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CHAPTER 8
DEADLY DYNAMICS and the PERSONAL PROVISION
Jeremiah, the Jousts
of the Adversary,
and the Joy of the Lord:
Modern Man in Perspective
JEREMIAH, the JOUSTS of the ADVERSARY
and the JOY of the LORD
You like tests, such as climbing
to 19,000 feet as our physiotherapist appears to have done, in Africa recently ?
Very well, consider those of Jeremiah, and ponder your own, for it is
instructive, and best to profit by the examples of other, when these can prevent
falling, incline to resolution or assist your sitting in peace in heavenly
places (Ephesians 2:6), your heart at rest with the Lord, your hand at His
tasks.
We shall
consider the plea of Jeremiah, the reply of God, the promiscuity of the people,
the division of the forces and the personal part in the life of the prophet, in
this spiritual saga, and impactive history.
1.
The PLEA
(Jeremiah 14:19-22)
What have we done ?
asks the stricken prophet, his heart for the people (14:9). It is not that there
is any pretence of righteousness, but this, this utter abhorrence from the Lord
(16:19)! The people are later seen even more directly asking,
"What have we done wrong" (16:10). The response
is not ambiguous! but clear, incisive and historic. They have served other gods,
forsaken the Lord, not kept His law and each one has so obeyed the dictates of
his own heart, "that no one listens to Me."
The case is not small, but all too familiar in
our own day, this trend to sporadic spirituality, synthetic unities and specious
disobedience, clad in contemptible sophistries.
Jeremiah here proceeds: We know we are sinners,
even against You, so please do not break your covenant with us. Idols have
nothing to show, it is only you: so we will wait for your response to our plea.
Thus spoke one with a heart not duplicated at all readily among the people (cf.
Jeremiah 5:1ff.!), for in 11:6-10, a spiritual conspiracy is exposed.
“They have turned back to the iniquities
of their forefathers.”
How hard it is at times to find
those who wholeheartedly will follow the Lord, whose desire is to do the will of
God from the heart, not to follow some dream of their own, some will, some
aspiration (as in Jeremiah 23:23-29), but in all things and in all ways,
having capitulated gladly to such a Lord as this, to abide in Him, as He also
abides. Consider however John 15:7.
How many cry, shriek, assert,
using the name of the Lord, but following other gods as well, precisely
as did the stricken Samaria, even after it was little more than a name, its
actual Jewish inhabitants removed by crusading, invading Sennacherib of Assyria,
that the abominations of their hearts should no more populate the land,
according to the will of the Lord (II Kings 17:16-18, 24-33).
The last verse cited above tells
us that they feared the Lord and served other gods, a cocktail to make the famed
Molotov cocktail seem like a blessing by comparison; for that destroys the body,
but this the soul! What is the good of being religious, if your religion is not
the Lord! What is the good of seeking fruit and gifts, if you do not ABIDE IN
CHRIST, and therefore do not follow His word which tells you that HE appoints
the gifts, according as HE will! (I Cor. 12:11)...
What is the good of seeking this
and that in prayer, if you yourself are not first of all a seeker, capitulated
to Christ, a servant for HIS direction, walking in the Spirit, abiding in His
word (Luke 6:46)!
We are all sinners, but if this
is not your objective, then your objective is spiritually objectionable and
scripturally unsound. It is necessary to be watered by the spring of salvation
(Jeremiah 2:13, 18:14), not the drain of desire!
“Will a man leave the
snow water of Lebanon,
Which comes from the
rock of the field “
“Will the cold flowing
waters be forsaken for strange waters ?”
What had they done! Even at the
time of the brutal removal of Israel to the North, the southern sector, a
separate nation now, Judah, was under no small condemnation. In II Kings 17, in
the very midst of the judgments shown for Israel to the North, there is this
statement (17:19):
"Also Judah did not
keep the commandments of the LORD their God,
but walked in the statutes of Israel which they made.
And the LORD rejected all the descendants of Israel..."
Often enough was Judah warned,
but it did not heed what had befallen its northern neighbour, or the reasons for
it, and this is exposed in depth in II Chronicles 36.
What have we done! Indeed, what
had they NOT done, might appear the better question. It is therefore not
surprising to hear that the LORD will NOT remove the impending affliction to
Judah, given over a century to change its ways, to seek the Lord and follow Him.
Indeed, Hezekiah and Josiah, great kings of Judah had led great reformations,
but like bright stars they shed light for a season, while the people sank and
descended, till there was no remedy.
II Chronicles 36:14-16 shows it with detailed and dramatic intensity.
Hear but
one excerpt! (bold added).
"Moreover all the leaders of the priests
and the people transgressed more and more,
according to all the abominations of the nations,
and defiled the house of the Lord
which He had consecrated in
Jerusalem.
"And the Lord God of their fathers sent warnings to
them by His messengers,
rising up early and sending them,
because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place.
"But they mocked the messengers of God,
despised His words, and scoffed at His prophets,
until the wrath of the Lord arose against His people,
till there was no remedy."
The curse causeless does not
come! declares Proverbs 26:2:
"As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying,
so the curse causeless shall not come."
2. The REPLY
(Jeremiah 15:1)
Accordingly, when we come to
listen to the reply from God to Jeremiah's plea, we find a finality. The mercy
is this, that there would certainly be an exile, yet that it would (as we find
in Jeremiah 25), not be for ever but for 70 years. In the meantime, death,
devastation and destruction awaited the remorselessly sinning people, often
warned, now heedless and reckless.
Thus God, knowing that the
covenant was for blessing, to faith with its accompanying practices, which it
engenders, and for cursing, when the covenant becomes a mere stepping stone for
sanctified sin, had not failed to warn of the blunt rebuttal to the covenant,
which they had breached in empty words of religion, and heartless deeds of
rebellion.
The reply is SHORT:
Though MOSES and SAMUEL were pleading, He told
Jeremiah, there could be no other result for this people.
Cast them out of My sight!
3.
The PROMISCUITY
(Jeremiah 15:2-9)
Where should we go ? they might
ask. Then tell them, was the divine message, those to die, to death, those for
sword, to that point, those to famine to that lack, and those to be captives, to
that end. THAT is where they belong. Trouble is to be their mentor and
recipient, because of their long sustained iniquity, idolatry, hypocrisy,
injustice and fraud, things summed up in Manasseh, the king whose ways were as
good at keeping the law of the Lord as a sieve for keeping water. He cast
children into idol fires, brought idols into the temple and practicing
witchcraft and sorcery, worshipped the whole host of heaven, like the
naturalists of today, whose gods are without minds, and whose minds are without
truth for they announce ‘truth’ while excluding it, and proclaim their charms,
as if by magic.
There comes a time when such
confused delusion takes its toll, as indeed it has in two World Wars in the last
century, where strife and superiority were taken as if mother’s milk would give
place to rotten vegetables! Thus for Israel, the divine decision, after some
centuries, was irrevocable; but lest you should think it hard, even in Jer. 17,
you see a simple, practical offer for entire deliverance, a matter of rest on
the day of rest; but they would not. So does man abandon hope, and blame God,
while God abandons not even the abandoned, when and IF they return
whole-heartedly to him.
Even Manasseh, that king from
age 12, and centre of the grotesque, he himself at last sought and obtained
mercy from the Lord, before he died. It is never too late, if you in faith CALL,
and do so with your HEART.
Thus there is a certain
terseness in the matter of the format of punishment. Now however comes appeal.
4. The DIVISION
(Jeremiah 15:10-14)
At this point, Jeremiah feels
downcast, as if he were some sort of spiritual pugilist, always complaining to
the people, challenging and chiding them,
“Woe to me, my
mother, that you have borne me,
a man of contention to the whole earth!”
Oh how he would have loved just
to be at peace with all. However, he had been given a mandate to speak from the
Lord to many nations (Jeremiah 1:9-10), to labour.
Indeed, not the least part of
this often punitive expedition into requitement for iniquities and oblivion of
truth and reality, righteousness and mercy, is an opposite aspect. While all the
work of judgment proceeded, there was a more distant prediction, already vastly
fulfilled, both for Israel and for the Gentiles, by name, and for the world as
well, as one. As to the first two of these, see*1
Jeremiah 30-31 and The Biblical Workman Ch. 1, and as to the
second, the link above. Fascinating as these are, are present interest however
is the GENTILE prediction so named, in this Jewish prophet's wide-ranging
coverage. Moreover, it is in the contrast where blessing effulges on that body,
all indeed except the Jew, whose place in the ultimate blessing is not thereby
diminished, but has its chronological place, because of unbelief, as Paul in
Romans 11 expounds in magnificent force and clarity, in terms of the olive tree
figure, simplifying to a marvellous extent
(see The Biblical Workman Chs.
1, *3, and
3,
*1 and at
dry bones).
As to the Gentiles, then, in Jeremiah 16:19-21, we
see with that grand indifference to favouritism, partisan exclusiveness, justice
and truth, with mercy, which is one of the mightiest testimonies of the glory of
God, that not only is there in this chapter a gruesome account of the coming
judgment on a remorselessly and blatantly, a chronically and captiously
unrepentant Israel, but there is a contrast to the woe which the rejection of
divine mercy is occasioning for Israel at that time.
" 'Because your fathers have
forsaken Me,' says the Lord,
'they have walked after other gods,
and have served them and worshipped them,
and have forsaken Me and not kept My law;
'and you have done worse than your fathers,
for behold, each one follows the dictates of his own evil heart
so that no one listens to Me:
'Therefore I will cast you out into a land that you do now know, and there you
will serve other gods day and night, where I will not show you favour.' "
The desire to flirt with
folly, to amplify with futile philosophy and inert mysteries of man's
machination chucked to the heavens as if they would receive such inventions (cf.
Jeremiah 2:22ff.) ...
"For though you
wash yourself with lye, and use much soap,
Yet your
iniquity is marked before Me," says the Lord God.
"How can you
say, ‘I am not polluted,
I have not
gone after the Baals’?
{naturalistic
false 'lords' with various inept mysteries}
"See your way in
the valley;
Know what
you have done:
You are a
swift dromedary breaking loose in her ways,
A wild donkey
used to the wilderness,
That
sniffs at the wind in her desire;
In her
time of mating, who can turn her away?
All those
who seek her will not weary themselves;
In her
month they will find her.
"Withhold your
foot from being unshod, and your throat from thirst.
But you
said, ‘There is no hope.
No! For I
have loved aliens, and after them I will go.’
"As the thief is
ashamed when he is found out,
So is the
house of Israel ashamed;
They and
their kings and their princes, and their priests and their prophets,
Saying to a
tree, ‘You are my father,’
And to a
stone, ‘You gave birth to me.’ "
MODERN MAN IN PERSPECTIVE
In this, they
are like today's naturalists in essence, for this folly is endemic in all
delusion at the level of reality, creation and rationality. It re-appears like
a bad dream, in ever new dress*2 - as
if man COULD not learn, despite every scientific, logical, rational, historic
and metaphysical fact and principle in the book of life itself, in the scope
of thought. He MUST decline, like a ball on an inclined slope, when it being
merely round, and smooth, seems to have no option.
But man has
option, which he will not take. To be sure his sin closes his eyes, but eyes,
they are still there. It is indeed in the very face of the light of the glory
of God in the face of Christ Jesus that he continues so to act, the solution
staring him so gravely in the face, that he seems only by some kind of mental
tic to avoid observing that fact (cf. Christ, the Wisdom and the Power
of God Ch. 8, SMR
Ch. 6, Repent or Perish
Ch. 2, SMR
Ch. 8). If Jeremiah felt it sad in his day for his Jewish people, does not
the Gentile feel the same sorrow, not only for the Jew, but for his fellow
Gentiles!
What profit
for any man or woman, for any child or youth is there in such a dismantlement
of mercy, provided at such cost! It is not that God does not incline HIS heart
to receive fallen man (Colossians 1:19-21, John 3:16, I Timothy 2 cf. SMR
Appendix B, The Kingdom of Heaven
Ch. 4), but on the contrary, the winds of appeal
are fair, and the power to save is great (Isaiah 63), nor is there any barrier
which any can erect, for the God Almighty is not baulked by obstacle (Isaiah
14:27), though in love He neither forces nor awaits the verdict of mere
pathology (cf. Great Execrations, Greater Enervations, Greater Grace
... Chs. 7 and
9).
Even then at
the time of eventual judgment, after centuries of spiritual sloth and
pollution, for ancient Israel, that to be as foretold by Isaiah and Jeremiah,
at the hand of Babylon (cf. Jeremiah 25, Isaiah 13-14), then, the love of God
is seen like sunlight bursting from behind dark and stormy clouds:
"O Lord, my
strength and my fortress,
My refuge in
the day of affliction,
The Gentiles
shall come to You
From the
ends of the earth and say,
'Surely
our fathers have inherited lies,
Worthlessness and unprofitable things.'
"Will
a man make gods for himself,
Which are
not gods?
Therefore
behold, I will this once cause them to know,
I will cause
them to know
My hand and
My might;
And they shall know that My name is the Lord."
There is the
light and the shadow, that the light is seen to be coming to shine on the
Gentiles in this, that in their time, many will turn from the follies of
absurd and inconsequential naturalism to the supernatural God who instituted
the painfully precise and conceptually carved realities which constitute the
natural realm, in their integrity of integration and their marvel of joint
operation in the conspectus of thought which drives their designs into being
and their kinds into confines.
It is, says
Jeremiah, to come. There will be MANY Gentiles, and that all OVER THE EARTH,
who will see the folly of such idolatries as afflict so much of modern man's
thought, making it both base and vapid, so that they never agree, for in error
there both is and can be no agreement, facts always jarring at unpleasantly
situated spots, making a farce of philosophy and a comedy of pseudo-science*2
which solemnly breaches the most fundamental principles of scientific
method, as if intoxicated, but it is a spiritual phenomenon, invading the
mind.
As he foretold
for Israel, so to the letter, to the jot and tittle, as Jesus put it (Matthew
5:17-20), it came to pass, even to the name of the Cyrus, who would RESTORE
the Jews from Babylon, after they had been sent there, over a century after
Isaiah foretold it, only to return when Jeremiah said they would (Jeremiah
25). As he foretold for the Gentile world, so to the letter it has come to
pass, and this author is one of the MILLIONS to the ends of the earth, who
have been part of that most blessed fulfilment, which Paul expounds in Romans
11.
There is then
an divine ebullience, so that although the Lord does not in sickening
indulgence forsake judgment, yet there is the incandescent pathway for ever
new ways of showing mercy, in the only design available, through mercy which
faces facts and pays, with love which is will so to act at sacrifice, and in
sacrifice, the sending of the eternal Word of God as man, so that as man, man
might have met his unmanly and often inhuman maladies and madnesses, sins and
seditions.
Small wonder,
then, that Jeremiah, as we see in 15:10-14, is almost overwhelmed as almost
endlessly postponed judgment, at last sits. As the Lord said, "I am weary of
relenting", and the time comes, and it came. Yet in the midst of his
expostulation and sadness, there is a light, even here. Thus the prophet, as
we were seeing, soliloquises, and yet that so as to be heard above, no
doubt:
"Woe
is me my mother, that you have borne me, a man of strife and of contention
...".
God is far
from unapproachable, and indeed has encouragement for those who seek Him (cf.
Isaiah 64:5, Psalm 145).
At this prophetic lament from
Jeremiah, the Lord gives him a mercy: there will be a
REMNANT,
a remnant of faith (as in a remnant sale!), among the people whom he so loves
and for whom he feels such intense compassion; for not all of them will die, not
all will be obliterated from the earth, and indeed, for this remnant there will
be blessing. It was to come in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, and there you see
the zeal when, after the ordained 70 years of exile (foretold in Jeremiah 25),
they duly came back on time, and rebuilt, released by Cyrus, just as Isaiah had
forecast over a century beforehand, so naming that King from the outset. When
that time came, then there was purging of spirit, work of hand and zeal of
spirit.
It was, as it is, time to
rebuild. Are YOU part of the remnant of faith ? Then trusting Him, return and
work! For the rest, then, exile is the best to be found, just as now, unbelief
invades what fades. Those who are the Lord’s, these do not fail, for HE, He does
not fail (John 10:9,27-28).
5.
The PERSONAL PART
(Jeremiah 15:15-21)
Jeremiah then makes request to
the Lord not to be taken away, pleading,
“O LORD, You know …
In Your enduring patience, do not take me away.
Know that for Your sake I have suffered rebuke.
Your words were found, and I ate them,
and Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart;
for I am called by Your name, O LORD God of hosts.”
He had not sat with mockers, but
alone, like an outcast.
Despite such zeal and
concentration on the things of the Lord, he asks:
“Why is my pain perpetual … ?”
Pained and grieved for his
people, and longing to be with them, not seemingly against them, he is as one
who would turn his head to a fountain (Jeremiah 9:1), as a reservoir for tears
to be shed for the horrors to come for the unremitting sin and horrible
hypocrisies of his exuberantly erratic people.
What then of the prophet himself
? for he also is human, even though dedicated without limit, consecrated without
compromise, and seeking to fulfil all the word of God with integrity.
“IF YOU WILL
RETURN, THEN I WILL BRING YOU BACK.”
That was the divine message to
the troubled soul of the longsuffering prophet. THEN you will stand before ME!
What then ? What is the instruction to him: then SEPARATE the profane from the
pure, the secular from the sacred, the spiritual from the godless, the true from
the false, the word of God from the words of men, and
“you will be as My mouth.”
The advice that follows is what
many have ignored. Temporarily stirred by some vast departure from the faith,
they often go with the wandering ‘church’, that no more honours the word of the
Lord, but substitutes its own wherever it wants it. It is like an employee
saying to the boss,
Oh yes, I will do ALL that you
say, only there may be one little oddity. For example, I have special indulgence
on cheques over 100,000, and it may be that on this, I will depart from your
wishes. But that! it is only one thing! In all else, rely on me!
Who can find a
faithful man! If you do, keep to him!
Accordingly, the LORD told this to Jeremiah:
“Let them return to
you,
But you must not
return to them!”
That is a thing especially hard
to do when you love them, seeking only their good, while they neither listen,
reform, nor return. Then, whatever the prophet must suffer, yet he MUST not
rejoin them; for it is no help to assemble with what moves in direct OPPOSITION
to the Lord’s command. That does not help any church, nor was it permitted to
the prophet; for to announce the way is not to follow another.
However, as he fights for the
truth, valiant for the truth, obedient to God, the Lord undertakes to make him a
“fortified bronze wall”.
Fight ? yes they will fight
against you, but not prevail,
“for
I am with you to save you!”
the Lord announced to the
restored prophet. Wicked or fearsome alike, they will not prevail against
Jeremiah, whose own path will be faithfulness, with power in the presence of the
Lord. The fire in his bones which could not be subdued had its necessary outlet
in faithfulness, and in this was mercy, since his prescription for Judah, if
followed would have delivered them entirely (Jeremiah 17), and even now, it
would leave them free to return in 70 years.
Faithfulness in power, mercy in
truth:
It is there for one and for all, each ascertaining his
or her own call from the
Lord. Be faithful then, and do not subordinate His wishes, commands and works,
to yours.
But if you do ? What then do you
resemble! What did Israel, did Judah resemble ? a wandering star!
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Watch therefore your
way, and keep your eyes open,
for the Lord is wise in His ways and knows His own (II Timothy 2:19).
Walk in the light of His word, in the power of His Spirit
and in the love
of His life.
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Love
? Infinite love, for love is infinitely important,
and the love of God in Jesus Christ has broken death,
irrupting in the body’s resurrection, a grant to each believer.
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In, with, by and through
Him, life is both abundant and eternal
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To
BE a fortified bronze wall for us who have returned,
to bring us back to His protection, where justice smiles because mercy has
paid,
God has relentlessly at the time appointed,
ransomed us by His own blood, penetrating death, suffering judgment in
Himself,
to provide impenetrable peace
(Hosea 13:14, Galatians 3:1-13,
Romans 5:1-11, 8:32, Isaiah 53:3-6,10-11,
Acts 20:28, Revelation 1:5, 5:13). |
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The tears of the prophet
(Jeremiah 9:1), reflect the heart of the Lord,
who has triumphed where tears did not avail.
Let us now share in that triumph,
as recipients, by living the life which He empowers.
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MODERN
MAN in PERSPECTIVE
INGLORIOUS
GLORYING and
REPENTING
and RETURNING
To the Lord is return
needed.
HIS is the glory and the
majesty and the power, the peace and the profit, not for selfish
aspiration, but for the culmination of creation in its intent, man in
God's image, to be in God's presence, not in the devilish desperation of
making himself a little god, or a little better. It is not this, but the
radical uplift and transformation that comes when God once more comes into
fellowship with this, His creation, that is needed (Titus 3:5-7, Romans
5:1-12). It is for the lack of it that this world, with increased power,
makes its hearty corruption not only so very clear, but so completely
intolerable. What will man do ? continue in corrupted cultures as if they
were sacred because something was once done amiss, and continue in them,
like automated destruction units, bemused into imagining their littleness
great, or their corruption in need of continuity! There is such a way, and
it has always been very broad, like any other folly that lacks
understanding in the midst of precision equipment.
Tears may multiply,
and who would not weep for modern man in his rejection of his own
beginnings in splendour, as if God left something out. It is not this, but
rather than man has come to make it increasingly profitable to the pride
and passion of mere flesh, divorced from its crisply magnificent
commencement from the power of the divine imagination, to look to himself
and the creation, instead of to the Creator. It is not new (Isaiah
22:12-14), but its corruption and its results are as cumulative as Romans
1 discloses in its analysis.
The case for man is
so far worse having a good product tampered with, through the corrupt
offices of some third-rate firm instead of going back to the manufacturer,
and finding the conditions of warranty. For in that case, it is mere
folly; in this, however, it is a veritable passion for corruption; and not
surprisingly, it corrupts, as man without due service, and without giving
due service to his Maker, corrodes. The folly of heart transforms itself
into the fact of history, as man more and more literally explodes.
Such in principle is
the outline in Romans 1, and in a fresh phase of folly, the occurrence in
modern history. When you turn out the light, you are in darkness; and when
you avoid the light of this world (John 9:4-5), alone attested, verified
and validated to explain all, be adequate for all*3,
being in the beginning with God and God (for there are no gods but God -
Exodus 20, Ephesians 4:4, John 1:1), and who as God created in the
presence of God (Colossians 1:15), that we all might be, as well as our
environment both of terms, concepts and body: then, you are in a
darkness, and it is one that may be felt.
As the subtle
intrigues against God continue, now in this false philosophy, in the
unending confusions of futile flesh, and when as always that fails, now in
some other confused vanity of irrational imagination, then you find what
you expect. This, it is found in two dimensions: first, incredible MUTUAL
failure among flesh, amongst the human race, and secondly highly credibly
PREDICTED failure in the furores and heaps of quickly accumulating
religious rubbish and seduced state-craft, as outlined in the predictions
of Christ Jesus the Lord, in Matthew 24, Luke 21 and seen in detail
as fulfilled, in Answers to Questions
Ch. 5, as in SMR Ch. 8.
These are the deadly
dynamics of THIS generation, and in our next volume, Lord willing,
we shall see something of their dancing, prancing and irrelevance to
righteousness and reality with the answers staring and almost blaring in
the face of man, professionally hard of hearing, and blasting his
ear-drums with such vanities of pride and lust, that he cannot hear, just
as he in vast numbers, will not seek where truth is to be found, but
rather seeks where desire, intellectual, physical, immoral, or inane,
may be sated.
As to God, He remains
(Zechariah 9:7, Psalm 90); and as to His salvation, it remains
available (Matthew 24:12, Galatians 1). The light has long come; it is
merely the undivine tendency of man to turn it out and shout violence to
mind, body or environment, that makes for the currently, passionately
increasing darkness (Matthew14ff.).
It was so for Israel in
the bulk, when the Lord came; and they killed Him.
It is so for the Gentile
world in vast proportions now; and they seek to kill what they misname the
'culture' but what is in fact the testimony of truth, as they go, as
Israel of old did, in their case before Sennacherib of Assyria. This time,
however, they go even more directly before the push and putsch of the
devil, many glorying in his demonic power and calling evil good, and good
evil, just as was done in Israel at its worst (Isaiah 5).
Israel of that day was
dismissed in the end, peremptorily and deported; this world is having its
statuesque substitutes for spirituality dismissed, and when the time
comes, it will itself be deported, indeed finished (II Peter 3, Isaiah
51:6, Matthew 23:35). It is vain to hope in what is temporary; the
temporal goes, the truth remains. It remained because it is undismissible;
and it continues for the same reason, indispensable as alone
attested, Jesus Christ (John 14:6). That name is the only one given to man
(Acts 4:11-12), for salvation, and without salvation, there is
desecration, a dynamic so deadly that cancer is a mere image, and one not
merely of the body, but of the soul. Illusion becomes delusion and
delusion dynamite, literal or metaphorical, but in either case, endlessly
destructive when, the childish pranks of mass murderers past, people whose
consciences are sunk with the Titanic, unless they repent, they take their
place with the discards of righteousness in the eternal confines that
substitute for everlasting life.
It is high time to avoid
this. It is the day for calling on the Lord (I Corinthians 6, Isaiah 55).
In calling, as in eating,
it is necessary to DO IT, not merely to think about it. Otherwise ? it is
not done!
NOTES
*1
Concerning Israel, consult the following.
Ezekiel 36-39, and in particular, 36:22,
Luke 21:24; and see
Appendix A, Ch.
9, SMR,
Galloping Events Ch. 4, Of the Earth
... Ch. 10, It Bubbles ...
Ch. 10.
Concerning the world, see Jeremiah
30-31, and for reference to that and its environs, The Biblical
Workman Chs. 1,
3.
Our present interest is the GENTILES
as such, and to this the text attends.
*2
For scientific method, see the
earlier, particular references.
See for example,
The
gods of naturalism have no go!
and in particular:
SMR pp.
140-151
Earth Spasm ... Chs.
1,
7,
Deliverance from Disorientation Ch.
7,
Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic
Ch. 7
Secular Myths and Sacred
Truth Ch. 7
Cascade of Truth ... Ch.
3.
together with
SMR pp.
179-195,
234,
Wake Up World! Your Creator
is Coming Chs. 4,
5, 6,
The gods of naturalism
... Ch. 9
Spiritual Refreshings
Ch. 13, 16,
Beauty for Ashes
Ch. 3,
News 57,
59, SMR pp. 159,
315Bff.,
A Spiritual Potpourri
Chs. 1-3,
Earth Spasm ...
Ch. 1, News 81,
Calibrating Myths
... Ch. 1 incl. *1,
Stepping out for Christ
Ch. 10 ;
Christ, the Wisdom and the
Power of God Ch. 8
Repent or Perish
Ch. 2.
*3
See
Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer,
and in particular
What is the Chaff to the
Wheat ?
Chs. 3 and
4, TMR hatmagrock/validity, SMR
Chs. 3, 5, 10.