EPILOGUE

THE TIME TO BE TIMELESS

ETERNITY IS THE AUTHOR OF TIME
AND NOW IS THE TIME TO FIND HIM
 

THE WORTH OF THE SURF

Australian Surfing World, May/June 1999, p. 73

WHAT is the call of the surf ? WHY do so many spend so long (we met one last year, perhaps in mid-thirties, whose ... profession it seemed still to be, without distinction, simply surfing as the main cause of living) ?

The article or rather short presentation in the above magazine, perhaps 100 words, shows that there is more to it, at least for some. Listen to this.

"The act of tubing itself is a bit like the high a yogi gets when he's meditating at a very very high level. The physical act of riding an eight foot barrel and being enshrined in that little cathedral for three or four  seconds while your (sic) pulsing in sync exactly...Relative to the end of the eye,
you're frozen."

Later, he says this: "And it is awesome, because you just experienced a feeling of timelessness. You have identified your being with the timelessness of the universe... aside from the physical sensations... and to a lot of people ... that's why we all keep doing it, because it gives us a real identity of who we are and where we fit . And that's why a lot of the soul surfers get so much respect... they just embody the whole concept of being in tune with the energy of the universe."
 

1. THE PHYSICAL MEANING

In this tube effect, as very clear in the sensationally apt photograph accompanying it, the surfer is largely covered in a tunnel of water, which is curled about him. The wave is moving, so that away from him to one side, this tube is not fully present. The tubing moves and the surfer moves with it, but as he does so, he maintains his relationship to the geometry of it, always IN the tube. Not only is the tube moving laterally, it seems, but of course there are tons of water composing this neat, geometrical figure. Not only is this so, but there is DIFFERENT water in the SAME tube pattern, as all the components move forward as well.

There you have it. Motion forwards, and perhaps sideways, together with changing water, immense quantities of it, drama and dynamics, danger and agility, versatility and vigour, on the ACTION, MOTION side; and stillness and sameness, a constant pattern, an enclosing medium, a tunnel in which to 'live and have your being' during this performance.

THIS gives, it appears, a feeling of timelessness.

Apart from the constancy of the picture, in the vagaries of the motion, this achievement of forces, into which is obtruded the figure of a man, there is a 'meaning'.

Timelessness is the feeling, and 'the whole concept of being in tune with the energy of the universe' is a poetic philosophy founded on it. Identifying 'your being with the timelessness of the universe'  is the volition, the act of will.
 

2. THE REALITIES OF THE ACTION

What however in fact is happening is nothing of this. The energy of the universe is being sustained by its original creation, which gives it a reservoir, so that the availability of energy is decreasing, according to the second law of thermodynamics. There is nothing timeless about that. However there IS a FEELING of CONSERVING IDENTITY in the midst of change; of being in the vast, enormous, even awesome HOLD of seething ocean, astonishingly conserved and continuing while it changes in forces, in its cocoon of geometry. There is the CAPACITY to participate in such a mathematical and hydro-dynamic masterpiece as this tunnel, and to do so with the WILL which elects to find a WAY into it; and because of the mathematics inherent in the universe, there is a PLACE where the WILL can find this ELEMENT of rest!

Yes, this certainly has an awesome aspect, and it is suggestive without doubt of a religious reality.

What is it ? Under the washing forces, the oceanic sublimities of force and grandeur, there is a constancy, there are principles, there is a reality of construction which is anything but chaotic. Mathematical laws, physical laws, conserving constructions are there. This is MERELY physical in one sense, but in another it is associated with vast beauty, delicate balances and enormous precision.
 

3. THE ENDURING APPEAL

From the early Greeks on, this combination of fixity and motion has been absorbing. Parmenides thought all was fixed and conserved, Heracleitus, all in motion and change. Neither is correct. There is the flow of change, and there are the fixed principles without which it would have no course to follow, no road to travel, no time to traverse. Dynamic and immobility are a pair. Action is WITHIN bounds, and forces are DIRECTED by powers beyond them, which give them form, meaning and limits. It is like a train set: there is motion, and at times commotion is with it; but there is a track, and there are, with due care, ways to follow it which are absorbing (to those who love these things, and they are not all children), precise, timely, allowing passing of trains over bridges while others go below, and a whole dance of meaning.

This is delightful because it is so suggestive. There is ORDER and there is OPPORTUNITY to find its meat and to participate in it. That was so too with Hitler youth.

Order itself, then, is not the awesome thing; it CAN be revolting, soul-assaulting, making time have leaden feet.

It is the FREEDOM to participate in DELIGHTFUL order and BEAUTIFUL GRANDEUR which is so arresting. It is the THOUGHT that there is a WAY to come from immense densities to airy realities, which for all their difficulties, far outweigh, and indeed, give the soul's desire amid the mere matters of physical motion, commotion and oceanic disturbances in the sea of life.

WHY is this so delightful ? The world is not delightful. It has many delightful features, available in this and that way, as by entering a superbly maintained orchid, and largely disposed, ferny garden amid stately trees in the midst of Summer, a subduing of forces to wonderful ends, a USE of marvels of creation in SEEDS to astonishing performances of composition and delight.

WHERE then is the KEY to this garden. WHAT is the way to this wise and wonderful reality which lurks so near, seems to some, so far and is yet beckoning, beckoning...
 

4. THE PARABLE

The surfing tube then, mathematically is an expression of what is genuinely awesome, in an engineering and controlled way. It is not in itself but in its message, that the appeal is final. It is there that it lies. Thus in a car, the  feeling of speed is arresting; it is however the fact which is effectual. The feeling without the fact does not travel!

This stasis amid dynamics, form amid turbulence, maintenance of position amid vast material forces, this aspect of location amid translocation, fixity amidst mobility, SPEAKS.

Of what then is this a parable ? What does the story SAY ? wherein lies its appeal ?

There are a number of features which one will now list.
 

·       1) Life is dangerous, and there is a way out of this.

·       2) Life has commotion but there is a meaning to the way of achieving peace.

·       3) Life seems at times impersonal, but there is a personal place for those who are entering its domains in the right way, in timely fashion.

·       4) When you do this, effectively, then what had seemed turbulent tumultuousness, becomes assessable in a very different light.

·       5) YOU come to have a place which is beautifully contrived, even when such a thing seemed IMPOSSIBLE.

·       6) This may all occur amidst a smiling grandeur, which nevertheless has the potential to be devastatingly destructive. It requires understanding and effort; and yet with that, there is a place prepared with powers wholly beyond oneself. Into this one must go.

What then is the reality of the fixity ? This, in the actual waves,  is mere illusion, in the sense that it is a geometrically sustained continuity, amidst change. There is nothing literally timeless about it, for it goes in a little time, and being in 'tune' with it is merely using what it offers of continuity of form, to allow waters harmlessly to be about you for a short period.

The reality is far more, and the awe and the wording, used in the magazine, indicates that it is THIS, not seen, which is sought.

It is simply the sense that beyond the motions of time, there is yet a meaning, a significance which reaches to the very point of allowing individual expression to cohere with individual IDENTITY.
 

5. THE MEANING OF THE PARABLE

HOW is this REALLY SO, beyond parable ? Beyond wording which suggests the strivings of the soul (to use the term supplied by the surfer here), what is the reality which JUSTIFIES then, such expressions in this mathematics of motion ?

It is this. In fact, the sheer technical brilliance of the design of things, inherent in atoms, in DNA and in mind, in logic and in will, allowing such happy harmonies, is merely expressive of the POWER and the MIND necessary to develop it, and to emplace it as one coherent working system with amazing possibilities and enormous dangers. Whose mind has made matter have this inherent engineered quality, given it its laws, made life with the form and format which achieves CAPACITY to IMAGINE and WILL amid such elements of lower kind (lower because while they too have matter, they are limited both by it and to it) ? As has been demonstrated many times on this site, it is ONE, the GOD whose power is eternal, timeless because in fact He invented time, like matter and all those passing things.

HE is not so much timeless (as if He lacked it), but ETERNAL, for He is the father of time, the maker of our little systems, as a father perhaps of the train set of his son.

It is the FATHER OF ETERNITY who is to be sought. It is HE for whom the soul strives, from whom the sense of the BEYOND is an AWESOME and not a TERRIBLE experience.

It is HIS PLACE amidst His creation which is arresting; it is the sense of a due and PROPER PLACE in His teeming marvels, a street address in spirit, which is arresting.

It is the sense of there being

• 1) a PLACE PREPARED for you and

 

• 2) the NECESSITY to GET THERE

which shouts at the heart. It has a peace of profundity; but it needs to be instituted, activated; it is available, but it needs to be FOUND.

ONLY THEN, is life what it should be, identity what it must be, if one is not to be rubbish, the foolish flotsam and jetsam of brokenness.

There is of course a certain brokenness which is required. It is the sacrifice of a broken spirit, a humble and a contrite heart, as King David indicated after committing the most appalling sin, in the midst of one of the most radiantly delightful lives of history (read his expression of it in Psalm 51).

THAT however, while it helps in finding your spiritual street address, is not enough. You also need the KEY to get in.

That key is Christ, who surfed, if you will, into this world of motion in order to find the TUBE of sacrifice, being perfect amidst imperfection, sinless amidst the turbulences of sin, the storms of passion, the tides of evil will, self-centred self-indulgence and self-satisfied armour-plated hearts.

HE died, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God (I Peter 3:18). He did it well. He paid a RANSOM (Matthew 20:28) to bring from the WRONG place, those who thus become HIS CHILDREN to the RIGHT PLACE, the street address of the soul which is WHERE I LIVE. "BECAUSE I LIVE YOU WILL LIVE ALSO!" He cried to His friends (John 14:19), as He looked beyond the divinely planned, and long predicted crucifixion to the resurrection and the sending of the Spirit of God into the hearts of the people who found the 'tube', the place of His peace in the midst of the history of the world, and then acted as His children with an identity which is wonderful past measure, that of children of the light (Ephesians 5:8), citizens of the commonwealth of heaven (Philippians 3:20ff.).

HE invented time; HE came into time; He did it IN TIME, and AT THIS TIME, it is necessary to acknowledge Him, receive His sacrifice and come into a peace which passes all understanding (Philippians 4), sins against HIS WAYS forgiven, His substitution of Himself for ourselves in death, the passport to His contribution of HIS life to ours in abundance.
 

6. WHAT IS AWESOME

THAT, it is that which IS awesome, that which is the fulfilment, the meat, the meaning of this parable. It is here, to this tunnel of truth, which the soul must come. It is not enough to have the FEELING for it; that does not travel to the truth. It is necessary also to have the FACT of it, with Jesus Christ as the object of your faith, His life as the pattern for your own, His death as the payment for your sin, His resurrection as the guarantee of your own, trust in Him as the fidelity of your life, to be at peace with God in His grandeur and gravity, to be in His joy in His friendship and challenge, to fulfil HIS PURPOSE on earth, and to find HIS PROVISION in eternity, for such as we then  are, sinners redeemed by grace, paid for by blood, sitting in not oceanic, but heavenly places (Ephesians 1-2).

What then ? "We have obtained an inheritance" - not merely hopeful - as in the 'tube', one is there now), and we were "predestinated according to the purpose of Him who works all things after the counsel of His own will, that we should be to the praise of His glory, who first trusted in Christ" - from Ephesians 1:11-13.

But how are you then found in this place ? It is found when "by grace are you saved, through faith; and that not of ourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them" - from Ephesians 2:8-10. It is indeed a "gift by grace" - Romans 5:15. NOT ONLY is it found by unmerited favour from a loving God, but its very presentation, like the gift itself, is a work of grace. A gracious gift from a gracious God, made in its being by grace, given by grace, it is this which is the face of the door of the place God has prepared. NO OTHER DOOR is genuine. It is a feeling, as much as the wave; it suggests; but of itself, it does not permit entrance to God.

There is the awe, the mystery of love: HE WILL NOT TOLERATE making the tube. THAT IS HIS AFFAIR. He will not tolerate paying for it, or the right to enter. It is HIS GIFT and HE MADE IT.
You ? You just enter. HE is the key. Come to Him, call on Him and enter. That is all.

NOW YOU ARE IN, by faith! Excellent. then there is the peace which passes all understanding. There are many other surfers in this ocean of His love. Be with them, in the team of Christ. There is discipline, for you do not need to get flabby. Follow His instructions, the coach above all, His word the Bible. Let it nestle in your heart like a wave in its beauty, in the midst of the ocean. "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you will and it will be done to you" - John 15:7.  You ask in His name (John 16:23). HIS NAME! There is the wonder of wonders, for that is the name of His life. HE IS the WAY, the TRUTH and the LIFE. It is in HIM that you ABIDE, unmoved by the motions of this world, untouched by its follies, active amidst its turbulence, kept in the place of peace, serving God and loving your neighbour, fearless, triumphant in His grace.

THAT, that is the place. Look finally at this:

"He who dwells in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the LORD, He is my refuge and my fortress, my God; in Him will I trust" - Psalm 91:1-2.

One always remembers being in the cavern behind the Niagara Falls. A lift takes you down, and you dress in waterproof boots, hat and cape. You move outwards from behind, towards the powerful and eminently dangerous falls. They are now only a few feet ahead of you. The moisture may even (as happened with the author) make a run in the colour of your tie. Next to your head is infinite destruction, awesome, obliterative of physical life. Within the rock is total safety. Here is the combination: peril and safety, place and nearness, action and solidity. One is living IN THE ROCK. That rock ? It is Christ (I Cor. 10:4), and one TRUSTS in HIM. THIS is the secret place, and it is publicly available. It is indeed awesome, to penetrate beyond time, to the One who made it, and yet to know Him, whose it is, and to walk with Him, as Father and Friend, as Shepherd and Saviour.

 

It is about time that this sort of time came to its full time. It is now near (Luke 21:28-30, SMR Ch.8).

The suggestions of peace, as real as the commotion of surf, have their meaning, and it must be met. Timeless is not the name of the game in this time; it is time to be holy, and to both seek and know the Lord. The wave is going to break. It does not stay suspended for ever. When it breaks, there is a safe place, beautifully crafted. It is not timeless, but it is eternal. It has something of His awe, who is infinitely awesome and who comes in His time:

"In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump:
for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible,
and we shall be changed" - I Cor. 15:52.
 

Finally let us move towards that interface to come, between time and eternity, and be warned in our thoughts, and our cultural conditioning, lest we sleep the sleep of death (Matthew 25:1-10).
 
 

INTERFACE
 
 

 TIME AND ETERNITY

TIME is so small a passage of events compared with the dignified and pure delights of eternity where the pressure of necessities becomes the wonder of freedom, exempted from the limitations of sin and the necessities of driving disciplines to illustrate, remind and test.

In Time, many do not act in time, for their times are their emperors, their circumstances their kings, and they live under them! For the Christian, circumstances are accompaniments, not kings. Time is preparation for eternity, the race of pilgrimage, the opportunity for expression of the love of God, the power of His Spirit and the grace of His disposition, the deliverance of His Gospel and the wonder of His word.

 

Thus there was once a magazine called ETERNITY. This world is very much preoccupied with itself, and that magazine has gone. Its witness however has not gone, like that of Galileo before an authoritarian deformation of the church, using military power instead of gracious Gospel as commanded (cf. SMR pp. 903ff., 1032ff.,950ff.). The times of testing and exhibition of the truth which God as shown in the references above, alone has and CAN HAVE, together with those with whom He shares it (the world is TOLD!) and who receive it: these draw near to the end of this phase. The author of time is soon to return to His times, as He created them in the space-time station which he made (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 18). While then there is still time before eternity sets in, where the constraints of our time are more ample in the creative power  of the author of all authority and all test and the judge of all things, it is all the more important to alert those in this world who will hear, that the time is about up!

In particular, one could take from the many journalistic, philosophic and academic evidences of the decline in our times, as the end draws near, as the finishing post comes in sight, certain features which, being well-known, are the better noted for help and warning in Biblical terms.
 
 

MODERN DAY JOURNALISM

Modern day journalism often reflects the tenor of the times. For this reason, it may be highly profitable and popular with those who live in them.

We are inundated with evolutionary aspirants, as numerous as - but far less successful than - the suitors of Cinderella. They are always jutting into real time, but never found in it.

Time Magazine in this is no exception. Its contributions are not of course all of one type, but some of its more flamboyant foci, its paraphernalia of popular cult ideas, cultural norms and academic propositions which are never able to be sold, but always on sale, are worthy of attention, if for no better reason than this.

It must be acknowledged, with great sorrow, that various sacred propositions of Christian Biblical Theism are there attacked without valid rational basis, or sustainable evidence, merely in line with the tenor of the times.

Various parties may be quoted, or may even speak, sounding out their preferred philosophies. These come,  dressed up with the frills and froth of journalistic notoriety, as if some new thing had graced the stage of this dying world, when all that is found, in the end, upon analysis, is the reek of mortality in the coffin of rationalism (which has no reason for its reason), existentialism (which is not really very interested in the topic) or other remnants of thought, often akin to ancient Greek philosophy, but never to the evidence, or the necessities of thought.

It is necessary to expose these things in type, for their coming is often enough.

It would have been nice if Time had published the site at least of refutation, as in the case of its August 23, 1999 issue; but this is not provided. That is the problem: when people in magazines, universities, radio and so on, sound forth with their licensed products, and there is no room to allow CERTAIN scope for refutation, the people can be misled. There may be many journalistic reasons ('We could not do this for all! etc.), why the replies may not be noted. However, in the end, if you cannot do it right, do not do it! That is the limit.

This being so, and no scope for refutation provided, we can therefore on this site provide a short guide to some of the refutations relating to some of the articles.
 
 

NATURALISM

Thus the efforts on evolution of August 23, 1999 are answered in depth and in detail on this site, and rebutted thoroughly in their invalid bases at these addresses:

Benevolent Brightness or Frothy Bane 81, 82, , and there is further material at Questions and Answers 3, STEP 8, 9, 10; A Spiritual Potpourri 1-3 and 4-9 ;  Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming... 2, 4, 5, 6, Epilogue. Also see That Magnificent Rock Chs. 1, 7, 8, and SMR Ch.2.

A book is not normally written by itself, and the naturalistic fallacy ignores the fact that there is a reason for this fact. It cannot, because it is not there to do it; it cannot because it is a recipient and has not the capacity to do it. It cannot because it is not personal in mental capacity, wedding knowledge, will and power. The matters are exposed in much detail in the above.
 
 

MISS-OGYNY ?

(Not the hatred of the woman, but of the missionary! a word to be coined here! It is often a question whether this is present in the the proud arrogance and denunciation if not distortion, of what refuses the peace of Christ in the name of artful subjectivity which CANNOT stand cf. SMR Ch.3, Barbs, Arrows and Balms 7).

The incredibly rationally lacking article, in the aspect on culture and missionaries, of Time, March 8, 1998, is a classic of its type. For refutation of method, first see SCOOP of the UNIVERSE 30.

For contrast also see SMR pp. 582ff., and Barbs, Arrows and Balms 13, 17, Appendix II. While the concept of cultural lust, control and pervasion is as common as silicon, and its constructions as artificial, and while indeed unmoored vessels do drift with the current, or move erratically as other forces apply without due direction for course, blindnesss to the forces at work is no ground for the assumption they do not exist, or for making inspired guesses on that assumption about past history and those who inhabited it, missionary or other.
 

It is then like imagining Marx was actually motivated by 'capitalistic' lusts, in 'interpreting' his life; and he may have been: but it is far from obvious, since a communistic lust seems to have replaced thing-itis, with man-itis, so that  the due disposition of the race, and dispersion of its goods,  became of more immediate interest than getting them in large amounts for himself. The control lust is quite as potent as the grab lust. When you are not God, it is quite as ludicrous. Neither is commendable in Christ; nor for that matter, for the Christian, are these or any other lusts of this temporal world and its puny powers and blind visions, the dominion or Lord, whatever many fallen churches may show. Even Christ had 1/12 of his group of apostles in the making, a devil!

Our generation is listed for a vast declivity, like a toboggan slide for many religious bodies (but NOT all! for the gates of hell shall NOT prevail, said Christ, against it, though they will make a very valiant effort), so that assumptions without knowledge become simply slack generalisation, like those who survey a crowd of recruits, and seeing many ill-attired, assume there is nothing good there. While the ill-use of Christ by Muhammad, constructing one some centuries later, by the Pope, reconstructing the bodies of thousands by flame and torture, still more centuries later, making litter out of love; and the ill-use of the Bible, making tatters out of truth, by unseeing exponents of what they neither understand nor follow, is commonplace for this last hundred years, and many follow them, all this is merely an incidental and recurring theme, to reach its climax in this period.

Pre-occupation with such common considerations does not obliterate the wonders of church history, where people have actually followed the Lord and His word, and have stood out as a result, like Lincoln, Shaftesbury, Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Boyle, Elizabeth Fry, Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer, John Knox, George Mueller, those famous five murdered last century by the Aucas, David Brainherd, the Small Woman (Aylward), Tyndale, Wyclif and those numberless many who in our generation, give all their heart and mind and strength to the kingdom of heaven, and note its heavenly dispositions (cf. Hebrews 11). Even their imperfections do not argue their blindness, for sight is the pre-condition of their lives. It is the thrust which speaks. In all things, it is necessary to have enough information when filling in gaps, sight unseen.

Moreover, in one of its obnoxious platitudes, Time in this case assumes that the missionary 'community' made an assumption of the moral superiority of Christianity. This is an excellent example of reading Christian values through non-Christian assumptions, and hence mischaracterising by lack of sight.

Christians do not, in general, assume the moral superiority of Christianity. BIBLICAL Christians - those who do not invent God and then worship what in that case HAS to be an idol, since no man can imagine God like an artist and hope the infinite is what he has imagined: these say with Paul: "For me to life is Christ" (Philippians 1), and this, "that in all things Christ may have the pre-eminence", and this, "I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness... but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith, that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection,  and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death" - from Philippians 3:8-10.

It is nothing to do with the moral superiority of a RELIGION, but a GOD, THE GOD, and thus of GOD not as philosophised, but presented, not merely proclaimed but in performance, not from afar but near, in and as Christ, definitively incarnate (Hebrews 1:1-3). Hence it is a distortion to make the 'religion' to be the butt, when its object is Christ. It is not a religion but CHRIST who is presented as morally superior, and that without limit.

It is CHRIST whom the Christian deems morally superior to an infinite degree, to what is not Christ (who characterises false prophets who do not acknowledge Him in no uncertain terms in John 10, as does Paul those who create their own 'christ' in II Cor.11). It is not moreover an assumption: for as this site expressly presents, with challenge to all and any, it is DEMONSTRABLE that it is the truth. The truth IS morally superior to fiction, because it attends you better than the variabilities of dreams, and hence is safer, surer and kinder in the end. To believe a lie is self-destructive. It destroys first your personality and then threatens your life.

WHEN the truth is that God is love, neither lax in conformity to the desires of lust nor unlovely in the presence of the willingness to follow spiritual hygiene and live with Him;
and that His sacrificial intensity is not only unmatched, but exhibited in Christ,
then the question is:
WHAT is this wonderful moral grandeur which can compete ? In all history, it is not met. It does not stand. There is nothing to contend as to truth, and there is nothing to act like this truth.

That then is the only thing: it is NOT an assumption,
since it is demonstrable that the Bible is true;
since it is without parallel in practice;
since truth is the kindest of all;
since this is without the demerits of all constructions which leave out the Maker and hence merely vie with reality to the destruction of the followers.

It is not a religious assumption, but a personal one, it is not about a cultural by-product, but about God who made man who made culture and thinks a good deal too much of this little product of his, which does little to commend itself, and looks more and more ludicrous in its endless contentions and bloodshed. It certainly would be an assumption to take it that the Inquisition's blood was morally superior; but then that is one of the superiorities of Christianity, that that had nothing to do with it, but merely with the implementation of Christ's prophecies on distortion. There is secular and there is religious distortion. The Inquisition was the latter. Neither of these is morally superior. Neither COULD be true since neither has one whit of justification from the word of God.

When you omit God from morals, you omit morals from morals, since there is then no way to have them (Cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 7, 31, SMR Chs.3, 5, 10, 582ff.). When you have God, you do not know His morals unless you know HIM. You cannot know Him if He does not speak. Only Moslems, Judaism and Christianity provide the verbatim address which allows communication that is propositionally sound, secure and explicitly definitive. The errors of the other two religions are made manifest (in SMR Ch.1 and see pp. 50ff., 91, 829ff., 988ff., 1080ff. and Chs. 8-9) . ONLY the Christian faith - that is the Christ as God manifest, CAN have objective morals, rationally acceptable and valid. There is no assumption whatever. The alternatives, including man as measure of man, when his measure is not known, are ludicrous, without foundation, mere reductionist fantasy. There is no comparison. There is nothing  to compare. Rationally, morals are what God provides and nothing else. Of course they are objectively superior when objectively they are all there are!

In terms of care and capacity, kindness and reliability, mercy and grace, for those who value the race and its created condition and need, they are also such that none can supersede them. If you forsake His standards, you forsake your own good; if you live by standards without love, you forsake the very spirit of God, and if you substitute your own standards, your unrealism is this, that you make of yourself the arbiter of truth, with no possible access to it but by God (SMR Chs. 1,3,10). This is a nugatory, nebulous, nubilous, fantasy of subjectivity without knowledge, desire without fact and self-assurance without knowing what the self even is! It is certainly not commendable in any competition with truth!

On Culture see also: SMR pp. 378ff., 422Qff., 374ff.. It is just what other people think and do and how they do it together and weave it consciously and unconsciously into various tartans, which in turn, are subject to those cleavages which truth and divine power present as they are perceived or departed from, so that human culture  is always changing for it is never right, though at times it is nearer than at others, since people do not en masse follow God, and hence in the mass, follow something else and go somewhere else.

Although there are plenty of places to go, the direction away from God is one, and the results are one, in the end. There is hence a certain uniformity about history, enlightened by moments of efflorescence when, here and there, reality enters with more force, or better yet, the people of God exhibit more cohesion in society, as happened in Geneva and to some extent in some of early USA history, so that an unbelieving world is sometimes enlivened by a real tang of truth, before it remembers (as happened in the USA after the mid-nineteenth century revivals) that after all, it IS the world and ITS culture is what it is and will be. It is its own (in practice), but belongs to God (in reality) so that its culture is ALWAYS cause for concern, friction and fantasy. In particular, the sort of glamorising of influence, which you see in accounts of the GREATEST 20th CENTURY people and so on, as in Time and other places, is rather like glamorising murder because it is so ... influential. The MORALS which are used are mere assumptions, and certainly objectively false, when there is the least desire to translate influence into value!

GOD, on the other hand, IS what He is, as He says, and will be what He is, since He does not change, and hence has the immeasurable advantage of telling the world its history in advance, both directionally and in considerable detail, and calling in the same voice to the same image-bearer, man, to come to the same place; and since sin entered, by what in the end is the same method, in substance (cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 17 and That Magnificent Rock 3). It is easy to 'read' His people with the book of culture, but the result is simply assured distortion, however unintentional. It is rather like learning a new language: you cannot tell too much about it, unless you use the more obvious signals and receive perceptively, until you know it.

 

 

JESUS CHRIST

A FEATURED TIME magazine article from a particular author on the topic of

Jesus Christ, who was He ...

appeared in December 6, 1999.

The uncritical approach of Time, in marked accord with its jejune romancing on favourite topics such as the myth of organic evolution (see Wake up World! Your Creator is Coming...6, pp. 132ff., That Magnificent Rock, Chs. 1, 8), but in marked distinction from its strictures on the missionary dealings of a noted family is arresting, entirely verifying the Biblical admonitions (Ephesians 4:17-19).

It is not that any one person thinks this or that; it is that MANY people despite much education in many cases, are pleased so to dispose their thoughts that they appear immune to reason in these spiritual areas, whereas in many another arena, they function markedly well! It is perhaps as in John 12:41: "If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, 'We see.' Therefore your sin remains."

For refutation of such 2 millenia-too-late reconstructions from the imagination which ignores the survey of evidence and the necessities of logic, in its own engulfments, see:

The Shadow of a Mighty Rock Appendix C, Chapter 6, Chapters 1-3,
Barbs, Arrows and Balms17,
That Magnificent Rock Ch. 3,
Repent or Perish 7, 2.

This lies in the area of verification, following proof; and read in its logical place is wholly overwhelming evidentially, in the most entire contrast to all innovative and 'creative' endeavours to meet the validity requirements of logic, the verificatory demands of scientific method and the synthetic coherence of all facets and aspects of attestation, one with the other. (Cf. That Magnificent Rock 5, 7, The Shadow of a Mighty Rock Chs. 8- 9, and pp. 973A, 643ff.).
 

IN PARTICULAR,

the focus of unparalleled prophetic detail ON Christ,
on His necessary performances which He was designated to fulfil, and His stature as deity
(A Spiritual Potpourri 12, Barbs, Arrows and Balms 14, 17, 23, SMR Ch.7, Section 4, Biblical Blessings 13, Repent or Perish 7, Extension 3 , The Biblical Workman 7, Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium 15 ) -
to  be checked by all, as to His fulfilment or otherwise before they committed themselves to HIM;

and FROM Christ, which He gave with such rigour (SMR Ch.8):
the revealed deity whom we again can check as to their fulfilment as given from His lips when present on earth -
an eventuation occurring the more so now, since they are accruing continually the more as the years pass,
and never more clearly than in the focus of the LAST TIMES
(those specifically featured as preceding His return to select out His Church - not buildings or pretences but believers from the ruined world) -
 

these TWO FEATURES provide precision like that of
intersecting cross-wires in a gun-sight:
just one of the aspects of
the monopoly on truth which, as well as
the monopoly on KNOWING it, through Him alone as basis,
is His.
(Cf. That Magnificent Rock Ch. 5, 7, The Shadow of a Mighty Rock Ch.3).

While we are at it, we check on

·       His personal fulfilment of personal promises made when He was on earth, on

·       the wonderful audacity of TELLING the world just HOW it would seek to infiltrate and poison the church, and just what would happen, and then having it happen:

like a greater than Eisenhower, who told the Germans several centuries before D-day just where and when he would land (by a super-chronological process), and then went ahead and did it and had it all happen as he ALSO told them, in detail, step by step.

We check on
 

• the TOTAL fulfilment of ALL philosophic problems BY HIS WORD, when it is applied and Predestination and Freewill does this in detail in one area, while SMR Ch.5 shows it in many more.

 

Likewise we observe
 

• the Gospel as progressively and harmoniously foreshadowed in detail for over 1000 years,

then fulfilled and taught on the basis of
 

·       the Christ who came, as predicted, and acted as predicted, to enable what was predicted then to be preached, as predicted to

·       the Gentiles when the Jewish nation rejected the Christ, as predicted, and before, as again predicted, the whole world began to turn as they turned, away from God in such

·       a lustre of death-lust as death attests in the last 100 years of slaughter so massive, that it is like

·       a crazily consummated epidemic, death avenue for the world, grasped and expanded, seized and thrust,

which incidentally, He also foretold, and did so specifically for these times (Revelation 6, Matthew 24  cf. Wake up World! Your Creator is Coming...1).

One truly beautiful thing about the journalism, the writing from God, is this, that in every sphere and facet, in every fashion and structure, it does not change, it does not move, it does not alter, but lays down like a bud becoming a flower, the stages, each assorted to fit the next, all to fit the total triumph which we now know as the word of God, and the Gospel, those written formulations, propositions and pleas, promises and provisions of Almighty God, who is what He is, and not what someone or other decides with sword or compression in University classes, to 'make' of Him.

One REASON why it does not alter is this: you do not NEED to alter what stands. Just one reason why science, though a testimony to man's industry, is laughable when in the grip of this or that modish philosophy, it would CHALLENGE God, is this: IT for its part challenges itself just months after some solemn announcement and 50 years is far too much to expect for many of its propositions: unlike the 3500 or so which have graced the immovability of the Bible.

What logic shows it MUST be,  IT shows it is!  When God is speaking, there is not really any competition. Now see SMR pp. 100-101.