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Chapter 4

This is in fact the completion of Ch. 3, for both constitute one whole.

A MORE INTIMATE COVERAGE

Now that we have seen some headings and outlines, let us luxuriate a little. First, some might like to survey in a slightly more specialised way, some aspects of validity and reason, and for this an Appendix is provided. However, it is good to proceed in the precise vein above for pleasantness, so let us now do so.

AT THE OUTSET

Thus we see that Reason for the Faith, as provided for in I Peter 3:15, with its earthly setting shown in Romans 1:17ff., as also the result, can be phrased and phased into a

Comprehensive Bible Christian Apologetic Method. 

This in turn is self-confirmatory on every side, as in science ideally various hypotheses are sought to be intertwining, each approbative and sometimes even illustrative of the other.

In general perspective, if you pre-suppose no God, because it suits you, then you find no rationality or validity^*1.  Presuppositionalism specialises in this fact.

If you pre-suppose God, antilogies disappear.

However it is not our path merely to do this, grievous as it is to all unbelief at the outset. This is merely one phase.

In our next step, instead of adding to the presuppositional, beyond the first aspect, we proceed to follow reason, which after all for anyone seeing man in the image of God has no problems, rationalism being merely a debasement of a facility into an idol.

If then you set out to follow reason in order to inspect results, while also affirming any model which destroys its own validity, then you find antinomy, its voidance and deletion of argument, meaning and even words. If reason were an oddity of correlation merely, then it would be in a self-contained system of thought which would breed nothing of truth, merely of happenstance.

Thus again if causality were denied, then even the meaning of words would become insupportable, since characteristics are necessary for definition, and these in turn have their innate grounds and nature, which instead of being erratic, in order to become describable, are affirmable so that a source of results is correlative to a possibility of definition. Remove the one and you remove the other, so leaving yourself speechless, and hence unfit for argumentation. See Causes.

Character must BE in order that DEFINITION might be! Character must have ground, and does, in order that it might become characterisable. The process is a causative one, in which what is  produces what appears, through sufficient ground. Science being built on this, finds its matrix in it, and hence its power. A realm of causality caused by some imaginary cause, does not thereby become void; for on the contrary, IN ORDER to imagine a cause for causality, you have to ASSUME IT OPERATIONAL FIRST, so that something or other may CAUSE IT. The concept of such a thing is thus merely illusory and self-contradictory.

The mere fact that you are imagining a cause for causation does not alter the fact that you are using it in order to derive it, which has the common name in logic, of begging the question. This is an entirely vain thing, suitable only for school-masters who seek to teach the elements of logic to fledgings in Year 11 High School.

If however you avoid the voidance of reason and of causality, then no longer are you barred and harried, harassed and impotent at the outset by compulsory, pervasive irrationalism (cf. SMR Ch. 5). If you FOUND yourself on irrationalism, you cannot escape its quality, merely immersing yourself in the magic of its cessation.

If then you follow reason as shown in SMR Ch. 1 for example, you are forced to find God. This it does, even moving to His only authorised word to mankind, the Bible, by irrevocable necessity (cf. The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy). This Bible in turn confronts you on inescapable terms with the Christ of God, the remedy of God, and the Gospel of grace, of which it is full (cf. SMR Ch. 7, and pp. 520ff.). This becomes then an entire solution to seeking, involving metaphysical, epistemological, aesthetic, moral, political and physical resolution of mutual and specific principles (cf. SMR Ch. 4, Question and Answer   7, Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 7, Little Things Ch. 5, It Bubbles... Ch. 9, Repent or Perish Chs.   7,   2).

It resolves antinomies, excludes antilogies, and institutes not only individual meaning, but a nexus of meaning, coherent and integrated, while dependent and created.

This result is then subjectible methodologically (though it is already sure) to scientific method and is left alone with the criteria it requires, so validating reason, as is normal practice in other spheres. There being no competition in religious fields in this specific level, there are no issues; but the different heights and depths of verification when there, constitute an integral and personal answer; and since we are personal, this is necessary as one aspect.

Simplicity and integrity of all fields and powers of man, in resultant is its own additive to verification and integrity, and in fact, this could be looked on as aspect XIII in method, since it not only, as in VII above is a quantitative corollary to truth, but a systematic one in depth as well, a methodological surplus.

This then is the METHODOLOGICAL SURPLUS PHASE, which juts into view.

It is a matter of total structure in architectural simplicity, and its wings not only meeting logical need, but surpassing it in just that way that the mind of the Author of man in His own image might be expected to do. It has the savour of regality and the originality of the unlimited, with the cohesion of coherent thought and the superb correlations of design at the metaphysical level, as in the more apparent meeting places of thought's envisagement that are correlative to power without limit and understanding that is majestic. To look and learn is privilege and wonder both!

Let us now amplify a little.

Since the Bible, verified and validated as from God, is both a revealing of His plans, personal nature and purposes, and of His actions towards man and his environment, it opens a new test, that is likewise an opportunity. Truth loves and rushes to its exhibition, for that is one of the most conspicuous aspects of light: it reveals by nature!

Thus, through these inscripturated words, the Bible, validated as authentic in every way and wise, the Creator provides a way for a stable platform of communication with God, in the plan of salvation. More, these same words provide personal access to  God as by children to a father, and even, in Christ authenticated therein as Saviour of mankind, it provides reasonable grounds for such access (cf. SMR pp. 582ff, 611ff., 620ff.). It provides personal supervision to ensure adequacy and fidelity of the communication, and grounds for this being not only possible, but actual in a coherence of concept brilliant in disposition, all-encompassing its provision, like a prodigy of mountain peaks, each an independent summit, all a glorious totality, beyond need, superb in configuration and elevation.

In this way, the necessity of absolute truth revealing itself willingly is met, and at the same time, a rationally affirmed procedure is in place. It is not as if reason creates, but that in its fossicking and ascertaining office, it LOCATES the word of God! Further, in making available such a thing as becoming children of this God  of creation, there is from this same word provided a change of nature to the dashed image of God in sinful man, so that freedom has meaning to its very depths, and one's nature is not one's ultimate at all, merely a phase for consideration! So does liberty become meaningful; and in love, which is willing to do such work on man, there is the basis of the change for it is costly to redeem, restore and re-make.

It always is! (cf. Question and Answer   2).

This means of access provides for the negation of the offer (cf. John 3:19, Matthew 23:37ff.), which makes it meaningful in terms of liberty. If indeed, sin precludes the healthy operation of will, yet God in love is able to know and find His own, having desired all, while willing to violate none (cf. Luke 19:42ff., John 1:12ff.). In the end, as for creation, so for re-creation or regeneration as it is called (cf. Colossians 3:10, Titus 3:5ff.), God is author of initiative; but having founded man in His image, He is also with authority, the exponent of a love which never defiles itself by becoming force. Hence the endless seeming parade of paternal laments in the scriptures. You see this for example in as in Isaiah 48:16, and Jeremiah 48:36 -

"Therefore My heart will sound for Moab like pipes, and My heart shall sound like pipes for the men of Kirheres:
because the riches that he has gained are perished."

It is the LORD who is speaking as announced in 48:35. Poignant likewise and expressive of love in its integrity is the Isaiah passage:

                           Nor destroyed from before Me.' "

There incidentally, in 48:16 you see the sending of the Saviour from the Godhead as in the book of Isaiah, God the Father sending God the Son here prefigured with that majestic ease that relates to absolute truth speaking beyond time, and into it, so that we may listen! This example, while confirming our present purpose, also and in turn finds its place in XII as exhibiting the phenomenon of resonance. Facility without being facile, multiplicity of truth without strenuousness: here are some of the criteria of that majesty for whom truth is more than environment. It is His own nature!

Thus we are considering the divine provision in the Bible, the word of God validated and verified, so that this not only gives scope for liberty as noted above, in order to allow people to NEGATE (John 3:19), but provides personal VERIFICATION of the reality of what is freely supplied in practice to believers: and that in the special case of PERSONAL inter-relationship with this God, which as in knowing the artist and not merely surveying his works, is of the most intense and intrinsic gain.

It is an integral reality and a valid integrality, not in terms of parts as gods, an office they writhe to avoid despite the most invasive experiments over long years (cf. TMR Ch.  1), but as a created system inter-active indeed, but a derivative of design, each agent and aspect having place not by it own power, but by imaginative construction and deft correlation. On such part is man; all of whose personal aspects are explained in the ways we have begun to exhibit under XIII, and have often exhibited before

(cf. It Bubbles ... Ch. 9,
Little Things Ch. 5,
Earth Spasm ...   6,   7,
SMR Ch. 4,
Calibrating Myths ...Ch. 3,
Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 16, Ch. 13,
Predestination and Freewill).

To this we shall return near the end of this Chapter.

Meanwhile, let us perceive that it is for this reason, again in verification, that you find one such as Paul the apostle saying this:

"For I am hard pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ,
which is far better;
nevertheless to remain in the flesh is more needful for you,
and being confident of this,
I know that I shall remain and continue with you all for your progress and joy of faith,
that your rejoicing may be more abundant in Jesus Christ by my coming to you again."

(Bold added.)

IN THE ONSET

Thus at the level of test (not that faith needs this, but method supplies it!), there is verification scope at the personal and inter-personal level with no less a personal being than the infinite God; and it is not in terms of His promises and principles, which merge like mountains on the horizon, the way and the result being correlative in intimacy.

These aspects include that chastening as required from any father (Hebrews 12), but the more especially from the Father of spirits; and this is present also: for it is not pleasure but company in the beauty of holiness which is at issue, and no more can the child of God fiddle about than can the scientist fool with his records or the athlete with his training. The fact that the end result is guaranteed (John 5:24), when it is LIFE which is operative, is no more relevant than is the knowledge that if one follows a path one will not get lost. It is not a question of motive but merely the characteristic of a highway, in fact the highway of holiness described as such in Isaiah 35.

This provides greater richness and depth of test, for love is as far removed from pleasure as is gluttony from appetite.

Now this liberty for man, however corrupted and polluted, implies and denotes, and indeed this the more from the pollution, a spiritual evil and disease in man without God, by which freedom, in excess of pathological zeal, frequently elevates man to god. It is not so actually, but in spirit; and often is this found in practice but without the power or the wisdom! It is indeed to pseudo-god-like status that he elevates himself, if you desire it expressed more fully. Thus is created collision, confusion and vast evil. This in turn expressly as well as logically by implication, is prelude to a rebellion which has results in every phase of human life.

This is an application of the onset, of the scope of liberty despite love, in the realm of creation.

One result of the rebellion is mental, so that men invents countless philosophies, none of which endures, any more than fashion does (cf. I Corinthians 7:31, Romans 1:17ff., I John 2:16, II Chronicles 36, II Kings 17, Matthew 23:37ff., Luke 19:42ff.), so accentuating and aggravating man's rebellion. These are predictable, since man has mind and warped spirit; and it is predictably invalid, as succeeding generations continually attest of the failed mental flights of predecessors without the governance of God in their thinking (cf. SMR Ch. 3, News 82, Repent or Perish Ch. 7, with Spiritual Refreshings 13 and 16).

Thus these mental paradigms of pollution called philosophy, be it moral or political, metaphysical or epistemological, logical or other, when secular and without God as is usual, often lead to imaginary gods to enshrine their ambits (cf. Deuteronomy 32:17ff.), which can arise in detached hearts and so create the confusion which, to overview it in biblical terms, merely confirms the pollution.

The results are inoperable logically, politically as being seen the more in recent times with the militant Moslem phenomenon, abundantly provided for in much of its excesses in the Koran (cf. More Marvels... Ch. 4, Divine Agenda ... Ch. 6); and indeed, it is precisely the folly of ignoring the invisible (cf. It Bubbles ... Ch. 9) which has led so such visible results in our philosophically debauched generation (cf. TMR Ch. 8, News 121, 122). If you ignore basics, then your ignorance will lead to what become for you increasingly, insoluble puzzles and ultimate vulnerabilities.

Blindness that is wilful always has this result that is woeful, whether mentally or morally with its aids in Aids, or politically as with aides-de-decamp in Hitler and Stalin, Mao and Lenin.

It does not work, for man simply is not so made; you can FORCE it for a while, and when as biblically predicted, such a method is used by a world power based in Europe (cf. Cascade ... Ch. 12, News 151, With Heart ... Ch. 10, His Wounds ... Ch. 3), it may last as did Hitler for a little while. Then it may seem that this power of pollution is ultimate; but it is merely an asininity of the highest order, and its overthrow temporarily by man or finally by God, by reality at last, is as assured ... as is its coming. As to that, it is soon (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5), in terms of the biblical criteria.

Already the world has had two millenia to experience the power of God and the fulfilment of the Messianic thrust to the uttermost in Jesus Christ; God is not impatient, but utterly sure (cf. II Peter 3:9). It will come. It is invested in His word, with a place; and it will meet this race as did the rest of His declarations.

The increasing numerical power of Europe, the rise of its currency relative to the US dollar in stark contrast, its increasing concern about its Constitution, its divorce from real ideals in this, in favour of pragmatic devices (cf. Christ, the Cumulative and the Culmination Ch. 4) : all these features are in line with the predictions, as this growing Euro-cluster is faithfully following the follies of dead philosophies, which become morbid mortuaries for the deceased in the long run, because truth hurts, and its avoidance assures collision, as throughout human history.

Thus the liberty in the concave of unbelief leads to erratic philosophy, conformable politics, oppression and antagonism between false religions and false versions of religion, all using force here or there; and these mutually antagonistic power blocs, continually re-emerging as if a kaleidoscope of very certain parts has been well shaken. This has accelerated since in particular, the German invasion of France in 1870, in the Franco-Prussian war, through 1914-18, 1939-45 and the 1945-1990 cold War with its partition problem for Europe,  and now through its increasing directive status (as in the Madrid Quartet - towards Israel of all places!): all these features of development confirm the mass of mess which folly invents and obstinacy consummates, so accounting for no small measure, on the negative side, of modern European history.

Episodes of desolation have led to an era of mutual co-operation and even co-ordination. Power, unity and religious vagueness with vagaries of 'destiny', this is the documented situation now facing us in Europe (Christ the Cumulative ... Ch. 4), an ideal preparation for the power to come and its devastating destruction in its day. Europe is a pivot to be; but it is its coming incumbent who is crucial (cf. Highway of Holiness Ch. 2, SMR pp. 683ff., His Wounds... Ch. 4,   *5, Let God be God Ch. 8, Biblical Blessings Ch. 2, SMR pp. 904ff., 886ff.).

More generally, racial hatred, survival of the fittest as a new political game, through pride as in World War I cardinally, through aspiration as in World War II, through the heat of ideological desire on the part of a defunct system parasitic on others, in the Cold War, the resurgence of money for oil with Islamic triumphalism, as was present not a little from the capture of Mecca on, with Muhammad (he was not ASKED to rule them by all! but invaded with power and passion), the exploitation of moral barbarism in the name of religious immunity, the pragmatic KGB-style utilisation of resources as they may be found, with results as they may occur: this and that, these and those, and many more such framed philosophic putsches have polluted the air of this earth till it becomes more and more difficult to breathe at all.

This is metaphorical, but it even has literal application for some! Sour power becomes glower power which brings nearer that hell which life without God comprises.

This development and direction of flow of course is specifically predicted in overview in Matthew 24, Luke 21 (cf. Matthew 24:7-8,12,21-22), but it is the DIRECTION of flow which is our current interest, and its predictability on the biblical basis to which we are attending!

Incidentally, this is an example of the PRINCIPIAL-PRACTICAL CORRELATION (XIV) which is a fourteenth feature of our method, in that it is forced on our attention by reality!

If XIII is architectural, structural: then this phase is dynamic, functional.

This differs from V above, in that that was an episodic matter, whilst this is a systematic one; and it differs from other aspects in this, that it belongs to the application of biblical data to the world in two concordant phases. It differs from the qualitative and quantitative aspects in that it is inter-systematic. Indeed, it is the very plethora of considerations and the intrinsic-extrinsic relationships between them which is like a texture or fabric, and is the very testimony of the substantial and underlying reality which one would expect. This, in turn, is verification of the biblical perspective all over again, at this precise level as well as in correlative other ones. Indeed, it is doubtful if there is any limit to such phases; and it is here merely a selection which is made for the purpose of showing method, and marvel simultaneously; but then again, when you know God, while it is no less marvellous to SEE such things, it is far less surprising.

Champions serve aces, may not be universally true in the tennis world, but it is near it. Deity deals in depths and heights that reveal themselves from infinitude without cease to the finite mind: this for one in the image of God, is not merely unsurprising, but in accord with expectation!

AT THE UPSET

These and many such features seen frequently on this site, then, not only further verification, something that is quite pervasive, but fulfil specific biblical analysis and prediction, as does a vast area of the scope, sequence and underlying content of modern history, not least with the noted elevation of Europe on the one hand, and even more marked, the Jewish presence once again in Israel. This is found together with  the inveterate detestation of the same as seen both in the UN's invidious and destabilising negativity (cf. His Time is Near  Ch. 10), and in the camp of the false prophets, such as the Muhammad fanatical camp of fundamentalistic militants.

Zechariah 12 forecast just such pre-occupation with 'dealing' with Jerusalem (cf. SMR Appendix A, It Bubbles ... Ch. 10), and just such cost for the presumption! Ezekiel predicted just such restoration into the very wantonry of the nations (as did Moses in Leviticus 26 with Deuteronomy 32), for an Israel restored to its national place. This however, it is most clearly and emphatically depicted in the Bible,  in God's faithfulness because of His desire and word, not because of their honour or faithfulness (cf. Ezekiel 36:22, cf. 37:28, 39:27); and if it to one, then it is to all that the message will come. When the mind of God is expressly set on a target, it is not man who alters it (Ephesians 1:11).

 It is thus a divine vigour which is being enacted, and the issue is not in the end what who will 'do' to or 'for' Israel, but the mind of God. This being written and propositional in scripture, the waves of horror killing become mere flagrancies of human obstinacy, which like all other, have dim and dismal future awaiting them (Ezekiel 38-39, Joel 3, Habakkuk 3, Micah 7).

Moreover, it is not only the Jewish presence in Israel (cf. SMR Ch. 9, Appendix A), but in Jerusalem which Zechariah and Christ (Luke 21:24) connote; it was to be a return after many days before they reach their Messiah, first rejected (Zech. 12:10) at last. Many indeed were these to be, in its exile (cf. Leviticus 26:37-42, Deuteronomy 32:35-42, Hosea 3:1-5). For how long has the curse, not causeless, come (cf. Deuteronomy 32:22-29, Proverbs 26:2)!

Now after so long a time, after 1900 years it has come. Indeed, it is the Jewish re-take of Jerusalem which is, as seen there in Luke, the signal extraordinary, of the near return of Christ. THIS HAD TO HAPPEN FIRST; so here we find not only the general character of modern history, the return of the Jews, and indeed their glorious triumphs as forecast by that same Zechariah (loc. cit., cf.  SMR Ch. 9), but the Jerusalem re-capture (1948, first 'half', 1967 the rest) as a specific index to fit with the rest of the historic tartan of colours and strands predicted; and both compose together the signal of coming culmination.

It is here shown definitively that the river is near the mouth to the sea... It is sea-side time, but alas, not in any holiday sense! The signal here notable is one occurring once in nearly two millenia It is not a repetitive phenomenon in the Christian era, but a single and singular one, hotly disputed, burningly denounced, but divinely ensured. Jerusalem is Jewish again.

Thus explained in spiritual pollution, and predicted in divine power, both, is this world's disrelish of this Jewish fact in Jerusalem, and the UN's inveterate hostility to a Jewish national presence there. The nations have been thus and were predicted to be thus, to the end (cf. Psalm 2). WHY do the nations rage ? It is against the LORD and against His Christ, says the Psalm; but the end is clear, as that Psalm shows. It is a hostility which not only led to the crucifixion of Christ, but leads on to the very rebuke of God among the nations, which was to come and now approaches with all the energetic throb of a distant express train, ever now more clearly heard on the echoing rails.

Pragmatically as well as principially, no Physics text book is as sure as the Bible; it never errs. Physics - for all its to-do, a study with which modern man loves in his own inveterate declension from God and desire to 'handle' the universe as if it were is own construction, whereas he cannot even construct himself - is a discipline which varies its theories to meet ever-challenging facts. The Bible, by contrast,  in over three millenia controls facts, and hence has no need empirically, just as there is no scope spiritually, to change! (cf. Matthew 23:35, Isaiah 55). That of course, and this is further verification because it is a TESTABLE matter, was just what Christ said. Not a jot or tittle will pass till what ? It is till ALL is fulfilled. Hence ONE error and He is wrong. That is a standard no other branch of knowledge can or does meet.

THAT in turn is further verification: it would be unreasonable to impose such a requirement of man; it would be unreasonable NOT to do so with God when He so speaks, a fact which Christ indicates clearly enough in Matthew 5:17-20 in His famous jot and tittle statement, as in 24:35 in His God beyond the universe declaration!

Rebellion, biblically posited of man,  does not relish reality discordant with its hopes and dreams. Adolescent dreams are by NO means the only ones! (Jeremiah 23:25!). Thus this return of the Jews both confirms long-range prophecy over millenia (from Moses in Deuteronomy 32, Leviticus 26), something far more notable than successfully targeting a small moon from billions of miles away, and rebukes illicit hopes and puerile dreams lingeringly attached to errant manhood!

Since man is so potently destructive by INTENTION, and frequently in sad and even grievous actuality, and since he is so variable and creative in thought and deed, this scramble of human thrust against divine diction, in this eventual Jewish outcome patently connotes that this Age is nearly over. Therefore and quite predictably - indeed predictedly as in Psalm 2 and Deuteronomy 32 with Zechariah 12 - this antagonises the rebels against God, who see the writing on the wall, and can read.

This fact in turn arouses both fear and further hatred, as is normal in rebellion when authority is undented; and redoubled efforts to quash that Jewish State arise not only from Palestinian murder squads, Islamically financed assassins of children, whose punishment by Israel the Press rarely ceases to focus. It comes also from the UN, and  from the Madrid Quartet of the UN, EU, US and Russia. To be sure that name for the unholy alliance it denotes is now rather anachronistic;  but the intention is not! This group with its Road Map have a road to further removal by international power of more of what the Jews gained despite international armies, at the first in 1948.

These things jointly show not only a pervasive coverage of giant movements in history over vast ages, from the word of God written, the Bible, but a majestic splendour in scope, detail and accuracy, atmosphere, perspective and detail. This provides the MAJESTIC PERSPECTIVE, a major face of Biblical Christian Apologetics (No. XI above). We see in the predicting word of God the atmosphere of sustained shame for the Jew, shameless intervention by the Gentile, passion aroused and military victory against all 'odds' by the Jew by virtue of divine action, the seizing of Jerusalem and its embroiling in intervening busybodies who cannot leave alone what God has ordained. We see the case of one of Israel like a thousand as Zech. 12 declared would occur before they repented of the murder of the Christ (12:10), which follows. It is all there, in its zeal, its passions, it sequence and its style.

It is so like looking down on mountains from peaks, that the comparison is strangely arresting. It is the Lord who looks down on man in his place and sees him as he is (Isaiah 40:21ff.), and His word majestically attests this fact, just as it graciously directs man to the divine remedy (Isaiah 40:9-10, 52:7-55:6).

 ON THE FACE OF IT

Nor is the scientific verification at all levels testable (and as on mountains that one is climbing, there are MANY faces to survey and surmount), by any means, all! Problems insoluble without God, the revealed and known God, not some flummery of mere invention or calumny of idle contention, are resolved by the specifically biblical data about Him, His purpose and plans, and concerning man. Not merely is this without residue (the Exhaustive Resolution phase of Biblical Christian Apologetics), but it is with facility (another, more specialised aspect of the Majestic Perspective aspect of the method).

This applies to the fields of the meaning and nature of beauty, freedom, morals, responsibility, guilt, law and love, folly and arbitrariness, good and evil, meaning and 'Nature',  and many others that arise on this site and in the mind of man, and have done so for millenia; and some of these are given condensed reference in

SMR Ch. 5, Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 13,
Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch. 3,
Earth Spasm ... Ch. 1,
Defining Drama ...Ch. 4 (cf. list above at VII).

Problems man proposes, God disposes by revealing the reality in terms of which alone they are resolvable. Their resolution is so relatively simple when the blinders are off, that the scruffy discourses outside His truth become like dust of stallions kicking, in contrast to the peace of comprehensively resolving perspective when the word of God becomes the base for thought, and the stage for action of the mind.

Through the word of God, the Bible, not only are these chronic problems of philosophy without exception seen voided into clarity in composite collation and single perspective with meaning and substance, but they are so solved without that reductionism which is a mere evasion of issues, as common as deceit, and as useless as lies. Moreover, through His word and its principles and perspective, this resolution is wrought with facility, as if mountain ranges from a highest peak were seen in their relative domains, their river beds and correlations clear, as is the case at the South Australian Wilpena Pound, from St Mary's Peak.

In fact, the biblical perspective like such a summit of and for all, makes it easy to disentangle and review philosophic errors as shown for example in SMR Ch. 3 in general, and 307ff. in particular. Here then is rest for the mind as well as stimulus, delight for the question reason as well as a shield of reality for the seeker who finds in this a rock not only higher than he, but an eyrie which exposes from its sublimity, what the plain loses in its dust. (Cf. Isaiah 33:14ff. with 55).

	That is the Therapeutic Aspect  (XV)
	of the Exhaustive Resolution Phase (IV),

one more illustration of the intense and singular coherence of the whole body of method, since it but reflects the massive coherence of the realities when viewed from the word of God, like ranges spread out before the inspired eye. Made for man, it matches man and so enhances him, in internal verification.

Thus the inspiration of being able to see all things in coherent, rationally delicious, spiritually triumphant, explicatory penetration becomes an ease to the mind, a joy to the heart and a radical lift to the spirit, a thing of peace and nourishment, fortifying the personal; while the Spirit of Him whose word it is, at the same time brings personal meaning to the inter-relationship of the things, which are His, with one's own person. It is like some Summer cruise, with unending bliss on all sides. Not that there is no taking up of one's cross to follow Christ, since the world is hostile and it is war! (Ephesians 6); but there is an inward reality and a rational thrill which matches the depth of the spiritual experience of the One to whom all these things relate (John 14:21-23).

As is usual when the truth is exposed concerning a puzzle, mathematical, geometrical, or other, it becomes hard to see how on earth people could so have butchered the matter! That however is the nature of blindness, that it does not see; and when as biblically predicated of mankind without God, it is wilful, then shut eyes make sight the more difficult yet, as Christ indicated for many (Matthew 13:14-15). On the other hand, not only does God reveal to His children what He has done, as who He actually is, but He even strengthens them with might in the inner man, giving them illumination in a personal way (Ephesians 3:16, 1:17-19), as if a painter were meticulously to explain to an apprentice the wonders of his art. When it is God who acts to instruct His creation, naturally, this supernatural zest becomes an illimitable privilege and delight. How clearly He shows that there is nothing too hard for the Lord! That too is verification, since just as He claims, so He does (Genesis 18:14). It is as natural to the supernatural as the light is to the sun.

Just as there is report that some who are physically deaf have come to consider their plight an advance or advantage, and delight in its usages, so here but in this case culpably, people tend to create a 'culture' which like a rampant vulture, pecks on, yes seeks to swallow up what is not desired (cf. Beauty for Ashes Ch. 3, TMR Ch. 8, SMR 252Aff., 252Iff.). In this way, convenient myths are created (cf. Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch. 7), as a substitute for the actual and demonstrable creation of creative minds such as those of men (cf. Secular Myths and Sacred Truth). These then become quagmires which trap the young, festering philosophies disadorning the swamplands they create, so leading to traditions which defile their possessors and render frustrated their victims.

However such vain cultures are unstable and fatally vulnerable, and their ludicrous tenor limits even in this world, their intrusive tenure, so that they writhe in discomfort abundantly deserved (cf. SMR pp. 380ff., Earth Chasm ... Ch. 1, SMR pp. 307ff.). This has the advantage however of showing more stunningly majestic in contrast, the purity of truth and its eminent functionality in the mind and heart of man, made by it, and for it, and not efficacious in the end, at all, without it, either practically or logically. With an irrational chip on his shoulder, to use computerese, man is scheduled for disaster, his vain visions becoming the foster-fathers of bedraggled splendours, arrested developments, endless collisions both with 'nature' and with the rest of his race, until the entirety becomes more like an object lesson for the guilt of declivity from God, than a life to be lived. From the first, death was the penalty of sin, and without its remedy, in the redemption the Bible reveals in Jesus Christ, time is no balm, and effort is no resolution.

Let us however look further.

On a nearby and parallel face, we find that all the resolutions duly made of the philosophic mess that man richly deserves, just as they explain all, so also they fit as one (cf. Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 13, Acme, Alpha and Omega ... Ch. 9). In stark contrast are the misdirected efforts, aspiring to  categorically impossible substitutes for God, involving 'this unit' or 'that unit' of this kind or other, like making this part or that of an automobile its imaginary factory! They lead merely to frustration and impotence, as Einstein found readily enough (cf. SMR pp. 299 -303, Spiritual Refreshings loc. cit.), both in principle and in practice! Even profound genius cannot second guess God, or re-invent Him. What is made, remains in just that category in all its inabilities and abilities.

Of this kind are the hapless constructions of Marx, Freud and Darwin, all seeking explanations within what is made, and ignoring the making, the Maker and the design matrix in all of its operative features.

On this, see Repent or Perish Ch. 7, Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 9, esp. *1, The gods of naturalism have no go Ch. 25, Aviary of Idolatry,  SMR pp. 925ff., and *2 below. Programmatic, they remove the validity of their own internalisation, like refuges from reason, and by their own modelling, become part of the processes which determine, not overlords able to inspect. Determination by forces is not determination by truth, but conformity to process.

To get beyond it, you need both liberty and absolute truth as shown. Man has both, but defiles the one and tends to ignore the other. Hence comes culture. While some of this may be beneficial, its trends in these last centuries has become lethal, just as at times it has been carnal, sensual, subversive, submersive and whatever other debasing thing appeals to man who, on the broad way, double checks his cheques but not his direction, so having a chequered career which assuredly does not bring down the chequered flag of victory, but the bankruptcy of careering downhill.

This is as it has been, was to be, and is eminent as it was foretold eminently to become (cf. Romans 1, II Timothy 3, I Timothy 4, II Peter 3:5-8, Joyful Jottings   8).

It is in line with specific prediction, generic analysis and tendential indications from the Bible, all three. In terms of method, this is one of the endless seeming ways, in which one rich vein of ore makes contact with ramifying parallels on all sides.

This is negative verification; but in terms of therapeutic release from such follies, which is likewise an arena of cohesion, see the inspiring flight into reality as in Little Things Ch. 5, or It Bubbles Ch. 9. This does not dissipate, being interlocked, strand on strand. Again, it is seated on the rock of reason, reality and revelation, but this in reverse order! The first points, the last is the culmination that becomes the basis!

Thus the return to intrinsic significance without reductionism or antinomy, in operable realism, then, as in the above references, enables avoidance of the monistic folly of trying to elevate the impersonal to final status (cf. SMR pp. 307 in its exhibit of the fantasy of folly), and this ludicrously by subversion of the personal, on which it heedlessly seeks to seat its validity.

What is contained in system is not its arbiter; and what is driven by dynamics of meaninglessness is no arbiter of meaning (cf. SMR pp. 294ff.). Such a basis becomes a pervasive limit to the status of its results; and what is derivative from the impersonal, by the logic of the personal, is irrational for that very reason. What you defile you cannot use as basis, without being defiled; and what you dismiss, you cannot make rock, when it is stricken from the model's register. If you do, however, you are merely irrational and nothing more remains but to pursue realities with those who do not dump reason. For what gives to thought no intrinsically valid status, its logical status is null; for intra-systematics have no means of becoming their surveyor and judge (cf. SMR p. 305ff.).

In other words, you cannot logically abuse what is determinative, and be valid. Whatever sees must be capable, not subordinated by alien realities that dismiss its integrity, or else sight is without the significance assigned it.  If then PERSON is adequate for discerning truth, it needs valid basis; but if not, it but spouts. Moreover,  you cannot dispense with person's integrity by person. If it lacks it, it can do nothing here, so the dismissal is vain. If it has it, however, it needs assignable basis, not mere affirmation in fancy.

This must first unveil absolute truth outside any urgings and limits of internal systematics, and then make available this same truth in its own integrity, without subordination even in the process! As seen, this is precisely what biblical revelation provides; and in so doing, it exhibits in this, as in all other aspects, the requisites of coherence, validity and integrity. Because it is not only moving where these logical necessities repose, but where their verification mixes with multiplicious confirmations and singular logical cogency, lacking nothing, and in this is alone, the case is as shut as open: for it opens to the view only to be closure of the case.

In this, it is alone, being assessable by many means, as this Chapter is at some pains to exhibit. As nothing else meets the systematics of the case, moreover, this meets them with a fluency and flourish that is a finale to thought, indeed establishes it with the result.

Thus Biblical Christian Theism (BCT) having all these ingredients, the METHOD for the apologetics for the same exhibits this counter-distinguishing fact, and gathering relish with its sheer profundity and multiplicity, uncovers the sheer wonder of it all.

Let us then be clear. It is because BCT HAS these things that apologetics for it has and has had soaring success, and on the other hand, wilful follies seeking to avoid these realities naturally fail, have failed and so made the reputation of philosophy! It is categorically easier to be counsel for the truth than for fiction, let alone devious devices; and when the truth is made manifest as a Person with power and instruction, then the case advances to delectable heights.

It is a matter of rebellion not invalidity, which bewitches man, for the invalidities he faces are but a byproduct of his glide from God and slide from significance that results. The first, rebellion in spirit,  produces the second, invalidity of thought; it is this and not the creation which achieves such a dismal destiny! Restored by remedy, man once more is engaged in the crystalline beauty of validity of thought as virtue of life.

What is actual miscreancy has the mischief that accompanies it, and so whether in reason, logic, or any other discipline of understanding, there is endless TALK of progress; but in fact where this is so, mere regress or re-circulation ensures. If you do not have the horse-power to take your car up the hill, what are you do to ? Push it ? or ... invent something that will. Nothing that can be invented has infinity and beyond the temporal which is delimited; so the only alternative is to take what is there, which being eternal, actually requires no invention.

To be sure, man in his almost inerrant deviationism seeks still to invent (cf. Ecclesiastes 7:29, Romans 1:17ff.); but the advent of his inventions is always a stirring and a burring and a whirring, though with whatever ingredient, however illicit, it often seems culturally or psychologically proper  for the age concerned (cf. A and F Schools), until its failure becomes a swift witness against its odium.

On a biblical perspective, such errors are not only predictable (cf. Ephesians 4:17-19 with Romans 1), but predicated of the end of our Age, in tumultuous proportions (Matthew 24). Put someone in the fire and it may not be too scorching at first, when just lit, but in time its ravages appear.

This cumulative and culminating aspect of man's errors as the Age reaches maturity, provides a double verification, a dual one indeed, with an integrity in its overall oneness of vision which is additional verification.

It is not only WHAT verifies alone which matters, it is HOW it does so; and the BCT has not only both, but facet upon facet, such as the WAY in which the fulfilments occur, rambunctious with rebellion and rampaging with blood (cf. the forecast of Revelation 6), as if they could not wait to fulfil anything and everything possible of the biblical analysis!

This is the Historical Prognosis Phase of BCT, which is dynamically allied to the Prophetic Prognosis Phase, a more generic aspect of prophecy as simple verification. These are really covered in IV above,
but here given some further enrichment in concept. It also relates to VIII and XI, since God and not particles being ONE and ONE ONLY, there is always a blending and mutual fortification of aspects of His truth, which is yet another verification, that of essence.

A further aspect of this category of method, or phase, is this, and it is in one sense positive. Just as say England and America, the USA, show a trend to advance formally and formerly when each was distinctive in the world for its (comparative) Christian emphasis,  whether with literature, science, power, victory and liberty ascending like an eagle in flight, so now is its opposing dynamic found. This is one of disarray because of increasing withdrawal from the things, principles, morals and ways of God. It is like a nail further and further from its magnet, more and more weakly drawn to attachment. So do they advance again, but this time it is towards perdition.

So does the internal and erosive dynamic resulting from the breach of morals, truth and certainty, bring down with such advance whatever is high, to where it places itself below, in the realm of the increasingly spiritually sick and idolatrous, as occurred in the Roman Empire. (Cf. Pall of Smoke ... Ch. 9,  News 73, 13, Joyful Jottings 14, 21, Secular Myths ...  Ch. 3, Galloping Events Ch. 7). Britain soared when its basis was at least in form, biblical, and much in fact, from 1600-1940 or so; and USA did no less from its most Puritanical beginnings to the time of its dissociation from Biblical emphasis into various idealisms and ideologies to which it was always vulnerable, so that freedom gradually became virtual god or goddess, and truth and righteousness optional derivatives for many. Its fall if it continues in this line of dissolution of duty and bereavement from beauty, does not rest on more than grease, which unlike rock, not only moves readily but aids movement.

Alas for excellence of spirit, and delight in spiritual things, that what makes a civilisation seem an example to the world, dominant indeed, can become through entanglements as if it were of its own doing, or its own excellence, the very occasion of downfall. It was indeed so with many before, as with Tyre, when the rendering is this: "You corrupted your wisdom by reason of your brightness" (Ezekiel 28:17 - "by reason of your splendour" as it may be rendered).

Biblically, the saints will temporarily have a hostile and alien world in the ascendency, and this is clearly coming like the wind of stupour from the blazing desert of corrupt, irrational and erosive philosophy (cf. Revelation 13:7) and religious mockery (cf. II Peter 2:1ff., Matthew 24:11,24). God is however not mocked, and the end of the Beast or international consortium of stupefied power pushers is distinctive, although not distinguished (cf. Revelation 19:15-20, II Thessalonians 2); for doom is never desirable. Indeed,  if it has taken a time for the international aspect of grisly world rule to come, yet it is visibly coming in fulfilment of that intense realism which is a hallmark of the Bible.

MORE FACES

This illustrates (in terms of VI above, but in a specialised sense) the fact that the biblical perspective and word not only EXPLAINS all the facets and functions of historical development over time, but exhibits WHY this is so. It does so not only in terms of rational principles, that is things surveyable and appreciable by reason, provided by revelation, but it terms of a close nexus of practicality and principle that becomes like a laboratory lesson, as distinct from the lecture that precedes it!

We could call this the GROUND PHASE (XVI).

Here, although it is close to the Explication Phases, Qualitative and Quantitative, there is the emphasis on the actual accounting for things at the personal level, at the acme, so that it not merely shows WHAT happens, and HOW it happens, but more expressly WHY it does so and the practicalities of its eventuation. If the former categories are the multitudinous and the intermingling phases, this is the dramatically directive and the accounting phase.

Here, inside the counsel of God (cf. Pitter-Patter ... Ch. 4, SMR pp. 623ff.), you see the moral movements, the spiritual accruements, the patience and the discipline of God, as so often shown directly in the Bible as in II Chronicles 36, II Kings 17, Isaiah 1, 6. God does not always show all of His specialised intentions, but when He does, one gains the inestimable advantage of seeing examples of majesty at work.

Such is the atmosphere in Ezekiel 29,  for example, where Egypt is given to Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, as reward and price for performing the Lord's discipline on other nations; before his own time comes up! (cf. Ezekiel 29:18ff., Jeremiah 50:29ff.). You see it in Psalm 2, in the interstices of God's gift and man's rebellion, in Micah 7 in the final resolution of the Israel question, where much love, much discipline and eventual faith and deliverance accrue; and again you find it in Romans 11, in the overall viewing of the justice and ground of the entire movement of God's actions with Jew first, and then Gentile, over a vast span of history, and you see the quality of mercy with the input of judgment with a certitude that mingling with practicalities, becomes shocking in intimacy mingled with scope. it is like seeing on operation on video, with all the blood vessels being cut and tied, and the bones cut for opening up, before the remedy is applied.

Not merely, then, does the biblical perspective explain and validate such aspects in creation, as beauty, morals, liberty, reason and felicity, peace and disquiet, guilt and grace and so forth, as listed and referenced above: it actually exhibits their nature and significance in their final repose. It portrays developments in time, in history and these with explanations and descriptions at the level of ultimate direction.

It is one thing to solve a problem; it is another to comprehend its elements or elemental aspects and function in its field; and indeed, it is  yet a further to find the personal basis of them all in their engaging and remarkable unity in God, from whom they come, to whom men need to come to have any idea of their way (cf. Psalm1); from whom, not coming, they inherit their desires (Proverbs 1), This, it is that vacuity which proudly masquerades as wisdom, but not in reality, and which, history, is failed furiously as it flails.

In one sense, in method, this is going from metaphysics to ontology, and from this to deity! In another formulation, this means that we are moving from seeing these things as FROM God, to seeing them, by His revelation, WITHIN Him, proceeding from Him in His own oversight and control, personal manifestation and exhibition. Such things are to be found only in revelation that is explicitly His own, which gives us this huge bonus for finding His word in the first place.

Treasure found has new limits for the finder, and new liberties. God once found has no limits being infinite, that is when He is found as He offers Himself which He, being personal is in His own way only; and it is then, according to His word, that things are comprehensible to the uttermost. This does not mean that mystery is absent, in the sense that for now, we know in part (I Cor. 13); but it does mean that what is shown covers the case magnificently, and what more is to be found in heaven, is not contrary but consummative, being beyond the test, the smog of persecution and the scenes of sin, without impediment in its wonder: for then, it is beheld directly  in its beatific reality (I Corinthians 13), when His children know as they are known.

Finally let us look at two more FACES, the LIBERTY, LAW and LOVE one and the CONSISTENT COROLLARY one. The former is an example of XVI (Ground Phase) and the latter of V above, with more detail for delight to the heart and mind that knows God, and verificatory to the one who does not.

TWO DELIGHTFUL FACES

Like a mountain range being climbed, this has many faces; and now we survey two in a little more magnification.

We come now to what is really an exhibit in the field of IV and in particular XVI above, the GROUND PHASE of explication, as attestation of source of the word, and hence verification. Here we find an area where, without these precise ingredients, resolution of the potential antinomies would have been impossible. That is the sort of thing which by its unique validation, beyond all competition, is an expected resultant of reality, and the more so when the same has been found personal.

A

Our visit then is to elements of the arena of predestination and freewill, as have been presented already in The PQ.

	By these, we find explication of the aspects involved in this field, without reductionism, that sallow avoidance of issues which is more psychological than logical.
	We find no less the necessity of such elements for any understanding of the subject matter
	and hence,
	thirdly, validate that man is not insane in his imaginations of guilt, responsibility and shame, liberty and the capacity to cast thought freely, but a product of the God, without whom liberty is impossible, life is self-contradictory frustration, its parameters a pool of death.

Indeed, here we find why perfectly inveterate is the human tendency to affirm as truth what he has to say, whether concerning this or that ultimate, and this no less when the alleged 'truth' is some denial of this or that. It occurs even when man wishes to deny truth with the 'truth' that it is not there! He is not insane, merely reduced to inanity by departure from design.

It is explained fully from the fact that truth is the design opportunity for man, and freedom is the designed option, allowing divorce that leaves the design drive intact, but not its destiny! When in the revelation of God, one can look at what is there, it is interminable in its explication and undeviating in its coverage, this owing not merely to the realities themselves, but to the dynamic of life which sourced in God, has there its base, power and paragon.

When owing to unremedied rebellion, one cannot so look, then the form remains but the function and facility is departed. Hence the behaviour of man in this in a way which is virtually endemic!

These are some of the resultants of divine revelation, showing the relationship of liberty, lord and love, truth and law.

This could equally be called
an aspect of the PERSPECTIVE PHASE of Biblical Christian Apologetics,
but the two are so closely interwoven that it seems best to make this part of
the GROUND PHASE,
so making this

the GROUND AND PERSPECTIVE PHASE as XVI.

This then becomes simply an explicit extension or expression of its coverage.

In this, because of man's tendency to reject the word of God, some even going so far as formally or formalistically to accept it, while retaining rejection of its advice, so that the 'acceptance' is mere appearance and not reality (cf. John 5:39-40),  a drawing near with the lips but not with the heart, with the form but not with the fact: there is a resultant both predicted and verifiable in historical actuality.

It is this.

Such omission shows why man, becoming frustrated, rebels the more, why false vision - with an obstinacy resultant from abstinence from the living God to whom His word inexorably leads, which would be courage and wisdom if correctly set - leads to rivers of blood. This readily becomes both metaphorical and messy, and in both cases tragic.

It shows moreover why inferior because false religions, like other adventures outside reality but here with more impetus, lead to aggression, their exponents seeking to dominate with force. Inferiority loves domination, and to domineer, because quite simply there is no other way, truth being void to it.

If maximal intensity focusses because of the significance of the area in view, its imagined ultimacy in thought and life, then maximal folly can result readily. And it does, our generation generating such rivers of violence in the name of false of intemperate religion that its rebuke for undervaluing the entire reality of the ocularly invisible, for so long in tepid irrationalities,  becomes heavy indeed! Ignore soil erosion and your crops will fail; ignore spiritual erosion and your blindness will tell. It is telling, spelling it out with letters as high as man.

Why however should this specific field be noted, when other facets of the omitted faith which deals with reality as it is, as demonstrated, could lead to much the same resultant ? namely, frustration, desperation and this with deluded dedication, domineering and violence. Let us give an answer to this question.

It is of special acuity here because when the deterministic fallacy (cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 7) has man by person declare person invalid because externally constrained beyond its own parameters and essence, and without understanding of it, then the self-contradiction makes light of what man is, and so induces desperation, futility and disturbance. On the other hand, where liberty is so exalted, in the other extreme resulting from missing the truth of the word of God, that it becomes a virtual god in itself, as is the case increasingly in the United States, then flights of fervour without limit seem the more interesting, significant and apt for man; and the resulting frustration of finding these no better than that of doomed Icarus, leads to more eruptions defeated desire.

It is as if lassoed libido in fury seeks to break its ropes, for it never realises its hopes.

To pursue the image of Icarus: when flying too high, man finds the wax on his wings melt under the heat of the sun, while then the waters of the Aegean, being metaphorical only in this case, produce a reaction and response. Humbled man, as if  laughed at by life, determines at whatever cost, that he WILL prevail. When WILL won't have God and won't accept defeat, there is a resultant conflict ignoble and ultimate. This is seen in the scene of mankind at present; and this aspect is one very significant contributor, one animus for increase of adversity, escalation of horror and rampant slides of the lavas of the unexpected, for when rumblings disturb the land, stability shows more keenly by its absence, the beauty its presence had provided.

Where thought cannot prevail, blood may be paid by opponents; and where culture collapses, someone must pay: but this is the more so, when the cause of its collapse, this beyond all others, becomes the fixation of thought and the desideratum of the heart, so that it is like someone who is drunk, becoming convinced that only more alcohol can help. Thus does man come to bind himself, blinded in spiritual arrogance, profane in polluted heart and seized by inebriated will.

Freedom CANNOT be found despite all the political theories that are as waste matter, recovered from the drain and put on the throne; and force MUST be used to replace what actuality cannot contribute. Such is the dilemma of man in this rebellious phase, and not few are those who both do, and have done this, whether in the appalling molested Sudan, in Biafra, in Rwanda, in India, China or Russia in its former merciless magnificence as the USSR, in the Inquisition or the Holy Roman Empire, most unholy, and vainly imperial, whether in al Qaeda with its allies, their beheadings and their bombs, in the selection of children for suffering, as when PLO operatives blow up Israeli school buses with minimal media coverage, or when Chechen fundamental Moslem extremists fashion their thoughts on the operating table of the bodies of partially or totally murdered children. You cannot partially murder ? Not physically, but mentally and morally, you may, when the ... residue is a lifetime of anguish.

Man so acts. He acts in rebellion against God first of all. It leaves him swamped in oily marshes, red-tinged, but not with sunset.

Freedom however can be found, and this has been gloried in, inside the cover of the covenant of Christ, for millenia. It is simple and simply unbelief which, refusing the solution, insists on imposing the error, like some child in mathematics class who in error, by pride and force seeks to 'convert' the class to his views, and so spoil all. Such is the nature not only of the current Moslem menace (cf. Divine Agenda Ch. 6, More Marvels ... Ch. 4), but of  the address of the sects to confused humanity. In the midst of man's various, sometimes furious and sometimes tepid and tedious rebellions, this brings no small additive also; for freedom in chains to the slavery of false prophets becomes a voluntary obsession with force, often used psychologically by varied religious leaders, so that the heart's fixation removes all possible liberty and leaves that inconstancy of mind which politicians can the better use.

That in turn can readily lead to force whether of 'control' or arms; and to the denial of freedom as we shall see, is in great danger of arising like a poised dagger, even in Britain! (cf. Ch. 5 below).

Truth has no options; you take it or leave it. If you leave it, error has no reward and its cumulative consequences, often indirect, make fodder of man.

Man without God is like a swimmer without shore. It is tiresome and leads to desperation.

When however man accepts his place as product of God, and his eminence as a personal product, and receives with joy his choice emplacement as made in the image of God who not being spatial  imparts in this to man, power to communicate with Him and to relate personally: then there is first of all hope. (As to space, it is one of God's creations along with time - Romans 8:37-39, as inspection of these verses biblically demonstrates.)

What is this relationship biblically, and how does it verify by its uniqueness, the validity which has been demonstrated in the realm of revelation ?

It is one in which man finds pardon for sin, which being wrong is an oppressive intrusion into truth, and hence both a destabilising force and a frustrating fulmination. It is one in which man finds power for living, and hence to avoid inept frustration through impossible aspiration or desperate despair. Again, here is to be found a companionship with the Creator, who being intensely creative, is fascinating as Father. Further, no more is the vain aspiration for total autonomy, liberty for man to be 'god' in view, so that the inane antics of the various unimpeded philosophies of right and power such as the Nazi and the Communist, brothers in shame, become mere emblems of error, not invasive engines.

Again, there is no gloom such as is apt in deterministic imaginations, which removing significance from man, or else leading to unviable bursts of hope to manage the universe and make it become what will make man be  what he autonomously wants to be, merely contradict themselves. If indeed, this were so, then man would be unable to know it, or the truth: for truth to be known, it must both exist, not contrary to the assumed model, and be able to communicate itself, lest in the act, the recipient exclude by its own parameters, the very thing being transmitted.

Biblically, these conditions are met; and are testable so that it is with reason and not lofty dream, founded on exactly nothing, that conviction acts (not BECAUSE of it, but with it, since faith has its own ambit). With this, the anomaly of man loudly proclaiming the truth, while divorcing himself from its very existence, is avoided. The folly of voiding freedom while displaying it in error and the model in which error must inhere, since those who differ are deemed in error, is equally avoided. Manifest muddle is replaced in biblical declaration by coherent, cohesive, comprehensive and explicative conditions.

Thus a determined man is a slave in essence and by nature, even before he seems to implement visions in his slavery. The more he strives, the more he illustrates what he is, on this model. Determinate by fiction (but far more than good for him, because of his anti-divine divorce, cf. Psalm 1:4-5), determined by desire, he is the very antidote of rest and the contrary of composure. Small wonder psychiatric horrors surge in the world, like marauding star-fish, destroying the reefs of beauty. They are but a natural outcome, in much, of the disorienation through desire which is a cultural pandemic.

Such is rebellion; but there is also the way of peace, first with God and then in heart cf. Isaiah 26:1ff.).

All these frustrations and impulsions and compulsions being gone, the man of God can have peace (Philippians 4:1-6, Ephesians 2:14). But does he ? Yes, for in addition to the pardon and the power, there is the perspective. Now guilt has meaning and the masses are not mad, but merely sleepy in spirit or unconscious, because unaware of the Lord, and so dulled and dimmed in heart. The reality is true; the feeling may be diverse, for when equipment is misused there is little limit to the awkwardness and oddity of the result: hence despite the depth and basic impotence of modern psychiatry, it is leaning increasingly on drugs of varied impact and uncertain value (cf. SMR Ch. 4).

In his new perspective, man sees God as Creator, as good, as loving, as kind, as sacrificial incumbent of the post of Saviour, as becoming man and so enabling man to see purity in its source, truth in its personal reality, power in its place and peace from this truth in the mercy which enables such a despatch. Not dealing with less than God, since ONLY God is Saviour (Isaiah 43:10-11), and Christ is the Saviour whose name has no other conjoined (Acts 4:10-11), man has direct access not to bureaux and officials, not to priests and clamour, but to deity Himself, where is a peace from infinity, as when one swims in some vast fresh-water lake, surrounded by wandering paths directing to snow-clad mountainous heights, all composed and constant. So seeking and thus discovering truth, and finding it by this provision, the man, woman or child of God has the peace of a reality beyond all that he COULD create, had he the power: for it is eternal and constitutive for the very composition of his own being.

Where however is love to act ?

Where love is present, and ONLY THEN, the necessary action of God in selecting those who are to be His children, or more accurately, implementing His eternal selection (Ephesians 1:4), becomes not a self-trip but a truth circuit. Thus the God who WOULD HAVE ALL (I Timothy 2, Colossians 1) to be reconciled to Himself, whether in heaven or on earth, becomes the One whose love as all but ceaselessly shown in the Bible (cf. Matthew 23:;37, SMR Appendix B, Hosea 7:1, Jeremiah 51:9, 48:36, Jonah 4:10-11, Ezekiel 33:11) WILL NOT force, but will rather desist: yet not lightly!

Thus the integrity of truth, not the fulfilment of personalised satiation of desire becomes the criterion of divine selection; and in truth, since God is love (I John 4:7-8), not merely a possessor, this love is consigned by nothing ulterior. Hence, both as a result of this reality, and by direct affirmation of God,  any outside the kingdom are so by their own preference (John 3:19). This love of God, while allowing their persons to be fulfilled in their false advocacy, not merely does not initiate this deranging process, but knowing to the uttermost, does not let it happen awry, amiss. It occurs before Him, and it has its finales of horror (cf. II Thessalonians 2:10),  but only with great grief. It is as when a son refusing to cease smoking, finds himself soon bound in the resultant grip of cancer.

Thus even the Christ Himself actually wept for the city which refusing His advocacy, doomed itself. This it did by exposure of its sin to truth without the mercy God persistently had offered, a mercy despatched on the Cross, and yet awaiting that same nation, until it repents (Luke 19:42ff., 23:27ff., Isaiah 30:15-18).

In this way, the innate sinfulness of man without God, who cannot choose what his state excludes (I Corinthians 2:14, John 1:12ff., Romans 9:16), cannot elevate himself above what he is, or choose in terms which contradict his spoiled structure and spiritual strictures, becomes no adequate barrier against love; while God choosing, overturns all dangers of time or season, psychological oddities or other ingredients unworthy of the dignity of eternity or such results; and so ensures no 'misses'.

No one therefore enters hell except over the dead body of Christ, in this, that it is a gift sufficient for all, apt for all, offered to all and on behalf of all (I John 2:1-2). Moreover, although it does not of course PAY for all (Romans 8:32, Matthew 26:28, Isaiah 53:1-6 - the 'healed' being the 'we' whose sins are laid on Him), but is applied only for 'many': this is not an exclusion for the God of love, but a redemptive fact.

None being paid for can fail, since whom He justified He glorified (Romans 8:29ff., 17); and indeed, there is eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:12), and what payment of the infinite is inadequate!

However, none who do not come can be paid for, on the same ground; for if paid for, they are redeemed and His BY redemption! If they do not come, how are they His ? and if they elect to be excluded, how can they be paid for, and how does anyone pay for what he does not own! When God owns by ransom, it is not merely eternal redemption, but inalienable by mutation, a transformation back to the image of God as first placed in man (I John 3:9, Colossians 3:10), so that (Romans 5:1-11, 8:1-10), it would be like trying to make a flow turn into a mosquito. It is simply no more of that type. What God redeems has His 'seed', His spiritual nature ingrained.

Man is either redeemed or not; and if redeemed is kept (John 10:9,27-28); but  if shutting the eyes, and alienated ultimately, his is neither place nor mutation, neither transformation nor truth, neither pardon nor peace. His debts unpayable, his peace forfeit, such are compared by God to the marshy wastes not flushed by fresh water (Ezekiel 47 cf. Biblical Blessings Ch. 5). There is nothing hybrid.

Not so is the love of God, who knowing His own, pays for them; but with weeping in the Messiah, shows grief at the refusal of many who thus excluding themselves, have nothing put to their emptily sustained accounts! Appearance may masquerade and affirmation protest, but transactional analysis is void. Such are those who in appearance may even deceive themselves, living their own lives, and placing a spare tag about themselves which transforms nothing but their integrity!

In this way the love of God is not an aristocratic manipulation, but a sincere seeking; and not another name for force either, but a glowing reality from which all human love in man, made in  God's image, takes its source. This in turn explains why man loves, loves to die for another man, and so on; for although the devices of sin make devils of many, the intrinsic realities of man's origin and construction lead to many actions of worth and wonder, angelic in disposition and delightful in aspect. As with truth, so with love, man has difficulty in total divorce from that for which, and by which ... he is made! This is yet further verification, which like water in flood, flows on all sides.

By such things, man's life is shown, like snow on the peaks of mountains arid below, and becomes a thing of far more excellence than the cynic will allow, in his reductionist fantasy. Indeed, now there is simply no need, however evasive and corrupt, to try to paint man in this or that obviously fantasising and delusive caricature; for his evil is all but fathomless, and the good he often seeks and shows has heights of wonder attached to it, remnants of the glory from which he was formed, before sin deformed him.

The cleavage of good and evil, and of goodness and evil in the ranks of man is likewise explained, as is the passion for beauty to be found in the world, amidst the unclean and the repugnant, resultants of a curse MADE ON wonderful creation, which declares forth its wonder constantly (cf. Beauty in indexes, and Beauty for Ashes, with Beauty of Holiness), just as corrosion and corruption blare their fearful music as well.

Man's dignity if you will, or exalted meaning if you won't, becomes now a thing not for frustration and desperation, improvisation and innovation in nonsensical desperation, as is common throughout history. Rather there is a past and a present for the man of God. As to the past,  his siting is in this schema: that goodness is his source, evil is his selection, yet goodness churns within him by virtue of his construction, while evil yearns by force of his corruption. This itself might even lead to violence of some dimension, through a sense of violation or vileness; but instead, the God of love provides the power to triumph over the evil and implement the good (cf. Romans 6-8), so that victory, not defeat, meaning not muddle, vision not mere vigour, comes and reality shines like an impossible dream (which it was for the deluded who deemed it but a dream), come true.

The determined aspects of the creation which make for the stage setting in which personality and meaning can translate themselves with relative ease, these become as desirable, just as automatic gears in a car which far from defeating driving liberty, the more enable it. This aspect, again, is like a platform for performers; and it is good to have it for setting and stability, when once the folly of imagining oneself to be part of it, is past.

For much in man, this is not past, and he fritters his time in inane pursuits which inflame his heart and pollute his mind, emptying his pocket of billions, as he reels in his dreams of the impossible, trying to force life out of the inanimate, will out of the willed, liberty out of the constrained and love out of stone. Saying to a tree, You are my father! and to a stone, You gave birth to me! laughs Jeremiah of such self-destructive affirmations, themselves the very means of annihilation of the validity of the thoughts they think! (Jeremiah 2:27).

Can the bound be free to think ? can thought arise from objects of sequence and happening ? Does logic inhere in happening, as if its internal constraints removed, its imaginative construction personalised and essentialised, its product-status could become that of producer, whilst matter unmindful of such thoughts,  languishes without any power to do anything in this direction
whatever ?

Is reality to be invented, is the empirical as likewise the rational to be ignored, so that the deadness of soul-less insatiability for dream can be indulged ? Is the bound to be free to validate its binding, being bound, and is nought to equal infinity ? Is not hell precisely what is PREFERRED in kind, so that its camp is the kinship of calling ? Would not heaven be horror for such, since truth is intolerably tedious! In time when our time is distilled away, and the constraints of the temporal yield to those of eternity, the very realities themselves become the more impactive, having no shield in eventive^*e cover.

But let us return to the issue more directly.

Is this contra-factual dream of pseudo-science to continue, while logic laughs ? and is prodded matter to become the source of itself, when nothing vomited clay, clay squirmed into thought, and thought found will to add, out of the summoned regions of nothing, that contemporary garland which but exhibits the emptiness of alienated thought, as if Punch Magazine were alive from the dead, and this its first new volume of wit.

Truth is not found on trees, in stones or in the whole panorama of creation except in this, that it requires for Maker the One who has it, without whom man is a muddle of meaninglessness, only with effrontery and logical antilogy declaring even this, since on any such model,  he fails to reach credit rating in the truth stakes, at all. You cannot have what on your own model, is not there.

No so is the case with those persons who find in a Father of dimensions sufficient for their trilogy of mind, matter and spirit, the wisdom of truth, and in the Saviour He has sent, the way to abide in it.

These are no more confused with the driver, or the driven, taking rather their place as neither gods without power or glory, nor as objects without basis or cause. Rather are they now those who can then delight in the facets of creation, no longer confusing them with their own persons, in the image of God (cf. Romans 1:22ff., 28ff.). No more is man what the Bible calls a fool! (Psalm 57). Instead of defiling wisdom into folly, he forsakes folly as wisdom becomes the gift of God to him. This delightful provision is as with the wisdom so zealously offered in Proverbs 1, where however after the passionate offer of peace in truth, the case becomes negative, the fool becomes fastidious in his clouds of wilfulness,  and the journey following in this chapter,  reveals the spotted fruits of rejection.

What however where this appeal is not rejected ? Now man CAN be different, without his HAVING FIRST to BE better in order to choose the better; and the guarantee is the love of God. It is God who chooses (Romans 9:16), but in love that would have all (Colossians 1:19ff.), He chooses, and He chooses what He has foreknown before the creation (Ephesians 1:4), where sin does not require superiority to other sin, or sinner to other sinner,  to do better, since its presence is not in designate force before man is created. Indeed, it is intended that this very love divine should be the topic of a compendium from our site, the next volume for the set, In Praise of Christ Jesus! Small wonder, for here is the key which the power of God moves to open the door to peace and truth for man.

Nothing less than this divine selection can achieve the result; nothing else can remove the incredible horror and forcible intrusion of the extraneous into the ultimacy, as would occur if a slightly better man, being better parented and educated, could achieve a decision which would lead to a better eternity: so that he could boast (or perhaps even gloat) of his accomplishments; and such a channel would be a contrary bane even in heaven! His 'flesh' would be better and his eternity correlative, so that liberty would be null, and a species of spiritually aristocratic unreality, at a premium. The better man wins, being better.

This is not the biblical depiction and it contradicts it at every point. That in turn is one of the interminable verifications of the wit of Holy Writ, which never fails in its consistency, coherence and  comprehensive coverage.

Not only does Holy Writ depict what stands, but it avoids what falls, as any equipped with infinite knowledge would know to do, not in the perils of avoiding error, but with the frank and robust certainty of KNOWING what he is doing. It is only God who is, as shown, in this position (SMR), and it is only here, in His word,  that eminently testable results are available, as likewise in Christ, the epitome and crux of the word of the Book.

What then ? Naturally, and this again, that becomes one more verification and validation of the truth of the Bible at this GROUND and PERSPECTIVE  level  Indeed,  Paul speaks of just such a madness of gloating, and excluding it from the truth of God, pours upon any such thing, a wholly justified contempt. For this see Romans 3:27ff., with Ephesians 2:1-12).

Being a better being is a RESULT, and not a cause of the election, the choice of God! (Ephesians 2:8-10). Freedom with its responsibility overtone, guilt-wrap for sin and need of pardon nestles into this situation, and although sins mars its operation, it does not at all mar the operation of God.

Again, nothing less than paid for pardon can allow justice with munificent and magnificent mercy to be without dint or deviation, and so truth without harassment; and nothing less than the payment of Christ in the form of man can justly remit the sin of man, when the infinite in finite format took what was coming to the finite sinners whom He redeemed.

For further on this aspect, see for example:

Marvels of Predestination and the Ways of Will Ch.   6, *2, will and meritless operation;

Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch.  11, esp. pp.172ff.; 

Great Execrations, Great Enervations, Greater Grace Ch.   9;

His Wounds Opened Eternity Ch.   4 (also contrasted with Islamic deficiencies);

Sparkling Life ... Ch.   7, Earth Spasm ...Ch.   6.

 

NOTE

*e 

If 'eventive' was not till now a 'word', then it is so now: there is a word in Webster's, eventless, so we can take the positive, meaning in the realm of events, the latter as normally defined.

B

Finally, we give further attention in the CONSISTENT COROLLARY PHASE (  V above).

Let us take a further illustration in this sphere.

In this world,  the seasons themselves pulse with creative power, installed cyclically within the very structure and ambit of creation, so that Spring a thousand times arrests cessation, and dynamising afresh, spreads forth the diligent and often delicate abundance of beauty and strength, while Winter exposes the basics and Autumn signifies rest.

Here thought dominates in law, which casts its line over diversities like imaginations, held in forms, the very stuff of design itself; and contrary to anything contrary, it persists. Intelligence in its main strength is conferred on man, with which to appreciate the divine exhibits, of which he himself is one. Thus arise in turn his dilemmas and antilogies, when he seeks to act as if god and truth in his own right, or seeks to depress his status to that of mere object, without knowledge, and yet knowing it to be so!

It is the catch 22 situation in which whatever he does, becomes self-contradiction, until he returns to fact and faith alike, in the God of creation. In this, is there is both a delightful irony, and a telling rebuke. It is moreover a display of the impotence of pollution before purity, and of misused imagination before reality.

Let us however return to the seasons, for such revolt in man is ever unseasonable. Thus shelved in situ in creation are the more and the less aspects of its Author's depiction, like the throb of a creator's heart, and reminders of creation come in each birth, each flower, each fresh herb awakening in Spring as from sleep, and at that, festooning the creation with fresh tenderness and strength, but this always within the parameters of the often most intricate and ingenious designs (cf. SMR p. 211ff.).

Yet to those who, forgetful in vision as in reason,  imagine things just as He in His infinitude imagined them, but do so in a riot of unreasonable self-affirmation, like a puny, pugilistic baby, in wilful disease of volition: to these comes the confirmed defilement of His image as they seek wildly to construct gods of their own, to invent them in the midst of their own impotence, to import them from nowhere and imagine them anywhere. So they make their gods, whether barren and austere, as blank as the face of the shocked, or garlanded with useless glories. These are the  gods which demonstrably lack the gifts of creation (cf. TMR Ch. 1), but not the facility for molestation of the same, through the distorted mind of subverted man.

As Jeremiah was inspired to put it, "the gods which did not make the heavens and the earth shall perish from  the earth and from under these heavens" (Jeremiah 10:11). Unfortunately, there are many who will perish with them, these inane creations of creatively minded image-bearers of the God of creation; they shall fail like sailors in canoes in mid-Atlantic, in wilful insubordination amid the thrashing elements where they cannot abide, trusting themselves to floating graves.

These developments are far from being merely individual, but afflict races, civilisations and cultures, sometimes repetitively as the mercy of God allows more time (cf. II Chronicles 36), sometimes over centuries before the end comes. Further, the career of the whole humankind, now increasing and in more and more ways and in more and more examples,  most unkind, moves like a turgid stream to the river mouth.

False gods and frustrated man, in passionate decline, and obsessive obscuration wedded to obfuscation, move together to their dénouement as if a play in Shakespeare, where Act V allows no successor!

In this, they excel. In this, the twenty first century is the exponent extraordinaire!

Thus does even rebellion exemplify in the heights of its liberties and the depths of its defilement, the massive power and active singularity of its divinely dowered gifts. Man is geared in the image of God to handle many levers, and futilely at times imagining himself one more, seeks to relax in the muddle and so bring disaster; or imagining himself god, seeks to make more or fondle fetiches and then revolt because it is all so impersonal, as programs tend to be! So does creation reflect at its peak, the mind of its Maker, while the judgments that afflict the earth, more personal than mere parallels to refusal to respond to reality, as with f