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CHAPTER 5

FLOOD AND MUD

JUNKET FOR PLUNKETT

News 323

National Geographic, September 2004,

Faith and Freedom August 2004,
Telegraph, September 23, 2004,

BBC News August 16, 2004

ABC News Radio, September 22, 2004
et al.

IT IS NOT ALWAYS NICE BESIDE THE SEA-SIDE

TO RECOLLECT THE ONCE SO POPULAR SONG

First, let us visit the seas. Flood after all can come from rain, but also from seas, and how they have raged these last years, whether in California some years ago, or now catastrophically with the displacement of some two million from their homes, in Florida.

In earlier News items^*1, we have seen the mounting evidence of mounting seas and oceanic uproar, including the danger to Manhattan Island, and the partial immersion of a railway subway system, the danger of islands sinking in the Pacific, leaving only a memory and various other meteorological phenomena in this connection. It is moreover to be a time of such vehemence in many ways, that Daniel declared this of it:

"And there shall be a time of trouble such as never was,
since there was a nation, even to that time" (12:2).

Christ stated that such would be the torment of the times that unless the days were shortened, mankind would be wiped out, or to use His exact sentence, "no flesh would be spared" - which is even broader in significance.

For years it is has been modish to be modest - not in the clamour of mankind's endless boasting as if he had something to do with his construction in one of the most inane exhibitions of thoughtless culture ever known (cf. Laughing Stock, News 94, TMR Ch. 1, Wake Up World! ... Ch. 5, and see Psalm 100, Isaiah 45:12). Surges of imagination have come like cresting waves, but not in the ocean of salt water, merely in that of the mind have been their errors and their antinomies, resolute in unrealism, fantasising in fictions. Their rearguards, since like a long frontier, there is too much to guard, have become increasingly unguarded  as to historically invasive fact ; just as from the first,  they have been oblivious of reason (cf. SMR Chs. 1-3, 10).

On the other hand, from the Bible have come constructions from the very mind of God, and of their confirmations, validations and verifications, not one has failed.

While these latter declarations of deity proceed with majestic oversight and uninundatable security, the fiascos of human philosophy, invading science as if it were a vacation setting, have become such a negation not only of scientific method, but of reason itself, that it has come to the point that were it not for a spiritually congenital blindness, one would almost despair of the greater part of the human race (cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 7, That Magnificent Rock, Spiritual Refreshings ... Chs. 6, 13, 16). Nor are those concerned the category of the unlearned, but rather those who have imbibed the social sour milk of bacterially infected God-declining cultures, and if anything, it is these who are the worse affected than those to whom they purvey their gear.

Congenital ? Yes, spiritually congenital. As we shall see, it may be that some people do not like the divinely revealed nature of mankind without his Maker; but that is part of the disease, as the Bible itself makes so clear. Thus in Romans 1, we find these words:

^"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven
against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men,
who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
because what may be known of God is manifest in them,
for God has shown it to them.

^"For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen,
being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead,
so that they are without excuse,
because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful,
but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Professing to be wise, they became fools ..."

Here is the biblical charge. Man is suppressing the truth as a race (not all of course, but in numbers sufficient to make a generalisation apt; and any who escape do so by divine intervention - John 3:16, 6:40, 6:65, worked out from eternity in the embracive love of God and applied in time - cf. Colossians 1). What then is Romans 1 here declaring ? It is this.

	The knowledge of God is inescapable
	but contrivances (cultural, educational, personal, a blend)
	are used to aid
	ignorance of Him (consciously, unconsciously, by abuse of lecturers, or desire for honour):
	all this is well attested and the author has seen not a little of it personally, and shared some of this on this site!.

 

So great is this unwarranted deviation from the obvious, this chaff philosophy in place of the wheat of knowledge-properly-so-called^*2, that is, what is able to stand logically, experimentally or in the broadly based heuristics of patient examination, that God sees fit here to declare that man in this state is "without excuse". The dissidently devious thoughts in place of validatable, verifiable knowledge are called "futile", and the hearts which lodge them "darkened", so that the divine indictment reads:

"Professing to be wise, they became fools..."

At the end of this Chapter, Paul writes this:

"And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge,
God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting;

being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness,
covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness;

they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful;

who, knowing the righteous judgment of God,
that those who practice such things are deserving of death,
not only do the same but also approve of those who practise them."

(Red is used for the sentence relevant to our present enquiry.)

This of course does not mean that all are guilty of all these actions, but that this is the statistical trend, or better, the spiritual nature of the entire syndrome, some exhibiting it more in this, some rather in that mode, while some have escaped by divine mercy and grace (cf. Hebrews 6:19, Titus 2 -3).  

But where is the spiritually congenital reference ? It is in the encompassing index to the nature of man who shuts his eyes to creation's Creator, man's Maker and spirit's depositor. That, said Jesus the Christ, which is BORN OF THE FLESH, is FLESH, and that which is BORN OF THE SPIRIT, is spirit! Indeed, this is found in John 3:6 in which conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus made it imperative for people to be born of the Spirit, a life-transforming regeneration and vitalisation which is centred in His salvation and Lordship, being dynamised by the working of His Spirit, bringing each life back to the intimate knowledge of God, once innate, but now re-introduced (Colossians 3:10, Titus 3:5-7).

Thus to be born of the flesh alone has an element of vacuity, dysfunction in terms of the original creation, of evacuation ... It is signifies that to be merely a human being without vital and effectual reconciliation with God, is a fleshly matter. The term ‘flesh’ is here used in a broader sense of alienation from God, as in Romans 7:18, Gen. 6, Gal. 5:18ff., in the last of which you see that it is author of 'heresies', a specific to the spirit of man. It is not just protoplasm, but separated mankind.

There was in this domain, a dereliction of spiritual realism and duty, which God describes in  Genesis 6:3-5. For this, there came a climax in the time of the great flood, one which it is one of the uttermost lusts of flesh to deny. Yet it is one which nevertheless has left evidences too solemn to be trifled with (cf. News 1), just as the prediction persists unremitting, that this desire to dismiss that event, that divine judgment in an earlier deluge,  would be a sign of the last phases of this Age (cf. II Peter 3:3-5 and Joyful Jottings  8).

As to the flood, God has promised not to repeat THAT (cf. Genesis 9:9-12), but also to remove the universe by fire (II Peter 3, Matthew 24:35); yet this not at all in a moment from now, but only after the vast travails of rebellion have met their terminus, the Lord has taken and brought His people, and reigned to exhibit to the eyes that would not see, what cannot now be avoided, and to manifest to all His righteousness: for whom faith is the access, and redemption the rock. Of this Habakkuk 2:14 speaks, as does Isaiah 59, Revelation 20 and Isaiah 11, esp. v. 9).

Most not however believing (Luke 18:8), the signals as in the time of the flood are given; and this time, they are both numerous, eloquent and incremental (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5).

One of them, as in Luke 21, is this sea and waves raging. How they have raged, often enough and in a setting grave and cyclotronic enough to expose man to much concern and anxiety in the last couple of decades, as our earlier references attest; and that too, is just one of the causes of the situation described prophetically by Luke 21, where there is the phenomenon of "men's hearts failing them for fear". It is indeed a fearful thing to be one of two million in the USA fleeing from typhoons, harassed by hurricanes or troubled by tornadoes or encircled by waves invading, smashing, pulsing, as the pressure dynamics and the rising waters exhibit the result of global warming. Whatever terminology you elect to use, the result is here quite the same.

The National Geographic^*3, September 2004 has a masterful coverage of this multiplying rise in dynamics and water level, and in some parts of the South and East of the US, falling ground levels to magnify the event. Oil pumping is always an issue when other factors accumulate to accentuate its results.

The scale and scope of these oceanic disturbances with roaring seas and smashing waves has now not only been sufficiently repetitive on the grand scale, sufficiently aggressive and intrusive on an augmented pattern, but rationally understood in terms of our gaseous emissions and atmospheric changes, to the point that the scriptural warning and forecast of Luke 21 is no more a subject of the slow modesty of what hates to see the Bible fulfilled, or difficulties unresolved. The relevant issue is now being researched and exhibited with a zeal which admits that vast masses of Arctic ice are melting, sea levels are rising, land is being lost, and the scale of increase of sea coverage, even the rate of rise to lateral spread is being carefully quantified. HOW MANY feet here or there, of the sea-shore are to be lost to ocean per inch rise in the water level! This becomes the question.

Moreover the circulating phenomenon of ocean currents, and the enlargement of impact which this can cause are being deftly assessed, while the fact that sudden changes can come when resistant stabilities are lost, as with the release of a stuck gear all at once, is being faced. While the temperature change is not regarded as likely to amount to MANY degrees, it is pointed out that very few degrees change amounted to the background of the Ice Age! Now it is not fall but rise which is the problem, not evacuation of energy, but its increment.

So does tempest and trial, fear and devastation, smashing of sea-side areas, lowering of earth, rising of sea lead to this fulfilment which is in the setting of the rest of the tapestry of trial which ushers in Act V of the human drama, long declared by God, now being experienced by man.

THE BLUNKETT JUNKET IS NOT ALL PLEASANT ADVENTURE

While these things are catastrophic (imagine being ONE of the two million, and wondering when it is safe to return to your hobbled or gobbled home! imagine it with children...), there is far worse in view.

Which is worse, caning or hatred ? Which is more atrocious, the use of 'survival' as a guide to sink life, or of waves to sink a ship or destroy a home ? To this author's mind, the survival sentence on life, to make mini-men the agents that society tolerates, licences or permits, is far worse.

It is not ultimately a question of how much pain or suffering is borne, but of how far man will go to subjugate, subordinate and control others, in defiance of God and His ways, himself personally governmentally taking the platform as if divine, while merely human.

It is not always by any means intended; and the conscious aim may even, at its own level, be almost laudable; but the results of blindness and false values can be profound. Here, not those who are wounded, or killed, or impoverished (and the State may help some of the last group), it is not these who are the focus; it is SOCIETY ITSELF!

How often have American "do-gooders" been pilloried for their good intentions by a cynical world! They sacrifice and act and work and seek to alleviate suffering. Some feel it is too obtrusive or too this or that for the subtle needs of sensitive man. However when the do-gooding comes from the Home Secretary in the British Government, the case bears examination, the more when it is a matter of stating this, that

"We need to be able to take on these extremists  and say, I'm afraid our society, pluralism and openness, the ability to accept differences without being subsumed, is crucial to our survival, it's what distinguishes all of us, from every faith, from those who would take our lives because they reject our faith, and it applies equally from far right evangelical Christians, to extremists in the Islamic faith."

(Reported July 2004 and taken from Ecumenical Insanity,
under the heading "Defining the Culture Wars". )

Now the use of the old-fashioned term 'subsume' is just possibly not sheer idiosyncrasy, since it is convenient. What does it MEAN ? It means to place under, to make subordinate. Now what have evangelical Christians to do with 'subsuming' people ? What has their preaching of the Gospel of grace, the love of God and the necessity to respond one way or the other, to do with putting people under ? and what has any of it to do with extremists, whether in "the Islamic faith" or elsewhere ? What has hatred for that matter to do with love, and slander to do with fact ?

Firstly, there is as one writer puts it, "guilt by association" (News and Christian Comment, July 2004). This has been dealt with at some length earlier on this site at The Biblical Workman,  Appendix 3. There it was shown just how ludicrous it was to allow the term  'fundamentalism' (abusive in part at this epoch, because of muddy lack of clarity in its designation), to be used as a link between

	those who believe the Bible to be the word of God (correctly called 'plenary inspirationists' if you want to be both accurate and non-discriminatory),
	and those who believe it a good idea to murder.

There IS, you see, quite a difference, since murder is forbidden in the Bible, and in John 18:36 we find this of Christ  - who gave His name to the term 'Christian' which therefore is vitally relevant, even for those who would like to abolish Christians or their mouths, which seems in part at least the present issue - that He had other ideas. It is WRONG to fight for Him, UNDESIRED to use force for Him; for His KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD. That is the view of Him whose word is law to the evangelical Christian.

How long does it take people to realise that these words from the One who told Peter to put up his sword, and so not defend Him against arrest, mean what they say! Romanists have had their atrocities in the Inquisition, Islamicists^*3A have their atrocities in their own pressure groups, like al Qaeda, which cites the Koran (cf. Divine Agenda Ch. 6 for what may be cited), while Communists with their god in the ground type of magical laws from no cause, in a model of a chance universe, these too have had their blood-curdling passions and wealth-removing desires indulged to the uttermost, as Solzhenitsyn has pointed out in historical perspective, nor has he been alone in such 'revelations' (SMR pp.   971-972, 926ff., cf. 721ff., 659ff.).

What however has that to do with evangelical Christians, which by any ordinary definition must mean those who believe the Bible, and consider it important to do so, so that they seek to inform others to enable their believing it too, if they should so desire. Is information to become murder ? Is 'subsuming' to become a convenient term to mean, embarrassment at hearing of the words of Jesus Christ, even if you choose to reject them, and ask the speaker not to tell you more ?

In other words, this convenient term appears to hide, if the words of this Home Secretary, as reported, are to have any sort of appreciable relation to reality, the difference between non-violence (to which evangelical Christians are committed), and mass murder; between telling information^*4 to those who are willing to hear it, and bombing those who are non-conformist. Moreover, it is directed, if words are to have normal meaning, at those who act with the required methods of love, from a book called the Bible which is supposedly still the wisdom which the sovereign accepts on coronation in that now rather strange-seeming land of England.

Is it really to be so ? One must hope not, but Britain seems in vast danger of just such a thing,  in its new EU compilation and religious indifferentism, with this new law of its own in the offing; it appears to be growing  more changeable now than any chameleon, and to risk subjugating life into some kind of control through compulsion, while blaming those harmless in the same, as they themselves forcibly perform what their own intrusive law should exclude!

Against all of this, the evangelical Christian is by faith and principle, divine precept and usage, excluded. The word of his Christ, whom he follows,  and which he presents, does not impose; it presents; it does not bomb, it entreats (cf. I Corinthians 4:13).

How then is he or is she, the evangelical Christian, call thing what else you will,  to be included in what is by PRINCIPLE and DOCTRINE in the word of God, EXCLUDED ?

	Do facts not matter ?
	Is a doctor an extremist misuser of violence because he may tell you that you have cancer ? Is this 'subsuming' you ? It might almost appear so.
	Is the Bible suddenly now to become calumniated as so rotten that its words have no force whatever, even that very Bible which in law still apparently holds sway over the sovereign ?
	Is prejudice to become a ground for rejecting what scientifically is the most honoured book in the world, in terms of NEVER being shown wrong in ANY scientific claim over millenia (cf. Victory Ch. 5, Importunity ... Ch. 4) - and despatching it as groundless ? those who serve Christ according to its word, as worthy of imprisonment ? Is this putsch or just push!

That this same Bible may be proved to be the word of God (cf. SMR), is not the present point.
It had rather better be shown to be an obnoxious folly before its presentation, the declaration of its teaching, should become a matter for prison sentence. Millenia have not sufficed to tarnish its truth, nor has any study been able to shame it, while it shames shams by continuing unmoved, with time not a problem.

Nor is evil implication alone the problem with this law looming.

The EXPLICIT conjoining of Islamic extremists and violence agents with evangelical Christians in a speech by Mr Blunkett is not just shameless confusion, misuse of terminology, factual error in gigantic proportions, slanderous and offensive, ludicrous and shameful, illogical and linguistically null: it is a misuse of government power to control, subsume and subvert, or imprison or penalise, harass or hound people with whom your faith does not agree. It is indeed, to enact such a law,  PRECISELY to do what Mr Blunkett claims he desires to prevent people from doing; and it is to do it to those who PRECISELY are in their own religion forbidden to do what he is proceeding by every appearance, to intend to do. If he is confused, it is time he clarified.

If this procedure is not one of confusion, then the word has changed its meaning: it is a very prodigy of confusion, it is a contusion of confusion in the system of life of political man. Indeed, it is reported that Colin Hart, Director of The Christian Institute, made this relevant statement:

"David Blunkett today has showed the danger of giving politicians the power to censor religious belief. The confidence of evangelicals in this new law has been shattered by the Home Secretary's intemperate comments."

As he is reported to have declared in The Telegraph,  Sept. 23, 2004:

"To equate evangelicals with terrorists is an outrage."

It is of course far worse, it is a contra-definitional slander of inelegant proportions. But what did he state on this ?

As reported in WorldWide Religious News, again Sept. 23, 2004, Blunkett "is to make inciting religious hatred a criminal offence. The new crime is likely to be closely modelled on the existing one of inciting racial hatred which carries a maximum penalty of seven years' imprisonment south of the border."
 

It proceeds thus:" Mr Blunkett said that it would be a "two-way street", adding:

"It applies equally to far-right evangelical Christians as to extremists in the Islamic faith."

How 'far-right' is to apply to 'evangelical Christians' is unclear, since 'far-right' tends to suggest the use of physical power and duress to control, force or overthrow, to which evangelical Christians are inveterately and by Christ's command, opposed. How does 'evangelical Christian' involve hatred, when this is the band of those who are to sacrifice in love to find for mercy its deliverance and whose God IS love ? (I John 4:7ff); and how is political force an answer, by condemning violence, to non-violence, which for its own part avoids it, while the State proceeds to  use its own violence to intrude where violence is excluded ? Does Alice in Wonderland have something of a 21st century venue in this ? The question must be asked, and it is time a rational answer was obtained to the point underlying it.

If however Blunkett 'means' far-right people who use the name Christian, then he should say so, and not make this unpalatable and insulting confusion of terminology. He should do this,  even if only for the sake of delivering elsewhere, where it belongs, the threat of seven year's imprisonment, and avoiding the distemper of political confusion in calling Christian love, hatred, Christian concern, subsumption, and Christian testimony, force.

It is of course a slander and an ignorance which is one way of confusing the masses; and though this is presumably far from the intention, when there are seven years' prison to think of, it is best to think first, and not make terminological monstrosities and vagueness into an art form.

That it is even possible to make such a contradiction in terms as this, and to make it as a Minister of the Crown in Great Britain is significant for Apologetics.

Like the floods, these things are at first sight all but amazing in their severity and the suddenness of their onset; but at last, it is apparent as has been declared now for some 14 years in this country, the trends leading up to this have long been apparent. Are we to be amazed when cancer is diagnosed, if after years, it spreads its fangs into the flesh ? Not really, though it still shocks, and is appalling when one finds the result realised. Here it is wholly unnecessary, a moral decline, and it need not be shared. But what does this development mean ?

It means this, that iniquity is abounding Matthew 24:12) to the point that it is willing to distort doctrine, misuse language and threaten Christian testimony itself,  in a land famed for courage, character and fearless missionary work in evangelical terms, in such bodies as the London Missionary Society; and for Bishops such as Ryle; as for men of mercy like Shaftesbury and Wilberforce, in their industrial and slavery reforms respectively; and for such societies as the former China Inland Mission, once equipped with some 600 missionaries.

This is in line with

	a) the general decline in moral and religious temper which is predicted for the end of the Age.
	b) the special fantasising which it is designated to descend into (as in II Timothy 3, II Peter 2, Matthew 24:24).
	c) the 'beast' complex, in which social, economic and political, yes and financial power is to become vested in a Rule and Ruler (eventually), which will domineer, dominate and oppose all that is godly, to the point of even seeking to control transactions.

While one is far from wishing to go further here than the exposure of the enormities by report attributed to the Home Secretary in that once so powerfully spiritual (Isle), there is more in this line which arrests the attention, as society moves, now in Europe (cf. Cascade ... Ch. 12, News 151, With Heart ... Ch. 10, His Wounds ... Ch. 3), now in England, now in the USA (cf. ), towards its own downfall. As to the USA, it is fascinating to read of the words of secularism being taken as a mandate and a moral platform for judgment in this extract.

First, on that Web site, there is given a quotation from a prominent member of the Clinton Administration, and then a comment, not unfitting!

If you've ever wondered what the expression "culture wars" means, Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, provides a textbook example:

The great conflict of the 21st century will not be between the West and terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic, not a belief. The true battle will be between modern civilization and anti-modernists; between those who believe in the primacy of the individual and those who believe that human beings owe their allegiance and identity to a higher authority; between those who give priority to life in this world and those who believe that human life is mere preparation for an existence beyond life; between those who believe in science, reason, and logic and those who believe that truth is revealed through Scripture and religious dogma. Terrorism will disrupt and destroy lives. But terrorism itself is not the greatest danger we face.

That is the citation. Now comes the comment.

Please take note: the gravest danger facing the West is not terrorism, but religious faith. The people he describes aren't fundamentalists, they aren't fanatics, they are simply ordinary believers (Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, etc.). Some of his contrasts are simply ridiculous (since when do "those who believe that human beings owe their allegiance and identity to a higher authority" refuse to utilize science, reason, or logic?), but in any case they indicate a mindset that essentially says that any set of beliefs that doesn't bow before the god of secularism is a threat to our way of life.
 

Such a development as that noted above is not unlike that of the Kissenger emphasis on power-broking, as if  real politique could achieve its reality only by discussing with other nations,  various powers and dangers, vulnerabilities and abilities, and horse-trading a resultant which would economise on devastation and thus provide a 'win-win' situation in relative peace for both.

Such is the theory one may readily often hear in this connection. Such win-win result however is not to be found in principle, far less in ideology, but in pragmatic terms. When truth is no longer the guide, and relativity is in practice the carrier of the top echelon, then what results is a visionless respiring, rather than an inspiring directedness; the opposite of the situation when European scientists flocked to the USA in order to help it, by aiding the atomic weaponry research, ensure that Hitler could never win.

Again, there is vision and vision:

	it is good on the whole to have a directedness of purpose towards meaning and virtue,
	but it is far better to have vision of truth given from God, so that not in the flagrantly variable philosophies of man
	(and having ANY vision so long as it does not hurt is one of the side-stepping outthrusts of defeated philosophy, in cynical abstrusion from truth),
	is there found delusive rest:
	for these but dictate in their invariable fatalities amongst moribund casualties, as every tyranny bites its appropriate piece of dust.
	Rather is that vision to be found which has endured, should endure and will endure
	because withstanding all contrariety, manifesting every triumph in any test
	and confirmed in the only man to be capable of being a standard,
	whose testimony is truth itself, Jesus Christ. (Cf. Christ, the Wisdom of God and the Power of God Ch. 8,  SMR Ch. 6, Repent or Perish ... Ch. 2).

It is here, in this vision which is backed by divine power which needs no harassment, insists on holiness and walks and works in love, 
that power has come, even when it has not been sought, because of truth^*5;
and it is in departure from this
that declivity breeds such contemptible indifference,
that wealth and honour and power become like Rachel's household gods,
stolen and useless, an index of shame.

As to Britain, however, there has been much noise about the intention of Blunkett to have the tabs on each Briton to the point that one Briton declared there was danger of surveillance excess.

"My anxiety," he is reported as declaring these words,

"is that we don't sleepwalk into a surveillance society where much more information is collected about people, accessible to far more people shred across many more boundaries, than British society would feel comfortable with... "You have to have clarity. "Is it for the fight against terrorism ? Is it to promote immigration control ? Is it to provide access to public benefits and services ?"

The person voicing these concerns happens to be the "UK Information Commissioner" and he is far from being alone concerning Blunkett's increasing insistence on vast supplies of data on the British, and as it would appear, EVERY Briton. His concerns are reported in the BBC News, August 18, 2004. In September we are seeing more of the religious outrage; and the two of course are like twins in mutual function. If control is to be, religious control is essential, and knowledge is the way.

Such of course would be NECESSARY for the outcome of Revelation 13 to occur, where all financial operations are monitored. Hence this is, whatever the intention for the moment, a social movement in that direction which, when the evangelical Christian misnomer is added to it, becomes exceedingly impressive as an arena of building for the sky-scrapers of control which scripture depicts as having to come. It will come only when the power or the appetite culminates, one now whetted in many, and excused by others in terms of 'survival', as if we all stopped fighting in case we were hurt, and so allowed nations to overrun us, or allowed women to be mutilated if only we could be safe, or children to be murdered so long as we ourselves ...
survived ?

Was that the term!

It is this skyscraper which is now coming both in Europe and Britain at an appalling rate. It will of course have to be worked in confusion, by those not realising what they do, as well as by others seeking world dominion for a godless group of those who 'subsume' others to their wills;  for it is unlikely people would ever be so foolish without inducements and gobbledegook to permit such power.

By absolute contrast, the Kingdom of Heaven, where force is not relevant, but love and truth, courage and grace, humility and praise, adoration of God and delight in His ways endures past all the pomp of pretence, the clangour of calumny, and the gravity of alienation, for here friendship with God, not survival, is the boon, and eternity is the realm of operations.

On this, see The Kingdom of Heaven, Ch. 2. This is the granary where the wheat of the spiritual harvest belongs; as to the chaff, if it prefers the winds of 'chance' without God's governance for the soul (John 3:19), and the darkness of the bin which the absence of light confers, why chafe about it ? That is the way it is, when the preference circulates in the dimness of obscurity, without the Light of the World (John 9:5, 8:12). Watchman, what of the night ? the question has come since the day of Isaiah. The night comes, but also the morning; and as David puts it (Psalm 17),

"As for me, I will see Your face in righteousness,

I shall be satisfied when I awake with Your likeness."

NOTES

*1

On Flood and End-Time oceanic turbulence:

See News 1 , 45, 205, 209, and other News items at

Red Alert Ch. 14,

The Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet  Ch. 6, esp. *3,

with SMR Ch.2 , pp. 160-170, 234-248;  714-715, and see also SMR index. 

These items go back much longer than a decade, and the power-based vehemence is increasing to the point

where you would need to be blind not to recognise the journalistic-feeling that you now gain when reading Luke 21:25. The point here is that it is a CONTEMPORARY journalistic impact one gains in a TOPICAL way from the new events, conforming to predictions of detail, some two millenia ago.

When God is concerned, time is not an issue! That is, it is not at all difficult, any more than it is for an author to turn to some page or other of a book he has published. In this case, we have a copy of much, and it is called the Bible, where God speaks what He has in mind. It is good to listen, and most instructive for things temporal; but how much more for things spiritual. Unwise is he or she, unwise is old or young, rich or poor that fails to listen.

*2

See Cascade ...Ch. 3, for the meaning of I Timothy 6:20, which applies patently to such cases.

*3

Amongst the numerous interlocking elements of the presentation of cumulative consequences of new energy reservoirs, such as those through warmed waters and changing currents in the ocean as a result, while increased oceanic volume through melting ice is becoming part of the amplified liquids problem, with rising temperatures increasing the volume further, there are some worth noting.

Thus it is pointed out that the great Glen Canyon Reservoir in Colorado - a picture of some of the vast cliffs of being impactively presented, has falled in level drastically owing to the 5 year drought. Less than half full, it is yet a major source of hydroelectric power as well as water to millions, whose plight will be drastic if it fails.

This is the other side of the coastal batterings such as have been seen in multiple form recently in Florida, tempestuous waves and storms surging on, the ocean-wrought strength of blasting winds reaching even into Pennsylvania: this reminding us of the transience of national power, the vulnerability of man, yes, and the settled certainties of the word of God which foretold just such oceanic disturbances and havoc. As you see China in flood, or Japan in wind-wrought devastations, Bangladesh awash to a large percentage in this global warming phenomenon, we find an interesting assessment in the National Geographic's extensive article.

While in the past, it points out,  changes occurred in the climate and ecosystem, now it is apparent that human efforts are relating significantly to change. Thus the CO₂ levels measured above Hawaii's 13,679 ft. Mauna Loa mount has moved from 315 to 375 ppm since 1958;
while in Alaska, the average temperature in the Northern city of Barrow has risen in 30 years by 4.16 F degrees, an indication of the different ways in which the total change is becoming manifest in different places, yet with one basic effect: more heat, greater fluid energy, higher water levels as massive ice shelves melt, receding land line and advancing water levels, with engulfing of islands and havoc-wreaking winds associated.

It is noted that the inter-dependence of much in the eco-systems means that some creatures will be unbalanced in their environmental activities, and that this could ramify as in any disturbance. We are not therefore any longer talking merely of trends, but of observations which affect, in their outcome, millions of people making this a major global phenomenon, not a theory ice-bagged in some cabin of thought.

Heat melts permafrost, and the Geographic article illustrates this, showing that this means foundations for structures once secure are becoming mere soggy bases, hence disturbing civilisation's hard-wrought hold in the North.  While the concentration of CO₂ in the earth's atmosphere helps to reflect heat and raise energy levels, intensifying the sun's impact on earth, and measurements indicate something of the order of an increase of 100 ppm in this gaseous concentration in our atmosphere, in the last 140 years, this is augmented in impact by the devastating effects of changes in the mellowing influences on climate, as ocean currents distributing heat change for the earth, now make vast areas vulnerable to massive change. More directly,

Shorter Winters and Longer Summers also is a trend which could not only change agriculatural practice, or endanger it, but threaten species of wild-life and challenge farming stock.

There is thus the complex effect of temperatures rising in areas which could change fertile areas into dangerous arenas.

As far as the ocean is concerned, it has been found that deep layers measured in Bermuda have a much greater rise in CO₂ concentration than ones nearer the surface, one layer measured moving to nearly twice the surface level, which scientist Bates, who is involved, reports as signifying fundamental oceanic change. 

It is noted that the three gases, CO_2, methane and nitrous oxide have a strong effect on the earth's temperature control, since they have an 'intricate dance' in which they absorb heat from the atmosphere, trapping it and warming the earth, and facilitating the cooling by transmitting heat back to the atmosphere providing, in such a way as this, one barrier to prevent the earth from being  "an inhospitably cold orbiting rock". Clearly the vast changes accruing as man works his often godless energies with the energies available, exploiting on the grand scale, as in any over-heating, many systematic results can be expected. The Geographic's point is that these are now arriving!

Thus on one side, does man's knowledge of atmosphere and ocean, limited yet considerable, enable measurement and observation of the agents of change, and on the other hand, it can observe the effects of it, till the two in concert at last convince him that his ways are woeful in results, for a magnificently sensitive planet. Long has man been taught to disregard design to the detriment of logic (cf. SMR pp. 211ff., 252Aff.), as well as to disregard for this or that passion, the wantonry of careless self-indulgence. Now the fact that there has long been a veritable marvel of merging considerations which enable life to CONTINUE, once formed, is becoming more blatantly obvious as suffering increases.

As the end of the Age comes in, the misused mind of the man immersed in godless culture, if not paralysed by desire, is becoming more able to see that his very body may be killed by tempests, drowned by waters and heated by pangs which may not only be imagined, but experienced.

As at the time of the great flood, as Jesus pointed out (Matthew 24:38ff.), man continues careless, as if indifferent, his way of life as if a god unaltered; yet when He said it, it was prediction concerning the end of the Age, explicitly, and from far off.

Now judgment may not be avoided. Its form is as predicted:

whether psychologically in fear, frustration and desperation, or in religiously excused mass murder, as desperation becomes deadly assault;

whether religiously, where endless god-making machines seem to replace thought in man and innovative and groundless adventurism merely adds insult to the waywardness towards the actual Creator;

or in earthquakes, famines or other predicted implements of reproof (cf. SMR Ch. 8).

Yes, it is also to be seen in immoralities unmentionable but ceaselessly paraded, 

as if it took courage to sink in the waters of wickedness, or in lovelessness, and this

as if marriage were a baneful bond and not a tryst for man, women and blessed children, as if self-indulgence were god!

It is all there, including the sinking of churches into gaseous waters, where great swelling words of folly replace the Bible (II Peter 2:18), so that where logic is defunct (as in the cyclotronic litany of degradation found in Romans 1:17ff.), 'faith' becomes mere wild fantasy without logical effect, far less ground, and ceaseless propaganda makes of victims a panache for  'progress' to an end which, without any real beginning but delusion, becomes fatal.

Thus does the chaff of chatter become a focus and feature of those smothered or 'subsumed' by it; while the wheat of wisdom being despised, gives of its gain to those who elsewhere receive it.

Grievous is it that greatness, happily emboldened by God in the days of enlightenment - not
'The Enlightenment' which appears as a trade-off to gain  liberty without understanding instead of ecclesiastical perversion with oppression, should now bow to listless urbanity, and even the cartoons become emblems of regressive, reductionist thought, ugly and as inviting as a squalid swamp, smelling acrid even from a distance. This becomes the fetid odour left, now that Puritan precepts derived from the Bible, that evangelical reality, warm in fervour, oppressive of none, seeking light for all, and love in the midst are even being carelessly calumniated in Britain.

Yet in the absconding from such realities, as has been attested sadly often of the trends in Britain as in Europe and the USA  for many decades^*6, there is merely one part in the international decline, to be descried. As to the judgments, we note them from the word of God, in the world of man, and must read what is written for our instruction if we would prosper in peace and not trifle with truth.

The judgments are written. It is not otherwise in the scriptures of Matthew 24, Luke 21, Revelation 6, II Thessalonians 2, II Peter 2:1ff., II Timothy 3:1-5, 4:1ff., coming to a culmination of political renegacy as man acts his imaginary god-like status in dominion and domination over man, in Revelation 13,17-19. Just so do the signals assigned come, whether within those marvels of brevity, references in Daniel to the increase of knowledge, sharp as a mathematical formula, in Daniel 12, or in Joel 2, to pillars of vapour, these both as incisive marks of the end-time data bank, or whether for that matter, in the towers of evil, substitute christs and consternation.

They are provided in simplicity, but fulfilled in profundity, whether in the mushroom clouds which tower on their lethal and  narrower struts, veritable columns of vapour that are a chief sign of our Age, or in the explosion of knowledge to the point nearing self-worship of flesh, or in the pandemic of psychiatric rush (Luke 21). Some signals are in themselves close to sentences, not only grammatical, which they are, but of judgment itself.

Whether signal or sentence, it comes, it all comes.

This word of God is not a matter of mere measurement over the last three decades, but of determination revealed for millenia, not from the facile mind of misled man, but from the validated and verified mind of God at work for man. Truth is not negotiable, and neither is sin; but it is able to be pardoned in purity, and replaced in righteousness (cf. II Corinthians 5:17-21).

It is not, therefore,  a question of judgment alone, just because it is now more obviously looming like some force 5 storm on the horizon, be it typhoon, hurricane, tornado in designation, depending on definition and sometimes even the locality! Rather as man so well knows in many spheres of his life on this earth, it is a matter of either/or, of negative option in the face of truth for convenience, comfort or desire, or being moved to receive the truth and  ACT. Such it was for the Jew as in Acts 2:37ff., and so now is it for Jew and Gentile alike.

Mercy continues like a gentle stream from the pure snows of truth, but relatively few regard it (cf. Matthew 7:15ff.), as Jesus knew and foresaw. It is as in the days of Jeremiah (18:15ff.)  for Israel, but now for the world.

              In the day of their calamity."

The day that comes is one of truth, and those who trust in His mercy where it is to be found (Isaiah 55, Acts 4:11-12), have nothing to fear (John 5:24), but the world will meet its God.

This divine stream of living water (cf. John 7:37ff., 4:14ff),  it does not dribble but proceeds in beauty and peace, providing temperate waters for thirst and cooling for the fevered heart (cf. Ezekiel 47). It does this not in the abstract, for the Cross of Christ was never merely abstract (cf. Ezekiel 47:1, Galatians 6:14, Hebrews 8-10); its prediction being not a mere thought but an attention wrought for man. It has been a divine attention which, culminating in murder, indignity, harassment and unholy passions, on the part of human assassins, yet in infinite mercy was wrought by God who turned a tragedy into predicted triumph, as He arose, death's victor, since death itself is sin's outcome, which mercy defeats.

Death, as it is written, is swallowed up in victory (cf. I Corinthians 15:54, Isaiah 25:8).

It was costly for the Son of God, become man in order to declare God to man and  to die for man; it was grievous to register sin on His own person, yet not within it, as the vicarious offering proceeded to its blessed completion.

It was horrendous to be the hated object of contempt on the part of the contemptible, and it was wonderful to pray for their forgiveness, not of Him who died for them, but BY HIM whose Son they slaughtered. It is not a sudden thing, but one published for millenia, and for a millenium again before He even came; for God does not change. His mercy is still on offer, and its basis is as vicarious now as then. It becomes substitutionary when His redemption by these means is received; for then the sinner becomes the saved, and the straying the sanctified, the lost the found and man a child of God, the costs are paid and the case is closed! so that the matter of LIVING should begin, in the fatherly presence of God, and the brotherly peace of Christ.

If these tempestuous days of even physical dimensions are needed, in order that they might remind man the renegade, of his need of God his Creator, and that by appointment long made and made clear: then for love they are not in vain.

It is better to rebuke than listless, await man's decline and devastation. As Christ suffered the rebuke for many, it is enough. If rebellion does not relish redemption, then truth still insists; and it is free (Romans 5:15, Isaiah 55), in need of no payment from pride or pollution alike. In all this is the love of God vindicated, and the liberty of man indicated. There is still scope amidst the hurricane of unholiness, which these winds resemble in power and devastating force, to find the peace of truth where the Prince has provided it, in Himself.

*3A The term is used carefully, for 'islamicise' is to seek by the means thought fitting, and these sometimes have included force as in the Koran, to make of others, followers of Muhammad. Hence 'islamicist' would be one who so acts, as distinct from any who are called Moslems, but do not desire so to act. Hence it is a useful distinguishing term.

*4 See Importunity ... Ch. 4, especially as hyperlinked.

The very essence of Christian seeking and appeal, information and consecration is to the God who IS LOVE, and who died rather than have man a mere inhabitant of hell, who rose to demonstrate His authenticity, who has predicted the Gospel for centuries before it came, who has spread it across the earth for millenia before He returns, who forbids force in the faith (John 18:36), and continually in the Bible is shown in grief or endeavour, in heart to heart talk or appeal.

This is so far from duress that it permits eventual destruction rather than tamper with the springs of truth in man, which must be from within rather than without (Luke 17:20): the ignoring of which is that classically unbeneficial folly of all government banes.

It is massively ironic that Blunkett even dares to misemploy on the one hand, and deploy on the other the term 'evangelical Christian' to refer to an alliance in thought with Islamic extremists who are not merely notable but notorious for barbarisms of method, murder that is not only indiscriminate but at times child-directed, while providing the outcomes of life-time agony, anguish or suffering, these added without apparent concern in the midst of their misguided devastations and multiply murderous miscreancies.

Nothing could be further apart than this from Christ, to whom the evangelical Christian gives total allegiance, whose word forbidding violence for the faith echoes in the soul.

In fact, the alliance of these contraries in the words of the Home Secretary is merely an example of the extreme danger of fiddling with freedom, lunging into liberty on the part of Government, so that violence becomes its own method, suppression its own way, harassment its procedure, confusion its king and folly its fulcrum.

These are not mere words: what is it that a fulcrum does, but provide something on which to lean as you lift what you want, out of the way where it currently is... And what does Blunkett's oration do, if not threaten to lift out of the way (by incarceration, a form of violence), those who abhor what he derides, ostracise what he denounces and evacuate from what he seeks to invade, while he pillories their reputation and is in danger, if he proceeds, of earning it for his own government.

Surely in this the Home Secretary has brought such a shame on Britain that only the overthrow of these medieval seeming transmutation of facts into fictions and fictions in imprisonments can diminish. If he has erred in communication or intent, now is the time to evacuate from these regions of surrealism.

*5

See News 151 for background.

*6 See Cascade ... Ch. 12, News 151, With Heart ... Ch. 10, His Wounds ... Ch. 3;
                News121, 122, HEART  10,  9 ,

                but also  73, JJ 14, 21; TON  13, BEN 73 CASCADE  10    
                the last in broad association with others), 77,

                News 113, 13,  5 DIAMOND 9 

and          Christ, the Cumulative ... Ch. 4.