JOY OF THE LORD

IN THE APOLOGETIC ORCHESTRA
 

Includes brief outline of the 183 Volumes
outside The Shadow of a Mighty Rock (trilogy)
and survey of significant historical developments and perspective  in this phase of apologetics

Since The Shadow of a Mighty Rock (SMR) was published in August 1992, a 2nd Edition of the trilogy has been placed on the Web, 1996 - one first created in 1994; a 3^rd Electronic Edition in 1998, and finally 180 other works, including the Index Volume have likewise been created, the whole presentation on the Web estimated to be over 58,000 pages and 23 million words. The total of the volumes is named, In Praise of Christ Jesus, now in its 64th Edition, and appears on the Web, but pre-eminently in the CD-ROM which includes musical, artistic and lecturing features, with correlations of the spoken and written word.

In all these things, as the matters have been dealt with and written, it would be less than candid if it were not gladly acknowledged that as author,  I have been aware of a help from the Lord of creation and salvation, the Lord Jesus Christ, so intense, so reliable and so available, that it has been a delight, a privilege and a profound mercy. As His servants, in this small part of His kingdom, as in any other, in His light we see light, and He sends forth His light and His truth and leads us. As with the Israelites leaving Egypt, so with His people today, He is a tower of strength and His power is invincible, His grace is sufficient, and if we suffer, what more beautiful than such a cause as His. This is empirically the case, operative by faith, the gift of His grace.

Accordingly, this provision is made that others may be helped, who on the journey in or to the Lord, have occasion for such a ministry, as, seeing Him who is invisible, we occupy ourselves until He come.

A brief overview or CONSPECTUS of the total of these apologetic works, this library of logic concerning the Lord, or task force of testimony, may be of interest or help to some, and hence is here provided.

They represent one instrument in the vast apologetic orchestra attesting the Bible and the Gospel therein contained

as the indubitable word

of the logically indispensable and

evidentially pervasively assured God Almighty:

the book He has caused to be written.

As far as this particular instrument in the Apologetics orchestra is concerned, which the Lord has enabled one to write: Like the piccolo, this is intended to be precise in sound, penetrating in character. This has a place in the music set to the glory of His majesty.

In fact, the systematic refinements or remodellings of Biblical, Christian apologetics have been proceeding in particular from a Presbyterian source with some vigour over recent years.

A) The Princeton-Westminster Seminary axis. This was a development in history, when the latter seminary began with a core of staff who left Princeton following the betrayal of its Biblical basis.

At first at Princeton, and later at Westminster Theological Seminary, Professor J. Gresham Machen brilliantly exposed exegetical error, ignorant surmisings and the basic immiscibility of theological liberalism with its confused cohorts of unbiblical assailants. In his numerous books, these were shown as misusing the name both of God and of the Bible, in inventive excursions more properly the subject of new religions, which he showed, they were. As such they lacked logical and historical base. As "Christian", equally, they lacked integrity and realism, being alien, parasitic, enshrining popular thought with no ground for ascribing divine origin to these shimmerings on the lake of human history. The Bible remained indispensable, immovable, unique, superior to syncretism, sui generis, supreme.

Cornelius Van Til, famed Professor at Westminster Seminary for many years in this field, also a rather prolific writer, has been most effective in the systematic demolition of all that is not Biblical, showing its invalidity. He has perhaps been rather less notable at the construction level, finding what IS inevitably the truth. It is a gap rather than a necessity to which he positively points. This is important not only from the point of view of comprehensiveness, confirmation on ALL sides, but in dealing with Judaism and the Moslem ideas.

B) Dr Francis Schaeffer, with another but slightly different kind of fame, has a similar or perhaps less extreme imbalance, though he has much lateral detail in attestation of the truth, which is of profound interest and significance. These two, in this field, have adorned the century.

C) Professor Gordon Clark, a Chairman of the Philosophy Department of a major U.S. University, and a Minister in one of the Presbyterian denominations, inclines to more highly developed system in a number of areas, but goes too far in his disinclinations in some directions (Three Answers, One Answer Ch.   6, The Glow of Presdestinative Power Ch. 1), as in his disaffiliations of reason, as illustrated and exhibited in SMR, especially in the matter of Zeno (SMR pp. 291-292). His elegance of form however is exceedingly useful.

• These things of much value are past.

A development has come to be needed
in the present, to provide emphasis
for the following features.

• Hence our

Library of Christian Apologetics.

 

1) What is it to do then?

In view of the gap or hollow seen in A above:

Demonstration of the actual truth is thus needed,
and specifically provided, step by step, LATER RATIFIED PHASE BY PHASE.

2) On the other hand,

the danger of determining truth

with human invention,
and hence "moulding" it

by erratic, errant arrogance

or blind subjectivity must be removed.

How?

By first identifying its necessary source -

irrational invalidity the only alternative,
a denial of the conditions of discourse -

and then reading what is there DELIVERED -

that is demonstrated to be the Biblical revelation, which, in addition,

precisely defines its own nature.

Necessarily the word of God, as first independently shown, it then speaks for itself!

(See SMR Chs.1, 3, incl. pp. 315Aff.,
and That Magnificent Rock, Ch.5, Validity and Invalidity.)

89 further features follow, to cover the provision in all, of about 10.7 million words on the topic of Christian Apologetics, written both for the glory of God and with the aid of Jesus Christ, whose power and grace do not vary.

3) The enormous SPREAD of Biblical basics and relevant doctrine and data is given so that all may be verified, where, as very frequently, the divine disclosure and exposure earlier made, permits this at the present time. The word of God like any other word is testable; in what it is shown to be and in what it freely admits for testing, it has its distinctive force and sublime integrity.

Hence the reference to "all the prophets" in Luke 24 should be met with a study in which every book in the Bible is cited, with many hundreds of references of various kinds declared, demonstrating the quality, precision and scope of a work proven earlier in the trilogy to be the word of God. Thus the honour due to His name through His word is expressed. There is simply nothing remotely like this provocatively plural and fearlessly precise series of integrated, synthetic, salient, particular pronouncements, prophecies and analyses, with which to compare it.

As the word of God, this however is precisely what it would be expected to declare. The superlative would be expected, in such a case, to be the norm; and it is. It needs however patient exploration in detail; and this is therefore provided in various and varied dimensions.

4) In terms of SCIENTIFIC METHOD, there is thus needed an extremely varied verification - intensive as to the qualitative attestation of the work - the Bible - extensive as to its coverage of fields of impact for its words: this in view of its extreme claims (Isaiah 41,43,48, Jeremiah 23:21-29, Amos 3:7, II Corinthians 10:5, Romans 1:18-20, Acts 1:3).

These in the noted contexts make it clear that the challenge here pondered, and noted as met, is of the Bible's own making. We merely remark on it, and then proceed to demonstrate that what IS claimed, inordinate as it is, is what is FOUND. After all, what is co-ordinate with God? only pride and pretence, and that is simply fiction. In this area, however, we have opportunity to VERIFY this at the level of precise method.

5) The challenge which must be paralleled by the scope of the verification presented, for such a work as this, also involves fields which without being predictive per se, are in CONFLICT with other treatments of them; and in this sense, the verification is to show that the PERSPECTIVE and PRESENTATION of the Bible in fields such as evolution, physics, philosophy and so on, is confirmed with a limpid solemnity and rational imperturbability in the midst of the rash and varying fevers of opposition. 3500 years do not make a difference; whereas in science, 35 years may be decisive for the rejection of much.

6) Where it is PREDICTED PRECISELY that alternative and hostile presentations will be made, and these are made, then there is verification in the COMBINATION of verified presentation, and verified prediction of the nature of the hostile alternative which was to come, in this, that it has come! (e.g. II Peter 3:5, II Timothy 3:5; cf. SMR p.873).

Atomic bombs must show their power in more dimensions than one, in that there is a vast physical spread and involvement; and so with the word of God, and much more so, it exhibits with a coverage consonant with its claims.

7) More particularly, it is shown that the Bible provides a level of scope, detail, calibre, quality, persistence and consistency both with facts and with itself, not only in minor detail, but in perspective, and all this with a unique, enduring, logical viability. That is companion to its exclusive logical validity (e.g. That Magnificent Rock, Ch.5).

8) In terms of method, whereas Van Til intended to use Hume on Kant, as a ferret on a rabbit, here both Hume and Kant are demolished each apart, leaving a bold necessity, already shown, continually fortified at all levels, in a systematic manner. Covering the case on all sides, a nipping of the 'promising' hopefuls in the bud proceeds. The prevalent cankers in each such systematically aspiring 'alternative' selected are shown in particular, while their generic source is demolished in overview.

9) Similarly, reductionism needs to be and is exposed at many levels in the process of positively demonstrating and then verifying the Bible as the word of God. Once again, this needs to be undertaken in a scope suggested by the amplitude, the immense fields of declaration found in the word of God: exposed seriatim.

10) In all this, it needs to be and is shown, that there are

just as many rational competitors

• a) for the place of the Bible as truth written,

the pronouncement alone of the Almighty to mankind, the race, in words,

for ANY sustainable place in the thought of man re origins, reason and destiny -

as there are

b) for the place of Jesus Christ as the LIVING word of God, express and incarnate definitively:

• THAT IS, NONE! Upon analysis, it is found to be a case of no contest.
  
  (Cf. SMR Ch.6, Appendix C etc..)

Living and written word of God alike,
these stand as solitary as the Statue of Liberty
in their perfections, isolated by grandeur.

There is demonstrated to be no rational alternative in either case. Further, the two, the living God incarnate and the written word, are mutually supportive and complementary, intimately associated; and they give mutual attestation. Jesus Christ and the Bible given through the Spirit of Christ who in due course became incarnate (I Peter 1:21-22, II Peter 1:19-21, John 15:26) arise like a soaring star, immaculate, higher than the heavens.

History is as supine before the facts as is reason itself; and therefrom is the enduring giggle... albeit it a grave one, a sombre smile. And that? It is that God duly announced some 1000 years ahead of time His plan to raise His Messiah, His Christ, bodily from the dead, and to exhibit that body to the saints in the very face of the alienated powers of this world (cf. Psalm 2, 16, 22, 72, 110). To this He progressively added.

Was it not to the honour of flesh that it disprove God in so simple and so well attested a plan, when a millenium of notice was given? (See SMR pp. 936ff..) Was not the objective great enough, was not the opportunity wide enough!

Was there not time to prepare? Let us take an example.

England had spies to help Drake know of the advance of the Spanish Armada. What if they had had 1000 years notice however? What if Spain had GIVEN it, and then won! That would be a high order of demonstration of power and competence, fearlessness and inordinate superiority. In fact they lost, and England FOUND out their plans and apparently watched through spies and reported their progress. In fact however, by contrast, Christ won with a millenium of notice, leaving the ungodly opposition in confusion and impotence.

The flesh as always in the end, has no honour, and in this and all similar extravagant seeming opportunities provided by the Almighty for His exposure, all that is exposed is that He never misses - no, not once!

That again, it is what you would expect; and just as it needs verification at multiple levels, so this is therefore done. Indeed, it is formally demonstrated - with verifications merely an additional act of conscientious completion - that whether reason be in the dock, to use C.S. Lewis' famed phrase - or more specifically Jesus Christ or the Bible, there is mutual and immovable attestation not only of the truth of the word of God, but that all other approaches, foci, functions, witness, ground or basis than that manifested by Jesus Christ and the Bible are, and must be, false.

11) In particular, CREATION is examined, as a specialised example, in a particular focus on scientific method, as likewise is the whole structure of evidence. It is a specific feature of this work that this mode of thought, currently so popular in the mouth though less so with the practical pen of would-be practitioners - is shown to give wholly exclusive support to creation.

In particular, the nature and definition of creation and life is extensively examined ... since, in science as elsewhere, it is always useful to know what you are talking about. This involves a different level of thought, but in this work it is conjoined with the prior, pure demonstration of logic, so that all may be seen coherently in situ, and together.

A work of 4 volumes, a Tetrad, is devoted to dealing with such areas. A further volume is devoted to SCIENTIFIC METHOD as such.

Now we pass more particularly to the relevance and scope of works other than the trilogy.

12) As to CREATION, in That Magnificent Rock, Chs.1 and 8, this approach is carried somewhat further, and the presentation is set up to enable more ready appreciation by the cursory reader. In Ch.8, it is extended and applied to a practical outcome in what is called ... education.

Ch.7 of the above work supplies - along with SMR Ch.2, and Extension E, Ch.4, the Supplement to Ch.2 and Ch.3- further expression from the modern milieu of the startling fantasies of shipwrecked unbelief, stridently but pathetically piping up its cause as the ship of specious and misused reason finally sinks, gurgling without life boat or any support. If there is hilarity in the effort, it is a grim one.

At these and other levels, the stages and phases of anti-verification of non-Biblical approaches are examined to preserve the overall scope of the work, and to help create an awareness of the profound and pervasive emptiness of thought in what is elsewhere more formally discredited.

Thus there is a continual duality of method, the pure and the applied, with a synthesis of result in unity.

13) While That Magnificent Rock  is the major systematic accompaniment to SMR, its Ch.5 being an excursion further into validity, showing its perfection and unique sustainability in Biblical terms over all other works, there is also a stable of other running mates, with added attestations and confirmation, with exposition at various levels.

14) The Other News - The Celestial and the Terrestrial  is largely an applied work, and has much verification at this level, constantly contrasting the ephemeral unbiblical follies - babbles, Babels, of modern man with the effective and practical validities of the Bible. The enduring news on the one hand, and the current items on the other, are related as reality and distorting images, the latter both expressing and articulating the nightmare follies of the fabrications of man, when given legs. Vision and vitiation in this way are here constant partners.

15) In Questions and Answers - The Word that Speaks, is another applied work, assisting readers to see point by point the intricate reliability, coherence and forcefulness of the Bible's teachings; and it has therefore some relationship to SMR Ch.7, though it is more a fossicking and a ferreting of issues that attract special attention.

16) Predestination and Freewill (with Supplement, The Father of Freedom) exhibits the staggering fact that ONLY in the Biblical presentation, itself gloriously consistent and harmonious within itself, is there found ANY logically sustainable answer to this whole area of freedom responsibility, sovereignty and individuality, necessity and autonomy.

The sheer beauty of this field is like the roses of the garden bower, wholly in keeping with the rest of what the Lord supplies in the Bible. It is this sustained and uniquely sustainable reality which is the constant attestation of its truth: not only that this alone is verified, but that it is SO verified, has a verification with such innate charm and delight, so inwardly attesting as well as outwardly alone able to stand before all assaults from reason. Indeed it fits reason like the hand of a friend, as if to say, "And whose reason IS reason! Who is ITS source?"

To this field, a HEXAD or work of six volumes is devoted.

17) Biblical Blessing - A Walk in Christ with the Wonder of the Blessings of the Bible is a more personal expression of the wonder of the God who spoke man into existence and spoke then to His mind and heart. It applies the Bible to individual life, showing its origination of a whole scope of precious provisions, such as becomes the Creator-Redeemer. For the receptive mind, this provides much in personal alignment.

18) A Spiritual Potpourri is something a little akin to a Digest of topics to enliven the heart and deepen the mind, with special features within the fields of creation, gender and aspects of salvation. It alerts to a fascinating spread of what goes on in this planet, relative to its source, its origin, its procedures and of course, its destiny, to which it thunders like a wild colt, though alas, face it, it is growing old. This work helps to avoid the mere swamping of culture and returns to an application of truth to life which is neither dependent on man, nor foreign to his needs. This done, it enables review of the total competence of truth, and the sheer delight that is available in life, if only it were placed where it originated. As to that origin, its certainties are all the more shown.

19) Barbs, Arrows and Balms - Alerts,Warnings and Blessings: this is like a lively spiritual scalpel, but one probing the mind, the heart and presenting with care the essential findings from the word of God as it proceeds. With the severances comes the balm, and with the balm the blessing.

20)  Repent or Perish - A Survey of Doctrine and Life with a view to the end, an eye to the beginning and meditation on the mediation which brings the one in good place with the other.

21)The Biblical Workman - Finding out what the word of God says, avoiding traditionalistic accretions, erratic erosions and innovative flirtation which puts the old love on an equal footing with the new, it looks at the truth in the only way that fits: without flinching, acknowledging the duty as Paul put it, to avoid all that handles the word of God deceitfully, now a major occupation and even pre-occupation of this generation (cf. II Corinthians 4:2, II Timothy 3, II Peter 2).

22) A Question of Gifts brings back distorted unbiblical extremism, often found in this area of spiritual gifts, to its source, the Bible, often wrongly claimed for what does not arise from it at all. With express avoidance of the merely reactionary, whether on the one side or the other, it distinguishes Biblical teaching here from contemporary cultural conformism, which may present itself as the word of God, in the very act of contradicting it. This enables clear understanding instead of warped ideas that can defile truth whether this way or that, and so confuse response to it. On the other hand,

23) The Kingdom of Heaven, the Love of God and the Spirit of Envy - with Other Essays and News... looks keenly into the depth and scope of what the Bible sets before us, and marvelling, aloft at the towering Tree of Truth in its beauty and proportion. It seeks to provide for a more substantial grasp and appreciation of the Truth for the people of God.

Things topical and typical unite to display that Christian living is no mere philosophy, but a pageant of vitality and a challenge to purity in the power of God. Pilgrimage is not a modern term of delight but it is a result of being in a heavenly kingdom in an earthly setting, till the roll is called. There is a beauty of life as well as a beauty of truth. Provision for youth is made at the end.

Thus the hope in this book is to help open the eyes to more of the beauty, wonder, virtue, depth and loveliness of what is true. In this it runs counter to decadent disillusion and cynical subversion alike - the causes AND the result of which are making contemporary mockery in practice of what mankind could be. That however is an option, not a necessity. Truth liberates, and it is available. Its liberating power is one of its attestations, in that it is adequate for mankind, when ... embraced to the heart, in Him who said, I am the Truth...

These aspects are no less verificatory of the ultimacy and adequacy of the word of God than any other, less personally penetrating field. It is all of one.

24) This stress on the positive -

by contrast with the pathology of departure from God, our Maker and Saviour - on the constructive in both senses,

is maintained not instead of, but in conjunction with necessary negatives. This is to offer positive health as well as the 'negative' removal of cancerous spiritual tissue, malign to holiness as to health of heart and of mind.

The benignity of God is so profound, that experimentation with folly, for which this generation is so famous, tends to clog and pollute not only the atmosphere of this once blessed planet, but also to betray the vital, moral, psychic, sound political, industrial, educative and therapeutic phases of the life of our race.

If this human race must go rather than endure in peace, pursuing its humanistic racism, its racist humanism, its secular squalor and unspiritual pride (II Timothy 3:1-7) - and that in very large measure will occur as does all else that the Bible affirms - it is good that at all those many levels: then

it should be helped to see, and see now, what is missing, before all is lost; while to the glory of God, the way of truth is shown, attested, verified and confirmed in every way and on every side. Meanwhile, reason is reason and faith is faith, and they are not the same. Many, bankrupt in reason, follow the passions and desires of the will with results not unlike those rebelling against wise parents when young, but now eternal: and on this see Rejection Syndrome in the SMR Index. (Cf. Hebrews 4:2, Isaiah 41:21-23.)

If this Library should help any to dissolve doubts, resolve tensions, be open to truth and above all receive the Lord Jesus Christ as pastor, prophet and King, Lord and Saviour, as the very personal and unique definitive expression of God in love, in human form: it is well.

25)The intention, far from unnecessary offence, is to liberate towards truth, to heal or help to find healing, to deliver those oppressed by what is often devious and deplorable confusion, sold to mankind's damage and eventual death - if and where still outside Christ. This sale is at immense cost, therefore, as well as being that of poison exquisitely prepared to dull, damage and kill the initial vitality which God as a gift supplied to our human race. The gift of God, the gift now of eternal life, freely received, is the alternative!

God is shown willing to supply again for those who have, with others, lost their spiritual inheritance: to provide in redemption and for ever. Yet few will be the takers. When lost man, however, puts up his head from the mere oblivion of his own thoughts, and declares what is the truth, it is not merely a categorical lie, for without absolute truth, both there and communicative - none can have it,

but it is also a proud presumption (cf. SMR p. 100 and Ch.3) .

Why? It is because man playing God is not play, and not divine. It is not a role to be assumed. Its results populate (in thought) and depopulate (in bodies) the earth. It has never worked, never works and will never work (cf. SMR pp. 601-631B; 580-594; Ch.4).

On the contrary, this apologetic library is to show that God who has expressed Himself in man's creation and for his salvation (John 3:15-19) is indeed love (I John 4:7), that justice and truth are the foundation of His throne, as He says, and that mercy goes before His face (Psalm 89), His uncreated and eternal word expressing Him

in a symphony of salvation that is

envisioned from eternity,

articulated in time (Hebrews 1, Isaiah 48:16, Ephesians 1:4, Romans 8:28-30)

and experienced in the verifications of life.

To reject that mercy, that kindness in Jesus Christ is as inexcusable as it is fatal, as morbid as it is spiritually carcinogenic. To fail to tell this is unhallowed, to resist or reject its telling suggests a hatred of humanity and love of illusion so profound that the ultimate categories are indeed invoked! (Cf. Jeremiah 5:29-31, Luke 11:52.)

Better to reject air from the lungs than this same Jesus Christ for the spirit and heart of man (John 15:21-23).

It is in this spirit that all this is written for the glory of God - who IS glorious, and the deliverance of those oppressed that the joy of the Lord their Maker, may be their strength, and that they may find this, "Christ in you the hope of glory" no more just a phrase, but a dominant feature of a liberated life that knows God not in divorce but in devotion.

Finally, let us reiterate that all the above plus further sound, lectures and music, pictures to aid in
the production of a sort of cathedral of expression of the testimony of, to and for the Lord Jesus Christ, Lord of glory, crucified and bodily risen, to return, is available in another format. It is that of CD-ROM, where an easily obtainable disk will enable low cost consultation without internet expense.

Robert E. Donaldson Th.D.

January 1999 and February 2000
 
The tally for this set: In Praise of Christ Jesus is now 160 volumes, with major sub-sets noted in

SEARCH.

 

Later Developments -

1) March 1999 to December 2001

Twenty seven more volumes of great variety,  were written in this period, to which the index volume may be added.

26) Scoop of the Universe

This has a wide-ranging coverage of News, making the second news volume, and draws on the depth of the Biblical witness, to show these things as verifications in detail, in trend, in thrust, in blindness or in divine accomplishment. Prophetic events thundering onto the scene, have long cast their shadows before them, allowing us a more leisurely appraisal of what was long foreseen in the divine witness.

27) Joyful Jottings

 The thrust of joy in the Lord that may be felt and known in the midst of His service is here focussed, with much concentration on little things, and great - such as a whole review of some of the great Messianic Psalms, which stand like granite amid the littleness of menial things in a stricken world. The century about to expire is looked at, and the wonder of the divine glory is focussed.

28) Benevolent  Brightness or Brothy Bane

This is the 3rd news volume. In particular, the dire alterative courses are studied in some of their principal phases. The divine benevolence is not evacuated by the human folly, not scarred is the divine heart nor marred His beauty of holiness. Glorifying God in the 20th century is pondered, with some of its scrap heap material, carnal junk such as mistaken views on the animal realm, the creation reality, while the divine symphony from above is traced from the Bible, and perceived over history, as it is being heard also on earth.

29) Stepping Out for Christ

The necessity of severance from many things, ideational, educational, cultural, social, is gravely considered, together with the splendour of the knowledge of the Lord to whom one must turn; while a number of allegorical dialogues occur, allowing a critique of some of the more ephemeral but deadly additives which are so popular that it is almost as if all thought is stifled, hope made vain and life aborted in the carnal caves of modern man's secular and often frothily religious lurking. The creation is considered, with emphasis on

• the second law of thermodynamics,
• the logical base beyond that, and
• the empirical foreground now being so amply and rewardingly studied, as the race comes near to its finishing line; as is the resurrection in its precision and power.

That power is not shelved. The Biblical statements in their simplicity as often, in their severity of definition and their particularity of pronouncement are considered in many fields, and their utter accuracy and irresistible truth appear with delight.

30) The Index Volume - this provides both for topics and Biblical verses, an extensive index, in 6 segments: one is trilogy's topical index, one its extensive if not exhaustive Biblical text index; then two more concern the A-J part of the topical and Biblical index for the rest of the volumes, and the last two, the K-Z section in parallel to that.

31) Lead us not into Educational Temptation! This is an exposé of the work in an important Victorian committee realting to education, which proposed a new religion without bothering to say so, for intrduction into the schools. Perhaps they did not even realise ... What one MUST realise is that this is in precise conformity to Biblical prediction and a delightfully near to inconceivable fulfilment of its assigned trends.

32) Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming...

This volume sets in high contrast the apathy and ignominy of this world's thought and the imperious and imperial surge of reality, which does not brook ignoring, and is making its presence felt in the predicted ways. It is because the Lord is indeed meek and lowly, that the thing is lost on many, their sins shouting where He speaks. Nevertheless, the end of the Age is surging into the stage by various announcements, and exposures, unheard by the dead. The laws of science now so exposed, and the laws of the Lord are a special area of concentration.

33) Refreshings for the Digital Millenium

As the name implies, this brings out the contrast between the toils of this benighted world and the joys of the internally active, eternally objective God, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, whose activities are as alive and beautiful as ever, like a never diminishing spring. The love of God is a special focus.

In all these things, the answer of reason to the certitude of faith is the apologetic thrust. The reason for the faith is always present as the Lord always makes it present, through this system or provision or that, developed or presented, there being no limit; assaults, invalid from the first, are overthrown to the last; and this, it is never exhausted, which is the nature of truth, always victorious, as Christ was, in meeting any kind of challenge; and indeed, it is because of Him, alive for ever, that this is so. His word is under His guarantee, and all imaginations against it are as dust (cf. Jeremiah 23). The diplomat at work in the name of deity is infinitely beneath the deity. This does not alter the claims put forward in the latter's name or His power to meet them by any method which He chooses. Thus we proceed here.

34) The Frantic Millenium and the Peace of Truth

Although the book is not now still growing, the whirlwind of history is. The frantic millenium provides the keenest opportunities for contrast with the serene certainties of prophecy, the published word of God and His peace. Although it mounts its evils, like feckless and reckless artillery on a city wall, turned upon itself, it does nothing to remove the resilience of sin's remedy, Jesus the Christ. It is the heavenly Jerusalem in which there is peace, and on earth, the city of truth, whose citizens are His, and of which the captain is Christ the Redeemer, who is also its foundation and author.

For more detail on contents, see the itemisation in LIBRARY, and of course, in the prefaces of the individual books, available through library.

35) Acme, Alpha and Omega: Jesus Christ

There is so much. There are so many ideologies of hate, lust and political pride, including the pride of internationalism, which is human race pride, as intense and thirsty for glory as ever any of the other have been. Amidst the vanity and emptiness of its overweening ambitions, there is one whose ambition was to die for sin, whose glory was to be given it from the One who sent Him, and preceded His lowliness by eternity. The study of His word, in this world, constantly unveils the splendour of His conceptions, the moral integrity of His passion and the capacity of His sovereignty to proceed without pulse or tremor, to the end. Its terminus is its inception, His eternal word, who came as Jesus Christ.

36) Tender Times for Timely Truths

There is a time to ponder, to dig deeply, to be encouraged, to gain perspective, to remember keenly that the Lord is personal, dealing with persons, and to heed in receiving His goodness, wisdom and word tenderly, knowing that even in correction there is love, and in soundness there lies growth. Topical, devotional and verificatory, it seeks to bring help in personal and contemporary affairs, from the word of God.

37) Answers to Questions: Drama, Dramatics and Delight

This volume consists in answers to questions actually asked. The first three meet vigorous attacks on the Bible, in the domains of morals, miracles and the trinity, almost precisely as posed on the Web, and there answered. It shows the dramatic realities of the Bible, the word of God, like David before any Goliath, sweeter and more substantial than anything which can be offered in the level of harassment, assault or the bombs of belittlement. It moves over these like a tank.

For this we praise God, who is alive, and who gave His word, which lives, and His Son, who was dead, and now lives for ever, routing death, bearing sin for His people, and coming to reign.

On that topic, we then proceed in the last Chapter, in some depth and detail, to answer the question posed in II Peter 3: Where is the promise of His coming!

In Ch. 4, we look at Christ's own question: Ought not Christ to have suffered and afterwards to have entered into His glory ? The answers to these questions, with their source in the word of God and their parallel in history,  can enliven the heart; for the answers lie in the Lord, who in none of these things is dormant, but dynamic and delightful.

38) The volume, News, Facts and Forecasts, published September 2000, has four chapters dealing with music, myth - biological and philosophical - and symbol, together with the wonderland of theology and a recent assault. It proceeds to a detailed coverage of the topic of the return of Christ, with many facets, and onto many modern issues in their Biblical perspective. For detail see BULLETIN 1, and for more on this, see Library. Further work in preparation, see Bulletin, and currently Bulletin 2.
 

39) Things Old and New - Love with Mercy has Acted

Multiculturalism and sophistry, God's critics,
sedition by sects and other aspects of old novelties in new clothes,
with no small touch of Australiana

THE EMPHASIS IS ON OLD THINGS, NEW FORMS, ONE UNALTERED TRUTH

40) It Bubbles, It Howls ... He Calls

Here is an exposé on the Middle East crucially, with some parallelism to her neighbours near and far, and much differentiation: each in different respects.

The intense pathos, drama, gravity and portent is pursued in detail.

January 2002 ...

41) Divine Agenda
Published January 2001.

This brings to vivid and graphic reality much of the present, its principles, practices and developments, with special and particular emphasis on the ordering of events on an agenda, n9ot human but divine.

42) Galloping Events
Published January 2001

The sheer exuberance of current and contemporary movement in the predicted parade of events is dolorous to the unsaved, but a ravishing display of divine power and precision to those who know the Lord. This requires watchfulness both of the text of His word and the triumph of events. It is stimulus to the unsaved to find the Author, whose mercy is mixed with the medley of events, by His word; and to the saved to rejoice in God their Saviour.

43) Little Things
Published February 2001

The exquisite felicity when the divine is the author, constrainer and creator
beyond the muddle of sin, the miasma of doubt and the machinations of evil

Such is the discernment and infinite understanding of Christ the Creator with the glory of the Trinity, Himself a member, for there is no other Creator but God, that seemingly little things can broadcast the fame of His name, His attention to detail, show the wisdom that invites, and attest the Lord who alone is Saviour.

WHEN GOD IS THE SOURCE, EVERY LITTLE THING COUNTS
We are saying it with centring, because it is so easy to overlook ... little things.

44) Pall of Smoke and Diamond of Joy
Published March 2001

Contrasts, complementarity and beauty.

45) With Heart and Soul, Mind and Strength
Published April 2001

The kind commandment: to love, but how it searches!

46) Licence for Liberty
Published May 2001

The Parade of man and the Power of God

For other dates of publication, and further access to each volume,  see The Site in the City.

47) Ancient Words : Modern Deeds
Published June 2001

For events good or evil to those who receive them, the ancient words of the Book of the Lord
are competent, unerring in aim, immovable in entitlement,  and as to the directions of this divinely ordained book to history, they are recognised without tremor or turning.

Meanwhile, comparisons of things past and present in this context made for enlightenment both directly and indirectly.

48)Beauty of Holiness
Glorious Light Amid Uncomprehending Darkness
Published July 2001

49)  The Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet

       Prophecy: A Light in a Dark Place
        This World: A Dark Light in a Place

Published August 2001
 

 50) Light of Dawn

the gentle unfolding of light
untouched, untarnished and pure

Published September 2001

51) Lord of Life

The Lord is the Light of my Life

unphassed, unfazed and unfading
Above time, beyond time, in time
always

Published October 1,  2001

52) Red Alert in a Grey Day,
with the Bright Light Coming

The title is rather self-explanatory.

Published October 26, 2001
 

53) More Marvels from the Majesty and Mind of the Almighty

Published November 26, 2001

This includes some rather intensive scriptural study.

Apologetics must know of what it speaks, and those who pursue it are bound to the knowledge of the word of God, just as those who study the creation must find the data in their field. The holy and happy harmonies of these fields are only advanced by knowledge. Here, it is the former which is our main project.
 
 

January-December 2002 ...

15 new volumes have been added in this period, making a total of a 57 volume monograph, intra-systematic, correlated and very slightly revised from time to time. Not intended as a series, it simply develops as the Lord enables and enlists for service, and constitutes one single whole.
 

54) Deliverance from Disorientation

This has much to do with Daniel, a book which neither does not need change, the world which both needs to and does change, and the culmination coming as addressed in Daniel, which does not change, but will arrive without haste, or delay.

Published January 2002

55) Highway of Holiness, Path of Peace, Way of Truth

Here we examine motivation, purity of heart, reward and reality; and then proceed to a compilation with some extension of the works on this site on the prophecy and prophet, Daniel. His impact is far vaster than many realise, his attestation of things divine bearing imprint of amazing conspectus and clarity, testable, verifiable, verified, inspiring, humble, hallowed, not hollowed, proceeding from God, for God and bringing with it, many hearts of joy on their way.

Published January 2002.

56) Sparkling Life in Jesus Christ
 Published February 2002

This is a volume of sharp clarity, dealing with issues from the Biblical Canon, to World Politics, from Cloning to the Millenium, Creation, Man as purposive, and the Clarity of the Bible. Its message is constantly this, that if you want more than mere effectuality, but certainly not less, if you want not a dim flicker but sparkling light, it is to be found in one place only, the word of God, living and written, on display and without rational competitor, or alternative testable revelation for man. It deals with man as he is, leaves nothing out, puts nothing in, and exposes him, vulnerable as he is, to the light which also has "healing in its wings", when it is received. That light is Christ, immutable, immiscible, unrelinquishable to those who know Him, irresistible to logic, the rock which crushes what rejects it, and needs it as all men do (Matthew 21:44), but is a secure ground for those who find in Him the truth.

57) The Impregnable Tower
Published March 2002

In this volume,  the words of Micah and Zechariah concerning the Tower of Strength, of the Flock, are pondered, and Zechariah, over some 60 pages,  is expounded under the thematic note, The Messiah in Zechariah. Historical phases, current and ancient, are considered as we progress through the swirls of contemporary events, fulfilments and fiascos, all in the light of the word of God, which nothing of these things in the least degree has snuffed, is capable of snuffing, or even makes to flicker.

Quite the contrary, the more the morals of man flicker, the less the word of God concedes; but the more man looks to the Lord, the greater the opportunity. It is not gone. It is now for man or nation, who looks where mercy and power is to be found, purity and truth, in the word of God, in the living word of God, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

58) Cascade of Truth, Torrent of Mercy
Published April 2002

With much on the Middle East, Current News, Prophecy and Predestination in a personal sense as well as doctrinal, this gives you something like an aerial view, your airplane cruising not far above the tree tops as the end of the Age comes like a magnificent promontory to the gaze.

59) Red Heart, Dead Heart and Pure Heart
Published April-May 2002

Conspicuous confusions, profusions of prolixity and cordons of righteousness: they do not agree, but all are present. The world is setting on its business of severance from God at prodigious pace, but the connection is ineradicable, indefeasible, ultimate and righteous; and thus the effort is not only not feasible, but delinquent, abasing to man who is seeking to exalt himself, and fatal. There is however a far better way, far more clearly delineated, more conspicous in its attestation, coherent in its affirmation, which alone stands, and standing acts.

It includes "Homage to Perfection" and the apologetic significance of Psalm 73. Haggai's "Desire of the Nations" is also surveyed. The current political confusion on Israel is also a major focus, in several chapters.
 

60) Regal Rays from Revelation

Major Matters in the Book of Revelation, and on the Impact  of Revelation

Published May 2002
ISBN 0-9580787-3-4

In this volume, the Book of Revelation is given focus, materials on this site being collected in order of Chapter, to give a series on this prophecy of John. More material is added, and the work commences with some scrutiny of the Middle East imbroglio. Various aspects of divine revelation cohere in this conspectus of considerations of the power, work and will of God, both in history and in writing.

61) Trust God, Mate! Forget about 'Fate' ...

This work specialises on the decline from trust to 'fate', that fortuitous or banal concept which evacuates from the divine realities, and sadly faces the consequences, unaware that it is in fact a deviation from responsibility, a departure from God which induces the illusion of 'fate'. Nor is it entirely without background, when the Lord is mocked by such penury of logic, and projection of evil into inane philosophic concepts. Like chaff is the wicked blown (Psalm 1), whilst the Lord KNOWS the way of the righteous; and who IS righteous, but the one to whom the gift of God in Christ is applied, donating the truth, covering sin and clothing with a righteousness far from merely academic: it is brilliant with the dew of truth, happy with the life of God.

62)

Secular Myths and Sacred Truth

published June, 2002

ISBN 0-9580787-8-5

Here, amid current news, is the evacuation of secular myths in favour of sacred truth. Naturalism and other fancies are replaced with reality, the hollowness of humanism with the holiness of deity, and the landscape changes. It looks and is far more wholesome not to say beautiful, without the pock marks of adventurous, dazzling meteorites, which leave holes and dirt. Its past, present and future meaning is then apparent in that far greater adventure, the history of man in the word and works of God Himself.

63) By this stage, we are able to engage in more review, covering in scope many things fashioned earlier, to the applications desired. We move often with news of developments in the world that moves like some crooning singer, ever nearer to its audience, but in this case, its audience of judgment from God. Naturalism in some of its evocative intransigencies, especially in Britain where it is considered in terms of 'The New Vikings', child training in Australia, the movements to the international aggregations of political power, the journalistic depredations on Israel, the blind spot in the Middle East, yes the double one, the significance of artistic developments in Russia to the phenomenon of water in the Bible, and its spiritual implications: all these things are covered.

In all this, the key is the consequence of sin and the advent of the beauty of the Lord, in stark and solemn contrast, made available at Calvary, wrought by the Spirit of God to this moment, and brought into life by abiding in Him, who did not fail to abide His own mission of redemption, resurrection of His body and demonstration of His power, that to the simple, the Gospel might appear, and to the truth it might declare itself - yes Himself, saying THIS IS THE WAY.

64)

Earth Spasm, Conscience Chasm: and the Renewal of Life

Published August 2002

ISBN Pending

This is a varied volume, in which the clashes of fiction with fact, delusion with faith, reality with pretence, virtue with vice figure; and it has its historical study, intensively in I and II Kings with special reference to Elijah and Elisha, their words and ministries. These are taken in a survey of scope in the mighty works of the Lord, their significance, their consummation and the perspective of divine intervention in natural affairs.

The concept of Nature is examined, and the supernatural is seen in terms of scientific method, in the actualities of creation, as in the Bible itself.

This is a volume of oversight and insight emphasis.

65)

Jesus Christ: the Wisdom and the Power of God

Published September 2002

ISBN 09581449-4-X

The power and the wisdom of God is too much forgotten in the slime-covered chains of naturalism. Those who break free are at times in danger of forgetting the simple fact that GOD HAS POWER, that it is available for His mission and purposes, that it is not another way of seeking pleasure but of securing performance in His love for His mission, church and word, that men, women and children may find Him,  and in Him that resource, recourse, resourcefulness, wit and wonder that the waterfall merely suggests, the mountains intimate in their beautiful massiveness and space recalls in its majesty and grandeur. He has made these. It is vital to know Him, and hence time in this volume is given to history, focusing Kings and Chronicles as well as more recent times, to the testimony of Jesus Christ when on earth, and in the whole panoply of the divine revelation. 

 

66) Calibrating Myths, Machining Dreams and Keeping Faith

Published October 2002

ISBN pending

Man is bent on his own way; secular, transvestite man, is seeking to clothe himself not with merely male garments, but those divine, and this Age is awaiting the coming pseudo-apotheosis. In this, the Satan, that master change-imitator charlatan, leads a man to conceive of himself as God, with this difference, that he has POWER over men, to a limited but still spectacular extent (II Thess.2:4ff.).

This is no mini-explosion of human ingenuity awry, such as gas bombs, radioactive contamination, modified crops, genetically engineered, flowing about the earth with the wind, inadequately controlled or understood. No, it is categories apart from that; for here comes that finale of presumption, the acme of arrogance, that dim brilliance to which modern man for so long has been tending in his forsaken and misused systems of  psychiatries, sociologies, histories, biologies, undistinguished events in metaphysics (cf. SMR Chs. 3-4), where theory dictates to fact, and fact refusing to fit, makes the secular preachers all the more vociferous, as if their very loudness would abash.

Since, however, they deploy themselves in many but far from all academic posts, there are many who heed instead of thinking; and the marvels of nothing making all, the material inventing the mental, or the spiritual, or these thinks in succession, but first of all itself, though it shows no such capacities, and if it had them, could not have used them before it was: this is ‘cool’. Indeed,  this sort of delusion has become almost as simple as breathing to the artfully deluded and the spiritually concluded. The great mercy is that a new commencement can come to any of them by finding the Saviour,  and many of them do just that, thanking God for deliverance from such mesmeric obfuscation; but more do not!

The calibration of the dreams attending these delusions is one of the major comedies of all time, as if a bankrupt were spending years of time enquiring about the most sophisticated ways of storing his millions, when alas, he is broke. The machining of dreams leaves them small and fluttering little things, piled on the dump truck of history for reprocessing, in the manner normal in secular history, and philosophy. The measurement of the unknown is not a practical joke, but one of the major emphases of geology, for one (cf. TMR Ch. 7, Section E). The measure of man himself is always being vied for, never agreed upon, and never could be, without the truth, since God is not duplicable, and His image is from Himself.  No genome is available for Him, who makes, but is not made, who composes the things, necessarily in His status being eternal, self-sufficient and free (cf. SMR  Ch. 1,TMR Ch. 7, Section D). As Christ put it, “Before Abraham, I am.”

Considering some of the major misconceptions of our Age and observing their consequences is a grievous task of pathology; but since it may awaken some, and encourage others, to find or to advance in the faith of Christ, it is provided here.  

 

67) Gracious Goodness and This World in Disorder

Disorder is rampant, the call for discipline is reckless, riots are a way of life, death squads a form of existence, as Revelation 6 comes into full force; yet this is only a resultant. There is a cause of it all, and a compassion available.

It is prescribed, not negotiated. It is free, not meritorious; but its results are delightful and its dynamic is divine. Patterns in the muck are noticed, power over the resultants is discerned, provision continues, and the destinies speak volumes, indeed these are already written, like the rest of the scenario’s outline, in the word of God, who makes mockery of guru pretensions and fulfils ONLY His OWN word. No one else is God; no one else can do it. No one else is you, and no one else can answer for you: except you become Christ’s. Then He by His spirit is your governance, as in millennia past, and He by His resurrection is your way-shower and by His cross, your barrister, Himself the payment; for there is no death in Him.

 

68) No Thanks for Angst!

The Truth is Alive, Resurrected and Written

Considerable exposition of biblical passages is to be found in this volume as we see the governance of the word of God. The whole modern phenomenon of angst, in strong accord with the astonishingly majestic, extraordinarily direct and wholly reliable predictions of the book of the Lord. How incisive His ways and how verified His word, which sits like the spiritual sun in its glory, shining and revealing, in light dazzling without the softening glory of the Son, leaving nothing to itself, exposing all things.

In this volume also, there is opportunity to trace the reply to a questing soul, and to ponder how elegantly sufficient is the work of God, how clear His word, how alive His salvation, like riding in a boat on the waves, with the fresh keen salt of reality and the wonder of the disappearing blue, which yet is there in the distance, after the droll indifference of this dreamy world.

 

PUBLISHED 2003

So far, since January 2003, 14 books have been published.

69) January

 

Dastardly Dynamics, Delirious  Daubs, Wandering Woes, Bleary Theories and

Immovable Faith
 
 This nest of the topical, the current, the newsworthy, the blend of the ancient and the modern, the scriptural and the contemporary, and the application of the former in the domain of the latter, keeps you up to date as the Bible lives on in the history God has prepared, commenting before it comes, advising after it is here. It includes answers to questions, both provided to the author, and as old as the days of Paul.

 
 70) Published Jan 2003

ISBN 0-9750303-3-7

59^th To Know God, the Power of Christ’s Resurrection and the Fellowship of His Sufferings

In this work, the title delineates the topic, always keeping Christ in focus, without whom is no good thing that lasts, for He who is equal with God and from eternity, alone can bring to it in peace. In this volume, Job is given substantial treatment with special emphasis on suffering - in 3 chapters, as is the unity of the faith over the ages. The book of Acts is also summoned to attest these things, within its first 12 chapters, whilst Daniel too comes to the bar; and the trilogy of knowing your God, receiving and using His power for His purposes and the value and victory of sufferings in His company is focussed constantly.

 

71)

60^th volume

Published Feb 2003

ISBN 0-9750303-5-3

Great Execrations, Great Enervations, Greater Grace

Diversity in the current contemporary period, intensity in scriptural applications, and investigation of the theme make of this a pathway to thought, challenge to faith to expand and appeal to those who do not yet know their Creator as the meaning of life, the purpose of destiny and the Lover of His people, to review their needless omission, lest it become reckless as well.

 

72)  61^st  Marvels of Predestination and the Ways of Will

Published March 2003

ISBN 0-9750303-7-X

This compilation is rendered from various of the published works on this topic written earlier, with addition and development where this seems apt, allowing the reader to visit topic-wise, in different dimensions with comparative ease.

In yet greater scope, we see the ebullience of these concepts of predestination and will from the Bible, their integration in themselves and their application to reality so broad, so efficient, that the source of this biblical revelation is once again attested in the marvels of coverage which it provides, leaving nothing out, embracing everything, but not with clammy arms: rather with an integrity both personal and unchangeable.

 

73)  62^nd Of the Earth, Earthy, or Celestial in Christ

 

I Corinthians 15 has some wonderful contrasts: the first man, Adam, the ultimate man, Christ the Lord. The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.

 

Now we are finding the funding of nearly everything imaginable that is earthy, worldly, carnal, rapacious, insolent and demanding; and hearing nearly everything that is raucous, obtuse and insurgent, from bin Laden to Communism, from Islamic submission requirements of those subordinated to these false lords, to the arrant yabber, deemed funny for some reason, of cartoons which reduce man to a motivated, moulded relic of a meaning no longer to be found.

 

The celestial is abused, its name debased whether in the slaughter of people in shopping malls because somebody called ‘Allah’ allegedly wants it, to the devising of means of allowing what destroys to become the lord of what builds. And what sort of destruction would that be ? That is what the Bible has long called Apollyon, the devil, whose varied functions include accusing the brethren (normally falsely), contesting righteousness, inducing fear of death, alienating from God, inducing to love the means of life more than life (‘Mammon’), tempting and corrupting. He can come dressed in flowing white robes which do nothing for his heart, but much for those whom he dupes, surrounded with flowing verbiage, elevating himself or his false prophets to the heavens, while his ways are earthy.

 

These two courses, those of the bacteria and those of the body, those of the creation and those of the desecration, they continue parallel for a time, until the judgment. In biblical words, these are the wheat and the tares of Christ’s parable in Matthew13:24ff., which grow up together until the harvest, by which time … they are readily recognised.

 

In this work, contemporary events, biblical exposition and in all, application for Christian Apologetics abound.

 

 74) 63^rd  The Heavens are Telling

The Beautiful Face of Biblical Predestination

It is many years (now about 39) since this author first wrote the Master’s thesis on Predestination and Freewill. In March of this year,  a second Volume was composed, largely of works on this topic, and applications and developments, since the first work.

Now, a little later in 2003,  it seems necessary to present a third volume, to make a trilogy on predestination and the ways of will in the whole field of man, liberty, law, licence and responsibility. In this Preface and in the Introduction to Ch. 7 there is some new material, which may be of special interest for those familiar from times past, with these uncollected items. .

In this volume, there is emphasis on the nature of love, and further exposition on error which has deceived many in the church, for with excellent features from some, there has yet not seldom been conflict for many. Instead, as always, of such things,  the only solution, and from the point of view of Christian Apologetics, the DELIGHTFUL solution is to return to the Bible and  see the MINE from which sometimes the mimes have been taken, see the realities too often ground  down from their original setting to banal substitutes. In this volume, this is done.

It is ONLY THEN that the wonderful exposure of the force of the divine word on this topic can be appreciated. So far from being some strange or exotic kind of concept, predestination with its intimate and ultimate companion, divine foreknowledge (biblically defined) is utterly necessary, wholly harmonious:  and this ALONE has these features in the whole field of discussion about freedom and power, force and liberty, determinism and voluntarism. What would one expect ? that philosophy would open its mouth and infect the biblical doctrine with some SARS ? Alas, it has nothing to say to the point, and its morass in this field is one of its historic vulnerabilities. On the contrary, the Bible presents a definitive mass of truth which is coherent, and sound, rational and internally consistent,  as well as ample to cover the empirical world.

Not merely so: alone has it the ingredients to make POSSIBLE such a harmony. We have seen much of this in Volume Two of this predestinative trilogy, that is, Marvels of Predestination and the Ways of Will.

However in this volume, there is emphasis on the particular wonder of the divine love, which is the paradigm, the power and the precept, the personal reality without which man does not and cannot live. He constantly WARPS his ‘love’ into nepotism, or family limitations, or political or personal rampancies or passions of this sort or that, not allied to that kinship and kindred compassion and relationship which in absence, creates such a draught as to create a kind of terrestrial pneumonia, with high temperature, hot breath and pallid face. Such is the affliction of this earth, at war with God, in its basic premisses and many of its most illustrious premises.

The beautiful face of Biblical predestination however shows, in its setting in the jewellery of His word, a beaming loveliness which never fades, never shades, is perennially bright.

 

74) 64^th  The Christian Pilgrimage

From Grace Triumphant to Face Divine

ISBN  0-9750778-3-X

Here you see aspects of the Christian pilgrimage, with special  attention to Timothy. Its beginnings precede time, its end is with Him who made time, and you may come to Him at any time in this Age of  Grace.

You may be defaced, outfaced, or prefaced in your actions by your way of facing things, your reputation, your character, speaking before you come. People tend to grow in the expressive result of their lives, stooped and sullen, sad and contrite, quiet and reflective, frustrated and patient, or whatever the mark might be.

For the Christian however, there is the pilgrimage. It is not, emphatically NOT, a matter of visiting some town famous for this or that, no not even Jerusalem. The cross of Christ was programmed in heaven, performed on earth, and its contribution of action is past; only its application continues into the future. It is the One who died there, whose face beckons, filled with character, essentially in repose, but lively in light and radiant with beauty, the beauty of holiness (cf. Psalm  110, Daniel 7).

 

	In this pilgrimage, the defaced residues of the image of God in man are replaced by the new surface and the new character which it exhibits.
	Outfaced is the past, distanced is sin in its regal clothes and costumes; the face that shines is the One who came and went and returns.
	This lends light to one's eye, firmness to one's countenance, balance to one's responses, passion to one's drive, delight to one's inner resources.
	No, it is not a physical journey, though truly one's body has much to endure in the pilgrimage; it is a spiritual journey, just as an aeroplane is indeed  physical, but the one who LIVES IN IT, the pilot, gives its endurance meaning and its character purpose.

It is known to God before the Ages began, or the world commenced, prepared in His grace, and it leads to His face divine (Revelation 22), where the beauty of holiness is like air, and the individuality of His saved ones is like perfume from flowers crushed, for there is no sin left, and the water of life is pure.

 

75) 65th Victory
Heritage of Christians, Exile from this World

Published June, 2003

ISBN 0-9750778-5-6

How manifold are the victories of the Lord, and they need examination, itemisation and consideration, appreciation,  application.

 

In contrast the world has nothing to offer but defeat, more palpable as its own mismanagement of the creation which  it loves to disaver, inexorably proceeds. The stultifed human pseudo- 'creation' to come is a mess, but the Creator has a better way. The personal application of victory is examined, and a substantial allegory completes the volume, outlining the heritage of Christians, that exile from this world.

 

76) 66th ALLEGORIES, APOLOGUES AND ACRONYMS
              Imagery with Verse for Christ the Lord

ISBN 0-9750778-7-2

It appears that the many allegories, apologues, acronyms, pictures in words, plays in scenes, animal speakers, dialogues and presentations for the imagination hitherto presented on this site,  might be put together in one book, allowing comparison and if desired, continual reading in one bloc, rather than through various labours,  to and fro with seekings in this and that chapter or work. Hence there is now presented this compendium, yes with some small additions, not entirely insignificant, but still in the very stream of the originals. Largely a selection from earlier works presented on this site, it is however set together with the initial conspectus provided in the Preface, to provide perspective. Moreover,  just as the groupings are significant, so the progression is deliberate, as item succeeds item.

Hosea 12:10 tells us that the Lord used many images, indeed that He multiplied imagery in speaking to Israel, and it may be that imaginative presentations may be helpful in this generation also. It is with the earnest, indeed ardent desire that this may prove to be so, that this volume of some 800 pages is presented.

SCALING THE HEIGHTS, SCANNING THE DEPTHS, SPANNING THE BREADTH: JESUS CHRIST HAS THE ANSWER

Whether you soar, or plunge, however broadly you span in mind or by sight, there is harmony, validity and resource, irrefutable truth and empirical confirmation in one place only; and however high you aspire to reach, or in whatever depth, the result is always the same.

The airplane of discovery makes only one discovery: Jesus Christ is the Truth, the Life and the Way. Electron microscopes of the mind, find it so, unrestrained searches of the spirit find it so, the testimony of the eye and the ear, show it so. The result ? fear God and keep His commandments, yes but far more.

The sacred fear, the clean fear of God is the beauty of holiness which as in a clean house makes it savoury and fragrant, but the house is built for love and truth, peace and labours of love, and the love of God and His truth are wedded, inseparables, and though often assailed, intentionally or otherwise by confusion, it is this love which has constrained Him to send His only begotten Son that WHOSOEVER believes in Him should not perish, for He did not come to condemn the world but that the world should be saved. GOD IS LOVE!

It is only when you take the word of God as it is, that you find the elixir of life, the full flavour of the bread of heaven, the sovereignty and the grace, the mercy and the breadth of His scope of love, and there is the glorious consistency of His word in all things, a place of delight for the alienated, of scope for the harrowed, of adventure for the still, of relish for the abandoned and of truth for the seeker.

Come and fly! come and sink to the depths in a bathyscope: it is the same. Jesus Christ has it all, the word of God shows it, and the ways of this world reflect it; even though that mundane mirror is shattered, it cannot quite separate itself from the light, which nevertheless condemns it. This, it is not the offer, it is the result of its reckless refusal. The glorious fact is that the scope of the divine offer and grace and love is as broad as mankind (Titus 2-3, Colossians 1), though the foreknown results of grace are as narrow as the way of the Lord.

130

121st

Published April 2006

ISBN 0 9758436 8 0

The Pride of Life, the Prince of Life and the Destiny of Man

These intertwining topics leave a vast clarity to man, a challenge, a confrontation, an opportunity, leading to all that makes man valuable, or to judgment for declining to receive it.

131

122nd

Published April 2006

ISBN 0 9758436 9 9

THE SPIRITUAL SAGACITY OF PREDESTINATION IN LOVE

FOREKNOWLEDGE AND CHRISTIAN FAITH

This is the name for the sixth volume in what is now the Predestination Hexad,
a set of six volumes in this field. It has grown from being the Predestination Quintet!

In this volume, there is much attention given to the heights and wonders of a freedom that soars, yet is not autonomy, a foreknowledge which selects, but is not a 'horrible decree', to use Calvin's term, a predestination in love and the simple  fact that these biblical concepts are an apologetic triumph for biblical Christianity, for the lost who seek and for the insecure who long.

They are drawn from several chapters in other works, published since the fifth volume of the PQ or Predestination Quintet saw the light of day, with provision for further additions, one more being presented with this publication.

Now, therefore,  it is necessary to change that name PQ  to PH, as in chemistry, where it refers to hydrogen ion concentration, the most acidic as ph 1, and the more alkaline assembling itself after ph 7. Here however, since this is not chemistry, it is a matter of PREDESTINATION HEXAD, for the latter term can mean simply a group of six. It is no longer the PQ. That is the new name for what is now a six volume set on predestination, freewill, responsibility, love, justice, judgment and duty.

132

123nd

Published May 2006

ISBN 09775556 1 5

CHRIST'S INEFFABLE PEACE AND GRACE
AMID THE SMOKING CANDLES,
FLAMING FLARES AND POLLUTED PRODUCTS OF MAN

Man in his own modes invites and sometimes even invokes blessing or cursing. His actions can appeal to nearly all the human race, as with Saddam Hussein, or Hitler, or Idi Amin, as being morally those to be despised, reprobate, ruinous, disjoined from humanity. What then is the humanity ? What is it that makes its discernments in any slight way, at least, valid ?

Similarly, the practical provision of aid to the afflicted often commends itself to the many, especially if through ignorance they suffer, or through a prize-fighting brutality of the oppressor. There is a sense of justice and equity which, however repressed or distorted into a shape convenient to lust or selfishness, still exists.

There can come the smouldering, smoking evidences of error, as with a smoking candle, the flaming flares of deserved evils, like darts descending on a spiritually slovenly people, or those who have swallowed some ideological potassium cyanide without even checking carefully the description on the bottle, or the site of the manufacturer. How often, afterwards, with a few millions of souls departed from their twisted bodies, or tortured corpses, they reflect on their errors!

Man's polluted products, whether in the appallingly horrible and grossly misnamed 'female circumcision', which appears an ultimate in masculinistic oppression and heartlessness, almost to the point of self-serving assault, if not indeed in some ways past it, or in chopping off hands for stealing, or killing for trifles, in mental mists of philosophical fog which obscures vision, till the next one replaces it, these seep in, and sometimes, as if preferring the maritime mode, roar in like giant breakers for which the surfers are unprepared.

Beyond all this, there is the alternative mode. Here a man does not rely on himself, or what others like him relay, on culture or on the current idiocies of thought which will be called so in a following generation, if one is allowed to come, but seeks his Maker. At that there are two ways: he may seek in a cultural vein, or a racist-self-realisation model for a working religion to get you places, or something to bring you advance without tears, choosing carefully as at an ideological super-market, or a pleasure tent; or he may seek God where He may be found. Here reason impels, sin lashes and truth drives. If a man seek the Lord with all his heart, says Jeremiah (29:13), he will find Him!

He is not far to find (Acts 17:22-31), and His word has penetrated all cultures, all ideologies, like light into darkness, being both verified, rationally inevitable and alone valid. All this has been shown often enough, but here we are seeing the applications among men, with special emphasis on the profundity of peace with truth, which God provides.

^"And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart."

Ch. 7 provides exposure of the rampant folly of the da Vinci Code ?
 

133

124th

Published June 2006

ISBN 09775556 2 3

WHAT GOD SAYS, GOES:
CREATION IS FINISHED, BUT GOD REMAINS

This is Volume 4  of the NOGO TETRAD,
THE GODS OF NATURALISM HAVE NO GO

The TETRAD itself has ISBN 09775556 3 1, as a set.

In this 4th Volume of the Tetrad, the work as assigned for the set is as before, in the Preface.
This last volume deals with matters of history both in the blowing of the soap bubbles of evolutionism, and in its entanglement with the partial destruction of the race, overview of developments and reasonings, practicalities and logical necessities, and is a book of review on the one hand, and application to society on the other.

134

125th

Published June 2006

ISBN 57755566 5 8

GRATITUDE FOR HIS GLORIOUS GRACE

The Signature Divine

Grace is a delightful thing; to be gracious is an attractive feature; grace with glory is to be found only in God, from whose heart it flows in brilliance unimpaired, in history unreceding, obscure to the obfuscationist, apparent to the purged - the lens of their heart made clear, the delight of His children, the hope of mankind and limit-free source of freedom, in that its love is to redeem what is lost, provide for what is fallen, seek out what is sunk and release what is bound.

It is not indiscriminate: nor is it discriminating in negative gear, but rather in liberality it is like the winds of time, the radiance of stars, coming not from an icy mass but from a spiritual fire in which no dross can remain, indestructible in it issuance, indefatigable in its realm, bringing in many sons and daughters to the family of God, with entry visas signed in blood, that of the Lord Jesus Christ: issued in pardon, conferred in love and confined to faith, in Him, whose image this same Jesus, God as man,  exhibited with illimitable fidelity, the criterion of infinity, the cure for infirmity and the ingenuity for kindly development, in the paths of duty and the ways of peace.

Gratitude for such a grace is often forgotten, when contention replaces conviction, aspiration evicts  reception and thankfulness disappears like a distant aeroplane on the merging horizons of time and space. It is the task of this volume to confirm on many grounds such gratitude, in the joys of such grace, and to commend the place of grace for salvation for the lost, join with the faithful in this response to Him who is divine and show that reason itself is as lost without such a response, as a tin soldier in a fog, heartless, little, misshapen in mischief, the dim core of what might have been a star.

Gratitude for the Grace in the Glory of the Lord

In this volume, in fact, there are three major stresses. The first is gratitude. To be grateful is sometimes hard for the proud; but in the kingdom of heaven there is no room for these, for blessed are the poor in spirit, and the fate of the proud, as in Isaiah 2:14ff., is not attractive.

HE DID IT: are we who are His not grateful. Is this not to be shown as gratitude is, in fealty and fondness, in joy and pride IN HIM! Is He not the One to be glorified, praised and forwarded, so that the salt is savoury and the light is radiant ?

The second aspect is GLORY. God is glorious, and the foolish efforts to achieve glory when it is not present, or divine glory when it is His, or to be glorified as man, when he is mere creation, is so inglorious as to be perhaps the most obvious noxious element in mankind, making him like a weed, a mere deception, acting like a plant, but invasive, infestive, meretricious and with a shocking smell. It is well to concentrate on the glory of God for it is inspiring, apt for His children to ponder, stirring to the depths and plants deeper depths even as we gaze upon Him (II Corinthians 3:18).

The third emphasis in this work is His grace, already given attention above.

It is not something achieved or deserved, not something grasped or deserved: it just is in His power and in His nature to dispense it, not to the noble or to the wise, not to the beautiful or to the most-performing artisans of devoted toil. It is given where it is received. HOW this comes to be has vexed the minds of many, but it need not. The scripture is perfectly explicit. GRACE is poured out, is effusive, for God WOULD HAVE ALL to be reconciled in heaven or on earth by the blood of the Cross and SAYS SO (Colossians 1:19ff.).

To be sure, man CANNOT grab it, by willing, for he is excluded by sin from perception UNTIL converted (I Corinthians 2:14). Nor is his will irrelevant, for this is the GROUND of exclusion in the face of the divine desire NOT to condemn (as in John 3:17). Indeed, it is the specially denoted REASON for exclusion (John 3:19), even in contrast to the stated divine desire for the world, on the part of Him who has given a propitiation even, not for us only who believe, but for the entire world (I John 2:2).

He does not PAY for all, for that would make payment ineffective and God a goose, and indeed those for whom  specifically He has been delivered up ALL go to heaven (Romans 8:32). He DOES however make a payment adequate for all, in sincerity offered to all, so that in HIS KNOWLEDGE (and indeed foreknowledge, not of our deeds or worth, but of the reception of His grace in His own discernment, before all time - Ephesians 1:4, Romans 9): it is given to the recipients only. Equally in His love, it is with desire, pressed on all (Isaiah 48:16ff., Matthew 23:37, Colossians 1:19ff., I Timothy 2, Luke 119:42ff., Jeremiah 48:30-33, 51:8-9,  Jeremiah 1-14 cf. Ch. 2).

Thus you CANNOT go to hell without this being deemed of your will,  by Him in HIS KNOWLEDGE (in the scriptural action and spiritual circuit,  as in Romans 8:29ff.): that you REFUSE or the equivalent, to receive Him, even the only Door to Deity, the Saviour Jesus Christ (John 10:9, 14:6, Isaiah 43:9-10).  To be sure it is He who performs the salvation on His own; but it is not wrought without respect to the grounds which HE knows, of the wayward preference, seen past history and time (Ephesians 1:4), psychology and human autonomy, known to God. Unlimited by sin in His sight, who bases it not at all on any human works, of will or other, it is no ground of merit, but an avenue of grace.

THIS grace is so pure, so lacking in limiting factors based on self or selfishness or mere plan or program, is so elemental, is so rich, is so vast in scope, rich in attainment in Calvary and all that went to prepare for that, that it is like teeming rain. Someone asks you, Is it raining ? has the drought broken. You reply: raining  ? why it is teeming, God be praised.

But HOW MUCH are you grateful for SUCH grace as this ? It is also elemental, as deep as life, as broad as mind, as high as holiness and as joyful as exuberance. It is like growth in Spring. You cannot contain it, for it is everywhere.

On such things does this volume dwell, and in such joy is it presented in the name of Him in whom one dwells, and who dwells Himself in one's heart (Colossians 1:27, John 14:20).

125th

Published June 2006

ISBN 57755566 5 8

GRATITUDE FOR HIS GLORIOUS GRACE

135

126th

Published July 2006

ISBN 09775556 6 6

DIG DEEPER, HIGHER SOAR. DIVINE GLORY DELIGHTS THE MORE

There have been vast passions roused to investigate the heights of the heavens, the depths of the earth and the sea, the geographical spread of the earth, the meaning of life and the place of man. Religions have spawned as if some great fish had nothing better to do than surround the maritime mysteries of the earth, with its variable but basically kindred ilk. 

We have in the preceding 125 volumes considered the realities of the truth, which is to be found in Christ Jesus,  and the need to avoid slimy much and slithery substitutes for spirituality, and the glory of God. 

In this volume, our task is to look deeper here, if depth may be found in this or that issue, and higher in the other place, if heights avail, and thus to show that the glory of God in these domains and lights is as delightful as ever, soaring with the heights, surpassing the depths, like a light in the oblivion, a guide in the obscure and a joy in the vales of misery which sin donates with the largesse of an emperor, and the perverted joy of a liberal misanthrope.

Here no less than in any other domain or clime available to man, the Lord in His blessed liberality provides wonder for those who seek Him, answers to address and grants to those who ask. His testimony is beyond the heavens, gives to the depths their very name, and removing the enchantments of dreams, provides the consistent reality of truth. His word is very strong, and nothing mars it; and though man marred Him when He came, this was by permission, indeed celestial edict, a predicted part of the divine passion to redeem man, now fulfilled in myriads of those to whom from the uttermost heights, this blessing to the very depths has come.

Nor did it come without pain, nor did it go without triumph; for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is merely one of His works, but it is the one which counts above all, since here is the future history for mankind, as many as receive Him.

In particular, three chapters deal with aspects of suffering and its revelatory rationale, the design for this; and another two cover the design for man, in which as individual or in group, he works as one designate, in rational relationship with the system of the lower creation, and spiritual access on God's own terms, with the deity Himself.

136

127th

DOWNFALL FROM DEFAMATION

DEGRADATION FOR THE HUMAN RACE
through DEFAMATION of DEITY, and
THE GODLY GRANT OF GLORY IN THE GOSPEL

Published August 2006

ISBN 0 9775556 7 4

Delinquency is not limited to adolescents. Adults can be quite good at it.

Nor is it limited to misuse of one's own life, or that of one's fellows. It can stretch to  malignity against God.

Delinquency against the divine is becoming an art form,  a propaganda thrust and an educational tool.

It is leading, slowly, quietly, but with more drama as the thing progresses, to the systematic downfall of the human race. This is not a lurking, surreptitious thing, but precisely as in the Bible, an open, a gay, a swaggering, a swashbuckling antic, with its own devious ways; and that there are outbreaks of inflammation and high temperatures, both literal and metaphorical, among mankind, this is merely a routine expression of the advancing nature of the disease.

It is to be expected, like boils in a system adapted to them at a given time; where they come  may be surprising, but that they come is not.  It is the same with a body infested with cancer: it may come in surprising places when it colonises, as it were, enjoying metastasis. If however the first line of abuse, as for example in excessive and careless sun-baking with a fair skin, is wrought, then the result may be taught. It has ways of its own ? yes, but not without ground.

When you misuse the fundamentals of life, it may bite back; it may in the manner of life, writhe and contort, like a carved up embryo, as may occur in that modern way of life which is abortion for convenience (it may sometimes actually be required for health reasons, or in rape and so on). The life being aborted is like the life being abused in one's own case: it may writhe and its various, magnificent controls being abused, like a steering wheel of a car caught in a rut, may themselves contribute to downfall. When you are not killing en embryo but your own like, slowly, there may be resemblances of note!

The defamation of deity which is one of these abuses not merely severs man from his source, but twists the truth, on which man's very existence as a spiritual and rational being depends, so that man is like a contorted embryo in these circumstances, wondering where next to wince.

In the face of such grandiose plans of wretched wrecking procedures, levelled ultimately against God but often deploying man's own equipment with a combination of vanity in the sense of empty folly, and that of proud self-reliance, on the part of this object, man,  neither free to determine birth nor death (except the latter in that way-out called suicide, the resignation of life, not its surmounting or joy): there is a case developing. There is a strident neo-image for man.

Its face is contorted. It readily runs amok, like the ways of Saddam Hussein in his torture camps, where allegedly people new to upper echelons might be brought in order to be taught immunity to compassion or revulsion  at the things done to the torture victims, and the quantity of death ensuing.  This procedure now being aggrandised and developed for man ? It is this.

It is defamation of deity by perversion, reversion, aspersion, distortion or contortion. This in the current volume will be one of the topics; but the glorious grant of the Gospel will be the way out, the way on, as it in fact is; and the way all this is to be brought together is a major feature.

Within this volume, these very things above will be rehearsed, DV, and the matter resolved as it must be, has been by God, and needs to be internally recognised by man.

137

128-129th

LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST
WHO ANSWERS RIDDLES AND WHERE HE IS, DARKNESS DEPARTS

Bible or Blight, Christ or Confusion:
The Comprehensive WrittenResolution of Man's Intractable Problems
is Found Only in the Bible, the Word of God

Published September  2006

ISBN 0 9775556  6 6

Two Volumes: Bible or Blight ISBN 0 9775556  7 4

                            Christ or Confusion ISBN 0 9775556 8 2

This is a comprehensive compilation with some additions, exhibiting in substantial detail the fact that the resolution of philosophic riddles, demonstration of creation and exhibition of comprehensibility, meaning and scientific integrity rests without loss in the Biblical depiction, or model. It covers life, youth, design, history, philosophy, science, meaning, man in an integrity which the world neither finds elsewhere, nor can duplicate in validity or verification. To reject it is not 'by faith' death, but more: it is to a contemptibility which awaits what awakens to destitution through will misused, and life aborted not in the womb, but in the way.

It may seem hard to some that truth is invariable and life a grant to be washed with grace and restored to the Maker in faith and gratitude, through His chosen way; but then each path in the brain is a chosen way, and each bone, each blood vessel. Life is by gift and by grace; and it is not a horror to be belched at, that the way home is provided, this also, but a matter for marvel. It is best by far to come home, for this is where the God of creation and the Lord of salvation is to be found. What logic requires is what love inspires.

It covers some 2.2 million words or 5200 pages.

137

130th

CHRIST INCOMPARABLE, LORD INDOMITABLE

Published October  2006

ISBN 09775556 9 0

This world has its flags furled, for its spur and saliency is smitten. It lies broken amidst its fallen dreams, futile ravings and vile ravishings. Its leaders are flawed, its fashions cry for lordship and squabble interminably, its prides are like lions on spree, its follies like children run amok.

Christ Jesus is unravished, unfallen, smitten but this vicariously, risen and that in the power of God, declared the Son of God, corporeally unconquerable, spiritually in peace, triumphant in mission, incorruptible in mind, tender in heart, willing in spirit, great in understanding. He is incomparable and as Lord He is indomitable.

Sin seeks to ravage His people, but He rescues; jealousy seeks to abase His position, but He stands, the Celestial Trade Towers that cannot be lowered, and His trade is in the souls of men, of women, of children, and for these HE pays; and His profit is not gain for coffers, for commerce, to increase Himself, already infinite beyond time and all creation, indeed as a member of the trinity, creator of all (Colossians 1:15ff., John 1:3). It is in purchase of what is smitten, in redeeming what sin has ruined, what life has grieved for; and bringing it to His own kingdom, where life and love, peace and duty, responsibility and realism mount like eagles.

His kingdom is not of this world; but it will at last demonstrate to this fallen world what righteousness is, not only as now, in redeeming freely what is lost (Romans 3:23ff.), but in showing in the glowing testimony of truth, what life is when it is founded in God, and the globe is ruled by it; and this before this whole world, a travesty of truth, though His light be in it, because of sin, is removed as II Peter 3 tells us, and with its works, burnt up.

137

131st.

JESUS CHRIST, DEFACED,  UNFAZED:

BARRISTER OF BLISS

Published November  2006

ISBN 09802972 1 4

There is about the majesty of God - even when it is tabernacled in flesh, tented in an envelope of protoplasm for serviceable purposes, yes for salvation for that element of His creation called mankind, which increasingly becomes less manly and less kind - something which never loses its atmosphere, depth, brilliance and impact of utter reality.

This, it is scarcely surprising in view of who He is: the Creator of all. Yet it is always astounding to see it actually happen before one's eyes, as one reads of His entry into this world and performances, His attitudes and principles, sagacity and insight, oversight and power. It is staggering that a man could be so endued; but not so at all, when one finally grasps the whole point: this IS GOD!

It is not some elevation of human desire, essentialisation of human thought, concentration of human philosophy, arrangement of human power: it is wholly other, not in the Barthian sense, as if it did not belong, far removed as that is from Hebrews 2 with its emphasis on the brotherhood and the Lord's taking of kinship with those in His image. It is rather in the sense of utterly devoid of pride, proficient in dominion and efficient in serviceability, integumental in meekness and illimitable in holiness. This, yes: but as a man!

Again, this is the whole point. Nothing less could bear the brunt of the deaths of millions of sinners, in justice to truth; and nothing less could bear up to the infinite God the race, that special people, who are that section of this human race, which is redeemed (has been, and will be as well).

We are thus to meet EITHER the fancy dress ball of human invention, convention and comedy dressed in the drab robes of approaching doom, well deserved and pursued as relentlessly as recklessly, or God. To meet God, you come where He is available, just as you do to enter a house, using the door provided. You do not rant and rave as if it were an offence to your extended sensibilities to have to lower your important or yes, even imposing self to the designated entry point. You just go there and enter.

138

132nd.

THE FACE OF GOD, ILLIMITABLE, UNFUNDED, DEFINITIVE, DECISIVE

Published December  2006

ISBN 09802972 2 2

There is nothing more important than this, the divine face, the face of Deity, the expression, definitive, decisive, clear and assured of God Himself.

With men and women, yes and children too, there is a face, there is a heart, there is a spirit, there is honesty or dishonesty with it, and knowledge or confusion with that, and there is articulation or the lack or muddle of it alongside. We have some idea, perhaps of the face of each, the expression, the meaning, the priorities, the pre-requisites, the motivation, the purposes, the ethics and the life; but there are many barriers to certainty, unless God Himself shows the case (as He did, for example, to Samuel the prophet, concerning the choice of David, the young lad whom he anointed to become king - I Samuel 16).

The Lord, He asserted, KNOWS THE HEART. He looks upon it, and sees what lies there. It is not a matter of appearance at all, but of heart. It is the same in Jeremiah 17:9-10.

Who, Paul pursues our issue, knows the man except the spirit of the man, at the human level ? Let us realise with what we are dealing (I Corinthians 2:9ff.). Similarly, who knows the heart of God as does the Spirit of God. God in His Spirit KNOWS, as man in his spirit is directly aware. Man in his face expresses (if by that you mean his expressive medium of which face is the physical counterpart) what he is. God in His word expresses what He is, and in the face of Christ Jesus, has expressed Himself definitively. That incarnate, eternal Word of God has thus presented definitively who God is. His words as Messiah are declarative, His face shows it just as His Spirit knows it.

In this volume, the ways of man before God, the ways of His creation are considered in the light of His face, revealed in His word and displayed in Christ Jesus.

2007

Nine  volumes by December, have been published.

139

133rd.

HOW GREAT IS THE GOD WE ADORE

THE WORSHIP OF JESUS CHRIST AS DEITY

Published February  2007

ISBN 09802972 3 0

The puny, pusillanimous, defective, de facto and not de jure, the premature, the immature, the merely quaint, the tittivating, the merely titled, these things may be; but they are not for adoration.

The novelties of imagination have their place, and great is the joy of creation; but when the innovative is the execrable, and when the focus is the foolish, then what does man become if not a gash in the cliff face, a vacuity instead of solidity, a ruin in the making to become a relic without joy.

Greatness is in the eye and heart of man, and it is often perverted to his own contemplation, or that of his family, society or mere ideology. People die for such things, vanity, association, respect. It may be of those who are themselves unrespectable, but their respect still enthralls.

Are you a GENUINE child-killing terrorist, who cares nothing for flesh ? Do you QUALIFY, do you have the QUALITY! Can you take the things needed to reach this social level of acceptance!

Such becomes a type of such human offerings to folly, misplaced adoration for what is contemptible, mesmeric motivations that gash into the heart of humanity, and collide with that of the Lord.

Saddam Hussein, we read, used to have close associates, or those intended for such honour, witness tortures unspeakable and death, in order to harden them and make them ready. But for what!

So does power and glory tempt man to become a horror, haunted by folly, of which Hussein was a symbol, for the sake of what ? Acceptance, with funds, paid perhaps as in one parallel case, for killing Jews, so much each, like buying deaths at a supermarket. How perverse are the adoration, the accolades and the abasement before what is base!

It is to God alone that such adoration is due, and since God has shown in only one verified way, where He is, it is to that way alone, that God-given wisdom turns. Who as Christ has been foretold, who as He has given all and had all to give, who but He and the prophets who foretold Him and the apostles who were His, has commanded history, and it turns at His word: His predictions in perfection, as was His life!

It is time to awaken to His perfection and to put to sleep in the psyche, the unruly menagerie of frivols that falsify truth and contribute emptiness; and to the study of such things we proceed.

140

134th.

THE OPEN DOOR, THE CLOSED MIND AND THE CALL OF CHRIST

Published March  2007

ISBN 09802972 4 9

When the only barrier is a closed mind, people are in great case. It is not as if tanks or artillery, plutonium capsules force-fed or human-bombs making craters as a sign of a fine religion, near cafés with children in them, were arrayed against one, when it comes to finding God.

It is the closed mind, more aggressive than a tank trap, more potent than an infantry division, more useless than an atomic bomb without radioactive content.

When, in addition, there is no closed door on the part of God, so that granted you do not need to penetrate horrific arms to gain access to it, you even find it open as you knock, then you marvel at the monstrous good fortune of mankind.

It is however only when you consider that the call of God is given to INVITE to this door, and to actually come in through it to His kingdom, and when you realise wisdom and information alike are provided to show the wonders of it and the naturalness of it, sin being the unnatural intruder, already in possession of the human shop, that you can ponder with amazed concern the fact that the carpet is not threadbare at the entrance.

The ready love of God, the ready gun of gurus or mantras of mullahs, the epics of misconstruction and the love of libel and delight in defamation are all assorted in this great affair; and it is thus well worth-while to examine and ponder, consider and become no neutral spectator of the plight of man in the face of this depraved demission of deliverance. It is necessary to be informed.

In this book, this is our aim, and our hope is continual: that some finding through these things, the way home, and experiencing the drawing of the Spirit of God as the truth of Christ is perceived and the grandeur of His mercy, will not short-circuit the opening of the door, by special electro-magnetic interference utensils, lest they should be saved.

141

135th.

GLORY, VAINGLORY AND GOODNESS

Published April  2007

ISBN 09802972 5 7

Glory is one of the main measures of man. It is not that he is glorious, but sensitive to it, susceptible to it, may feel sentenced (rightly or not) by it, and can seek it for himself, his clan, group, city, nation, professional body or political lord syndrome (or mentor, depending on the case).

It is FELT to be glory when in fact, however, it may be like soiled linen, wholly diverse in character from the pure and refreshed type. It has a relationship with it, certainly, but not a salubrious one. It has a kinship, as does a wreck with the thrusting vessel of aesthetic appeal, grandeur of outline and dynamic motion, manoevrability and architectural felicity.

There is a relationship; but it is alas far from one of identity.

When glory is misnamed, its work miscarried, its object misnamed, then it readily becomes vainglory. This may be a product of vanity, either in the sense of vacuousness or of pride; or it may be merely the current duping routine, by which misled man finds glory in misleading others, and becomes hostile to the point of mass murder, with those who resist. We have seen this in Mao, in Hitler, in Stalin, in Idi Amin, in Saddam Hussein, and in his own way increasing, in Robert Mugabe. In some cases, they may genuinely feel they are doing good: it is just that those who do not share their irrational dreams and inconsequential notions, need to be removed for the plan to succeed: which of course it does not.

That mankind continually looks for such things, is duped by them, has virtually a sequence to date, so that you get, like old movies or new, your particular version for consumption, is one of the major testimonies to the reality of God. Why ? It is for this reason:  to depart from Him is to make yourself so vulnerable to error, as if you foreswore EVER to say 2 plus 2 equals 4, while setting out in a career in mathematics, that the inanities of the race, which plague it like chasms in the midst of a vast highway, with the expected toll,  become virtually predictable. In kind, the Bible supplies the details; and despite this, man in the midst of the clear and multiple fulfillments of the predictions of the holy prophets, goes on as if hearing were out of fashion, and sight a menace. It is as Christ indicated, Ears they have, but do not hear, eyes but do not see.

It is a disease which Jew-baiters and haters now freely share, as if epidemic were their desire. In His own day, Christ said this of similarly blinded people,  citing from Isaiah:

“For this people’s heart is become gross, and heir ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.”  

For all that, man is so made and created in such a grand outgoing exhibition of the grace and love of God, that goodness continually thrusts its head into the very realms of vainglory, and sanity into the domains held in restraint by insanity, rationality attacks irrationalism and virtue seeks the flower that vice loves to dissect.

In this volume, these three features will be given some emphasis, so that the contours of society, the retrenchments of realism and the vast and rapid advance to desolation which this earth is making, may be seen in a keener perspective, one not only found in the Bible, but seen in its fulfilment, one not only desirable, but necessary.

142

136th.

BAY OF RETRACTABLE ISLANDS

MISSION FOR THE MAINLAND

From Evanescent Extremes

Back to the Book of the Lord

Published May   2007

ISBN 09802972 6 5

A far more extensive presentation than an earlier work, CELESTIAL HARMONY FOR THE TERRESTRIAL HOST, this in principle irenic work, points out the marvels of unity which come when the word of God, the Bible, is given absolute sway in the realm of needless matters of dissension. It is the more apposite in an Age where increasingly the existential, or the spiritistic, the spiritual octopus of hedonism, entertainment, hysterics, psychic collations, ideological feastings, traditionalistic adaptions and composite adoptions teems, grabs in its submarine seductions, where the strangling is more than appears.

Sometimes an affliction calls attention to the central realities of life, and ministers comfort in the end. The 14 topics and the contrasting mainland itself,  concern form the basic outline. This volume is currently around 280,000 words in extent, being selections, amplifications, extensions and correlations in its field, from books earlier published, showing that extremes frequently mar the sober presentation of the Bible, making for warring parties, as if moving out to islands, from the mainland. It is better with the Bible to stay on that mainland, or if outside, to return.

143

137th.

DIVINE MANIFESTO, THE BIBLE:

DEITY MANIFEST, JESUS CHRIST THE LORD

Published May   2007

ISBN 09802972 8 1

The Bible is the Divine Manifesto, antidote to confusion and master for rebellion; the Lord, who as there and in history shown, is the anti-dote to blind servitude and Maker of liberty, even restoring it to its place, this time, in a renewed personal environment, one expressly constructed as a site for the exhibition of truth. Indeed, this same Bible, applicable to man,  is verified in all major fields (cf. Light Dwells with the Lord's Christ).

Many delight to find the truth, after such a time, and its counterpart, peace, after so much tension and turmoil.

As David declares in Psalm 139, "I am fearfully and wonderfully made." This truth he dwells on.

The powers of corruption are correlative to those of construction; and meanwhile mini-midget man, a few feet in protoplasm at the visible level, at the invisible can comprehend and concur, mischievously run riot, defame, deflate, inflate ideas, people, soar in spectacular pride and stamp on greatness, or cast down, continue burrowing like a flea into truth, to infect it; or else, there he is, moving like an airship majestically, to survey the skies. This is not only wonderful in the scope and amplitude, the contrast and capacity which man has been given; it is fearful.

It evokes a sense of that presence required, so far beyond man in his operational powers, to make it felicitous so to operate in such realms, by providing the logic in the universe and in man, and making both answerable, each in its own way, to His summons or dismissal. All this,  relating to the reason of God, has not only mutual coherence, human interpretability, but is penetrable to man until he comes to the utmost power required to create all this in its integrality and liberty combined.

When he comes to God, he must stop and listen.

It is then that the fearful part comes in. What fear is evoked when you realise the wonder of the Maker: for if the made can achieve for good or ill, so much, how far much more can He!

What responsibility lies in man, for where much is given, much is required. Plans pre-made, as in Psalm 139 (Bible Translations Ch. 2 No. 10) show their force as the embryo develops, its multitudes of phases inseparable, an awesome agenda of immediately successive phases with no meaning or pay-load until complete, a deliberate design, a designated portfolio of man's construction agenda, through myriad conceptual turning points and assessment works.

 Past a multitude of events constitutive of coherence, it goes,  till the child born, it grows, and the end is pursued, at length appearing at the level of maturity,  as just one, one person: with inherent potentials correlative with those of the embryonic development,  after 20 years or so.

Then is the full-orbed splendour to be found, either to doom itself into deserved oblivion, or to live in the favour of its Creator, not striving, but sent on mission, with commission!

So man may come to comprehend the layers of meaning in the universe, of law and limit, and the skies of imagination and conceptualisation, the load of verification and validation, to know even God; and then to find the facilitation of function and the meaning of all phases stretched out before him. A mind to reason, a Divinely Prescribed Book to reveal and a life to live, all come to man: fearful fabricator of a place in hell, as if craftily copying the ticket to reach there, in the form of a visa, or in realistic weakness, worshipping his divine Benefactor, who made minds to find the truth, and truth to confront the minds, even putting it into words, to inspire the soul, compel the heart and arrest the spirit.

Some however plunge over the cliffs of fantasy instead, with fearful rigour pursuing the rigor mortis, the paralysis of such fragile wonder, into its deserved stale-mate, in which overcome, it abides in the shadows of darkness, self-illumined with a light which is not there.

To all this the Bible speaks, clearly, with vast coverage, with principle, precept, promise and exhortation, with revelation, information concerning the mind and heart of God, for and with which man has been so made that he can READ IT! To read the mind of God as self-portrayed! what a vast panorama of spiritual spectacle is stretched out before him, and lies written.

Man writhes to dispossess it of its truth, and falls, a liar; or else he struggles to express his delight in this one word which never fails, and intimates it from a thousand pulpits. Man can be illuminated with a light sourced in the Divine One, exposing truth as the sun the grass below, as he studies the word that has  smitten and blessed, arranged the fall of empires and attested things to come, millenia before their arrival^*3. Otherwise, he can smirk, shirk, strive, chide, not abide, and like a car unserviced, put out his oily smoke of discontent, disfaith or other spiritual disease.

The Bible, then, in its own domain of revelation from God,  is not only unique in verification and validity (Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer, Celestial Harmony for the Terrestrial Host), as often shown in detail in this site, but in itself, an ordered, organised, multi-dimensional, superbly structured, integrative and purposively presented whole which so speaks. In this, it reminds of the construction of man, of whom this Bible speaks.

Indeed,  the Book of the Lord abounds in regulatory rules,  order, rationality, inter-folding of principles and concepts, liberty, love and intensively in immensely personal manifestation of will and knowledge; and all of this is a supra-universe of its own. With man, however, it is an intra-universe, but one with allowance for attachment to that supra-universe, or detachment which has led, in the domain of dire rebellion and self-important strutting, to so much vapidity, invalidity and vacuity, that a perpetual cloud hangs over the sulphurous fumings of its exponents. So has it come, as many aspiring for glory, and missing the point, merely inhabit those clouds, which give solid support for nothing. Mistaking them for the earth, they merely fall.

As you examine this Bible with willing mind, however, it positively shouts the obvious, its internal structure giving multiple echoes, as of  voices in a huge and majestic structure; then it whispers, intimate, now demonstrates, now appeals. Humbug is summarily axed; weakness is graciously strengthened; confusion is relentlessly unmasked.

144

138th.

GRAND BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVES

Published June   2007

ISBN 09802972 9 X

There is in the Bible such an array of majesty, profundity, overview, oversight and magnificence of spectacle, such as the Canadian Rockies and lakes, or the New Zealand scope and marvel of wonderland exhibit, that not to dwell on it as such, would seem either a shame or an omission like that of ignoring the kiss of engagement, or the first day of a new enterprise.

While many have been the exhibits already on this site, this volume is given to seeing features, facets and wonders which claim attention and clamour for it, as it were in their own intrinsic fascination, brilliant points of light, massive modes of splendour, which demand awed observation.

In the main, specific texts, by no means limited to one verse, are taken; and in some cases, groups like alpine clusters of towering, parallel giants, are made a spectacle of joy as we behold their intrinsic beauty and wonder, the meaning and the matrix, the message and the profundity.

145

139th.

MASSIFS OF PURE SPLENDOUR

in the Celestial Alps of Christ Jesus

Published July   2007

ISBN 978-0-9804100-0-6

There are available for a spiritual trip, massifs the view from which is spectacular, showing the form and figure of many lesser but glorious mountains, their very loftiness a sublimity in itself, a close up bringing near to the very face of God.

These take the form of various declarations from God, set in such an altitudinous glory that in their context, they present marvels and wonders, which those who know the Lord can attest, much from their personal experience of His actions, attitudes and atmosphere, for He is a God of power and His righteousness is like the depths, His mercies like the heights and His wonder like the streams which leap from the snow, to convey health to the soul. Much more is from the testimony of truth in the minds, methods, spiritual, moral and aesthetic panoramas of man, in his history and the anguish, in the beauty and the peace, which comes now from sin, now from the Saviour, Jesus Christ. These decisive divine declarations give interpretive passages to the very heavens of divine majesty, meaning to man and wisdom for those who fear not man, but lie.

In Chapter 1,  these matters are explained in terms of both their significance and their relevance to Biblical Christian Apologetics.

146

140th.

DEITY AND DESIGN, DESIGNATION AND DESTINY

Published August   2007

ISBN 978-0-9804100-1-3

This work is partly composite and partly composition, being a work in which many earlier foci are brought together, listed in sections, with the total theme given sometimes large, sometimes smaller introduction.

Design is shown to be endemic in man and the universe, with the pock-marks of curse for sin, by no means incidental, but fundamental in significance, as with any misused design. Here however, in the case of the life of man, there is an inter-personal episode and outcome, which affects not merely the man himself, and the race, but the environment where his life is lived, and his death continues its condign affront to those who do not know God.

Confrontation always meets this affront, which starting with man, ricochets back to him, in terms of his very design, with conscience and consciousness, guilt and guile, grandeur and splendour, love and hatred, lust and charity, genius and obtuseness, thrust and dynamic, invasion and perversion, all having a place so tangled where truth is avoided, that the self-contradictory concept of a chaotic universe is employed, or deployed by some, only in its sheer irrationality, to be the very base from which the precise opposite may be demonstrated.

Pre-occupation with particles, in this context, is as useful as pre-occupation with one's seat-belt, when driving through a herd of cattle. It is ultimately the personal which is peremptory for man, since person he is, equipped with spirit which fires and misfires, seeks God and seeks autonomy, and flies about like a witless vulture, wondering what to assault, or a twittering canary, potentially beautiful, but ineffective in the hot gases of a wounded earth. It needs its place, near to the heart of God.

The demonstration of the sole validity, certain verification and vital and vitalising force of the Gospel of the grace of God and the final account from Him of man's fall, fault and features, his foci of mind, spirit and body, as appearing in the Bible as the written word of God, that of all writings, the one solely authorised by the Lord for mankind: this remains in every field and feature throughout the approximate 2.5 million word work.

The designations from the Lord to man -

relating

to the design of mankind on the one hand, and

to the spirit of man on the other:

 that volatility
which sweeps its sight from high to low,
and shames or stuns with its hopes, blindnesses and awakenings -

whether He makes these
 in the authoritative, operative principles of the Bible, or in the applied events of history,

whether in the sufferings of the martyrs or the aggressions of the persecutors,
seen in the setting
of the constant, passionate divine appeal with the Gospel,

in His knowledge, acumen and assiduity
in the eternal context of His revealed scriptural word and His saving works:

these shape destiny.

So do we find in this work.

True to His revelation, assigned as His word has required, His is a peace past all understanding; but His principles are readily understood. These are and remain as He has guaranteed and granted them in the Bible. He is not of two minds; His word stands and is fulfilled, more certainly than any merely physical law. Those, they relate to the stage: but this to the Director.

His word stands, as the word of God alone can, and alone does. Addition to it, as we see, annuls its simplicity and magnificent resolving power, but also moves as disastrously towards ruin as does subtraction: and in this, science is merely an illustration. Meddling with the facts of His creation or of His word is like taking water from atomic power plants: there is a melt-down, but the word of God is not changed, only those who seek to change it (cf. Revelation 22),  just as the laws of His creation do not move, only the minds of those who with a sophisticated blindness, ignore them.

As to the destiny for each of mankind, already known to the Lord, it is found out by man; and repulsion from the divine remedy is as effective a way of mutilating design as may be found anywhere.

In that mutilation, there is philosophy of speech, antinomy of thought with specious results, as of one who insists on having influenza, and cannot see because he will not move to the remedy. Such in major fields without variation of reality, do we find.

147

141st.

EVIDENCE AND REALITY, THE PRINCE AND THE PROOF,
 

CONSTANT CHRISTIAN FAITH AND THE FICKLE FRENZY OF FORCE

Published December   2007

ISBN 978-0-9804100-3-7

Proof ? but of course: read Romans 1, Luke 1. Evidence in the composition of the various logical corollaries leaves no room for doubt or deviousness. Reality is not an option, nor is Jesus Christ a possibility, design a shilly-shally situation. It is all as clear as the nose on your face, or your glasses, when you kiss and clash the latter, or avoid the former. You can leave it; but it will not leave you at your will. Reality is like that.

2008

14 Volumes so far published this year - December.

148

142nd.

Published, January 2008

ISBN 978-0-9804100-4-4

A TIME TO PRAISE GOD

151

145th.

KEYS TO THE COMFORT OF THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST

ISBN 978-0-9804100-7-5

Published April 2008

There is scope in the salvation of Jesus Christ for comfort. The term sometimes so rendered from the Hebrew can signify strength as well, and in the Greek of the New Testament, what is translated 'Comforter', literally meaning one called alongside, one who pleads another's cause before a judge,  pleader, counsellor, advocate, helper, succourer. Such is the case in John 16:7, and the words of Christ proceed to indicate that He is also to be called "the Spirit of Truth." The fact is that it is ONLY in the truth that one can take the counsel, courage, strengthening and wisdom jointly which is the need of man. The truth is He who made man, and His Spirit is at work in His people.

Anything less or else runs the risk of being fatuous, foolish, inept, superficial and just plain wrong. In any system of thought or model as it is often called, which omits the absolute personal God there IS no truth, for all is at its height, modelled as reaction. What happens becomes the maximum, and even that is absolved from complicity with truth, since the latter then does not exist. Left only the ruptured mind of the one who invents such self-contradictory systems, in order to enunciate them, and then of course have them at once cancelled in validity.

On the positive side, however, when the Spirit of Truth comes to those FOR WHOM CHRIST PAID THE PENALTY, the ransomed, the redeemed, those reconciled to God, then there is a comfort BECAUSE of that fact. The fact is beautiful as well as practical; it brings healing as well as holiness, truth as well as peace, for God loves to bring peace, though not where war is in the heart, since truth is not double-tongued (cf. Micah 3:5, Revelation 19:19). In the Hebrew, as in Isaiah 40:1, the term used is seen as having a root relating to a deep breath, and hence often is used to relate to comfort, relief, like a huge sigh.

Relief is in redemption and comfort is in Christ, through the Holy Spirit whom He has sent as He foretold, until He comes to collect His own and receive them into His kingdom. Already the kingdom of heaven is in our midst, depending on which 'midst':  that is, it is to be found in the background of ambassadors for Christ - which is heaven, God's place - for which they are sent in Christ Jesus (as in Matthew 28:19ff.). Since He is in their hearts and loves His people, it is found in their midst also, operative without deceit, emulation or conceit, but where His rest paired with redemption, is realised by abiding in Him and His words abiding in those hearts no less.

151

146th.

JESUS CHRIST FOR THE PEOPLE,
BUT NOT FOR THIS WORLD

ISBN 978-0-9804100-8-2

Published May 2008

Australian has been greatly blessed, and in pursuit of its initial biblical principles in its foundation from Britain (ostensibly a Christian nation), it has in many things done well. Now for some years it has performed a desperate rearguard, to re-establish pagan follies, irrational modes and ethical amorality (cf. News 19). More and more rights are to be given to biblical wrongs. Sodom and Gomorrah might almost feel shame if they see what this land is promising to become, including some of the earlier churches, which become instruments of departure.

We remember amidst all this infelicity, feverish philosophical substitute for truth, passions for merely preferred paths and deferred morality, that THIS WORLD is NOT something for which Christ told us to pray.

	I PRAY NOT FOR THE WORLD (John 17), was His dictum.
	It is the people in it who are His concern.

This world is to be banished (Isaiah 51:6, II Peter 3, Matthew 24:35), its works burnt up with their evils. It is unfit to live. It has had a long innings of millenia, and although many times many in it, even nations have veered or even come to the point of honouring the God of creation and redemption, yet its contemporary move is to endless war, subtlety, programmings from corrupt philosophy, often corruptive men, people who like Mugabe, appear more interested in condemning those who did not please them, than pleasing with goodness,  those whom ostensibly they serve.

False gods flit in and out of the world like visitors from foreign lands, equipped with prestigious embassies, some with atomic bombs in the basement.

The world is going. It is not fit to provide life. People are coming, in millions, convicted, converted and cleansed, challenged, changed, redeemed, regenerated. The crisis is merely the end of the examination for this earth; and much is the harvest to be gained (cf. Matthew 2:12, 13:30, 24:31). The Gospel of the grace of God persists like lawn amid the weeds, in an aridity caused by constant lack of water, as the outpouring of the Spirit of God is undesired. It is not however without eternal effects, in the hearts, lives and destiny of many.

In this volume, the distinction of what GOD is providing, this WORLD is giving and getting and what is for PEOPLE who care for their Creator and seek His word, face, will and word, is crucial.

152

147th.

HAPLESS HITCHES AND HOLY HEALINGS,

GODLESS GLITCHES AND DIVINE DEALINGS

including Spiritual Sprigs and Biblical Gems

Spiritual Lapses and Restored Synapses

ISBN 978-0-9804100-9-9

Published June 2008

As one reads Sir Edward Creasy's work, The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, the time of writing being mid nineteenth century, there is a certain perspective which appears. Since it is not a recent publication, there is a certain help from distance in time, to seeing the motions of history.

From this book on great battles of the world, it is apparent that the human race often looks up and is cast down, tries to smile and lapses into frown, seeks sheen and finds blood, desires eminence and discovers the grave, scamps grace and saves face, only to be caught in its spiritual twistings and burned in its devious turnings.

In spiritual things, there is also a correlative pathology. Many, like Solomon, do wonderful things even in the name of the Lord, but then lapse, as he did in his old age, into the weakness already apparent when he was younger, but now clutching him like a dying man being rescued, as if to kill his rescuer by uncontrolled holds. Again and again, both in conduct and in doctrine, a person or a church will lapse, and in the cases of the children of God, the healing being available, will find solace and health in repentance and spirituality instead of undirected surges of spirit, and vying in misplaced industry.

The world meanwhile, without the Saviour, finds in its NECESSARY glitches, as it may conceive, them, mere evidence of being on the wrong path, and so beyond these, the passions lurch into wars without just cause, into venom without caution, error without remission, hatred without intermission and industry without point, which in the end beckons to judgment without end.

These things are on the one hand, sicknesses to be healed in the body of the Lord, and on the other, deadly amours with mortality, on the part of those who disdain or disregard the Saviour and hence His healing. His dealings with such are like those of a doctor whose patient does not often come, and when coming, does not often listen, and when listening, does not often do. The result is world history.

In examining elements of these themes, and instances, it is hoped that the biblical perspective in detail will help some to be revived and to look up to the Saviour and to find Him, and others, who already known Him, to abate divisions without grand, to embrace the Saviour with renewed fidelity and to adorn the Gospel without those little glitches which spoil programs so readily. In all things, there is one book, one Lord, on Spirit, one salvation, one Gospel, one grace, one peace, one love, one joy; and what is faithful to the book, in spirit and word, is faithful to the Lord.

TEST all things: it is with this book of the Lord, that Bible,  that you test, and when you try the spirits and try your ways, to see if there be any iniquity in them, as David sought the Lord should do with him, you use this His word, to challenge or solace you, and relying on what He has said, look to Him who said it, and does it! Praise His name for ever and ever.

With these things, this volume is also set to itemise various sprigs, spiritual issues or items which may edify, challenge, comfort or contort, depending on the receptor, and biblical gems, since these lie like untouched gold nuggets in the Bible, and need to be discovered or re-discovered or reviewed in awe from time to time, to give strength to the weary and joy to the godly, yes and warning or truth to the straying and hope to the helpless.

Meanwhile, the coherence, cohesion, the brilliant complementarity of all the biblical doctrines is its own apologetics: it fits like the fabrics and materiel of a house-building kit, and here, it is that for the household of faith, for its delectation, presentation and use. As the world whizzes on its predestined path, always imagining great things for itself, except when it is not too disgusted or exhausted for a while, even to think, the great day of His Second Coming, His glory which is to follow (Luke 24:26, Mark 14:62) moves nearer as history zealously is fulfilling the preliminaries required, like a housewife cleaning each room in the morning

153

148th.

HALLOWED BE THY NAME!

Hideous be your templates, horrendous your ethics, blighted your morals, despicable your conceptions and cursed your creations!

That would be another approach to life.

You see this duo repeatedly in the Bible. Thus in Ezekiel 20, there is a veritable litany of error, of grossness, even to the point of putting children through fires in the interests of pagan conceptions of surrounding religions, culture king, calamity the result.

Man has always had a tendency to embrace the pagan, preferably with some admixture of derring do, as in the child burning piquancy to the delectations of the religions exposed to divine fury as seen in Ezekiel. He desire to exclude the supernatural from the natural is wholly parallel to mother cursing, as if one did not need a womb, or father defamation, as if no need was necessary.

But to HALLOW the name of God, rather than seek to blight it, to make light of it, not to sight it, this is something else.

It is the task of this book to make that exceedingly clear; for it is not enough to have goddish sorts of thoughts. With God, His name is to be hallowed.

ISBN 978-09805471-1-5

Published July 2008

153

149th.

GOING WITH GOD

THE CHRISTIAN ABIDING: THE LORD PRESIDING

The Brighter Way for the Declining Day

ISBN 978-0-9805471-3-9

The holy way in this declining day - for in the forecast arena in our Age, a day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and this makes two since Christ (II Peter 3:9): it is much assaulted. We are told that it is better now, though for murderous malice and spiteful confusion, for blighting on sight, for murdering in millions, for overthrowing good things and investing in lust there could have been few like it. Indeed for the power of man to destroy, it is unparalleled; and in this as for the desire, it has no equal. This is bringing our time into complete accord with the precise prediction to the point of Jesus Christ.

It is a spiritual fact of the utmost significance that when FACTS such as these are mentioned, the tendency to scoff at verified spiritual realities, so prominent in our day, seems to surge. Facts in this area as in that of the fraud of organic evolution, seem to be disparaged almost compulsively (cf. The gods of naturalism have no go!).

One thing does not change as the fiery embers of the setting sun make ready to appear, scorching broadly and not only in the Middle East as foretold, with Israel the victim proposed and the occasion for the catastrophe to be imposed on her assailants. The pre-occupation of this world with the place set by God for the nation once chosen to bring both the Word of God, in Old Testament writing, and the living Word of God, Jesus Christ, is great. Nor is this surprising; for if God sets a nation in a place, just try to displace it!  And if you fail, just start reflecting on what you are doing, and what He is doing, and consider before it is too late.

After all, Israel's former displacements for a time were foretold, as this deliverance is likewise (cf. It Bubbles ... Ch. 10, Israel Ch. 1, Red Alert ... Ch. 10, Outrageous Outages, Awesome Inputs and the Courage of Christ Ch. 11). How the prophets laboured to warn her of the assault by Assyria, a rod for the discipline of her faithless ways before God over centuries, and of the exile to come through Babylon: but she did not listen. However, with the warning came the hope, and Jeremiah in particular foretold her restoration after a 70 year exile, just as Isaiah foretold that Cyrus, by name, would be a national instrument in the restoration of the exiled nation to her land.

The culmination in the execution of the Christ, the greatest legal fumble of all time, also foretold and in those terms,  in Isaiah 53 and Micah 5:1-3, has led to a longer exile; but this too is now past, as the further predictions for her armed successes (noted in Zechariah 12) against wholly disproportionate enemies are now fulfilled (1948, 1966, 1973 with some reference to 1991).

Nor is it a case of a beautiful nation - though I personally greatly admire its frequent humanitarian actions, even towards her oppressors, at the medical level, and her restraint as squabbling nations continually seek her destruction, like dogs fighting for a bone, with cats squawling at the same time - for Israel has yet to repent, as predicted in Zechariah 12, and to acknowledge its error, in crucifying Christ, God as man.

To be sure, this was predicted also (in Psalm 2, 16, 22, Zechariah 12:10, in Isaiah 53, as a bunch with many other items, ranging from a millenium to half a millenium before it happened); but the repentance to come is now at issue, just as the Christ to come was the issue when the date for His death, predicted by Daniel some half a millenium before its occurrence, was coming up (cf. Highway of Holiness Ch. 4). It does not lessen the error of Rome plus Jerusalem in settling upon His death, repaying blight for might shown in healing, help, grace, compassion, words such as no man ever spoke, as He took His place within history.

There He has become the chief focus, and that for millenia;  and this is likewise the case in the book most sold since printing began, in Europe, almost 1500 years later. The Bible and the Christ, the Lord's Christ, these are the dominant focus of history to the point that the very dating system of Europe reflected it, at least in intention.

The way of Christ does not change. The world contests it; the Lord invests it.

The kindness and compassion, the pity and the power, the capacity to raise from the dead, this is needed as much now as then, when it was not appreciated by the ruling and contentious, the envious and the blind authorities in Jerusalem, ruler and ruled, at that time. Pilate and priest combined in their awe-ful parallel then,  to the coming time now,  when the first and the second beast are to unite to seek to eliminate Christianity from this earth. Already the efforts of the devil to this effect have come far to fulfilling the predictions along these lines. Hitler sought to remove the racial evidence, as does not a little of the militant Islamic movement now, making archeology difficult in the sacred sites; and it is not really racial at heart, since it is a matter of what GOD CHOSE to do a job, and what remains, as in Israel the nation, to show the world its failure.

You see this sort of thing, a hostile world rule against Christ and His will and way,  foretold at length in the book of Revelation. In Ch. 13, and the two evil dread noughts are there noted, the first and the second beast.

Beast ?  that is socio-economic, politico-cultural, militant militarist regime, with its rulers spending the time seeking to annex the world to their cult. The second beast is a religious specialist, seeking glorify the first. It is just like an expanded Hitler-Goebbels regime; but this time not national only, for by then that prototype is international. The devil in Revelation 12 is shown trying to swallow up and drown out the Christians, having sought first, as seen in the earlier part of that Chapter, to extinguish Christ at His birth.

There we find him trying to persecute the Jewish Christians to the death. In that Chapter likewise, we find he extends His desire to all the followers of Christ; but as always, in the ultimate result, he is thwarted. It is not surprising that he gets very angry and, as one with certified and advanced cancer, he knows his end is near (Revelation 12:12:12). The otherwise almost inconceivable wrath and folly is therefore not surprising! If there is one thing which tends to be extreme, it is the wrath shown and extremities imposed by frustrated tyrants, and while their little day lasts, they can exceed all boundaries, to the limit allowed.

The Roman Empire tried hard to pursue this job of extinguishing Christians;  but it was thwarted, and fell. The Holy Roman Empire, using Romanism as a dual-cultural club, tried to extinguish with the Inquisition, the Biblical Christian testimony (cf. SMR pp. 902 - 931, 911ff., 1032-1088H); but it likewise failed. It is apparent that there are today forces which would like to 'have another go'. Still there lingers the force of the last fall of the oppressor.

Indeed so far did it fail that the British Empire arose from the ashes of the fires of Smithfield in Britain, where the ashes of saints accumulated (cf. Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 14). This Protestant body ruled much of the world and became the most powerful grouping for many years, but in two World Wars exhausted itself, and now is willing to move if you will, through the Chunnel as a symbolic funnel to be under direction from Brussels, a growing summit for imposition of authority, in the continent where Hitler failed to make it Berlin.

Thus with the passing of the British Empire, together with the white-anting of Anglicanism increasingly and that of many large Protestant Churches (cf. SMR pp. 686-706, 857-876),  the stopper in the slaughter of millions of Christians is pulled out, and the race is on for the extinction program by the more modern exemplars of slaughter. This may be found not least in the Sudan, but are ably supported by all reports for decades, by China in its own way and the Laden exercise, laden with desire to re-assert the Islamic heresy (cf. More Marvels ... Ch. 4, SMR pp. 1080ff., Divine Agenda ... Ch. 6, Lord of Life,  Ch. 8, *1).

Accordingly,  these movements growingly fulfil both the blood lust theme found recorded in advance of history in the Book of Revelation (not only in Chs. 13, 17 but in Ch. 6 where death is shown in guise as an adventurer and almost ruler), and the false prophet multiplication as a phenomenon on this earth, before Christ returns to rule.

That is the back-drop. In the foreground however, there is the same Christ, the same Holy Spirit, the same Bible, the same word, truth, Gospel, program, in a setting now well advanced from simmer to boil.

In this volume, we seek to concentrate not least on the way of living in Jesus Christ: and this,  whether when the people of Jesus Christ are proposed for the slaughter mentally, physically or spiritually, or proceed in peace in the beauty of His holiness. That, it is in contrast to the ghoulish presence now becoming so popular within the confines of the vehement among the human race, while Europe rises to meet its appointed prophetic centrality.

154

150th.

THE BIBLE:

NOT THE DECLAMATIONS OR DISTILLATIONS

OF MAN,

BUT THE DOCTRINE OF DEITY

Published July 2008

ISBN 978-0-9805471-4-6

Back to the Bible! has come the cry for many years. The Bible! comes the carnal response, why ?

It has been one of the chief purposes of this site to show WHY!

In sum, it is because it is not dated like other works, by the misconceptions of ruling cultures, or fated by the feeble-minded estimates of truth or past or future of seductive seers, nor is it invalidated by models of thought which do not permit truth to exist, or if to exist, to be known, or if to be known, or if to be known by man, not to be communicated, or if communicated, not accurately so ... and so on. The litany of self-destruction for those who seek to tell us WHAT IT IS, is endless, and their models are futile. Here is found the mourning at the coffin of secular man, with the pall-bearers for the funeral, the mystique religions of evanescence and suffusion with the thoughts of man, with or without any tail-ends of truth from another source. But the Bible is not so. All this it avoids, because it is the doctrine of God.

It is because like truth, it describes events, those pulsating with normalcy, to give them perspective, just as it considers those erratic, with judgment on order or confusion found as its masterpiece, in their settings. For each, it gives grounds. It applies them. It gives precise enclosures of what is to be history and not merely grants numerous details, but the dynamic behind it and the reasons for its application. It makes personal the seemingly impersonal, wise what is witless and gives interpretation to the mass, or for some who misunderstand, the morass of events, like an expert reader of space photographs of things on the earth, pointing out now this and now that, so that it may be discerned, and being discerned, acted on for good.

It is because like man, it displays knowledge of hearts, their diseases, spirits and their seductions and force, but unlike man, does not underestimate the power of man or his puniness or fail to provide the grounds and reason why, and grounds for, what happens to him. It is most unlike man in this, that the knowledge of hearts is given not only by One who presents Himself as Creator, and so ABLE to have this wit and wisdom, and omniscient and so reliable. He also speaks as One who gives no congratulation to a perfection which is not here, or to a heart which is in rebellion, nor on the other hand, no rebuttal to a heart which seeks cleansing, and for that matter, no rejection to the plea for purification and the means for it.

It is because it is the charter, not of human rights, but of godly gifts, of the dimensions of our souls, the depths of our spirits, and their superficial claims are rejected just as categorically as their vast aspirations towards their Creator are blessed. It is because it itemises the spiritual sicknesses which lead to false gods, who did not make heaven and earth, and rejecting them, appeals to man to find wisdom where it is, in his Maker and in His Manual, the Bible, which alone has the verifications to endorse it, and of course, the Saviour to apply it, Jesus Christ. It alone has the date for His death (Highway of Holiness Ch. 4) and the prognosis, both for Israel and Gentile nations, all of which have been fulfilled to the letter, and in their own diverse ways.

It alone has provided specifications for salvation, not only in word, but in the person of the predicted Messiah, not awaited, though it was long awaited before He came, but come; not equipped with thought alone, but with power in deeds, in raising the dead, in being raised from the dead, in putting the two together in a short space of never-overthrown challenge, and always fulfilled words. In it alone is the testimony of the types of miracle He would perform (cf. Isaiah 29, 35), the type of death He would suffer,  and the salutary and indeed salvation-based reasons for it (cf. SMR Chs.  8  ,     9, Repent or Perish Ch. 2, Christ, the Wisdom of God ... Ch. 8), and the grounds for His resurrection with its potent meaning (cf. Going with God Ch. 5, With Heart and Soul ... Ch. 3), which His men proceeded at once to apply world-wide (Matthew 28:19-20).

155

151st

BEWILDERMENT, BEDAZZLEMENT, BEDEVILMENT

OR THE BEAUTY OF

CHRIST'S HOLINESS

Published August 2008

ISBN 978-0-9805471-6-0

Blood ? wars seem to arise like evil flowers, cape-weed which bedizens so many fields in blatant colourful contrast of black and yellow in Victoria, or sour-grass which in South Australia looks so 'pretty' in its almost delicate flowerings, as it carpets so much, as if the mere business of living were a bagatelle, a thing of nothing, its flowers finding paths and explorations that might daunt the mighty. But it is a weed.

War with the heady throb of blood is likewise a weed. In this century its talons are cruel, its heart is usually befouled with the grime of crime, political folly, egotism, false glory, inveterate hatred, incestuous spiritual relationships with the evils and the Evil one, as it drives dauntless, like sour grass, sour spirited sallies and gross hearted severances of peace, arms, legs, hands, futures, hopes, its specialty.

As often enough stated, this is not some 'religious bash': it is fact. It is time that the sadly tic-like movement to scratch the itch of conscience by derisively formulated disclaimers of 'doom' by a race given increasingly to wild frenzies and lifeless replies, should be replaced by repentance. Is it really imagined that the Creator of man's power to think, to surmise, to imagine, to investigate, of the fields to which he attends, of life, of death, as shown in recent volumes of this set, is immune to man's antics ?

Is it really thought that man has it all rolled up, wrapped up, parcelled and neat, his answer to the obvious and probing question as God beholds his conduct: WHY! Why are you, this race called mankind, WHY ARE YOU SO ACTING! Do you imagine, says God, or rather you thought that I was one just like you! In crime ? in folly ? Hardly does He whose is all grasp for more! Take care, He says, lest you be destroyed. But the drugged mind is all but past caring, that of mankind in the mass of its degraded movements, demolishing what is right, exploiting what is wrong, and singing with it the song of Man, Man, Man!

Psalm 50 has a caution!

"But to the wicked God says:
 

'What right have you to declare My statutes,

Or take My covenant in your mouth,

Seeing you hate instruction

And cast My words behind you?
 

'When you saw a thief, you consented with him,

And have been a partaker with adulterers.
 

'You give your mouth to evil,

And your tongue frames deceit.

You sit and speak against your brother;

You slander your own mother’s son.
 

'These things you have done, and I kept silent;

You thought that I was altogether like you;

But I will rebuke you,

And set them in order before your eyes.
 

'Now consider this, you who forget God,

Lest I tear you in pieces,

And there be none to deliver:

Whoever offers praise glorifies Me;

And to him who orders his conduct aright

                           I will show the salvation of God.. "

Yet so many want to ask God, WHY ? why do you permit such things ? as if He had not been so gracious and forbearing that it staggers the soul!

The answer is ever obvious in one's own heart. WE have power to choose, love has power to dispose itself, friendship has power to bestow itself, as does hatred and enmity and vying and lust of all kinds, not least the spiritual for autonomous self-will. WE do choose and the results are accordingly to be found. It is the divine brake, and not the accelerator, which amazingly slows down the rate and spate of crashes; but folly mounts, and its results accrue, first of all like the moraine of glaciers, then like the flooding of rivers, then like the rising of seas and the violence of storms.

What do you expect ? Endless folly to be given a grant for eternity! Not likely.

The fact that mercy is so vast and prodigious that this race is not yet exterminated, though it is seemingly doing its very best to achieve this by violation of individuals, races, nations, truth, care, concern, in the interests of having more, dashing into the derring-do extremities that lash the earth and assail its people and imposing this or that erratic or despotic will on others, should not be construed to mean that the RESULTS will simply forget about it. They are so disposable, as if for these too, it were merely a matter of finding a suitable rubbish bin and tossing them into it.

There is a folly in this earth, not least, new look politicians, who promise new things, new ways, change away from old things, and this has appeal to many because old things have been so tarnished in the travails of compromise and falling standards for so long that a new look seems charming to them.

But what is this new look ? more people power, less regard for what is left of standards of purity and truth and distinctiveness for the absolutes of the God who sent Jesus Christ, whose answers remain what they always were, NECESSARY for life! That appears its most popular direction.

Religions and a good dose of dialogue, in the current climate, and for a nation that once might have called itself Christian, this appears nothing more than another name for compromise and despatch somewhere else, of the biblical absolutes of Christ, leaving the memory dim, the standards misty and the new shores as welcome as tarry tarmacs, afflicted by the heat. As they settle on them, the vision goes from the nation, while the option of bottomless depth yaws, or yawns, for it has had many takers.

The way is falling since Britain fell, and it has, to be sure, a long way to go; but it is falling faster as every bulwark against popularist betrayal of divine truth becomes a commonplace, large organisations still illicitly called churches betraying Christ by blatant pushes for pre-eminence in themselves, or for autonomy of morals as if Christ had never been, or arrogance in doctrine, as though a Bible could be written and displayed with new teaching on any street corner at will.

It is as Paul describes such ventures into such areas,  into ventriloquism for the voice of God or plagiarism or remoulding relative to the Lord, a fitting work for the devil who loves a different Gospel, another Jesus or another spirit (II Corinthians 11). That proud spirit can specialise in transforming his appearance into that of a false, or falsetto angel of God! Following his leading has never been a good idea. It ruined this earth more than any merely environmental work of man could ever do!  It made it FIT for judgment! (cf. Romans 5:1-14, 8:17ff.).

There is payment to come. Let us leave that side.

There is also the beauty of holiness to find. It is in Christ now as it always was. It is not found in grabbing, getting and forgetting what is godly, but by discovery of the truth where it always was and will be, in Him whose it is, in the God of verifiable, validated revelation in Jesus Christ, the doctrinal deposit in the Bible. Abandon that, abandon Him, mould it to your will (in theory - in fact it will never change), use Him for pleasure, profit, a happiness-machine, an investment opportunity, USE Him for ANYTHING, rather than finding in Him life as HE gives it, and what follows ? It is this. You are then merely making HIM a means to your objectives, your life and your will. He is not so available. Christ did not call us to take up our crosses and follow Him, in order to suggest it would be easy, or self-gratifying. Who on earth could find it gratifying or pleasurable or fulfilling to heave on his shoulder a great, heavy, cruel, rough cross, an object on which he is to be crucified! (Galatians 2:20, Luke 14:27ff.).

Life is beautiful IN Christ, but ugly outside. It is not however supine saturation with pleasure but spiritual moulding with truth in mercy. Mere satiation of desire leaves unanswered the question of WHAT desire and WHY! To find God is to find love, truth, pity, beauty of holiness, peace and wonder. It is not for profane hands, which is why so few who name Him, have Him. FEW there are who enter this narrow way, said Christ (Matthew 7). Many are called, but few are chosen! He intimated.

Be like athletes competing for a prize, said Paul! This is not the work of leisurely laziness or pleasurable performances. This world has history and history has point, purpose and meaning, both exposing the weaknesses, giving experience of them and their correction, intimations of their purposes, overcoming of their deviations, exposition of the power of God in the weakness of man and the scintillations of scenarios unspeakable or spiritual, the glitter, the bedazzlement of what  blights, or the glory of what has fought and won, and conferred on His own, that victory.

Where is the honest, sincere response to the wonder that God is, with the wonder-reaching aspirations of spirit which finding life through regeneration (Titus 2-3), live anew in the active and dynamic presence of the living, loving God who gave many things ? Let it be in you.  To life, where it must be, in Him, He has given the openings of grace, and to this He invites (Matthew 11:29ff.); to mind its open door to truth (Ephesians 1, Psalm 119), and to heart its land of splendour, where sacrifice and conformity to truth are like brilliant alpine resorts, arduous and inspiring, delightful and awesome, to be treated with the utmost care (Philippians 2-3).

May God bless you as you put all your valuables in His spiritual basket, and placing it in His hands, with a will made clean by the blood of Christ, live entirely for Him. You will not find it easy, but it will test faith! However, His hands are sure, and the basketware is His (Ephesians 1:11, I Peter 1).

In this volume, which is not large, the intention is to use things small and large, minor and major, as in a store room. It is hoped you will find what edifies, trusted many will be blessed and recommended that you SEEK the Lord with ALL your heart, and finding Him by faith, eject encumbrances and run well.

The track ? It is called truth. The athletic style ? it is called love.

156

152nd

THY WORD IS WONDERFUL

Published September 2008

ISBN 978-0-9805471-7-7

It is often the case that someone with marred face or limp shows a spirit which not merely disguises the defect, but almost seems to make it a prominent thing, a desirable feature, so great is the spirit accompanying it - like a gnarled tree, in some feature of its trunk, which nevertheless sways magnificently in the soughing beauties of its life, and shades deeply in its recesses.

Christ is beyond all in this, since the defect of death was voluntary, the distortion of limbs was resolved on, and the direness of slow torture was willingly adopted. Moreover, it was not for display, important as this can be, of the patience of truth and the magnificence of divine mercy only, as if we should see a moving film. It was for practical action, in history, and by history, to make eternity available.

In this volume, DV, there is to be that simple attestation which reality brings without fanfare or flourish, like a fine rug. It has no profit-seeking rep to signify its wonder, but it is warm. It is like a smile: it has no announcement of its presence, but it warms; or like a fire in the grate, it has nothing but diminution, slow loss to show, but it provides great gain. Such was the Cross of Christ, not a spectacular Olympics to hide distress, but a spectacular distress to demonstrate reality, and bearing the shame of man's now inherent and devastating sin, to void the consequences even to death, by death, vicarious and undeserved, effectual for relief.

The word of God has brought millions over millenia to this same Christ, as the LIVING WORD of God. It is to this WORD as to the written word, alike that we now come, the expression of God Himself, whether in verbal symbol to feed the mind and establish the soul, or in what is written, to break the rock of pretence.

It is  who He has borne all to provide for all what only some will accept; but His word is wonderful, that Bible which to jot and tittle as in His own day, when only the Old Testament was there, would conquer history and come to pass. In the New Testament, bound to Him by His own power, of whom it IS the testimony, it is no different (cf. I Peter 1:25, Matthew 4:4, I Corinthians 14:37, 2:9ff., John 14:26). Just as He cannot be added to, nor yet suffer subtraction (though man sought to suck away His very life, the ultimate subtraction, it was in 3 days restored as foretold), neither can the word of His mouth, the thought of His heart, the Gospel of His grace (Galatians 1), no nor even varied.

In this word, we find that testimony in itself, as in the oak or the spirited one who overcomes all, and to witness and enjoy it is in itself, to be taught what is truth, as light teaches what is reality. It makes no sound; but it shows. So is the Bible, and such must be our open heartedness towards it, to appreciate what it is, the very word of God, conveyer of truth, worker of experience, arresting the spirit, deploying the thoughts, inspiring the heart and teaching the mind. We shall allow ourselves to be exposed to it and to sup on its strength, feed on its faithfulness and follow it to its pith, point and path, since this will never vary, nor will it alter at all; for though heaven and earth WILL pass away, His word will not do so! (Matthew 24:25). With  God, it is like that ... it is different!

157

153rd

The Holocaust of Morality and the Coming of Christ the King

Published October  2008

ISBN 978-0-9805471-8-4

Barbarism is never attractive. It is descent into insensitivity, decline into the bucolic, the aggressively self-parading or assertive, the loss of knowledge and the presence of the desires of flesh, making man manacled to nature, as if part of that over which IN GOD, he should bear responsible rule.

When however you have assertive decline, the very follies of a gospel of disgrace, the downward embraced as an illicit lover, mere partner in lust, when knowledge is distorted by artifice and morals become inventions of so-called culture, a mere name for what people are broadly doing and saying and thinking, be it good or bad, brilliant or immune to all reason, as now in many countries, whether from the Communist, the Islamic or innovative religious slant, dressed in philosophic rags or preening in cultural adornments, then what ? It is then that horror has its day, and folly its adornment.

On the other hand, the stability that is to be found in the unchanging Jesus Christ, long announced to come over millenia, coming at the date set in the prophets of Israel, to do the work assigned, whose Gospel enshrines what was foretold, and has done what was foretold; and when you have that well-grounded, rationally founded morality which bends to no refraction and is made diffuse by no diffraction, but is the correlative of man's design and the issuance of his Creator, then what is to be found ? Then there is the nobility of enterprise in the necessities of righteousness, the grace of God in the midst of provocation and the natural blessed by the supernatural, so that it is like a beautiful picture, serene as Constable, valiant like Drake at the Armada and with voice for its thoughts, given by God.

In service is there dignity, in obedience is strength and in vision of splendour there is understanding.

The current comparability with Sodom and Gomorrah, mounts; and to the former of these,  it appears there was only a matter of hours before the destruction came suddenly, following that extravagance of lust when some of the men sought carnal intercourse with an angel! (Genesis 19). Such things are in the line of challenge in II Peter and Jude, and form only a part of the dishonesty, aggression as a paranoid pre-occupation for wits and vainglory, at levels individual, national and international, which in this generation colludes with other vices to form clots in the drains of living, where men drink disease.

If there is no joy in the description of such things, or goodness in the fallacies and philosophies, pollutions and filibusters of endless bombast of propaganda which wants to make 'nature' lord and spiritual obesity the companion of moral famine, at least there is point. People have been known to repent, and whole international movements have occurred as one sees in the history of revival, in such works for example as Edwin Orr's "The Second Evangelical Awakening". To be sure, much fanfare has been fantasy and many awakenings have been little more than stirrings in the sleep, but far is this from being the universal rule. Awakenings have swept nations like winds in Autumn, the leaves.

Further there is reason to expose the bases of doubt and defeat, despair and illusion which makes of life a splendid or a dismal fancy, according to the phase of the pathology in view, so that by stability and contrast, reason and revelation, fruits and function,  the grounds of righteousness appear in their beauty and the blessedness and happiness of holiness is seen aright. Skewed or sedative works and articles, features, teachings, promptings, instructions, grounds for retaining a lecturing job and the like, despite known fallacy: these are as common as blow-flies in their season, but less productive than worms, which at least enrich the soil, and do not make it radioactive.

Indeed, pity has its place, for who in his right mind wants to see needlessly, the breach of loveliness that COULD be by the vice that MUST be, when the necessity is only apparent, and the gall of what breaks man has all the spiritual attractiveness of the devil ?

Thus we shall plan to awaken thought as we move with the Gospel of grace in such ways, in the intention that some may be saved from seduction, delivered from devilish dynamics and enlightened by the light of Christ, as they sink in the deep ocean channels amid the outgoing currents, where only fear and distress await, if not at once, then in due course.

158

154th.

The Secular, the Sacred and the Sublime

Published November  2008

ISBN 978-0-9805471-9-1

An idea of its contents, which are much in  creation-salvation-culmination, is to be found below.

The secularity of the secular is just the worldliness of this world. The sacredness of what is sacred is the reflection of the Creator, and the sublimity of the sublime is the manifestation of His power, presence, personal nature, wisdom, brilliance, majesty, holiness, compassion and mercy, wonder and grand creativeness, the anterior to our own passion for it, the ground for it and for as many as receive Him who made them freely, who paid for their restoration and redeemed, the culmination of it.

HERE is the real creativity: GOD who created first man, has created the solution to the sin which is the necessary aptitude of liberty, and in so doing has sent His personal expression, His living word, the exact representation of His being, incarnate as His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to bring the Eternal to the Present, the Everlasting to the Temporal and the Life Eternal to the recipients.

It is part of His creativity and holiness that it is free ... Certain additional emphases are found on this topic in this volume.

2) It also deals with education, that eliciting within creation, and with a broader teaching, even in Chapter 3
 

THE MESSIAH IN JEREMIAH,

WHICH IS EXEGETICAL, AND A GRAND TOPIC. It is not that Isaiah is given too much prominence (for HOW could that be!), but that often Jeremiah in THIS respect is given too little. Effort is made then to remedy this!

159

155th.

Mini-Messages with Maxi-Impact

Published December  2008

ISBN 978-0-9806138-0-3

Reviews of some wide-ranging basic topics of Christianity, with emphasis on pith
and application.

2009

17 Volumes published this year - December.

160

156th.

Published, January 2009

ISBN 978-0-9806138-1-0

ISRAEL II

ISRAEL: ITS DAY FROM A LONG WAY AWAY

Consider Israel - If You Don't, You May Have to!

Compilation of many earlier presentations on the Bible, Israel, the Church, this world and the next, with additional material, updating or extending the earlier work on ISRAEL.

161

157th.

THE UNCOMPREHENDING DARKNESS
AND THE SELF-REVEALING LIGHT

The Duty of Holiness

February 2009

ISBN 978-0-9806138-2-7

Taking over... It is Satan's long-standing desire.

The light of truth, however, unlike the uncomprehending darkness in which it shines (cf. John 1:1ff.), is self-revealing. Darkness merely scarfs up, hides, occludes vision; but self-revealing light has something to show. Light is what exposes and what is truth exposes itself with relentless patience and continuous evidence (cf. Light Dwells with the Lord's Christ).

Suppression becomes the answer and oppression the result of the clamouring clangours of the din of darkness, which would sometimes reduce its call from that of blood in the ground to a flood over it, 'managing man'. Thus there is a phase of spiritually illiterate violence, whether by fines or imprisonment (such as occurred to Bunyan and may yet occur in Australia for those who tell what the Bible declares, Victoria having given a strong lead), or bombs or invasion, by raids as in Georgia, or by death camps as by Hitler, it is the way of force that does not favour truth, that answers a challenge ideological or spiritual, by a shower of power.

Where evidence mounts and will not be discounted, then petulant or aspiring force is used; where truth declares, mouths are to be closed. Nothing must betray the powers-that-be in their inordinate lust to take over from God, declaring a new gospel, that of betrayal of Christ, even in the case of  many, this in HIS NAME! (as II Peter 1 forecast, and the period from 1900 to the present abundantly fulfils as many of those bodies which were once churches, retain the name, and preach otherwise cf. News 121, 122).

The self-revealing light is not mere illumination, however; it has something within it to reveal. God dwells in light inaccessible, preferring to declare Himself by light, and suffering none to invade; and when His light shines, then the realities which suffer no darkness of confusion, or of incomprehension show themselves, the very nature of the divine Being and His plans, thus attested from antiquity without change, in the Bible, as it grew to total fulfilment in Jesus Christ. Here the propositional became the personal, and instead of servants of God preparing His way, He came in Person (cf. All This Rot about Not Believing).

Without the God who made him, man makes gods, whether of nothing, matter, ideas, power, rule, race, spiritual beings, spiritual powers, a pardoning virgin (cf. SMR pp. 927, 977ff., 1087ff., Jesus Christ , Defaced ... Ch. 5, esp. *2), a mother-earth, a natural force or anything else he happens to think of (cf. The gods of naturalism have no go!), whether ransacking the Bible to violate it in its own name, or being more adventurous, basing himself on himself, and so neither knowing nor able to know his basis. You will never find what made the car by worshipping it or its processes of composition.

In this volume then, the assaults of darkness, force, folly and the results, are on the one side and on the other, there is the wonder of a light that shines out from its own basis in God, cluttered by no nonsense, full of illimitable power, which can seem harsh to those who betray it when patience is finished and the case is done, but is gentle to those who use it, without seeking to fuse and confuse it with anything else. The conflict ? it is like having a team of kids opposing a Test side; and far more, the finite poking out its tongue at the infinite. When mercy is despised, what is left is reality, which shuns theft of truth and deals with it as with all estranged scorn: with justice and this ultimately ... means judgment.

God is most gracious and patient; but there was a beginning and there is an end to it all. The reaping is near now (Answers to Questions Ch. 5)and the weeping is already in progress. The Gospel of Jesus Christ was forecast in increasing detail for millenia (cf. Joyful Jottings 22-25), its crucial cost has been covered by on the Cross for more millenia, and the entirety of the divine program is now coming towards its end. Many have their love grow cold as Christ forecast (Matthew 24), because it is so tedious-seeming, and others because of multiple betrayals; but when one's trust and hope is placed in God, then only grace prevails with ineluctable truth, and forgiveness proceeds with an unyielding love which in mercy, shows it. If hope springs eternal (in our season), it is chiefly because the ground for it is still on offer!

Man is on test conditions; it is well not to follow the mob, nor the delinquents, but the only other focus, Jesus Christ while there is yet time (cf. Christ the Wisdom and the Power of God Ch. 8, Repent or Perish Ch. 2, The Magnificence of the Messiah). His is no blemish, all evidence, only validity (cf. Deity and Design ... esp.  Section 8). Indeed, in Chapter 11, the matter becomes luminous as Habakkuk asks his famous questions.

Meet Him; He is very pleasant to know. You will then find His word as a resource insuperable, His promises as a course indubitable, His presence a recourse inimitable and His mercy a forest of beauty with the streams of spiritual peace in its midst.

162

158th.

THE KINGDOMS OF THIS WORLD and

THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST

ISBN 978-0-9806138-4-1

March 2009

First of all, consider Him who is first - and last. There is no competition there for the primacy of position or the outlasting, enduring end of the matter.  He is BOTH. Nor is there any emulation within Him, for He delights to give His kingdom to His Christ, He who is the Father, and the Spirit of God is sent by the Son from the Father. Thus when in Revelation it declares the unutterably musical, majestic, simple, solemn sentence:

the kingdoms of this world have become
the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ,

there is no sense of striving together. That is the way of this world. Rather the One delights to give it and the other delights to receive it and both, one God, delight to send the Son so that many might be moved from the kingdoms of this world to His own.

There is nothing meretricious: for merit is total and pervasive. It does not need to be earned, for it is there; and its disclosure is not for assessment for it assesses and is wrought over all. What is, precedes what is done, as a car precedes its mileage; but this One, He is eternal. The alternative of nothing (which gives nothing, but we are something) or something inadequate (but by definition that CANNOT do it) leaves only one opening: what is eternally sufficient from the first for everything to the last. Nor is He composite, as if synthesised, nor contained, as if Another were over Him, for that is not God but a subject and what subjects is God.

Nor is He less than personal who makes persons, gives them that liberty which is the groundwork of responsibility and that law which is the basis of morality and that fervent function of spirit which is the underground work for creativity in our race, the results of which are nobility and disaster, wonder and woe, calamity and consummation, in a perfervid mess of mangling called the kingdoms of this world.

It is great to envisage their loss, as Shakespeare phrases it, we dote on their very absence and yearn for their decease; for it is then that these kingdoms become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, that Messiah who being sent from eternity, the Word of God living and lively, who created all things (Colossians 1:15, John 1:3, I John 1:1-4) whose is eternal life and from whom it is obtained, that door for entry, that Lamb for atonement, that Destroyer of death and deployer of life that cannot finish, for He gives of His own.

In this volume, our concern is the movement from the one to the other, the quality of the one compared to the other, the politics of frustration and the power of reformation, the ending of an Age and the coming of the King whose kingdom is over all, whose trinitarian magnificence with His Father and the Spirit leaves an eternal light that nothing can obfuscate, a glory which nothing can penetrate and a life that nothing can end for the citizens of that realm (Philippians 3:20-21, Revelation 7, John 11).

163

159th.

Christ the Citadel, The Hospital, The Acquittal,
The Creator, The Restorative,
The Celestial Regality:

Look! He Comes

March 2009

ISBN 978-0-9806138-5-8

Be ready! For some 2000 years, since the arrival of the Messiah, Jesus Christ,  on this globe, He has operated in spiritual hospices, hospitals, operations, missions, in His people throughout the world. He has continued His application of redemption (cf. Acts 1:1).

Millions have been acquitted; many wooed, regaining life, made gentle who were fierce, escaping the curse along with the total citizenry of the kingdom of heaven. The taut have been taught from within, impacted from the record of His incarnation and death, from outside, another spirit has been sent within them, kindness has displaced cruelty, healing injury, fellowship fury. Such has been the lot in the Lord for a few (cf. Matthew 7:15ff.).

The spuming floods of the spiritually spurious have been from the evil powers, driven with devious dynamic and power designed to envelop the followers of Christ, but the Lord has delivered them (cf. Revelation 12:15-16), though many have added their blood to the flood, faithful and fearless, smitten but not seduced.

The celestial citadel of Christ Jesus (cf. Psalm 18:1-6) has rendered them in spirit secure, in life meaningful, in heart directed, in mind founded on the objective reality of God Himself, translated into a visible life on this earth in the person of Jesus Christ the Saviour, who faithful through death has led to the other side (cf. John 14:1ff.); so that we who are His are secure.

Meanwhile, menace has sought to mesmerise this world, to seduce to compromising policy, as did blind peace-niks in the 1930s, ignoring the due and just warning of Winston Churchill, till the whole land was near to repossession by evil and lustful forces from Europe.

Generations earlier, a fascinating example of penetrating and biblical faith appeared in Archbishop Cranmer, who seeking peace for the Church and the kingdom, wavered, for a short time accepting the ultimatum which would have made blatant but popular idolatry acceptable, but then realising his confused submission, that all must be subordinated to the truth and honour of the Prince of peace, Jesus Christ, without whose rule no rule is righteous, in him grace prevailed. He drastically rejected the agreement, turned from it and entered the band of martyrs in high drama and magnificent testimony.

Denouncing the folly of the nation, in the very speech in which he was supposed to cringe, at the execution, he burnt first the hand in the fires prepared for him, as a testimony against compromise and an elegant if sacrificial signal: NEVER COMPROMISE WITH CHRIST, for any motive whatever. Thus grace assisted recovery and he with others who did not waver, stood. They fought, wrought and taught; and for a time, many listened to these and multitudes of others, murdered by the Romanist conspiracy^*1, which displacing Christ's command of non-violence in religion, used it to the uttermost (John 18:36).

These were examples of faith in grace, and it is not a litany of the lost which they enter, but one of those found who found it not acceptable to be found where faith is not!

A wall not of concrete but of fire has surrounded these and millions of others, so that in death, as epitomised from the Bible in Stephen (Acts 7 - a man of faith and wonderful works through it in the name of the Lord), the presence of the sublime Sovereign overshadowed all the disastrous and evil devilish competition with the spuming furies, which this world provided, courtesy of hell. These who stayed put in their place in the Lord, being kept by the power of God to salvation consummated in heaven, as given on earth (I Peter 1:1-8), loving Him who first loved them,  have secured their place by grace, through faith, and their spirits were not quelled.

When GOD keeps your spirit, hell is beaten before it begins; and indeed, as in Ephesians 1:11, those who by faith have been saved, have received already an inheritance, which history simply confirms, being predestined to the faith they have, before this world began (II Timothy 1:9ff.). And that ? It is by the God who IS love, who would have ALL to be reconciled to Himself by this self-same blood of Christ (Colossians 1:19ff.).

But this world, it is broken.

All things of the curse continue in this world, by nature now

·        in cursed condition (cf. Romans 5, 8:17ff.), and

·        impoverished, its sufferings and vanity a result of divine action,

so that the very surrounds, while keeping much of their original beauty, become a fit surrounding for those who strive to arrive, and do not receive the life of God as a gift, redemption as a necessity and the call as a mercy as water to replace the flames.

Brutalities in nature and in the nature of man continue in their unblessed measure of correlation, the one sin and the other its consequence, this the very mirror of sin, though something of this world's created loveliness, love and solicitude are seen remaining in faithfulness to death in many cases of parents for offspring and those who love, yes, even in the animal realm. Nevertheless, much brutality mocks man within created and cursed nature, though it does not reach to his refinements of devilishness, not being spiritual in kind. Yet such a condition exposes him to an insight by sight, and to a rebuttal of sin by display of its nature in the very lower creation, to which he relates as one given place as a race, now forfeited in pollution, reduced through rebellion and spoilt by sedition.

These things, therefore, mock the more as man increasingly seeks to ape the vanities of nature, taking it as a paradigm, as if to look at a car crash, and to use the crumpled result for a factory specifications for making cars. Education follows; folly mounts like tsunamis aplenty; and pain flows on as the waters of life first withdraw from the tribes in revolt on this earth, unkind to each other, uncontrite before God, and these self-same waters come crashing down to rebuke avarice, greed, faithless lying, ludicrous inventions of the mind and dreams of spirit (cf. Jeremiah 23, Ezekiel 14). Man creates the waves, calls for correction and slanders God as they return mounting, after their withdrawal, unwilling to repent, unable to remove reality.

Such is the way, as the evil one seeks to rifle the store, and is increasingly outraged at his impotence, for he can snatch only what is spurious.

Let us then not be bemused as man is confused, a result of unremitting sin and refusal for its remission (cf. Romans 3:25). Let us instead look up to reality, see the challenge and be down to earth about it, not living in a fallacious dream, but walking in the Spirit as students of heaven, so becoming rather exponents on earth, acting, teaching, preaching as able, dutiful members of that kingdom of heaven which now is, and then will be consummated, now is invisible but effective, then will be visible and perfected.

While this world is on its odious way, a partly anaesthetised and ever increasing horror, stanching its wounds with poisoned philosophy, its sleazy practices an engine of grief, man meddles with invented, unproven, unverified religions (cf. The Kingdoms of this World and the Kingdom of Christ) , dreams of the heart. So in seduced crowds he acts,  instead of eating the free bread of heaven, as much a gift as was life itself in the first place. Thus does he not receive the blessedness of new birth, the cordial result of such eating, such faith in Him, nor in such unbelief is found the creation of the spiritual and redeemed life, that regenerated life, that second birth which restores what was lost in the first place (John 6:47ff.,Colossians 3:10).

The world sinks; Christ has risen. Do not therefore bathe in its industrial waste, dead, morbid and mortal from the factories of sin.

Time is running out (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5); Christ is coming back. It is not a flood this time, a universal deluge (cf. News 1), but instead the very Judge in person,  who comes to reap and then to rule (cf. Acts 17:31).

What then ? Make peace through the blood of Christ, that expression of life given to death to deny judgment to sinners and to elevate life back to God, and responding to the Gospel, meet with the Resurrected Ruler whose grace has given so far 2000 years to our Age, a time in which to respond to the Gospel, in individual hearts, in tribes, races, families, nations, in this world as one whole! In all this time,  some have come; but the tread of the mundane feet of this earth is resounding with increasingly stultified rebellion, mighty in envy of the Lord, secure in its sedition, aligned for devilish dynamic soon to come, at which time it is soon to go, merely exhibiting its freakish finale before it is manifested with such a clarity that divine light strikes it down (II Thessalonians 1:6ff.).

Make peace while you may, with Him who IS

v        our peace (Ephesians 2:14-19),

v        peace-maker by proclamation,

v        sacrifice by crucifixion,

v        the end for sin's guilt by dynamic over death,
in the power of the resurrection, proclaimed in public,
attested afresh while He performs by His Spirit,
 as He has promised for two millenia.

Don't then mix with water to obtain the dilutions of the devil,

or deal

with his manifestations of duplicity,

his impudence of spurious serendipity or

his prescriptions of rebellion, on line in many a body called a church,

on show as they dive to hell for new morals,
and abandon the purity of the Maker,
for the insistence on which, in the love for His people, He has died.

Not for some other mortal race in the universe did He die, not for some other design, not for some other specifications, not for some other people. He died for this one which He made, and rose for this one, to which He has offered ablution, and remission. His word carved in this sphere is not lightly designated for some other world; and His face, though bashed plentifully while He was here, is simply not available for more post-mortem, post-resurrection slappings. The sting now is in the simple strength of sin, which, when past mercy by such devices, is raw like a whipped hide, and awaiting the blow-flies of corruption for its follies.

Developments of dither, withering, slithering in the midst of spiritual and logical slide and salubrious sainthood continue, and need to be watched; for His return is near.

164

160th.

GOD'S GIFT OF GRACE IN CHRIST JESUS

April 2009

ISBN 978-0-9806138 6-5

There are many graces, places and faces which mankind makes and provides, in name at least, for his use and facility. Multi-cultural approaches abound, though in general they seem a substitute, at least in the Western world, for actual grace and truth which go together like two inseparable twins.

Consider it. If you show grace, it is a kindness undeserved, but coming from a willingness to give. That is a major part of the concept. If people come to your country and you give them opportunities and aid to which they have no right, this could be called a species of grace. If on the other hand, as seems in great danger of happening, grace is the idea, but treachery to truth is the fact, then this is a species philosophic putsch, a denial of the past principles of one's nation without ceding that this is the case.

Truth is the necessity before 'grace' becomes another name for capitulation, disgrace and moralless meanders, leading to national death. It is not for nothing that nations rise and fall; and there are reasons, grounds for this, to be found in the reality of the God who made us.

In this volume, number 160, we have planned with the help of God, to bring out some of the depths and realities of grace, so that it may be first of all relished, then applied, then realised for what it is and is not, and finally seen in the light of the face of Jesus Christ, who was "full of grace and truth" as seen in John 1:14. There is much that follows from this; and it is close to the heart of all human life, both now and forever.

Now this work is finished.

165

161st.

SPIRITUAL FOOD AND SPIRITUAL DRINK
THERE IS THE REAL MISSING LINK

May 2009

ISBN 978-0-9806138 7-2

Food that revives the spirit and drink that issues to and from the heart! that is the point here.

Take the words from  I Corinthians 10:

“I do not want you to be unaware, brothers,
    that our ancestors were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea,

and all of them were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.

 

“All ate the same spiritual food,

 and all drank the same spiritual drink,

    for they drank from a spiritual rock that followed    
    them, and the rock was the Christ.

 

“Yet God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the desert.

These things happened as examples for us,
    so that we might not desire evil things, as they did.

 And do not become idolaters, as some of them did, as it is written,
    “The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.”

Here are a number of interesting aspects. The ROCK which followed the children of Israel throughout their desert experience was CHRIST. That accords with Isaiah 45 and Philippians 2, used concurrently; for thus we find that there is NONE but GOD ALMIGHTY to whom every knee is going to bow, and it is to CHRIST that every knee is to bow, so that Christ is God Almighty (as John 1 and 8:58 show),  He is God Expressive, the Eternal Word of the Living God, equal in status, one God.

It is not Peter, who at once suggested that the Cross idea be dropped (Matthew 16); no, that was no rock, but a stone (cf. SMR p. 99). The play on his name has been ludicrously parlayed to ignore the difference in petros and petra (transliterated) in the Greek. He is ALSO AN ELDER (I Peter 5), and does not violate Matthew 23:8-10, which forbids the erection of rocks in this manner, as if to vie with God! There is, as God says, NO OTHER ROCK (He does not know any – Isaiah 44:8 - do some then seek to know more than God Almighty! in the false glory of Rome … cf.  II Samuel 22:2,3, Psalm 62:1-2).

Alas,  Romanism’s plan has, for this reason,  been a gutting of the glory, were it possible, in this mock ascendancy. But this is not our topic here, but spiritual food and spiritual drink; for sometimes it is necessary as Professor E.J. Young noted, to show a meaning by indicating both what negates it and what confirms it, so narrowing the field for comprehension.

Spiritual food and spiritual drink is a name given through Paul for the divinely bestowed food (manna) and drink (water by command through a rod!) which sustained the people of the Lord in the desert environment. It was so, the context in I Corinthians 10 is indicating, by the power and presence of Christ (pre-incarnate) who is the Rock. The apostle proceeds to move to the topic of what is called Communion, the partaking of the Lord’s Supper.

In this, incidentally, in the last Supper, Christ did NOT commit suicide, being God incarnate, nor was it a sacrifice, which came later, nor was there shed blood without which there is no remission (Hebrews 9:22), nor was there suffering which is essential to the case (Hebrews 9), nor are these conditions met in the Romanist mass, which is therefore anti-biblical in its self-definition, blatantly askew from Hebrews as from reality. Thus, in format, He was real man like His brethren, but without sin (Romans 8, Hebrews 2); for He had one body, which could not be broken in two without cessation of its normative functions, in death. That could come only at Calvary, once made, once in the history of the world, and not often, for otherwise as Hebrews relates, He would have had to suffer often, but now: ONCE. The bread was bread, not body. The Lord's Supper has nothing to do with saving sacrificial action in process. It is statedly to be done in memory of HIM.

In what way then did Christ’s customary use of symbols with depth of meaning apply here ? The point is simple: when you partake of this Supper, you enter into an action by faith in which you are receiving revitalising realisation of His presence in you (Colossians 1:27), His action for you (I Peter 3:18, 2:22ff.), and His grace through you (cf. (II Corinthians 12).

It is not putting food in your stomach, for it is spiritual food which counter-designates any such idea (cf. John 6:63, in this precise ideational context). However, the mere presence of such symbols confers nothing; for unless there be faith, there is nothing. Hence Paul is used to warn the people not to play about with symbolism and imagination, but to have saving faith in the living God.

Just as the baptism that saves (I Peter 3:21) is NOT the washing of the body (cf. John 13, symbolically), but the witness of a clear conscience through faith in the resurrected Christ: so the point of the Lord’s Supper is not the eating of flesh, but the cleansing of the heart through the death of Christ in which the sin being focussed and forgiven, there is life anew and that, eternal. The work on the Cross, redemption, ONCE ONLY, leads on to the work of regeneration in the heart, ONCE ONLY (John 5:24). What did Christ say of this topic in John 6:63 ? The words that He speaks are spirit and they are life! What, He asks, if I go back to My Father in heaven! Where then the physical (cf. Acts 3:19ff.). Wilful abuse of His speech makes for woeful results. But wise use of it makes for life (cf. SMR pp. 1032-1088H and in particular, 1086ff.).

Thus in this volume we have a wide ambit. Spiritual food and drink is biblically a phrase capable of use concerning any sustaining work of the Lord Jesus Christ, our Rock and ONLY ROCK (II Samuel 22:32, Isaiah 44:8); and it is even capable of referring to Holy Communion; but from the immediate context of I Corinthians 10, it has the broader meaning in focus, which is here in this volume, our own.

As God is not to be confused with symbols, so is He not to be shunted into the magical trances of evolutionism, the rabbit of life out of the hat of nothing (ultimately) and bits of things (in passing). This too is brought out as the actualities of life and indeed eternal life are shown afresh.

For the rest, concerning the title of this volume: increasingly, realists are despairing of ever finding any ‘missing link’ between man and other creations, this having been a choice topic for 150 years or so, and a dead one, like the bones that do not come. More and more, it is being acknowledged that the very earliest cases of relics are not diverse in kind from those of modern man, and as Professor  Oxnard indicated, finds in this field are frequently sensationalised.

Thus, it is hard to find any new ‘find’ which is not set down as the missing part of the imaginary paradigm. The actual words of the Professor Oxnard were to the effect that a find is almost routinely turned into an epochal discovery, and in irony, he indicated the folly of such idle sensationalism. Indeed, the more it differs, the more it is the same; and the more dates are toyed with on philosophical assumptions, the more they return to short notation, On these topics, see for example:  News 81 and references therein, SMR Ch. 2, pp. 234ff., TMR Chs. 1, 8, and. 7,  of the last, esp.  Section D and Section E, The Defining Drama Ch.   3, Christ, the Cumulative and the Culmination Ch.   9, Cascade of Truth, Torrent of Mercy Ch.   6.

Where then is the real missing element ? It is not in the bones; they have been given more than a fair trial. It is in spirit. The linkage severed in silence, it is not to animals but to God: the one that matters. It is stricken wilfully, though it is in this case, abundantly present. the absence of this link is volitional, not objective. It is this which is missing just as surely as the inferior one is not there, bereft of light, both rational and empirical. Not wanting the spiritual link, many among mankind seem earnestly to yearn for the lower one, which after all, has fewer problems for control-minded mankind, whether to receive or to deceive. With God, there is truth, and truth can indeed hurt; but without it, man is unmanned. He becomes prey for beast not on four legs, but two.

For the full Preface, click on the link 161st. above.

166

162nd.

THE TRACK OF TRUTH

MEADOWS OF MERCY

AND PEACE OF PARDON

June  2009

ISBN 978-0-9806138 8-9

Rest, like work is a wonderful thing. They are partners in truth.

Relished labour in a chosen field for the glory of God is a summit experience; for to have God work WITH you is choice indeed, and to work FOR Him is privilege in pith and not just in passing; but to have rest from labour in the meadows of His mercy is like the quiet lowing of resting cattle in lush pastures (Isaiah 63:14) after milking, settling down in the growing shadows and quietness of early evening, amid the trees that glisten in the gloaming with the moistures that abound.

There are the tracks along which the cattle move, and there is the hay provided for supplement to maw and spirit; and while they need a quick response if they lose temper or become quarrelsome in the shed as they are milked, yet that is soon over and a mellowness can return and a peace without ill-will can resume. Cattle can be troublesome, but they can be very pleasant, and having often been on a dairy farm, one learns to like cows, and to feel for them.

They are kept, they are kept kempt, they are matters of concern, and due provision is made for them. Horses tend to be more bluntly affectionate and dogs yet more so, perhaps, or at least more readily. With these, a relationship can be brutal, exploitative, with hatred and snarling, or beautiful, accommodating, a matter of fellowship and mutual delight. So it is with man and his Creator.

In blind fulminating or dreamy licence, depending on the case and the day, man can sign off God as if He were an unpaid employe, in such a massive feat of folly as leaves astonishment a mere foothill of the psyche! He can deliver Him, in will, to oblivion or to others. He can crucify Christ afresh, denying His relevance and acting AS IF in love God had not given a more inevitably insistent and persistent account of His love than of anything else in all creation; for all else depends on the undependable, whereas His word depends on its testing and fulfilment, on its logical necessity^*1 as His own, and its magnitude of scope and perspective, avoiding invalidity as no other approach to life has ever done, or could do^*2.

If man denies Christ and the love of God, then in that very act He is implicitly accusing God of having less mercy, less provision, less concern for man than many a man and woman has or would like to show for mankind: an impossible feat for those created ^*3 by Him, as well as anti-evidential. This proposition, rejecting the love of God in Christ Jesus, as if it were not,  is not merely an illogical enormity, but refusing what cannot be refuted, places an unwritten slander squarely at the door of God, a spiritual missile, an implicit charge that would leave Him an inane goof without goodness, inactive before imperious calamity,  whereas He is the wise counsellor who making freedom, provides in passion for the goodness to flow to man in a channel, as water is so readily follows,  and even adds the massif by its side, which mercy produced to transfer pardon to any confessed sinner who receives it by faith in Him,  where man abandons abuse of truth, liberty, love and power, for its pure source.

That channel is the Cross of Christ, one arm receiving, as it were, the mercy from heaven vertically, and the other spreading it abroad as He cried, even to His tormentors, Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing!

Then by His Spirit, He applies this, that Spirit who does not speak on His own authority (John 16:13), but glorifies Him who sent Him (John 16:14, 115:26), as Christ glorified His Father who sent Him (John 17:1-5): for what was created through the Word of God (John 1:1-3, Colossians 1;15), found salvation provided through the personal presence of that Eternal Word (John 1:12-14), and its application by the impelling constraints and creative power of the Spirit of God (cf. Titus 2-3), that blessed link with the sacrificial Saviour, without whose redemption,  none can stand before God (Acts 4:11-12, Romans 5:12ff., Hebrews 9:25ff.).

But stand ? In Christ, His servants may also rest, and rejoice for life in Him is what it was meant to be, a work of restoration and animation which brings heart to all His race (Colossians 3:9-10, Ephesians 3:16), that spiritual race found in Him, on whose hearts are written His ways (Hebrews 8): for whom that Rock Jesus Christ (I Corinthians 10) bore the sin, and removed it both prospectively and retrospectively, once and for all, in one day (Zechariah 3:9). The application (of the salvation)  comes with application in His name, the reality with realism, the truth with repentance and faith in Him who died and bodily rose in a resurrection, prototype for His own people.

But what of the spirit shown in Jesus the Christ ? It is one thing to forgive those who harass and slander you, but another entirely to have your own body used, the travail of your soul appointed as the MEANS of mercy to those who slay you!

Such is the mercy and the mind of God. He has exposed it in prophecy, in history and in the soul of man in millions for millenia. Exposed it surely is, but not imposed; misused it often is, but its comfort in power and peace, in quietness and confidence, in productiveness and friendship with God for those who love Him, who are the called according to His purpose, is inestimable in beauty. In this way, duty becomes not a chore but a choice, and godliness not an imposition but an aspiration continual, like that of perpetual dawns always heralding the light which shines and makes its presence gloriously felt.

We, mankind, are not so lovely alas; but the potential is there, not to remake ourselves with weird political, social and psychic devices, but to be redeemed and restored, re-created by God to become blessed in the patterns pf peace and not sounding boards for the patter of impudence, impertinence, self-elevation and an abandonment into wilful ignorance

Anyone redeemed is what is marred in ugliness set on the road to spiritual beauty, dissidence restored to understanding and an absentee from the effectual class of truth made member of Truth's Tutorial (John 14:6).

In this volume, the purpose is to conceive and consider divergence from the diversity of error into the singularity of the composition of truth with peace and the mellow fruits of spiritual Autumn. It covers affairs both personal and national, ancient and contemporary, the love of freedom and its meaning, the love of God and its fruit.

167

163rd.

ISRAEL III

Faith, Fishbones, Fiascos and the Faithfulness of the Lord

A Contemporary Inspection and Collection
in the Inextinguishable Light of the Bible

Published June, 2009

ISBN  978-0-9806 138 9-6

Much has been happening in the Middle East in general, and in Israel in particular in the last few years. While in January of this year, some of the aspects and developments in Israel, and concerning it, have been compiled from earlier presentations, to enable a collection in this one field (ISRAEL II) , others were not included and much has been written since that time. The unfolding of the ultimate conflicts for Israel, closely linked to the return of the Lord as one sees both from Luke 21:24 and Romans 11, from Isaiah 59 and Micah 7, is thus of an intensified importance.

It is not just that there is no other nation which has had a history like that of Israel, for the very simple reason that no other particular nation has ever been so selected by deity for a commission to enlighten the world with the truth concerning God, has both wrought magnificently and foully in the process, and has been given its overall historical results in advance, and had this also, the fact that it would be foretold, itself foretold (as in Amos 3:7).

It has thus been a messenger to heed for the word of God from it, and to lament, for its own failures in the way; to admire for the courage of its faithful prophets, and its use in having the agents for this incisive product from God, the Old Testament, and to be desolated at its desolation, as a father might see one of great promise and commission, doing great things, and then dipping into the dismal and the lamentable.

As Netanyahu is now back, and Obama is now in, and their ways are in many regards like those of a flock of geese passing, and a tower in a city, for they are not close in kind, and as each tends to epitomise a philosophy; and as moreover, Netanyahu is quite sensitive to some of the prophetic facts about Israel, and to say no more, Obama seems relatively impervious in this dimension, with a new world in his eye and a  method which dares to outface principles of the utmost severity: there is a certain testing. We are growing nearer to the tensions foretold and the outcomes envisaged. It is not that the USA is likely to invade Israel by force; for that is far from the intention. It is by charm and a combination of incentives that it seeks to dislocate, in its current mode, Israel from its biblical heritage more and more. While this is perhaps not the intention, it is certainly the direction of the outcome in the plans envisaged, plans mutual for the Madrid Quartet.

Here, then, we are not speaking of an enemy, but of what in this world's divisions comes across in reputation as the greatest earthly, national friend for Israel! Hence the instability tends to mount, and greedy eyes rove, pondering the dishonour to God, the God of the Bible,  which an overthrow of Israel might constitute. Such a consideration would appeal to every devil-possessed heart; for on this, God has spoken (cf. Galloping Events Ch. 4), and foretold some of the final wrath and writhing to come, with Israel in view.

When man speaks the exact opposite to what God has said, there is sure to be more than tension and even than contention; for it draws near to the final outcomes of that vast parade called history, so incisively depicted in some of the parables of Jesus Christ, and given perspective through that magnificent intrusion, called the Gospel, where folly and faith arise like two contestants, and God is the judge. It is well for mankind that He has already judged sin, for those who receive His pardon, IN Jesus Christ, the vicarious victim to clear the slates, and already judged no less, that what rejects this,  His Gospel is due for wrath (John 3:15-19,36, Isaiah 49-55);  for there is mercy abundant, and there is NO OTHER MERCY: for God is judge Himself, and what despises His provisions, has no other.

Much has been written on Israel in recent events till June 2009, and it seems good at this time therefore to collect these items, together with some going back to 2007, and present them in one volume.

168

I feel sorry for mankind.

God was sad enough for them to plan the death of His eternal Word, incarnate, to cover the cost of the case.

Are you so sorry that when they have spat both literally and metaphorically  in His face, and never repented, viewed with irrational disdain the realities that He is no nincompoop but author of wisdom and understanding and demonstrably sole ground of our own, and provides all its exhibits, that they have then recklessly absconded with their own potential for these blighting dreams.

Not so much, no, not too much then.

Manage away, then man! but know that for all this God will surely bring you into judgment (Ecclesiastes 11:9), and with every passing year, you are seeing more of it. That ? it is PRECISELY as predicted, the disease of sin and the syndrome of results being given and now seen before the eyes in agonising detail as a witless world astounds itself with its wisdom, and with a talkative self-help program,  puts deliverance to one side,  as if the very devil.

How long slumber ? How long legislate that it is light, while blind! Will words make it so ?

Not too much longer, fortunately. This is fortunate for the race, for as each successive generation comes only to go (here and there, as it is all appointed), the trail of vapour is lower till it becomes one of smoke, and the physical earth itself is nearer  to its own explosive protest.

His coming is near; the aggravating  debt of dismissal of the revealed, the biblical Jesus Christ is mounting, not to the skies, as much as towards the hot centre of the earth; but even there, it cannot be buried. Only God can bury sin (Micah 7:18-19), and He has provided the right pit for it, in the heart of Christ whom it smote like a hydrogen bomb, but whom it could not for all that, contain (Acts 2:23-24).

It is certainly time to seek the Lord, and to avoid the disaster which makes the current financial stress a mere symptom, like a rash, compared with the mortality which has its come-uppance when it refuses the eternal life for which it was built.

Far from folly, there is the valid testimony of a kingdom that is pure, a place of peace ineffable, of joy unspeakable (I Peter 1:5-8), of justice and truth, and its King has already given His life, a ransom from the price of sin which is sufficient for all, adapted to all. In principle, it is just as it was when there was the prelude to Christ's cross, that  animal sacrifice in Israel, on national offer. IF it was not received in heart by faith, and not all did that (Deuteronomy 29:18ff.), then these thus were receiving curse and not blessing, being like someone fainting instead of receiving a necessary operation.

Certainly there is no cover in absconding from the credit offered in Christ.

It is inoperative for those without faith, for without this you CANNOT please God (Hebrews 11:6). It does not apply where the hands of the heart are not placed on the Head of the Lamb, with confession, repentance and faith. It does not apply where the Lamb is not seen as God Himself in human form breaching death so that its very physical claws are blunt, and cannot tear, so in love granting in justice met upon Himself,  resurrection in Himself, and for all His people (Romans 10:9, 8:32ff., I Corinthians 15, Acts 2:23-24, Isaiah 26:19).

For whom then does it apply ? It DOES apply, and by the Spirit of God application is MADE for the one who so receives the King, whose goings are eternal, whose coming provides salvation, whose crucifixion bears the curse of sin and whose resurrection confirms as did His miracles before that, His power to forgive, paying for all whose hearts come and whose lives are surrendered to Him, their Maker and Redeemer. Leaders ? They cannot compete (Ezekiel 21:25ff., John 14:30). This world in autonomy ? it cannot go (James 4:4). It grows wilder and yet wilder.

Man without God is like a cow in the jungle. A fine thing ? undoubtedly, but in the wrong place. Jaguars, leopards, lions there mingle with its misplaced form, which is prey for them.

Man makes himself a prey continually, failing to pray and refusing to work in the kingdom of Christ, or actually seeking to make their own, with their own gods, facilities of the imagination, as empty as a long drought's sky. As Jeremiah puts it, the gods that have not made the heaven and the earth, will perish with it.

169

165th.

The gods of naturalism have no go!

Volume 5

The Bugle of Creation to the Belligerence of the World

Ranging in Reality -
a Good Change
from Corruption through Philosophy,
when it comes to Science and Reason alike

Published July 2009

ISBN  978-0-9806 750-2-3

With the publication of this volume in the set noted in the title, there is now a pentad on this topic. This brings up to date the compilation and review of aspects of creation, serene over its battalions of invidious detractors, insidious supplanters and acrid assailants, impregnable because of fact, sublime because of power, immovable because of what happened and its testimonies innumerable, categorical and immovable. The mountains may be moved; but not this.

170

166th.

ISRAEL IV

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR ?
 

ISRAEL and The TWO-EDGED SWORD

FOR and AGAINST -

and the setting is

SIN or SALVATION

ISBN  978-0-9806 750-3-0

related to Waiting for Wonder, yet to be published, with additions both in introductions to some of the Chapters 1-9, and currently in Chapters 10 and 11,
these chapters not being found in Waiting for Wonder.

Israel IV is an absorption unit for Israel matters specifically, from other areas, sometimes with additions, variations and applications.

171

167th.

ONE ONLY BUT NOT ALONE

THE HOLY TRINITY

ISBN  978-0-9806 750-4-7

With all the treatments of the trinity that appear in these 167 volumes that comprise the theological set, In Praise of Christ Jesus, there has developed a composure, with various stresses here and there on different aspects of this glorious reality which is the nature of the God of creation and redemption. How wonderful that HE on whom all depends and from whom all has come, is never alone, for in the infinitude of His intimacies in His own Being, there is companionship such as you often see echoed in the biblical depiction (cf. Zechariah 13:6-7, 11:11ff., Psalm 2, 40, John 10:30, 5:19ff., 1:1ff., Habakkuk 3:13, John 5:29 ...)! In fact, that is just what Christ SAID (as in 8:29). The Father, said Christ, has not left Me alone", and "He who sent Me is with Me," this in perfect concourse with the trinitarian excursion shown in Isaiah 48:16.

It seems therefore good to collect, extend or adjust slightly perhaps here or there, or excise some parts in a treatment, some surrounds which are not necessary for our present purpose, add some small point or aspect to a treatment, and in general make the whole more of a composition.

It is this which is now presented, a convenient module for this magnificent topic, such because of the magnificent and only God to whom it refers.

The Holy Trinity is not anomaly, but both logically refreshing and penetrating, a joy to the heart and the basis of all. It  is source and centre of the whole of salvation issuing in Jesus Christ.

171

168th.

WAITING FOR WONDER

ISBN  978-0-9806 750-5-4

Published August 2009

Wonder and work, witness and do not wander. For the preacher: Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel; for the worker, Work for the Night is Coming in which No Man can Work! (John 9:4, I Corinthians 9:16).

In the meantime, what is the attitude of heart, the mind-set in the Christian ? One of the chief elements is this: WAIT. It is no use doing what one I know did recently, saying, 'I give up!' That was sad, like a flower saying, I will bloom no more! Patience ? as one other declared, God must do more. I cannot wait, or some such words.

Waiting simply is not an option.

It is a necessity.

You must wait for the grass to grow again after drought, for love to form and formulate itself, for truth to be grasped by the investigating mind. To rip up the grass to see if it is well established is nothing to the point. Wait for it.

In spiritual things, as a Christian, the word is WAIT, and in Psalm 27 you see this repeated in with emphasis:

"Wait on the LORD; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart.

Wait, I say, on the LORD!"

In His time, He sanctifies in this, in that, reveals promontories to be extended, islands to coalesce, personality trends to be corrected, jutting points to the made smoother, weak inlets to be fortified with protective shoals, delicate formations to be junked for solid rock, principles to be formed and formulated in the heart, scriptures to be understood and applied, obedience to be wrought with self-discipline, and mistaken ideas to be dumped without decorum.

The Lord is WONDERFUL evoking WONDER. All His ways are righteousness and justice, truth and peace of heart, and all His paths are wise. As you know Him, Wonderful is His name (cf. Judges 13:18, Isaiah 9:6-7). Wonderful are His dealings. Just to give the tone of triumph, creation is the start for man; redemption is the consummation; eternal life is the dynamic and eternity is the outcome. In this volume, these things with some of the current movements as the last phases finish, occupy us; and with this, some of the lustrous passages in Isaiah 49:55, as the power surge leading to the end of the Age lets their light show up His splendour, with increasing urgency to a dulled generation.

Wonder is His way, and living with Him may involve discipline, correction, and it does, cleansing and purging, purification and courage, loss and sacrifice, endurance and patience, but as you WAIT ON THE LORD, you see and find wonders this world knows nothing of:  for its way does not merely diverge. It is entirely different. It is too damp to light, and no flame is in it, but that of destruction and passion, and when this dies down, a lingering twilight with a cousin, darkness to come.

In Him is no change, and they who wait upon Him will never be ashamed, for in His light they see light, and life in Him never ceases to provide wonder, to culminate in eternal companionship.

WAIT on the Lord, for this is the way. In spirit be patient under tribulation, giving nothing to the enemy to satisfy his least desire, countenancing no dishonour to the Lord, not reacting to provocation but responding to what is detrimental to the truth of Christ, not seeking convenience but in conviction seeking the glory of God, not exempting oneself from the commandments, like those wanting to be slim and gourmandising instead, regretting what they leave undone and do, alike. 

WAIT WITH EXPECTATION, for they will never be ashamed who wait upon Him (Romans 10:11), nor will need arise in a blather of talk, or a welter of action, to rush intemperately; for He gives more grace to the lowly (James 4:6). Grace is the way to His face; waiting is the way to heed from His heart; waiting with expectation is the way to finding, for faith is the culmination of call as it is the beginning of knowledge, and in His knowledge - that is, in simply knowing Him, there is the wonder that MUST come because He IS wonderful!

In this volume, the wonder of waiting, the waiting for wonder, the wonder you gain when you wait, this is part of the theme. The source of it is the Lord, the crux of it is His heart, so gracious and noble, so peaceable and faithful, so grand in vision and so apt in power; it is His wisdom, so unfolding in mercy and resolute in understanding; His plan, so acute in wit and so sure in fulfilment: yes Himself,  so loving in disposition, disposing of nothing that may be won, and winning all that may be found!

You don't have to invent wonder, though you may transmit something of His as He enables: it is there already. It is found, like gold in a mine, in Him (cf. Job 28).

Wait for it; wait for Him; for not only is His wonder within (Colossians 1:27, Luke 17:21), since the kingdom of heaven in in your midst, in your heart's relationship with Him whose way IS heavenly, a haven and a path for holiness (I Thessalonians 5:23), but it is also wrought in deeds. As Paul declares in I Corinthians 14:16: "For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." Again, he declares in I Corinthians 4:20: "For the kingdom of God is not in word but in power."

Thus it is not a poetic exercise, though exuberant poetry flows from it; it is a work of power. Words are not empty, but portents of operational power. There is nothing asthenic, nothing spiritually anorexic nor is there any inanition here; for the empty is full, the lame is made strong and the word of healing of mind, spirit and body, has no inhibition. If He chooses to allow a disease for a time, then so be it.

There are those like Paul who find this is the very pathway of effective service (II Corinthians 12:6ff.), one of the most notable here, after due and persistent prayer,  being patient and even ardent acceptance of trial and challenge - "If I must boast, I will boast in the things which concern my infirmities," for nothing is lightly done by the Almighty.......  and with Paul, his infirmity was for a very specific and personal purpose.

Further, since HE was crucified to gain salvation, there are those who suffer to show it (Colossians 1:24, Philippians 1:29). Nevertheless, His word of power can and frequently does heal, with an abundance of ability, like that of an athlete showing minimal elements to Primary School children. When once the need arises, as at the Exodus, as at the return of Israel to its land, there is no limit. Indeed, what He says of it shows just such an approach, as you see in Micah 7:15 and Revelation 19. NOTHING is too hard for Him, and THEREFORE He is a constant source of wonder. He is also the God who alone does wonders, great wonders (Psalm 72:18, 136:4). He who trusts in Him through His eternal word, Jesus Christ, will not be moved (Psalm 62:1,6).

This, His power,  is not only in creation but in regeneration, adoption, propagation of His truth, fulfilment of His word, the provision of wit when one is under fire (Luke 21:15). It is found in the divine dynamic as He uses each member of His body, with glorious originality and total conformity to His word (Romans 12, I Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4); and as He supports those more lonely in testimony, as was Tyndale at times, as was Elijah (I Kings 19:1-18).

Fear Him, for He is fearsome like a vast fire on a glorious hearth in mid-Winter when one comes home from intense cold, from an expedition afar. It is good to fear God, for this fear is clean without alloy, a purifying delight in His awesome grandeur and splendid majesty, intense knowledge and divine perfection, immensity of love, with a joyful exuberance of delight in His spiritual security and strength (I Peter 1:1-8); not with craven uncertainty but elevating delight and self-abasing realism. He, the Rock, is entirely certain and so are those who wait on His faithfulness, knowing that what He says so often is just what He does, that He who has begun a good work in you will not cease with it half done (Philippians 1:6); for a work without faith is NOT EVEN BEGUN, and one with it, resulting in regeneration (I John 3:9, 5:11-12) will end only when the consummation of promise becomes the appearance before the eyes (I Corinthians 13:11-12).

This volume, while from it is taken much of  Israel IV, a specialised repository,  is by no means limited to a study of the Bible and Israel, though this becomes one major feature in it. Its first chapters deal with Stephen, a figure in the Book of Acts, and what follows from Chapter 4 to 8, moves in many biblical passages in a theme which includes the majesty, justice, retorts, rest, peace, discipline, watchful words and clear-cut testimonies on the character and nature of God, which whether in this or that aspect, forms in its glory, the object of this volume. It looks into the flow of Isaiah 49-55 and in the Appendix collates and inspects some of the thundering waterfalls of testimony to His truth.

RELIGION, RELIGIOSITY AND REALITY IN CHRIST

It has appeared to this author that the many religious perspective operations which have been presented on this site could well be modelled into a compilation, one of reasonable coverage, assisting those brain-washed into comparative religion approaches, synthetic insight scenarios and existential contentions to begin to breathe again.

So often it is assumed that the speaker, whoever it may be, without rational source, has the objective knowledge to enable a classification of all things, in the field of religion at the least, or the evaluation of all things, or to BE the basis, and this is made on the understanding that in discussing God, or gods, you first assume that there aren't any of these, that the class, category is null, vacant, or that you constitute the basis for all understanding, or your experience, gaspings or gapings. After all, if there were not any god or gods, you would have to be 'it', the centre and masterpiece to be able to dispose of all things by your knowledge, which would need not only to be absolute, but absolutely communicable.

There may be palliatives, analgesics, to the effect that people really thought this and that, or were driven to it by this and that, feeble rationales for irrationality, or were deluded;  but underlying is this godlike perspective commonly assumed by those who deny gods, while taking their place with an ease which would be admirable were it not ridiculous. You either become god in order to tell us all about what is not there, or you act as god in order to marshall all things: that is the manner of the modelling. In either case, it is unbecoming, as well as untrue. We are born and die. Without God, we know nothing rightly; but then, we are not without God, and by Him are able to understand all things from Him (Proverbs 8:8, Romans 17ff.).

What however of those who do not actually claim godhood or its functional powers and merely articulate the view that it is all comparative, relative to genes, past, present, developments or any other oddity chosen ? If, however,  all were comparative, where is the basis for evaluation of any ? Assumption ? Presumption ? arrogance of heart ? seizures of the head ?

If absolute truth were unavailable on a model of this kind, there being merely reactors, reactions and reagents, then in what manner is this disposition of things to be known! What is not there CANNOT be known. Since however, it is readily demonstrable both that it is and where it is (cf. SMR, TMR, and other major sets found in Search^*A), we escape - like a rocket propelled adequately to escape the tenacious gravity of the earth - from these conundrums. Pursuing logic remorselessly as in these volumes and their correlatives noted, we find a network of demonstration which moves to a finale in verification in the Bible, application of its data and confirmation; and this proceeds, while avoiding the anti-validation of a model antagonistic in the first place, to what it presumes to gain.

If reason were unreasonable, where would validity be in any knowledge ? It is however given as a gift, and like other gifts must be used to the uttermost, since it has been proven to be inestimable value in much. Declining to use it in any one field is mere arrogance and intemperance, allied to whimsical caprice or worse (cf. SMR pp. 150ff., 330ff.). It becomes a scientistic folly justly named "The Cult of the Forbidden." Contrary to scientific method, it is merely an export of an invalid philosophical assumption, simple begging of the question.

Using reason however as in any field without fear, and in this in particular, it becomes eloquent by results. Finding the necessity of God by it^*B, we find the testimony of God through it, like using a geiger counter to test for radiation. Having found what He has to say, and using reason to show it must have been said (cf. Psalm 50^*C), we verify by showing it has the calibre, or better the qualities which could in any case have come from no other source. When we also find that it resolves all questions of validity and truth in passing, while analysing and extraditing man as the source of his own pangs, pains and tragedies, declaring the prognosis of his diagnosed disease, and foretelling what is needed for understanding and convenience, the resolutions are complete.

Indeed, when further, we find the basis in the Bible for resolution of all psychic, social and political problems, and the call to come out of the problem-making kingdom into the kingdom of heaven, then the practicalities become as grand as the principles. When even more than this, we are told of the signals for the action of the Great Physician who is also the Judge, and that this is imminent, joy should know no limits (cf. I Peter 1).

There is an exception here. When this diagnosis-prognosis and resolution which applies on all sides is rejected by will, so that as Christ put it, light has come and darkness is preferred to it (John 3:19), then there is assuredly no cause for rejoicing. But this ? it is like a man who having a cancer which can be extirpated by operation, refuses it. If he is sad, that is his affair; he is merely being wilful. In this case, man is enabled not only to act as he will, but to will as he will, since in the providence and foreknowledge of God, he is in line to have a new nature which is aligned to God, and it is God who knows the truth and He is not dependent on pathological presumptions, as His love is applied (John 3:16, II Timothy 1:8ff., I Timothy 2:1ff., Colossians 1:19ff.).

With God, there are no limits such as unbelieving man weaves for himself, entangled like a foolish kitten, and in the Bible there are resolutions on all sides, and no wonder, since the return to reality as always, is the path to understanding.

As we survey the scene, then, from a biblical and logical standpoint (as seen in the above, these are correlatives, each requiring the other as we proceed in search of God and what are His wants), we find the lapses, errors, quaint oddities and vicious errors in this or that religion, and using the biblical explanation, find that all fits. In this, biblical instruction, principles and perspective become a course for instruction in religions and their ways. This is a particular focus of this present volume.

A major contribution is on Buddhism; while a number of  analyses and applications cover the chief logical points needed re Islam for this purpose, as occurs likewise for secularistic or atheistic naturalism, with its oddities of exasperation and continual innovation, as can happen when sailors try to save any sinking ship, but failing, add their own squalls to those of the ocean^*D. This is seen in its nakedness, while the basic character of pseudo-Christian sects is similarly exhibited; and it is seen that these join with some major religions in a wider view of sects. Judaism, defined for this purpose as the Old Testament religion  without the New, as inspired from God, but allowing some latitude on the nature of the commitment to the Old Testament within the definition, is given its own analysis, and with it Romanism which has some points in common with it.

The standpoint is not a mere investigation, but one governed by logical analysis and what this leads to in terms of perspective. The Bible being rationally required, it is used in this overview. In this way, all fits into place with eminent simplicity, and the oft-roted myth that religion is a mere contentious error for myths and word-smiths, is not only rebutted, but miserably dismissed (cf. Secular Myths and Sacred Truth).

Its exponents are shown to be not only in an unconscionable logical muddle, but to be met by an imperturbable logical clarity on the basis that life did not just breeze in, that highest power of mentality and conceptual mechanics known in the things visible on this earth, that matter did not simply decide to arise, and space-time did not protrude from nothingness with allowance made by something as some concession based likewise on nothing (cf. The gods of naturalism have no go!).

God has spoken into being, our DNA written codes and the Bible, both most evident and each practically testable, over the millenia. Nothing approaches in brilliance in the one language, or in testability and verifiability and validity in the field, the other. With God, it is not a question of whether or who He is; but of what man does about it.

Notes on the Above.

*A

See:

DEITY AND DESIGN, DESIGNATION AND DESTINY, especially Section 8;