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CHAPTER   2

ALL ABOUT WORDS, WORKS AND THEIR CORRELATION:

THE WIT OF GOD

Designs in words, in works, in history

by programmatics,
by prophecy and
by precision

in the word of God

with special reference to Revelation 13

Introduction

THE WIT OF THE LORD MAN'S MAKE-UP

HUMAN DESIGN

Man, he has much to say, but often witlessly; and his wisdom in methods is overflowed by his woeful witlessness in so much of his purposes, increasingly resembling a highway where accidents - as in a snow storm - can become the norm and sound method the exception.

Not so is it with the word of God, investigable and true to test.

The wit of the word of God reminds one of Psalm 139, which speaks of witty inventions.

A careful translation of part of it is as  follows: ^*1

"Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed, and in Your book they all were written,
the days they should be fashioned, when as yet there were none of them." Thus, as the KJV correctly indicates, it is the unformed members which are assaulting the astonished attention, the wonder and the marvelling of David, and their programmed organisation."

Let us then first look at design specifications in material things, before proceeding to them in the spiritual, intellectual, in the word of God itself, for all things must be reviewed, not merely this phase or that.

As in any design, and in accord with the definition of design^*1A, there was the initiation structure, to enable the design to become actual, there was for this the intellection aspect, to HAVE something to actualise, the purposive aspect, to have a reason and point for having something to enact, unified in finality as one; and there are  all the means, to secure the procedures in progression and progressiveness, for the attainment of the result. With this, there is the point of the whole thing, the underlying drive for such a concatenation of imagination, intellection, execution and means, and the point of application for the resultant, WHY it is needed. All these things are part of design.

You do not ask for roses from cabbage leaves, but from an adequate stock, equipped with all the features, functions and genetic constructions that serve as template of order, and ground of production. The stock base itself, for each and every, for all created things that live, using its single and singularly brilliant DNA language, this too needs to be found from what has known qualities the correlate with such creation, capacities in kind kindred to the production of such results. It is the fatuous fabrication of living things from the mind of man without the established means required, that makes one wonder why the Wright brothers did not simply wait, for the fabrication required, from so fertile an imaginary field as this 'Nature', this goddess in disguise, which in fact, pointedly, is merely an excuse for ignoring the point. In science, you look for what does the job, alone, in correlation, has the capacities, not for what does not!

Here however the dream world of pseudo-science, that branch of Paul's 'knowledge falsely so-called', operates as if a type of LSD, producing illusions of grandeur where there is none, nor is any to be found.

As to these thing components of correlation, these multi-systematic concatenations of construction, not merely irreducible in complexity for function, but contrivances of integrality for system and coded commands for operation, they are more abundant in the case of the human embryo, than in all designs on earth which man makes, and which are materially available for inspection. They are thus,  except perhaps in the case of the mature man who comes at the epitome of the growth season, moving first from the womb  into the outward world and thereon having an instant breathing categorical change, so that it is from air, not blood, that the oxygen is received; and the program proceeds on  till formed before our eyes, he is the counterpart of design, procreated with the same abundant power, as in his creation, through the template provided.

Of course! says one; but it is no 'of course' if you have to MAKE such simultaneities of change for so complex an item as this, more  complex by far than anything man has made, or finds means to make. The question is not so much what you are accustomed to, as if you were the son of a millionaire and were used to having everything paid for, but what it takes to PAY, to provide, to cause these things, these exquisite delineations of detail, progressions of thought, co-ordinations of conceptions and eventually, fabrication of the equipment to enable conception itself in the mind of the thing made, man.

Man ? There is an integral aspect to the whole, able to work in spirit, mind and body in a cognate world which is comprehensible in terms of this equipment, analysable and investigable, and indeed, to a limited extent, able to be copied (SMR Ch. 1). What however is its PURPOSE and POINT for which the entire incomparable (literally so in this sense and setting) design is made ? That is not known, at this level, for the very simple reason that it is the MAKER who knows this kind of thing about designs. However if you know the Maker, you could ask Him. In this case, He has deposited His mind on the subject, not unnaturally or unexpectedly, in only one place susceptible to scientific verification and logical validation, the Bible (cf. The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy, Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer, TMR Ch. 5, SMR Ch. 5).

Man is here, set in this globe, this sphere, this deposition, in order to know God, and  to worship and serve Him, and since he has fallen into an alienated condition, and has marred both his body and spirit and the world, there is a provision for his finding the adjustment clause for such calamities as now the more obviously, make themselves felt by unbelieving man, willing to believe that the foremost example of what is definable, is not within the definition.

What is it like ? It is like saying that the chief student, the one whose results make all others look small (as was the case when one teacher said of one student in year II of High School, that if the standard were set at the level of that student, no other student would PASS!), is not really a student.

What is it like ? It is like saying that the foremost billionaire on earth does not have money. It is not simply an error, but a prodigious denial of reason. That is the cost of avoiding the Creator, to reason. As for reality, of course, the cost is far greater, as is normal; for if you deny the basis, that is one thing, it is a willing event; but if you take the consequences, you move from will and works, to what, in short HAPPENS when you engage in irrationalism and rebellion jointly.

From what is above and what is to be found in endnote ^*1   below, we find only one course, and that is the fulfilment of the definition of design in man, eminent above all visible competition from any source, however intelligent, however imaginative, however gifted (cf. SMR p. 211, Deity and Design, Designation and Destiny Chs.   2 and   8).

Neither does ontology produce, nor rationality deduce, nor the empirical induce, nor aetiology conduce to, such a construction of thought as unmade man, the peak of composition uncomposed, nor yet to such a construction as man arriving en scène, to inspect his place, landing from the witless into this brilliantly composed ingeniously integrated world with its commands visible, inspectable, and its ways profound.

 

The imagination of man yaps, like a stray dog, yes it shrieks like a drug addict in his delusions, commanding that 'Nature' be womb for man. In fantasy, dream determines to beget children, where there is neither womb, nor any apparatus for reproduction, It seeks with engines of thought the children of desire; but nothing comes, nothing is done, for 'Nature' knows nothing of it, nor co-operates to perform, indeed to the point, it is barren as stone, unwitting as a tree.

Naturalism is dead, evolutionism rots. Who will bemoan her ? It is God who lives, alone sufficient, alone efficient, Maker of the invisible mind of man and of his invisible spirit by which he can think delusively if he wills, and soundly if he won't be misled. It is God who exclusively is adequate, while the miscreancies of man merely minister to his death by this abuse of the gift of life.

 

However, granted that man is a design, by definition of the term, and that one may ask the Maker for the reason for man's construction, and that the Maker has unequivocally and clearly, testably spoken (as is fitting for creations which can reason and check - why else make them so enabled ?) as to the point of the design, is it not merely what would one expect ? And what would one expect ? It is not that apparatus at this level of profundity in its creation, with so many subservient methods and pathways involved in the utmost intricacy of assembly line production and mathematical brilliance in miniaturisation, would be left to destroy itself by crankily failing to know what it is for. Would you endow a car with no knowledge and at the same time provide automatic steering by a non-map as reference point ? Would you not be insane!

Yet, except by wilful and individual pathology, man, the product,  is not insane (cf. Bright Light  Ch. 7). His works deployed exhibit an ability to apply purposive intelligence, to review it and to comprehend. Insanity ? insanity, it is something else! That too is simply a matter of definition which is a great way to avoid illogical slides, and one reason for using such devices, aids to reason, and enemies of delusion.

It is therefore to be expected that the REASON for man would be made known; and it has been made known from the first, and implemented in the coming of Christ, to the last, with all the items of HIS multi-millenial schedule, like those for the human body in the growing embryo, moving to its maturity. These similarly, with similar profundity of thought and openness to inspection, have been provided for in the text of the book of the Lord, the Bible (Isaiah 8:20), eminently testable, exclusively valid, so that this, man's purpose in design, this too may be found, just as man is found from the embryo.

Man actually comes; it is all programmed or provided for in myriads of ways; and Christ actually came, He was provided for in myriads of ways, in history, in prophecy, in testable data and detail, in power and in the results following such as this, that the Gospel to result was itself  predicted (cf. SMR Ch. 9), and the world-wide coverage likewise.

Yet what was predicted was by no means all progression into fulfilment, for the world was subjected to judgment many a time^* , in the flood, in this nation and in that, in Israel, in the Gentile world as now and in detail being fulfilled before our eyes, like the growing embryo. This organisation of predicted knowledge, however,  it is as the body of history that it comes again to the eye (as shown in Answers to Questions Ch. 5 and SMR Ch. 8). Just as the embryo follows its WRITTEN pattern, before it arrives, so history, in Christ, and in our present world, this too arrives, fulfilling the written specifications of the prophets of the Lord; and the thing which is the finale, is the return of the Lord.

It is He,  who once crucified, comes to be king; and in particular, this completes the paradigm, for the murder of the One to be sent as exemplar of LIFE, as PAYMENT for sin and as provider of PARDON, set to die when He did by the word of Daniel the prophet, this becomes the mastery of the endless Majesty which, where His subjects are willing (Psalm 110), and regenerated and recomposed, brings to them a peace endless beyond all our time, past all test. This too was foretold (Isaiah 2, 9:1-7, 11). It has begun now within; it will be accomplished then when the word written is completed in this finale.

Indeed, the good and the bad, the myths man would create of nature, and the byways he would follow to avoid God, all was foretold, right down to the present nature of massive mythology in naturalism, which works as well as any broken down car, its every essential point flouted by nature, which is not wiling to  receive it (cf. SMR pp.140 -150, Joyful Jottings   8).

But what of the design called man ? His coding requires cogitation, for such is the nature of ORDERS in code for this and that to be DONE as required; his implementation of code requires sequence and materials to be provided in shrewd and exceedingly clever ways, so that it is a matter for wonder how it could have been done; which is again what you would expect, since man as a creature would naturally not be expected to be near his Creator in capacity; for it is one thing to MAKE, and another to be MADE! It is one thing to BE a car, and another to MAKE a car! For the latter, you need what a car  does not at all have! It is the same with nature; it has no exhibits of what it takes to create universes or man; and none of the opportunities industriously supplied to it,  to help it along a bit, have led to anything productive whatsoever. Cars need designers, not cars, to make them, in the end, when you think it all out, and consider ALL the input in the case.

Now if cars are demanding, and spacecraft (partly because of miniaturisation), then much more so is man in his construction. Logic knows no barriers, for where it fails, so does argumentation, and where it is excluded, the exclusion zealot is irrational, devoid of ground, an unreasoned relic. Thus, so far from this being a case of argument by analogy, it is argument by causation. If you require a given product , you need a sufficient cause for it; and if it involves the manipulation of codes in order to execute a stated plan, then you need whatever it is that has the exhibited power to make codes, and designs and for that matter, COMMANDS. Commands are correlative to purpose, purpose to thought and thought to personality at least.

There is both in the bodily programmatic precision and the mental integumental structure, formal logic as natural as the air; and liberty to ruin it is as near as laziness: not to mention the spiritual zest which lying latent or even dormant in many, is no more disturbed by factual need, than is the thought of some drug addict, hideously deluded.

Yet it is precisely this spiritual desire which enables mad-cap mentors to rule the minds of millions, and slaughter sundry other millions, in unstable efforts to make them SUBMIT as in Islam, or Heil Hitler as in Nazism, or Heil Man! as in humanism, or Heil  Survival! as in evolutionism, and all have one thing in common. NOTHING happens but force, for neither wit nor wisdom is to be seen in any of it, for nothing stands to verification, nothing to analysis and nothing is the best result ^*2A.

If you hit something hard, you may break it, but then it is merely a remnant; and of course, you do not MAKE it! That is another phase of life altogether. Force without intelligence, whether in the imaginary construction of intelligence, or in the endeavour to persuade people of intelligence of the non-intelligence theories to 'account' for it, abstracting the very code of conversation from its aetiological validity, and indeed, by definition, any possible ground for validation (cf. SMR Ch. 3, TMR Ch. 5): this does not occasion design. Inability is not the source of ability, and irrelevance is not the basis for results, unless these too be irrelevant. For production of functionality, you need what it takes, not what by its inspectable and defined nature, lacks it. That is a riot of imagination, not a realism of method.

Even with force, you need its source (so that it has a relevant supply of energy), point of application so that it does what is needed, and does not destroy, sequence and subtlety of configuration, and with this, the things themselves to configure, with their orderly, unitary and cohesive ontologies, the power to dispose things, the code to impress itself in things, to make them what they are or to make them make what they are not (as in the embryo case). The provision for rubbing things out, unfortunately, no more writes them than does any other elimination program. Deletion is not creation, non-survival is not arrival, expression of a system is not some other system, except by imagination which, though fitting for the exciting realms of magic for little children, is nothing to do with the rationality of man or the reason for his being.

The witty inventions, the astute provisions, the methodological masterpiece production, these are to be found in the DNA, and their mathematical depth is what challenges and stirs the minds of the greatest of mathematicians, like Einstein, who mocked 'chance'. They are also however to be found in the word of the Maker, not only as inscribed IN His creation, as to their bodies in code^*3, but addressed TO it in words, as to the mind of man!

That is what one would expect, and as always, what verifies the word and work of God, is what is found, and its abstraction or negation is what is not found. Consistency and harmony, verification on all sides is merely ONE of the criteria of truth; and in terms of scientific method, it is one which is ENTIRELY NECESSARY. It is not found elsewhere, and in naturalism, it is confounded by this very method on all sides (cf. *1 below, SMR pp. 140ff.).

THE WIT OF THE LORD IN REVELATION 13

BIBLICAL DESIGN

Let us take on the other hand the sheer marvel that is the Bible, and consider yet one more illustration of its precision and wit. Thus in Revelation 13, there is a question. IS the bestial political-financial apparatus, the last of its kind, the empire-making, world-dominating example par excellence, to actually PLACE on the forehead of ALL (not killed) the mark of this, 'the beast' ? If you read some translations, you might think this, but in use in this chapter for 'making' things happen, are two Greek constructions, in some ways alternatives, but here the differentiation is significant; they are not the same and their point is reflected in the context, in the way they diverge. It is in fact remarkable that in so short a passage, in fact over the space of 4 verses, these constructions are used at different points.

Thus there is in Greek a distinction which should be translated into differentiation in the English. In Rev. 13:14 there is the verb to do, make or cause, with the infinitive: the evil entity causes them to make an image. That is to be done, will be done, is done. He caused it to be, and it is.

Very well, it is simple cause with adequate power, and effect with certain accomplishment: cause and effect, that is in view. This image is certainly going to be constructed.

However a different construction is used in the Greek in Revelation 13:12, for there he causes, as before, but causes that they might. It is a different construction, the conjunction of purpose and the subjunctive, not a simple infinitive as above. English to some  extent provides the same option. Thus one might say, I caused them to do this. This is clear. You did it. They did it, and the reason was that you made them do it. However, you might instead say, in a different situation, I decreed, ordered, appointed that this should be done. If you are omnipotent, as you are not, it is clear that it will happen. If you are not, and no mere man is, then it is clear that this is your intention, or even decree, appointment, requirement; yet what happens depends, it all depends on your power and that of those for whom your purpose (the conjunction in  Greek is one of purpose).  Whether or not they try to resist or circumvent your decision, decree or determination, your purpose is one thing, and that is another. How successful it might be, that is a third component of the situation. Thus Rev. 13:12 could read: " ... and ordains that the earth and those who dwell in it should worship the first beast ..." or something similar to  grasp the quality of the matter carefully.

Thus in the cases of Revelation 13:12 and 13:15,  this is an edict, not a mere effectual power to get it done. He makes it to be that this should happen, he makes an edict, declares, requires and so on, is the sense of it. He will not of course get it, for we KNOW that there are many who will refuse, for AS MANY as caught are to be killed, if they decline; as in Rev. 13:15. In this verse,  this also, it is a not case of simple cause and effect; but with that same subjunctive, the meaning provides the sense of edict, declaration and determination, that it might be done.

It is neither more nor less than Hitler's approach to the Jew: the Jew was to be slaughtered; and yet not all were slaughtered, for some escaped detection, with foreign aid, with Swedish cleverness, with Dutch resistance and so on, and were never able to be confronted, because not found, so that the result of investigation was irrelevant. That never occurred, because they were not caught. They escaped the net, ordained!  The application of the edict, quite simply, was in those cases thwarted.

Now you may wonder what is the point of this distinction, that would interest us. First, then, it is the point in that the AUTHOR decided to write it that way, making the difference between the grammatical construction in Rev. 13:14 and 13:12 and 13:15. It is always important if you want to understand the mind of someone expressing himself, to know what he says, is it not ? Such variation in so small a  compass cannot be overlooked; it is not a question of stylistic conformity, but non-conformity, and the cases in question precisely reflect this fact.

Thus the IMAGE is CAUSED TO BE, but the death sentence and the homage is DECREED that it might be. There is the essential difference, and it is one pointed out in  Thayer's Greek dictionary concerning the use of the word here translated 'cause', its various translations into English,  and the effect of various grammatical constructions. This Greek term includes the concept of purpose which we have noted, allowing such translations as 'appoint, ordain'. Such is seen also in Mark 3:14, where Christ ordains disciples that they might proceed in a certain way. That is the same construction as the one we have noted in Revelation 13:12 and 13:15.

When a mere man appoints or ordains, however, not the Son of God but the child of Satan, it is one thing to ordain and another to force it to happen. THAT, as we have seen, it depends on the power, and the escape routes available. Death is the barrier which some pass; escape is the other possibility as in all dictatorships.

Hence, it is by no means sure that there are but two classes of persons at that time, and in this respect: those who DIE and those who BOW. MANY may escape, no doubt a small percentage, but with many billions of men around, even 0.1%, say of 8 billion, would be 8 million, and one tenth of one per cent is a VERY small percentage!

Hence when the Lord returns, as you see happen in Revelation 19, after the destruction of  'Babylon'^*3A , that great satanic, unspiritual sop to this world and bastion for the betrayal of the saints (in Revelation 17-18 there is recorded the sudden calamitous devastation of what had for so long endured, with its hideous incorporation of the evil birds, as they are called, of the earth), certain things now follow.

There will be many with the Lord's Christ (Luke 2:26), the Lord Jesus Christ when He comes, including who lost their lives to the work of the bestial political power, and religious power, with its IMAGE; for these are part of the "all His saints" which are so directed as we see in II Thessalonians 3:13, at His coming.  There will therefore also be many who have died throughout all ages in Christ (I Thessalonians 4 shows their abstraction from this earth), and there will be ALL whom He has taken to Himself, according as it has been predestined, a fact the Westminster Confession rightly exposes when dealing with those who die young, or similarly by extension,  are intellectually 'challenged' and the like.

That is the first and blessed resurrection, that which is part of the coming of the Lord for His 'elect' as in Matthew 24. It is (cf. Bible Translations 4, number 32) those beheaded AND those who have not worshipped the image of the beast, this the culmination of many  prototypes over the Ages! (Revelation 20:4).

When is it to occur, in terms of sequence ? Christ in Matthew 24:15, in a setting of the 'end of the Age' and moving on till a 'then' which is the greatest tribulation to that time, and the point that unless He returned then, no flesh could be spared, shows that there is a pointer which shows a veritable climax of evil and horror is at hand. What is the pointer here in view ? It is this: that when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, STANDING IN THE TEMPLE, then flee from the environment.

This of course is what was given a preview in Antiochus Ephiphanes, as in Daniel 8's prediction; but it has its counterpart in the little horn of Daniel 7:8 (the same phrase is seen in Daniel 8:9), whose evil work was fulfilled in his placement of what is not God in the temple of God, an element for worship (cf. Biblical Blessings Chs.   1 and   2).

This figure is given more data in II Thessalonians 2, where it given the name 'man of sin', who is seen there parading himself, showing himself that he is god, in the temple. Now in that passage, it is made clear that his DOING THAT, that is, making of himself a god, apotheosis by desire if you like, occurs after what RESTRAINS is removed out of the way. The accelerator rushes the vehicle of evil in the domain of history, to its climacteric horror, when the brakes, what restrains, are removed! And what is it that DOES restrain except the power of God, but since that cannot be removed, what is meant ?

What is removed goes with the saints from the scene, at their call out of it, to Christ, at their summons from this terrestrial scene, to the wedding of the Lamb (Revelation 19:8). How can it be declared ? It is of course the power of the Spirit of God that dwells in the lives of His saints, salt in the earth, refusing to bow to the idolatries of man's fallen lusts, their testimony of valiant witness and freely poured out blood, a hindrance that shouts and echoes in the minds of the masters of tyranny.

It is this that is removed. It is this that until then, restrains! Now all restraint gone, the malignant apotheosis proceeds to its delight, and its swiftly following doom!

How is this removed ? It is removed with the saints whose bodies,  in whom the Spirit dwells for such work, are removed at the call of Christ, whose summons comes with the words, "Come up here"!^*3B  as in Revelation 11, whose power resounds with the trumpet, when the dead are raised incorruptible, and this mortal puts on immortality (I Corinthians 15).

What is the name for that ? It is commonly called 'the Rapture', in terms of Matthew 24:27ff. (or the 'first resurrection'  - Revelation 20), and means simply what Christ prescribed when He calls His elect from the four winds, and gathers them from the world (as also seen in I Thess. 4). It is indeed a rapturous thing, in both senses of the term, for the rejoicing of deliverance follows an immersion in the smog of spiritual corruption, growing constantly deeper, like that from the burning, physically, of rubber tyres. Just  as that became appalling, so does the summons to the Creator's reception evoke delight!

When does this occur in terms of the dynamics of the evil powers gathering in their storm ?

From Matthew 24 we learn that when the man of sin STANDS in the temple, the end is at hand. When he SHOWS himself^*4, or decrees, as very likely would be the parallel performance, assigning a role of deity for himself, perhaps as the ultimate representative of man in his self-idolatrising way: then the people of God are already REMOVED (II Thessalonians 2:7-8), but only for a time.

The absence of their 'braking effect' led to the stunning speed of the spiritual insanity of the 'man of sin' (II Thessalonians 2:4ff). After their 'wedding' in heaven (Rev. 19:8), fitted with linen white, that is washed in the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 7:13-14, 19:8-14) , they come with Christ as He desolates the wickedness of the false prophet, the beast and in dazzling truth, destroys the false glory of the man of sin (as in II Thessalonians 1).

These then are some of the features of the sequence,  let us return to the matrix of events itself when the Lord and His saints return to this earth. Let us consider the earth when Christ, having withdrawn His elect from the ultimate turmoil, comes with them, in that season when the apostles are to have their thrones (Matthew 19:28), and the earth is to be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 2, Habakkuk 2:14).

THE WIT OF THE LORD IN THE MILLENIUM

WHO then will be those who, in the millenium to follow (as in Revelation 20), are to be upon the earth, in addition to these His resurrected saints.

It was in Revelation 11, in its grand sweep over history,  that one saw the call to them to 'come up'  (Revelation 11:12^*3)  - just as there is that piercing call to 'come out' from the false church of 'Babylon', as seen in Revelation 18:4, before His return!  (cf. Separation 1997) ? Coming OUT and coming UP are a sort of sequence, like a dance; but it is not for mere amusement! Who, however, is left on the earth, besides these who come with the Lord, resurrected ?

It is of interest to consider this, the earth's population at the millenium. Firstly, there would be such as were not extinguished in the battle at His coming with His saints as in Revelation 19, for whose flesh the birds are there shown to receive invitation, for a gluttonous opportunity. Many will then perish. Not all however are stated to be be consumed in this way.

Secondly, there may be those who, as in Matthew 10, were indeed in Israel, but to whom the Gospel had not EFFECTUALLY reached; for God is a great lover (I John 4:7ff., Colossians 1:19ff.), and WOULD HAVE ALL to repent, and it is His GOOD PLEASURE to have ALL reconciled, every though, in the image of God, they are not merely subjected to duress. Love does not just TAKE them all. That however is the declared desire of His heart, one which does not supplant love in its restraint, but does require us to receive the divinely declared datum as FACT; and those who know love, will not find this difficult to understand.

This  being His approach, as self-revealed and exposed, then this is the case, and it is high time that more people took the PRECISION of the Word of God with the necessary faithfulness, just as the body needs no casual or merely intrusive interference with its brilliantly composed genes, or the most horrible malfunctions are prone to occur.

Thus there may be many still upon the earth at His coming with His saints,  who did not receive the divinely adjudicated impact required from the Gospel, for indeed as we see from another source,  those who preach, as Christ declared in Matthew 10:23, will NOT have gone over all even of the cities of Israel before the time of His coming! That is HIS opinion, and when you are dealing with God, or rather being dealt with by Him, it is best to LISTEN and not tell, for His data bank is infinite, if you want to put it that way, and one's own, it is not!

Thus, secondly, there is this mass of persons who have not effectually heard the Gospel. It is conceivable that some of these will  be convicted, converted and regenerated, in parallel to Paul as an apostle, one 'born out of due time',  and thus not in the general line of the norm. At all events, they will be there, on the earth, during the millenium. Some of these could be Jews in Russia or elsewhere, or Gentiles in many of the parts of the earth where the potency of the potentate, the working of the beast which rises to a crescendo before the return of the Lord,  is circumvented, as in the Jewish case with Hitler, despite his horribly large percentage of 'success' in his new, bestial 'final solution'.

It  seems certain, that  such a new and broadened 'final solution' concept will be applied by the bestial powers in the time just before the return of Christ, the net this time inclusive of Gentiles, indeed of all who resist and may be cornered, captured and despatched. These, being His saints, as in I Thess. 3:13, clad in the robes of white linen, will evidently come with Him on His return, with all His resurrected saints, despatched from "the marriage of the Lamb" (Revelation 19:7), to participate in His triumph; but some not yet unearthed and brought home to Christ, indeed many may remain on the earth.

Thus, at Christ's coming to call His people, all Christians will be taken, and those left may include many to whom the Gospel has not in God's loving sight, been adequately presented, or even presented at all, and these may be either Jews or Gentiles.

Thus there is PROVISION in the text of Revelation 13 for there to be millions of persons in the millenium, not resurrected at His coming, not then Christians, and many will NEVER be Christians; indeed, some of the people on the earth at the end of the millenium are expressly stated in Revelation 20, to rebel, revolt,  because in the end, it is not at all about wealth (except as one more idol), or conditions (except as one more test), or abasement or exaltation (except in this, that it tries the spirits).

This is not the ultimate determinant for man, nor does he have this as his final outcome, or dynamic.

What then is the ultimate basis ? It is all about the will to worship, the desire to praise deity and to find and relish Him, the preference before God, and as He determines it, for light or darkness (John 3:19,36). Rich persons often may not desire Him, being full, but some do; poor may seek Him, lacking all else, but many don't. Many ARE rich because they have not sought to serve Him, which assuredly involves much sacrifice, in monetary as well as in other terms. Many ARE poor because they have sacrificed their substance to forward His kingdom; and undoubtedly these things help to make more of the poor to appear as His, than might otherwise have been the case! *******

It is as in Isaiah 26:10, be liberal and kind, upright in government and in disposition; but what may be the response of many to this ? Many even of  those so well treated will, even then, not seek the Lord. Indeed,  men in vast numbers will not seek Him,  even in the land of uprightness. It is not the government that is the criterion, appalling as many such bodies are, and it is not poverty ultimately shows its teeth, horrendous as is much poverty: it is not here that there lies the final criterion. No, it is that poor or rich, loved or hated, many do NOT want the Lord, and DO want their own way, will, worship, wit and place, and not that of anybody else, including God Almighty, their Creator. Lusts of self-love, culture-love, nation-love, family-love, can turn even good things into the items and instruments of rebellion against God, author, Creator, Governor, and King. .

Thus the millenium is ONE MORE TEST for record,  and it will DEMONSTRATE in the famed and long-serving laboratory of history, now growing on  towards 10,000 years old, or somewhat less, for this world, that even where the folly, filth and oppression of the sins of OTHERS, such as rulers and evil cultures, is not dominating (at last), in the millenium, yet this will seem but a small thing to many, who will revolt to bring the millenium to an end.

However good it is, it is not good but evil which dominates them, not serving God but their own name or nature or humanity as god;   so that judgment sits as in Revelation 20, and the world itself passes away, no longer able to incite ensnared, beguiled, gutted men to the worship of its elements, its personages, its popularities, its cultural exhibits or its latent powers, donated at creation.

The point at the beginning, at creation and the initial test, will be the criterion at the end: God or not God, Christ or one's own salvation, knowledge of God FROM God or as imagined in one's own degenerate, because alienated heart. It was so in the initial lure (Genesis 3:4-5), to forget God's words and to imagine great heights for oneself in autonomy, as with Satan's deception of Eve; and the challenge remains the same.

The seed of woman, in the womb setting for the Messiah, did indeed through the incarnation yield the one to crush the power of evil, of Satan, of delusion, and to bring restitution to man, just as God said at the start. Now His people are with Him, and His reward is sure, for HE is the reward, the exceedingly great reward, then, just as He is the shield, now! In that day of His return with the power He showed then, and the regality outwardly which then was not imposed, merely exposed, there will be the aggregate of all who have for all time, backwards and forwards, come to Him, to HIM ONLY, whether in preparation and preliminary mode in His mercy, or in the consummatory historic fulfilment of it all in the Cross and resurrection of His body. Two millenia ago, it came to that predicted date of His payment; then was satisfaction provided for man, as many as would come; and at His return, then mature are His plans, and manifest is His wisdom.

How wonderful are His ways, magnificent His works, and even the curse (Romans 8:19ff., Romans 5, Genesis 3 cf. Beyond the Curse) does not obliterate the beauties, botanical, aesthetic, meteorological, in conduct, in grace, in man's imagination enshrined in art, which are His! Yet mankind has this counter-current, like an impelling disgrace, which sets him to find something else, to misuse the vast powers of invention granted to him when he was made in God's own image: and so even in the blessed millenium, he will in his milling revolutionary zeal, seek something other even than God. This is a 'vain imagination' and its end is as astoundingly sad, as its beginning is outlandishly alien to all truth, a mockery of wisdom, like a youth embracing his new car, and lusting for power, curving it about a light pole, in the excess of his inflated enthusiasms. These, controlled and rightly directed, might instead have enjoyed forever the wonder of his Creator, and the works of meekness in the presence of His majesty.

THE WOE OF MAN, SELF-DESTRUCTIVE

 IN HIS DYNAMIC DISABILITIES

The depiction of the millenial beauty as in Psalm 72, Isaiah 2, 11, 65, Micah 4 is enough to emphasise this point; for even  that magnificence will be merely a ground for lust to seek to TAKE IT (Revelation 20:7ff.)!  It always, to this time, so seeks; and then will it have its final fling.

Let us take a preliminary episode in our history, as illustration.

Look for one moment at the former, great British Empire.  Why, here you had it made: it was a Protestant country, not willing to have the enslaving enforcement of the horrors of Romanism^*5, whether in Inquisition, or disposition, and while  allowing persons to choose their religion, yet it did not allow such impassioned desires to rule the world by force, such as the Inquisition merely ILLUSTRATED in the one aspect of judicial murder, as if to extend in multiplied cases, the spirit of hatred of Christ which had led to His initial death at the hands of the priestly schismatics, who ruled, and the Gentile ruler from Rome, who administered!

It was at length a RICH Britain which sat in its centre; and a RELIGIOUS Britain which aided those who would seek the Lord, to give grace to government. While of course, since people did not HAVE to be Christians, or even to appear  so, it had many faults in structure and function, yet these conditions were in many ways safe (you would never have many of the current insurgencies and threats!), stable and adapted to the winning of souls and the exercise of the faculties of the saints.

Nevertheless,  many USED it as a cloak for self-righteousness (thus freemasonry^*6 got a strong hold in many of the realms of this 'Christendom', where allegedly entrance to the very site of God could be found without Christ's always necessary sacrificial atonement), others ABUSED it as a site for  drawing  salary while attacking the Bible in liberalism^*7, a worship of intellect which could not even stand rationally, being merely a congeries of fraud and ignorance, irrational and at length despicable for its opportunistic exploitation of credulity. Reason is good, like much else, when its gift to man is kept in place. Soundly does it identify the Bible as the word of God (cf. SMR Ch.1 ), but it is THAT WORD which is to be heeded, without admixture, any more than that for any other work of any other author, in his own name.

Again, national glory became - being largely a RESULT of such wonderful conditions as those who were distinctive to the land - yet a place for worship, for ultimate regard, as if an orange tree worshipped its fruit instead of the maker of its genetic structure of which this is the 'fruit'! The sense of mere ideals, as in the Boy Scout Movement, so that some of the moral and ethical components of Christianity could be exported without the basis, and centre, in the Cross of Christ (which the Bible makes indispensable and indisputable  in Galatians 1 and 6:14, for example): this too became an insult to God and a breach in realism, as if the car were the works, rather than its Maker, as if its excellent goings were the point, rather than the design and the operation accorded to it.

Thus World Wars became easier to generate, since national dignity and power were so vast that they had, it seemed to be defended; and World War I in its pathetic poignancy and intense, immense suffering over unexciting years of horror in the trenches, could become at least comprehensible. Yet again, the sell-out to a Communist partnership in World War II could come into being, Churchill declaring that if Hitler were to invade hell, then he would seek something nice to say about the devil (as noted in War at the Top, by James Leason, p. 130).

Thus the all-consuming passion to remove one monster of evil who dared to assault the British, while most understandable, became an end in itself. Principles were made subordinate to this one war, as if the real war were not the one which in the  end  counts  and controls the destinies of men far more than any mere passing phase, however prominent or dominant. That war ? it is that of Ephesians 6, between darkness and light, truth and lie, fantasy and fact, flight and repentance, ruin and redemption, yes, that between Christ and the cavalier constructions of man for his own way (cf. Questions and Answers   2). .

The use of another monster of evil, Stalin, quite as bad in principle and practice, as a much praised partner, became a suicidal mission spiritually. By allowing the 'necessities of the case' to seem more important than the requirements of reality and the worship of God, England  allowed itself, like USA later, to become subservient to forces, like cancer, which could kill in the long run. Hence the  Cold War which Solzhenitsyn correctly described as the  Third World War, duly arrived, like the bill for teaming with the nation guilty of the blighting slavery of the Bolshevik, for participation in the lurid decrees of Siberia, the expropriation and servitude of millions, working with the source of that godless theft on the grand scale, one not forgetting to seek, by drugs if necessary, to steal the soul as well!^*8

The trend to make all religions nice, and to subsume them all under some philosophical image, which became popular between the WW I and WW II, has more recently had its come-uppance similarly, with its weird desire to make religion synthetic and syncretic, abandoning reason to desire, and desire to convenience. It became one of these 'nice' exploitations of credulity, contrary to all reason and  reality, something which the cultured often respected since firstly, it is convenient and potentially prosperous to do so, and secondly because relativism has become an idol in its own right (cf. The Desire of the Nations Ch. 2), though irrational and self-contradictory at the outset (cf.  SMR Ch. 3).

Its reward for this abuse of logic and the Lord simultaneously ? It has been the Islamic militancy, and the arrogance of al-Qaeda, taking on the USA, which in turn began, in the voice of its President, the one current, to speak of the Koran as good, the religion good! whereas in Christian terms it is but idolatry of a god who is not there, by a false prophet (*2) who neither gives ground for credence nor scope for acceptance.

Such is the case with all the sects, of which Islam is but one; for this Arabian sect has exported a combination of various doctrines, more original in invention than historical in kind, that are found in some other sects, with some sort of regard for Christ, whom, however, they make in their own image. They surround the Bible like bees, trying to steal or grasp its unique verification and authenticity in this or that, while departing from it and seeking groundless, to make some new construction. In this respect, Romanism pervasively, much of liberal and more recent Protestant waywardness from its beginnings in the Reformation, the sects and Islam are partners. All use what they abuse, mistreat what they call on and seek credence from that from which they depart.

Together, like all the student papers from a mathematical exam ?

How 'nice' is all religion now ? and how comparative is murder in masses, and how convenient and comfortable would an atomic bomb be in the hands of Iran ? Ask the US, ask the UN, and you will find out! It is not a secret.

All of this is illustrating in our CURRENT world, now in its final stage before the return of Christ (Answers to Questions Ch. 5), the way the most exhilarating combination of prospective joys in government (relatively, in a sinful world) could be, and WERE abused, aborted and contorted, till this same Britain that once soared in an Empire once fraught with good - alas and not without evils - and Gospel, began  making official provisions for 'same sex marriages' and the like, such as is at this moment being brandished in the eyes of the world, through a famous case.

If then such a wonder of strength and opportunity for righteousness as Britain, in that nominally Protestant Empire,  surged into folly and has fallen into decline within while winning wars at great cost outside, indeed now has surged into rank moral failure, then what have we seen ? Is it not that just the sort of return to vomit that is to come in the end of the millenium, though then from a perfected rule, has happened already, in measure and in degree. The future has cast shadows behind it, and its preliminaries are already out of the mist, and standing in the full light of day.

It means that since in a relatively secure, structured and spiritual case, such as we have known, there has come this vicious reversion to folly, then it is a thing of small surprise to learn that when the very perfection of godliness in Christ's coming rule as foretold, arrives on this now soiled and often sordid earth, there still arrives, inveterate and vicious, one last, end phase of revolt. If it has happened in Britain in this our own day,  despite all the blessings that were reaped, it is no shock to find such rebelliousness endemic to much of mankind, and that this which has already been seen in the British illustration, is mere a foretaste of man's final autonomous declaration, at the very end of time, when judgment already reeks, and the consummation is apparent.

Thus it is easy to understand from the past, the future. That, it comes in this millenial reign; it arrives to present an opportunity: yet even after it has been universally established, and after such peace and probity as is scarcely known in this earth has manifested itself at that blessed time, revolt arises. There is to surge into arrogant life,  a graceless, godless, thankless crusade to remove the righteous rule of God, the kingdom of Christ, and to make of this very same God, benevolence and love notwithstanding, grace and goodness apart,  an  enemy to be overthrown. It is however, the kingdom of heaven, the last of the kingdoms (Daniel 7:25, Ephesians 1:10), and its liberties of love are by no means a vacuum of power, but an exhibit of authenticity.

Such is the message of Revelation 20, and of history in its preliminary preparations, already.

THE FINAL SPIRITUAL CARDIOGRAM

and its current preliminaries

That is the terminus of the millenium of trial, of opportunity, the curtain call for grace to the godless. Judgment sweeps in with the rocketing suddenness of a tsunami.

The heart of man having thus been exposed in the most intense clarity, as by some sort of spiritual electron microscope,  the whole of history as we know it on this globe, and indeed the globe  and the universe about it, disappears. The creation in general and man in particular were ORDERED by command into being, and the laws of physics and chemistry merely illustrate this, while the DNA of life shows code as such; and the orders were surrounded by whatever ingredients for the execution of orders seemed good to the Creator (when one creates, one always chooses what is needed for whatever the creation is, whether computer or automobile components, or whatever, together with the design instructions to assembly and implement).

Assignable at creation, now they are consignable through desecration and alas, it is in the realm of the garbage that the profligate and the proud, the self-governing and the self-righteous now go; for without mercy, by a self-imposed prescription, they are also vulnerable to a terrible reality, sin un-atoned, God unknown and mercy thrust as a pariah to the wilderness. 

II Peter 3 tells us of the heat and noise in this event, and to be sure it will the greatest devastation since creation. That irruption however is as nothing compared with the judgments to follow on those who had the privilege to inhabit this structure, firstly as a world, then as a surrounding and investigable universe, and then again, more intimately, as spirits possessed of bodies in that most illustrious piece of creation which man has so far seen, by his own or any other means - his own self.

That such selves should so be seduced, and then seduce spiritually, is their doom. It is one thing to ruin one's own gifts, but to be seductive in word and deed relative to those of others,  as in the teaching of organic evolution, the sects, the isms of fanaticism which have made gall and blood of this world to so vast an extent in the last ONE  CENTURY (as in Revelation 6's forecast, now duly being fulfilled to the letter), this becomes mill-stone application, for the neck.

Every child who is taken from godly opportunities and made a rat of the survival schema, the imagination seduction program, of this or that -ism of folly, has to be answered for; and unwise is he, is she who so seduces spiritually,  and irrationally indeed, and proceeds in the manner of the priests of idolatry in the past, to the dreadful task. The children of Israel were submitted to the flames of a physical variety by their vice-saturated and idolatrous elders,  in the day near the end for Israel, that Northern kingdom that failed (I Kings 17); and this youthful carnage the Lord detested, for its repayment was one main ground of the devastation to come to that nation.

That was then. Now that the clock has moved on a few millenia, when the flames burnt on youth are spiritual, it is yet the whole point of the exercise that is the same: for the child himself or herself,  being subverted, is burnt as in a flame. As it was for Israel, now it is for Gentile nations in multitudes. Fallen churches with infamous dogmas manufactured in hell, are not uncommon, the delusive for the deluded, while fallen governments rush into the gap, with naturalism, humanism and self-interest, that matchless combination for confrontation with the Lord. It does not because it cannot work, and man goes his long way to desecration inimitable, without redress, till the very earth cries out, and the judgment sits on his inability to know his God, his neighbour or his script. A wilful inability, it is one that coming from ravagement, ends in ruin, in everlasting judgment.

It is no small thing that has come; nor will it be any small thing that goes.

The Cost of Corruption

What then of the pedagogic vice, in spirit and in teaching, that grips so many schools and universities. From liberalism to the libertine, from irrationality to acrid autonomy for the young misled, it has been but a small step. One small step for each, and it becomes a walk, one great descent for mankind in the mass.

Gone is the youthful idealism, gone the hope, gone the way, gone care with reason, gone education, and in its place, mere aggressive, mutilative indoctrination, indefensible, incompatible with reality, bringing many of the young as they grow, from the very light and life that can come to man,  supplanted by the striving success stories which becomes inducement for many, to the point that they may have a little more of this or that: so they sell the soul and end with a spiritual life that is little more than existence; and this ? Is it not at the hands of  indoctrinative incendiarists, incontinent against the truth, in the process! immoral guides, the misfiring rockets of drunken un-idealism, bounding into space because of inner vacuity, without God, without guide, without meaning, since the severance of reality leaves a man as chaff in the wind.

When the Lord then returns - and it was He who declared this, that when He DID return, there was this relevant question: WILL HE REALLY FIND FAITH ON THE EARTH! (Luke 18:8) - then will the finale appear, and thus the ultimate will now rule directly. In majesty is His rule, yet it is not performed in such a way as to deny the image of God in man, and merely compel faith, which in any case is a contradiction in terms.

Thus there will be many available, perhaps in the millions, for that day of final test, and manifestation of this truth. Even though there is then shown to the unrighteous that perfect righteousness which is that of God, made available freely through the Cross, and moving in might throughout the earth, yet a mass of mankind will still seek to defile it. It has been the way from the first; and it will be to the last!

That done, and the magnificence OF that righteousness simultaneously exhibited, for the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14, Isaiah 11) - there is nothing remaining except judgment. Let us consider its  two essential aspects.

There is the book of life in which, from before the foundation of this world are inscribed the names of the people who belong to the Lord, who have received Him and by then will have come to know Him as Lord and  Saviour, and to receive His words. John 17:6-8 gives the example in the case of the apostles, distinctively'

That then is the first book. Then there is another set, an undistinctive one referred to simply as "the books" when these are "opened." In these, the judgments appear, where any man wishes to stand on his own pride and performance, and gain entry by the assumed admiration of the Almighty for his sin, as if self-admiration were a password, and defilement were an  entry  permit to the haven of heaven and the face of God; and what greater defilement is there than this, than one should dare to substitute one's own self for the  Saviour, and one's own imagined righteousness for His sinlessness, or that found in any other, so insulting Him, defiling the integrity of the Gospel, removing its need, all on the basis of imagination and desperate  disjunction from  all that God has done!

Such is pride and such is its fall; but to this is added all that says, There is no hope! (Jeremiah 2:8) and just follows its ideological or principial or moral nose, making of itself god, whether in glory or shame, and following what is preferred. In no other realm does this work, nor is the universe, the cosmos, the character of man or his spirit constructed by preference. This dream is mere wind, and it blows so hard that in the end, it is a typhoon, twisting its violent way to apocalytic ruin (cf. SMR Chs. 3, 10).

Restiveness does not re-create reality

Neither in chemistry nor in physics nor in mathematics for that matter, does preference constitute reality, and to imagine that one can invent the ultimate reality any more than the created realities, is worse than illusion. It is delusion such as II Thess. 2:10 foretells will be a major ingredient of the end of this Church Age,  as indeed it is at this current hour.

Thus in the wit and wisdom of God there is scope indeed from Revelation 13 for the many who will inhabit the millenium, and the tests and demonstrations which it will  yield for all eternity, the lessons exhibited and the points to be made. Moreover, there is never ANY scope for complaint against God, for whether it be in this way or that, in the positive prophecy of the Gospel, its time, the Christ, the Jewish situation and drama, that of the Gentiles, or this nation or that, of the world disposition and coming culture, it is all there to test, and the test is true to the last point, to the letter and to the minutest element as Christ declared (Matthew 5:17ff.) of the word of God.

It all harmonises with itself; with what comes and happens; with the past; with the present trends, with the false teachings coming into some bodies once faithful churches (cf. News 121, 122, It Bubbles ... Ch. 11), with the many sects, false christs and false  prophets, all this on the one hand, and on the other, with the spread of the Gospel. In nature, this is precisely as predicted. Moreover it has moved thoroughly throughout this world as predicted, and continues to do more, until the Lord, satisfied with the extent and intent and the intensity of it all, calls out His people. This He will do just as He promised to Israel in Egypt, to Judah in Babylon, to His Church now suffering duress such as He foretold; and all this is as He promised.

WHEN you are called out from sin and selfishness and the slobbering mouth of philosophy, with its broken teeth and decayed molars, then the next step is as natural to you as is the step, when you are in athletics doing a hop, step and jump. It follows on ... Just as He has done spiritually, so He then does physically, following the example of His own life of sublime, spiritual power over disease and death, spiritual ruin and moral darkness, moving through crucifixion to resurrection of the body. He is not a god of parts, but the Creator of all; and having built, having redeemed, He consummates all, while alas where decreed mercy is forgotten, the final ferment explodes into its heralded abuses, decay and disintegration, to find its end in the brightness of the light it has despised (II Thessalonians 1, 2, Revelation 19-20).

NOTES

*1

For this, see Bible Translation  2 at this point.

*1A EXCURSION:

Designations of Design

 See first, with respect to definition, SMR pp.  211ff., Repent or Perish Ch. 7, throughout but esp. in two locations and their hinterlands, Ch. 2 above, and indexes.

On design definition, the case is clear. You need what has integrity, or better integrality, oneness in multiplicity, so that many things minister to one result. You need the power to imagine it, since commands do not imagine themselves; the capacity to codify it if you want to use, as in DNA, programmatic devices, the comprehension to make code articulate with command, and command with the raw material for its implementation; you need a series and sequence so that the correct data come with the correct  matériel and the correct provision of it at the correct time, and the correct concept with which to edit any errors and rectify any oddments. So is it with the embryo, and indeed in much of the following growth, outside the womb.

This of course is precisely what is found in design, to make it so; and nowhere on earth is that of man surpassed in any visible realm. How is this so ? It is a question of complexity for the unity, differential divisions of mind, spirit and matter for the components, inextricably interwoven for normal function, operational sufficiency and efficiency for the command centre or operational agent to secure the results which are to be gained from comprehensive USE of all the equipment and connections and phases of life involved. Nothing comes near such versatility, power and combination, synthesis of dynamic diversity in KIND, as this. Fulfilling the specifications for the definition of design, it yet surpasses all other visible examples.  To remove this example, this exemplar indeed, man,  from  design, would have to remove the concept; but the concept is based on billions of examples, systematically found and implemented by the designed unit himself, man. It is just that his observable case surpasses all in the various elements that constitute what is defined to be design.

There follow three citations from earlier works, to illustrate the ludicrous results which come when man tries to ignore the data, and invent by magical moments in thought (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9), what no moments in nature contrive to produce; for you may watch forever, for what lacks what it takes, to take what it has not got. Cars do not produce cars; you need the extra features to imagine and purpose, to contrive and to make them arrive. Man-maker has to have all of this, and for such a thing as man, inventor, creator and imaginer, comprehender and amender, you need as it were the machine tools correlative to that; but it is not machinery: it is imagination and all else that the formation and formulation of command exacts.

Correlative with this again is the obvious fact that INFORMATION does not  arrive, but in information science as seen below, we find that information tends to dissipate, like other design. What is based on its autonomous arrival, when the law directs that the natural course of information is  its dissipation: this is not only UN-scientific; it is ANTI-scientific, and justly put into the realm of magic, where causes inadequate posited, with no evidence, are imagined to go with the results desired.

From  DANCERS ... Ch. 5

Secular desperation finally comes to expression, and reality brings at least temporary deliverance from the futile dream of self-creation of what is not into what is, as design is contemplated in its enormous energy and facility.

From Wake Up World! ...Ch. 6, with some extension, we note this:

Indeed, Gould draws attention to Darwin's belief that you cannot logically expect PROGRESS from the changes in view by any inherent propulsion, citing a letter  to Apheus Hyatt, Dec. 4, 1872:

"After long reflection, I cannot avoid the conviction that no innate tendency to progressive development exists."

That of course led to Schützenburger's impasse (SMR pp. 128 ff., 157ff.). We shall soon see in the CREDO of Gould, more saltations of thought, as in Nilsson and Davies.

The Gould reference is in his book, Wonderful Life, p. 257. Gould cannot find any either. Indeed, he declares this: "Instead of a narrow beginning and constantly expanding upward range, multicellular life reaches its maximal scope at the start, while later decimation laves only a few surviving designs" (op.cit. p. 233). Indeed, he not only notes the mockery which facts achieve of the developmental design by gradual propulsion concept of Darwin, but goes far further. On p. 236, he propounds this: "But if we face the Burgess fauna honestly, we must admit that we have no evidence whatsoever - not a shred - that losers in the great decimation were systematically inferior in adaptive design to those which survived," and on p. 239, he adds:

"... we have no evidence that the winners enjoyed adaptive superiority, or that a contemporary handicapper could have designated the survivors. All that we have learned from the finest and most detailed anatomical monographs in twentieth-century paleontology portrays the Burgess losers as adequately specialized and eminently capable."

The  "decimation" is his term signifying the vast lost of biota, of design, from Burgess time till now, that ultimate parody of the developing marvel concept, proliferating its productions: for here the marvel is first, together with its proliferation, and then it dies down, up and out. On p. 236, he warming to his task, announces as if under hypnosis to his 'cause', "the mere pattern of life and death  offers no evidence that survivors directly vanquished the losers". Even a postiori, looking back on what was and what is, he is stumped; and that is the ultimate, when you cannot even 'explain' when you see what is the 'result', by the principles which supposedly require it.

So far from their being any inherent power to create design types, we find then that there is an inherent process to remove them, and just as the mechanisms are deemed incredible by Gould, since much is expected and little is gained, in gradualism, in order that the compleat angler should arrive and be capable of function, and we might add, since the evidence of the efforts on the way is so conspicuously lacking in all the myriads that ought to appear, that it is the other side of the impossibility, so that the coin shows both sides at once, which this being all too clownish, is quite fitting. How Alice would have loved it in her wonderland; but in science, of course, it is not a good time to take a course in children's literature, and mix it in!

Small wonder then that Gould is using heaven's name, explicitly, in his apostrophe, like Calvin in Calvin and Hobbes, as we saw in Wake Up World! ... Ch. 6:

HOW, he asks, presuming to do so "in heaven's name" - seemingly in the grip of growing frustration and desperation, like that of Nilsson and Paul Davies in his nothing approach (certainly radical, even if radically irrational)
 

·       "HOW ... COULD SUCH DISPARITY ARISE SO QUICKLY"*^1A (op.cit. p. 227). The Burgess time provided what he calls a "Burgess maximum in organic disparity" (loc.cit.). The Chinese fossil case cited is reputedly similar (p. 226). "HOW," he continues, "IN HEAVEN'S NAME COULD SUCH DISPARITY ARISE IN THE FIRST PLACE, WHATEVER THE LATER FORTUNES OF ITS EXEMPLARS?" (Cf. Questions and Answers 2, End-note 1.)

·       It is of course far easier to go to heaven in word, than in fact; just as it is far easier to have continuity in nature through the power of phrases, than in the power of evident construction.

The intense and literally immense irony is this: that while Gould's words invoke a heaven of whose power no indication in his words appears that he is aware, in the antics or cavortings of his desperation, it is precisely where he invokes this name, that the answer he seeks is not only present: it is blatantly so. However, how many, how often are themselves amazed in due course, at what they did not see, and as we shall see in our Chapter 7 to follow: the sense of irony is not lost on God ! (as in Proverbs 1, 8).

The conundrum, it is most easy to answer. The bewilderment of Gould, it is simple to understand in this matter, just as his own conception of punctuated equilibrium is no more than a nomenclature with which to clad what is not there, and what is lacking on such secular constraints ? It is that lacks in such a theoretical model: a cause for conception, creation, institution, decrease over time rather than increase, beginnings like a splash, and endings like death. Gould here begins to realise in the face of evidence, the ludicrous nature of the omission! At last we find someone so fascinated by the facts, that he actually begins to state them.

From The Majestic Might of the Merciful Messiah: Jesus  Ch. 6

Forgetting facts is no way to remember reality.

Yes, they present golden ideas of variation with PROGRESSIVE INFORMATION attached, so that NEW KINDS of living things arise (kinds ? you know The Defining  Drama ... Ch.   10 ?), even though it has never been seen, the means for it have never been positively tested and the equipment to produce it has never been found. ALL tests fail, for the relevant criterion of advance in integral functionality into more complexity and capacity; and anti-verifications abound. Information science, for example,  brings in yet one more law for this dissident theory to break: a law that information tends to disperse, not concentrate; empirics show NO design increase is made in derivative generations, a fact scarcely surprising since generation of information is generation of adapted data with attached significance; and to signify ?^*1

For that,  you need what has it in it to do this, and in the DNA case, to give signified orders that will in fact be executed,  as well. The arrival of kinds in this arena ? We don't find it; there is no such information producer at work in the creation field, to be seen, found, witnessed or observed; no, in advancing kinds of life, there is no scintilla to be found. Books do not write themselves (unless, of course, the text be already written, and we are talking of a program by intelligence to transmit the writing by intelligence, to intelligence-possessing readers, without which the process would be meaningless, valueless and ludicrous); engines do not elaborate on their mutual, detailed specifications and enable their decoding into other engines; buildings to not raise their levels and instal their wiring; it is necessary in all things to have what it takes.

If you do not have it, you do not get it. If you want thought, you need a thinker to process and understand it; if you want will, you need someone who can will, to get the job of willing done; if you want imagination, you need a subject to specify the topic and the events: you do not make merry with water, nor does lava flow from ice. You need what it takes to get what you've got, or want to get. Making hey with irrationality while the sun of popular favour shines may be profitable and an anodyne for pride; but it is nothing else.

That is the way it is. To dabble in magic or its equivalent,  a theory of irrelevance has been produced. It cannot stand 'nature' as given from something other than itself, so it criticises it by showing it came to be what it is by doing what it does not do, and starting its design productions as it did not start. We speak here of what is observed, reported and presented by scientists such as Gould. HE may not have been keen on the implications, and did produce a theory without power and so void of explanatory power; but he did note facts in rather important ways! (I've got some notes for you on that^*2.)

Science often does note things like this, together with what is necessarily implied by them, in terms of correlative procedures. How things go when they are there, made, is scarcely correlative, however,  to how they have got here, in order to be able to go on with things, once they have been made. Manufacture is not the same as operation. The work of driver or mechanic is not that of car-manufacturer, creative thought to initiate books is not the work of the librarian, nor is the butcher the breeder.

Operation has only one thing to say at this level. It is not organic evolution. It coincides precisely with creation. How ludicrous is that fixation which some appear to have as the father of thought, so that they talk of the untestable! Testable ? Is it testable whether or not new kinds of creatures are being currently manufactured by 'nature' with out intelligent aid ? Is it testable whether this negation is to be expected where certain forces act in a kind of way which is used to account for design ? Is it testable when the Bible indicates with force and simplicity, that creation was FINISHED, as to KIND ? Is it not obvious that the one implication is fulfilled, and the other is not.

The ideas of forgetting about facts were often to be found in the darkness of obscuration in earlier phases of science over history; but there seems currently to be a reversal and renegacy, back to those other phases.

FROM

DANCERS  Ch. 6

(with some extension)
 

Where 'nature' says no! science is not the one which says 'yes' -

but science falsely-so-called, it does it, yet only in the fantasy mode, the idol branch of idle imagination!

Nature does not, in fact make itself or its components, but they are USED as they are made to be used, whether with fancy variabilities of sub-type, glorious situational provision such as crystallisation, or not. It is set up and it works according to kind, and if it is capable of being 'hurt' as life is, then it is hurt, not re-designed. That is why we NEVER find increments of design, only variations within each kind. That is why information theory, like biota evidence, is that what is relevant to life, DECLINES. It does so in theory, as in practice; and here the attestations of theory are built not least, on practice as they ought to be in scientific method arenas.

Thus the ONLY place where the ACTUAL power is placed is the non-natural, since 'Nature' does not do the thing in view, namely the institution, constitution and coherence creation of biological language, type, kind, material and vital sub-components, thought, spirit, will and so forth. We can USE a kind to GET its kind; but we do not have them making themselves, for the very simple reason that in this universe that takes work, and in any causal situation you need for that, what its constitutive constraints require, to institute them, both initially at all, and then in the various kinds in view. The alternative is irrationalism which cannot even argue for itself, since it would invalidate reason, a foolish effort, since reason brings us to revelation and this to affirmation, verification and validation (cf. It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, SMR, TMR, Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer ).

Not therefore where the data say NO:  but

	where the logical constraints say YES,
	where the type of thing observed in our world, has an adequate resource,
	where the spiritual aspects of our lives (cf. SMR pp. 348ff., Little Things Ch. 5, It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, *1A), have not only their own ground of creation, which is not by the absence but by the presence of the qualities shown, not only to be, but to create because it IS,
	where truth can without self-contradiction be KNOWN at all, and
	where cessation of the arrival of the major kinds in law or life, as also stoppage of the effective and directive wielding of their torrential information basis, that they might be produced, as likewise the end of the irruption of any starkly new information without operative intelligence, together with the falling, not rising human genome (cf. Waiting for Wonder, Appendix),   has its meaning: this is where what is finds what it does, where reality is investigated and found active, not in myth or magic, but in measured discourse and certain reason.
	Here output and increasing entropy have their team-work,  not magic and mayhem (cf. TMR Ch. 1). THIS is the testimony of experience, the demand of logic and the ground of verification;  and it is the resource and the only one for validity, and the constraint of actuality. Here indeed reason discovers empirically in the verified Bible what it demands systematically: a solution to self-contradiction, antilogy and senselessness, in the most sensible of constructions, to the uttermost level, and in this discovery, validity rejoices and rationality is resolved.  There is nothing else.

It is not for  Gould to complain in heaven's name when heaven is the answer, or if you will, the God who made it by will in the creation explosion.

It is not for him to lament in his academic bewilderment: for massive creation of information and correlative formation being logically required, as also in its cessation in this role after its relevant 'explosion' confirmed as to nature, being the assignation of the components, not from themselves but from what made them also, we move in this realm, that of the rush into existence of multitudes of designs, by Gould's account, followed by decimation of the same. It is not with tragic grief written over our faces, before dabbling in more magic, but with the knowledge that there is ONLY ONE PLACE where the validation and verification alike exists; and scientific method being forced to go where the evidence not only in one phase, but in each phase both separately and synthetically, is to be found, it MUST present this.

And that, it is merely what in fact logic independently requires in its other reaches as shown in SMR, TMR and elsewhere so many times.

That all harmonises to perfection, and makes of mesmerised man's intolerance of truth, while asserting his chosen 'truths' as if bewildered into confusion,   the more ample a ground for judgment; but this too, it resides in the One whose powers delimit such a function (cf. Romans 1). On that, see Celestial Harmony for the Terrestrial Host.

That God in His mercy, as the Bible indicates, is ready to forgive, has power to pardon as well as to create, has a willingness to do so and delights in mercy (cf. Micah 7:19-21, Romans 3:23ff., Colossians 1:19ff.), while not directly pertinent to the present concern, is of much relevance to those who conceive it. It is considered at length in The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy.

*2 See The Desire of the Nations ... Ch. 5.

*2A

See Aviary of Idolatry,  Highway to hell, More Marvels ... Ch. 4, Divine Agenda Ch. 6,  Wake Up World! ... Chs.  4, 5, and 6, It Bubbles ... Ch. 10   - Ch. 11.

*3

See Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed ... Ch. 4

*3A

See on this topic, SMR pp. 946ff., 729.

*3B

On the identity of the 'two witnesses' see Acme, Alpha and Omega ... Ch. 5. On the nature of the millenium, see Regal Rays of Revelation Ch. 8, as noted, with SMR pp. 506ff.. 

*4

Christ Himself came to the temple in two cleansing operations, the first as seen in His early ministry, John 2:13ff., when He made the challenge to them NOT to make His Father's house, one of merchandise, and it was recalled that it is written, "Zeal for Your house has eaten Me up" - Psalm 69:9. On that occasion,  too, the challenge was answered to a vital point for His later trial. "Destroy this temple," He announced, "and in three days I will raise it up" - a clear testimony to His Godhead, since "I" must here refer directly to God and corpses do not, because they cannot, raise themselves up. The Son of God however, merely in the matrix of man, is readily able.

Thus we find that He was speaking, as the apostle John says of his occasion, of His body (that is, the living temple that was the incarnation format for God Almighty). THAT, and not some soon-to-be-outmoded, irrelevant and dysfunctional temple, which He would Himself replace as the ULTIMATE and FINAL penal sacrifice (Hebrews 9, Matthew 20:28, Isaiah 53, Ephesians 1:10).

In the second cleansing of the temple, this time near the end of His ministry, as if to put the final seal on the transition, as noted for Palm Sunday, in Matthew 21, He told them more,  declaring, in a combination of Jeremiah 7 and Isaiah 56, that "It is written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer,' but you have made it a den of thieves." In this way, the theme was developed in line with the developing resistance of the priests, and their murder-craft. Escalation was coming now towards its summit. Now the blind and lame were coming to Him for healing in that very same event, as He proceeded to provide in an equally positive display of compassion, not only for the name of God and the purity of His worship, but for the woes of flesh.

Thus,  He healed the blind and lame who came to Him, even on that near ultimate occasion, with the Cross looming (cf. Matthew 16:21, 17:9-10), thus making a major contrast in power, purity, holiness and grace with the treatment He Himself was about to receive, in a few days' time, from the religious savants, the spiritual cognoscenti. Moreover, in so doing, He the more fulfilled what only the Messiah could do, would do, healing and speaking with power that none could meet, at the time appointed by the prophet Daniel, defying the defiling traditions (Mark 7:7ff.), and challenging the impostors who marred the truth, just as they would later mar His own face with their brutality and unbelief (Luke 11:30-54, Isaiah 52:14-15), so that He could then fulfil the rest of the predictions concerning Himself (cf. Isaiah 52:15, Isaiah 49:6), to Jew and to Gentile.

Twice the Son of God came to the Temple to PURGE IT.

It would seem quite possible then, that the 'man of sin', the impostor, will make two visits to the temple -  to POLLUTE it; for the time will come when this evil personage will come to the temple to magnify himself, as Paul in II Thess. 2 predicts will be the case. .

It is not demonstrable, that the 'man of sin' will come to the temple on TWO occasions in this way, to reach the culmination of sacrilege; but it fits the entire picture of his activities and the biblical comments on them - one of which will be to just be there in the appalling horror (the abomination of desolation, the idol in the place of worship itself), standing in his own vile name (as Christ foretold in Matthew 24). The other may then be the case when at the culmination of his imposture, he actually SHOWS himself, his situation also now arriving at its climax, that he is god, as if this were any indication (as Paul predicts).

These two events, then, may occur on two occasions.

How little of the compassion and power of Christ is His, but how great is the willingness of man, on the one hand to crucify the Saviour, and on the other, to worship blasphemy, and give reverence to an idol, even to a man masquerading as if divinity were his own!

So does the wheel turn, and so does 'progress' from the authentic to the comically vain perdition proceed.

*5 On this, see SMR pp. 903ff., 911ff., 946ff., 1032ff..

*6 See SMR pp. 701ff..

*7 On theological 'Liberalism', that illiberal philosophy of tenacious hatred, odious indifference to the majesty of God and irrational subterfuge, seeking to make of the mind of man a foil for the infinite wisdom of God, and to correct, inspect and aid the latter in an arrogance like that of Kaiser in the military field, and Stalin in politics, see: SMR pp. 100ff., 257-267, 457ff., 691ff., 857-873, 932ff., 999ff., including *4 at the last site.

Unless GOD states and stipulates the remedy for man, not culture, not history, not dialectical idealism or other even more spectral monsters of incoherent thought, with the answer not anything which is within the purvey and capacities of man, then what man presents to himself is not what the Lord thinks, it is not the divine thought which requires the knowledge of Him who is divine, and the heart. What then is it which man so produces ? It is then not the truth, but some blend of a presumption so precipitous, so principial, so infamous and so degraded that it is nothing short of idolatry, to have it and to heed it, with the normal results.

The fourth world war owes much to this fallacious flight of fantasy; for it has permitted the elevation of the Islamic militancy, with the voice of Christendom so silenced by marauding philosophies of relativistic irrationality (cf. SMR Ch. 3) in those who slept for so long, that the misled churches, if such they may now be called, are now struggling to adapt to the blood of the scimitar, so strangely found in the crib of their earlier ecclesiastical productions.  Tame religions, manipulable fauna and flora of philosophy ? They speak, without access to truth on their own premises, of what they deem true, and so make a flood of folly, which some have even admitted into 'churches'; indeed the practice was common.

The blood of the Cross and that of the scimitar are infinitely divergent, and always have been (cf. SMR pp.  1080ff., More Marvels ... Ch. 4, Divine Agenda Ch. 6). Confusion of Allah and God has been one of the mainsprings of submission, which though pleasing to the Allah construction of Arabia, is merely one more admixture, like that to be found in ancient Israel, an ultimate offence against God, reason and reality.

Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind: this was not just a nostrum for the Jews (Hosea 8:7). It is a principal point for all who wander far off. It is better to stay with the supernatural, eloquent, self-expressing God as the Bible requires (cf. SMR Appendix D), rather than to make new words of 'God', like some play-boy who signs cheques for the mighty in his own name, and attempts to cash them. It is not only that sooner or later, they bounce, but the law-enforcement, very rightly, pounces. This is not to justify those who may be permitted to administer the result, but to underline the vulnerability of vice to its end.

Babylon administered the result of judgment on Tyre, and God gave it 'wages' for the service; but this was far from justifying it in itself, or its manner of dealing in its judgments far and near, including that on Judah. The vigour of denunciation of Babylon and the announcement of its terminal fall, it the wonder of the kingdoms, to irreparable dust, has little to equal it! On this, see Ezekiel 29:18ff., Isaiah 13, Jeremiah 50-51, and in particular 51:49 with Micah 4:11ff., Isaiah 51:22-23.

On this topic, see also J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism.

Indeed, as in *5 above, Babylon in Revelation 17 even lends its name to its eschatological counterpart, as the end approaches in Revelation 18-19, before at long last disappearing in the massive medley of the end of the Age (17:16,  18), superseded.

*8 See SMR pp.  698ff., 925-930.