the cyanide of pretence, but to follow things through to the minimal requirements: this alone allows logic to live.

In that life, is the possibility of discussion. Without it, the suicidal party, the drop-out, is merely irrelevant. Thought has escaped him/her; logic is lynched; language is no more possible. So be it then. It is Creator or suicide. For my part, I affirm life, and life has logic, and logic requires God. But even if I did not, logic still could not be except in this way; for to deny its basis is to require NOT ITS DEATH, but your own as a human being, thinker and disputant. Dead disputants cannot argue.

They are merely divorced from all the realities of thought, in a first approach to final death. Certainly it is sad, and who could think otherwise; but like death from famine, it is common. In this case, it is also wilful. But the will is there; for God put it there. Those who misuse it, are its victims, denying to themselves the blessings of its created reality, in terms of autonomous heights that merely melt the wax on the wings, for God is always, and those created CANNOT be that. It is too late. All their power is derivative; they CANNOT win.

All their aspirations are without rationality, for they CANNOT be the centre of things. As to the justice of their 'complaints', it is like a cheque which disowns money. It refuses its milieu, and WILL NOT be applicable where it applies. What then could you expect for it ? It is then but a bit of paper. As to the folly of such treatment of the Creator, and the reality of His nature, see Questions and Answers 1, 7, Barbs, Arrows and Balms 14, A Spiritual Potpourri 12, 15, 16, Repent or Perish 2, 7 with SMR pp. 100-101, 999ff..

But let me now introduce you to my friend the magpie. He seems to have grown a little since we watched him disporting himself a trifle supinely at times, and to be ready to talk.
 
 

Come my pretty boy!

DO NOT pretty boy me! I have had it to here with parents. It is time to stretch my wings.

No offence. You certainly seem to be in flying mode now.

Flattery is an offence under the United Magpies Convention Cultural Conditioning Construction Rules.

It is merely as you take it. I have some admiration for magpies ....

I AM not magpies but a growing, and I hope, flowing...

Boasting will get you nowhere.

At least you can laugh. Well let's get on with it. I gather you want an interview.

Nice of you to come. Well have you noticed anything ?

Yes, I was reading what you wrote, and it occurred to me to ask one or two things.

Swoop away.

 You were speaking of the synthetic whole, and all the components and syntheses of things. You seemed to be saying something like this: THEY HAVE BEEN INSTITUTED.

That IS the fact of life.

It is pleasant, isn't it ? I have an institution as maggie, and a facility as myself.

I find the combination wholly exhilarating, he chortled. I mean, I had nothing to do with the fixture, magpie, but have much to do with its deployment!

His eye gleamed, and he went on.

If I madly imagined
 

	myself or my kind to be the creator of the fixtures, or of the DNA orders, the synchronised commands and the correlated power to do them, in fact, to make construction sites plus workers plus equipment plus oversight, generative, governing, ordering, organisation, disposing, directing, protecting; or
	that the beach did it in-between doing what it is really good at, and shows itself good at, and built its own sand castles, mechanised them and gave them wings; or
	that the stars asserted themselves, or
	that it was brought to be and fashioned by something ludicrously in principle unequipped for it, while in practice deprived of it, that yet made hay while the sun did not shine, while the seeds were not there and there was no ground;
	that some non-mental practitioner operated, one not only dead but never seen or shown alive, some uncoded, unqualified, resource-denuded, systematically inadequate and artlessly ineffective alien to all such endeavour;
	that some inert and purposeless executive made purposes, or
	some minus made pluses, not merely in symbol but in substance:

then that would merely make for a ludicrous mis-swoop, and I’d sputter and flutter to the earth.
If I did that, I would suffer a dislocation of the mind, or have the eyes of thought picked out. I would generate worlds in my imagination, dreams in my trances, but folly in my life.

If, he continued with that alert eye I knew so well: If I did that, then reason would lose it beak, though get handy claws and make worlds without using them. The last of things would have mind for the best, even though it did not even lose its mind, never having had one; while minds that are now created, would imagine matter through causal evidence, and then make it a god, and dispensing with its cause, give it worlds for its play-pen, though all knowledge of its very existence depends on thought, and any reality it has for the man of the world, can be found only if mind is independently valid first. If it’s not, then what do reactors know ? If it is, then from what source did it gain this ? If inadequate, forget it, it is illusion. If adequate, then admit it, and find its other requirements in addition to logic.

This fantasy, he chuckled,  is a mouth without rationality, uttering great things - as in Daniel 7:20,25, and one day some man will doubtless put himself in the bottle, and declare himself the genie (II Thess. 2:2-3).

What then would you call it ? I asked as he did an astute landing operation near me again. He was reminding me of SMR Ch.3 very much indeed.

This, he carolled in mock comic-opera style, this is magic. It is all magic of one kind or another: that is, it’s the attribution to what is insufficient in nature, of imaginary power, as in the case of a genie in a bottle; the mental gift to a product of the capacity to produce what its nature omits and its design does not acknowledge.

He reflected, and then proceeded, spreading himself to several short bursts.

It is myth: the attribution of power to featureless non-functionaries, alive and alert only in the imagination.

It is religion, and an ugly one, worship without wisdom and fiction without enough relevance to be even interesting. Relishing irrationality, it pretends to be sober, disenables causal reality and then uses causeless fantasy, while talking causes as if even language were still functional, uttering a slurred slurry of speech, while tottering in a parody of reality, with mind alcohol reading perhaps 1.3.

In fact however, he continued in full flight though still sitting, the case is otherwise. We are executors, not creators, except within the facilities provided.

It is true, mum - or mother now, I suppose - used to tell me with no uncertain beak that I created too much! There is the load of creation we CAN do, but it is not of ourselves, our universe or our minds that we can or do make a creation. They just work, though one can let them rust a bit, silt up, get overgrown, have worm infestations.

It is true, I responded. With colossal fixity, this path for the kinds has been laid down, and has no least idea of how to lay itself.

No, paths don't.

Let me extend this a bit. With science as empirical, its method as verificatory, its formulation meets all criteria with a spectacular facility.

If that were a worm, it would be a juicy one. What formulation ?

In terms of scientific method (first the facts, then account for them, then ensure internal consistency and external match with the rest), it is requisition for, the necessity of the SUPER-natural sufficiency, to account for the NATURAL inadequacy for its being.

You mean - and at that point, he made such a warbling and such a profusion with confusion, of notes and melodies as filled me quite with awe...

Excuse me, he said, it is one of my instinctive capacities, and it seemed a felicitous moment to indulge - excuse me, engage in its function.

Yes.
You were saying, then ?

His courtesy was captivated, and it seemed proper to continue, and so I did.

I was referring to the supernatural One, the God of creation. In simple scientific terms, on every side, logically, empirically, prophetically and principially, in present power from the same source according to specific promises, and historical supervision, this finding as a formulation is verified, required and re-inforced.

Yes. I knew that long ago: creation is simply a fact. That’s why I’m here.

Creationism is an attestation of it. We are illustrations of it. The Bible is a multi-testable work; and it’s one which, in terms of scientific method, a procedure with its application here also, gives shining correlative confirmation in very phase, feature and subject. Its statements rationally account for and profoundly explain in one coherent whole, everything that is (cf. SMR Ch.5). No exemptions appear; no contradictions arise; time does not weary it, nor does discovery vex it.
It stands before and withstands all tests (cf. SMR Chs. 2-9) - the thing science is good at conducting.

The Bible ? It’s demonstrable in the first place by reason (SMR Chs. 1,3,10). Then in biology, in life, and in fact in all arenas, it is verified.

He paused reflectively as I spoke, to eat a worm, which evidently was unusually good, so he flitted away to a nearby wire, overlooking the sea, and looked at it, and then at me, meditatively. Swooping back, he came out with this.
 
 

Is it right to test the Bible ?

For its own part, yes. If your motive is jealousy of God, a desire to have the universe less open to test and hence less open to injury, or to make yourself its boss and so on, so that your test is not objective, but subjectively stressed with antipathy, then the attitude is wrong, even thought the test is in itself, quite right. TASTE AND SEE that the Lord is good, and what is one of the earliest things on the pilgrimage to God's presence without peril, called heaven, is the Bible.
What if you test it with a desire that it should be right ?

Well said, maggie, and I wish more could think so simply as you do.

But what about it ?

This brings up a whole new dimension, so I shall treat it most briefly, to ensure we do not wander into that sort of marshy wilderness of little eddies, which do not flow.

Do so - and then, about my question ? he darted momentarily to a line of posts, railings, to push off a seagull which seemed to him, evidently, a little too curious. There are some things which need concentration. At least, one hopes that was his motive. The seagull dutifully flew away, watching with that suspended motion in mid-air which seems almost effortless, though the breeze was by no means a listless one.

It seemed a good moment to answer so I did, as follows.

Honesty and abiding in Christ as the truth - these are part of being a Christian. No facts produce fear, all facts are in chains, for they are created facts. The controls seem like chains, anyway, to those who hate God, but they are really controls.

WILL is a fact. You can use it within limits, to deny the obvious, as is most common in this field. When you are a Christian, your will is NOT a slave to desire, one way or the other, but a servant of truth. You KNOW the truth, and you SEE the truth because HE who is in you IS the truth. To assume you COULD want to make His word true when it IS truth, is a contradiction in terms.

More simply, or you'll give me indigestion. Have a worm ?

Oh thanks, not just now. You test it with an EXPECTATION it will be right, and that RIGHT will prevail, and with a FAITH that this will be the case. After the first million or so times, it does not seem an issue; at the first, faith works, and till the last it is the same, but like putting on running shoes, when it is done, you do not expect them to airlift you, but to tread rightly.

Good confidence. What would you say about this ? In what sense is the Bible confirmed as a confirmatory document ? I mean, it is confirmed in what it says about creation, by creation; but what about its standing, independently of that ? Isn't every source, however good some contribution on some topic, to be assessed, and critically evaluated as to its overall competence - I mean, just as you would do concerning a witness in a murder trial ?

Certainly. Past performance is relevant to functional power, not to mention integrity, which brings up the topic of the will again. In the case of the Bible, its independent demonstration (as in SMR Chs.1-3,10) is one thing; its capacity to stand in ALL fields apart from MULTIPLE changes in MANY circumstances, this is another; the superiority of that to ANY science is so absolute that it is laughable.

Science is CONSTANTLY amending and superintending what it says, and laughing at its foibles and follies of yesterday (when it is in the mood, and does not feel challenged). By comparison - now do not be offended at this - it is frequently found to be even worse than you were, compared with your parents, 3 months ago. But that’s when it is contrary to its own discipline, just as you sometimes were! It however is not lately growing nearly so good at learning discipline in these dimensions, as you were. It’s growing worse in this, because more are growing more cold and unseeing, and hence less ready to fashion their thoughts on what to many are the spiritually undesirable dimensions required.

I'll buy that. Must say, my own performances were incredibly dithery at times. Yes, I see, that is so. It is impressive. You know the way I used to go - CAW, SQUAW and so on, when I wanted food. Give me more or I'll do it now.

Good motive. Its imperviousness to assault is an allied feature. People have been trying to debunk it, whether for kicks or kudos, for removal of a moral mountain to give freedom for folly or pleasure, or to get even with those who love it and have annoyed them, or various other reasons (such as avoiding income tax or annexing a nearby land because it seemed it would make them richer, or making slaves because it seemed it would make them pleasantly lazy) ... for millenia.

Moses, I continued, though speaking in the name of God with multiple tests constantly met, as to the divine power working with him, in a most naked laboratory type historical situation, was challenged for all that, by the sons of Korah, who were met in that case, with a sufficient barrier (Numbers 16). It came in the form of an opening in the ground. The conditions were not favourable to fooling around. Deserts can be harsh. Sin is like a desert.

He cocked his head, and commented sagely: At least Moses did not do it.

Quite. He fell on his face before the Lord (Numbers 16:4), and would gladly have given up except it was a commission, and for the matter of that, pled with God not to destroy the people. He nursed them.

Yes, so it has stood in many wars on it.

Undoubtedly. Like Christ in Judah, when it is a question of DIVINITY, of the SUPERNATURAL WISDOM which founded us, TALKING, it has to be good. It needs to stand. It does not need to be outwitted by what it formulated, this wisdom which also speaks in the Bible.

What do you mean - by what it formulated ?

Ourselves.

Ah! At that moment, he grabbed a crust from a nearby hand.

Permit me to ask a question, I said.

Do! he responded.

Was that nice ?

Tasty.

No, I meant, why did you steal that crust ?

Oh, it was just an embarrassing moment, the poor chap didn't want to throw it away, so I acted as travelling garbage.

Hmm! The Biblical POSITION, what it claims, the absolute truth from the mouth of absolute knowledge, confirmed by absolute test verification, also gives it a unique position. Without absolute truth, you cannot know anything. If then the Bible is to be true and right, then it MUST come from absolute truth. What doesn't, is mere reaction, however tested, for it is not itself a criterion which does the testing, but a consequence without truth calibration.

What of the Moslems ? They claim the absolute truth from the absolute One who has it.
They do not show grounds for believing this is not an absolute imposture. ANY communicator who wishes to identify what He wants, needs to identify who He is, if it is demanding. The Koran does not in the slightest degree do this.  If you want more, read SMR pp. 50ff., 91, 829ff., 989ff., 1079ff., 1186Aff..

Thanks, I'll leave that to Summer reading.

Good, make it sooner rather than later. In this way,  the Bible leads to the destruction in principal and a priori, of every contestant. Nothing has what it takes, they lose what is necessary even to make the affirmation; and as to showing what is wrong at the outset, is right in the end, every other option fails again, so you have this delightful, divinely ordered duality. Nothing else CAN stand, and nothing else DOES. Principle-performance criteria like that are like a Summer breeze. This is the only one, and it is getting very hot.

Yes, you see that in the heat: a lot of birds that don't seem to have any manners. Human birds, I mean. They are not to the Manner borne. The things you see when you soar. Their hearts seem ditched in the dirt. They are not with it, and it is not with them.
 
 

An interesting observation! It is true that the leap to laxity of thought is often allied to a jump to mini-morals, and in fact the two are prophesied JOINTLY with vast precision, in a whole tartan complex of associated and principially related elements (SMR Chs. 8-9, cf. Matthew 24, II Timothy 3, II Peter 2). These are carrying this present world to its destruction at the speed and with the address also prophesied.

As a matter of fact, it rather reminds me of some of your swoops. There is the feathery control, the structural flexing also ordered exactly and in sequence, there is the speed, the location you choose for the launch, the alertness on the way: it is not so many atoms of activity, but one whole overall, synthetic totality which CAN be looked at in detail, but IS one whole in conception, filled with purpose, susceptible to error, multiple in format, singular in significance.

I must say, that’s myself to a tee.

People DO like to ignore things in a way that would be infantile if it were not directed to various motives that mull about in the mind of autonomy, and such like.

Didn't I hear you the other day say that the mockery of religion was also predicted ?

You may have. It is in II Peter 3, for example. Did you find this:
 

• "Scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts,
• and saying, ‘Where is the promise of His coming ?

For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.’
 
• For this they wilfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water. But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men."

Indeed, you are right. It's also useful, because it aids scientific alertness to the way things are going, as one follows the book: just as it confirms its words, so also it affirms where we are: near to the end of the track for this Age.

What's the next main step ?

Well of course the Jews have to be met with amazing force, which God overthrows, but more decisively, Christ is to return. The crucified King, whom unbelief dismisses but can never replace, the pattern of wisdom, for man, and the resource of His creation as the eternal word of God spoken, sent and accomplished in Messianic mission, will return as the same book declares (Acts 1:7ff., I Thess.4).

Yes, I remember now. He scratched under his wing, and I had to realise that he looked rather like an old chemistry master of mine, with that beak so pointed, that look so acute, that head, so inclined. But in society, it is never good to take too many liberties, people and magpies being what they are; so I did not suffer myself the delight of so much as a contented and harmless smirk. There are, after all, more important things...

The Jews had to recapture Jerusalem, for Christ predicted its total devastation, stone from stone, just as Daniel had indicated its destruction after the death of the Messiah. When did that occur ? Well, after its A.D. 70 destruction, that was in 1948, 1967 chiefly. Long time. Has come now. Had to come. Now it's past, we have the "on your marks" call, for the race of life. It is nearly time now for the final lap (Luke 21:24). Actually, 1981, 1999 were too more dates in the Israeli declarations of intent and conception concerning Jerusalem, just as the earlier ones showed the physical arrest of the city, by their forces.

Don't humans have even a bird's wisdom ? he asked.
 
 

It varies. Those of us who want life's wisdom need to apply now. God,
whose patience is a steadfast wonder, is as sure as kind. The kindness of two millennia ...

You mean since Christ was born ?

About that, yes. His kindness in all that time has waited (II Peter 3:9). The sure arrival of Christ like Spring shows its first leaves. But the blossoms, will be those of disaster to those who reject the Prince of Life (Acts 3:15). No more can SPIRITUAL LIFE arise for man, than biological life "arise" for its own delectation, drawing vainly on bank accounts of ability that are not there. Each is declared by the alone sufficient One, that is God.

He wiped his beak, so I was able to continue.

Also declared is judgment, which many would like to see on this or that movement or person or place, but which in fact come where it is fitting; and it fits everywhere that is rebelliously liberated from the Prince of Life, who after all, has IN CAPACITY as LIFE, suffered and bled and been buried and broken the whole stab of death, to declare pardon from the position of victim victorious, sufferer vicarious, judgment bearer (Isaiah 53:5-6, Titus 1:1-4). Psalm 2 says it so well...

Yes, I was peering into that this morning, where it says God will laugh at those who cast away what they trickily call His 'cords' and want out with His Son kindly sent to achieve what we lost the power to do, abundantly friendship in the love of God as His children.

He will also act: Beware you judges, He thunders.

The beautiful bird looked out to sea, with its hovering clouds, reflectively, and I proceeded.

There is thunder enough on this earth from nearly every source: the ultimate thunder will out-thunder them all, because it will be judgment according to truth. After all, since God is beyond all system and is the basis of all creation, including all derivative system, then what contradicts the facts contradicts Him, is at war with Him, distorts His wisdom, defiles His creation, mars His image in man and marauds against His people. Into this little rat’s nest of evil, this other way, He has not poured mere destruction, to rescue His truth, affirm constantly equity protect from the ravages of mental, moral and spiritual lust, as with any other pests, but planted remedy instead.

And that ? it is His Son sent to deliver the goods, death for life, and curse taken for curse voided, a gift of lovingkindness and mercy to man. He is the key that fits it all; none other does; nor can it; and He opens the door to understanding as also to life.

But not to all, surely, since so few are His ?

Offered to all, it is rejected by most; keyed up with themselves, their stars and their fads, false motivation, and agitated super-activation or disclination, they fail to use the key. That is their wisdom, and it will kill them, though death is not the end of it all, but judgment.
 
 

You know a good place to see it put together ? II Corinthians 4:1-7. There you see the COMMAND OF CREATION, which is ordered by illimitable power by word, just as we see inscribed in DNA and operative in material things. You see too the obfuscation of the cataract-closed eyes of man, the leitmotif of the "god of this world" - engineer of the folly the wayward will courts, a sort of anti-eye doctor; and you observe all this together with the supernatural source of the restored life of man, shown in the plan of salvation of God which is put still further in II Cor. 5:17-21: based on pardon, redemption and practical love in Christ, the ransom price.

Let me follow that up, my dear bird, will you ? Man in His image is not a conditionable construction for manipulation, but an object given leash, rein and opportunity, and given it too in such a way that mere authority is not at all the question. It is irrefutable truth allied with unwithering mercy, provided at cost and with personal anguish by the Creator in Christ.

• "In all their  affliction, He was afflicted," it says (Isaiah 63:9), but His on the Cross was definitive, the just for the unjust to bring us to God.

Seems pretty straightforward to me, except for people who will not go to hospital at any price, because it suggests they are sick.

With these words, the discerning bird looked rather mistily downward, so I hastened to enquire with these words.

What's this about hospital, may I ask you ?
 

Well, if you need a ransom for your own follies, he replied, you are sick, aren't you ? Sick in heart, in spirit.
 

Yes, He is the great Physician.
 

Some people would rather die in mortal agony, even suffer eternal anguish in the pangs of truth, than admit they are sick in heart or sullied in spirit.
 

So it seems; but in their profusion of confusion, they often try to blot out the facts with the fictions of the Age, as if TV and violent sport (even tennis is moving that way) and violent road rage and territorial, religious and tribal wars, would somehow preoccupy themselves enough to forget the obvious: they are sick and need healing.
 

That DIN some of them make, he said with a little flutter. You even have a President with hearing problems because of ear butchery when younger. Isn't it sad, how they wreck themselves so that havoc can be wreaked on their destinies ?
 

The DIN of SIN, eh ?
 

Why don't you tell them ? I'd sweep down and swoop in their paths, you know ?
 

Indeed, I know your ways, especially at mating season!
 

Well, would you like someone interfering ...
 

Not particularly.
 

It seems to be that some people of your race are acting as if they really WANTED to achieve a new qualification: that of rubbish. If you reject your proper use, what else is it ?
 

That's Gehenna, Jerusalem's slow burning rubbish dump of old. Christ used it in reference to hell.
 

Rejecting Christ is like chucking worms into the rubbish tin. I learned not to do that. He looked thoughtful.
 

Reject Him, His plan, His way, and intellectual rebellion joins hands with reckless ingratitude to present the only available implement, the rubbish tin - or rubbish arena if you prefer. That is the type, but not the hype of hell.
 

What about a pointed pith ?
 

Don't like your imagery. Pith tends to be pulpy ...
 

Pulp can be pointed when my beak annoys it.
 

Yes. REPENT, BELIEVE IN HIM FOR THE REMISSION OF SINS, and ensure it is THE LORD’S CHRIST (II Cor. 11, Luke 2:26, I John 5), SINLESS, CRUCIFIED AND BODILY RISEN. Other makes are fakes. He did it. Carefully manufactured words of men, as to them, they did NOT (II Peter 1:16-21). HE commands repentance, and commands no less the darkness to depart, because when it is in His light, it can do nothing else (II Cor. 4)!

For once he was still, so I proceeded.

Listen to this: "God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." He commanded the light, commanded the creation, gave man the option of fellowship, to continue in it, and as he did not, He commands repentance (Acts 17:30-31), and on faith in Him, commands light. That is really MULTIPLE COMMANDS, but all about ONE Messiah, ONCE crucified, ONCE risen, giving ONE salvation available to ALL people, and He is SOON returning in the power with which He both, with the trinity, created and was raised.
 

I am used to commands. In the end, I found they led me to freedom, like this!

So saying, he swept down with the wind to the beach, carolling and circling, and then quietly resumed his perch by me, on the seat.

Go on! he said.
 

Well I shall swoop on these things myself, so settle with your worms a bit, and consider these things.
 

Will you be very long ? he asked warily.
 

I fear it may not be incredibly short, I nodded, looking out to sea.
 

Well, I'll listen if I like, he said, and then the air resounded with that matchless warbling which is at once stark and joyful, luminous and mischievous, noble and exuberant.
 

Look, then I said, at the situation.
 

• Repentance of sin,
• acceptance of the substitutionary splendour of the Saviour,
• crucified with sin, laid upon Him for all who are to be healed (Isiash 53:2-6),
• typifying heaven and hell through the diverse declaration of the two thieves on the nearby crosses,
• with the relish of His power in breaking death:
• these by faith are the ways of Him who made this world, and offers the next.

Some people, said the astute bird,  seem to say you just have to keep saying the word Jesus over and over, but that sounds to me like vain repetitions (Matthew 6:5-8), without knowledge or spirit, as if you people were all zombies.
 

You are right to be so critical of this, I replied; for it is not just the letters J.E.S.U.S., but the person to whom they refer, Biblically presented, historically active, the unchanging God in the person of man, not some result of impermissible Moronic messages coming AFTER Him from forbidden angels, as for Mormons, or papal proclamations giving something new and contrary in the same name, or some Moslem grotesquerie, separating Christ from His Father of eternity, or some thought control method that uses psychology to manipulate ... Hardly. That is really crucifying Him all over again, a deadly folly. In fact, some people want to start all over again, putting Christ in some pot of thought, instead of having their thoughts in His keeping.

Forbidden is humbling before angels and masters, I pursued it;  for this is excluded from the first: any addition in the delusions of spurious intrusion. The mystic and miasmic words are excluded in the teeming multitude of false prophets a-plenty and abounding, as predicted - Matthew 24:24, Colossians 2:9,18, Galatians 1:6-9. There is but one good shepherd (John 10:11,27) - the rest are brethren, and even the apostle Paul, had he preached a DIFFERENT GOSPEL from that which he had ALREADY preached to the Galatians, would be cursed with these frauds. THAT is what HE said in Galatians.
 

That is practical and straightforward, said the lively magpie, carolling with pure pleasure and chortling in his inimitable way with a delicately gentle amusement.
 

It is as you say, came my reply. The Gospel was not identified and bound so that it might be lost; but bound so that those who were lost should not subvert  those who were found (I Peter 1:25-26, Isaiah 59:21, Matthew 24:35). Those who pretend to find what it is not given, are the lost, when they believe it, for what is found is neither the authorised, nor the bound nor that attested from the first. It is simply what, as predicted, is inserted at the LAST.

He mused while toying with a worm. It seemed a good moment to pursue the point.

Of course, this same Jesus is the one to return again. His words will judge. He says so (John 12:48-50). He is just and what He has said will stand, and what has added or subtracted, IS NOT standing by what He has said, so that the judgment according to His words will be painful. He has not provided what is false for thousands of years, in order to judge by what is true. It is an EVERLASTING COVENANT (Hebrews 13:20), so that the promise is not only to the Jew of Peter's day, but to "your children, and TO ALL WHO ARE AFAR OFF" (Acts 2:39, emphasis added), as many as the Lord will call.

There is no limit to this everlasting covenant in time, or word or in power (Romans 1:16). If there were, it would not be everlasting; nor would each word stand, as the word of God does stand, abiding as I Peter 1 says, for ever. People or even a whole society, may ELECT to ignore what is there; but it is there. It is never lost to those who seek. It is never weak. It is never in chains; for as Paul says, the word of God is not bound (II Timothy 2:9).

The effectual promise does not depend on new gospels with new angels and new leaders and new masters (God forbid - Matthew 23:8-10, I Cor.3, II Cor. 11): THAT is the stuff of immaturity and the realm of revolt, we learn from these words of God.

The new gospel is no gospel, the other gospel is not another. It is, this covenantal promise as Peter declared,  TO ALL who are afar off, and is received by as many as are called. Where it is not received, it is not the less the word of God; and where it is, it is by the power of the Holy Spirit, by whom the Lord acts (I Thessalonians 1:5). But what does God say of His word ? this: "All His precepts are sure. They stand fast forever and ever, and are done in truth and uprightness. He has sent redemption to His people; He has commanded His covenant forever..." (Psalm 111:7-8).

This does not signify that He has not sent redemption, that His precepts are not sure, that they cannot be done in truth and uprightness because they are gone, or that forever is really now and again. That is not what it says. It is not the word of God which is bereaved of itself; it is man who is bereaved of obedience, alert with rebellion, making new christs as predicted (Matthew 24:24), plenty of them, like spiritual manufacturing premises, thus fulfilling predicted mounting rebellion, and insulting the Lord to His face, who warned of these things, while they abound in their invasions, distortions and perversions as though He were set at nought, so that His words might as well follow suit.

And so it is for such. Taking the works of Christ and the word of God, they seize both as they are able, and torturing the words, or inserting pollutants, they wrangle with the Prince of Peace, not this time to His detriment, but to their perdition.

It is the lost who are lost to the Lord; but the word of God is neither bound nor unfound, as if His intercession (Hebrews 7:25) by which He is able to save to the uttermost ALL who come to Him, were unavailing (contrary to John 11: 41-42). What Christ called wolves, however, wolves in sheep's clothing, these would betray the shepherd and scare the sheep, as if Christ were a failure, and mucked it up through a lost gospel, in a vacant globe and a void earth, to which He had come so far in vain. He however, and his record is not touched by such trifling; so that foundering is all that is left for those who have lost it, not by its absence, but by their presumption in impugning the integrity of God and the realities of history in accord with His word, for "concerning your testimonies, I have know of old that you have founded them forever" - Psalm 119:152. No, out of the mouth of the generations, they will not depart (Isaiah 59:21).

Jesus never fails.
 

AMEN! said the magpie, happy to get a word into the address.
 

Do you believe that ? I asked.
 

I imitate what I hear, he said, but one could not help wondering at the sad, gentle look in his eye, just how much he understood; more, it seemed, than many who are NOT birds, but fly in the wind as if contrariety were paradise.
 

Encouraged, I continued, therefore.

As to the Lord Jesus Christ: He DID NOT COME to condemn but to save. His words stand, as they have stood, being guaranteed to do just that; and what does not stand with them, will, said Christ, have them fall on them, and what ? Cut them to pieces (Matthew 21:44).  Indeed, if they are to build on the rock of His word (Matthew 7;21ff.), then how would they do so if it were missing! The decision in these things is not small; the issue crushes into a condensed destiny with fraud, or to a living faith in the God who is able to keep what is committed to Him, keep His gospel and keep His prophetic depictions of the time just and accurate, so that we might know the time of wolves, which is now, while the sects use their appointed teeth (despite Matthew 18:6, for they seem not to know what they do), where the necks of the lambs are not taken safely into the fold, all too well. .

Jesus the Christ is not reconstructable or subject to a kind of spiritual plastic surgery, is He ? (the thing was tried then, in Paul's day, as it abounds as predicted in this - II Cor. 11), and those responsible are apostolically called "false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder!" he adds, "For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. Therefore  it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works" - II Cor. 4:13ff.. Small wonder, for to reconstruct Christ is to construct a god, and to worship an idol (John 5:19ff., 8:58, I Cor. 6:9-10).

Christ ? The Son of God who works all things after the counsel of His own will (Ephesians 1:11): He did not come so that comedians might make cartoons of Him; He came that the world might believe, and bound His word that they might be sure, and predicted the mockers that we might know, so that just as the Bible was found, and the truth discerned in the times near Christ,  when the things were known, and the church was enabled to ensure it  (SMR Appendix C), so as the additives are found, in these last times, it is bound that it be false, and many stumble as is bound
(I Peter 2:7-8).

THIS is bound, and so it is bound to happen, as those foreknown pursue their grisly and ungrateful paths. But the word of God is not bound (II Timothy 2:9, Matthew 5:17ff.), and not a JOT or TITTLE will pass from the law. Its every nook, each cranny of meaning will be sustained. Its teaching will be sustained, its impact maintained, its impartation contained and disseminated, incapable of de-activation, dismissal or departure.

Accordingly, all that is newly and without authority added, new gospels and the like, all that is re-written will be smitten.  Revelation  22:18 forbids the adding to these "THINGS", just as clearly as does Gal. 1:6-9, II Cor 4, II Tim. 4:34. Thus all that is added will be subtracted, and those who follow fraud will merely self-constitute as serving another lord than He whose words will not pass away. Let then the gods who have NOT made the heaven and the earth save them (Jeremiah 10:12), just as they saved the fraudulent priests of Baal in the days of Elijah, with that panorama of power that was silent, that intervention that was zero, that love that was lost (I Kings 18:20ff.).

God is not mocked, however much the mockers deride. It does not do anything, unless, without repentance, this: that those who mock find mockery their 'saviour', and a saviour that is which damns, for it is merely an invasion of truth from error, grasping, snapping like a rampant crocodile, the unwary.
 

Count me out for that! cried the aroused bird. You people seem amazingly dull to play about in such things. You want to know your place.
 

Dead right! I answered. And what a place it is for us!

FOR GOD HAS GIVEN US HIS WORD OF THE EVERLASTING COVENANT (Heb. 13:20-21), and with the criterion of Christ, has sent the word of God, that the One showing His face, the other should preserve His portrait. This was done so that all might find the One who came, not mourn for the loss of the record, as if His infinite power were inadequate to support it, instead, as is the case, of unmasking the fraudulent who would add at two millenia distant, the devices of re-writing with the pen of ignorance the things which were recorded of Him who, coming, showed Himself, and being shown, is truly exhibited to our eyes in the word of God, which does not pass away.

Indeed (Amos 3:7), if God HAD sent His Son and then so messed things that  the record would be corrupt, and the picture would mislead, then  that would be a case of failure, and the manifestation of Christ on earth would feature as a mockery, unholily hooted through corrupt text, which its author did not sustain. However the word of God is what He performs, and in nothing is it left vacant, idle or in error as we have shown in much detail (SMR Chs. 8-9 for example). WHAT HE IS GOING TO DO HE SHOWS HIS PEOPLE (Amos 3:7), and what He says He does (Isaiah 48, 34:16), and what He says He keeps (Isaiah 59:21, Matthew 24:35).

DID He then forecast that the word of God would be lost to this earth ? lost to the faithless but not to the earth! Instead, He forecast THE PRECISE OPPOSITE! The word of God would remain and endure, and many with itching ears would hire preachers with impenitent tongues to salve their ears with new things. The evidence of history and the attestation of our contemporary times, as always with the word of God, match, and do so to perfection.

False prophets, false christs ? What did the Christ tell us about this, as time would pass, and the special features of His approaching return would show (as in Matthew 24, Luke 21 as in the above references, noted).

Fraudulent aspirants ? THEY will come and WILL add and WILL subtract, and WILL have false angelic visions and WILL want, with itching ears, something different, but they and those who heed will  ALSO be calamitously conditioned by such things, or indeed, receive them because they are already conditioned amiss (I Timothy 6:2ff., II Tim. 4:2ff.). The appointment to stumble is predestined by Him who knows all (I Peter 2:8-9), discerns what all are doing, and states that the Gospel will remain, though heaven and earth pass, as Christ indicated.

Indeed it has been revealed in no little detail since the days of Isaiah (52-55), who is cited in the New Testament with that same everlasting gospel (Rev. 14:6, Barbs, Arrows and Balms 17).

They build on sand (Matthew 7:26), and then get upset because it is getting dirty with time. That is the way with the sand, when the waters are polluted. It is NOT because the word of rock was absent, but because it was not DONE that the condemnation is PREDICTED and the judgment PREDICATED in this case, for those who built on sand!
 

They would do well to consider who are so based! said the darting bird, momentarily diverted into a foray against a seagull who seemed to have taken a fancy to some rather appealing food morsel.
 

Let us modernise our imagery, I mused. It is no good putting your tent-poles into radio-active ground. This world will pass, to be burnt up, just as will its evil ideas (II Peter 3). The avalanche will come. The surface is dangerous. The helicopter is at hand. It is unwise to be dazzled by the snow, and wait for the crunch. It is also thoughtless; but if hell is the desire, THIS is the way. It deserves it all.
 

Well it is certainly getting it! cried the learned magpie. It seemed to have noticed a lot. You know there are some of you people I WOULD DECLINE TO IMITATE, even for fun!

You know what I think of this world ? he continued.  It's no good joining it, it's only a staging post.
 

What do you know about horses ?
 

They're fun to swoop on, but really I love their smooth motion, the myriads of hooves and the simplicity of flow, like wind.

That's life: symmetry and significance, purpose and unity, matrix and profundity, with plenty of substructures, which merely serve the purpose.
 

What's the purpose ?
 

Return to sender, gratitude for His graces, correction for His wisdom, salvation from sin, friendship with God, peace with one's fellows in His kingdom, love of truth, splendour of beauty, appreciation of all things good, intelligence with virtue, morality with mission, willingness to love the Lord, who IS lovely, and not to nestle with interminable termites, blind but useful for some things, under the ground.
 

Termites ? he asked. Valuable, but let them stay too near your house and you'll know the curse. You need to consider your company, and the end of the matter, not just some one feature.

But blessing ? his words began to flow like his song. I like to see humans step out for Christ, striding in the way of designed life, living in the discipleship of love that has liberty for its dynamic, teamwork that is open to option, principles open to light, walking in the light, children of the light, untamed by fear, unstricken by pollution, filled with faith.

He then sang with such exuberance that it seemed the heavens would come to listen; but that is his dynamic deliverance, his presentation from his beautiful voice, from its contribution in his creation. That is his gift. Eternal life is mine (I John 5:12ff.). There is endurance! What is true lasts. HE is true, and it is good to last with Him, not passing like a chopped down oak-tree, however beautiful the lawn on which it once ... stood. My home is in heaven, and my look is for a city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is ... God.
 
 
 

NOTE
 

*1 See SMR Index, and
Rest, Index ( 'vacant house of naturalism'): KH 1 pp. 12ff., KH 4, pp. 34, 37, 38(2), 44, 47, 57ff. ; TMR 1 pp. 15, 17, 19, 35, 41;TMR 7, pp. 176Aff., esp. 176I; BEN 68, 44, pp. 176ff., 51, p. 247 KH 10, Part 2