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CHAPTER  9

WHY LEAP ?

Leaping for joy, or for your neighbour's throat ?
It is a calamitous contrast, but in
Christian terms, a just one.

News 337

The Australian, Monday January 10, 2005

 

No, this is not an existential soufflé on suicidal jumps, such as the dogma of organic evolution (cf. Secular Myths and Sacred Truth), or al Qaeda's parallel in devastation of the human race in gross and outrageous confusion and multiplied murder in search of an aggrandisement which neither arms nor history have managed to provide an allegedly almighty 'Allah', who is the projection of a false prophet (cf. Divine Agenda Ch. 6, More Marvels ... Ch. 4, SMR pp. 1080ff., Highway to Hell, His Wounds ... Ch. 3, Tender Times ... Ch. 8) who flatly and basically contradicts the evidence to which he refers as we see in the above SMR reference.

There we see that he comes as free from preliminary fortifying testimonies, as a moon alone in a frigid Winter’s sky, surrounded with occlusive cloud. The prophets of the Old Testament which he cites, yet teach wholly contrary to him in the irrevocable and drastic essentials of redemption, as does Christ (Exodus 12:21-30, Leviticus 17, Isaiah 53, Matthew 20:28, John 6), and so far from giving background to his statements, they eviscerate them wholly.

Christ's message is very different. WHY do the Christians even when persecuted tend to LEAP for joy ? The author has had this literal experience when being 'rubbed out' in a former denomination as a young man, by the time-honoured method of slander. There is a certain delicious joy in serving Christ and making up what remains of His sufferings as one presents the finished work of His atonement in the power of His resurrection. Living for the truth under the care of Him who IS the Truth, is an experience of a life time, and the best is this, that it never ceases for all eternity (Revelation 21-22).

How different is the drab looting of persons by mere incumbent power, the truck of the prince of this World, who after all is merely the devil or his envoys using whatever power or pomp the heartless wretches who populate his domain, may contribute for symbiosis! You read of Elizabeth Kendall's exposé on Papua (not Papua New Guinea, in the south of the Island of New Guinea, but what was Irian Jaya, the Dutch part taken over by Indonesia in what even the Encyclopedia Britannica reports was an action of some doubt).

It is worth while hearing from the Principal Researcher and Writer of the WEA RLC, that is the World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission. In an article available for use, she has this to say.

 

 
 
 
 

   
   
  Date: Wednesday 1 December 2004
Subj: Papua: Blind to Genocide?
To: World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty News & Analysis
From: WEA RLC Principal Researcher and Writer, Elizabeth Kendal.

---------------------------
PAPUA: BLIND TO GENOCIDE?
---------------------------

December 1 is the day Papuans remember as their "Independence Day".
Papua's Dutch colonial masters expressed their commitment to Papuan independence and recognised the Papuan anthem and Morning Star flag, which was then raised for the first time on 1 December 1961.
Indonesia, which had ambitions to annex Papua, immediately fought an undeclared war with the Netherlands in Papua, over the issue of Papuan independence. The USA intervened and, with the assistance of the UN, Papua was placed under Indonesian control on 1 May 1963. The Australia government supported the move.

Then in 1969, under the farcical ‘Act of Free Choice’, Indonesia hand-picked 1,025 Papuans to vote unanimously against Papuan independence. This sham referendum, which the Papuans refer to as the "Act of No Choice", was then passed off as a legitimate, democratic act of self-determination. The UN accepted the result without debate.

It is widely accepted that at least 100,000 Papuans have died at the hands of Indonesian security forces since 1963, although Papuans say the real figure is probably much higher. According to Operation World, 90% of all indigenous Papuans are officially reckoned as Christian, predominantly Protestant.

-------------------
DESTROYING A PEOPLE

There are two ways to achieve genocide. One is to wage war, massacring a people in cold blood. The other way is to enact policies that are strategically designed to culminate in the eradication or decimation of a people: in the words of the Genocide Convention, "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."

With this second method, the genocidal policies need to be gradual to avoid arousing suspicion and able to be attributed to natural causes. (The Government of Sudan has on numerous occasions engineered famine for such a purpose.) In December 2003, Yale Law School's Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic released a report in which they argued that Indonesia is indeed enacting policies in Papua that will, if not checked, lead to the genocide of the indigenous Papuan people. (Link 1)

One insidious method of "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part" is the Indonesian security forces'
introduction of AIDS to Papua through the provision of Javanese AIDS-infected prostitutes to indigenous Papuans at sites where Indonesian authorities trade with Papuans. Add to this, trans-migration policies to change the demographic make up of Papua from predominantly protestant Christian Papuan, to a majority Javanese Muslim. Add to this, a continual stream of human rights abuses that leave the population weak and traumatised. Add to this, the theft of all Papua's resources. Add to this, the division of Papua into three provinces, two being majority Muslim, leaving the Papuans politically marginalised in their own land. Time and blindness is now all that is needed for the Papuans to become a decimated, subjugated Christian minority in a Muslim majority state.

This slow method of physically destroying a people does, however, require great patience. And when a slow genocide is under way there is always hope that voices for justice will wake up and intervene.
Evidence suggests however that many in the Indonesian military (TNI) and the Indonesian elite security forces (Kopassus) are running out of patience and are looking for an opportunity to commence slaughtering the Papuans with the aid of the Islamic Laskar Jihad and the pro-Indonesian militias of Eurico Guterres.

If a war against the vulnerable Papuans erupts, it will be catastrophic. NOW is the time for the voices in support of rights and justice to speak out for the preservation of Papua and its indigenous people. One day soon it may be too late.

PROVOCATION AND EXTREME TENSION

All through 2004 Papua has been on a knife edge with the Indonesian military attempting to provoke conflict and the Papuan leaders, especially church leaders, trying to maintain calm. This tension cannot be maintained indefinitely. The Indonesian military wants to justify its claim that, due to the "separatist threat", Papua must not be granted autonomy and must remain under military control, because the military profits, through corruption, from the exploitation of Papua's resources.

One provocation the Indonesian military uses is sniper killings.

On 22 November, Nethy Dharma Somba reported from Jayapura (Papua) for The Jakarta Post, "Local non-governmental organizations, churches and student organizations urged the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) to set up a fact-finding team to investigate the recent series of shootings in the province.

"Eight people, including a church minister and a police officer, were killed in a series of attacks by unidentified gunmen between Aug. 17 and Nov. 12, 2004 in Puncak Jaya regency. Some 15 others, mostly children, died when more than 5,000 residents of 27 villages in the regency had to flee and take refuge in remote areas after they felt their lives were in danger due to the continued presence of the gunmen.

"The police and military are blaming the Free Papua Movement (OPM) separatist rebels for the incidents, while tribal leaders, religious leaders and human rights activists in the province are alleging that the Indonesian Military (TNI) is behind the shootings."

A more detailed account of the shooting of the church minister is available in the Radio Australia transcript of an interview with Pastor Socrates Sofyan Yoman, President of the Fellowship of Baptist Churches in Papua. (Link 2)

Pastor Socrates Sofyan Yoman says that Reverend Eleesa Tabuni was shot by members of Indonesia's Kopassus Special Forces in the the town of Mulia on 14 September. Pastor Yoman also reports that after the killing, troops arrived in a helicopter and shot at the villagers from the air as they were gathering food from their gardens. He says two were killed and multitudes fled into the jungle in fear of their lives.

It is estimated that some 5,000 villagers are now displaced in the jungle, without food as their crops have been destroyed. The Papuan human rights group Elsham reports that church members have been pressured to hand over a witness to the killing of Pastor Tabuni.
The church members are refusing to comply, which is extremely courageous as Papuan have been executed and tortured to death by Indonesian troops. Pastor Yoman says that 22 churches in the central highlands district are now empty because the people have fled to the jungle. He fears they will starve there.

PRESERVING A PEOPLE

In early November, Papuan human rights activist John Rumbiak told Australian media that Papua is "a time bomb waiting to go off".
According to Rumbiak, an extra 25,000 troops have entered mineral and timber-rich Papua since 2000, and more than a million migrants from Muslim Western Indonesia have moved into Papua, rapidly closing the gap on the 1.5 million indigenous Papuans.

Rumbiak, who is the international advocacy co-ordinator for the human rights group Elsham, called on the Australian government to "support and encourage" Mr Yudhoyono to establish the "necessary pre-conditions" for peaceful dialogue. He said those conditions should include a withdrawal of the massive troop presence in Papua, the dismantling of the militias and the dropping of the decree that has divided Papua into three new provinces.

If this does not happen soon, Papua will become fully Islamised and the vulnerable, predominantly Protestant Christian Papuans will be totally decimated and brutally subjugated.

------------------
BLIND TO GENOCIDE?

The fact is, governments of influence are not blind to this genocide
- only disinterested. It is inconsequential.

That gold, copper, timber, and relations with Indonesia should be worth more than the lives of precious human beings is morally repugnant.

- Elizabeth Kendal
rl-research@crossnet.org.au

Links

1) Yale Law School – Dec 2003
Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic Indonesian Human Rights Abuses in West Papua: Application of the Law of Genocide to the History of Indonesian Control http://www.law.yale.edu/outside/html/Public_Affairs/426/westpapuahrights.pdf

2)INDONESIA: Thousands displaced after Papua raids
Radio Australia. 8 November 2004
http://www.abc.net.au/ra/asiapac/programs/s1237348.htm

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An ABC Radio Australia feature on the Web, a reference for the above, adds further, and this may be found at http://www.abc.net.au/ra/asiapac/programs/s1237348.htm There in graphic and detailed presentation, in dialogue, one is introduced to the things that are weighing.

At one point, it states this:

According to Elsham, local church members refused to hand over a witness to the execution of the clergyman.

You may wish to turn to this site for what precedes.

The news item goes on to note that members of the Papuan parliament indicate that they will investigate the raids, and this action is backed by Indonesia's President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. It is reported that some observers consider that the Kopassus Special Forces may be trying to induce the President to abandon his plan to give special autonomy to Papua, and that there is much income to be gained in the current situation, as military bodies pick up wealth from illegal use of the timber they confiscate.

 

All of this,  raises the question of the release, not of Christian joy with peacefulness, but of blood and stomachs to the domain of emptyings and emptiness, a very different thing.

In a useful article in The Australian, Monday, January 10, 2005, Mark Steyn notes the not so irresistibly obvious Islamic fraternity and compassion, at least in its financial expression; for behold, as in effect he points out, Have not the so-called Satanic US and allies, given prodigiously compared with the miniscule ratings on the same scale, from Islamic countries, elevated in riches ? Has not their response to a largely Islamic disaster and desolation been relatively enormous ?

With Australia's billion dollars in aid for Indonesian or allied devastation sites, there is found some ten million of Saudi Arabian resources consigned, this increased by all means, threefold after criticism, to thirty million. Is it US dollars ? Does it make a large relevant difference ? In the article noted, comparison is made: in a telethon for the widows of those who blew themselves up in order to devastate, cripple or kill Israelis, including those yet to perform these inventively torturous acts to grab for more yet of the Palestine illegally grabbed from Israel after its donation by the League of Nations around 1920, there was a far larger amount. Islamic sources were more forthcoming then.

What was it, this amount for this destruction ? It was 56 millions, yes in US dollars.

To ruin your own and others ? 56. To help places where 150,000 or so may have been killed by a natural disaster ? 30.

To rebuild, then, around half of what is given to destroy

those not yet killed

 
bullet by Hitler,
bullet by pogroms,
bullet by slaughters innumerable from Rome's million or so ... casualties (100,000 sent to slave mines in Egypt by Rome, for example, after the fall of Jerusalem to that Empire),
bullet by opportunities after Islam's invasions following Rome's fall;

not yet rubbed out in this world, or significantly erased
bullet by the Inquisition's confiscations of life and fortune, with torture as an item on the agenda,
bullet by Russia's pogroms,

and now
 
bullet by Islam's inveterate bombings, for which money is given in advance, to assist those who suicidal husbands are gone in the interests of blighting.

Perhaps even more to the point, Iran is cited in this same article as having donated to this pan-disastrous tsunami, some 627...

Yes, this is so, even though it is reported in the same edition of The Australian - indeed on the same page as the article noted, that Aceh was the first province in Indonesia to implement Sharia, the rule of strict Islamic law! Indeed so strict is this, that as the Encyclopedia Britannica points out, it actually involves not only man's relationships with his neighbours and his State, but with his conscience and his God! If this ultimate Islamic province met with a vast and devastating natural disaster, an act of God as insurance calls it, what of human aid, then ?

One may ask, 627 what ? Has it given more than half of 'infidel' Australia's stated donation ? Not actually. It is 627,000. That is to say, it is by appearance, some 2/3 of one per cent.

The purpose of the figures is not arithmetic, but morals. If this is the constructive contribution, how does  it compare with the destructive ? If this is construction for allies, what is its relationship to destruction of those despised, who are not Islamic and desire no such impositions of forcible submission in the interests of impelling religion ? And why are these who have helped, why are they despised ? Because they do not follow a wholly unvalidated and unverified religion when one uniquely validated and verified in all points is available, headed by One who in person, Jesus Christ,  did what none has ever successfully managed to criticise, in terms of a divine mandate spelled out in detail from a millenium beforehand! (cf. reference in para 1).

Yes it it is He only, in empirical fact,  who was predicted in date and detail, in works and in point of His death and nature of His resurrection, in His Gospel, in His death at Israel's own hands and its method, in His Gospel reaching the Gentiles while Israel was 'blind' and who in His own predictions has accurately and minutely covered the course of our Age.

Someone who often calls me by telephone said this: Muhammad was not foolish enough to call himself the Son of God! Yes, the author replied, because he did not have the evidence! Actually, the evidence is not only what He could do and did, so that death was the only end of the dilemma for those who feared Rome might misinterpret His royalty, and who wanted religion their own way, not that of the predicted Messiah who in all points was unable to be faulted when His performance was match to the prophecies concerning Himself, a point He made (Luke 24).

It was also how He met all challenge of word, or of deed, such as in Mark 2 when He met criticism of His pardoning a man his sins, by putting a practical test. Which is easier ? He asked, to tell him he is forgiven or to tell this man (paralytic) to take up his bed and walk ? It was not this alone. Any time His power and word went out, if it did not happen as He said, His claims would be ludicrous and His mission ended. With God, 100% meeting of every challenge and condition is just a beginning.

A thousand year prediction precedes and then proceeds with it!  (cf. Highway of Holiness Ch. 4, Joyful Jottings 22-25). A two thousand year prediction of the end of the Age continues it (cf. SMR Ch. 8 and  
). The necessity of such a word of redemption is yet more (cf. SM Ch. 1 and see
THE MEANING OF LIBERTY AND THE MESSAGE OF REMEDY. In logic and scientific method, there is no option. If man wants God, it is not hard to find Him.

Alas, it is true that there is no Christian nation, but then this is far from contrary to what Christ predicted for the end of this Age, with evil abounding, false prophets mutliplying and false christs. Further, since Christianity is free, as is necessary relative to God, a whole nation will have this and that, and while it is true also that England and the USA rose to massive heights of power when Christianity had the most obvious hold on the populace and nation, its forcible imposition has always been a negative feature. In the two cases mentioned, their greatest power seems to have come when the greatest liberty mingled with the greatest scope of Christian faith, both aspects being present.

There is indeed decline both in power and in purity in both peoples as shown in the subversion of many churches and the power politics which seems to so large an extent to be replacing the ideas and ideals of Christian vision in the affairs of the nations (cf. Wake Up World! ... Ch. 3, A Question of Gifts VII, News  13,  73. Joyful Jottings   5, 21, IMMFAITH 10, including  *2,  4, His Wounds ... Ch. 3, and Ch. 2 above). The same sex marriage furore in violation of gender specifications, like the homosexuals in the pulpits of some bodies bearing the name of "Christian", though the practice is utterly and repeatedly scripturally condemned (as in I Timothy 1:10), in the most ultimate and categorical terms, merely extends the testimony of spiritual decline.

Nor is it alone! Indeed, persecution in China of the spiritual, like that of Islam in its exclusivism in Saudi Arabia for example, these things together with Europe's desire to depart from religious inheritance in the EU ( His Wounds ... Ch. 3, and Ch. 2 above ), are testimony to a world decline which being from the heart, needs remedy in the same place! Those of Islam increasingly in this generation are in multitudinous array fighting each other, as in Afghanistan and Aceh, seeking control of this nation or that, to obliterate this or that, to act as judge of this people or that, killing, maiming, beheading, blasting, cursing until the world is sick of their violence and pretentious claims, as it has become of those of Communism, Nazism, Romanism in their blood-letting presumption and baseless profusion of confusion*1A.

Some race, idea, religious construction of devious man, some principle or power is to be 'it', the governor, these are constantly on parade. They never work for they are not so. Not an abstract idea, not a vehemence of self-assertion, religious or secular, on the part of creation, not the hypnosis of power nor the self-admiration of culture: none of these things is the way the universe works. They are mere mirages of confusion, substitutes for strength, ignorances of creation, aversions from the Lord, defilers of remedy and renegades of irrationality, supping where the table is not laid, and drinking what is often more red than wine.

The world is growing weary of strait-jackets, and placebo packets with fancy labels, of guns and shatterings where logic rails and reason is evacuated, where God is remade or ignored, while the truth continues as the follies rush heedless into the ravines of unreality. The language is not too strong; the sufferings are prodigious just as is the presumption. The world seeks, where it will not find, for its prince is against the truth and always has been since he fell, and he is angry (cf. Revelation 12), and inspirits his offspring who desire rule.

This world seeks a more faceless naturalism*1A, but this, though a convenient trapdoor for humanism which leads to self-worship which pampers the inane, the profane and the cups of the proud, is as barren as any, a mere shriek in the bleak and unresponsive confines of a nature which like our own, has been built.

The ways are now clear. There are two main paths when the viciousness belittles itself, and the heart reveals itself by its mists of blood: this naturalism and humanism leading to a religious input for convenience and mystery, as biblically predicted, along with the efforts to control those who like blood on the ground more than in the arteries by international guidelines which become double-bits in the mouth of humanity as far as the devil can contrive it, this is one. The other is Christ. There the milling pretenders and amenders as predicted in Matthew 24:12,24, II Peter 2, will seek to impose their will, but whatever they are permitted, it will no more be the Christ of history and the Bible than any other competitor.

Having left the Rock, they will be mere chaff in the wind. Willowy religions which bend to every draught may continue, but will be irrelevant. Power is desired and it will be gained until its final face is shown, and the insane lusts for extradition of all but man and his self-worship, enshrined in inscrutable mystery for safety, will continue till the earth heaves with this unnatural disaster; but then the end comes.

There is, except for God, always a beginning, and except for Himself and those who are His, an end, though the endless end of wilfully persistent and unpardoned guilt remains to exude its testimony. "Then," as Christ put it, "the end comes" (Matthew 24:14). HE comes, and those of us who are His go with Him (Matthew 24, I Thessalonians 4), while the earth writhes in its own self-inflicted torment, like a child at the steering wheel of a powerful automobile, excited in its folly, and deft for its own doom.

Meanwhile, back to the blood, and the flood of judgmentalism from its takers.

One Arab news source is cited in this article as saying that for the US to give aid is OK, but if they sell alcohol, open bars and so on, then "we will fight them."

Is hypocrisy necessary ? It is an option, but is there some compulsion ? If women are mutilated in many Islamic practices, not at all uncommon, to say no more, so that males may have the control or household security or whatever other horrible imposition they make for their own masculine type, does this mean war ? (Feminism is just as oppressive ... a certain balance is needed.) One could understand it if it did; but it is not the way for the Christian. Such mutilation is vile, violent and presumptuous, a substantial alteration, not merely superficial, of the construction which the Almighty has made; and yet it is done, wilfully, woefully, ludicrously in defiance of creation which is not to be found in an opinion, but in ACTUAL HUMAN BODIES!

If further people are going to massacre Jewish bus loads of children by indulging in the Gentile hatred of Jews and Israel which has been such a feature and focus of the fetid substitutes for meekness, patience or pity which have arisen like greedy waves, hungry this time, not for tsunami victims of natural disaster, but for those of unnatural disasters - is this going to lead to war ?

We might well understand it if it did; but the Christian approach is not to use violence to secure its  position.

Is the bin Laden bankrolling to be ignored, and is there to be a mere shrug at the continual reported Gulf State bankrolling of Taliban schools in Afghanistan which was such a feature, even if it is less so now, is this, with the objective of manufacturing what could best be called subjugation fighters, to oppress others with this religion of submission (of others to itself, most manifestly, rather of of this to the God who has attested His words all too well) ? It might indeed lead to war on those who practise such things, whether from the PLO or any other race molesters; but the Christian approach is not to use force in such matters.

To be sure, the USA has fallen morally within, just as has Islam in violence,  in such hideous presumptions and persecutions of other members of the human race, as if murder were sanctified by using religious terms without divine accreditation of any manifest kind! Does this mean that they who love to invade and invest with violence those otherwise at peace, are to increase their sins by killing each other ? Is the USA, after all, for its part,  trying to take over other people's territories as is Islam ? Moreover what of this Papua matter ? If the half of what the World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission report has to say be true, we may indeed ask, does this mean war ? It might well, but this is not the Christian answer.

That there might be observers sent to such areas from some competent international source, so that those who engage in the provocations of these murders whether in Israel, or in Papua, in Sudan (Divine Agenda Ch. 6) or elsewhere in this imperiously affronted globe, should this be internationally cited and dealt with as was South Africa because of apartheid ? But it is not so.

It does not seem to occur to those in charge of such high-level official situations, that in mindless presumption based on unaccredited vision, to mangle or MURDER MANY and crowds of children in Israel means EVIL, and hence should be stopped rather than indulged in territorial gifts, and if need be punished. Or does it occur to such,  that if Israel attempts to defend itself from international, explicit global pan-Islamic molestation with inveterate cruelty, as normal in so many Gentile circles for centuries, that this should not be classified as very different from self-defence. Is there some need to help those who have participated in the land grab from Israel ? Is there need to help the many and wealthy nations which seek to overthrow it like some kind of collective bully, to indulge their passion with world aid ?

Do you need the Madrid Quartet to draw and quarter what is left of Israel ? Why ? Certainly not because of justice.

These things being so, is there no talk of a UN commission to have observers with speed in Papua, the former Irian Jaya ? however vain they may be; or better, some body of assured credentials ?

If not, why not ? And hurry ? If this article cited above has any substantial measure of truth at all, within it, surely it would not be hard to verify it ?

Is it that where Islam seeks to expand, the UN seeks to contract its operations, or help the invaders ? Was it at all valiant when Nasser sought to thrust Israel into the sea, when it withdrew its troops, which stood in his way ? Is there no thought of ANY compassion, or any control ? Is there, in Papua,  to be a movement of a million people in order to overwhelm a free people, as alleged in the report noted, in order to take them and bind them to a religion of force ? For what reasons ?

If God approved of force to get people to worship Him, He would never have given them an option, for then there is neither faith nor love, merely conformity. But this religion uses force in these ways, and indeed it is in this sense that the imposition of sharia law as reportedly occurred in Aceh, becomes a virtual mockery of God as well as manipulation of man.

The UN seems not only immune to justice in Israel, but blind to desolations of Islam elsewhere, including in the genitals of females*1. It is so selective that it would not seem gravely remiss to think of it as an ANTI-CHRISTIAN CLUB. If Europe was afraid of becoming a Christian Club*2, what of those whose actions so often favour Islam and its oppressions, and not noticeably at all those of Christians ? Even in the Sudan, where after many years of unmitigated slaughter and horror, there was UN thought of action, there were more months set aside for them to come to terms with the fact that it was not really ... quite right, what they were doing.

In this time, opportunities to slay more millions, to molest, maraud, slave-steal more and more, continued.

The world is full to the vomit line of blood, of murder, of hatred, of hypocrisy. Is it any wonder if the Lord arises as He has long predicted He will do, to adjust the records and remind man of his flimsy follies and heartless deeds ? Does one need a magaphone to help people realise that the mental and spiritual torture of being subjected to violence, or to having one's child stolen by idolators, or other maiming, in the case of ONE PERSON is a profound deed ? that when it is multiplied by thousands, it is a massive event, and when it is internationally profuse, that the world is moving sedately on its magical track of imaginary powers of order from nowhere, to the meeting with its God!

It has happened long ? too true. It is happening more for there are more people and more means of making more horror in more places with more idolatry as more disfaith comes in more droves from more mangled hearts which with more mordancy operate with more individual opportunity through more weapons of more kinds on more people, their prey. It is more and more asking for it; and it comes, yes it comes. It is good to live in the presence of God, in such a dustbin of misdeeds, rather than to crawl under its lid, for the Christian knows full well that he or she is a pilgrim and a stranger in this earth, looking for the heavenly city, paid for by Christ, and with immigration so intense that hypocrites have no opportunity to enter. Those who enter have all had the most radical operation in the world, a heart operation in which it is a NEW HEART, not a resuscitated on which is given (Hebrews 8, Titus 3, II Corinthians 5, John 3, Jeremiah 31).

It is ONE THIRD of the oceans which are slated for affliction (Revelation 8:8-9), and if this tsunami on a relatively small scale, compared with the total oceanic power and scope, serves to help mankind realise the stakes in which he is gambling if not at times almost gambolling away, and of what the Almighty may do after two millenia of patience, then its cost will not be pure loss. Not only has judgment been long in coming as Peter so clearly forecast would be the case (II Peter 3:9), for the Bible always has it right, since God IS TRUTH; but it is also sure and progressive as the time comes (cf. Matthew 24:21,29, Daniel 12).

The charades instead of charity, the crusades of vile violence to grab, instead of wisdom and truth, the endless immersion in blood, in hatred, in exaggeration, in neglect of history as if a flood of amnesia, instead of in love: these things are not pleasant, not appreciated. When Islamic persons have more than one wife, then, what of this ? By the standards of the New Testament (cf. Proverbs 3), that is bigamy, a deployment of various females rather than a unison of male and female in blessed equality of value and nature,  engendering differentiation and assignment of duties where self-sacrifice, not self-fulfilment is a keynote, as with Christ (Ephesians 5).

Are all of these things now some sort of basis of complaining of the ADMITTED and AWFUL sins into which the US is coming to join those who have long so erred! It is true that the USA has fallen sharply in the moral and spiritual sphere; but it is no less true that many have never arisen to that from which she has fallen! Is the fallen to judge the fallen ? Is fiasco to become ritualistic!

The time is coming when this grating grandeur of man in his preoccupations with his own navel, desires and inventions, whether religious or philosophic, when his self-aggrandisement in making gods to reflect his thoughts instead of finding by evidence and attestation the God who made him able to think, will meet its final judgment. What is the use of making interim judgments, and what is the value when coal is complaining about the colour of black ink ? What is the point of such childish seeming intimations! It is best to stop ALL SIN and ALL blood letting, and to seek the Lord! Hell is long, and happiness is not well grown in that soil. It is time to repent, not accuse of renegacy, while committing deeds the atrocity of which is all but past all weeping, bringing only judgment to book.

The meekness of the majestic Messiah is still the only answer. In all this carnal writhing and striving and arriving, can one find one iota of meekness, of NON-SELF-ASSERTION! It is my vision or my life or my country or my race or my religious construction, or my international dream ... or whatever. It is time for mankind to realise that it is not HIS PLACE to invent truth; and as we have seen in What is the Wheat to the Chaff! Chs.   3 and   4, with Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 16, and Repent or Perish Ch. 7, for example, there is no excuse. The testimony of God, available these millenia, never changing, quite contrary to the new-branded makers of religions since Jesus Christ, whether in the 6th or 7th century after Him and His scripturally predicted death date, and resurrection, or in the 21st century,  is but one truth. It stands and stands alone when rationality and scientific method, when reason is applied.

It speaks for itself, for none can stand against it. It says; it happens; this is the invariable rule.  And what is it ? In word ? the Bible. In person ? Jesus Christ.

Without this meekness, man's madness rushes mindless, and his power surges unrestrained in combination with passion, with vying and crying and blood-letting in the name of religion, and obvious endeavours to rule the earth, whether by Communism or Islam or Romanism, yes or naturalism: it is all one. It does not work; it cannot be justified; there is no reason in it, no evidence for it; but with every coughing decease mixed with blood, there is merely more reason for judgment, which comes apace. This world is not available in the end for those who make the most noise, the most threats or let the most blood with the most canny manipulation of men to achieve dominance for themselves, their religion or race. It is available for judgment for just such things; and truth while it does not domineer, DOES RULE.

The tsunami is a visiting card (Luke 21:25), and the rest of the main types of episodes of what is to follow are already noted in advance. God, the true and living God, He is like that. He makes it very clear (cf. Amos 3:7). You could not possibly mistake it, evidentially speaking. He is willing to reason; but for rebellion in the end, what is the reward, when it works its passions despite millenia of compassion and a rich gift to man, which makes even Australia's munificence to an Islamic nation seem pitifully minute ? When man continues in wilful and arbitrary exclusion of this Christ, freely available, and not at all by force (John 18:36), for such are the ways of God; and when he does this despite the very gift of the divine ransom by which Christ has paid for ANY who want reconstruction in the inner man and central heart of his or her life, what then ?

Then ? Where mercy is mistrusted then judgment alone comes. Truth rules; mercy is offered; judgment remains where mercy is dismissed.

It is not that one wishes to visit odium on any person, of whatever religion. For persons one has the utmost pity, and hence writes. For truth, however, there is no alternative. In its interests, force is no answer. You leave what is wrong or your wrongs, including complacency and self-trust, in yourself or your choice of god or gods, or your wrongs affront and confront you at the hand of God. Hence the pathos of the Gentile world, which for so long has handed its close version of hell to the Jews, and much of it is still doing just that: it is like that for Israel of old. That, it was the pre-run. Israel had the answer of God, and yet killed its King. Now what ? The Gentiles, as Paul points out in Romans 11, they have had their opportunity, and to them, whether following their pleasures or this or that false prophet who appeals, there is this word:

 
bullet "BE NOT HAUGHTY, BUT FEAR;
bullet FOR IF GOD DID NOT SPARE THE NATURAL BRANCHES,
bullet HE MAY NOT SPARE YOU EITHER!"

(Romans 11:20-21).

There the image is this. Israel was like a divinely planted olive tree. Wanton in folly, it severed from its Maker, which became in horticultural terms, a case of being extracted, like a branch, from its own tree. God then tells us that we Gentiles, whether British or Arab, or Chinese, Gentiles all, we would do well to do better than Jew-bash (engage in anti-Semitism ? you prefer possibly ? ). We would do well to consider that we too are NOW having this divinely planned opportunity to find the Christ which Israel AS A NATION rejected. If not, in what way do we expect a better result than that which came to Israel? Is judgment to be lop-sided ? Scarcely.

God has given a warning these 2000 years, and here we are in 2005 hearing an atrocity of hypocrisy as Jew-bashing continues with much oil money to inflame it further, and men seek to take Jerusalem (Abbas is quite clear, he wants it for a Palestinian capital - it would seem he has not heard of Israel, when he uses such language, for one did not even hear 'joint-capital' and even if one did, since when is the Palestine accorded as a whole, now a pitiful residue left for Israel, to be so snatched from the recipient!).

When will it be realised that God foresaw this (Zechariah 12) and predicted the amazing Jewish victories which staggered the world in 1948, 1967, 1973, along with the continuing carnage and tension cf. SMR pp. 779ff.). Did HE not say to those who would seek to control and answer the matter in their own way, that Jerusalem would be like a heavy stone ? (Zech. 12:1ff.). And is this not so, Jordan, is it not so, Egypt, is it not so, USA, and is it not so, Syria, Iraq, and will it not continue to be so ? And why will you die, Gentile nations, as you fight God!

Grating grandeur must go, as must self-exaltation amongst the Gentiles. These must realise that the Jews are not their private plaything for self-gratification and dedicated grabbing! If you are a Gentile who does this, envisages it, co-operates with it, then YOU are a subject of judgment no less than they; and if THIS is the judgment you try to foist onto the Jews, then in all justice, with such a measure as you mete out to them, do you expect to escape just such a judgment meted out to you!

Jerusalem is a site of significance, an easy reference point as you seek to molest Israel; yet it is not this, not a city in which Christ was crucified, for which He has His own agenda (Luke 21:25, Micah 4), which is the need for the invasive peoples. It is not this, but Jesus Christ, O Gentile nations (you who are still involved, and who is not in the matter of Jesus Christ ?), it is He who is the final criterion, the eventual scene, and the ultimate Judge (Acts 17:30ff.). He came with self-rule to rule out sin’s dominance, and to let in a light which shines from eternity to eternity. The blood He shed was His known, and He did not think to make of Himself a bomb, but a blessing.

Think well as you lampoon His meekness with your macho, and fund your resistance with the oil He made, or act as acolytes to those who do; for indeed, the saints will find the powers of evil will mount, and for a very little while, they will seem to prevail, and then we will see, those who remain, just how much love, mercy, peace or even humanity is left in the man-manipulators who, making their own gods, as predicted, eventually see and find it in themselves*3. That final ludicrous folly of logical fantasy, and evidential blight, becomes the signal for a removal, as of rubbish. The removal of the harvest comes likewise as in Matthew 24, a two-way separation from sin and for it! (Matthew 24:31,40, 3:12, 13:30, 8:11-13).

"And I tell you, That many will come from the east and west,
and will sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven.

But the children of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness:
there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go your way; and as you have believed, so be it done to you. And his servant was healed in the very same hour."

In any time in the history of mankind, since the very beginning, there is the wheat and tares situation or division: those destitute by desire, and those constituted by conversion to the peace and pardon in the Lord who has died to make it free. Now it is one nation which, having come near, rushes headlong to its destruction; now it is an individual, who having but tasted, spits it out and heads for the poignancy of deprivation by pure folly. Proverbs 1 puts it with such yearning, and yet such decisiveness. It is God who judges, and has judged, and has shown on the Cross the severity we deserve, and with mercy, the love which has provided remedy. The options are zero, as in all that is precise and divinely constrained by ultimates. Reality does not quiver, but the vacillation and vice of man.

Who would want his fellow man to be the butt of such just judgment ? One cannot alter the judgment, but one can appeal to the heart, and the mind and the life. Do not go that way! It is a precipice for lemmings.

Why leap ? It is not AGAINST your victims you are wise to leap, but with the joy of the Holy Spirit as you suffer for Christ, and present freely to all, the divine terms without violence or vileness, but with a compassion which pays, which stoops, which pleads and which presents. Did not Christ give this advice, as you suffer for your pains in favour of a compassion for mankind, and find but odium for your efforts ? Luke 6:23ff. has this.

 And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said,

“Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God.

"Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled.
Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye
shall laugh.

"Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you,
and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you,
and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake.

"Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven:
for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets.”

 

 It is not often that one puts the citation from the Bible in red, but on this occasion it is done, in the manner of a stop light.

 

NOTES

*1A

As noted in Victory ... :

Their philosophies are as blatant as their wars, and their peace as obvious as their logic, which is to say, as deflated as a tyre which not only burst, but lies in shreds upon the bedizened road for miles back. (Cf. Red Alert Chs. 2, 16, and see SMR Ch. 9, pp. 965-966, 971, 925, together with Errors.)

See also Aviary of Idolatry, Highway to Hell and The gods of naturalism have no go!
Anguish,
Ecstasy and the Mystery of the Messiah Ch. 5,
The Bright Light and the Uncomprehending Darkness Ch. 3,
Three Anzas, One Answer
Ch. 5, More Marvels ... Ch. 4

 

*1

New Life Christian newspaper, June 6, 2002, had this to say as cited in Secular Myths and Sacred Truth Ch. 6.

"It would help the situation if the Islamic Council of

 Victoria (or Australia for that matter ) would definitively state that they totally condemn the practice of forced conversion that has taken place in Ambon [a violated Island not far to our North*3], often enforcing circumcision on adults. It would help if they would condemn the massacre of innocent Christians in Ambon, including women and babies, as recently as last month. It would help if they would condemn the Islamisation of Southern Sudan by means of genocidal war. It would help if they would condemn the practice of Sharia law as practised in many parts of our world, where children are indoctrinated in the Koran using most brutal methods. It is not long ago that our television screens were filled with the horror of two women accused of adultery in Afghanistan being shot in the middle of the sports stadium. It would help if they would condemn the lack of religious freedom in many Islamic states throughout the world. Enjoying the (now relative) religious freedom of this country, it does not seem too much to ask that they seek to influence their co-religionists in other parts of the world. It is also reasonable to ask, given the record of Muslim's persecution of Christians around the world, that Australian Muslims indicate that they do not agree with this, and do not want such things to happen here."

The Encyclopedia Britannica relates under "clitoridectomy", the more proper name of female circumcision, that it is widely practised in New Guinea, Ethiopia, Egypt and various Islamic peoples in the Middle East as well as in India and the Sudan.
 

 

*2 See Three Anzas, One Answer Ch. 5.

*3 See Biblical Blessings Ch. 2, The Moon Soon (Bible based novel).