THINGS LITTLE AND LARGE

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THINGS IDLY LOST

DIVINELY FOUND,

RESCUED FROM THE CONTRABAND

Rev. Dr. Robert E. Donaldson

Published World Wide Web Witness Inc.

November 2012

ISBN 978-0-9873360-6-4

PREFACE

To be clueless is never to be desired. Clues abound. They cluster. They insist. They get up and speak, even shout, concerning the Lord and His Christ, Jesus. Logic acclaims; history verifies; man writhes and God provides, and the two, far from normally, may meet, resulting in peace.

The things amiss may be small or large, and the indications of truth come to some through one obvious channel or another, as the Spirit of God enables the heart, sometimes sulking in blindness, sometimes blazing in desire. The phases of our history in which men dabble, as they look for inspiration or sight or understanding, are many, some of these fraught with delusions like army divisions, raiding the countryside of the life of man, some with outstanding occurrences which are normally in the end, not heeded, so making history.

It is not that man is bad at mathematics or ungifted in engineering, but in seeing the truth about himself, he has a sin problem, profound, and potentially fatal. Indeed, it would be so now if it were not for the mercy of God.

Idly lost is the divine provision, magnificent in magnitude, splendid in heart, but not abating for the sake of convenience... Divinely found are many from the maelstrom; and in this field, where many like lost lambs, bleat helplessly or in pure frustration at their lostness, and others like rams line up with something to smash into, the unspeakably OLD word of God continues, present from the first (cf. Barbs ... 17). Itself never wandering nor distorted to the last, it has the message the same, from the heart of the same God who made man, who has made himself contraband by cleavage. The content of this gracious message has grown in grandeur, the scope of this word in detail, but it has not altered in theme. It has made wonderful provisions, but with the same principles. It has dealt with many departures, as of run-away children, but it has the one recovery, alike, for great and small, and it shows in things great and small likewise.

Where light is sought, it is readily found; and God is that light, and Christ the light of this world, without whom, there are various more or less gross forms of darkness, unimportable as such, into the kingdom of heaven. It is necessary to look up to where it is, to enter (Isaiah 45:22-24, John 3), to be saved by grace, and to be guided by it, from God, for God, to God, through His appointed Saviour, who brings to man the amazing fact that the One who made us WITH words, has words for our souls too!

But then, He is liberal in grace and plain goodness: He is like that.

CONTENTS

Chapter One

PAIN, SUFFERING AND EVIL

Revised and Extended

Chapter Two

WORLDS APART

The power of God to salvation is not the power to judgment!

Chapter Three

WORLDS APART

Part II

Choices, christs and chalices