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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).

bullet

"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.  

bullet

"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.

bullet

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.

bullet

"The depth says, It is not in me: and the sea says, It is not with me.

bullet

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.  

bullet

"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.

bullet

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.

bullet

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 ]

bullet 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
 
bullet as delusion to give angst some opportunity to preoccupy the flesh!

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

bullet VICTORY which is the heritage of the Christian ? This, therefore, is to have
 
bullet 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;
 
bullet 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
 
bullet 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
 
bullet 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 PredestinationCh. 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).