WHAT IS THE CHAFF TO THE WHEAT ?

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Explorations in the Obvious

Robert E. Donaldson

Published October 2004

World Wide Web Witness Inc.

ISBN 0 97566840 4 3

PREFACE

Of course you might well ask, WHY explore the obvious ?

Perhaps because it is not so well known.

HOW could it be so, if it is obvious ?

Because of what used to be called by some, the cussedness of the human race, which is of course a corruption of cursedness, which itself is a result of being cursed. This formulation has the advantage that the word used to describe it has been corrupted, just as what it describes has been corrupted. It is all corrupt.

That is part of the divine message (Ephesians 4:17-19, 2:1-12, Romans 1-2, 6:23, Jeremiah 17:9). Another part is this, that this corruption needs the core, base, centre, life, individual concerned to be regenerated. Naturally, this is glad news, for a new car is far better than a mere adorned bomb (Titus 3:4-7). This is because of the kindness of our God (Titus 2) towards mankind.

It is because of the corruption that the need is there, and because of the corruption that the obvious is not so well known.

If you are corrupted, anti-corruption may appeal as much as non-smoking appeals to smokers. In fact, such is the perversity of fallen, fouled and often foiled human nature that the very fact that there is evidence of lung cancer danger for smoking can make the smoker the more resistant. He will not be summoned, summonsed, frightened, shanghaied, even if it is from death.

There is resistance to reality by what is not merely deformed, as the Bible makes perfectly clear is the result in man's nature from his fall, but so defiled that it includes the very will and heart of man in the deformation. It is not, biblically and actually, as if you are appealing to someone whose bumper bar has been bent, to have it fixed. You are appealing to a drug addict to drop the stuff, forget the needle. In some, it is pride which is master, so that to appeal to them on the basis that their condition is unflattering to their need, is an affront, which they feel is the last thing they need. Give them flattery and they may love you; reveal their condition and you and refuse have much in common, to their discerning eye.

This tends to produce distortion of the means of re-creation in their eye, inflammation of the ear, a cast in the spiritual eye, added to the existing one, as a sort of application, with the result that what is the Gospel of God and the grandeur of His grace and kindness becomes so obnoxious that some would literally rather die than be healed.

When this attitude is rife, and it is so in a thing called 'culture' as a norm now, then actual knowledge of the obvious can become unclear. That is why in various modes, applications and intimations from the Bible, we need to examine its reasonableness, its necessity, its glory in remedy and its actuality, lest some by profusion of disdain, distemper of heart, blockage of ear, detached spiritual retina or other means might not find. HOW COULD they find if the retina is detached ? there are more avenues than that of the eye. HOW COULD their hearts receive the Gospel if they are corrupted ? There is more power in heaven than on earth, and on earth there is no successful embargo against God, however much the man of sin, shortly to become obvious too, might desire this. God is still able to deliver, even from the lines of human repudiation, writ large in the heart. That is because the Maker KNOWS and is not limited by nature.

Others, courtesy of culture, once not ineptly thought of as the VULTURE CULTURE, for thus it can now readily become, are confused, or weakened, or have their vision obscured by the mist that is exuded from the ground of doubt, and to them also this book is directed, if by any means the grace of God may strengthen, help and regale them, if not for the first time, then perhaps for the fifty first! Multiplication of grace is a glorious thing, like a cascading waterfall where before there was but a stream. By the mercy of God this is the opportunity that comes from many sources, and it is enough that each part of this blessed fall comes cascading whence He will, sometimes involving many rivulets to make a river in which may flow the current of joy.

The title of this volume is taken from that delicious part of Jeremiah 23:28-29:

"The prophet who has a dream, let him tell his dream,

And he who has My word, let him speak My word faithfully.

What is the chaff to the wheat ? says the LORD.

Is not My work like a fire ? says the LORD,

And like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces!"

It really does do just that, throughout all history.

It also feeds those who eat the spiritual wheat which it contains (cf. John 6:47).

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 LAW, GRACE and the LORD

Chapter 2

THE SUPERFICIAL SPLENDOUR OF THE MERELY SPECTACULAR

Chapter 3

GODLESS MUSINGS ARE BUT CHAFF,

WHILE WHEAT GROWS OF ITSELF

Matters of Method in Biblical Christian Apologetics

Part I

Chapter 4