AUSTRALIAN BIBLE CHURCH October 29, 2006

A CONTINUATION OF THE THRUST AND BASE OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
OF AUSTRALIA ON BIBLICAL LINES …

A MATTER OF RISE AND FALL, AND THAT'S NOT ALL

    Isaiah 66, Reflections and Applications:

PART I

I THE MIGHTY GOD, HE NEEDS NO HOUSE

Isaiah 66 is a pearl among a necklace. It is set off by the other 65, and shines into the New Testament reflections. At the outset, God reminds each reader that heaven is His throne, the earth His footstool. All the creation is under His hand, and heaven itself is the site of His splendour. It was from here that Christ came (Philippians 2), to this footstool, where such inane dreams possess so many, as history increasingly becomes site for a horror camp and folly, a favourite to a generation almost certainly the last before Christ's return (see Answers to Questions Ch. 5).

One of the signals is accurately supplied by Prince Charles, if the news be true. According to report presented for example in The Advertiser, October 27, 2006, this Prince is making clear his intended apostasy from the role of Defender of the Faith.

This is defined in the historic Coronation ceremony as the faith to be upheld by the Sovereign, one both Protestant and Reformed, with the Gospel itself. The innovation is reported to be one involving the simple matter of additions. Defender of Faiths is the new look. You add an 's', very simple! You can take out the definite article too, very definitely...

It is like someone saying that not only will the father of the house keep an eye on the occupants in their beds at night, but equally superintend every scamp and tramp who enters. CHRIST makes this point in John 10, concerning robbers and thieves, at the spiritual level, emphasising that the ONLY One not so at this level, is Himself (John 14:6). FALSE christs and prophets were to come (Matthew 24), but He ONLY was to be followed without surrogate, substitute or alternative option, He as attested from the first and to the last in the Word of God (Matthew 5:17ff., John 5:39-40, Ephesians 1:10, Revelation  5).

God is ONE, the ONLY Saviour (Isaiah 43:10-11) and this Saviour is Christ, the necessary one (Acts 4:11-12): HE is the One through whom the Father is made manifest definitively (Hebrews 1). We are to await His return and avoid those who speak of Him as in this room or that (Matthew 24:26,Hebrews 9:28) for His coming is glorious and manifest, though many be troubled, moan or mourn when it comes (Revelation 1:7,  Matthew 24:38 - 25:1-30, Mark 14:62).

It is this same Christ, true God and true man (Hebrews 1-2) who did not commit suicide at the Last Supper, as if bread were His actual body (asseverated in John 6:62-63). Instead, He categorically  declared that it was to be in remembrance of Him: the One who was received up into heaven until He comes at the regeneration of all things (Acts 3:19-21, Luke 22:19). It is He who is the One who will always have this role of embracing all believers in Himself as Lord (Ephesians 1:10, Revelation 5). This projected and reported plan then, for England, becomes a double marriage, in which one party is found with two ceremonies! The sacred bonds of singularity however are not merely on such a proposal, breached by spiritual adultery, but the marriage would be re-performed as well as if to enhance the perfidy. Such might not be so much the death of a nation, as its interment!

That singularity, without any doubt or argument, is precisely the position IN TERMS of the CURRENT Coronation REQUIREMENT of the sovereign, voiced AT coronation, and it is that of the 39 Articles as for over four centuries adopted in the Church of England. That is its comparison with this new plan of mutilating multiplicity.  Indeed, when you look at that suggested new formulation, in essence at least, it is true also that it is a categorical departure from the Bible (Mark 7:7ff.,cf. SMR pp. 932ff., Ch. 9). Adding to this is the work of lawlessness from first to last (Deuteronomy 4, 12, Proverbs 30:6, Revelation  22:18ff.).

What for nearly half a millenium has been in place for England, in one form or another, for its Church, would now be discarded; and on the outlined plan,  it is done as if it were an addition. That is the tenor of the report: Charles does not want to be crowned, it indicates, as Defender of the Faith, but of Faiths. The Jewish rejection of Christ as Lord and Saviour and Son of God, and the Moslem version of these very things (they are the same in this regard!), these are to be new additives to the ground of coronation, the requirements of the King, to be joined with Romanism. Indeed, more 'faiths' are mentioned for the throng, even than these! It is a spiritual promiscuity that is in view, on the grand order.

This Defender of Faiths concept is not for the first time reported of Charles, and although there is no confirmation of this latest report from the princely quarters, this silence would appear unthinkable if it were a gross defilement of faith even to suggest such a thing. Who married to one wife, would not protest if someone publicly made clear as news, that his intention was to marry two others as WELL! Whatever the basis, if the broadcast is inconceivably horrible, the refutation of the principle at least could be clear, and should be categorical, with the honour of the Lord starkly established. Indeed, who in that case would not have disowned the first report of such multiplicity ideas as Defender of Faiths, some time ago! The case is far otherwise.

Perhaps then a new result of this new treble or multiple marriage could be found, in some new child of the projected union. What could it be ? Perhaps in the next Dunkirk or Armada, the next take-over bid for England, there will appear a new result! Perhaps they could call on composite gods this time, as ancient Israel so vainly sought to do! “The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens!” declared Jeremiah (10:11). As your cities, so are your gods! Derisively declaims Jeremiah 2:28.

A take-over ? if the report be true, is this itself not precisely such an event!

If it be said that it is in form only, a projected Coronation ceremony approach, yet are there not results ? Is not national power to be then placed, to work for its performance! and is this not an invasion from within, a fifth column to delete history and displace centuries of prosperity, deliverance and amazing power in the British Empire of yore, a grandeur which for decades has been declining, as has the attachment of the Church of England to the Bible! (cf. A Question of Gifts).

New ideas for altering the biblical depiction of God, and its ‘translation’, in fact alteration, are now rife and backed by the Archbishop of Canterbury (cf. Christ Incomparable, Lord Indomitable Ch. 9), just as a desire for the Pope as Chairman of Churches has been officially voiced over a decade ago!

Why is such a concept, coronation or not, of Defender of Faiths, even considered ? According to the Report, it is claimed that it is to reflect England as it now is. That is rather like saying that your wife of half a century is now, through a new ceremony, to be become one of several. Charles reportedly would like two ceremonies, one for the 'Christian' department as before perhaps, and another for the rest! This in itself is rather like spiritual bigamy, if the report be correct.

The substantial deliverance from the oppression of spirit and finance formerly found in Romanism’s rule in England, a liberation which  Elizabeth I brought on after Henry, leading to a time of almost intoxicating delight in adventure, discovery, literature, art and music, through love of the truth and commitment to the God of the Bible without addition or compromise: this is to be followed, if this comes to pass, by what ? It is, as presented,  to have as sequel a certain rescinding, a decree nisi toward the living God, the God of the Bible,  on the part of the nation in its church and  coronation commitment. Rome is to be defended on English soil, not as a way of freedom for the individual, as now, but as a way for the nation in its characterisable conduct. Judaism, it is reported, has the same treatment. So are other 'faiths'.

A nation of faith, in name at least,  is to become a nation of statistical spiritual character, moving with the arithmetical eddies.

This would mean a precipitous move from the day of Elizabeth I, when Shakespeare dwelt (his life and her reign had some 45 years in common in the 15th and 16th centuries), that day when Spain's Armada intended forcibly to instal Romanism's ways, but  failed, when Drake and Frobisher were active in discovery, the former being the first known to have sailed around the world. This is the reported nature of the spiritual sequel in view, after the reign of Elizabeth II.

There would even be something almost humorous in contrast. Thus Elizabeth I was a forerunner to England's greatness as the Bible was more and more made the model; and Elizabeth II, if this plan is to be, would be the forerunner of spiritual divorce on the part of her son, of religious ruin, renegacy and rebellion. How it would parallel ancient Israel as outlined in such Psalms as  78 (cf.  78:56), and 106 (cf. 106:39), with option for the parallel sort of result, which afflicted Israel! (Lamentations). To be sure, it was not a good idea to make the Church a portion of the nation, in the first place, since it is to be ruled by Christ only through HIS people (Ephesians 2:19-22, Romans 16:17), in faith; but this in no way mitigates the direction of change or the religious nature of the new situation projected for the nation, but rather aggravates it.

Nor is such a type of synthesis of religions to be found in movements in England alone, by any means; for the riot is increasingly international, a terminal efflorescence of evil, foretold in the Bible (cf. I Peter 2, Revelation 13, 16), rife in the domain of spiritual pathology, a pandemonium, a pandemic with the heavens under review by the footstool.

II  GOD LOOKS to the one who is POOR in Spirit and Trembles at His Word

Isaiah, then, made it clear that the majesty of GOD was vast and immutable, illimitable and unparalleled, and who are earthly sovereigns if they gainsay it! It is not sound for the footstool to voice its desires for new gods, aloft in its thought, as if it sent up rockets and hoped for them to stay in the heavens, and to be the Rock for the nation.

To whom then does the Lord look ? Isaiah 66:2 tells us.

It is to this sort of person: one who "is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word."

What sort of trembling supersedes the centre of the revelation of God, Jesus Christ who ALONE can lead to the Father! (John 14:6)! There is no option: it is defilement, disjunction or repentance. This news item is merely one of many which happens to be new, but is one of a fold of hundreds of items throughout the world, in the same direction; and such is found in the UNITED RELIGIONS  movement, which has been spearheaded by Bishop William Swing (Episcopalian). What then was the purpose of that organisation ? It was as reported in the Ecumenical News International (June 22, 1999), "to unite the world's religions for the global good by using peaceful dialogue and conflict resolution."

Is this to tremble at the word of God!

On the contrary, it has but one value in biblical terms: it is this, that it fulfils to the uttermost the PREDICTED rule of false religion (Revelation 13), to come before the Lord's return (as in Revelation 19), with the false prophet (Revelation 16,19) and the forcible 'beast' alike, moving men to servitude such as the Reformation once helped to overcome. This dominion however, it is not just from a city or its religion: it is to a spiritual evil so vast, that the whole world is to be its retinue (except of course for the believers in Jesus Christ, who overcome "by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony" - Revelation 12:11).

Yet it is not only in things political and financial, national and international that the evils come rushing like so many mad bulls. They are also to be found in what has been a challenge from the first, and will be to the last.

It is not only trembling at the word of the Lord which is a feature of what the Lord looks at, a characteristic of the one to whom HE LOOKS (that is, with whom He  covenantally concerns Himself at the acutely personal level - cf. Psalm 1). It is to the one who is POOR and of a CONTRITE SPIRIT.

While this is part of the trembling (as in Psalm 2  - indeed, as in Psalm 19, a holy and clean fear that is not craven but awesome): it has its own features. What then is such a spirit ?

It involves both our words to and thoughts about each other. Is the one who is 'poor' - that is, poor in spirit as in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5), to tear and bite his or her neighbour with cutting and personal words, or to be rather an ointment of peace ? Reproof may be  needed, but the object should be love, as we seek to save some with fear (Jude 23). Wolves must be exposed and  resisted (Acts 20:28-31, II Timothy 4:2). Yet it is enough that one must fight for the faith (as in Jude and II Cor. 10:5): for the man and woman of God has an underlying peace and in personal matters knows well to turn the other cheek, being forbearing with the law of kindness in the mouth.

We do not use physical weapons, but spiritual (Ephesians 6), and of these there are such features as grace, longsuffering, kindness and grace.

Do not bite and tear each other lest you destroy each other, says Paul (Galatians 5:13-16). Let us hear his inspired word.

"For, brethren, you have been called to liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, take heed that you be not consumed by one another. This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfil the lust of the flesh."

Poverty of spirit is the opposite of the macho, the scarring by tearing teeth in speech, by self-seeking striving in spirit. It honours God and loves the brethren, protects the lambs and seeks in love for the lost.

So then, as we watch the unfolding of evil on the international stage, and see the near return of Christ as this amalgamation process of religions continues as the antichrist approaches, let us continue in well-doing, in love and poverty of spirit. Let us be strong in faith and bold and clear in testimony, but activated by love and concern, tender-hearted personally towards one another.