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Chapter 1
VICTORY
is
NOT ONLY FOR ANGELS:
Heritage
for Christians,
Exile from
this World
Victory ?
Of course, you might
say: That is manifestly ridiculous. People, like Alexander the Great, in this
world,
of this world, garnering cherished ambitions, manifesting power,
projecting personality, imprinting their names on history, surely these have
victory.
Alexander, a little
over 30 years old ...dying, being
somewhat wounded, at a feast far from home: this, it would seem, smacks
but little of triumph. But you say, Hitler and all that: for - from
his viewpoint - several glorious years, he smacked Europe's bottom, and
avenged in particular his rufflement at the Art Gallery that thought
- in his view - too little of his work. Surely, you might urge, this was,
although admittedly but temporary, a victory, at least of sorts.
Undoubtedly, it is a
victory of sorts; but the sort of victory which ends in infamy, vainglory
manifest, power polluted, flesh scorched and a body incinerated does not appear,
in any realistic view comprehending all the features of the performance, to be a
victory at all. It savours rather of those tediously infantile and grossly
glamorised deaths of some of the suicidal religious assassins who have littered recent
history with their murderous macho. They hurt more than they are hurt, at best;
and the best is worst, for what is established by all this carnage, this
weeping, this convulsive cry from the hearts of mothers at the agony of their
children ?
Is it that the world in its profane
vanity is willing in wild incoherence to imagine that in some way this helps
establish the case that the Arab peoples,
already by breach of contract given some 79% of Palestine, need yet more in
order to be FAIR, in some abstruse way. Is it THIS which is the 'victory' ? Is
it this, instead of actually USING the massive land grab, already made,
namely Jordan,
to house Moslems ? Is it then this, to grab yet more from the country which lost its appointed territory by this
donation from Britain, which is the gift of very largely Moslem Jordan ? And that
donation, it was one in strict and explicit
violation of its own
Balfour Agreement of 1917, and of the League of Nations
decision of 1920, both of which accorded Palestine to Israel (ALL of it!). How
then do they talk of Jewish occupied territories, instead of Arab occupied areas
of Jewish Palestine, such as Jordan AND the West Bank, AND the Gaza strip ? Has
language ceased to have meaning for the sake of propaganda ? Has 'victory'
become the method of having a new holocaust, in little dabs, a few score here,
choice children there, so that the idea of Europe's long and infamous
persecution of Jews will not be lost, and may be soundly exported to the Middle
East, by having an International Road Map reward the terrorism, and defile the
original gift, yet more.
All this, and yet does one hear the
term 'justice' used by such defamation of its character! Justice to pillage
Israel more, justice to reward murderers, justice to judge Israel for seeking to
defend herself against murderers!
This ? It is victory. If shame and
incoherence, if torture - for these murderers, although posthumously so, are
MASS TORTURERS, vile beyond description their work against the young without the
least sign of care or guilt - if these things are in the category of victory for
this human race, it is not really apparent in what way. If such aberrant
monstrosities drub the conscience of this world until it reels in self-preserving
confusion, declaring yes, yes, there obviously needs to be far more than 79% of
Palestine taken from the Jews who were given it by international protocol, and
we will call this justice. Yes, yes, obviously, but entirely and utterly with
clarity, we need to breach the agreement made with the Jewish help to Britain
and its allies in industrial chemistry in view, even more.
This too, it is a species of justice
?
It would appear to
be the same sort of species of justice that underground tunnels comprise, of
aviation.
WHAT IT IS
VICTORY implies a
fight. Against which party is the fight justly, intelligently, morally,
correctly to be
made ?
The normal choice is against God. It
is often clothed in custom-built false religion, usually involving some or all
of your approach to God in man-made terms. It is rather like coming to your
dentist without an appointment, and showing him your own appointment book, in
which you have carefully, yes meticulously written the details of your coming
appointment. He refuses, advising that you have to come to his office where the
arrangements will be made as seems good to his establishment. Is God then to be
deemed less than a dentist ? There is something to get your spiritual teeth
into!
The correct choice is in terms of that
truth which CANNOT even exist without God, since there is no one else who knows
all things in the perspective of omniscience, the purity of non-interference
with reality, and the competence that stretches before and after the limitations
of our time, to present things as they really are, not in the confines of the
latest ignorant outbursts of some group of fashionable scientists, philosophers
or sociologists, who have found the latest engineering of logic and man, to
their passing taste.
Those ephemeral things come like continual
Springs, without however
their beauty, and go like Autumn
leaves a few years later. Currently organic
evolution is in distress, its options being posed with pusillanimous philosophy,
with that daring of the weak, that fling before final ruin, you often see
in the jungle (cf. Spiritual Refreshings Ch.
13, Wake Up World
Chs. 4-6, TMR Chs.
1, 8, SMR pp.
226ff.).
Nothing is the source, say some. Matter is eternal, say others,
pleasantly ignoring the logical impasse of using causality to prove that there
isn't any need for it. They barge into worlds of creation which contradict not
only logic, but empirical fact (cf.
Models and Marvels, in TMR), and endlessly
opine, never containing the full scope of the data and the truth, always voiding, avoiding,
hoping, considering that Mars will yet do this, that the fossil record will yet
come good, though its decease was already in the mind of Darwin, who confessed
its non-co-operation, which as Director W.R. Thompson (Commonwealth Institute of
Biological Research at the time) pointed out, is a situation which has not
notably changed since! (cf. SMR pp. 200ff.).
In fact, all of this, it is the wrong war. Doing
without the God of creation, of information, of application, of mentality and
validity (cf. TMR Ch. 5, Barbs,
Arrows and Balms 6 -7,
29, Spiritual Refreshings
Ch. 16, SMR Chs.
3, 10), is mere self-war on your own only
possible foundations for truth, on evidence and on truth. It is, in the
Bible,
rightly called 'the lie' (II Thessalonians 2, I John 2, 4).
To what then is man to direct
himself ? Believe it or not, it is to God, it is against substitutes, puny,
pulpy, evanescent devices of delusion, and it is to follow the word written FROM
God FOR man. One
can sympathise with the motor companies who everlastingly, as
it might seem, find themselves
inundated with troubled clients who did not
bother to read, far less to follow the Manual! It is so simple, with a good
manufacturer, if you do. Of course, he will need to be good in at least three
respects: first, in the article provided, the car; second in the coverage of
topics set down in writing, and thirdly in the clarity of the wording. The
THING, the FACTS and the SPEECH are all vitally needed.
The Bible has these in abundance,
and some of the basics are shown, for example in SMR
Ch. 7, including some summaries at the outset.
If it did not, what sort of a manual would it be; and if it chopped and changed,
as does 'science' in its world views, and prognostications, often rendered
with absurd arrogance in view of the slightest knowledge of its history, then it
would obviously be absurd to believe
it. However it does not change for two very
good reasons: it does not need to (if your income tax figures are right, the
last thing you want to do is change them), and it is the word of God. It is the
word of Him who knows
the end of
all of TIME itself, in this world's limited but fascinating program
for it, its beginning, its reason, its point
and its pith.
When HE speaks, it is not in
hypothesis, but wisdom, not in limitation but lordship, and not in arrogance but
in due authority. When you are 'it', you do not need elevation, programs for
your advance or ambitions for your tenure. When you are Eternal, you do not need
time to applaud you.
The victory ?
It is first in KNOWING GOD. This
requires finding Him where He may be found, following His word, and in
repentance by faith, receiving Him as He is shown to be in His word written, and
living, both sent to this world.
This is doubly
underlined when
· in
this devious world
· there
is almost every conceivable delusion,
· from
sectarian ambitions for the glory of some denomination,
· to
secular ambitions for some ancient 'church',
· to
sects with a kaleidoscope of scriptural complexes, like iron and steel
skyscrapers with some floors made of mud,
· to
vanishing gods as in Buddhism and Hinduism (cf. SMR
Chs. 1, 10, esp. with pp.
995-1026,
1012ff.,
269ff.),
· vituperative
ones as in varieties of Islam, militant ones as in the Koran (cf. More
Marvels ... Ch. 4), and
· discreetly
hidden ones as in Communism, or evolutionism, smuggled into the arena, hustling
with their secret service agents (TMR Chs. 1, 8, SMR
Ch. 1, p. 80, Ch. 2,
p. 113, Ch. 4, p.
381,
421ff.,
422Aff.,
422Eff.,
Ch. 9, pp.
965ff., Ch. 10
*p. 999, and
131,
138,
212,
254-270,
276-277,
284-290,
292-303,
305-311,
313-316G,
332C,
998-1002C,
1014-1017).
The victory,
again, it is secondly in DEVELOPING THE FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD. You do NOT
do this by ignoring His words, as if you wanted to perform a gratuitous and
imperious operation on His lips, or some sort of spiritual parallel to lobotomy.
You consider Him whom you love, and love Him whom you consider, and consider
this, that HE KNOWS, that HE is love, who cannot lie (cf. Christ, the
Wisdom and the Power of God
Ch. 8, Barbs, Arrows and Balms
6 -7, Repent or Perish
Ch. 2, SMR
Ch. 1, Calibrating Myths...
Ch. 6): and hence you so act.
SO ACT! you may reply, or
indeed retort. You might as well say (without apology to Lewis Carroll), that an
athlete who wants to jump 7feet and 6 inches, just follows the routine provided
in the manual, and 'so acts'! It is so platitudinous as to be meaningless, you
may feel like adding, though perhaps deciding against such a course of words,
since it is not so much meaningless, strictly, as daunting.
WHERE IT IS
TO BE FOUND
However, wisdom is not always found
in our race, since it is (comparatively rarely) found where it is
to be discovered, in God Himself! (cf. Job 28 which follows).
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"Surely
there is a vein for the silver, and a place for gold where they fine it.
Iron is taken out
of the earth, and brass is molten out of the stone. He sets an end to
darkness, and searches
out all perfection: the stones of darkness, and the shadow of death. The
flood breaks out
from the inhabitant; even the waters forgotten of the foot: they are dried
up, they are gone
away from men. |
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"As for the
earth, out of it cometh bread: and under it is turned up as it were fire.
Its stones are
the place of sapphires: and it hath dust of gold. There is a path which no
fowl knows, and
which the vulture’s eye hath not seen: The lion’s whelps have not trodden
it, nor the fierce lion
passed by it. He puts forth his hand upon the rock; he overturns the
mountains by the roots.
He cuts out rivers among the rocks; and his eye sees every precious thing.
He binds the
floods from overflowing; and the thing that is hidden brings He forth to
light. |
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But where
shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding?
Man does not know its price; neither is it found in the land of the living. |
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"The depth
says, It is not in me: and the sea says, It is not with me.
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It cannot be
obtained for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof.
It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the
sapphire.
The gold and the crystal cannot equal it: and the exchange of it shall not
be
for jewels of fine gold. No mention shall be made of coral, or |of pearls:
for the price of wisdom is above rubies.
The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, neither shall it be valued with
pure gold. |
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"Whence then
comes wisdom? and where is the place of understanding? Seeing it is hidden
from the eyes of all living, and kept close from the fowls of the air.
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Destruction and
death say, We have heard its fame with our ears.
God understands the way of it, and He knows its place.
For He looks to the ends of the earth, and sees under the whole heaven;
To make the weight for the winds; and He weighs the waters by measure. |
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When He made a
decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder:
Then did He see it, and declare it; He prepared it, yea, and searched it
out.
And to man He said, 'Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom;
and to depart from evil is understanding.' " |
Daunting, to find it ? Yes, if you start by
claiming and clamouring for its non-existence, its dependence on you or
others, and so look for illusion by your own allusion, not for reality by its
OWN TESTIMONY (cf. SMR Ch. 1).
it is daunting to discover
mathematics from scratch, to find health from disease, to know all history
from ignorance. Anything is daunting which is beyond the power of man, or of
one man, or of one period only of history. Anything ultimate and absolute is
rather daunting, unless you first realise that this HOW YOU EXIST; and
naturally, there is a supernatural impediment if you wilfully destroy your
implantation, your derivation and hence your functionality by rebelling
against that ultimate, initial and final fact.
Some things, to be sure, cannot be done
simply because they are rather silly. Imagine the finite posing as the
infinite, the derivative as the ultimate, the created as the Creator, and the
ignorant as the omniscient. From such standpoints, nothing of lasting value
can be wrought, since it is pre-immersed in the dissolving agencies that bring
dissolution, not founded and grounded on the due dynamic which makes the
problem, since it has - that is, He has, made the people who have the problems
since they have NOT walked in His way.
Such slithering substitution for what is
ultimate and original, this cannot be done except in a way derisory or
confused (cf. SMR pp. 422Eff.,
Chs. 3, 10), to
provoke just wrath for impertinence (literal sense), consisting ]
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as rebellion to show the
power of little man to slap the face of His Maker (one of the reasons why Pinnochio's
cheek is rather appealing as implicit satire on just this), or perhaps
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as delusion to
give angst some opportunity to preoccupy the flesh!
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Man's wickedness is desperate as has been known
since Jeremiah, and long before then by experience; but this, it is the
declaration of God through the prophet (Jeremiah 17:9-10). Just how wicked,
this too is the domain of the knowledge of God, and He has let us know! (cf.
Ephesians 4:17ff., 2:1ff.).
What however is the use of examining the fusses
of frustration except it be to show the end of all that impotent pathology, in
the appointments and appurtenances of God Almighty. Being that, He made us.
Knowing all, He can tell us. Being love, He has done so (cf.
Spiritual Refreshings).
Thus the answer for victory is this. GO where
GOD is, and find HIS POWER for wisdom, HIS RESOURCES for strength, and HIS
TEACHING for knowledge. That, it is as far from impossible as it is to catch
the train to work. YOU could not make it go. But it does have (in some
cases) electric motors, and these do (in some cases) receive electricity, and
there are (again, in some cases) rails for it to run on, and there have been
(in most cases) preliminary preparations to set the track in the direction you
wish to take, or are willing to utilise.
Direction, with correction: not impotence,
frustration, this is the victory.
Yet, you may enquire, HOW is it precisely
victory, if I do not want to GO THAT WAY!
Some may even feel like being vociferous, and
actually shouting that last part, so it is in capitals to interpret for those.
Quite true: you may not wish to go with God,
for God, although you cannot alter the fact that you are His creation (SMR
Chs.
1, 10, TMR Chs. 1, 8, Wake Up World
...Chs. 4, 5,
A Spiritual Potpourri Chs.
1-9). Then in that case, it IS impossible to have the victory.
What you seek
has then God as its opponent, and while that delicious and ever delightful
freedom which He has appointed to men (not to BE something else, but to follow
paths of His own choosing, provided of course any path is to be found in the
wilderness) is thereby exercised, the folly of it is that in your ignorance
(without the necessary light from the self-illuminating and world-requisite
Absolute God), you do not know what you are doing; and if your will wants it
anyway, then it is moreover this, that you are self-propelled, like a gun in a
battle, where the firing continues, but the strategic placement is not even
known.
Hence, though it may have a smidgeon of victory
(for a decade, a score of years) in this, that you become rich, or ferocious,
or bloody handed like the jihad specialists, and you may rejoice in the
murders you have done, or the agony you have created (in commerce, in war or
in Israel for example), gloating over your power: yet it is not really very
illustrious, but undisciplined deviation from directions in the (in this case
necessary) and entirely wilful ignorance of truth; and having God for its judge,
that will not really produce the desired
result. To be judged for ignorance and error is scarcely a victory; and to be
so in view of witless confusion is scarcely a triumph.
That man tends to imagine that he shall have
his plans (such as taking over Jerusalem for some secular or false body, or
the world by some unification mode), and God shall lack them, when man's very
body is a product of the plan of God, and his destiny likewise, is one of the
ironically delectable mysteries of liberty. It intoxicates as often, perhaps,
as it frees. Intoxication produces a FEELING (so one gathers, having for one's
own part never knowingly imbibed alcohol, except at around age 8, when one sip was
taken of port wine, a childish interest), a touch of a sense of power and attainment, for some of
its symptoms; but facts are in another domain. IN this case, JOY does NOT come in
the morning!
Poison to the brain cells, who would want it!
But they appear to clap their hands for a
while. It is so with this world and its 'victories' which end in bloodshed and
defeat ere long. Spiritual intoxication is not a good strategic centre in
which to plan operations. The 'victory' of 'science' becomes the harbinger of
desolation, as ignorant hands with corrupted hearts use its wares for
terrorism, like straying adolescents in control of the ship, without map, but
equipped with caprice, whim and winning little ways. Now it is worse, however,
since actual adults act in the same vainglorious licence, mistaking liberty
for deity! Indeed, there is no little attestation in the ways of the USA in
particular (but FAR is it from being alone in this), that the statue of
liberty is nearer to the shrine of an idol liberty, which deems itself divine.
The 'victory' of politics
(no more war and all that, for World War I's hope as that of World War II),
becomes the grin of grimly diabolical forces. Man does not alter, except he
returns to His Maker to be re-made. Instead, he now normally seems more
interested in remaking the world in his own, now pathologically corrupted
image; and naturally, it does not work.
The VICTORY however is found in NOT taking the
wilderness circuit (the famous journey of the children of Israel as noted in
Numbers, where they are seen to prefer their own lack of courage in NOT
following the way and word of God, and to suffer its due results in 'meaningless'
wandering for 40 years, though its meaning was not lost on some!). What is
meaningful because given meaning, and not a dump of deviation: it is the WAY OF HOLINESS.
This is even, in Isaiah 35, referred to as the HIGHWAY HOLINESS. The author
must confess to more than a smidgeon of interest in this, in fact, to
something beyond mere fascination; for here something of awe and delight are in inimitable
mix. HERE, on this highway, you are SO safe in right walk, that EVEN IF YOU ARE A FOOL, you do
not go astray.
Do you observe, however the point of this ? IF
you are WALKING in THIS WAY, then sin is not walking in you, or over you, or
through you, and you are in express and explicit concord and accord and joy in
the Lord. Your works are committed to the Lord who made you, and whose payment
has restored you, and so your thoughts will be established (Proverbs 16:3).
Indeed, you commit uour way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He brings it
to pass (Psalm 37:5). It is all by faith; and the faith in object-oriented, or
if you prefer to call God subject as you naturally might, then
subject-oriented. It is an objective subject called God, not a subjective
object called you.
His word is strong in your way, for
"light is sown for the righteous" (Psalm 97:11); His work is your delight
and He gives you rest (Psalm 37:1-4); His wisdom is your
base (James 1) and His joy is your strength (Nehemiah 8:10). It is very reassuring to
see, then, so placed, that one could even be a fool, and not fail here. Of course, it is like
coaching: the worst student, with THIS coach on THIS way, freely following it,
is equipped with more than the best student without it, one lacking the
necessary eminence and power of true knowledge, and
so growing old in failure in truth, merely existing, consisting, persisting in
the WRONG WAY, GO BACK procedure, pending arrest.
What then of the
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VICTORY which is
the heritage of the Christian ? This, therefore, is to have
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LIGHT within
(understanding, perspective, direction from the living God and the written
word in holy and just concord and accord), imperative, and transforming,
and still glowing in its luminosity, having effect without;
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WISDOM (from the depth of God, to secure
His will, and grow in grace and knowledge in
His image - II Peter 3:18): and
it is to have
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STRENGTH to overcome temptation, resist evil
and overcome all obstruction of the devil,
the flesh and this world which
would seek to prevent the performance of the calling of God
(for He calls not
to idleness but to service - cf. Matthew 24:45ff.). It is, further, to
have a
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DESTINY WITH GOD, than which nothing could be
more consummate in perfection.
It is a return to the hand which created, with
the love of long service,
the delight in long friendship, the basis in God's
redemption;
and the lively rest from the temptations and trials of this
world, as a crown. |
It is an inheritance (cf. Ephesians 1:17-20,
Romans 8). It is the heritage of the Christian (I John 5:4, Romans 8:1-10);
while as to this world, this victory is in it not to be found: it is exiled
from it, excised in it. That is why its futility is legendary, its appeal
transitory, its follies collide with the mourning from the last ones and its
systems, landmarks in absurdity, abort in this way or that, as the framers
fall victim to this or that substitution of hope for reality, selfishness for
spirituality, blindness to ultimates and indifference to purity of heart.
Where there is some lift from a good past with many of Christ's
kingdom, in some one nation, quickly this world will often all but apologise
for the lapse from wickedness, and pursue its errors with new vigour, as if
moral money in the pocket HAD to be spent!
The MIDGET
MAXIM
It is as if there is one great mundane maxim:
GOD must NOT be served. How does its 'wisdom' speak ?
It is in often in this way. EITHER
(1) make one who is not
there, a fictitious fabrication, given of course plausible 'honour',
one who being absent in fact, is thus readily manipulable, and do it
in order to satisfy your religious feelings or those of your electors (or make
several), or else
(2) engage in not double but treble
talk, affirming and denying so many things in so many ways that no one is
likely to take any of it seriously at all, but only the penalties for
non-conformity of the government which legislates! In no small part, Victoria
is alas not far from this -
There is a further possibility.
(3) Some may simply try to ignore the
whole issue until, as with terrorism, war, or other perils, it obtrudes
nationally, overturning their unstable pirouetting, exposing their wily ways.
Increasingly, in this century, people like to kill each other for empty
religious reasons, an acute pathology in the human spirit which Revelation 6
forecast, and this in such a welter that it forces nations to face, if not
ponder, the fact that PURPOSES of LIFE are an indispensable ingredient of any
worthwhile nation. Whereas it drifts, history does
not. Righteousness exalts a nation, and sin is a reproach to
any people (Proverbs 14:34); and nowadays it would all but seem that there is
an international competition to see which nation can sin the most, and yet by
deceptive legerdemain make it look the best.
Of these three options, Communism likes to do
the first in laws, spreading delusive talk about freedom of religion, but in
fact often imperially demanding the necessities of the 'State security'
(translation: 'ways to prevent anyone thinking differently or changing the
form of government). Thus the allegation of freedom of religion has frequently
the unspoken additive, provided we can still control it and the people!
This determinist philosophy, which exacts moral sanctions while deriding
morals and removing any logical basis for them, also tries often enough
to merge (2) with 1), so that what has to be, becomes what ought to be, whilst
the 'has to' becomes merely a case of extorting sanctions.
Thus in a garbled synthesis of insincere
propositions and privisos, they proceed to a combination of opportunism,
pragmatism, unprincipled pretension and human debasement.
As to the third option, when pressure mounts,
even indolent nations tend to choose between security, limits to licence and
need of purpose of some kind. Since the ultimates are then involved, the clash
often comes sooner than many think. At times, a neutrality pretended on moral
and ultimate issues, becomes under international pressures, a suppression
order for what does not meet the majesty of the State, its concerns or
sensitivities, and State as such becomes ruler, man measuring himself by
himself, so that humanism becomes the idle idol that controls, until God
finding out its fabrication, leaves it to its demise as a mere muddled people,
enforcing convenient social mores for the preservation of ... what ? A double
minded, triple hearted morass of convenience. Where convenience rules,
however, the question will arise: WHOSE ?
Then the dictation of foolish suppressive laws
as in Victoria (cf. News 100, *1,
Galloping Events Ch. 7, *2)
comes to spare feelings while impaling principle, and even in that case, to
spare feelings irrespective of the intention of the one who is pilloried, not
for speaking untruth, but inconveniently.
They are all negative options, all fulfilling
the very spirit of Psalm 2, as the nations thought how they could and WOULD
cast the BONDS of God far from them, and His messiah likewise. The prediction
of an intensification of evil, war and immorality, blood and terrors, psychic,
political and military conflagrations, is now witnessed so fully that it all
but resembles an examination paper, in which the predictions are to be
compared with the examples offered by the examinee: in this case, history,
which conforms to the uttermost! So does truth lie fallen in the streets as in
Isaiah 59, and does equity stumble.
In none of these ways is God honoured; and only
in His exclusion are the nations increasingly to be found, satisfied. However,
since the more they err, the more they impact with reality, if it is not some
new bomb, it is a new way of delivering an old one, if it is not technical
prowess, it is suicidal mania, if it is not health as god, it is God as
health, until the entire self-serving morass, like a slow moving glacier,
leaving its muddy moraine, topples into the icy sea, too late, alas to awaken.
So the world goes to its appointed end, and now the flag is waving for the
last lap (Answers to Questions Ch. 5).
Reality does not suspend itself because peoples
want to be suspended in a comfortable, irrational medium of nugatory
nescience. Fat is bad for the heart, when it mounts, and so is the fatuous
philosophy of mere comfort and acceptability (always - to whom ?), with the
outcome of dictation as if god, when alas there is no sign of deity, but only
of the witless paranoia of literal impertinence.
If as in Europe, a nation like England can be
summoned to conform, because it is against homosexual people in the Army (News
113), then you see the sloppy pretences of
philosophy, which would make the differential, integral, the diverse,
homogeneous, while the heterogeneous is to be one, for the religions must be
unified in the interests of survival and peace and security, so that truth
must lie slain all over again. It does, however, not fail to be resurrected;
and its judgments are rife already on the ruined regions of the earth.
It is like the Cross: the opinion of this world
of its actual Creator, and ITS use for His redemption in witlessly helping Him
ACHIEVE THIS (by His iniquitous and barbaric murder, so fulfilling His
SACRIFICE which was necessary!), is decidedly an abyss of acrid fuming. This
it does, and has done, but it is not at all its way to receive what He has
done.
What then of the victory ? It is NOT of this
world, in life, for the life of this world is a form of psychic necrosis.
Nevertheless, victory is still available within it, as a field;
for this is the very place of the Christian victory, epitomised in the resurrection
and to be consummated in Christ's return to it. Until this time, the world
heaves and moans, and meets as recently in France symbolised in the discussion
of the world's eight rich nations (June 2003), where slight patches were roughly sewn on
ragged political garments, recently torn.
Yet this social sphere, this dizzy world moves,
it rushes headlong, rather like Judas, to its end, as if panting for it, doing
all the indicated things with a degree of dynamic and precision which reveals
how it revels in confusion; for what it would avoid, it pointedly asks for,
and what it seeks, it scarcely moves to obtain. Phrases do not move mountains,
unless equipped with a power, which by observation, this world lacks. It is
the word of God which alone has power to ensure its performance, in time, over
time, all the time. He said, and it was created. He says and history
unswervingly attests the power
The powers of this world, in fact under the
direction ultimately of the 'prince of this world' (John 14:30) will seek to
FORCE its inhabitants with the religious posture to arise, upon the
nations, shortly. Germany, Japan and Russia or the USSR have all tried it in a
very simple and apparent way. It is nothing novel, only in scope to come!
Stanchions of spirituality disappear increasingly from the social norm, so
that even less resistance than in the last century is to be expected! The
spirit of domineering delusion mounts.
Superficially, perhaps the coming world rule,
when first upon the stage of history, will appeal partly to that
humanism which likes to worship something, and so being without God and having
nothing else acceptable, worships itself (parallel to II Thessalonians
2:4-10), and partly to the rod of terror, which the Islamic assailants are
using for ends they scarcely dream of, since they are merely confused in the
guilt of blood. No terror! comes
the cry: therefore little liberty is the soil erosion pressure that
should shortly be expected to make crevices and then sinks in the soil of man.
Before the whole drama consummated in the
predicted completion in and by Christ Jesus the Lord, this world is passing
where it belongs, into oblivion, and yet not a quiet one, merely a moral one.
Thence, all being judged, it will be "burned up" with its "works" as II Peter
3 advises us.
The prodigious program of the living God, for
millenia evident in writing, proceeds more benignly to what is purposed in His
presence and commissioned in His love, indeed to His children: so that
anyone who has trusted with unfictitious faith in this One, the Redeemer Jesus
Christ, who came to pay, to be the objective revelation that alone brings
peace, and the rocket of power which arose from the dead, is exempted from
judgment (Romans 10:9).
The cover of the welcomed Saviour is sufficient
in its profundity and efficient in its precision (II Corinthians 5:17-21) to
His children and for His people; but the converse is for the one
uncovered, who can have 'victory' only in this, that defeat is assured, and in
God's victory, such defeat is freely shared. The devotees of dereliction from
God, receive just that. Vanity is their choice, and vanity their end. If
the irony is hideous, how much more the deed that stirs it to life, and them
to a death in everlasting shame (Daniel 12)! There is no escape from justice
except in mercy, and no advent of mercy except where it has chosen to come,
and rest, where love performed its profession, when they crucified the Lord of
glory.
Renegacy and rebellion from mercy, love and
truth have no reprieve, while autonomy has no status when it is mere fiction.
Is it to come, and is it near, this woeful
'victory' of independence ? and how near can he get, the renegade, the rebel
from God, to 'success' ? How near is the East from the West ? Such 'victory'
is as near as infinitely far; for the Infinite God is not the One to rescue
the repentless renegade*1 from defeat or the indulgent idol-crafter from
despair (Hebrews 6, 7:25). As to the one who craves his own life's lordship:
Keep your life and lose it, is Christ's dictum. HIS own life is by nature
eternal (Hebrews 7:16, I John 1:1-4, 1:1, 8:58), the very life of God, so that
its voidance is by nature consigned to a species of death, as are vapid forms
in the industrial mists that often pollute the fields by the factories.
Is there to be an assurance that what the
emigrant from God's ways has procured in wilful ignorance, is 'victoriously'
gained ?
Is victory two-sided, double-edged ? Alas, for
such, it is the victory of the plant pulled up, which refused to be grounded,
and subscribed to live 'alone': empty, withering, it rots in discord. There is
but one victory, and it is in but one God; and it is found in but one way, the
sacrificial death and the irrepressible life of the ONE SINLESS SAVIOUR and
ONLY SERVING SUBSTITUTE FOR SIN in the judgments of God, Jesus Christ; and
there is no other. If Acts 4:11-12 declares it, and Ephesians 1:10 eternalises
it, history likewise knows no other. Only one voice declares the irresistible,
only one word commands the truth.
Only one height is attainable where there is
other life, and this is not the puny pittance of Mars, but the height of
heaven itself (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri
Chs. 1-3); and only one dire depth is to
be found in the crevasse of wanton neglect of the opportunities which life
being given, ends laggard without: that Lord who is both God and Saviour. Life
? it shall be shielded no more, when it chooses to lack this necessity.
In our next chapter, we shall look further at
Romans 7-8, to consider the impacts, the impediments and the resultants.
NOTE
*1
Repentless renegade is one who having left what is good in the
ways of God, like Judas at first attracted, but never cutting the moorings
completely in order to know Christ, has a void where repentance might be
sought (as with Esau, noted in Hebrews 12:17), and remains in the harbour of
Self’s Selection, unspiritual, unenlivened, unregenerate and undesired.
As to ‘repentless’, it is a word which cries for adoption, and if it is not to
be found as yet in the dictionary (though it just might be in the 16 volume
English dictionary), then it should be focussed there. The word has sting,
where sting is, has force where force has been misused, and has a clear
nakedness that hits where the object is.
As to such a person, let hope surge and mount, for if a person is determined
to know God, it is not God who prevents it, but has in fact engendered the
desire in accord with His own desire that all might repent (I Timothy 2 cf.
Marvels of Predestination … Ch. 4).
It is only when the conscience is seared as with a hot iron (I Timothy 4),
when truth having been toyed with in the very presence of salvation, when
love’s labour is assuredly lost to the soul in view, when Christ’s blood has
been trampled underfoot, when such things as these have happened that not for
any lack of love in God, but for the ultimate renegacy occurs. It is not for
the depth of sin in the mere commission, but for the ruin in the very
realities of regeneration, spoliation of the opportunities (Isaiah 55:6) which
the Lord provides, that the lifeless soul departs for ever.
It remains true that the one who COMES TO CHRIST by faith with repentance of
sin and reception of both Himself and what He has freely done and provided for
all, as an offer (I John 2:2), according to His word, is not cast out,
emphatically, decisively, categorically (John 6:37). The deposit of faith is
paralleled by the deposit of life everlasting.
Is not the smoking flax just what Christ does not quench (Isaiah 42), and the
bruised reed what He does not abandon! While therefore the fear of the Lord is
clean, that no one presume to spout great swelling words of vanity (Jude),
denigrating the very word or work of the Lord, yet the love of the Lord
remains as ocean breezes, caressing the cliffs, as the azure blue intimates
its strength to the watching eye. Blessed is the one who receives Him, who
received such insults for us, such turmoil of sin, not committed BY Him but TO
Him, that He might bear it once and for all (Hebrews 9).