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CHAPTER THREE

News 169
September 11-15, 2001
TVs all but innumerable

SCIMITARS, SEDITIONS,
TOMBS, TRUTHS AND TRADE

The Truth beyond the Twin Towers
of the WORLD TRADE CENTRE

 

We were about to go to the Flinders Ranges, to range on their altitudes, examine their lavish contours, consider their beauties and take a time apart. It was so with the early disciples; it is good.

Before we went, my wife and I arrived at the house of our son, with whom we were about to set off, about 7.20 a.m. in the morning. In America it was September 11th., with us, the following day.

There stood our son, gazing upon a TV. This is unusual for him, and especially so early in the morning; but it would be virtually unthinkable at a time set apart for an early departure, minus much traffic.

What however was in fact so taking his attention, as he breakfasted spoon in hand, looking ... yes at the other side of the world ? There we saw the images, and before long were splendidly filled in despicable acts of mal-splendour, abysmal even within the abysmal histories of the maleficent millions of misled mankind. Soon to our eyes and ears, as we watched for some 20 minutes, interrupted by necessary preliminaries to our departure, we heard of what alas had been, not in act, but in nature, all too much a cause for concern before.
 
 

LOOK BACK BEFORE LOOKING FORWARD

This was mentioned on this site on August 17, 2001, where consideration of the growing US laxity re Israel was a cause of very due concern. In this, The Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet, Ch. 4, that concern was unequivocally voiced.

It revolved around the promises and curses of Genesis 12, concerning Israel, despite its foul treatment, for its own part as a nation, of Christ. God being faithful does not however abrogate His word. Given without qualification as may readily there be seen, it is fulfilled. In what way ? There is a due tendency to deal with those who make it their business to add to His own disciplines of a people formerly His by covenant, and to whom the promises to Abraham still apply. Let us bring to this effect, for our current thought, an excerpt from this Ch. of The Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet, written just some month or so ago!

 

EXCERPT from one month or so earlier ...
 

*2
Just as Great Britain did wonders for the Jews in 1917 in the Balfour Declaration (q.v.), but grew worse and worse, in 1948 handing things to the Arab Legion and not allowing many Jewish vessels to come into Israel to land after World War II’s holocaust for the Jewish people, and has considerably declined: one cannot help wondering what is in store for the US. This nation, despite the prodigies and performances under Nixon, in the 1973 war, has in the last two administrations seemed unable or unwilling to understand the Biblical position, the interests of equity for all, and the interplay of passions on the part of an aggressive and international Islam, self-declared in its hostilities to Israel and its appointed destiny for it. The brokerage of hate and destruction is a volatile and unrewarding act. It is the root which is wrong; spraying the leaves helps but little.

As the U.S. looks more and more for further yieldings from Israel of the already all but incredibly reduced ‘Palestine’ originally guaranteed to Israel, it becomes increasingly the subject of the Biblical burdens which adverse conceptions and actions relative to, towards the restored Jerusalem, will assuredly bring.

One hopes better things; but if the process continues, the results may accrue (Genesis 12:3, 15:14, 28:4,13ff., Numbers 24:9, Genesis 27:29,  Zechariah 12:2-3  cf. Beauty of Holiness Ch. 8.)

(In this excerpt the red bold print is added; but the point is not. It has been there from the first! It remains.)
 

One must realise that however great one's goodwill to the US or Great Britain, and indeed BECAUSE of such goodwill, for the former  provided part  of my education, and the latter most of my racial background (7/8th in fact), there is a divine provision. The US and Britain have excelled themselves in many things in the past in goodness to this people, so many of whom are now in Israel, regathered and not renamed, being Israel now as so famously of yore;

The current case of Colin Powell referring to undue reaction in Israel, when losses piled up for the lives of young children in that Middle Eastern land, a people with feelings and imaginations not unlike our own, with lives and sovereignty, a capital city and a national prerogative, if such exists for any: this caused acute concern. Whatever errors Israel made then, the response was scaarcely surprising, and in principle little other than called for when one's untended civilians are carelessly slaughtered by a pocket of people in the land, supported on all sides by mighty enemies, with money and land, as well as a religion notorious for violence in history.

What, one has asked in the past, if bombs came near to Buckingham Palace, or the White
House ? Would THIS be undue reaction if the US, not for vengeance, but for integrity, took action to mitigate the danger, however difficult!

Such musings of the past are now brought dramatically into the present. They, the United States,  now have an enemy which is doing to them what the Arab imperialists, with their catspaw, the Palestinians, even with their own admissions in Teheran of 1991 and 2000's Islamic conferences, are doing to Jerusalem. Their own sovereignty, symbols of power or sacredness, are under threat. Not now in the Middle East but in the coastlines of America, the curse has come. The enemy does not trouble himself in seeking to assault the White House. What had been a comparison for the stirring of the imagination in sympathy and realism, has it not now become a reality! Will the US now consider it an undue reaction, to use the phrase then used of Israel, to take all necessary action!

It does not seem so. Now we hear: We are at war. Colin Powell himself has made this clear as Secretary of State! Later the President used the same language.

One cannot but like Colin Powell, for his gravity and efforts at fair-mindedness, for peace; but one has to realise that no man on earth is without mistakes, and this, though doubtless intended to de-escalate escalating tensions, appears to be one, and perhaps his worst. Israel is NOT a possibility; it is NOT a subject of debate as to whether it will be permitted to exist. Its existence is NOT ONLY just as certain as that of the United States; it extends in time far longer, being nationally some 4000 years, and geographically in its present site, over  3400, more than three millenia!

Certainly, as seen in the numerous works on this site on the Middle East (including Galloping Events, It Bubbles, It Howls, He Calls... and SMR Chs. 8 - 9), it has been extradicted by divine decision, and has languished without its land for some 2 of these millenia. It is not that Jews were not there over that entire period; but the nation was not! As Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 30-32 so poignantly but gravely indicated, this people would in due course be removed from its land, only much later to be restored. We have seen often, as in The Biblical Workman Chs.  1 and   3, and SMR Appendix A, that it would be restored STILL not believing in its Messiah; and this, it has been.

Nevertheless, quite apart  from the fact repeatedly noted, that a large contingent of Jerusalem is to come back to the Lord Jesus Christ as its Messiah, with profound repentance for His death as seen in Zechariah 12 and Isaiah 66 for example, God is on record against the merely human desire to 'get' the Jews, to do evil to them, and to treat them as a butt!

The case is profoundly like that of a teacher who, having been compelled to discipline John Smith, has no slightest attraction to the prospect of his fellows using his passing problem with authority, in order to pillory him socially, and punish him for their own turgid purposes (cf. Ezekiel 38:11-19, Obadiah 13-17).

The above excerpt from one month ago, is an end-note. It may prove serviceable to understanding to present with it the paragraph from which it comes, and in which its reference may be seen:
 

Nevertheless, Jerusalem is still in the hands of Israel. Indeed, this return to rule their own Jerusalem was an event of the most amazing and incisively predicted proportions; for after prodigious and sustained mockery of the people whose once it was (predicted, Deuteronomy 32:21, Ezekiel 22:5, 36:4) and calamity to them and to the city (predicted, Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 32:23, Matthew 24:2, Daniel 9:26-27), it was itself to be, and IS itself now, an index to the EARLY return of Christ (Luke 21:24 in its end-time context). THIS IS NOW.

In what way was the city to be an index ? In the control restored to Israel over it, so that the other peoples could, as predicted, assail and assault it, seek to overcome and overturn the Jewish control and grab it back, in that way (cf. SMR Ch. 9, Zechariah 12, 14, Luke 21:24). This they have done as if themselves the willing slaves of prophecy, with great gusto, and if one might be forgiven the pun, have been served a response with great busto! In other words, the city is predicted to become a BURDENSOME STONE to those who adversely concern themselves with it, and from beaten Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Iraq and the rest, to the muscle of USSR supplied to Nasser in tanks, and the efforts of the US to negotiate even more of the place away (despite its earlier vast aid in 1973*2), there is indeed a keenly felt burden! So is that scripture likewise fulfilled.
 

Further of interest in looking back, so that we may look better forward, let us give an excerpt here, since it was itself a reference (to Beauty of Holiness Ch. 8) in Ch. 4 of The Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet, as may be seen from that slightly adapted excerpt above, one presented on August 17, 2001:

IF Hitler, or any nation, past or present or future, any Party, any 'church' or religious organisation or society, in fact ANYTHING puts effectual priority for the pursuit of some principle of his mind or desire of his heart, into the power out of a gun, or out of money, or out of physical violence, the murder and robbery of Rome practised on the Jews being merely one example, but a primary one and one calling forth the specific curse of God (Genesis 12:3, 15:14, 28:4,13ff., Numbers 24:9, Genesis 27:29) : there is prostitution of life for other things. All such things, whether from Communist or Nazi, Arab or oriental, are upside down.

The top is on the bottom, the bottom on the top.

It is so in particular, regarding the persecution of the Jews, in that it is not for man to oppress what God has disciplined (Jeremiah 50:17-20); and it is so in general, for it is not for man to rob and murder for his pretensions of power, racial or ecclesiastical, political or philosophical. THIS kingdom, the kingdom of heaven, is for the poor in spirit and the pure in heart, for the merciful and for the meek. Murder and torture is not meek; and expropriation is not poor in spirit.

The judgments of God are not for man to oppress man. If He turns an event to judgment, it is one thing; if man turns things to subjugation of the human spirit with murder and robbery, it is another (SMR pp. 1175ff.).

The vileness of violence in order to INDUCE man to be what he is not, a flittery-fluttery piece of floating rubbish, apt for constraint, and in order to pretend to ‘believe’ what force does not make true, is almost past all comprehension. It is as deep as sin itself, allied to its truly bottomless pit; for it has no foundation.
 

·  Thus the Arab attack on the US, if such it be shown to be,
 

·  (and extensive preliminary evidence is highly suggestive,
 

·  as are some Arab voices suggesting for remedy what is patently also a cause,
one, cited in a News Report,  pointing out that the US ought to consider WHY it is so hated*1 in such Arab circles, in seeking to avoid further destruction! a not very diplomatic attempt to capitalise on the devastation wrought):
 

·  leads to a further consideration. For all its weaknesses, the fact is that in former  times the US gave prodigious support for Israel. It has grown cold.

 

METHODS AND MEANING

But the Arab body or bodies - if it be shown that this is the root of the matter, or at any rate the Islamic body, as seems also indicated in the impounded car which may yet prove important evidence - IS responsible for the Twin Tower disaster, because of resentment against the measured support of the US, which once was strong, then a point arises. It is this.

If this is the beginning of assaults, then what is the end of them from the hand of  those who so 'discipline' a nation for giving SOME support to their prey! If a time of inconsideration on the part of the US,  a nation once strong for Israel (and in humanitarian grounds, not without strong reason as occasioned by absolutist regimes of which the Taliban is only ONE within ISLAM) can lead to this; and if the relative slackness of the past few years, indeed what appear culpable degrees of aloofness, can provide such troubles, what will the totalitarian mentality of much of Islam, and of its core in the Koran, seek if this slackness were corrected! What would occur if the US indeed continued an more active support against tyranny and a democratic aspiration in Israel ?

What then is the result for those whose inveterate hate and lust for dominion is such that they so resent what is now merely a mild supporter of Israel! As President Bush correctly said, "I will fear no evil".

This is correct for the Christian, and it will lead us later to consider its applicability or otherwise to the USA. Certainly the performance of a moral duty is better than allowing it to lapse; and fear of consequences is unworthy both of man and nations. Often it is precisely this that leads to them, while invigorated courage and vision distance them. But even if a man or people suffer, as did Britain in 1940, it is better for a nation to deliver than yield.

Of course, there is far more to it than this question of weapons and the tangling of knives and machinery, with buildings in this fashion. There is always a far greater question than methods used. There is the meaning of an event.

The Lord is of great compassion, and very slow to anger. The US has provoked Him, as I was told when first starting seminary in 1957 at Westminster in Philadelphia, with much religion of froth. In fact, the sects roar like 'teen-ager racing cars doing wheelies, and they are actually, in the end, disciplined militant bodies attacking the deity of Jesus Christ. This they do by changing Him from His scriptural depiction, so elevating what is NOT Christ, and having the cheek and impudence to USE it while attacking Him; or by stating that He is not deity; or implying it; or by altering the covenant which He has given, so that the name may remain, but not the mission or the commission.

In the end, it is all facial surgery on Christ, last time done in Jerusalem, but now freely throughout the world and with increasing intensity, in the United States.

The liberals before and after all this, continue their mindless assault, their irrational seekings with passion, to show error in the Bible, which still laughs at them so heartily as they vainly do the same old thing, millenium by millenium, that it is beginning to resemble the US effort, with potential billions, to find life on Mars, and other such prodigies of disbelief. (Of course it may be that, as one Physics professor here pointed out, that material coming to earth from Mars, it may likewise go to Mars from earth, but the point of inherent life on Mars is the issue, so notably negatived like ALL other evolutionary insults to God, complete with their immoral confusion of His methods of creation, as attested logically, and His methods of discipline as likewise seen cf. Biblical Blessings Ch. 7, That Magnificent Rock Chs.  1 and   8.)

The US is by no means alone in these follies, but it is a centre of much of the revisionism which is making new christs who cannot heal, new religions which do not worship God and new efforts for nature myths, who, not having made heaven and earth as repeatedly demonstrated on this site (see evolution in index), do not help now either.

See News 73, for an earlier warning or exhortation with grief, not only to the US, but towards the UK, as the waters are diluted, that once were far more salty - and in particular, note this point from August 8, 1999:

  • Ah England! what empire has surpassed yours, that of Britain, in moderation and development in politics and academic freedom, in emphasis on graces and liberty for bold designs. If America has become the land of innovative energy, yet, for its part,  it seems increasingly to move in a multitude of sects and swollen psyches towards a mere confusion, a babble of religious moods, an anarchy from sound morals, a wild spree for which, alas, it is no joy to have to add, payment may shortly be required. England has faded; America has frothed over the lip of the cup and spills.


{Cf. News 151.}
 

  • Again, there we were constrained to write this:
  • Religion continues with archness, liberalism raves and rants, and simple Biblical faith in the profound and glorious God is being covered with the gilt of this world, the guilt of sin and the neglect which such practices breeds.

 

Large denominations have collapsed doctrinally (the US Presbyterian being among them, in its millions, while the Southern Baptist is continuing to harbour Rome-aligning Graham), in Biblical terms (cf. SMR pp. 1032-1088H); and the concept of national self-interest, again not exclusive to the US, but heartlessly for some decades now, prominently pushed by secularists into the very heart of its government: these things make the nation a very different thing from what it was one century ago. It has been blessed with its many real Christians, for long; and it is still is so.

It is not however without credibility, that having added this dangerous tepidity towards the plight of the nation of Israel, which is on a knife edge for its existence, it should find the result as it has come. One conceived  and expressed concern that it might come; and it appears that it has come. What more is to come will depend on purity of seeking the Lord and applying truth to all things, not fear or self-interest. We shall look further at this point at the end of this chapter and in the following one.
 
 

PONTIFICATION AND PRECISION

By no means is one pontificating on the root cause of the Twin Tower disaster. This is known only to God. However it is no pontification but Biblical fidelity to point out that when you sow the wind, you reap the whirl-wind; that God is merciful but not stupid, that His longsuffering is great, but amongst the sufferers are the youth in the USA, as indeed in this one's own country in no small measure, so often miseducated in theology, in biology and in astronomy. It is not mere judgment which is at point.

Each individual life molested by rampant philosophy or irrational parodies of religion is a potential tragedy, another Tower, smaller but not less significant. These leave less obvious rubble, for the spiritual ruins needs more discernment; but they are still there! While much of this is private, and a duly private matter, much is public and appalling as such.

It is time not only for the USA, but for all peoples who want to regard themselves as in some reasonable way related to God, to act. Freedom should be restored to education,
as a beginning. Youth should be loved, not shoved.

Our own State of South Australia, as often pointed out, and in detail and formally from documents, in That Magnificent Rock Ch. 8, is a grave offender. It refuses
to give ANY logical answer to our protestations, and those of others, at its indoctrination contrary to scientific method, contrary to logic, contrary to evidence; and at this, that it does not even allow a due presentation from creationism and evolutionism. ONLY the latter is permitted, and debate on the issue is excluded, being pre-drafted into the area of 'sacred' things, which are DEFINED outside of logic! The presumption reaches to heaven! The folly invades things academic. It decrees religion like a pope. The prostitution of truth is now at such a level, that it is difficult to think how, without the added use of force, this inanely popular practice could become more of an enormity, a comedy not divine, a comedy against divinity, than it now is.

Many nations which have had much from Christ and the Bible should now stop to consider. America has been enormously blessed; now it tastes something much less than many do, but in a way so dramatic that the blind might see, the deaf hear...!

OTHER nations should consider their own case. Are you going to proceed to defame God and to molest with mockery and expect that the lies told and the fraud committed will indefinitely leave you above your peers, from whom you have historically been differentiated by the MEASURE of biblical emphasis and regard, the DEGREE of recognition of the Almighty that you once had!

Further, if this Twin Tower disaster comes to be shown as an Islamic matter, it is time, as often shown on this site, to realise once and for all that this is not, as a ludicrous cartoon in the Advertiser suggests, a matter of Islam being innocent, only terrorists guilty (if Islam IS confirmed as being involved). The Koran has many incitations to violence in the interests of the spread of that faith, and towards its insertion, if that were possible: a fact which fulfils the specifications of disfaith (q.v. faith), since objectively it is against the testimony which alone, in terms of logic and scientific method, stands! See these attestations in such sites as SMR pp. 50ff., 91 in the context of pp. 829ff., 987ff., 1080ff., 1186Aff., and note Koran, Surahs 3:148, 160, 4:76, 8:36-41, 9:5, 9:27-31, 9:77-46, 47:3-10, 48:22 in the above contexts.

The lack of logic and the abundance of force for 'faith' are twin towers of its destruction from any valid consideration.

As far as the Taliban is concerned, we find, moreover, in a report from John Zubrzycki concerning this movement, that Taliban leaders in Jalalabad, prior to their gaining Kabul, had this to say: "No one helps Taliban, only Allah."  It is, said that report, "committed to establishing an authoritarian Islamic State based upon the teachings of the Koran and a strict interpretation of Islamic law."

Indeed, "We want," the report cites them as saying, "to establish the first truly Islamic State and extend the Jihad from here. We will take back all the countries which were once Muslim from Spain to India." Not dissimilar is the free 'education' reported in Kashmir, where students were to become likely soldiers, being educated in the Koran with influence in view, and the US the supreme obstruction, and hence enemy (The Australian, in a report late last year).

In view of recent developments, it is of much interest to note in this news item, the reported words of Mohammad Ajmal Qadri, leader of the fundamentalist Jamait Ulema Islam party, as given to the Washington Times. "He was quoted as saying that although the thrust of the training was to deploy students in Kashmir and Chechnya, the West, particularly the US, was the ultimate target." It appears that they want a 'homeland' in Kashmir, rather than 'sharing' with Hindus and the method as now almost nauseatingly multiplied, is simply war. Then not only can the sect and section have what they want, the others cannot, at the level of religion.

The irony of their attitude to Israel's ONLY world homeland is of course intense! It is always difficult when you combine cruelty, viciousness and dynamics in the name of God, with some god of your own construction, who did not construct the human race. In such a case, you not only degrade the name which is above every name, but offer degradation to His creation. The results are often very bloody, hideous to contemplate, the proponents inured to the shameless propulsion of a 'faith' by force, to engulf those who do not, cannot and indeed logically should not accept it. It is domination of mind, body and spirit, or death, largely in practice, at this level. To yield to such persuasions is of course spiritual suicide, mental folly and racial degeneracy.

Since the LORD is in fact Lord, though violence to secure 'faith' is far from HIS methods, this is a gross attack on Him, to which in the way way programmed in prophecy, as often covered on this site, He will respond. Armageddon as in Revelation 16 is the doorway and the throne of judgment is the room of those aweful assizes.

Let us however revert to the Taliban and its tender mercies in Afghanistan. We have seen earlier the atrocities on women found in that State, now that it is established (Galloping Events Ch. 7 and see The Australian April 5, 1997, 'Afghan females vanish under barrage of mullah edicts'), as the entire suppression of liberty, even to the point that some German, Australian and US citizens have been arrested and disdainfully threatened with death for PREACHING Christ (not by guns but by gospel).

It is this which reminds us, though in those Islamic sites with brute force, of what has been seen in the democracies themselves as just noted above, with subtle misuse of liberty in education, just as irrational but more plausible. In the Islamic version here however, the thing does not hide, and we find the ultimate in suppression blatantly paraded as if virtue.

If then the Koran indeed promotes force in the area and arena of faith, thus making, whether intentionally or not, the Lord responsible for all evil, and violating the realities of the race at the same time (cf. SMR pp. 50ff., 65ff., 92ff., 978, 1186Aff., 840ff.),  we need to ponder this appalling horror. On their own basis, since human liberty misused SHOULD not exist, and thus with the power of the Almighty available for His will: if the same were Allah,  if this figment WERE the Almighty, then therefore necessarily it WOULD not exist, as verified in this, that in such Islam states following the Koran, it languishes sometimes to an appalling degree, especially with women.

This should be so for any allegedly almighty being of such a mind as that! To be sure, then, as if to verify the understanding,  it largely it DOES not exist in various Islamic States; but in most of the world, and with many convulsions of deliverance as men dabbled in such idolatries, following the unwarranted thought of man, liberty does exist. This Allah does not secure what the program requires. It is the antithesis of Christianity, where freedom is crucial for man in God's image. It has its objectives, its rules, and its 'lord', but it fails monstrously, notoriously, and now only with new oil money, is it again appearing any more potent than the pope, in terms of crass power.

What then ? The Allah simply lacks the power of his precepts. His signs and signals are violated as if by constraint. It is constraint; his is not the day. His image has fallen, and all the cruelty in the world will not avail to restore it. If possible, worse is to come, where not a projection of man's thoughts in cruelty and rape of religion, but a personification in his own name is to come! (as in II Thess. 2).

Meanwhile, what is the situation for Islam in its vehemences and violence ? in its declarations and non-attainments ?

What would one expect ? Obviously, no non-existent being today can do more than Baal in the days of Elijah. His devotees vainly called on him; he did not reply since he was ... hunting ? suggested Elijah, conversing, sleeping ? This is one of the criteria of false gods, that they require what they do not perform, and in test, do not supply verification. Power belongs to God (Psalm 57:2, 62:11);  but He has given opportunities for its good or evil use to men, and though they imagine they can construct their own gods, or do so in a profuse and contused confusion, as if elaborate robots of unreality, He leaves them to find their own level, and exposes their follies, before the judgment which is fast approaching. He does this by power and He retains His control by power, and implements as He has implemented His prophecies by power, sent His Son into the world by power, raised Him by power, got the death date in historical data as in prediction, precisely so; and He tells the way it is ending,  just as it goes, by power, doing as He declared.

We watch as those at an opera, with the opera program beside the hand. It is an opera of grandeur, gruesome in parts, ghoulish in some, glorious in the end, brilliant in concept, wonderful in design, overcoming not in mere power, but in a glory that makes power its subject and love its course.
 
 

THE WISDOM OF GOD

God is wise, and does not fail to allow the evil to show itself, the idols to explore their vacuities and saints to display their faith (cf. Daniel 12:10) as they proceed, despite all, in paths of righteousness.

God has given to man liberty in spirit; but not from results. It is however when man posing as God, reduces the liberty of man to his own deluded dimensions, that evils mount like a typhoon, whether they come from the Kremlin of the last century, the Koran of the 7th or the Rome of the inquisition and subsequently, moving towards world aspiration for their dominion. It is scarcely less true of these players than of of Islam (cf. SMR pp. 1032ff.). All three have striven to the uttermost, descending to levels unspeakable, horrors as a specific, depravities as a way.

The thrust felt in Islam  is well illustrated by the report of 8000 young Muslim radicals gathering in central London to call for the establishment of a global Islamic state" (Australian Beacon, September 1994). Such explosions of juvenile jousting are not dissimilar to what we find in Afghanistan and in Kashmir.

The liberty made possible to be dead or Muslim, far worse of course, since it mocks at God, aborts the scripture which it asserts (references below) and presents an unscripted christ long after His death who did the work which brought the fame, and made unique the name over all. Even in the Koran, though accredited with being sinless, unlike the free admission relative to Muhammad, the imaginary christ becomes a captive of the untested imagination of the false prophet. Another christ, as far as possible from the multiplied prophetic testimony is presented, one who does nothing, living only in the imagination of Muhammad. Life however is not founded on dreams (cf. Jeremiah 23), but on God who attests His truth, verifies His statements and presents His Christ at the required date and for the appointed salvation, with the protested power and the declared impact (cf. SMR
Ch. 9).

Fatally for those who so mock at the God of evidence and truth, of salvation and grace,  it is not the Lord's Christ who results (Luke 2:36, II Cor. 11), but the manufactured invention which bears the same name who is simply re-created at the will of Muhammad and committed not to earth, but to a piece of paper. It matches the Romanist concept of a piece of bread. The actual Christ cannot be so contained, or moved at the will of man. This is worse then illusion; it is delusion and presumes in the face of light, to prefer darkness.

While this is a brilliant fulfilment of the actual Christ's predictions in Matthew 24, it does not really affect anything but the perishing of the souls of those who so abuse the name and presume to act as if to recreate the One who is God,  defile the bodies of those killed to get rule for followers of this imaginary god and of course, or assail the human liberty of those whom they rule, being left alive.  (Cf. SMR pp. 826-831, 929ff., 1080ff..) It cannot create faith (cf. Hebrews 11:1ff.) or its fruits. In truth, these attest the OBJECT of it, the Lord Jesus Christ, by the concurrence of what He says and what happens. This, it is the fruit-claim verification which is so useful in looking at the Middle East, which seems so pre-occupied with the script God has provided these several millenia, that it hardly knows where to turn but to fulfilling what is written (cf. SMR Ch. 9).

What is claimed and done: this is mirage with the Moslem construction; history with God.

Not only does logic prohibit such distortion (SMR Chs. 1,10), verification evacuate its relevance, but history mocks it. That of course is one reason for the inflamed Islamic passions, Arabian excursions into the blood of the children of Israel and the desperation of the antics at the World Trade Centre. God's people however have no need of inhumanity to 'win',  for God is there already. He needs no aid. Neither the ghoulishly antisocial St Bartholomew's Day, celebrated in its heinous slaughter in France by a papal medal, nor this in the USA in 2001, can alter the truth. They merely confirm where it is NOT to be found. Hatred blinds; it does not build. It never endures. Its source the devil himself is on notice (Rev. 12) that his time is short. All that may be hated is sin; and this involves such desecrations of God's own property in man, as would kill not persuade, ruin in the name of the Creator, without ground but using simply a gun ... or a rocket of murder, murdering both its occupants and its prey.

In this connection, it is of much importance that the US, though not as such a Christian nation, yet one with a Christ-professing President, should carefully avoid vengeance for the attack on its civilians, and confine itself to extirpation in a war defence, of the powers which wish to murder, mutilate and assault its citizens in a barbaric fashion.

Yet in so considering the issue, it would be fitting to consider further the suppression of liberty RELATIVE TO FAITH. Saudi Arabia was even reported to be harassing US personnel, in this matter, yes, those called to help it from the once marauding Saddam Hussein! How far can it go ? Is this then the end!

Let us then think on  the result ? It means a weak god cannot stop what he does not approve. If on the other hand, it is really NOT wrong in principle, to have liberty in faith, then Allah has no part in the proceedings, since the Koran makes faith a target to force,  in vast and important terrains! The actual God whose word is ALWAYS fulfilled, gives to men responsibility. If they choose evil and live without the gospel, they are accountable. Equally, evils result. These God limits in predestination and accounts in prophecy, as if in a laboratory situation for precision; and He instructs the human mind to regard this precision, and realise the truth. If the human does not want the Almighty, so be it; but there is no moral entanglement of God in human follies, for He made man in His own image, and this liberty both makes for the wonder and depth of human personality and the rigours of evils such as the false prophet based Islamic movement.

God has acted, provided redemption, eliminated the false concepts of trying to make some mark, missing by this or that percentage, for eternity, or gaining. He has provided a free gift. He has given grace. His coverage is intense, perfect and provides a perspective explaining all, and finishing all where it comes in the judgment.

Not by force does He act in this, for the evil is the result of man not of God. Force, if the means, means this, that God is responsible, and man a dupe. Faith however leaves man responsible and God so far from being inanely less than some men, instead their source and splendour, giving in salvation what they lack at His own cost, as befits the Creator, and is requisite for sin. Not with less can any who live with Him, for whom sin's noxious foulness is wholly unacceptable, a quick transformation agent for heaven to become hell itself, were unchanged immigrants to land there! and for justice to bend, were the baseness of man to smile at justice, like a lout. It is costly, the truth. It took the Cross.

As for the violence of Islam in the arena of faith: Its denials of liberty in this Age of grace is not limited to many features of its own; nor is it limited even to its preying on the liberties of those nations taken over by this, its oppressive religion; nor are they limited to those of people like the now arrested aid workers whom they requite with death threats via a court deemed, of all things, a court of law ... what, the law of death to liberty and evidence ? ... no, they extend further. They seek quite assuredly to exterminate Israel.

ISRAEL at the conferences noted above, and often elsewhere, is quite explicitly made such a target. It must not exist. This is the thrust of it. What helps it, this MUST stop doing so. If this is the US, it must stop. We recall the case cited earlier: WHY do we hate you ? asks the Arab intellectual.  Ask yourselves that!

And what is the answer ?  It is because of Israel. Such has been the propaganda of so many years, extermination, catastrophe, sweeping into the sea and so on! What then for the USA ? YOU supplied Israel with weapons to help her! YOU are accountable!  Who then has said such a thing to this nation ? Who is that person ? Bin Laden! He is reported on TV as having declared this: It is his mission to clear Israel from its land, and he hold the US responsible for weapons to that country!

This is not to answer the Twin Towers question; it is however to answer the question of WHY there is hatred of America, raised by an Islamic person, interviewed not far from Israel itself. It is just the bin Laden approach. Expropriate Israel, and do not stop us... or else! God is aware of the movement, predicted it and will meet it.

We are now moving in terms of the Koran, and the TOTALLY Islamic pretensions in Afghanistan, from the past of the scimitar which threatened Europe and used misplaced force to secure religious 'victories', on pain of death, very like Rome which, like Islam and Communism, is a world conspiracy to replace with force, what faith does not desire (cf. SMR loc. cit.).

We are moving to the 21st century passions and the approach of the finale; we are moving, it may yet be shown, to forces of Islam as one of those conspiracies active even to the Twin Towers, to its aspirations, every bit as fatal to peace and truth as those of Rome and Communism.

We are seeing that once you play truant with the Bible, and imagine your so wonderful civilisation is a result of YOUR power, superiority or lying successfully, and not of the mercy of God, whose principles in the land exalt a nation, then you are merely joining the queue of the depraved, no great accomplishment. In due time, you will pay, as others have paid from Babylon onwards (see Jeremiah 50-51, and Daniel's revelation in overview on the Empires, and News 49, *1 for coverage on Babylon). It is indeed the whole world which is to pay, and the tributaries of evil will pay, as the intense forces of misdirection reach their climax (Isaiah 24, Revelation 16, 19).

As we have seen, there is coming a form of pure beast, if you can call any garbage 'pure', that is quintessential beast, a political-economic-social-financial spiritual scam, which will seek to take over from God and rule all the people with guile and force. We considered this often in Beauty of Holiness, and have seen it in Biblical Blessings Chs. 1 and 6, SMR pp. 750Bff. and other sites available from the Indexes. The evil is not centred in Allah or for that matter, any movement alone, but  in a man himself, its crux and parade, the height of humanism with the help of Satan, the intensive adversary at the last as likewise at the first, a man showing himself that he is God!

This, it is the epitome of humanism, the pit of self and the ultimate in racism, the human race. It is intolerant and as programmed as any Hitler, ruthless as any Mao. It is not Islam, and it IS religious (Rev. 13:11-15). Our present interest, however, is not in this aspect of what is coming, but in the way to it.

We are finding that pride of life, individual, racial, national or international and humanistic, is folly; has no logical basis; is a perversion of science; and an intolerance of man. It will fall because it cannot stand; and it is God who makes ANYTHING stand (cf. Hebrews 1:3, 11:1-3). So man goes his long little path, though it seems to his small endeavours like a four-lane highway, and in speed it does resemble it, his pathway to hell (Matthew 7:13, Mark 9). But it is sad, and it is eminently desirable that some at least should be recovered from the stricken aircraft of mankind, futilely tilting itself this time racially as much of mankind, not against the Twin Towers of World Trade, but against that rock who is God, whose fury Israel has for its part , already sufficiently tasted.

Now to come is the fury to be faced by those who as if God, declare that Israel shall not be (Appendix A, SMR pp. 502-516, and see Ezekiel 36-39).

Assuredly many things are left in our hands; but the truth is not. It escaped both Rome and Israel conjointly as Christ rose; and it will not wilt now. Some of the coming lurks of evil however are worthy of attention; for its plane, unlike the one which struck the Twin Towers, DOES have a parachute and it is only lack of faith which prevents its use. It is time to get out of the disasters of Islam, Romanism and Communism, on vast display now for so long; yes, and of liberalism, neo-orthodoxy and every other departure from Christ, the Biblical faith, the word of God unchanged over the ages, fulfilled in every age.

HOW, says the writer of Hebrews in God's name, "How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation!" (2:3). There is an escape when we do NOT neglect it as in Acts 2:36-38; but we need to remember that there is NO OTHER NAME (Acts 4:11-12). If it is neglected, then there is NO ESCAPE. But what would you ? If someone offered you a parachute when the plane was nearing the towers, and you saw the situation, would you argue about a second option! or take it.

God is not a bigamist, and His 'bride' is the Christian Church, those who receive in salvation and as LORD, this Christ, it is these whom God has delivered! There is no other God, there is no other way, there is no other book, no other Saviour, no other Christ, no other word.

It is not some other who saves! Certainly, there IS another christ (there are lots and lots of them as predicted in Matthew 24:24 by the One who did the job and paid the price of divine redemption for man); and there are heaps of other gospels, born almost every day, without parental virtue, spawn of the dust, without power or purity, background or basis. There is plenty of dust likewise; but a garden, this is select.

Grace has provided. It is not arguing, but giving. If neglected, this gospel, it indicts (John 3:16-19,36).
 
 

FUNDAMENTALIST DEMONISING

(1) The Start

This however brings us to a new aspect.

One of the coming and cunning lairs of the devil is now quite clear; and has been clear enough for long. Indeed, it was given a critical analysis as far back as The Biblical Workman, Appendix III, and as a topic of delusion, in Light of Dawn, Ch. 2.

What is this hateful device ? It is to attack the people of God as an option in seeking to be free of the Lord. It is, as so often, to blame them for the results of the neglect of the gospel, as if they were responsible, not their detractors. It is an old story of moral grime.

It is apt here merely to mention this phenomenon and see its relevance as imaginary devils are sought for the Twin Tower disaster, without reason, since the actual ones are in type so inveterate, as noted above, that their removal would require repentance itself!

On one radio program during these stirring days, in which many things are stirred, one gentleman of note was heard being interviewed. His name is not important; his message is rather more so. It was, he declared, a matter of evil with which we were confronted. This discerning remark was then amplified. It  was in particular, in this American disaster, the security expert opined, clear that there were evil forces which needed eradication.

Well, this is not an unusual situation in this world.

What PARTICULAR evil forces did he have in mind ?

FUNDAMENTALISM, he responded. It was this, Christian fundamentalism (of no immediate plausible or potent relationship to the Twin Towers as yet, but still, it rolls off the tongue), or Hindu fundamentalism (one gained the impression he was mentally scratching about, looking for other things to mitigate his savage lunge at the belief in the Bible, IF this is what he meant), Islamic fundamentalism (since this is ON RECORD against Israel, and major proponents show concern at US aid to the same, we are getting nearer  to something resembling evidence): or ANY fundamentalism. There, quoth he, there lies the evil!

Let us consider this a little.

Perhaps we could have the Love Fundamentalist Association, believing in free 'love', as in the 60s. Could it qualify ? Perhaps, at that, it might in the opinion of that speaker, since it was COMMITTED to it, and hence dangerous. To be committed to anything other than your skin could perhaps,  by such thinkers, be deemed dangerous. If you are committed to survival then at least you can respond to pressure.

However he appeared to leave out of his so subtle equations, one little consideration, one small pocket of thought.  If fundamentalism is the assured taking of some thought, philosophy or code, some religion or political fabric or framework, some social theory or biological one,  as RULING and ASSUREDLY RIGHT, then on his basis, there would be need to ... remove ? was that the word ? all evolutionists, all creationists, all socialists, all communists,  all Islamic people, all Romanists, all Jewish, all Hindu - no some, all democrats (look how that young group of people decided to DO something about the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania during the epics earlier this week, perhaps they even BELIEVED in democracy!) and so on.

This would be difficult; and its value does not appear obvious.
 
 

(2) THE FINISH

SCENARIOS AND SELF-SENTENCING

MUSINGS ON THE UNORIGINAL THEME OF FORCE, AND GETTING RID OF TROUBLESOME PEOPLE, AND IN PARTICULAR GOD -
BY AN IMAGINARY STRATEGIST OF THE SECURITY TYPE IN VIEW

Perhaps however he could, for no reason, but for relief, simply do this to religious people. It would provide, perhaps, some sort of outlet.

After all, if you confine it to the religious for some unapparent reason, and if HE is not religious, why worry ! ONLY religious people would go, and after all, on this sort of dream, GOD is Himself the ultimate in trouble. HE is very determined and even constitutes the truth. That has endless problems for people who do not want it; so perhaps...! But no. It is done already, when God in fact came in human form to secure redemption from sin and its gross and grotesque penalties, ones all too true for it however, by seeming gross and grotesque in bodily form on the cross.

And that idea to remove the Lord  ... that strategy ? is that the term for security interests ? It did not work. He was duly and on time resurrected and then did all He said, bringing the gospel to many nations who received it in substantial numbers, just as Isaiah forecast as to the substance and the result.

No, it did not work, the concept of deicide. Indeed, in arising, the Lord made death look foolish.

In solutions, it is so very important, is it not, at least one would imagine, such theorists would think so:  that it works! After all, getting rid of this and that race, the Tutsi matter in Africa springs to mind, the Cambodian one, the Siberian remnant one, yes it is not so effective ?  Hitler tried it on the Jews, and the Arabian Knights seem to be trying it in not a few aggregations of political power; but it has not worked. God is also on record as being against it,  and His record unlike all others, always works.

Well, our imaginary theorist might pursue the point: perhaps the prospect would be better if all religious people who believe some book is right and from God, should be ...removed ? that word, was this it ? Perhaps just their EVIL removed. That could be done, as the Inquisition showed to a point, by killing them if they repented of believing in God, as prescribed in the Bible, then grabbing their money and using it for your own purposes. It is rather like a cyclotron effect.

Let us then proceed with the musings of our imaginary protagonist, bent on security. We may even interpolate a little here and there.

You then can kill them,  as Thomas Aquinas suggested (SMR p. 1035), in many cases even if they did repent, for it tends to  clean things up rather better, it seems, and he appears to have spoken in terms of security ...  also.

Then those who live can have fear of you, and do what you want.

That however, it is secure ? One has to see a thing like the Protestant Reformation, and realise that really, the kill bit did not work.

Then Communism, really, tens of millions were removed, freedom fundamentalists, Christians and the like, committed people who simply get in the way. The
concept ? this: to Siberia, make them slave to death, use the results of their labour - a sort of variant of the Inquisition, to create wealth for the rest. Then you see, it was more modern times, and they advance, the security people. They work it out.

However it did not work.

It is also not very nice. After all, you are busily exterminating either people or their thoughts or hopes or beliefs, if possible and if they are not from God; and your objective is to stop people exterminating people, so that the point of the security is not clear. Unless of course, the objective is simply that one set of people should be secure, and the rest not.

Himmler had this idea, and he had the notion of beauty and peace with the best ruling for the best; but it too did not work. He apparently took cyanide and this was not very secure.

Which set of people should be secure ? The best ? But then what is good  ? Without God as we have repeatedly shown on this site (see Morals in index) there is no possibility of assigning any moral meaning to the term.

It is so difficult that perhaps the idea comes to this: religious people are not desirable, but a nuisance; God is not desirable; we have a world; let us use it without harassment for goodness knows, it is hard enough even without that!

Does that seem nice to the security-conscious secularist ?

But then, let us divide. Religious people can be influenced, but it is far harder when they have a book. Besides, the main religions have one, when God is either actually or ostensibly concerned. They are one element that could be wiped out. They might not be more than nearly half of the world  population and the rest could have more resources then. On reflection, however, as a security measure it does not rate, for to deliver a small fraction from violence, is it good to remove about half! It does not seem to meet the criteria of the security program, so better let it drop ?

Why not JUST the Christians. They try to be nice, so you could exploit that, and get rid of them more easily. Just dupe them and abuse their minds with all sorts of fake guilts, and then rub them out! Yet this is not very secure for many. Besides, it is really necessary to get rid of things that one could not possibly be part of ... otherwise the security would prove too insecure for ... well, practical personal purposes. After all, to be secure, one must endure.

Why not then divide them into those who REALLY believe their book and those more enlightened and easier to live with ? Then there is God. Since HE makes it intensively clear that HE is back of ALL of His book, why not try  rubbing Him out with the people who believe in Him ? (as in Rev. 19:19).

Anyway, you COULD make it appear that because some people believe in one god, and that god believes in violence to faith, and this is illogical as shown in SMR (see Index violence, and pp. 50ff.), then the Islam people could all go. But then, not all of them really believe in DOING it. It is only certain mullahs and leaders and some of their politicians. Should they be removed ? No ... only those who insist on those parts ? But then you will have to remove those who insist on ALL of it, since these are parts inside it... Yet perhaps you could make nearly all of them agree to removing some parts of their books, the parts that are a nuisance, and do it with a sort of dramatic delusion, so that they think they are becoming socially mature. Would God do well without anyone ? For of course the rest you would kill.

Yet again, the killing idea might take on. You would have to improve on the subtlety, maximise the propaganda, the Goebbels sort of thing form WW II might help, and then when the believers in the God whose word works, are left all alone, well, perhaps not kill them all, just the ones you can provoke to upsets for which you can readily have them killed; and as to the rest, they can be starved by money control, come to think of it as stated IN the Bible in Rev. 13.
 
 

WEAPONS BETTER THAN BOMBS
WISDOM THAN WEAKNESS

Now that we have ceased to regard the appalling directions of irrational force, let us look at some practical and ultimately spiritual steps the USA could take. Let us meanwhile realise that this is VERY FAR INDEED from being limited to the USA!

Well we have come to the end of our imaginary thought person, whose musings on the radio suggestions have been interesting, have they not! Their logical status is of course appalling*2.

They could well be related to our equally imaginary but equally spirit of the Age mentality in  musings of a bureaucrat, for which see Barbs, Arrows and Balms 18. The actual answer to the US 'problem' however is a just matter to consider, sevenfold. In this, there could figure the tightening of security, the question of high selectivity in training in USA to fly its aircraft, which may have to be treated as weapons, for such in fact they have become, so that licensing is to own a weapon not wholly unlike an atomic bomb.

Access to cabins could be controlled by pilots only, if necessary; and access BY pilots could be via television, with weapons available from within the cabin, by remote control, for those seen to be seeking unlawful access to the pilot's section.

These and many such things could be considered, but all this reminds one, not because it is wrong or bad, but because it is not the PITH of the problem, of a scriptural exhortation It is in Isaiah in 22:8-14, where we see a similar constraint:

  • "He removed the protection of Judah.


 

  • "You looked in that day to the armour of the House of the Forest;


You also saw the damage to the city of David,
That it was great;
And you gathered together the waters of the lower pool.
You numbered the houses of Jerusalem,
And the houses you broke down
To fortify the wall.
You also made a reservoir between the two walls
For the water of the old pool.
 

  • "But you did not look to its Maker,


Nor did you have respect for Him who fashioned it long ago.
 

  • "And in that day the Lord God of hosts
  • Called for weeping and for mourning,
  • For baldness and for girding with sackcloth.


 

  • "But instead, joy and gladness..."

THESE are the directions needed FIRST. Nevertheless, the lesser matters noted deserve consideration, PROVIDED the underlying CAUSES are first dealt with as a PRIORITY.

The Lord is the ultimate safety, and those who are His are not ultimately interested in this world; but again ultimately, they are safer than rock, surer than water, stronger than passing life: He who keeps them as their Lord, is Prince of life, Lord of glory, reliable, and His service is better than any time: for time, it is merely something which He made. Security is in Him alone; but that all that is needed. It is seen in I Thessalonians 5:9-10, Romans 5:1-12, 8:29ff..

Life is not a matter of survival, but arrival, in the midwifery department of the Hospital of Holiness, where it is endued also with grace and set forth with its specifications at the level provided for, in the spirit of man (Titus 3:3-7).

Meanwhile, at the national level, there are elements for review, more important by far than any merely temporal safety, in terms of which any nation is more nearly viewable as a going concern for God.

1) Make sure you do what is right concerning Israel, not regarding it as beneath the threshold of pain, or as if attacks on the White House were in some subtle way wholly other than attacks on the centre of Jerusalem. Be careful not to act as if constant attacks on the lives of American youngsters were wholly diverse from those on Jewish youngsters, and to refrain from buying*1 the concept that a population group within a nation should quite rightly be able to bargain for more and more of their host country, on the ground that otherwise there will be more and more crippled youths, broken children, maimed bodies within it.

In particular, be careful not to treat defence of that nation's security as in some strange way wholly contrary in concept to that of the United States.

2) Encourage Islamic activists and terrorists to seek the balm of their pains elsewhere, rather than in the pitiably small and wholly unique site of the people of Israel, in the multiplied surrounding lands; or give Israel back the rest of Palestine, as agreed after  World War I, and this  includes Jordan; though the former of these two options seems far more practical a solution now.

3) Encourage world action against terrorists in general, and those who make themselves either holy or unholy terrors, by presuming to kill or maim people whom they would like to replace. It is an action wholly cowardly as President Bush rightly said, when it was applied to the USA. The Jews are not different; nor their assailants by the means of indiscriminate killing of civilians, in this regard.

4) Seek a national return to modesty, rather than the clamant chaos of insistences on every immoral action and thought as sacred territory for the individual. Leave freedom alone where it can contain itself physically, and freedom of thought and speech: but by ensuring these, remove those violences of body which separate mind from body.

5) Remember that righteousness (Biblically defined) exalts a nation. People do not have to be Christian, but there is need for a regard for one's neighbour which stops short of killing his children, maiming his youth, or advancing into forced anti-God theories, instead of righteous evidence-bound education, with due liberty to consider without prejudice.

If a STATE does violate youth's opportunities in that sort of way, so far from being on a bounty list for divine favour, it is performing an atrocity. Let this sink in. If its funds are for this, if it boosts atheism, assumes its follies or fosters its proponents selectively in principle OR in practice: then it is guilty as a STATE, just like Israel of old. In this case, however, it is in the mind not body, that there is the sending of  its children through the fire,  for idols. Let the students think for themselves, and provide the facts not rudimentary theories contrary to all known law and observation (cf. Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming ... Stepping Out for Christ, That Magnificent Rock, SMR). That sort of selectivity is idolatry. This is not helpful if you are seeking God, honouring truth and imbued with peace.

6) Seek integrity on grounds that stand. There is none but God the Maker, the Redeemer, for all others being without basis themselves, move. Hence the nation is betrayed. Consider what you want to have first in the land. If it is some mixture of elixirs of religions, let that save you! It is predictable that it will not. The number of gods to have before God is ZERO (as noted in the ten commandments in Exodus 20). People do not have to believe Him; the nation has to be sure where it stands. If it stands outside this, let it be clear. It speaks of trusting in God. It would be wise to know who that is! He states this: Those who honour Me, I will honour.

7) Stop doing things to distance the Christian past of the nation; but at the same time, restrain all efforts to force people to be Christian. Christ did not shoot; He was crucified. Seek righteousness, not violence.
 

The surest way to massive and deserved trouble, relatively speaking, is to yield by subtle and diplomatic degrees, ignoring facts and avoiding trouble, as if it were in some way criminal for Israel to go back where she came from: for this is acting as God, who having given them the place and the covenant, has brought them back according to His word, and will bring them back in spirit as He wills. Playing God in radical contradiction of His word becomes in the end, another .... yes, declaration of war. It is not good, as wars go, to have such a war as that. It is, on the other hand, predicted as coming quite explicitly, as the end tumbles into its bath (Revelation 19:19).

If you are going to do it, consider its end (Luke 14:31). You CANNOT win, and you OUGHT not to win, for of all lords, there is but ONE who is just and wholly right as LORD, having begun us all, and the universe, and provided adequately for us all, if we will but receive Him. It is HIS creation, property and the ownership is for no other. Accordingly, WHEN He states intentions concerning it, you have only two options. Fight Him or agree. It is all His. He made it.

When the integrity of a uniquely disciplined nation such as Israel is at stake, humanity of heart  itself should speak. In this case as always when God is taken as the truth (John 14:6), agreement is also agreement with the facts. It is also agreement with a prodigy of loyalty and faithfulness, grace and compassion, truth and reliability for which the world has no equal, no near equal and no place. It is propositionally divinely presented in the Bible and vitally and definitively in Christ.

It is only those who are His, who find in Him the way; but there is no other way. You find Him otherwise as does a student a teacher. Consider the educational case: when you oppose him and his teaching, he may be gracious, and let you slide somewhat; but if your very life depends on your understanding, and truth is its companion, then there is no grace in his just letting you go.

Ruin is not a destination for which grace yearns, for any man. It is not so very difficult to find, if you just discover its recipe and carefully follow it. SOW the wind and REAP the whirlwind. There are a lot of whirlwinds about at present.

The ways of God are on display, unchanged over the millenia. Christ was on display, in high profile, rather like a human wreckage to resemble that of the Twin Towers. He is not unknown, nor yet His word nor His work. They are not merely for exhibition.
 
 

NOTES

*1
The obvious desire implicit in the Arab comment here, if indeed it was not a veiled threat, or even exultation at the destruction wrought, is this.

The purport ? Israel is to be left marooned by the US. Many in the Middle East positively hate, he is implying, any attempt by any outside party to prevent or limit the destruction of Israel, its entire removal, the wipe out of its democratic, open society place in the Middle East!  Indeed, this is found so intolerable that its restoration over some 2 millenia of exile, in 1948, as a nation, is 'the catastrophe' in the encyclopedia of Arab hatred.

Let us be clear. Some Arabs are Christians. Not all hate. Of course! But the authorities and the Koran and many leading Muslim clerics, and whole regimes, and several nations are on record with dire determination for the removal of Israel.

Hitler had precisely the same idea, except in this, that at the time there was no extant Jewish State, so it was the actual people, one by one, who were to be and in the case of over 6 million by oft-cited report, in fact were physically exterminated.

However there is an even closer approximation to Hitler's procedure in the Arab self-styled hatred which we are considering (limited as noted, but aggressively and defiantly nearly pervasive at high level, as also noted!). In Jerusalem young people at the crest of potential, awaiting coming adulthood can religiously be maimed by the mercies of Allah, according to the jihad concept. Merciful maiming! But some may say, But no! There is mercy, but this is judgment! Whose judgment and why ? It is Allah's judgment. Why then ? Because he does not like Jews ? or because people who notice his non-existence should, but do not,  send garlands to celebrate it ? (cf. Dawn of Light Ch. 6). An infinite who does not reveal his ways to confirm them, is but a cipher.

The Middle East is a religious bomb. It has a sovereign scimitar element, which as shown from the earlier cited references, is certainly in the Koran; and often but not always there has been strenuous efforts for this to be applied. This comes into the very domain of faith, subjugation of the living in the interests of applying this religion, whether they have this concept or not! It leads to bullying of women and people, races and places. It nearly took Europe. Putin was not in concept wholly astray in pointing out to Europe, not long ago, that what he did in Chechnya was something Europe should realise was not without ground. The menace was Islamic. It could threaten Europe also.

He was of course wrong if for that reason he was using force to liberate Chechnya, for this is not the place of force, to deal with faith. If however brigands take over a country, and subjugate with cruelty those whose lives they oppress, never having been given any mandate, but only having by vile means violated peace, then the case does indeed call for consideration in terms of humanity.

However this is not to be a religious matter; for Christ the crucified does not crucify. It is a brigandage matter. Was Chechnya demonstrably in this situation ? It is not easy to determine this, but it seems more than doubtful. However the principle needs watching when brigands, whether or not in religious dress, oppress a people, as does the Taliban whose introduction was force, and whose method is force and whose Muslim 'purity' relies on force, which they then attribute, to his detriment, to 'Allah'.

In a report printed in The Australian just before the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, we read this:

  • Leaders of the fundamentalist movement also denied allegations by the Afghan Government that they had received support from Pakistan in the recent string of military victories in eastern Afghanistan.


 

  • "No one helps the Taliban, only Allah."

This has proved wholly inadequate in the Middle East in the most dramatic way since 1948, on countless occasions, where the entire forces of tens of millions in very numerous nations opposing Israel, with cries of Islam, have failed DESPITE such 'help'! The Taliban doubtless would like some redress. If yours is the best football team, it is, after all, rather difficult to have them fail momentously, famously, incredibly, in compounded and varied circumstances, in small things and great, for over half a century without cease! (cf. SMR pp. 779ff., 829ff., Dawn of Light Ch. 5).

Israel given by international agreement after WW I, Palestine as a homeland, following the Balfour Declaration in 1917, has now only a carefully manicured little lawn of it left! (cf. It Bubbles, It Howls, He Calls...Ch. 10). They would like it to get off the grass.
 

The Taliban is now seeking to show its force and then to attribute the result to Allah. Their concept: the US is NOTHING to such power as this! That is the evident concern. However, while one butchery of civilians is not a victory, it does bring into better perspective the ruthlessness of the exponents of the religion who follow its relevant sections in the Koran, as likewise their disregard of civil liberties, of liberty in general, their use of force to fetch glory for their god, which is an entire desecration of truth and the divine name, which they have seized just as they seized Afghanistan.

It will prove harder to manipulate. God is not mocked. This we shall see, as the antichrist, who believes not in Allah but in himself, arises.

The place of the Jew, however, though small in Israel, is the fish-bone par excellence for Allah image-makers. It is guaranteed by God. When the Christians all go, there will be fun for a little, but then the judgment. God leaves His calling card in various ways. One was the work done in the Old Covenant through Abraham and his heirs; one was the work done in the New Covenant by Christ; and one is the work done in terms of His prophecies from both Covenants (for the author being God, HE does not change - as in Malachi 3:6, Matthew 5:17-19), as in parallel, in the Gospel by grace since then. God does not fail;  nor does His word.

 

  • It is then important that the US does not, however unintentionally,

 

  • join the queue of those who placate multiplied civil murder in Israel; and if they do not precisely acclaim the efforts of one section of the state of Israel to gain a sectional advantage by bombing children and youth, women and children in crowded places as form of protest for gain, then not

 

  • condone them and

 

  • criticise the Jews for a lack of due capitulation, in part or in whole.


If however USA does join that popular and populous line, then one can only tremble for her.

Currently, it would seem more likely that she will realise the force of the protestations of Israel at such Arab tactics, since they now fall on her own soil indiscriminately, almost as if to bring the point, shall we say, HOME! Perhaps it will have this effect, and if it does, this can only bring a blessing where it is sorely needed.

On what the USA does NOT need to do at the religious level, now, see Ch. 4 below.
 

*2 FUNDAMENTALISM, TRUTH AND ITS TORMENTORS

If someone is a man, and a man is bad, does this mean that all men are bad!

Do not, you say, insult my intelligence.

Why is this wrong ? It is because men vary, and the formal fact of being one, does not include a moral tag in the moral attributes area, except in this, that all men are born sinners, and there is none on this earth who is not guilty of sin.

If someone is a fundamentalist, and is bad, does this mean that all fundamentalists are
bad ?

Do not, SOME say, insult my intelligence. Others like to have scape goats, perhaps by nature, and so do no 'see' this.

In fact, says the reasonable man, fundamentalists vary, and the formal fact of being one, does not include a moral tag in the moral attributes area.

Most true.

So this is invalid generalisation, with the logical tag, rash generalisation. That is the formal name which it is historically given.

The case is however far worse than this, in several dimensions.

First (which is really now second, but let it pass), there is the second logical fault of inadequate definition, or confusion of terms. In fact, the term 'fundamentalist' can be made, according to social taste and preferences of mind, to mean, as our musing security official shows, almost anything. It could mean:

  • 1) all who have a strong belief in something fixed and certain, and will not change it, like democrats. It could be a right or a wrong belief, but it is not left behind.


 

  • 2) It could be a wrong belief, which is kept free from reason, as we have shown to be the case with organic evolutionism (index q.v.). In this case, the elements of fixity and irrationality mix, though plausibility may or may not remain.


 

  • 3) It could be a dangerous belief, that is for safety, like terrorism in order to bring political unity to the world.


 

  • 4) It could be the above plus a handbook on bombs and so forth, like that of the terrorists, according to preliminary evidence at least, who destroyed the Twin Towers of the Trade Centre: the one found in the car.


 

  • 5) It could be this with an element of religion, such as would appear when a second handbook, called the Koran was found with it, according to TV report at the time.


 

  • 6) It could be a dangerous belief, for spiritual safety, because it is the truth and people who want a lie, do not want the truth (II Thessalonians 2:9-10). This is to some, even more threatening, and the State of Victoria seems already to have taken steps to make FEELINGS more important than FACTS in this domain, when religion is concerned (cf. NEWS 156 - Ancient Words : Modern Deeds Ch.  15, Galloping Events Ch. 7, End-Note *2 , DIAMOND 10 ).


 

  • 7) It could be the case for 6) above, plus a handbook.

And so on.

Since it can vary so much, the term 'fundamentalist' is not a wise one to use, in normal cases, for the simple reason that ambiguity is so colossal as to make it like the muzzle of a gun used as a scalpel during an operation.

That is the second kind of logical error.

The third is more monumental by far. It is this. It is to ignore that some things which could be called fundamentalism are inclined to use force without restraint, in the pursuit of their aims, maiming, milling in killing, in mass murders, like the jihad movement; and some are not, like Biblical Christianity. Since this was the topic, it is rather an important point! It is rather like being a mathematician, and presenting yourself as one, and then finding that you failed to add one plus one correctly. For a novelist this might not be the end; but for a mathematician, the error is more substantial!

We have compared in this relevant respect, Biblical Christianity and the jihad movement, and noticed a salient difference.

The former has the following motifs from its book, known as the Bible, and received as the word of God (HE can speak, dear reader, as well as you, for the realm of symbolic logic and grammar, semantics and the scenario of transmission and reception of the same with understanding is not a property  of matter, but of man, and the will to confuse such things is not a property of thought but of volition, and the scope of liberty to do so is not a property of our own creation but of the One whose power has this propensity, while the rational attribution of grounds for receiving this, and not another thing as the word of God,  is as SMR has shown, without limit and without competition).

What are these here relevant  motifs then in the word of God, received as such by Biblical Christianity, which is what it has been from the first, and what its precursor was before Christ came, in the days when He was predicted as to date and work, life and purpose on this earth (cf. SMR Ch. 9, Barbs, Arrows and Balms 13, 20) ? They are inclusive of three which are relevant here.

  • 1) Do good to all men (Galatians 6:10)
  • 2) Love your neighbour as yourself (Matthew 22:39)
  • 3) Love your enemies (Matthew 5:44).


 

Now the more attentive may observe that this is not entirely identical with:
 

  • 1) Do evil to a select group of people.
  • 2) Love selected neighbours and hate the rest.
  • 3) Hate your enemies.


This difference is known as mutual exclusion. If you are the one, you cannot be the other. To equate these is like equating infinity and zero. It is not very clever.

It is also a logical error, or fallacy: confusion of terms, based on ambiguity.

We are not proceeding very well in the assault on 'fundamentalism' as a scare term and a scape goat.

In fact it begins to appear that if there is a goat here at all, it is one of naiveté plus vindictiveness; or at best, colossal and multiple confusion, irrationality of a kind that is in a class of its own.

How could such things be ? It is not primarily the intelligence which is at fault, for evidently in such a case as this, it is temporarily and at least partially suspended. It is in fact just what the Bible declares: man is alienated from the life of God without Christ (Ephesians 4:17-19), and holds down the truth (Romans 1:17ff.) so that the truth is an offence. They actually KILLED CHRIST, whose claim to be the truth is abundantly verified and wholly rationally and uniquely valid as noted in SMR and elsewhere. Where the going comes close to the heart and essential desires of the will, this can become much more obvious!

Thus this merely verifies the text of the Bible. Intelligent people do things like this! Yes, there is an explanation; and the more the evil is wrought, the more obvious its applicability becomes.

Thus the term fundamentalist is used to mean two OPPOSITE things relative to the POINT in mind, in the speaker! He uses ONE meaning to apply to the OPPOSITE case and condemns the latter in terms of the former.

We are not done. There is this element here also. This scurrilous and outrageous misalliance with irrationality which can be found, is one which also runs into a further maelstrom. Some who believe the Bible to be what it says, the word of God, and find it abundantly verified at all levels as nothing else is, as an exercise in reason and an excursion in logic, do not care for the term 'fundamentalist' BECAUSE of the ambiguity and rabidity of misuse so often found. We call ourselves as many have done for long, plenary inspirationists, or use the term plenary inspiration. This means that when God decided to talk to our race, which He had made, and which needed speech for direction, information and correction very soon, He knew what was in His mind and made sure it could get to the mind of the recipient. This is what is known as good communication, which endless seeming business communication courses require without much mystery.

God being the source of the symbolic skills of human communication, and of the hardware associated, as well as the software, is brilliant at this. Why would anyone think He would mess it up ? The thought savours of wishful thinking on the part of rebels. It is hard to see how any logical consideration is other than alien to the uttermost.

Thus Bible believers may be visited with an unacceptable, confused, ambiguous term while being abused with information that is the opposite of the fact.

As an exercise in security, the best place for which is the truth and the love of God, it is not merely hopeless. It appears as the opposite of the apposite. It does not really help, nor does it provide any solution, nor does it relate to the 'problem' except to augment it.

Safety is of the Lord, and it is vain to look elsewhere. It is unvaluable to mislabel His people. It is invaluable to seek and find the truth. Then you do not run into things in the darkness (John 8:12).