CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER ONE

ORIENTATION Upwards and Downwards

DISORDER

Disorder is not mere absence of order, as when men are walking about in a supermarket and not in ranks.

Who said they should be in ranks ? If however it was obligatory that they should be in ranks, then that would be disorder.

Who however SAYS so ? If it is an army, it would constitute disorder, if they were to be on parade. If it was a supermarket, it would be disorder if they WERE in ranks, since it does not cater to such organization. Order is relative to command, which is relative to purpose, which relates to authority, which relates to truth. Without truth, you cannot even define order.

Since you cannot even give theoretical options without truth, in its constitutive presence, being then merely verbal reactors without calibration or capacity, or even if you had it, without discrimination, for if you had this, you would know truth: then truth is the only way you can determine what the order should be.

Now you can use common sense. You might say this: I am a constituted, functional conglomerate of orders (in DNA), capacities (capacitated physically by its generative work), capabilities (derivative from the constructions), discriminations (relative to the construction in each and every one of its phases, not limited to the physical, mental or spiritual, but embracive of all in one integrated deposit called man), and this operates well under certain conditions, of which health is one. If I lose health through drugs, of which alcohol is one, then it does not function. Since it is all I have, it is best that it function well: after all, since my own knowledge and indeed that of all men is strictly limited, as so well attested every few years by the stark ignorance revealed by that time, of knowledge some decades earlier in so much and to such a degree, then lack of health is perilous.

If I persist willfully in spoiling it, or insist casually on allowing its degradation or deterioration, then for whatever purpose I might nominate my life, within its awesome powers, I am likely to be frustrated. Lack of health therefore destroys my future capacity to exercise options or implement personal discoveries. It should therefore be preserved.

Certainly this might be rationally said. However, then someone might query it as follows: WHY should you wish to be able to implement the decisions you make ? Of what purpose is life ?

To this, common sense might reply: To mortgage my future moments for the sake of the lack of discipline in this present one is folly.

Why, however, the interlocutor might persist ? why is this so ? Why not enjoy your present moment to the uttermost and forget about the next set ? Of what value is life ?

Not at all, you might reply. Life is of value or not: but IF THIS MOMENT be of value, on what possible grounds, in this state of ignorance which you adopt so casually, can you say that SOME OTHER MOMENT is not of value ? It is inconsistent.

But WHY should I be consistent ? the cynic might ask.

For this reason: if you are not, and developments are, then your arbitrary whimsy or witlessness will lead to gashes in your psychic situations, uncontrolled and perhaps uncontrollable.

WHY should I care ? cames the cynic’s self-caress.

You should care, first, because inordinate pain may be your lot if you do not: such as cancer from carcinogenic options fecklessly followed in your worship of the current moment, as it is tantamount to being, that is, your utter subservience to it. Secondly, magnificent openings may be forfeited through this attitude.

Rubbish, says the cynic. You do not seem to realise: I DO NOT CARE.

You are, one replies, inordinately concerned to project a do not care image. You DO however care. You obviously care a lot that I should imbibe this concept from you, and see you as in it. THAT is not a case of not caring. Be your attitude pomp or posture, sincere or whimsical, it is NOT, repeat NOT, one of not caring. Therefore you merely mischaracterise yourself, which inaccuracy misleads all your reasonings.

Let us however leave our controversialists. When truth is not available, and meaning is dismissed willfully, since the POSSIBILITY of access to truth is a pre-condition of rational discourse, and this possibility does not exist unless absolute truth and its access and desire of access to us is the case, then of course there are endless dead-ends. That is what happens in any problem, say in mathematics, when you are wrong in your initial understanding. There IS no solution. The rest is words and work, with no fruitful outcome, unless you are trying to kill time, say before your plane arrives or have other work of futility in hand.

Order then depends on truth, and that for man, on its existence and accessibility. It is not the same as being APT in determining gadgetries and modes, that is, IF I do this, in this present world at this present time, I get THAT. This is merely empirical. Our concern in this exercise is to look at the NATURE of what works and does not work, to determine WHY it works or does not, and WHAT it matters, whence it came, whither it goes, how it stands, what is its stability, how we know, why we know, what our sound and unsound purposes, how you determine this: in other words, the truth about things, people, programs and principles, not merely whether they do this or that.

Happenings are merely one phase of it.

TRUTH and ARBITRARINESS

When however we come to truth, as demonstrated in SMR, and find it is the Biblical statement concerning the origin, destiny and nature of things, people and programs, orders, communication and code, decisions, determinations and creation, then we can define order.

It is not a little as common sense indicated, but it gives the reasons, and sets limits. Thus you should certainly PROTECT health, but not to the point that you are afraid to die for what is the will and work of God, out of love. Dying is not very healthy. You should PROTECT the future in terms of discipline in the present, but not to the point that you sacrifice the value of the present for it. What however is the value of the present ? It is to be instrumental in the life of love and liberty in Christ, who having all knowledge, knows the futures which CANNOT be known by us, in ourselves: for example the time when HE will interrupt health for many, with His own advent in Rule as He has already come before to SUFFER, so that through the justice of His sacrificial offer of Himself for our sins, to bear those of all who come in faith to Him as He is, as Saviour and Lord, He might give us a future and an expectation which is truly personal, and eternal.

In this present world, now, however, there is immense effort to sacrifice the present for the future on the part of many zealots who arbitrarily and without reason kill thousands of people, if one may judge by the words of leadership, in order to help the world, the people in it, to accept their orders and those of their religious leaders, and so be subject to their religion, which for some reason they think a desirable sort of thing to have. Others equally arbitrarily seek to make themselves very rich so that they might establish dynasties in this world, either for their own present desire, or that of many whom they envisage or propagate, as coming in their order, their family. For this, they sacrifice truth and reason, righteousness and peace, as much though sometimes not more than necessary, being economical in many such cases, of the cost. Cost-consciousness has its own ways!

Others arbitrarily sacrifice their future in heaven for a taste of hell, in order NOT TO SUBMIT to anyone at all, including their Creator. It is vain since not doing so to the ONLY One who knows how you work and what you are for, CANNOT lead to any good thing, unless of course suicide is your wish; but that, it is not necessary, since life is God’s gift.

Disorder in its arbitrary vanities is what is seeking in all things, to run this world. ONE form of this disorder is armed might for national self-interest, as seen in Napoleon (trouble in Russia), Kaiser Wilhelm (trouble with the USA), Hitler (trouble in Russia et al.). Another form of disorder is religiously oriented national self-interest, as seen in the war of Iran and Iraq for so long, with so many millions Islamically dead, courtesy of others, Islamically active, and their respective nations very determined to WIN. A further form, is the desire to run the world by undesignated rules, relating now to this HATRED of this or that civilization or nation (in the way of their own, apparently), now to some book which they seem to wish to cite for no known empirical, logical or valid reason (cf. More Marvels …
Ch. 4).

The method ? It appears to be this: to create disorder in bodies, by removing health through maiming or death, and/or in buildings or other constructive activities of man when not so ruled, almost as if destruction were a warrant for confidence, or removal a ground for trust in providing! This is practical nihilism, in terms of validity, with no reason, no good, nothing admirable, both indiscriminate, undiscriminating.

Past all this, disorder comes also in suicides, reckless motor-bike riding, car driving, drunkenness and allied activities with beer bottles and the like. It is all disorderly. Again, you see it in nations SAYING one thing which is a lie, and DOING another. You find it when a nation PRETENDS in all its wealth to be your friend, and then by major players in it, assists those who are your enemies, as it is alleged is the case with Saudi Arabia. This distorts truth with fiction, if it be the case, and is not uncommon in the martial strivings and devious diplomacies of deceitful man in his warlike ways.

Further, this disorder, it is found when many mouths do not get food and others become very obese, though there is no very obvious reason why this should be so at least in some cases; though in many others, a false religion and a combination of this with hatred has helped to produce it over centuries.

DISMANTLING

Disorder is only just beginning. Those wearisome pundits who love to think of this our world as a monument to results without a cause, thus of course invalidating their own rationality and so theory (logic being dependent as a preliminary, as order, for coherent thought, and causation being endemic in logic cf. SMR Ch. 3), will now have the joy of beholding what really happens when ORDER is progressively removed. It will be if not entertaining to their minds, at least instructive to them. Thus when the asteroid (or like heavenly body as in Revelation 6) hits the earth with enormous results of a disorderly kind, then they will be able first hand, empirically, note-book in hand, to INSPECT it all, to ha! and ho! and hum! about it. You can see the more clearly that it really was a system as you systematically reduce and remove elements of that system.

However on the whole, they will not repent; for that is the nature of sin, it WILL not give up, even when it is seen as irrational and nonsensical. Revelation sums that up so briefly in 9:20-21:

v ⁰“But the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk. And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.”

That, too, it is disorder, the obstreperous insistence in stark irrationality on pursuing what without truth CANNOT understand what it is about, in order to execute the rest of life for its present pre-occupation. It ruins all for a moment, a maelstrom of desire, groundless, floating like dandelion seed in the air, but with less portent. Not, however, with less result; for disorder is merely the detachment from what belongs, and what DOES belong is merely distanced, not removed.

Truth judges in the end! You see this – and truth is what it is, nothing moving it – in Acts 17:31-32, where we learn that God “has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom he has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.” (Cf. SMR Ch. 6, Magnificence of the Messiah, endnote 1.)

DEGENERATION AND REGENERATION

This has been the negative side, except that judgment is NOT entirely negative. In fact, it is something to REJOICE IN (James 2:12-13). Thus in the AV, we read this:

Ø “So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty. For he shall have judgment without mercy, that hath shewed no mercy; and mercy rejoiceth against judgment.”

Ø In the NKJV, we find:

Ø “So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.”

MERCY TRIUMPHS OVER JUDGMENT. . . MERCY REJOICES AGAINST JUDGMENT.

Thus for degeneration, there is mercy possible. But is it actual ? Mercy may rejoice to the uttermost, but if it is not supplied to YOU, what then ? Outer darkness is a phrase employed for this by Christ (cf. Matthew 22:13). This was inherited by the man who CAME to the wedding feast, which symbolised the gift of Christ to man, and the ‘marriage’ of His people to Himself, in co-ordinate felicity, Creator and creature, Redeemer and redeemed, but who FAILED to bother about the dress. What did this COVERING signify ? As in the prodigiously impactive Isaiah 61:10, it meant that he neglected to find the sacrificial cover (the term in the Old Testament often signifies this, in the atonement through sacrifice), which came through the ransoming death of the Saviour, and came in his own works (contrary to Romans 3:23-27). Naturally, this was not good enough for God, who wells in light unapproachable (I Timothy 6:16) and may only be reached by the total virtue of the Saviour, and Him alone (cf. Titus 2-3).

What however has this to do with mercy rejoicing against judgment ? It is this: when you ARE covered by Him, as by a fur coat in an Arctic storm, then that is your sufficiency (Ephesians 2:1-10). By grace you are save through faith, and that whole cycle is not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, says the apostle.

Where then does this relate to regeneration ? It is just that you CANNOT get the COVER unless YOU are present to be covered; and IF you are present in THIS operation, you cannot, like a cat in the hands of the VET, escape without the other. What is this other ? It is the INCOMING of Christ by His Holy Spirit into your life (Romans 8:9, Ephesians 2:13-14). What does this achieve ? Firstly, it transforms you, as in the designation, being born again. This is no mere change of allegiance or newness of approach. All this you can have without anything approximating birth. It is a total renewal of ORDER, divinely organized, directed, and involving communication, comfort, strength, peace, joy, love and whatever the Lord sees fit to send in the orderly universe for your soul, now re-created, so that your new life shall be nurtured, nourished and strengthened; in fact, GROW! (II Peter 3:18, Titus 3:5-7). It starts in Him and ends in eternity (John 10:9,27-28).

That, it ends your degeneration (not your sin, but the sovereignty, the rule of it, just as being born a child does not remove your falling over, but your sensitivity to it helps vastly in removing your PRACTISING IT! … you have come to understand what to do!). It ends the rule of that crux of disorder, the disjunction from the companionship and grace of God. IN ordering your life, it also revitalises it, just as an electric cable brings order to the COMPLETION of the fittings made for it, and ALSO beings energy to the place where it in orderly fashion, is now fixed.

These things being in place, you are now able to REJOICE AGAINST JUDGMENT, because MERCY is now inseparably annexed to you, since Christ, the very mercy of God, WILL never leave you nor forsake you (Hebrews 13:5-6, 6:18-19, 10:10,14). Hence when judgment looms, you are covered. Your air-raid shelter is sure; and better still, on you those particular bombs do not drop. You are covered from judgment, and it does not apply. Assessment is one thing; judgment is another. It is not that your life is insignificant (Matthew 25:21); far from it. It is just that the just dying for the unjust has you covered in this domain.

Thus gracious goodness has provided the antidote to disorder, but with it, the health of holiness and the decisiveness of destiny. The world can be stripped like an old automobile; it does not affect you. In love, you seek for the lost, but in realism you let it go. After all, this world and its fashion, form, manner and style of living: what does Paul say of it ? There has to be the realisation that this is temporary, and not merely temporary. “The time is short so that from now on … (let) those who weep (be) as they did not weep, those who rejoice as though they did not rejoice, those who buy as though they did not possess, and those who use this world as not misusing it. For the form of this world is passing away” – I Corinthians 7:30-31.

This reminds us of Isaiah 24, where the various categories were presented in terms of coming judgment! Here the meaning is NOT that you should not rejoice with delight at what is good, or sorry with sincerity at what is grievous; but this. You should not be CARRIED AWAY with your joy or grief, and correlative values in terms of current happenings, for these are preliminary, and you stay is in THE LORD, who is permanent. When the purgings and preliminaries are past, the culmination is present, and then “we shall know even as we are known” (I Corinthians 13:11-12).

RE-organisation replaces DIS-organisation; RENEWAL replaces obsolescence; PERMANENCE replaces judgment; KNOWING in part is replaced by knowing altogether; TRIAL is replaced by attainment, the GIFT of God.

CREATION brought a shock of order; SIN has brought a series of shocks of disorder. God is as able now as before; and desecration now in such summary vogue in this ailing earth, is soon to be replaced by judgment and jubilation, not mere emotional release, but GROUNDS for it. The word is running down; the accounts are running up; but Christ has paid a price sufficient for all, available to a any and the ONLY responsibility for its non-arrival in your heart and its accounts, is YOURS! (cf. John 3:19). THAT particular disorder of arbitrary exclusion, it is final.