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THE FACE OF GOD
ILLIMITABLE, UNFUNDED
DEFINITIVE, DECISIVE
Rev. Dr. Robert E. Donaldson
Published by World Wide Web Witness Inc.
December 2006
ISBN 09802972 2 2
©
PREFACE
There is nothing more important than this, the divine face, the face of Deity, the expression, definitive, decisive, clear and assured of God Himself.
With men and women, yes and children too, there is a face, there is a heart, there is a spirit, there is honesty or dishonesty with it, and knowledge or confusion with that, and there is articulation or the lack or muddle of it alongside. We have some idea, perhaps of the face of each, the expression, the meaning, the priorities, the pre-requisites, the motivation, the purposes, the ethics and the life; but there are many barriers to certainty, unless God Himself shows the case (as He did, for example, to Samuel the prophet, concerning the choice of David, the young lad whom he anointed to become king - I Samuel 16).
The Lord, He asserted, KNOWS THE HEART. He looks upon it, and sees what lies there. It is not a matter of appearance at all, but of heart. It is the same in Jeremiah 17:9-10.
Who, Paul pursues our issue, knows the man except the spirit of the man, at the human level ? Let us realise with what we are dealing (I Corinthians 2:9ff.). Similarly, who knows the heart of God as does the Spirit of God. God in His Spirit KNOWS, as man in his spirit is directly aware. Man in his face expresses (if by that you mean his expressive medium of which face is the physical counterpart) what he is. God in His word expresses what He is, and in the face of Christ Jesus, has expressed Himself definitively. That incarnate, eternal Word of God has thus presented definitively who God is. His words as Messiah are declarative, His face shows it just as His Spirit knows it.
Again, the face is the expressive medium where resides mouth from which come words, and in metonymy, but also in bold, direct fashion, this the countenance, it is the declaration visually of who one is.
It is one of the most central mercies of Christianity that God did by incarnation, present His face (cf. II Corinthians 4:6). This reads:
"For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord,
and ourselves your bondservants for Jesus’ sake."For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness,
who has shone in our hearts
to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."
The wonder of God in His infinitude, definitive character and absolute freedom is the basis for man, who is finite, of varied character and has been granted astonishing freedom (cf. It Bubbles... Ch. 9, Little Things ... Ch. 5, SMR pp. 348ff., Repent or Perish Ch. 7, and Index). Hence comes, in alliance with God and resting in and upon His word and so His salvation, a peace surpassing understanding, but rich in experience; hence come in the outage mode, the psychiatric disturbances, so often found when unmoored, masked, malingering in psyche, man leaves the power and definitive character of God, as if to re-make himself in some mottled medley of mischief or machination of desolate mind: when this he has no power to do.
Then ambition, as with Lady Macbeth, and 'yet here's a spot!' mentalities can collide even with rational thought; though more often, suppression, repression and depression or wild states of escape, can attest the breach birth that didn't make it, for the follies of self-making man.
It is when we consider who God is, and how we relate, and how one must relate to be a child of God, rather than a self-imposed prodigal or even orphan, that results accrue most blessedly.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1 No Roof for Truth, nor for Man without It
Chapter 2 A FIG FOR FIGMENTS: FAITH MOVES MOUNTAINS!
REVERSE CYCLE SOUL CONDITIONING
Surpassed in Christ
News 385
The Australian, November 27, 2006
The Advertiser, November 25, 2006
Three Tiers, Many Tears, and One Triumphant Lord:
Israel and You
Three Cheers for Folly, for it you don't give it, who will!
NOTHING HAS SUCH APPEAL AMONG SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS ALIKE, EVEN THOUGH THERE IS NOTHING IN IT
Three Biers for Folly, its Blight, its Assaults and its Legalisms!
INTRUSIVE, CALUMNIOUS TYRANNY
OR THE OPEN ROAD TO TRUTH
News 386, December 2006
The Advertiser December 22, 2006
The Wise Men from the East:
Who were they, and what do we learn from them ?
The Star, the STAR, the Surrounding, the Shining and the Transfiguration
The Glory of the Forest of the Lord,
and the Nature of Sovereignty
The Glory of the Grandeur, Wisdom and Intricacy
of the Lord's Creation,
and the
Nature of Being in His Image