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Chapter 10

 

It is Coming…!

HE is coming.

 

News 254

 

ABC News Radio, Jan 4, 2004

Washington Post, Jan 3, 2003

 

 

Delirious daubs are to be found on all sides. There is the conception that humanism is the thing: you are kind, compassionate, fight to love and love to fight, enjoy yourself, endure where necessary, eat, drink as far as possible, be merry if within reason, and occasionally without reason for the sheer libido of it, and continue to accumulate wealth, friends and helps until your age increases and your children can take over. That of course is not the normal definition of humanism, but perhaps it is seen as an ideal for a multitude of those who espouse it.

 

 

MAKING CULTURAL GODS IN DIFFERENT WAYS

 

Many might object.

 

It is not I, such may say, who would follow such grossly hedonistic prescriptions.

 

To be sure, the idea of man as god is attractive, such may continue, but you don’t have to wallow to be a god. You need to more ethical, more attractive, to make life easier for others so that they can make it easier for you, use your wits, that’s why you have them, and enjoy what measure of peace you can; be wily; be foxy; be anything, but intend well.

 

 

But what is ‘well’ ? one might respond.

 

It is what makes you happy, with due respect to the future, and what will make others happy.

I am neither self-wrapped not self-rapt.

 

What then is happiness, for this expansive being whom you describe, your very own self, however hypnotised with it or hallowed from it you may feel ? one pursues. It is, after all, this self which is making the rules, selecting them, the ground for them, for they do not come with the package (cf. Things Old and New Ch. 10, Deliverance from Disorientation Chs.   8,   12, Spiritual Refreshings 15,  3, Lord of Life Chs.  5,   8).

 

It is the state of contentment because all your main drives and needs are met.

 

What is well about your drives, and how do you manage if others’ needs conflict with yours, as you see them ?

 

My drives, being human, are good; and if there is conflict, may the best man win.

 

Why is it good to be human ? Hitler had drives, insane people have drives, and many consider you insane because you do not share their drives. In fact, you cannot even identify the drives that are human.

 

People, such might reply, have good or bad drives.

 

So it is not good to be human, but to be a good human, in which case it is not the human part but the good part which is your interest, so that all you are doing, logically, is this: You are identifying good as good. Well done! What a magnificent identity proposition. All  your talk of ‘human’ is merely a smoke screen, a bleary theory or a nubilous daub.

 

All of this merely shows the complete uselessness, the weary song of the intoxicated as they guide themselves by themselves (imported ethics from nowhere cf. News 19), and by the human race (ditto), and pretend to have some compass with which to compass their lives.

 

It is just the same with various cultural religions, which merely proclaim (whatever it is), acclaim (themselves) and disclaim (all other religions, or various non-combinations, or combinations or whatever else fulfils their neo- this or neo- that – as in the case of Christianity which is not such a case, but is susceptible to reconstruction so that the depleted and distorted residue and result becomes such a case, neo-evangelicalism and neo-orthodoxy or other quasi-variety). In these cases, some idea of the mind, some ideal of the spirit projects its shadow from the netherlands of hope, or desire, symbolism or sense of significance, and either fights to get great (excuse the roughness, but the thing IS rough), or floats to attract (many people seem to like floating, just as physically, others like surfing, and indeed, some may find the combination of surfing and floating almost religious cf. Wake Up World!... Epilogue).

 

Humanism is not a possible logical option, but an exercise in subjectivity and a tour through a philosophic Arc de Triomphe which reaches not the interior of Paris, but of desire (cf. Lord of Life
Ch. 8, Divine Agenda Ch. 7). However, since the world does not like God (it likes gods, or invented Allahs – cf. More MarvelsCh. 4, which do not meet logical specifications or verifications, and in effect deny the mind in order to satisfy the contortions of truth to which man is heir when God’s place is left vacant in his heart), as Romans 1:17ff. makes so clear, and Jesus Christ specifies in no uncertain terms in John 14:30: what does it then do ? Then it naturally seeks, almost by a thrust of the frustrated spirit, like someone eating grass when no food is available, to find some substitute.

 

Some like to keep out of the arena altogether, and become irrational humanists; some like to have goddies, like Charles’ reported Teddy, to cuddle, as if to do SOMETHING for the cause of religion, and they import these from the East (in religious extravanganzas) or the West (in philosophic nullities), or make them up, with due respect to a cosmopolitan platter of tasties and  ‘goodies’, or imagine them.

 

Others refuse to have God or gods, and so make themselves or the race into these things, by inventing ethics, inventing causes that do not exist or display themselves, and inventing life, and then living it. They do not succeed, even if they disclaim their goddishness, when acting as gods, but without the power or prerequisites of God.

 

You get it in biology, with survival playing creator, and chance authorising law (in oblivion of scientific method cf. TMR Ch. 1,SMR pp. 140ff.); you get it in psychology, with humanism’s crypto-divine powers surging from past to present with a meaning which needs the authority of religion for support, as Jung began to see (cf. SMR Ch. 4); in economics at its most expansive, with presumed passions of man hideously limited to one, and made to invent history as if the immaterial prioritisation of the material were in some way relevant to the truth; as in religion, with someone or other having some visions or other without support, validity or ground (cf. More Marvels Ch. 4, SMR pp.  1032ff., Things Old and New Chs.   9,  10,  Epilogue,  Appendix), and then directing the world with a bomb, or rockets, or a scimitar, or torture screws and so on.

 

ALL of these things are irrational, without possible validity, founded on the foundling, man without God, without meaning, seeking to surge into the artificially created vacuum with pretended and often pretentious solidity. They are one and all the simple expression of man’s perversion from God, into religious or irreligious objets d’art (metaphysical branch), which are proposed as if taste could invent truth, or preference become the matrix of life. Hence is explained their otherwise inexplicably tenuous, absurdly irrational, continually invalid premisses, which for men to follow without such passion, would amount to absurdity.

 

The rationale is not too difficult: To deny God is absurd; so finding a substitute, like hunger seeking for grass where no food is, impels man where neither reason nor truth can come; but where vacuity or cruelty love to linger.

 

What then of such magics and myths, one and all of them ? (cf. Secular Myths…, A Spiritual Potpourr), the metaphysical misfits (SMR Ch. 3), the slavering substitutes for truth, the divorcees from reality ? They do but exhibit in biographical form,

 

v          the SYMPTOMS of artificial spirituality, or

v          the RESULTS of pretended unspirituality.

 

 

Both are sourced alike; each presents the same face; and neither has ever nor could ever give man any rest.

 

Coming from and in the severed frame built by God and for God, from that human life engendered by God, without God they engender gods, trying at times even to suppress awareness of the process itself, and at other times, exalting in prodigies of the irrational, as if mere movement where the idea of God was, must make it acceptable. It is like lost children searching for their parents. Now this adult, now that is seized upon with a zeal and with a hope wholly inexplicable, except for this, that they lack what they need, and being separated, do not find it. They do not look… in the right place.

 

What then do we find ? It is this.

 

Some affirm truth in terms which deny it, being unsusceptible to the testing which the created minds can achieve, and hence irrelevant to man, and so, far from adducing all principles and data available for judicious test and careful result, they launch like some untargeted rocket, into such an abuse of the term ‘faith’ that it comes to mean a disreputable junking of logic, evidence, of accreditation by verification; and so being in denial, it must be denied. You are not, and cannot be aided by USING logical devices while DENYING their applicability. This is mere self-contradiction, as always, rendering further contradiction or debate superfluous! It is to forfeit the match!

 

On the other hand, some deny the very possibility of truth, by abstracting man from any absolute, and making mere projections of this or that component of the personality in lust or hope or desire.

 

This has the disadvantage that truth is denied in it, and having denied truth, they cannot assert it (cf. SMR Chs. 3, 10).

 

This does not deter the determined god-maker, and few seem so passionately religious as some who worship the thoughts of their own minds, even when they have implicitly denied any POSSIBILITY of validity to them, in the process. This is the realm of the surreptitious god.

 

That men could fall to such irrational baseness is sad; but when they do, there is no standard but subjectivity, and no basis for this, but desire. What however is desirable ? Is it imagination unfettered ? This has the disadvantage that when you indulge in it, facts get in the way. The world gets in the way too, of course, since others have other unfettered feelings and reelings, so that there is conflict. Then death gets in the way.

 

One of the ways in which death gets in the way is in the cultural religion of Islam. It likes submission, and so tends to enhance the problem, since when you actually SEEK for others to submit, then of course the conflicts are going to be greater. Let us by no means pillory one case, for Romanism and Communism have been exactly the same, inventing against and without reason, and then insisting on the ground of their being right that you do what they say, and sending you, if you do not, betimes to hell, or to Siberia or to the ground amid blood; although it is ‘only’ your body. Communism more directly has often sought the soul as well; which is ironic, since it really does not ‘believe’ in the spirit of man, which it uses in order to formulate its unbelief, and chastises in its victims, because their spirits do not follow and submit to the delusive hopes of the amazingly religious, but vacuously empty self-contradictions of Communism.

 

But let us turn to some of the destructive zeal in the latest lust, some of Islam’s millions seeking for subjection (not of themselves, but of others), with the proviso - destruction if not, and injecting a song of irrational hatred and insidious religiosity into the moribund passion. This, after all, is likely to have an enormously unifying effect on Europe, which was warned by Russian President Putin,  in some his earlier exploits in Chechnya, around which time he visited England and presented his case, that Islam might threaten EUROPE, just as it was a painful blight in Chechnya. Hence Europe may be doing some thinking about not sinking, and about aggregation, congregation. The only thing then is the preacher, and in this we have often seen the developments! (cf. SMR pp. 911ff., 923ff., 947ff., Biblical Blessings Ch. 2, Cascade of Truth … Chs. 10, 12).

 

 

JITTERBUGGING WITH JIHAD, IN A QUIET WAY

 

Under the heading, “A Quiet Voice Echoes Among Islamic Radicals”, the Washington Post, January 3, 2003) deals at considerable lengthy with the case of Abubakar Baasyir and his love of jihad. There does appear some resemblance between the earlier US love of jitterbugging, that rank but for many attractive throwing of a sense of glowing, of vitality about the dance floor, so that jiving or hiving, being like ants or bees, like swallows or like pups, one apparently exhibits or appeals to a sense of release, of relief, of doing it at last or whatever else may be involved. There may even be some sense of glory, of achieving something, of making a statement, as well of a kind of delirious joy.

 

In some Rugby matches, you can sense at times the same. There can come a religious sort of atmosphere, one of glory, in which something not obviously very great, is nevertheless given the accolade due to something great. There is an ovation of heart, a cheering of soul, a virtual ecstasy of a sense of attainment: the goal is SCORED, and wit has won (or perhaps brute strength, but this is not the normal item here).

 

In war, you can see something similar at times. The Kaiser in World War I (how great is he), with plumed metallic lid to his larder, with grandeur of might his equipage, has stepped into the international arena, and is about to  score a goal, hegemony, being best, being first, bringing to Germany her true greatness, with strength, in some obscure and doubtless evolutionary manner making – if not mankind – a RACE or a NATION GREAT. Glory is there.  Or else it is Japan, with its Emperor, not rationally deducible as divine, but with some kind of divinity, and is not the nation, rising like the sun, about to impart a new grandeur to the Pacific West (from the US) or East (from Europe), or at any rate something designable, so that the GLORY is there. WE will do it; and WE will show them.

 

As with Hitler, who had another race in mind, there is the sense of mission, of thrust, of purpose,  and of achievement.

 

Of reason, there is never any; only the obscurantist dialects of desire.

 

Now ?  it is JIHAD. To be sure, it does have to some extent a racial clientele, for the Middle East where the thing began; it has a thrust for glory, an annunciation of this or that, has many ARABS and many dark-skinned people, and Indonesia might in some way be aligned, and the European thing could be contrasted, though it is difficult since France has not only many like that, but many Moslems. Oh well, if not race, then what (though there are racial – one does not say racist – overtones) ? Why of course, a prophet! There can also be a region (like Jerusalem, and by the way,  grab that, seems to be one additive thrust), and thus Mecca can stand to the world to proclaim the Middle East, and the Arabs and all that sort of thing; and of course, Allah, their invention.

 

Like the other sects, they are not content with their own invention (cf. Highway to Hell). Like the rest, in general they manipulate Christ by imagination without reason or ground, so that they detach the name from the testimony of history and of truth as demonstrable (cf. SMR, TMR); and USING what they do not have, INVENT what they cannot show. There is no empirical way and no rational way of attesting the thing; but the scimitar spoke heavily from the first to Mecca, and to the world in the earlier days, and it came close to cutting ice. Islam manipulates both ‘God’ as in the Old Testament, where it does not find the Messiah, and ‘Christ’ in the New, where it does not touch down on history; and it muddles both, satisfies neither, but is strong in invention.

 

One of the things in which it is also strong, is the glorying in strength. Thus heaven is not too hard for the successful warrior (cf. More MarvelsCh. 4), nor is its repose too much for those who follow the militant campaigns which lead to glory. Glory ? Oh well, at least they are meant to lead to SUBMISSION to this Allah, without ground or display, without reason or attestation, just with words, words contrary as shown in the above reference, to the historical documents to which indirect and sometimes direct reference is made (cf. SMR pp.1080ff.), in contrast and contradiction of that to which they make appeal.

 

There is, however, no contradiction of the desire to RULE. Like Kaiser, there is to be HEGEMONY, and you had better submit or you will be made to; and it is in this like the Japanese idea. Empire building with the religious variant can be attractive to some, and jihad can do it, some think.

 

Thus the report in the Post advises us in detail of the attraction which this minor cleric in Indonesia felt for the idea of subduing all nations where Islam was strong, with Islam. It is like a guest who forms an attraction to your three-bathroom residence and feels that you could, perhaps, stay provided the title deeds are transferred to him (or of course, to her, if you prefer it that way, but the case is not  attractive). Moving from Indonesia where Suharto did not appreciate the concept as it then was, he went to Malaysia, we are advised, where a more tolerant law allowed him to advocate what appealed.  By 1999, when he returned to a more receptive Indonesia, this man had apparently become a world influencing preacher, and his followers, finding inspiration in his teachings on jihad, had fought in Afghanistan, Bosnia and the southern Philippines.

 

Why worry ? It is just that his jihad movement, fostered under the (quite just, in this regard) heading of ‘Islam’, as shown in More Marvels Ch. 4, had got the idea of being destructive where Australians were concerned, in Bali. Now it is made clear that (allegedly) this was not his idea. He did not think it a productive procedure, since it could lead, some attested, to repression and that would be unfortunate.

 

Repression ? yes of the jihad-loving movement. There is a time and a place for murder, it seems, so that (as so often) the ‘vision’ can be implemented, and people ‘liberated’ (the Communists were great on that, and suppression and obliteration of many human liberties is called ‘liberation’, rather than indoctrination and spoliation, by many cast in the mould of this sort of visionary, political zealotry). In this one thing, he may have been right. There has been a certain distaste apparent in Indonesia for what some of his followers evidently decided to do, though without his specific blessing for the choice of time and venue, it may be. It may indeed prove counter-productive there.

 

Before this grand schedule of mass murder, so appealing to some religionists, meetings were held in Malaysia, people coming from many nations. Interchange (a sort of Islamic Interpol, not however concerned so much with suppressing crime as expressing it) occurred, and plans were made, visions exchanged, and GLORY was felt in many, who rushed off to fight jihads here and there.

 

It is not new. It is all as old as Cain. I am not satisfied with you and your ways, so I will scrub you out: That seems to be its song.

 

Murder, of course, is often quiet, since many do not then notice it so much. It is possible quietly to work for murder. Quiet commissions among the nations often quietly work for some war or other; though when the guns bark, it is less so.

 

The glory that is purely cultural,  as here, is thus a rather expansive thing, like an octopus, and its suckers can be dish-sized.

 

 

THE END OF THE DANCE

 

Most things have an end. The real glory is in what does not; and this not because it does not end, but because time is itself merely an invention of God Almighty, whose words, witness and ways are so  clear that to avoid them, it is necessary to follow the prescription in Hosea 9:7, “the spiritual man is mad” – as Romans 1:17ff. shows.

 

It is not a mental insanity, or lack of soundness, but a spiritual one specifically. It is a distortion, perversion and collapse of truth in the interests of subjective vision which, replacing the realities for which man is made, makes not always intentionally, a mockery of truth, and would slay it willingly. When it has the opportunity, it did just that; but truth being God Himself, did not stay low, but was resurrected not only in fact, but within the arithmetic specifications predicted: 3 days. That’s what it was to be; that therefore is what it had to be; and thus that is what was looked for, and being found, was applied to faith in this most practical of religions, scientific of faiths and empirical of beliefs. (Cf. Acts 4:19-20, John 3:11).

 

Slay the truth! Yes of course. After all, not to be too singular in approach, Israel did just that, and not to be unfair, so did Pilate, who represented ROME! Still, it was done in Israel, and Israel was formally committed to the only God who gives evidence and ground and secures validity, from the reason which He has created and which we all use*1.

 

HE had said what would happen if they SAID one thing and DID another, in the sense of merely parading the name, but performing other things, for diverse reasons, and unbelieving, merely disporting the deity, not worshipping Him. People often misunderstand the term ‘jealous’ here. It is really along the lines of ‘zealous’ plus the concept of being eminently concerned with purity and perfection. It has, of course, as is explicit in the sites such as Ezekiel 16, 20, Ephesians 5, an analogical mode of reference. It is using marriage as a figure in depicting the zeal of God for realism and relationship with His people, not fornicatory foibles or wild oats sagas.

 

You may say that this too is force in some sense. Not really, however. Certainly God has power and He can and does use it; but power, as in a car, is proportionate to the purpose; and the purposes of God are not suppression, but expression, yet not, in the end,  expression of what is not, the ‘vanities’ the ‘nothings’, like imaginary deities, or immoral hallucinations, with or without goddesses attached (because contrary to both design – which IS YOURS ANYWAY – and Designer); but of what is. Yet what IS ? As has been shown, the Bible is demonstrably the word of God who is truth (cf. *1 below), and God is love. Further Christ has shown it, in the clime of prophecies in simple history; though all things, demonstration, verification and confirmation have their own situation and should be realised as such.

 

However, today our concern is application and comprehension of what is happening in the world, so we proceed on this basis.

 

IF you do not WANT God, where is the force in that ? He does not use a scimitar. If you DO, where is the sense in pretence ? If YOU WANT A LIE, do not blame God. Doubtless that is why many are not marrying these days, especially if they have money, since they want to  KEEP THEIR OPTIONS OPEN. They want to be able to say,

 

Well now, you are desirable to me, and I quite like you, and I find pleasure in romance with you; but let us be clear. Tomorrow, next year, or in 50 years, when we are about to have family, or have one, or it is growing, I may find another and so may you. Let us enjoy one another, while we are mutually enjoyable.

 

Then children come, and the other partner wants another woman, or man, and perhaps other children, and so goes off; and the one who remains may have to contribute to their support, even though he or she is not training, teaching or perhaps even reaching them.  So is this humanism, horrible beyond bonds, making no standards out of visionary standards which change like the sands when the wind blows on it. There is no faithfulness, no meaning: mere conjugal hedonism. If you want that, in some countries at least, you can have it; but it ignores TRUTH. In truth, being designs, and designed by a Designer, we relate to that One and He is no less vocal than we, no less cogitative, no less systematic; indeed, our structure of thought being from Him, and being therefore correlative to the rest of the world which He made, and thus functional within it, He as source knows infinitely more about it than we, mere derivatives, do.

 

You may object to ‘mere derivatives’, but the sense is not pejorative, merely proportionate! If then you want to ignore truth, and live in some humanistic, or by extension, god-deriving feisty way, or sad way, or in whatever other mood your extrapolation of your desire may take, or your prosthesis of reality finds, or in some satanically infested way in which undoubtedly supernatural powers infest you, being like you in such a case, wayward and expansionist: you may. One does not say, ‘you can’, since in all rebellion there is no security.

 

But what IS rebellion ? It can be termed such by those who do not want you to cease to be subservient to their gods or ideals or dreams or visions, it is true, as notoriously is the case with Communism and now specifically in China; but this is mere political or cultural propaganda.

 

Rebellion is against what IS, or otherwise it could be called ‘restitution’. What IS ? God is. Thus rebellion is against God, and this is its original and essence. If you want to do this, you may. Where then is the force ? Make your own, choose your own, impart your own, kill for your own, as in jihad, and that group of religious imperialists, they are far from being alone in this, merely taking the current headlines, though not for the first time in world history (cf. Highway to Hell).

 

To be sure, as you do such things, or dream such dreams (cf. Jeremiah 23:23-29), justice will catch up with you; you will be judged (23:30-31). But what can you expect ? YOU are not the Creator. Since this world is His, by His rules it is ruled. Do you expect to become God, or with a few thousand or perchance millions of others, to achieve this eternity, having merely begun, as a babe, recently ? Is it necessary to be irrational ?

 

However God does not force to faith; and moreover, faith is not a force sort of thing. If you do not believe in something, cutting off parts of your anatomy, a reductive process, does not add faith. Indeed, it gives more ground for NOT believing in such duress where it does not and cannot belong. That is one of the reasons why the Islamic suppression and submission program is farcical for human beings. It is quite literally irrelevant.

 

Mere rule, mere force, make as many statements as you will in Koran or elsewhere, where it is APPLIED for this and that in the arena of faith, is in itself, and by itself an index that the religion is false. It is make-believe directing force with as much relevance as  the use of atomic power in a nerve operation. It is simply not fitting: it does not apply. It is extraneous, misconceived, ludicrous in abuse of words, concepts and reality. Jihad indeed is in the Koran in no small measure thus, as shown in the reference noted, and in this, repeatedly; and the Koran is both excluded by such considerations, and by the fact that no logic impels, no grounds arise, no reason is present for its adoption (cf.  SMR pp. 50ff., 62ff., 91, 829ff., 987ff., 1080ff.); and even force when appealed to, as it is often in this case is, does not work (cf. SMR 831). Why dismiss reason, when reasoning ? This it is not merely counter-productive,  but self-contradictory!

 

What then ? You do not want to believe, you refuse reason, you enjoy rebellion: you are not the first. History is your campus, the world your scene, its ways your scenario. You can choose to make gods, use those of others, suppress the name ‘god’ and simply erect citadels of thought, or of nonsense, and follow these, your absolutes though you may call them ‘relative’ on which you build though they be sand, without support or ground, crypto-gods, without power, glory or even name or acknowledgement. How furious is the spurious human desire to evacuate God, like that of many English parents in World War II, desiring their children to GO from the land!

 

You are free to be bound by rebellion. So are the jihad specialists who aspire to binding you, in many places where those of Islam’s gathering, as in the Indonesian case noted above, and al Qaeda, and in those various exploits contemplated, as in the multi-national pan-Islam meeting in Teheran in 1991, which had work to do in Israel, though it did not really own the place, and in the subsequent meeting in Beirut.

 

There are many WAYS of rebelling, and some are more murderous than others; but all murder the truth. It is available in Jesus Christ, who demonstrated it in the word of God and in His life, conjointly, and history has verified it ever since. It is dismissed ? Then in your life of the spirit (cf. Christ Jesus: the Wisdom of God and the Power of God Ch. 7, No Thanks for Angst Ch. 8,  Deliverance from Disorientation Ch. 10, It BubblesCh. 9), you have used force, the force of your own will, to take over the life which God made, and in which He does not force Himself. Of course all your systems, and thought, and capacities are derived from Him, cannot function in full without Him, so that secular philosophy always founders (cf. SMR Ch. 3);  but they are preserved by this amazing invention of freedom, from mere meaninglessness.

 

They CAN rebel. It is meaningless in reality AFTER that, but that is because it is rebellion against truth. The act however of rebellion is not meaningless; it is a volitional lust and thrust to an unavailable oblivion. It is a severance which smoulders.

 

What smoulders comes of course to lose meaning (put differently it is like chaff blown by the wind – Psalm 1:6); but its smouldering does not (cf. Isaiah 66:24)!

 

But the Lord knows the path of His people, His own, His called, of those who receive Him by faith, as Lord to follow His word, as Saviour to swallow up death in victory.

 

No human panegyric can attempt to equal the praise for God
which is felt and impels the one who has found in liberty
the reality of the love of God, the foundation and meaning of all love, its source, and its splendour. If God is above our liberties because of sinful occlusion of sight (John 3),
He is not against it, and fulfils it, in, through and by Himself


(Jeremiah 23:21-23, 31:18ff., Ezekiel 33:11, 30-33, Matthew 23:37, 13:14-16).


 

 

 

LIFE, LIBERTY AND LOVE

Before the End,

And after it, if you are with the Beginning at the End

Thus is invented, the liberty which is NECESSARY for love (cf. Predestination and Freewill, Beauty of Holiness Ch. 8); for without it there is not merely no scope but no meaning. As shown in Little Things Ch. 5,

v           Orders require action, do not donate truth, for the programmee: allowed merely to execute. The orderer is the criterion, and even if he were himself, the truth, his mere orders do not in programming, reveal himself, but his desire.”

Truth, such as in making the theory, would not even be relevant, so that it is self-excluded.

Meaning does not come from being a recipient of orders, but from perception of your place in such a way, that you are aware of the truth. Otherwise, it is manufacture, not meaning. A car HAS no meaning in itself; it achieves this only for the maker with his purpose. Freedom allows research and understanding (though it does not guarantee it, since it may be misused), and so enables meaning on the basis on the Maker of Man and Mankind, who being found, provides the meaning.

Since man (loc. cit. Little Things) has liberty, he can find meaning; but in the process, in order to be correct, must find God. Mercifully, this is most open, not to change as those who want God in some sort of system made by the actual God, but to coming, to entry. It is not so much a question of finding God, but of finding a way to avoid Him; which is possible, but only at the expense of reason, righteousness and reality (cf. SMR Chs. 1,10, TMR Chs.   5,   7).

Liberty gives access to meaning; but it also allows love. Without it, there is no such thing, for it is all programmed, uninvited, incited.

 

You do not HAVE to love; but if you do come to the Lord for your life, to complete what is installed in you, with the presence of the Installer, then you MUST in all honesty (to avoid confusion, that divorce of mouth from manner and life) abide by this. If you do not, there is a new and even more serious rebellion; but in that case, your heart has never been changed, so that you merely make, in the end, an irreversible (Hebrews 6, 10) excursion in the void of avoidance, and become like a child not quite born, which is certainly unpleasant, but what would you expect when you play with truth…

 

However as Hebrews shows no less, the Lord is very gracious, and once you are His, He is like an anchor, and you are held. The point here however is this, that you COME not by scimitar or hammer and sickle, or inquisitorial implements of torture, but by the grace of God, not His violence.

 

There is then, an end to all of this. It is not for ever. Man has limits, for as  God says (Isaiah 57:15-16),

 

§      “For thus says the High and Lofty One

§      “Who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:

o     ‘I dwell in the high and holy place,

o     With him who has a contrite and humble spirit,

o     To revive the spirit of the humble,

o     And to revive the heart of the contrite ones.

o     ‘For I will not contend forever,

o     Nor will I always be angry;

o     For the spirit would fail before Me,

o     And the souls which I have made.’ ”

 

 

WHAT IS THAT END ?

 

In a word, it is the truth: for it is always there. Judgment is according to truth (Romans 2). If you are IN the truth, Jesus Christ the Creator with the Father, and His perfect expression (Heb. 1, Colossians 1:15), then that is His mercy, and you are kept where it is, in Him. If you refuse and rebel, then as in Proverbs 1 and 8:34-36, it is sad, but you are invoking the end. There is a beginning and an end; you had in due time, a beginning, and life has been yours; but there is an end.

 

But let us look past the personal for the moment. …

 

A Washington Post news item, dated January 3, 2003, advises us of the refusal of the USA to respond to offered negotiation with North Korea. Why ? There is no danger of military intervention here, says the President, for we are working in concert with allies to bring pressure on North Korea. Who are these allies ? They number China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. How changed the vision! Now the Cold War antagonist, Russia, and the Hot War enemy, Japan, are joined with China, the developing ‘menace’ as some regard it, and this composition is acting together to prevent what could afflict Japan, endanger Russia, confront South Korea and embarrass China. They are not all equally likely to receive ‘punishment’ from this atomic rod, however; and hence the alliance is of considerable interest. It tends to suggest a more global understanding.

 

So does the reported presence in Russia of a globally active group showing concern for prisoners, and since Britain has been a major object of former action, proceeding to investigate, ameliorate and improve prison condition. In the ABC News Radio Report, we had the remarkable event of a very British voice, with very British moderation, reflecting on the human needs in prisons. Absence of bars in windows was good, less confining, disturbing (presumably little windows); but the eating place was hot. Soon we heard the Prison Governor in Russia, who was expressing pleasure in the heightened emphasis on humanitarian considerations, so that the prison, far from society in the old mode, and with multiplied thousands of inmates, could begin to thaw despite all the cold conditions.

 

Again British people pleasantly helping in Russia to gain better and more moderate conditions! How global we are becoming … More interesting yet again, was this comment from one of the Russian persons involved: RUSSIA, it was declared, is PART OF EUROPE and HENCE must be willing to share in the sort of standards obtaining in Europe!

 

All together seems altogether the thrust of it all.

 

Meanwhile with the Bishop Swing Unification of Religions, and the USA’s involvement in its new threefold religious engagement, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, as indicated in the famous prayer breakfast after September 11, and subsequent very busy remarks of an inclusivist character from various government officials (cf. News 121, 122, Cascade of Truth Ch. 10, Trust GodCh. 7, Lord of Life Ch. 8 and Ch. 1*2 above), there is increasing unification from the American side.

 

Not only do we find the Secretary of State visiting places like Morocco, but seeking considerable liaison with Europe. After all, since Churchill talked of the United States of Europe, much has happened, from the Common Market, to the proliferation of agencies whether in iron and steel, or atomic contrivances, courts of Justice located in the Hague, or international control units for what then became the European Union, in Belgium, and with more and more nations joining, the Biblical Portrait of the times approaching the return of Christ is rushing into reality: prophecy first, then practice afterwards, the line of action.

 

Then the developing ‘vision’ has cultural appeal to many (cf. SMR pp. 923ff.), and a religious inclusivism is likewise hoping for fulfilment by this international combination, which like the developing roundness which may develop on hips after middle age, could slowly repose by circulatory accretions…

 

Further, there is … glory, for some, in the very concept of size, power, importance, clout and significance. Again, there is a kind of historical romanticism which seizes many more aware of the nice things of Europe’s past, than of those gross and frequent grabbings for glory to which many fell prey, who then preyed on the means thereto: Empire building for gain (one of the motives for many, at least), religious oppression which even the Communists with their unwieldly and ill-defined religion of mankind and absolute certainties in an allegedly relativistic world, can do little to outdo.

 

However, in Communism’s favour in the race for the prize of most outrageous, there is the latest Laogai Report (Vol. 10, No. 3, 2002) from Harry Wu on China, and the use of prisoners’ body parts, as well as the terms and methods of excluding organs from those who must die, for this or that reason. These include ‘grounds’  for the theft of organs (at the time of death, or by one report, in the case of kidneys, before it!), such as withstanding the State, that great convulsion of power and vainglory which, trusting in itself, has as much wisdom as is normally found in those who do likewise. Further, it is reported in that place, that the trade in these parts, indicated in appalling detail, is brisk, profitable, helps hospitals, and within these, not least, Communist Party officials.

 

Such things must give one pause before awarding the palm for horror to Romanism’s exploits. On the other side, however, we must realise that Romanism, for its part,  pursued its designs and their power-hungry horrors in the Inquisition and sundry papally stirred wars,  for many centuries, in MANY lands, so that it still wins, though it has been quite an instructor for many, such as Hitler, who also was advanced by it (cf. SMR pp. 968-969, 807ff. at *10).

 

Both are components of that Biblically described ‘Babylon’ and its ‘mystery’ which allows a considerable accretion of parallel exploits in the past (Revelation 17-18, SMR pp. 946ff.). This it is which is formed by the artful composition of State and religion, the former taking the leading role, in a mixture of divine debasement, human self-exaltation and rampant self-realisation with glory imported from above in name, and below in fact, where it fades, like any glowing ember abstracted from its fire (cf. Biblical Blessings Ch. 2).

 

With a ‘mystery Babylon’ past, going back to Babel, and a Romanist face in the present and final deadly face of the thing, it is clearly portrayed (SMR pp.  946), this religious riot that distorts righteousness in doctrine and in practice with such ardour and address (cf. SMR pp. 1032-1088H), There it sits in Europe without seeming to realise what is coming (Revelation 17:1-6,16, SMR p. 947), and the new spirit of experimentation with man which is gripping this adventitious New Age, whether in clones or drones, in rocketry and supervision from the skies, or in psychiatry and supervision from the human control division. This queen, but not of hearts, is to be dethroned from her delicious combinations with royal pride and power, and the final princes will deal, conveniently and freely, without her at the reins. The sky is NOT the limit, for these ‘beastly’ (cf. the beast motif for nations in their religious rioting and grandiose patterns in Daniel 2, 7, and in Revelation 13) bodies aim higher than that, though they are to fall lower than the earth.

 

 

So does glory begin to make its hoardings anew in Europe. It is rather like a self-propelled gun.

 

Terror on the one side,

 

Ø     and internationalisation

o     from convenience,

o     from technological advance,

o     from markets to provide greater base for greater research and development, 

o     from debasement of Christianity in many subversive organs, like the WCC, which has been all but taken over by this or that political or theological slant from time to time (q.v.),

o     from trade utilisation of technical advance,

o     from sudden upgrading of markets such as Europe to and for itself, especially with Russian having such aspirations for Euro-participation, as also China and their immense economic potential (but for whom ? since politics may control more than a little of the economic phenomena by simple nationsalisation),

 

together with

 

Ø     Islam’s upsurge in immorality and strength as in the worst of former times, making cohesion more cosy (hence doubts about Turkey’s possible future admission…)

Ø     the Middle East and its confrontation platform in Jerusalem (where Europe is conspicuous for its Arab loyalties and hence less likely to suffer from jihad, and a most convenient shelter shed),

Ø     the apparently intractable character of militant dream-zeal cladding for various cultural passions:

 

all these things are pushing, pushing, for more European power.

 

They look for an issue in more extended European aggrandisement, greater integration with the USA, and of course, less scope for Israel, since apart from all else, they are small and unoily, whereas Islam is large and most oily.

 

The dastardly dynamics drive to convenience, survival, pragmatism, collaborations to overcome, control to subvert subverters, and principles to make it palatable, with various religious and cultural payments to these ends, proceeds. It moves, so that before long, why look, there is to be the attempted removal of the meta-religion*3, of the only one valid and rational and reasonable and intractable because of the truth, because it alone meets scientific method, because it alone stands when all else falls, and presents an interface with fact of monumental proportions.

 

If not ? Trouble. Was it not the same with Caiaphas when he actually set about having Christ killed, for all the world (John 11), like a religious Mafia specialist before his time ?

 

Will not the world follow the day when Christ’s literal death was decided upon (and permitted since it was God’s long announced plan to have Him as a judicial sacrifice to enable mercy to operate in truth, and not against it - Romans 3:23ff) ?

 

Will it not sell the official, the national parts that remain in order to … survive, or be safe, or secure, or pleasant, or have some way of keeping a world to some extent intact, which is all but destroyable with an atomic power now in the hands where bleary theories and the dastardly dynamics of pseudo-spiritual insurgency can have a force, purely destructive, of their own!

 

Pay the piper for another tune ? It is just that the asking price is mortal. Many will pay; and be paid out for it. It is ever so: sublimate spirituality, prostitute truth for a supine peace which knows only survival, put it in whatever grandiose terms you like, and agreeing to the idea of ceasing to be human, you find inhumanity on the throne, dispensing evils as now in China yet, in Russia for long, in various Empires when the price was similar, in aspirant false churches and in Islamic lust, more bloody but not more passionate that that in many another sect (cf. Highway to Hell, Things Old and New Appendix).

 

The truth remains; the immovable faith remains; and soon you will be seeing them overcome by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of their testimony and loving not their lives to the death. Indeed, in the last century you have seen such things in a scale of vast proportions in Russia, in China, in Sudan, in Indonesia, and elsewhere the brew develops, And what is the valium for political victory, but surrendering absolute truth, with relative ease, in order to be relatively sure that absolutely nothing will destroy the human race. It is like the doctors capitulating to the inmates of an asylum, and following their bidding, because, you see, they all have guns.

 

Guns and the gutless do not make for nice reading; and they both require judgment. It is coming. First man was coming, as God implemented His creation; then sin was coming as man expedited his powers of liberty; then salvation was coming as God exhibited like the sonorous drone of an incoming aircraft, His intentions; then the Gospel was going, until its gracious work was complete, as Christ ordered it to be (Matthew 28:18ff.); then the End was coming, and now is like a large vessel docking, now fussing with this, now operating on that, for quite some time, before finally still and at its appointed birth.

 

Thus have we been, and are liberally warned, just as Christ, in the same analogy, indicated was the case with the world of Noah’s day (the ark was not built in a day). It did not however heed, despite its manifest depravity.

 

All this is so; but it is not what we are really waiting for, who follow the word of God and who savour the testimony of validity, logic, reason and that to which they infallibly point: the Bible foretelling Christ, and Christ authenticating the Bible.

 

We are waiting for Christ.

 

No father ever waited with more expectation and inward joy for his son back from war, then does the alive Christian for his, for her Lord, nor did any bride with more delicious anticipation, look for the approaching form of him with whom she had elected to spend the rest of her life (in the days when faithfulness was realised to be a part of love). This, it is why John says in Revelation 22:20, in this way:

 

§    “He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!”

 

Certainly, there had to be a whole bevy of international events, and developmental syndromes of sin in the world, assuredly the Gospel had to go entirely throughout it, as Christ declared FIRST (Matthew 24); but then, a couple of thousand years, maybe, some 50 generations, it is not a lot. When the END comes, it will seem quite short. However, on the other side, there will be absolutely NO excuse, for the whole gamut of religious and ostensibly irreligious extravanganzas of unreason and irreligion will have been tried, and found to founder. The time, it is short, but sufficient.

 

One may say, But I am a Christian, and I do not experience such a sense of anticipation as you indicate. If so, either you are mistaken, and are not a Christian (though the door is open wide and see Ch. 2 above, SMR pp. 524ff., 582ff.); or else your love is in real danger of growing cold (cf. Revelation 3:14ff.). If the latter, repent and seek Him afresh as there shown, in Rev. 3. He is always gracious, and never wearies of His own children. It is easy to go on semi-automatic pilot, and to allow the cares and troubles of this world to be like undergrowth, preventing progress. It may be necessary in some cases, to cut loose and forsake all, this perhaps for the first time. When you are sitting in heavenly places in Christ (Ephesians 2:6), it is not something you forget!

 

In our next chapter, we shall plan DV to look at I Corinthians 15, in order, as an application in Apologetics, to see the coherence and meaning of the phases and aspects of the thing which is in view.

 

NOTES

 

*1

 

See SMR pp. 88ff., 92ff., Chs. 1,   3, 10,

TMR Chs. 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,10

Tender Times for Timely Truths Ch. 11,

Ancient Words, Modern Deeds, Chs. 1, 9, 11,

Earth SpasmCh. 1,

Wake Up World!... Chs. 1, 2, 5,

Sparkling Life … Ch. 4, Little Things Ch. 5,

News 122,

Secular Myths .. Chs. 1, 8,

Calibrating MythsCh. 6,  

Biblical Blessings Ch. 13

A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9,

Christ Jesus, the Wisdom and the Power of God Ch. 8

Barbs, Arrows and Balms 6  -7,

Repent or Perish Chs. 2, 7,

Spiritual Refreshings 13, News 19).

 

 

*2 

 

The following were noted last year, 2002, and are to be found in Ch. 1 above.

 

Various steps with religious bent were noted. Thus such were seen in varied places, such as in

 

“UN Ambassador James Cunningham on this topic, {as} in Bush’s notorious Mosque appearance and Prayer Breakfast for many religions (Red Alert … Chs.  6,  8, Gracious GoodnessCh. 2),  in strict contravention of II Corinthians 6:14, in his praise for Islam subsequently, as shown in the US Department of State, International Information Programs, Dec. 5, 2002, in which he declared ‘we respect the vibrant faith of Islam, which inspires countless individuals to lead lives of honesty, integrity, and morality…’

 

“US National  Security Adviser, Rice, said, we find in the same source and date, that ‘Islam is a great faith that inspires people to lead lives based on honesty, justice and compassion and reinforces the values of democracy and human rights.’ ”

 

 

For further detail, and contrasts with reality, see Ch. 1 above.

 

*3

See A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 15,  *1.