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BULLETIN SEVENTY ONE

TRUTH IS NOT SOMETHING YOU CAN TALK
YOUR WAY OUT OF

DESIST SIMPLY TO EXIST

If you start to wonder, Why ? and How ? concerning your place in life and life's place in whatever ordered it, and mathematics' site in logic and logic's place in thought, and thought's place in mind, and mind's place in reality, and reality's commanded source (DNA like physical law, is full of commands, direct or indirect, but operative), then it is possible to spend a few well-directed minutes or a life-time on the topic.

Let us take the former. There are two possible sources of everything, such as the integrated systems and collations above. One is nothing; the other is something. As to the former, there is nothing to it, be this potential or order or substance or fluctuation (of what, if not something, occasions a flat self-contradiction and hence a mere muddle, not even a theory). As one has often asserted, if in such matters you contradict yourself, there is no real need for anyone else to do so.

Something must be there. This something came from nothing or something. The former, as above is to be dismissed as mere drivel, antinomian nonsense.

When it comes to ALL THINGS, then something must ALWAYS be there if ANYTHING is EVER to be there. We therefore have no rational option but something always there. The basis is either adequate, in the model being invented, or inadequate to produce the results in mind. If inadequate, correctly deemed incapable of it, then the results, that we with the rest constitute, will not occur. But they did occur. Hence we come to an eternal, adequate something as basis.

Now you may take some important nose-dives in your flight. You may imagine, with some politicians and philosophers, that you have rights, though you deny any basis to everything. In that case, quite simply, you are deluded. There are no rights in something or other, however adequate or desirable they may appear. Spending on the basis of such rights simply points the way of self-indulgence, unintelligent imagination and normally, debt, which as now in some nations, is quite stupendous and could readily lead to serfdom to the unhappy lenders!

You may, as Camus did not, imagine it doesn't matter; but cold steel in response to your philosophic flamboyance does make a difference, as does spread atomic radiation for that matter.

Camus is interesting. Seeing existentialists more as indifferent accepters of the meaningless, he however for his part felt keenly about it; though the value of feeling keenly about what is not there is hard to find. What is important for us here is that this is one more of the multitude of philosophies and political enterprises or both, which has loose ends - things that do  not match or catch. You get that almost automatically and certainly these abortions of logic are most vulnerable to it when you have a model which does not explain or meet consistent criteria, or cover all the facts. It becomes a mere source of mesmerism for a mess.

Consider Camus. IF the model that seems to grip him were right, then WHY and HOW rationally be so affected by misery; but since as we have so often shown, in terms of the Bible perspective as right, the OMISSION of its personal and creative side is the predictable reason for Camus' irrational impasse. It is the verification of the impasse reached when there are no roads. On the other hand, it is this power of the Bible to explain not only facts but why confusions arise, rather like an X-ray but far more personal, which is one of its uniquely consistent features, a point to which one will return shortly. It validates once more its identification and verifies its words.

Again, Descartes for his part felt there was a truth (correct, without it nothing can logically be affirmed, and this is as shown in the 242 volumes connected into one system with many aspects on this current site). Once located once connected in that sphere,  one could look for all the ramifications. Yet as to thinking,  whatever he thinks he is, this depends on the truth.

That is the first question, and leaving it out does not help, the residue being worthless waffle, logically disconnected from a workable model. IS there truth ? If so, proclaim and attest it. IS there no such thing ? In that case, disconnect from all discussion, since you CANNOT be  speaking what does not exist, and have had a suicidal beginning by your own will, to argumentation. You have pre-selected a worthless and defeated model at the outset.

It you follow reason, then there is work involved in these things, adequate work for adequate results, which must be available; but of what is not there, NOTHING is all that can be confirmed, either now or at any other time.

NOTHING IS NOT SO  CREATIVE AS ALL THAT
BUT RATHER THOSE  WHO MISUSE THE TERM

 Irrationalism is not a logical position; nor does it abide with the DNA of life, which is so rational as to astute and brilliant as well, constructed with a sophistication which amazes the mind and makes one see, if in  pursuit of what is logical, something of the labour and profundity put into this 'simple' thing called lif. That however is mere initial arena; life also has in its human phase, its mind and spirit additional, for all indications can be, self-deceptively even, denied by mind and furiously fought against by that  staggeringly free, and sometimes deliberately nonsensically deluded spirit of man in his desire.  Delusion can become a way of life as the Bible has long told us, and one's eyes may find (cf. II Thessalonians 2:10).

Here as in so much that is volitional in mankind, if you  ask for it, you may indeed get it, and if you DO NOT LOVE or RECEIVE the truth, being caught in some spiritual spasm of wilfulness, possibly built on self-interest, then the result may be an INABILITY to find it, like a knot in a tyre, leading to greater wear or explosion.

You can invent systems to insulate from truth, political or psychological, but NOTHING will ever insulate from reality; it is by nature obtrusive. It is, after all, what happens... It is always best to begin with the preliminary exercises so that you may find the magnitude of your origin, and so be able to handle the artistry and majesty and wonder and utter brilliance  put into a series of related entities called the universe, and so not be constantly seeking to account in terms of yourself, for what is beyond you as basis in yourself. As you are not the basis, self-chained models must fail, as they do, vague and vagrant philosophies for millenia the attestation in detail of that fact. Moreover, failure to start with what is adequate to account for all, is by its very nature merely making a contrived and self-contradictory model.

It not only fails from the first, but all through has profound dangers of superficiality and reductionism, or often a convenient mental spasm to avoid personal responsibility for the mode of your relationship to reality, like it or not. Logic is found in you and outside you, in form and formulation, with valid and invalid modes, and is not limited to you or your own special internal order.
 

NOT ALL INVENTORS DO WELL

Men are so apt at inventing logically unfounded systems and models for the pleasures of the subverted, vaunting, taunting or covetous mind, that whole wars can be fought, with millions of men KILLED in foul circumstances amid vast and relentless seeming suffering, with some of these nostrums and notions at the base of it. Examples include these wrangles and tangles. WHO is the greatest nation, or may justly lay claim to that, or which is most to be feared, honoured or respected, or who has best grabbing rights for lust. Man is lost, until he finds the truth, and ceases the  rabid seeming nonsense of affirming that THEY have it, in a model where it is not present. Why affirm what you deny ? Why choose the ways of infantility ?

Neither was it to be  faithfully found in the mode of Orwell's ironic 1984, nor Hitler's 1945 nor Japan's 1941 nor the Ottoman Turks lavish displays, when they lost them and were made mere suppliants without power, nor Russia's wild spree in torture in a specious heaven promised, which was not there, and offer of freely given land, which for many turned out to be  labour  into death for lack of food in Arctic wastes... and this, to utilise remaining strength most economically as the tortured drank their non-celestial political drugs, this too sometimes forcibly. If there was wickedness, it would be wrought, as some would never dream of performing on whales or birds; and where there was preposterous pollution of body and mind, there were often there marks from Marx, prelude to the beast and a fastidiously careful prelude.

NOTHING works  but the truth; nor could it. It may work to your detriment or your triumph, but it works; it may work for your downfall, but it works. It has the floor and opposition to it is rather a means of postponement of destiny, which swallows up pretence (Lamentations 1:9, Isaiah 14:24, 48:8,15ff., Jeremiah 6:15, 23:20,32:35, Proverbs 1, Ephesians 1:11). It is stark when reductionism is trusted instead of the One who provided reality in our realm, from Himself. The omission of logic involved is like going for a three day hike in the desert, without even  thinking seriously of ... water.

It is when you find the adequacy, the unique adequacy of the Source, Eternal of mind and matter and spirit and order and law and endurance and time, space and other orderly penetrated stations of operations, together with that of their multi-dimensional mode of co-operation, the operative rationale, then you are in the midst of an open door, or at its opening. However, it is not enough to regard it. You need to go through it, to where it leads; or would do so, if the human spirit was not so ruined by unrealism and fetid imaginations and lofty ideas without a Maker or Producer, which as noted, have nothing to them.
 

THE TURMOILS OF UNPRODUCTIVE PHILOSOPHY
(Colossians 2:8)

That of course is not productive to follow. so we turn to the Eternal, Adequate  Something, equipped with conception, logical brilliance, speech and understanding, necessary to make understanding things and to  allow operations within them such as man continually essays WITH the same kind of power as now installed as part of man, a productive source physically, psychologically, metaphysically and discursively in the equally logical universe.

Indeed, both inanimate nature and human nature have this installed, and are so mutually operable.

 Has God left man in this ricocheting mess, His formed and created pieces of equipment by the billion, in life and in man, amounting to billions of units of almost incredible miniaturisation, as Dr Denton points out in his Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, and of correlative co-function. To be sure, He has allowed the Second Law of Thermodynamics to be  correctly formulable, for as He said long before it was discovered to be in operation in its field: the things made will wear out, the heavens and the earth (Isaiah 51:6, cf. later Matthew 24:35). God knows: He says; it happens.

That is a good and distinctive as well as decisive fact. In SMR for example the matter is traced vigorously and justly to its conclusion. The Bible alone either reveals or gives the principial basis for all the tours and contours one needs in order to understand one's own  case, that of one's own race and that of one's own universe. We are  not deluged with incomprehensible data, since we are made to be able to search, test and research; and many delight to do this, as a dog loves hunting. It is for many, an inborn enthusiasm, and numbers, indeed squadrons who are not professional in the matter still cast fascinated eyes on it, in whatever disciplined domain of thought and trial and estimation, and confirmation or otherwise may be involved.

The Bible alone having this facility under test or even supplying anything remotely like the adequately testable, that is, open in that category: it therefore is open to man - but his mouth is not forced open to  receive it. That magnificent gift of liberty enables even this. Man may learn to hate the logic and testimony within and without, because it interferes with his bravado, braggadocio, cunning, unjust lusts, callow plans or callous collages for himself or his race or wife or children, and each of these may move in the same direction. Again, man may seek to erode the abundant evidence of curse whether in clever reminders such as flies or mosquitoes or army ants or locusts, such as Pharaoh felt for the purpose of rebuke: constructions against vanity and profanity alike, pointers to clash and correction, as are various of the fragmented mentalities often found in the mind of man.

Yet it is there, in the model, part of it, not involving as does the nothing crew, self-contradiction and fundamental antinomy, far less antithesis (cf. Sparkling Life in Jesus Christ Ch. 4 and SMR pp. 92-96 - A Simplified Schema). It leaps from logic to Lord in creation, information, validation and verification*1. The basis of all existence is not lacking by some 'higher power' which, if so,  would merely exclude Him from being God, a mere creation. That is using one model in another and logically disreputable, as well as confused. Use a model, and keep to your track.

There is none trifling in this way with man; but the sole recipient of test challenge and verification confrontation AS the word of this Almighty and Originating God, is the Bible. It stands as did Christ; and it is never disfigured, but stands. For that matter, Christ though set to bear sin in galling death, neither failed repeatedly to predict the resurrection of His body, which would follow in three days, nor did prophecy (Psalm 16). Instead, He broke all restraint and breached death itself by rising from the dead, having died the just for the unjust (I Peter 3:18).

Never could any
match His relentless power to heal and raise the dead,
as shown in His three years of famous, unfailing ministry as Messiah.
Nor could anyone at all
march HIS remains in victory parade,
ANYWHERE; for they were not to be found

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even in the wealthy tomb plus garden where they were conspicuously placed;

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even with a guard under duress to keep the corpse in place,

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even when the power of the Roman Empire and of the Temple Guard
were tested,

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even with over a thousand years notice given of the intention of God when this predicted crucifixion (Psalm 212, Isaiah 52-55) would occur,
to bury death in its own coffin, for believers,
since for them He had paid its due and just price for sin I Corinthians 15,
Hosea 13:14).

Instead He completed the founding of the Christian Church and participated in intimate fellowship with His disciples, arranging for the Holy Spirit to be sent shortly after His departure (Luke 24:46-49, Acts 1:7ff.; John 16:7).

Hence there is neither space nor grace for a dependency, or therefore inadequacy or therefore a motion to obtain more to be more complete in anything, relative to the Deity. He has given both life and correction, and offers healing to the heart.
 

WHAT MAY BE DONE IN ITS WONDER IS DONE ALREADY;
WHAT MAY NOT BE  DONE WISELY, IS ADHERE
LIKE FLIES TO FRAGMENTS OF PHILOSOPHY.

As the Bible notes, God so LOVED the world that He acted decisively. It is His nature to be loving (I John 4:7), and to be grasping would be contrary to His necessary greatness and sufficiency. You cannot tele-psychiatrise God, but you can see the least logically He must be, to gain the results both in reason and in practice that He has, and to hold the position we have found He necessarily holds.

In this decisive action, He incarnated His Eternal Word, as Jesus Christ. It is He who willingly gave His life as a sacrifice for sin, and death for what warrants it, offering eternal life to all and rendering it to any and all in our race who trust and prefer Him to all the revolt and rebellion against Him, in which i n its sad sighs, this world lies (I John 5:19, 1:1-4, John 3:16-19, 5:24). Despite this, much of it continues in its indifference or scorn, vainly seeking some continuing existence, though every moment remorselessly it seems to warrant woe  (Matthew 24:10-15).

We are not part of a social prosperity zone, where ostensible reality has nothing to do  but to make up our mad schemes of self-sufficiency and make them work, when the nations are in fact far from it, and wallowing in unwisdom, in the main thrust of manifold lusts outside Christ in our race. Rebels have options at best, and when these come, as the prophet Isaiah was inspired to point out, it is a case of seeking the Lord WHILE HE MAY BE FOUND. It is a matter of calling upon Him while He is near. He is not a suitor for ever, nor is His call endless, for the spirit of man would fail before Him, man not being fully durable (Isaiah 57:15-16).

The first step is repentance, before judgment institutes its final assizes (Luke 13:1-3), and the next to trust in Him, leading to regeneration, since He who made can remake (John 3:3ff.); and thus the payment to redeem made, the acceptance may duly follow, and His loving desire (as in Colossians 1:19ff.), be met. He Himself is also met in a way fitting to what occasioned Him such loss, and us such gain (Ephesians 3:14-20).

One hopes you have, or have had, a good meeting.

 

NOTE

*1 See Secession from Supposition Ch. 9 for method and meaning.