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CHAPTER 3

WANDERING EUROPEAN NATIONS

BECOME THE PARALLEL TO ISRAEL

FOLLOWING THE WRONG EXAMPLE

or at least, the WRONG PART OF IT

News 322

Israel is of course asking for it. That is the final and ultimate reason why it is getting it.

This is not in the least a ground for anything but pity; except this, that one would so very much like it to stop asking.

One feels the same for a school-boy who, in the brio of ostentation, or the resentment of self-preservation, or the intensity of winning over the establishment or for whatever inadequate reason, being stirred, will not relent in errors that only, after all, are likely to spoil him in the long run.

One can admire, in such a boy, the tenacity of purpose, but not the clarity of thought.

When however mankind sees that Israel gets it, it is mankind who is only asking for it, yes this body, this race too; for mankind IS a race. At such times, one is very glad to belong to the kingdom of heaven and to be a citizen in it.

The human race is a RACE! This is often forgotten, but just as man hates a special race becoming the cynosure and paragon, as if childish pride prevented it from seeing its place,  a function of the folly of arrogance on the part of those who make such claims or imply them:  so mankind seems increasingly to  hate being thought of as a race, a mere particle of invented reality, all one, all answerable, all of a type, all with a bond and KIND stamped on them.

To be sure, they do not mind it in some way biologically, but not actually, in themselves; this thought about their being lacks appeal for the many. They like to think that whatever their past, which is quite indefensible except as from God's creative hand^*1, their future at least is ONLY THEIR OWN! Great and unbounded, it is the current malaise, they like to see their future as they dash in pieces the means!

When ONE race, such as Japan or Germany gets such ideas, in part or in whole, then the world is up in arms,  literally! It crushes the concept. When the HUMAN RACE, however,  gets such ideas about itself as one whole, and this is precisely what is happening, albeit the language has its own modes and modules, then this is very much to their taste and they love it, forward it, spend billions on it and fascinated, foster it.

This, the ULTIMATE RACISM is as doomed as any other. It is as implacable as any other. Its future is as assured as any other, since it is the acme of presumption, the paragon of delusion and the finest hour of folly! It seeks to grab from the shadows of insignificance (which their models normally give as their base and basis) a profound and insuppressible significance which, being impossible when all they signify is lost in significance through a model which tolerates none, since it has none, is mere verbal play and ostentation.

After all, if nothing^*2 made things that chance could use, and chance made things that intellect could fashion, and intellect made spirit and spirit made will that could choose to fashion them, why not simply explode it all into existence at once... oh, and while you are at it, invent intellect, spirit and things, the bits just assumed above. Oh! and while you are at it, have some being, power, organising potentate able to do this, and have this Being there all the time, since otherwise there is nowhere to come from, and so let things visible and invisible come from a source competent, since causeless^*3 phenomena are properly called myth. As we see so often in our history on this planet, tiny as it comparatively is, yet so grand for our lives: myths make mayhem in the end. Reality obtrudes!

Human racism is more painful than any other kind, since it is not only arrogantly self-absorbed, but causatively incoherent.  Hence this world's effort to call Zionism 'racism'^*4 reveals its own proclivity, NOT to call its own humanistic, mystic secularism racism: human racism! It is so absorbed, it seems, in its own brand of racism, that it confuses a particular nation's desire for a home with some other brand, and so in a UN setting came very near to branding Israel. The pot loves to call the kettle black, since presumably,  it makes it feel better about its own dirt, and blackness.

Expansive racism however is just what is coming more and more swiftly from the global authorities: an inane, dogmatic, determined, unfounded, bounded, foundering futility in loving itself above all and first, and acting like it. This is riotous human racism. It must be remembered, that whatever errors Israel has made, at least in its inception the whole point was loving GOD above itself and all; and the Creator is not made by those whom He makes, and without whom they would not be (cf. *1 - *4 below).

Such is the trend, and naturally enough in a world where the donated organising ability in man is not slight, such follies are increasingly institutionalised.

EUROPE IS IN TRAINING FOR THE JAUNT

The UN is becoming (cf. Mystery of Iniquity, Of the Earth, Earthy ... Ch. 13), with the EU, a force for religious amorality and loss of liberty. It is shaping up much more to the format predicted for its final foray.

As News Weekly reports (July 3, 2004), the UK Independence Party points out that the European law tends to be significantly less in favour of individual liberty than group liberty, much less tolerant of racial or religious minorities than is the case in Britain. The latter, with its Protestant heritage^*5 , has been amazingly clear on individual liberty; but it is in danger of being sunk in the collective market for secular society in the EU, which unlike Britain, refuses any reference to God, and has rights without a divine source, so making man king in unchartered waters which he neither made nor understands. 

The European Union, News Weekly advises, has member states already sharing cause with such 'liberties' (and corresponding individual losses) as euthanasia, human embryo experimentation, gay marriage, arrest without trial, abortion. It “lacks any basis in Christianity or religion,” it notes.  Thus, with secular bases for the EU (it vaguely refers generally to past inputs, and declares its mere will with its own mouth), devastating consequences may be envisaged, as this brakeless and religiously amoral vehicle^*5 imposes its will, running as it will.

Even in Canada, it is already against the law even to cite scripture publicly against homosexuality! Britain’s glorious role for liberty and opportunity is thus being sunk ready for the “man of sin” of II Thessalonians 2.

While both the UN^*5 and the EU seem almost to be vying for secularity and urbanity, yet the EU is moving fast to the forefront with its specific fighting about religion, its acknowledged rebuffs to its past, its sinking of reality for prosperity and its awareness of what it is doing. Moslems must not be offended; history can forget it. This seems to be the aura, atmosphere and thrust of the place.

You cannot move, murmur or aver, you cannot talk of any SPECIFIC input lest history offend geography, and geography erupt. Especially is this so when it is erupting already, and may decide to join forces with its outposts in Islamic terror. After all, Spain changes rather quickly from being notoriously gifted in seeking to free Iraq, to what has every appearance of another story. So Europe is most tender to the Islamic advent, which it rebuffed once before by force, at the Battle of Tours in 732 A.D..

The great achievement of Europe so far, for which concessions to Britain about industrial and similar matters is well worth while from the point of view of takeover, is that the Protestant, the distinct, the individuality-loving, the freedom-fondling Britain is being subverted into the scrum, wrestling on the dirt with others of like caking, far from the liberties for which it is justly so famous. These, if reluctantly, it now seems to be returning to a Europe which, having failed in the Spanish Armada, now has 'other ways'.

To be sure, the pope is not doing too well, his desires for 'Christian' acknowledgement in the constitution being so far wholly disdained; yet to get the Brit into the writ, to make it conform to the HUMAN RACE, EURO VERSION, this is a great 'achievement', comparable to the Great Depression of 1929.

It is not sudden, since Britain has been playing and braying about Europe, in or out, for a long time; but its result is being DEFINED! Whether it be a Contract or a Constitution, you had better be aware of what you are doing! You can get out ? After a while, when adjudication is considered, and no doubt the cost of the whole thing, and in the face of internal opposition, and power groups and benefiting groups and the like, and with economic consequences ... formally, exit is possible.

But is it practical ? After all, it seems that practicalities in the very FACE OF principles have driven Britain IN! If it was dubious in configuration, gravely and correctly concerned about the values back of joining the Common Market with its development in the EU, what would it be like to remove itself at some future date,  with penalties of rupture both political, financial and commercial!

Already the horrible immorality of a secular Europe has grieved Britain. Notable not so long ago was a painful EU intrusion, into its the British Army, of concepts so vulgar and detestable, in terms of that Book, the Bible, which the British Sovereign undertakes to honour, that it is almost inconceivable that such national duplicity could happen. Doubtless this would be out of the question,  50 years ago!^*6. Britain would be allowed then to have its own moral standards for men in the Army, and not have found dictation from abroad, contrary to its Bible, to the point.  Yet this new fever and passion mounts, and Britain is part of it.

What of the members of this EU ?

Now they are to draw "inspiration from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe" - as the current Constitution draft has it - so that whatever this infinity-zero blend means (God or man as bases), it is certainly nothing to do with the actual God, a defined or distinct God, or indeed, with God at all in his role as Creator and King. He can take His place, no, not in a pantheon, on consideration, rather not, but in the Hall of Fame where gods and kings and wings and things have their archeologically interesting sites to fill. Such is the apparent secular and cultural glide involved.

Secular or spiritual, in the EU Constitution now on appro, it is all one.

This being so, we see that the participating European nations, which swell in number now and mount,  are called upon, in the Preamble, to "transcend their ancient divisions and, united ever more closely, to forge a common destiny". If indeed it incorporates a Bill of Rights (drawn up in Nice, in 2000), this as always in such cases, means that there is no claim to the contrary, and internal definitions define and delimit what you get.

Thus 'freedom of religion' can mean freedom for innovators, such as sexual homology advocates, so that their position shall be as free from criticism as it probably was in Sodom; and this, not only in person, but in program,  word or statement. It can mean that you cannot move to the contrary without being called divisive, and that standards hence cease to exist in a society which puts gods and non-gods into the same destined basket, woven in human fancy, vainly and delusively fabricated from feeble rush.

What could be clearer than this sonorous language, "united ever more closely" for a "common destiny" than junking the past particularities, of whom doubtless, Christ is the chief. It is THEMSELVES who matter, not gods or history, whether in the creation or out of it, and they figure by some mythical magic which donates law, life and its exquisite and incomparable design (cf. SMR pp. 211ff.), from nothing at all, really.

Here is the making of that plush potency which yields the lush lord who is the "man of sin" who despises all that may be called God, in his own interests, showing himself that he is God! ( Thessalonians 2:4). That is the way it is predicted to be, and history rushes as if it were late for the train, to fulfil all these specifications in the predicted site, Europe.
 

If ever there was a clear signal, this is it! The Bible, here as so often, in the simplest words can designate what others might put into book format; and as always in this field, it is pointing with precision, and here to where the EUROPE which it specifies as the hub for the new world rule, is going. If it were not divine, it would be uncanny; since it is divine, it is delicious, like seeing a battle plan at Normandy fully implemented and wholly successful. With 25 nations and 450 million being mentioned numbers, Europe is on the move.

It is worth sacrificing just a little to subvert Britain, remove all residue of her Protestant past as having any decisive, or delivering input for her ever closer intimacies of the future. Now that stubborn little isle can walk down the aisle, hand in hand with her previous tormentors.

The scene, is it not touching!

But wait ? have we not seen all this before ? Of course, it was with Ahaz, that muddled monarch who, being promised ANYTHING, up to the heavens, down to hell, for his request when in dire straits, demurred saying that it was far from him to tempt the Lord (cf. Isaiah 7). Is it not enough that you weary men, God declared in response, that you must weary your God! The hypocritical lack of faith, clothed in sanctimonious words was as attractive as gibberish, and less so, since it was more contrived.

Naturally, deliverance was not unduly prolonged for such a way; and in the end, vain talk became a vacuous city, ruined by unrealism, reducing faith to fiasco, and the fear of God to the bleary indifference that could not exceed form and wilful substitution of whatever appealed, for the unfailing deity whose word continually controls history, and NEVER vice versa. Vagueness and vice in Israel led to something approaching vitiation! This is not to be a butt for all time, but a warning for all mankind! Many seem all but unable to absorb that aspect!

Yes, Israel has done all this: it has both gone in and way in, along the road of deliberate pilgrimage with its Maker, and moved out and way out, and round about. Rather than in the reverence for God, becoming devout, it has been sipping any spiritual poison as if compulsively. This, however, it is so reminiscent of the land called Britain which also has so often said so much in so many ways over so long a period, yes, and that in the name of the incomparable Christ, and with no small impact and blessing to this world,  but now joins alien forces as its religion declines in popular input and ecclesiastical purity. Just as Israel had that same Messiah to come and die around AD 30 (cf. Highway of Holiness Ch. 4), as its prophet Daniel announced, and despatched Him, after having earlier made no small testimony as a nation in the Lord's own name, so is it joined by this Gentile feat, not in direct assassination, but in comparable departure!

Now like Israel, Britain is finding a new association - like the gods of the surrounding lands, so vitally denied to Israel, like marijuana to the young whose future one holds too dear to sacrifice to pollution - to be really ... the thing!

Farewell, if this is to be your way, to you who have done so much so well for so long in times past! If your past was imperfect, your future seems likely to forget the very name of the Lord, as a nation, if you continue in this association with the new Assyria (to crib from Israel's situation), this EU. Yes Assyria took some of Israel, the North so-named, and failing to grab the South, Judah, which continued strong during a revival of faith under Hezekiah, it left this unit to Babylon, which took that land somewhat later. How many times did they have opportunity as the years passed! Yet they took leave in the end, of their censor and their God, and thence their wisdom and their land. It was a 70 year exile; but when Christ became the victim in person, it was rather longer, at some 1898 years, far more than a millenium!

So England in Europe awaits the divine rebuke to the falsely modelled clay of this deadly day. As to Europe itself, its charms have proved seductive indeed!

Yes the parallel is there. As to Israel, as a nation, in the end, in high differentiation from those thousands of its citizens who following Christ, were the commencement of the Christian Church, it crucified Christ; and Europe with its destiny and ever closer internal ties, humanising its religion and giving religiosity of some distant kind to its humanism, is now more organically, with Britain in tow, awaiting its own destruction according to plan, long announced^*7. You cannot toy with God without losing sense, significance and meaning, place, permanence and point, reason, reality and ... destiny, in any sense to be desired.

ISRAEL'S PLIGHT IS LIKE A NEW DENTURE'S BITE,
AN INEVITABLE BYTE OF DATA

While these generics arise and fall into place, with their lowering levels before the garbage collection day (which Christ very explicitly focusses as in Matthew 13:30), which while sad to the uttermost, is sure: there is another aspect which obtrudes.

This comes before the end of what would otherwise be endless in folly, the light of fiasco its only candle; for it is of course that special item which is both inevitable and planned from the first. You see that do you not in Isaiah 51:16. While this refers to Christ, without whom there would be no 'planting of the earth', who in fact did 'plant' it (John 1:1, Colossians 1:15), yet in the infinite intimacies of the Almighty, as the Word of God, there is obviously an application to Israel, the basic reference in the context. THIS is the other element. This is where the Messiah came, the salvation was enacted, the capital for that race to which the Bible was given, the birthplace of the Christian Church. It is this which divides the world with passion, and leads to a class of invasive murderers which fills the odium department of history with its cries.

Like Pharaoh of old, these Islamic force proponents, would deny to Israel its future as a nation, even if in some cases (but by no means all), they would tolerate it provided it were made virtually indefensible! It is perhaps simply a question of how direct you intend to be in your lust for the crushing of Jewish grapes with their red flow. Yes, Israel has played a long role.

Without this SITE and NATION of Israel, there would indeed be no CONTEXT of SCRIPTURE, since to them it was appointed to have it; hence no ENDURING TESTIMONY OF TRUTH, whatever errors they made as servant for the task, in their own field (cf. Isaiah 42:18ff.!).

Without that, there would be no APPOINTMENT OF CHRIST'S COMING, so that in date, in dynamic, in dealings, in birthplace, in tribe, in career, in sacrificial dumping (Isaiah 50-55) and evangelical gift of eternal life, He would not be there. The plan would lack application, the Messiah incarnation. However, they were there, and history proceeded according to plan, each part of the revelation being deposited, and then done.

It is all in a plan, and in a program, and with a purpose, in a comprehensible totality, in a scenario: and without Israel this would not be, since it was here that God decided to APPOINT the testimony (Isaiah 43:21). Here lies the utter unique quality of the Biblical testimony given to Israel, not only diverse and divergent from Islam - improperly pretending in the Koran^*8, to be in line with the Jewish prophet's religion - but from all outside that book of the Lord which is its written, transmitted treasure to this world.

Hence Israel, a divinely named and used module in revelation and incarnation,  is very convenient as a BUTT for this world. This it has been for Europe with its Inquisition and for Russia and its pogroms, all bound up in persecutions unthinkable over centuries. Yet they have failed to extirpate the Jew, for God has a future clearly revealed for this people (cf. SMR pp. 502ff., It Bubbles ... Ch. 10, SMR pp. 755ff.).

We have had World War I and II, and a shadowy Cold War, which Solzhenitsyn envisaged it seems, as World War III, and not without point;  these have come and gone. With their going, however, a returned Israel has come. Before this, Israel in the format of Jews,  has held the post of preferred victim over teeming centuries of blood and thud, squalor and stripping, whether pseudo-legal or physical as in Auschwitz.

How shallow, the memory of this world! How sallow its superficiality!

Now however the world is extending the compliment. Its ancient, religiously-tilted racism against a people used by God, is not past.

Now we see the UN in its constant threat to Israel (Great Execrations ... Ch. 13), and its large array of Arab or Islamic nations, and those who pay court if not to oil alone, yet in many cases it seems, not least to this, becoming a new plague for the tiny nation. This international assemblage, this UN,  is so found in its continual condemnation even reaching near to making of Zionism (the desire to have a land of their own), into a thing called racism (the desire to make yourself a superior criterion for others, and against their due existence or happiness), as likewise in its acting to dismember what was left of the League of Nations' gift of Palestine to Israel. It negativity here was shown from the first,  with its proposal of an internationalised capital of Jerusalem, and little segments of land left for Israel here and there: in this,  it has revealed its temper. That was its offer in 1947.

It is almost as if, in the domain and field of Israel, its only purpose were to taunt. Yet, it is one of the greatest and most telling ironies that one can find in history that Israel was willing to receive this (then) latest instalment of gross and vile discrimination, and the Arabs were not! Hence the ensuing wars, starting in 1948, are not to be laid at Israel's door, not that is, justly. What has so vigorously now been sought for so long among the wealth-inundated Arabs, in their land-expansion program beyond its current vast territories, this is what was once freely offered.

This is what was refused by the Arab body. This is what Israel was ready to accept, before its existence itself became unacceptable to many, and its land a desideratum, perhaps rather like a new dress for Madam ? You have to think regionally, where the money is coming from for these continual assaults on Israel, and consider the options rejected and the objectives so often cited.

It is very important, indeed vital, to remain on friendly terms with the facts.

PRIDE AND JUSTICE

Not Synonyms

Walls

But justice ? It is almost forgotten in this play of power and fear:

	ostensible fear of the 'insurgencies' of tiny Israel, ALWAYS and necessarily a religious symbol,
	both of what they once were when they walked as a nation with the Lord in the days of David and Solomon at first, and of what they did to their Messiah who is not for them only as all the world knows and has long known;
	and longed for power, as if to assassinate the people in one stroke.

It fired Nasser, and as to Arafat, he has proposed a destination for them, advising them of one place where they may go freely for his part, namely to hell.

And what has become of them, and of the fact that this land is precisely what their God, the only One testifying credibly of Himself, has said is for them (Genesis 17:7-8, cf. Galloping Events Ch. 4), and their actions have likewise been precisely as He predicted, both in their prosperity of old, and their scourging now for so long, since that time (cf. Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 32), while they betrayed the Maker of their minds and of their Covenant! It is so to the point that if you really want a short proof of God, you use the one in two words given, allegedly, to some king who ostentatiously sought it in two words: THE JEWS (cf. SMR pp. 755ff.).

It is not only a matter for mourning, as men who love life must feel, that there is this terrible confusion in the Middle East, with many of those Arabs displaced as they earlier sought for the overthrow of Israel in 1948,  or their children locked in vain conflict, now part of the throng currently wanting a free international grant of what Israel quite miraculously salvaged in the war of that day. It is a matter of multiplying tragedies.

One recalls what was the great time of May and a little more in 1948,  when their extermination, failed but not by so much as a thrust in Hitler's time, could be carried out more satisfactorily. This little post-World-War II exploit, could perhaps be executed by an international consortium of nations, against the fledgling State.

Many felt it could be, in whatever terms they chose to dress the matter. Many likewise, as so often before, reckoned without God, their Maker, and of the concourse of history, filled with man's sin, but still carefully wrought in the divine oversight. Of course, they were not overwhelmed. Instead, events proceeded in 1948, just as God said would happen millenia before, so it happened.

On the contrary, therefore, to much world speculation at that time, and in some subsequent wars: just as Zechariah 12 depicted it, before his revelation of their coming repentance for their national crucifixion of the Christ, they had victory so astounding that it seemed as if there were an invincible presence (Zech. 12:6-7).  So it was to be; so it was. It is always so with the word of God. Its failures are Zero, its perfection in accuracy, Total.

Accordingly, they did not die, but live; and their return was not followed by destruction at all (cf. SMR pp. 510ff., Appendix A, 755ff.). They seemed as if one were a thousand, and that was precisely what Zechariah had said would be the case, in this restorative period, prior to their conversion to Christ, their own Messiah.

Israel, it is not only a place, then, of mourning, but of testimony; for from this people came with prophetic force, the accounts of what is now history, long foretold. Now,  as it comes true, so is the desire to stop it, to gain control of this earth which not nothing but God made: this arresting desire on the earth is becoming intense. Israel is a symbol and, before zealous unbelief,  symbols of the living God must go! This is the mood, whether conscious or unconscious. Indeed, since the ever more closely-intertwined destiny of the Europe with its humanism and religions and all that, firmly under its own unlimited control, this is the rage! Out with God from all practical affairs for the nations; on with man!

It is perhaps soon to become a rage in a different sense as the love of power replaces the power of love more and more totally in the strained and vehement secular desire of the nations, in their central European haven, disporting themselves just as Daniel first predicted it.

What then ? The International Court of Justice, caught where it is vulnerable, would like the wall of defence against endless murders from those who want to be more in charge of what they currently murder, to be removed. How nice! It was like the case of the UN which would like the wall of defence comprised in the UN's own force between Egypt and Israel in 1967 to be removed, when Nasser showed desire to invade Israel. It was quite a removal that, and the good Lord, in fulfilment of His promises, not exalting Israel, but magnifying His own word of reliability, removed what had come with the intention of removing Israel via the sea as a new bathing ground for it.

Egyptian forces were sprawled in the mercifuless desert as Israeli planes, free through the prior virtual destruction of the Egyptian Air Force, left them no place to go, least of all ... Israel!

So the aggressor perished.

They failed, they also. God succeeded. This, it is a testimony to His faithfulness and lovingkindness both, to His patience and to His forbearance, beautiful features and qualities alike; for Israel to this day still awaits the day of its repentance for the murder of Christ. It is not the nations which should be seeking revenge, for are they not both in the UN and in the EU becoming oh! so secular; and God has Himself taken the steps. Is God not making Israel ashamed as she continues under assault, before what God has called a 'foolish nation', a people who without wisdom, insist on grab, not too far from the Hitleresque pre-occupation with making of Jews, his lab! (cf. Deuteronomy 32:16-21). The process continues.

The Lord God indeed is against those who seek to arrogate HIS disciplines, and charge into Israel like a bull, angered in its failure in Hitler, determined to abase this thing somehow or other, and bring it down!

Now what is the target ? There is this red thing, the wall, or the tiny fragment of Palestine which the eye of the bull seems to see, and it must GO! But consider His words in Isaiah 51:21ff.:

                            And as the street, for those who walk over.' "

Meanwhile, the scenario develops to the point specified in Micah 7:15ff.:

                           From days of old."

Brawls, Bravura and Bellicosity

The UN and Europe in its Madrid Quartet participation in grabbing more from Israel, these are active.

Russia also is not silent. Whatever may be the truth of the Mikhail Khodorkovsky affair (Three Answers, One Answer Ch. 3), considered in some depth earlier, one thing seems certain. Putin without much room for disputing, is acting in this area of ... justice, with a strong hand. There are, says he, to be no questions of horse-trading. Well said! There are however to be questions of ... just what ? If it is not horse-trading, then one is entitled to ask the question, WHAT IS IT WHICH HE IS DOING!

Is it to be a question of arrest before a charge is shown ? Is it to be a question of raiding offices where material for defence might be lodged ? Is is a question of pre-judging the issue with a type of humanist omniscience ? of asking for several BILLION in back-taxes, as if the taxation authorities in all these years since 1991 have never managed to get it quite right to the nearest 3 billion, but just realised their error now, years later.

Is it the case that they felt it necessary to prosecute instantly, while removing the data from the victim which he might have needed for his own defence ? Have they just now become of age sufficiently in the realm of mathematics, to realise it, and have they been altogether unaware, they or their master, of the political efforts of Khodorkovsky to seek less high-handed rule, as he appears to deem it, from Putin ? Is the delay for taxes so vast, to this point, on the one hand, and the timing in terms of political vulnerability for Putin, on the other, one of those remarkable coincidences ? And is the size of the failure to collect such taxes before now, just one more for the pot ?

Justice ? It is a strange time. Is it just, to freeze the accounts where payment might be made, so that the requirement of payment might be implemented ? Is it just to demand at once the payment when you at once freeze the man's financial hands ? Do you take a man's wallet when you ask him to pay a fine ? or is this the new police method ? and then do you complain when he does not pay and foreclose on his assets! Pretty ? but pretty ... what!

As one commentator on DW TV put it, It does not mean that the oil will cease coming, but that a new group of people will be making it do so, handling the matter, or words to this effect. If so, is the State take-over which may be in line, of a vast oil territory, a mere completion of the coincidence! We must await developments with some interest, just as those just past have provided no small ground for concern.

Did Mr Schroeder make any point about the affair, in visiting Russian with economic matters in mind ? Of course not. The Jew must go. Let Khodorkovsky's errors be what they may, the METHOD of treatment is almost inanely belated, brilliantly timed to deal with his political efforts to expose Putin's alleged misuse of power, and incredibly contrived by all appearance when one tries, largely in vain, to find anything which could resemble justice in the MANNER of it.

Meanwhile, on another front, with that marvellous international facility for which it is becoming more and more noted, the UN has apparently resolved that really, Sudan MUST stop this killing, and it is given but one little month to comply or it will have international trouble. How brilliant! With reportedly tens of thousands of murders, and millions of 'displaced persons' - those whose homes have been robbed or ruined by vile violence, with Islamic fanaticism on the run, the perpetrators have a month to continue.

Could they clean the matter up in that time ? in a 'final solution'! Even the US, now a little quieter, insisted on calling the treatment in Sudan,  genocide; but for how many YEARS has it gone on, this kidnapping of kids for the use of the Islamic rulers and their ilk, these murders, this intimidation! Whatever now is done, what is undone has been the undoing of multiplied thousands, and that, rather traumatically slowly, as little ones sink quietly, or not so quietly, into an oblivion as far as this world is concerned, from which they are so sovereignly ousted.

So the world uses its so beautiful institutions to adorn itself, and goes secular with becoming smirks, and for unbecoming reasons, and the scene proceeds as in Isaiah 59 for the Jew, now increasingly imitated in his unhappy errors, by the Gentiles, until the culmination comes.

That culmination, it is the good news. Israel will have a massive repentance as in Zechariah 12 and implied in Deuteronomy 32 cited by Paul, and in Micah 7, and the Lord will act Himself. He did, you know, the other time in Egypt (the book of Exodus tells it, and is to be paralleled as in Micah 7:15  - cf. Biblical Blessings Ch. 15) when He brought Israel out from what was deemed 'that slave-pen' Egypt.  He acted many times for Israel during its long decline (II Kings); and again for Israel after World War I and World War II; and He is plighted to complete the performance (cf. It Bubbles ... Ch. 10).

That completion comes in the midst of massive interference from outside it (as in Zechariah 12), in concerted international action. It comes also, however, when repentance clears the way (Ezekiel 36:22); and it comes after Israel's return (Ezekiel 37:10ff.), in that two stage and predicted transformation, the first geographical and only then the spiritual, of which the word of God in these places speaks in consigning the place to them without interruption, till the Age ends.

It is a beautiful scenario, in that the trustworthiness of God is not to be used as a gambit for abhorrent conduct, as Israel in the days of II Kings, tended to do often enough. Yet, on the other hand, it is not to be dismissed as a thing for man to replace. No man or set of nations can replace the power and precepts of God any more than a dust particle can replace a Raphael. As to that, it is a massive understatement!

As to the Lord, if HE SAYS IT, HE will do it! If there is provocation, this does not alter it. It does however lead to ... results, yes and often sad ones. The nations, those pagan judges, will learn that discipline is not the same as weakness, and that correction is not the same as encouragement for villainies on their part (Ezekiel 37:28). Israel is not by any means the only culprit, and bellicosity and animosity towards her, intractable triumphalism in loud and provocative depreciation, despite her victories, this is not really the way to divine favour. It is not even favourable to the facts (cf. Deliverance from Disorientation
Ch. 11, Great Execrations ...Ch. 4).

The prediction is clear: when the nations place a heavy foot on the accelerator of ruin for Israel, the time will come when their  rebuke will be such that it will remind one of snakes crawling into their holes, says Micah. Playing the fool with God and the tool for injustice, it is shameful; but the result is a shambles. It is sad that man will not relent until the end comes. But it will come, as each end has come, to each phase in history, of each sector of which God has spoken in the past. It comes, moreover, in ways it would be utterly impossible to emulate, for what is not God, since only TOTAL knowledge can furnish both minute detail and correct clustering and configuration of major matters in one, from millenia beforehand.

God has power; but does not use it recklessly as some do. He DOES however use it to fulfil all He says which in the end is with the alternates, Christ or not Christ, the salvation or not, the secular or the religious; and in the religious, it is the true or the false, the attested and divinely invested or the mere imaginations of the mind of man, so inclined to set up idols in his heart (Ezekiel 14:4). God alone will be glorified in that culminating day as we read in Isaiah 2:10-11, and "the haughtiness of man shall be bowed down". Why not ? Pride is never attractive or even true.

WHICH WOUNDS ?

What is far more attractive are the ways of the wisdom to be found wounds better than these. Loathsome as are the wounds inflicted for centuries on Jewry, by a Gentile world increasingly inflicting them on the very basis of a Christianity so distorted that it almost wounds to consider it (cf. SMR pp. 1032ff.), however much they may in the past have espoused it (in form at least), there is a way better than these. If actions are all too infamous from those whose actions are strangely like trampling underfoot the blood of Christ (Hebrews 10), in a belated  Gentilic parallel to some the faults of many in Israel before; yet there is an authentic alternative which nothing can either destroy or distort.

The wounds that really carry weight are those that Christ bore Himself, neither metaphorically nor symbolically alone, but in His flesh. In feeling He came to sense He was forsaken, but this was part of the vicariously borne penalty for man, for whom His offering was relevant. These wounds, and not some invasive action against the nearest approach some may now feel they can have, the flesh of Christ's countrymen according to the flesh, these are the ones which count for eternity. It is these, and not  some wounds from churches as they go as predicted, in many cases far astray (II Peter 2:1ff., II Thessalonians 2), with false prophets from their own midst as Peter puts it: it is these which count.

With what relish do many disesteem churches and Jews, symbols of what they desire to see gone! If they condemn what in many cases of fallen doctrine, fallen reality, fake and pretentious religion, is fit for condemnation, yet they stretch their ire to condemn the very Cross, and make it redundant. It is natural that failing in reception of God's wounds in Christ, they must pay with their own.

It is the height of something akin to comedy and tragedy about equally, that many then decry God even as they suffer for their faithless fictions and inordinate pride, refusing free pardon and so insisting on the judgment which they then resent.

It is but an extension in much; for the wounds of Christ are those where God displayed in a mercy which linked to patience has left a mountain for a message, a mountain of courage and constancy, faithfulness and that love which does not become daunted by evil dynamisms, but swallows them up. It is these wounds which, to the harlot (Matthew 21:31-32), symbolical or actual, to the flourishingly proud as to the dismally dull, to one and to all, offer the entrance to the kingdom of heaven.

These are those of the One who remains as Daniel showed from the first, before so much of this scenario was displayed with that keen edge which is part of the declared plan of the Almighty (Daniel 7:27). This is the One the peace of whose kingdom is continual, expansive and inexpugnable (Isaiah 9:7). This kingdom is the one bought with blood, actualised with resurrection, commenced in repentance, where tears not blood, are the required entry, tears not like the ‘blood’ of some Romanist fakes, mere artificiality: but heartfelt. These are those tears which attest a torn heart, a repentant spirit and a ready life, receiving with relish the One who suffered, the just for the unjust to bring us to God!
 

This kingdom is the one continued by faith, a faith in Him who paid the price of pollution, and removing it with Himself, provides the peace that passes all understanding. That is what peace ought to be, for God is without limit lovely, in the beauty of holiness, and what more peaceable than living in the very direct presence of the God who not merely made you, but died in incarnate form for you, demonstrating life and granting it at the same time!

This peace, it is in His kingdom, the only option for its attainment and its retention; for where the truth is missing, or where the love is abandoned, peace too is missing in ways so deep, so torturous, so agonizingly inept, that the Prince of this World is left balked and glaring, determined as ever to fulfil with force what he has neither power nor truth to fulfil in fact. For the wicked, it is axiomatic as well as written, that there is no peace. What more wicked than to refuse a grandeur of love, a majesty of power and a profligacy of mercy which dwarfs in its infinitude, all imagination.

Without wounds, His, inflicted on Him sacrificially, there is no entrance to the Kingdom of Heaven.

Wounding churches or Christians, or Jews, it does not count for that insurgent destiny. Without His wounds, it is all energy not only misplaced, but ineffectual.

NOTES

*1 See Secular Myths and Sacred Truth. See also Wake Up World! ... Chs,  4,  5,  6, TMR Ch. 1,
Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch. 3.

*2 See Barbs, Arrows and Balms 29, TMR Ch. 7.
 

*3 See Causes, and SMR Ch. 5.
 

*4 See Of the Earth, Earthy ... Ch. 13, It Bubbles ... Ch. 10,  *1.
 

*5 See on the EU, Outrageous Outages ... Chs.   3,   5, and in collation with the UN, Of the Earth, Earthy ... Ch. 13. See earlier on developing perspective, with focus on the differentiation of England, News 13.
 

*6 See Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming Ch. 3.
 

 *7 See Biblical Blessings Ch. 2, SMR pp. 750Bff., With Heart and Soul ... Ch. 10, SMR pp. 886ff., 904ff., 917ff., Deliverance from Disorientation 12.

As shown in these references, the 4th Empire of Daniel, which was to be (and has been in historical fact)  "partly strong" and "partly broken" is to continue to the end. It  is the Roman one. On this, an excerpt from SMR Ch. 8 is given below, its hyperlinks giving further access to this field. This was of course written perhaps 15 years ago, or thereabouts, and the developments since that day are merely confirmatory, verificatory and a concentration of the case and spirit of the thing.

*10a THE EUROPEAN PRESENCE IN THE WORLD AND THE WORLD'S PRESENCE IN EUROPE.

The antichrist rule is to be sited or based in Europe. (See Daniel 7; and infra pp. 902-931, specialising on this topic.) Relative to this particular prediction of site (cf. Extension A, pp. 691 ff.), made for the world ruling antichrist figure, first let us note this. Disparity, like charity, can begin at home: but as to that 'home', there is an interesting recent review of the growing power and portentous seeming hegemony of Europe. It is in that nest the paramount viper is to be hatched. What however is to be seen happening to the nest itself ?

World War 11 past, Europe is growing from a pitiable condition to a sense almost of grandeur which, if not the 'glory' that de Gaulle saw for France, yet arises in the vast perspectives of its increasing mobilisation, towards an expected and a desired outcome. Spiralling this way and that, like a swallow, it moves as if on a migration 'beam', set deep in the bird's heart!

While Chapter 9 infra will deal with greater elements, we touch in what follows mainly on the economic prospect for this prophetically cardinal area: Europe.

The economic aspect of this development has much of interest, and current indications, despite a phase of political tremors, fears and adjustment, are that a fortress Europe may not merely be an economic fortress, but a massive trading ensemble of arresting force.

Thus in The Australian, October 6, 1992, we note "Europe's Sun Set to Rise on World Again", the title of an article, by Dr Ian Lowe of the Griffith University. In this, he features amongst other items, the argument of Professor Lester Thurow that: Europe seems likely to be the next "success story" of the century. He stresses that it is larger as an internal market, than is the U.S. or Japan, with economies of scale thus readily available without the need to 'go abroad'. This of course may be both cheaper and less subject to costly change. The second argument noted is this: that European decison-makers have a flexible or inventive attitude to the future, not at all being inclined unimaginatively to assume a status quo situation, and hence are likely to be more adaptive and capable in catching what comes. Perhaps one might refer to this as conceptually strategic, commercial cum technical growth.

He urges the complementarity of Europe's skills, different regions contributing specialised parts of the whole, and illustrates with the Airbus consortium. Again, as example of fluidity and inventiveness of attitude, Dr Lowe cites the European commitment to less polluting, high speed trains.

Adjoining this article, is another from The Times. In this, the computing industry is given particular attention, for Europe; and there appears the concept that "the rules of trade will be written by the largest market and this will not be the US but Europe" (from the IDC Vice-President, Mr David Moschella). Why Europe ? Not merely is it the largest of those noted, as an internal market for itself, but Europe, it is asserted, spends less on computers currently, as a proportion of gross domestic product, than is the case for the U.S.. The concept is that this leaves room not merely for a larger market to saturate, but this for one currently less saturated. Put the two together and there is double scope for growth with the practice of inventiveness, and the rewards of scope and scale.

There is of course advantage for Europe in its post-war renovations... in being rebuilt with no small help from the U.S., however ironic some may find this. This is one ground both for relative newness of much structure and equipment, following its wartime demolition... and for a sense of change; and indeed, this is not necessarily a very distant prospect, with East Germany being rebuilt, partly from the vast stores of wealth accumulated in West Germany during its post-war renaissance. Costly it may be; but work called for can breed the atmosphere of adventure and change, the stimulus of challenge, the enticement of thrust - given the conditions for expansion.

With the U.S. heavily in debt (as Perot reminded it), where trillions is the name of the sum, lurching from its post as the world's greatest creditor to that of its greatest debtor in the decade of the 1980's: Europe is differently placed. Allied to hinterlands and degrees of mutuality, with very many at its doors, with Germany in particular far from mortgaged, this combination of tradition and change, size and scope, excitement in new combinations and awareness from old experiments, Europe now at last is getting beyond the stage of the remarkable, as a post-war reconstruction: it begins to appear in potential as a body of quite enormous economic thrust.

If now, it is still quivering into formation, in this it is rather like a dragon-fly, looking complex, awkward and weak, while its wings are new and soft, but soon hardened to be forcibly aloft and vitally active. The means of dominance are beginning to loom. Moreover, put differently, all these things present are in a cauldron peppered with the stimulus of the past, prepared with a voracious appetite for things yet to come. The E.U.'s world trade share? 38% in 1990, v. U.S.A. 11% (The Australian 24/2/95).

Europe is looking for its future, and for this, it is beginning to build; and that ? It is not only in Brussels. The "European Union" is Europe's U.S.A. ... 'U.S.S.R.'.

While the future will prove illusory in the end, being idealistically obscure and religiously confused in much, yet all things move towards the predicted driving force in Europe, at it once again; and this time in a vast combination as predicted! Confusion and delusion have not, in a dozen decades in Europe, managed to dispel the acrid dynamic before its fumes have again and again startled the whole world; nor is it predicted that they will do so this time. (Cf. pp. 886-889, 889-901, 905-906, 911-912, 922 ff., 930, 955 ff. infra.) The "partly strong and partly broken" 4th. kingdom (empire) of Daniel, which has exhibited and thus verified this characteristic to this day, has yet to have its final fling - and in what company!

 

And with what an end … the heights of the Lord’s power are both pure and sure,

and as to His judgments, they are a great deep!

*8

AN EXCURSION

ON ISLAM
AND OTHER INSTRUMENTS OF RELIGIOUS FORCE

where sacrifice is misplaced, lost or imposed

As the Encyclopedia Britannica puts it:

Islām

Sacrifice has little place in orthodox Islām. Faint shadows of sacrifice as it was practiced by the pre-Islāmic Arabs have influenced Muslims, so that they consider every slaughter of an animal an act of religion. They also celebrate feasts in fulfillment of a vow or in thanksgiving for good fortune, but there is no sacrificial ritual connected with these festive meals. On the last day of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, animals are sacrificed; nevertheless, it is not the sacrificial rite that is important to the Muslims, but rather their visit to the sacred city.

There is no mention of sacrifice, even, in the pillars of Islam, nor does one find any systematic, effectual, prescriptively highlighted sacrificial work. It is in the Koran passed over as a kind of religious thing that historically exists, not a designated part of any crucial path to spiritual peace or place. It is simply an acknowledgement of religious things, with only slight reference of a general and passing kind in the Koran, forming no part of any plan for arrival with God, far less a necessary or crucial thing. These other things, very different and given anything but casual or passing mention,  are paraded with éclat, their requirement vigorous and vital! Battles, arms and prayers are to the fore, blood from the Redeemer, from sacrifices as atonement for sin freely thus provided, it is as sparse as hair on a long balded head.

How different the Old Testament prophets in their emphasis! By all means work, but by NO MEANS imagine that is sufficient for the God of peace-offerings, sin-offerings, trespass offerings, peace offerings, individual offerings, national offerings on the sacred day of atonement for the nation, offerings at circumcision, offerings for lepers, offerings to be made in ONE place. This we saw in SMR Ch. 9 (here significantly extended for our present purpose).

It was in one place they were authorised to perform their sacrifices on settling into their land. The removal of that one place therefore is summary executive discipline, one that makes a laughing stock of such solemn religious pretensions as are based on the premiss that Christ is false.

Is it fully understood the enormity which this constitutes ? If the Jewish nation, brought back as we see by the grace of God - "not for your sakes do I this" (Ezekiel 36:22,32): if this nation is to be a pivot of force in showing that God means what He says, as He defends them; so too the Jewish nation has been prevented from the authorised sacrifice in the authorised place for so many centuries of time, equally confirming, yes no less, that their rejected Christ was indeed authentic, so that they do indeed no longer need the Temple in Jerusalem, or Jerusalem itself for the Temple.

Year by aching year, void by poignant void, pogrom by vicious pogrom... the lesson has been taught. Nor let there be any confusion: As to the pogroms - they are not guiltless who harry the Jews. It is God who disciplines, and requires the impact of the truth to be maintained, so that Christ may receive His glory and the Jews be recalled to repentance, as indeed must all the world for its sins... But here with a specific people God has a specific point to be made, and He makes it over and over in the prophetic scriptures, which we now are seeing fulfilled in startling precision and accuracy, over and over again ... in history.

What has been the witness of God through history, to the Jews during the near to 1900 years without this one Temple, denied to them?

You are wrong, you are wrong, it goes. See the Almighty call you to sacrifice by the covenant with Moses, until the Christ comes (Deuteronomy 18, Isaiah 53, 66). When He comes, then soon you cannot, cannot year by year make those old animal sacrifices in the appointed one place only prescribed (Isaiah 66:3, 53:10); and you will stay unable to do so until a whole new time like that of the period from Abraham till Christ is past (cf. Daniel 9:27, Hosea 3:1ff.).

Will this teach you how special you are (cf. the excoriating irony of Amos 9:7, therapeutic irony), when and if you break the covenant and fail to recognise... God!  Consider here the majestic ironies of Deuteronomy 32:15-17,28ff.).

Will this teach you that the sacrifice of GOD HIMSELF in human form (Micah 5:1-3, Zechariah 12:10) is STILL SACRIFICE, indeed the only adequate sacrifice, and that your clinging to sacrificial symbols is as passé at the T-model Ford, which you cannot now seriously propose as transport ?

It served its purpose exceedingly well, but when the consummation comes, the preliminary goes. Nor is the consummation in the Calvary of Christ some odd thing, but fulfils to the letter, and even better the whole concourse of sacrificial approach to God. If imperfect animals sufficed till the Messiah came and did as man what was needed by man, for man, how much more does the Messiah Himself suffice for all sacrificial offerings to satisfy for sin, for all time!

Thus, just as the Temple specification clearly signified, emphatically for ONE SITE ONLY, so the Messiah provided in one place only, both the fulfilment and the satisfaction.  This He did when Christ died just once, and that in Jerusalem by authority of those mismatched to it, who condemned him iniquitously. 

How firmly in former times God had told them of that one place for their covenanted sacrifice. Review it, if you will in... Deuteronomy 12:5-11, 14:23, 26:2, Joshua 9:27. I Kings 8:29, Psalm 78:68, 132:13-14, and II Chronicles 7:16, 33:4. Not only does the God of Israel choose a place - and that Jerusalem is that place in these scriptures; but He goes considerably further. Having shown Solomon that this is that place of which He has spoken, He gives a disciplinary forecast which is also a teaching announcement for all the world. lt would be near to criminal to neglect, from the only God there is, an announcement of such clarity and high impact!

He says, in II Chronicles 7:16,19-21 that "I have chosen and sanctified this house"; and in terms of the covenant then in force, the choice is announced as perpetual; and then... "If you turn away and forsake My statues and My commandments... and go and serve other gods..." (and Christ said: 'If God were your Father you would love me'... John 8:42, and "You are of your father, the devil" - 8:44, to those rejecting Him among the Jews)... then ? then ? what does the divine King tell His people He will do, if they so forsake Him ?

"Then I will uproot them from My land..." (done), "and this house which I have sanctified for My name I will cast out of My sight..." (done), and "will make it to be a proverb and a byword among all nations..." (done). All this is painful; so was the crucifixion. The physical pain of it may have been the least!

In Leviticus, for example Leviticus 16:14-29, sacrifice is forever, just as in Isaiah, it is infinite in its cost, ultimate in its provision and divine in its enactment, its finale firmly predicted in Christ (Isaiah 50-55, 9:7ff.). Thereby does it give basis for Psalm 32's word, that blessed is that man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity; and as to that, the covering is in blood. Grace thereby becomes sufficient, the entire basis of salvation, God Himself making the sacrifice that liberates, redeeming to free (Isaiah 53:11, 61:1ff., 55:1-6).

The Old Testament liberty, in the day of the Jewish prophets, to dispense with sacrifice as pertinent, profound, indispensable and basic, is as wholly negative as is the positive requirement, the absolute insistence that it is not automatic like a machine, but to be received by faith (Isaiah 1); and it is then that sins become as wool, though they be scarlet; and it is then that God abundantly pardons. HE is personal as we are, in His image, and persons need to act as such. This He affirms continually through the prophets.

As to faith, it is free, but it is not free of faith! It does act. Nevertheless, when once faith receives the pardon, then the pardon is indeed impenetrable by human devices, being both 'abundant' (Isaiah 55), and a cover (Leviticus 17:11), leading to iniquity not even being reckoned to the recipient (Psalm 32), so that utter assurance can become part of the divine mercy (Psalm 17:15, 145:1).

After all, when God pays, and says, nothing more is required. If you receive it by faith, it is yours and that is that. On the other hand, if you DO receive it by faith, then your nature is changed by the One who gives it, and as a child of God, you have a new heart (as in Jeremiah 31:31ff.), just as it was prescribed in Jeremiah and Ezekiel (11:19). With it goes the sin account, now no more accounted, but covered.

In all of this, sacrifice alone sunders guilt.

Hence the Koran's reference to the Jewish prophets with acceptance, its endorsement of these divinely led speakers,  as if to give it some semblance of cohesion to its own words by having a prior line to which to lay claim, is wholly false. The Koran as a book and Muhammad as a man has no such basis, for its religion and dogma is wholly other, alien, contrary and contradictory in this central theme, and all that it involves, with the Jewish prophets, one and all.

Muhammad comes with no background, without endorsement, without preliminary, contrary to what was preliminary, battering the Bible with a pin, scarcely scratching the surface: his own thoughts, unverified in power, in prophecy, in things past, in things future, giving paradise for victory and incitement to arms.

From SMR Ch. 10 comes the following which gives detail on the collision of claim and fact. This is ALL important, since the Cross and redemption is central for all the Bible, from first to last (cf. Revelation 5, Galatians 6:14 with Leviticus). Hence in red is the most relevant part of the following citation.

 

THE WEAVING OF THE WAYS FOR THE ANTICHRIST. See Extension 4, pp. 1072-1074 infra. What however of Muhammad's early - but continuing - input into this antichrist pattern ? a matter of assertion plus force to overcome ... unbelief in some mock-up, dysfunctional substitute for Christ. In the Koran, Surah 48:29, we find (it. added): ''Muhammad is God's apostle. Those who follow him are ruthless to the unbelievers'' - and how far? ''Believers, make war on the infidels who dwell around you. Deal firmly with them. Know that God is with the righteous'' (Surah 9:123, cf. 2:191); and indeed, (Surah 9:27-31): ''Fight against such of those to whom the Scriptures were given as believe neither in God nor the Last Day ... until they pay tribute out of the hand and are utterly subdued.''

Yes, he decries (in 8:36-41): ''Tell unbelievers ... [to] reflect upon the fate of their forefathers. Make war on them until idolatry cease ...'' Reflect ? Fate ? ... city assault, tribute money, and then servitude - with the provision for death upon its removal. The 'fate' is the alternative to 'faith' is the alternative to force. (Cf. *17 infra.)

And all this force ? with due provision for occasional defeat, yet it is found written (Surah 8:59): ''Let not the unbelievers think that they will ever get away. They have not the power to do so'' ... Indeed, the prayer was to be: ''Lord forgive us ... our excesses; make us firm of foot and give us victory over the unbelievers" ... and the theme, ''If God helps you, none can overcome you'' (Surah 3:148 and 3:160; cf. Surah 48:22 - "If the unbelievers join battle with you, they shall be put to flight"). In fact, since Moslems almost took Europe, they lost at Tours in 732 A.D.; and again when the sprawling Ottoman Empire fell, with World War I; while in the Middle East from 1917 and from 1948 in particular and repeatedly, Moslem military losses have been sustained, spectacular and even proverbial (*18).

This is despite enormous numerical advantage (the EXACT opposite of Surah 8:65 - ''If there are twenty steadfast men among you, they shall vanquish two hundred''). There have not been vicissitudes but repetitive overthrows, dominating almost comically the whole period of the Jew's return (as God predicted, Zechariah 12:6 ff. - cf. pp. 779-822, 851-857 supra.)

The force of evidence overthrows indeed the force of mere utterance. Proclaiming himself ''no more than an apostle'' (Surah 3:140-147), such that ''other apostles have come before me'' (Surah 3:183), Muhammad refers to Abraham and others, to the Jewish Torah (law) - Surah 2:135), and the ''earlier scriptures'' of ''Abraham and Moses'' (Surah 87:179), bowing to history by acknowledging, ''the prophets who surrendered themselves judged the Jews ... according to God's Book which had been committed to their keeping and to which they themselves were witnesses'' (Surah 5:44).

Witness! Dismiss evidence and what does 'history' become but the unholy butt of romance?

 While Muhammad says his book ''confirms the Scriptures which came before it'' (5:48), in fact the Messiah is as we have shown with dense-packed scriptures (cf. pp. 768-777 et al. supra), the eternal King irreplaceable, unsucceedable, whose word is final and, if rejected, fatal; and one need only cite words such as Isaiah 9:6-7, 42:1-4, 49:6, 53:11-12, 54:5,10, 55:3-11, Deuteronomy 18:15-18, Daniel 7:13-14, Psalm 72. Not merely is there no successor, this is so because the Son (Psalm 2:5-7) is God (Psalm 45, Isaiah 48:16, Micah 5:1-3), as shown earlier in great detail from many scriptures of which only the Jews were in fact - to use Muhammad's term - 'witnesses'. Successors, declares Christ, are false Christs (Matthew 24:24).

To fortify the contradiction: Muhammad wrote material wholly alien to that of the 'apostles' - such on his own admission - who 'went before' him, on the method of salvation, on redemption, on the place of grace and on the work of the Messiah (not really killed, says he - Surah 4:157, despite Daniel 9:25-26, Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, Leviticus 16). To aggravate the impossible, Muhammad has the prior 'apostles' sent by ONE GOD! (Surah 3:40 and 3:21). Should one God send prophets opposed to the very core of Muhammad's words ? Why He gave His 'servants the prophets' among the Jews, such wholly, consistently and persistently clangorous contradiction of Muhammad, the prophet does not manage to attest!
 

The whole superabundantly attested, textually ancient, intense, immense, detailed racial systematics and salvation dynamics of the interlocking Old and New Testaments (cf. pp. 735-836 supra) are airily dismissed for the infinitely divergent dogmas (cf. Surahs 4,5,9,24 and 48) of the anti-verified Koran.

As if to thunder the point home: God, having disciplined the Jews as Chapter 9 has shown His word predicted He would do, has given them the power He also predicted, abolishing the pretences of the Koran to its very face (cf. pp. 814, 830-834, 989 supra). Of a certainty, the Jews had less than no reason to add the scriptures on the Messiah, whom they murdered, but rather honestly retained them in fear. (See also *4 infra.) Yet they speak and are not silent;  are fulfilled and are never at a loss. They state; that clinches it, whatever the struggles man devises. God always remains God, not in mere theory, but in demonstrable fact.

The Koran is not merely unverified, but anti-verified and this with a divine mirth as God's predictive word ploughs through the field of history with the majestic insouciance of a tank in an agricultural field (cf. Psalm 2:8-12, Jeremiah 23:29; and Psalm 111:7-8, Isaiah 59:21 and p. 564 supra).

See also pp. 1176-1186C infra for treatment of Joshua as an instrument of theocratic MORAL judgment, not contrary to the love or liberty God gives. Christ categorically did not subject physically, do violence at all in order to remedy unbelief. Truly He upbraided morally, cleansed, lamented (Matthew 23:37, Luke 19:42), demonstrated on occasion, but never used force in any attempt to fashion hearts or make 'faith'. He so acted without force, and was subjected. HE did not subject.

Faith and force have divorce.

See also Divine Agenda Ch. 6 on the Koran references and application.

The reader is referred to  Highway to Hell with SMR p. 531-2, *2 and *4,  should he or she desire to see parallels in Roman Catholicism and Judaism to the concept of making works work to secure your passport to heaven, so that other things are incidental and not sufficient. For  Rome,  even the cross of Christ fails to secure salvation for the individual, so that just as Islam omits it, Romanism subordinates it (contra Galatians 6:14, Romans 3:23ff., Ephesians 2:8ff., and that in more than one way - cf. SMR pp.  1087-1088D, *9, *14 and *16). In this, their reliance on the sinner's own contribution for the eternal result, in whole or part, it is all one with these three. Not surprisingly, these endeavours to not stop at satisfying God by works, but dealing with man by the same means, often edged with steel.

All these religions have engaged in illicit violence, Israel against Christ and early Christians, but as a thing of scale, Romanism and Islam with panache, as if blood were not available to quench sin's guilt once and for all, and it were necessary to add it in floods from those sacrificed against their own will, to meet some gargantuan appetite, which no sinner could ever meet, even if it were willingly intended that way.

Even in the rather smaller example of Judaism, you see Paul, a brilliant young executive of the Sanhedrin, who knew well enough what was their theological position on works (Romans 10:1ff.).

For the rest, the world has known well enough the Islamic and Romanist traditions in history, too unspeakable here to ponder.

See on Romanism's efforts, SMR pp.949-955, 969ff., 992ff., 1033-1041; and on those of Islam, Divine Agenda Ch. 6, Part III; and it is worth considering that in military perspective, at the Battle of Tours in 732 A.D., in no small measure did the arrest of central Europe itself, by Islam, come very close to being achieved by force.

Communism in its inverted Christianity and Nazism in its perverted ideals of race and force more directly, both adding to the list of gods of forces, to use the Danielic term, in these respects, have added to the examples, and working their way, have added to the fray (cf. SMR  707ff., Ch. 8).

Man's prescriptions lacking the power and purity, the efficacy and the finality of God's plan of salvation, end in the mire, pouring out blood just where they refuse to find its total efficacy in the death of the Christ, now risen, so making senseless sacrifice that sates lust but gives neither pardon, nor reprieve,  nor anything resembling in the most minute degree, an acceptable world for life.

So does perversity from the converse of grace, lead to disgrace and dismemberment.

In view of the coming collusion of religions, this collision which is in fact present is crucial to realise, like the difference between drinking from all waters, and from a pure well.