CHAPTER THREE
 

DEMYTHOLOGISING DEMYTHOLOGY
 

 

News 111

'News about Myths, and Myths about News"
 

PRELIMINARY

Recently, the author was approached for discussion, by a student. What was happening in the midst of things, in tertiary College ? As I listened, and we conversed, it became apparent that this is a sort of academic news. What was being presented was a view depreciatory of what was called ‘Judaism’, which may have meant many things, but evidently did not hesitate, for some reason or other, to incorporate the Old Testament in its apparent ramblings of negativity. Opinings, inclinings were the acme of udderance rather than utterance, for it seemed the milk was sour on arrival. The Old Testament ?
 

What was its place ? How would he, the lecturer, 'assess it'! Soon it appeared, his evocative inclinations and views resulted in a general consensus, interrupted by one only student with the testimony of truth, that we were in the midst of myth.

Daniel was in view. The fact that Daniel predicted the death date of Christ was thus relevant as we discussed the situation. There is something so intensively unmythical about getting dates right, when you have to create a situation, a Saviour and a people who would set Him at nought, and into this ‘creation’ of the mind, put a date for the occurrence. That is - IF you were doing it - not God; if it were you speaking and not God.

Unfortunately, if it is YOU doing it, it is not possible. If it is God doing it, presenting scope, detail and development in historical finesse, it is not myth.

Since this is what the book of Daniel does, we need to look for a moment in that amazingly novel direction in such things, as one has found so often: the FACTS.

Myth is not of this genre. So we looked at the security of the date of Christ’s death and life (as in SMR Appendix C), the death date of Herod as an index, the time of the letters of Paul (and their being used so soon - in fact by Clement of Rome, and with such reverence). SMR pp. 886ff. was in view in the correlation. Such was the offering of Daniel, together of course in Chs. 2 and 7, with the correct delineation of the empires, with carefully precise notation down to the present time. This may be checked in SMR loc. cit..

Then there was the simple fact (as in SMR Ch. 9) that the entire gamut of Jewish history is aptly covered, in a series of phases, in Deuteronomy 28ff., and Leviticus 26, including the sustained mockery of the Jews, their puniness of power compared with the triumphant prevailing of obedient times, their characterisable desolation and desolatory experience of spirit, the seeming long unanswered prayers as they rebelled more and more and the like. All this was assuredly to be, we find, and in Deuteronomy 32 we see the extent of the deliverance which would finally be necessary!

This desolation in increasing tempo was to happen UNTIL they returned to their land - cf.. Luke 21:24, Ezekiel 36-37 and SMR, Appendix A. Then as we shall see, an amazing transformation in VICTORIES was to occur, yet still one with the faithfulness of God, not their own, the criterion as Ezekiel here shows, and Zechariah 12:10 implies for the outset, as we shall also exhibit. Indeed, these things, duly amplified may be followed in SMR Ch. 9, from the outset.

In conversation, we noted (as throughout SMR Ch. 9) the predictions of their dispersion, their return to Israel, their mighty wars against  enemies HIGHLY disproportionate in power (as in Zechariah 12-14 and explained in the Appendix reference given). We saw too that those who ‘concerned’ themselves with Jerusalem, to oppress and inflict, would find it indeed a heavy stone. Right Mr Nasser ? Right Mr Saddam Hussein ? Right Mr Clinton ? A wearying process! This was in Zechariah, in the immediate lead up to the quasi-national repentance in Israel, for having put the Lord to death by piercing, and as we shall see, that in His hands and feet.

That is now. It is not every day that the Jews recapture Jerusalem, following the crucifixion of Christ. Actually, it has happened ONCE in about TWO MILLENIA. It is not really frequent, then, is it!

In fact, God has a plan as the Ch. 9 above shows so clearly from His word. It is that the Jews SHALL return (they did  cf. SMR Appendix A), that they would do so, as there displayed, without honour, still disbelieving, in fulfilment of divine promise, that they would still unbelieving, this proceeding somewhat later, to a large return at a more or less national level, TO THE LORD. It is then they are shown predictively from around 2500 years ago, to repent of piercing the Lord, indeed, as God puts it, to "look on Me whom they had pierced".

Jerusalem of course had to be divided into two in the process (Zechariah 14) and this happened in 1948, as Jordan took half. This was to occur in the midst of rapine and plunder. Eyewitness account has confirmed that it did so. It is fulfilled like a scientific experiment ... when the theory behind it is RIGHT. In that case, the SAME experiment can be REPEATED as many times as you wish, provided the circumstances are kept to the purity of the theoretical requirements. In this case, it is history which conforms, not repetitively, but progressively, not in the same thing often, merely, but in the VARIETY of things in sequence.
 
 

PREDICTIVE ACCLAIM

This, naturally, far more demanding, involves PEOPLE with wills and wits and imagination and evil and virtuous thoughts and interactions of personality and circumstances meteorological, geological, democratic, autocratic and dramatic. It involves the roving mind and the active spirit of man. It is, for all that, precisely predicted. It NEVER misses, never errs, having the advantage over ANY scientific experiment, where conditions must be most carefully monitored BY MAN. In this case, with ZERO tolerance for error, it is not merely automatically, but emphatically directed by God. He KNOWS man and his heart and ways, and sees time as we can see space, set before Him. He is ABLE and SHOWS it, in this way, to cover any or all history, and elects to instruct us carefully on various matters, and not least among these, the OVERALL and in many respects, detailed history of the Jews (as in Amos 3:7).

Small wonder the  monarch who asked his philosopher for reason to believe in God in two words, got back, according to report, the answer: "The Jews".

But let us return to more detail.

The Jews then were to be evicted from their promised land, as predicted from Moses on. It would be at the end of a vast pilgrimage that they would eventually be restored, in triumph.

Thus, eventually Jerusalem, from which the Jews were to be removed in exile (as happened ), for a long time (as happened), would be theirs again, no longer under the say so and direction of the Gentiles (Luke 21:44, Zechariah 12-14). This happened. It was only on this SUSTAINED return that the repentance for killing the Messiah would occur.

True, the Mosque is still on the Mount, but this is by decision of the Jews who hold the land, not by simple direction from without. At the very least, we are trembling on the brink of what the Lord referred to as "the times of the Gentiles", which of course from Daniel 2,7 and 9, provides us last with the Roman Empire which as shown in SMR pp. 902ff., had to be partly strong and partly weak, and has in fact kept to that throughout its various falls and recrudescences, the Holy Roman Empire phase, the Common Market, the European Union phases, with all the military and social, economic and yes, spiritual consequences as traced in SMR pp. 902-931.

The varied and variegated character of its complexities was all too well shown in the Roman aspect of the Empire in later stages, the alliance with a form of religion (SMR pp. 923ff.) and its various calamities and cruelties. It has been not merely somewhat, but altogether partly strong and partly weak, partly clay and partly iron as Daniel so precisely predicted (Daniel 2:40-42 - partly strong and partly brittle, in fact). It stretched to Constantinople, it retracted, it showered its power on the earth with the Popes of Middle Ages, it towered in obstructive fanaticism in the Inquisition, led to civil war in Germany, had its army, decayed, arose again, pulsating like a dying octopus, arising like a stranded squid, on the seashore, when the waters of the tide come in again.

All this had to happen before the Gentiles’ innings was over. Israel had hers from say, 2000 B.C. to the death of Christ, and now the Gentiles have had theirs, or approximately so. The land and the city IS theirs, after all! THAT is what had to be. It would not be APPRECIATED by the Gentile powers as is most clear in Zechariah 12:1ff.. That too is all too true in the world of events, unfolding as planned and predicted in the Bible. The UN in 1947 accorded to Jerusalem an international status, and gave to the Jews various bits of land, round about, now here, now there. The war of 1948 was, in the world's eyes, apart from faith, merely a work of putting the Jews into the ocean, as announced by their enemies. It did not so transpire. It was forbidden. Another path had been chosen. Not naturally, but supernaturally, it transpired. (cf. Lead Us Not into Educational Temptation! Appendix on Miracles).

Evidentially, this is the way of this world; it has a will of its own, but the word of God rules. The announcements in Zechariah 12 were, moreover, not only PRECISE as to outcome, but DESCRIPTIVE as to the manner of it: overwhelming power was overcome by minimal defenders in a glorious manner which was historic and classical. That is why LIFE magazine memorialised one of the wars of the Arabs et al, against the Jews in a magnificent photographic magazine. Indeed two marvellous magazines appeared in the US, memorialising now this, now that vast and classical military victory at those times. This was the way it was predicted, the manner of it, and these magazines, some two and one half millenia later, confirmed the manner of it, as well as noting the fact of it. That is the way it is. It does not change. Facts are so very important in all this. Observation not philosophy is called for. Scientifically, this is essential. It leads to only one result. Facts are not permitted vagaries in the word of God. They CONFORM.

It was indeed wholly indecent, from a sporting point of view, for Daniel to insist on eviscerating EVERY facet of conceivable mythology from his precise, predictive, empirical, testable approach, down to the use of arithmetic of all things, and dates as indicated in SMR pp. 886 ff., in Daniel 9:24-27. How could any self-respecting atheist, from his/her own mythical position (SMR p. 383) even begin to make the normal assault from the wholly imaginary neutrality of anti-supernaturalist, anti-creationist, anti-God, humanistic, agnostic irrationalism, if he should carry on like this! (cf. SMR pp. 375ff.). How could the normal, and hoped for battering of the book occur from those committed to telling the truth while insisting it was not there to tell, and other allied intellectual slamming contortions which may be good for slimming, but not for scholarship: how could it proceed, if the prophet does this sort of thing. Daniel was NOT a good sport for that particular game. On the other hand, it is not a particularly pleasant or profitable game. The facts are far better.

In our conversation about these things, then, as we roved over the program of the lectures which had been received, we noted that this was in fact,  not the stuff of myths. For them, you are not supposed to dabble in simple, literal history. Quite the contrary, to be really hot stuff at myth-making (a refined mythopoeic professional, or even a good amateur cf. SMR pp. 380ff.), you are supposed to invent things. Maybe a little thought and symbol, or maybe even some legendary activity will make someone or something, or some scenario to be raised to the level in which the true and mighty things of origins and meanings and so forth, will appear. Flash it on the screen, and there is your myth.

This then will account for that, one thing for another; or the account, facade or tracery of imaginary events will imply some perspective of understanding in things mighty and meaningful! In myths, this might appear, though the realities be hidden in the figures, the symbols, because on those presuppositions of imaginative imagery and onrush into the ... great questions,  nothing is really known.

That is the presuppositional hall of fame for myths. That is the way those who are inured to all this, imbued with it, free from truth and ensconced on the academic throne of will-o'-the-wisp chasing, in the land of wandering thought and wilful extrusions from nowhere in particular, can proceed. Its head can be patted, and the hand that pats can do the same thing in modern dress, as with organic evolution, and make a new myth whilst smiling gently at former myths. It can even forget that it is a myth. That is so VERY modern. (See SMR pp. 252Iff., and That Magnificent Rock Ch.1 and Ch.8.)

So the two, legend and myth fit nicely, like two shoes. Make a legend in some way or other, and then use it for a myth. That is one way. In any case, there is some way for the ingredients to be prepared, cut up on the board, and put into the broth.

But this myth manufacturing presuppositional philosophy in which so many, some witting, some witless, live does not live here. It simply does NOT fit with Daniel in particular, or the Old Testament in general. There is one God (SMR Ch. 1), and He naturally enough being infinite, as there shown, does not dabble in things at the comparable level. He is incomparable. He is not found in some other place. He is where He is, does what He does and does it, of necessity, with a hand and manner which none can imitate. It is not a matter of a Jaguar and a Volkswagen here. It is a question of an infinite difference in power and wisdom. If there WERE any other place where this sort of thing occurred, this precision, this incisive, decisive and accurate account of things past and to come, without any need of revision in some three and one half millenia, then it would militate against the reality that there is ONE GOD... unless of course, He put His word in two places. In fact, there is but one account of this stature.

There is of course a second version. This one is the one to which the first one referred. It is WRITTEN, and is called in Isaiah 34, "the book of the Lord". The one to whom it refers (cf. Joyful Jottings for detail, as also to SMR Ch. 9), is called the Lord of the book. It is He who said that the Bible indeed testified of HIM, but it was not enough to think so. It was also necessary to come to Him (John 5:39-40), do business with Him, in fact receive Him as He is for what He presents, like a doctor in surgery. Presented in Isaiah 53 as BEARING sin for those who have believed the report^*1, and who are hence healed of the diseases of sin, like the sacrifices of old, He showed He had to be turned to in repentance and the sin cast upon Him. Otherwise they would, quite naturally and in the normal course for such things, die in their sins (John 8:24, 31ff.).

When one does not, however, and when one does come to this Creator in human format (Colossians 1, John 8:58), then the power which is His, is not different (Ephesians 1:19). It is NOT given for 'success' by this world's standards, since these are condemned (John 14:30), nor for opulent laziness, self-acclaim and all the other garbage of gyrating personalities, captured even if captivating to many, who often pay them well for their pains. Instead, IT IS POWER TO DO what God desires, to grow as He wishes, to overcome what impedes, to expose what is wrong, to lead those who are willing to be led in the way God appoints.

It is shown in myriads of cases and in ways too marvellous to isolate in this chapter. However some examples are provided of that blend of

·       worship (for it is fitting to worship one's Creator and Redeemer, whose goodness give to this quality its very name - cf. SMR Ch. 4 pp. 368ff., 372ff., 428ff., 582ff., 611ff., 620ff.).

·       work (for the night is coming),

·       peace (for "the work of righteousness will be peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever"),

·       joy (for who would not rejoice at the defeat of the sin that binds, the death that severs, the darkness that looms),

·       delight (for the Lord is in FACT very wonderful, and there is none like Him as a friend),

·       grace (for one's failures, here or there, are not pounced on by some angry tiger, but dealt with by One as compassionate as a nurse, as firm as law and as pardoning as goodness, since the penalty is covered, and the family kindness is always present, as are the qualities that prevail), and

·       power to prevail, for the assignments are to be performed as given, and who but He can secure that!

·       miracle as required for SUCH purposes as these, in completing the work assigned.

 

But the history of nations is replete with the exhibition of His worship, praise and the enduements of His grace.

His transformations are proverbial, innumerable,

·       history's darlings and marvels - people of stable and informed purpose who did not cringe, yes, neither trusted in themselves, whose words ring and whose lives speak (like Bunyan, Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Knox, like the 2000 C. of E. Clergy who left in the 1660's their homes, salaries and even physical safety rather than cringe in conformity to unchristian requisitions from forms and forces not the Saviour, but the State; like the innumerable Scotch Presbyterians who refused to Caesar the pulpit of shame, and suffered loss, were put in cages, exposed to winds, shot at in forests);

·       for courage has been so often required that books of martyrs abound; and faith so greatly utilised that wonder mixes with poignancy as the saints suffer and prevail in goodness and righteousness... not the saints of form, but those of fact, whose reliance is on Christ, on God only as required (I Timothy 2, Jeremiah 17, Psalm 2, Psalm 62, Ezekiel 33, Romans 3-8, Psalm 73).

These things are the lot of HIS people, who are not aristocrats but forgiven sinners in whom He lives, whose word is as He has given it, and life derived from His.

It is not enough to tell your neighbours how good He is. You have to come and have the operation and receive the work of His gift from His hands. In that sense, yes there is a living book, the Lord in person on earth (as in Philippians 2 cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 2, pp. 41ff., A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 12, and Biblical Blessings Ch. 13). Indeed, the Old Testament and the New alike, state, predict and retrodict with fearsome indifference to the libellous words of their detractors. They simply do not so operate, as unbelief would desire. They are crisp, clear and decisive, pervasive, invasive and their very profundity is at no odds with their scope, coverage and fearless audacity and enterprise. If it were possible to stick the neck out in the presence of the guillotine of factuality as a stunt, this would far surpass that. Indeed, God constantly reiterates it: HE IS TELLING US and there is on comparison NOTHING to slightly resemble the power and knowledge He is displaying in so doing (Isaiah 41,43,44,48).

But enough. Let us look at the underlying misconception, confusion and lèse-majesté being committed by those, perhaps themselves immersed agnostically in myths of their own making, who like to look at everything and everyone else as if caught in the same predicament.
 
 

PREDICAMENT

Predicament ? But of course.

• If you cannot know it all, how can you tell;
• if knowledge in this old and weary world, is not available,
• but only glimpses of symbolism and talk;
• and if you cannot tell ...
• then why, and indeed HOW
• tell ANYONE ANYTHING about myths and the like.

Caught in your own, you are a mere myth on legs, by your own devisings.
 
 

GETTING DOWN TO IT

Myths! that appears to be the vocal depreciation trundled out to obscure or interpret the fantasies of men in the dust of contrivance. There are those who say such things even in academic circles, in lieu, it might seem, of reason. It is not, indeed, that they do this on purpose; but then purpose is not always the guide of man. Events can come from the cultural medium, the political pressures, the domestic blend, the educational milieu, the longing of the heart and the hopelessness of the burdened heart, often too obscure in its sorrow, to know WHY there is such heaviness.

This is the MODEL often propounded. It is in the generic of Kantianism (dismissed advisedly in SMR Ch. 5 and Predestination and Freewill Appendix on Kant, cf. SMR p. 397, for more than adequate reason, as self-contradictory). It is in essence a mythical model. The forms of fantasy are supposedly enlivened by the imagination of dim comprehension of something or other in the art forms of creative thought. (In fact, this is not the least of the reasons why incredibly unsophisticated and elementary forms of art can win prizes nowadays. It is sometimes to help comprehension of the fact that they do not comprehend, but want to 'talk' about it, that skilful artists present artistically almost execrable substitutes for art. They do this, and often, then they 'win'. The prize is real enough! It is a pose, a posture, a philosophy, and at the present, it can pass for art. So does defamation of art interpret degradation of spirit.)

The general approach to cynicism and scepticism has been provided in SMR Ch. 3. The exposure of the surrogate character of the myth charge, from the source which itself is susceptible to it, has been shown in SMR pp. 380ff.. It is installed where it does not belong; and more ironic still, it proceeds as an intrusive label  FROM the source where it does belong. It is like would-be emigrants who do not WANT their own country, alleging that some other country is the same, from a state of appalling ignorance of its actual nature. Myths are exported intemperately from the land of myth, in the minds of men, who see as if in dark glasses, mythically set. Myths are seen everywhere, but of course, they are really a mere projection of the philosophic glasses.

The exquisite and precise character of the myth which is ANY alternative to Almighty God for the source of the earth has been noted in SMR pp. 252H-I, and its expatiation presented numerously in such places as : News 82, That Magnificent Rock Ch.  8 pp. 254ff., Answers to Questions 5, pp. 116ff., Repent or Perish   7, Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 8, SMR pp. 999-1002. Again, the very basics of its scientific squalor appear in SMR pp. 145ff., and the detail of that squalor in That Magnificent Rock Chs.   1, 5 and  7, with additions in Ch. 8. The historical flow of the escapades is noted in SMR pp. 422Eff..

What of the dominant model of man which excludes understanding, of the temporal man, the controlled and the conditioned man ? Those so shrouded in the clouds of control and compulsion, of the unconscious and the libido, or the martial arts of historical determinisms, or the social injections of the times, or the biological necessities which are imagined but never found as the leverages on life, may well opine about myth. They become myths by their own theories; in theory. In practice ?  It is not quite so simple.

There is the conscience and the spirit of man, with its clouds and vapours, hopes and imaginations, which, when undisciplined can move mountains of mullock onto the mind, and make it a sort of mini-Hiroshima. (See Barbs, Arrows and Balms 18, 19, 26, Appendix 1, SMR Ch. 4, Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium Ch. 13). From such sources discourses are prone to be radioactive. Destruction is their métier. It is however not imparted, so much as exhibited. It is sad, even poignant.
 
 

THINGS THAT SHOULD NOT HAPPEN:
WAR BY DECLARED NEUTRALS!

Indeed, you have in this sort of philosophical presuppositional milieu the quite delightful situation that the NEUTRALITY which some academics love to profess, becomes nothing less than a call to submerge religion in culture (or anything else you might prefer, mythical implications of culture will do, anything so long as MAN is in charge and his mind and spirit are FREE from the objectivities of their construction and of reality), and then profess they know nothing. Obviously they then could not teach ANYTHING, so it is often better on this way, to profess that NO ONE ELSE knows anything, while as for their part, THIS THEY KNOW, that this is so.

Thus you have in this disingenuous construction two classes. The teaching and the taught. The teacher KNOWS ONE FACT about religion, that no one knows what it really is, or what the end and beginning and middle and meaning REALLY is. THIS of course he/she COULD get only by KNOWING THE ABSOLUTE which is NOT so limited and obscured, clouded and controlled, disposed and dispossessed of knowledge of these things as man is SUPPOSED to be. It is not just that the teacher would have to KNOW that there WAS an absolute, but that it would have to divulge its nature in express and definitive terms.

Otherwise, of course, the absolute, when it arrived into the interstices of the mind of man,  would simply be muddled and muddied by all the limits, unconscious drives, prejudices and stark inabilities attributed to man in his relativised situation (another presupposition, these neutralities come to war in droves, all dressed as civilians). BUT IF, as required for knowledge of such things, the teacher did KNOW GOD in this way, then of course God would need to be THERE to be known, and to have the interest in DIVULGING this information definitively, escaping the derailing, pollution and distortions of man in the process.

Then scientifically we would naturally want to see its credentials. If a lecturer HAS such a divulgement so that he COULD know that there was nothing there, it could only come from SOMETHING there, articulate and definitive. The ONLY way there could be the removal of truth, would be by its presence. It is a difficult task, is it not! Yet they know, which implies this existence, which they then deny. Self-contradiction is the penalty of lèse-majesté to truth, in short order.

We are discussing a type of philosophic position, which tends naturally to discount any ABSOLUTE TRUTH, with the absence of it in order to do so. It is amusing ? It is disastrous. It is common.

But the ground ? The credentials for such knowledge, even though it be couched in negative
terms ? These unfortunately this kind of lecturer NEVER presents, for the very sufficient reason that it is SUPPOSED that whatever there is, for, by or through which everything is: this is not and CANNOT be known. Hence he/she is in a bind.

It is this. To present these presuppositions as a basis for thought (NATURALLY they are not STATED to be such, for the show could not then go on), is to present them as true. IF they are KNOWN to be true, then what they profess MUST be contradicted to enable such knowledge to be even possible. Indeed the impossibility of objective validity without the self-revealing God is dealt with in detail in That Magnificent Rock Ch. 5, extended in Ch. 7 and again presented in Barbs, Arrows and Balms 7 (cf. SMR Ch.3).

·       While they assure us that everything is relative,

·       they procure the absolute truth that this is so,

·       thereby contradicting themselves:

·       as they oppress with logical fallacies to match the magics of naturalism,

·       the reductionisms of humanism,

·       itself unmeasured,  measuring all,

·       and the fluencies of irrationalisms,

·       presented (of course) with reason,

·       just to complete the fiasco!

This MYTHOLOGY of the lecturers of so many of our bogged down tertiary institutions may not in the least resemble what they think; but from observation, in this genre of philosophy which rules so many tertiary halls, this is the way it frequently goes. Now to DEMYTHOLOGISE the demythologising in which they often think they are embarking: this is the pleasant task of the moment. Since this, their frequently found position, as demythologisers of the New Testament or the Old, for that matter, requires this base, and the base requires that the things presented would HAVE to be true, in the book they criticise, at least in kind, then the more they reject, the more they accept. In this mental splits situation, one would expect they may become a little strained. It is but natural.

What is less natural is the folly of students listening to such self-contradiction.

C.S. Lewis^*1A in his GOD IN THE DOCK has a delightful chapter (5) on the Myth Becomes Fact. Here he notes that the realities can stretch beyond our ken (for although the works of God attest His capacities, His heart must be revealed). Seeing may occur in ways less than adequate. People might put this in myth. When however God sees fit to unleash His Son on earth, send His eternal word in the flesh format for better instruction, inspection and the bearing of sin for those who do not LIKE or WANT the controls and constraints which SIN provides (for it is this, and not really society or the other brutalities ascribed to our situation, by the mechanists of psychology and the dilettantes of philosophy, which is the base and the elective dynamic):  what then ?

THEN says Lewis, the area which man seeks to interpret, interprets itself and presents itself. What was beyond man is now in his midst. What he sought in limited language/comprehension is now presented in unlimited actuality. God has spoken in flesh.

K.A. Kitchen provides a very different but equally applicable approach when in his Ancient Orient and Old Testament he points out that it is time the delusive, presumptuous, arrogantly distanced from reality philosophies stopped trying to ram their thoughts impotently into the Bible; and that instead, some severe and realistic study was made of its MILIEU. In the Middle East, he indicates, there are to be found the historical and geographical, the social and the political ways and proceedings in terms of which the Bible may the more aptly be understood, than in the presence of rashly intruded twentieth or nineteenth century philosophies. He illustrates with some finesse. These philosophic assumptions, used in place of actual and precise study of what is there, have of course been outrageously jejune and inapplicable, often based on the evolutionary theory which has bitten scientific dust to the point its very teeth are broken (as displayed in precise detail in That Magnificent Rock Ch. 1) . They are desolated to the point of being almost like a one act play. There is only one act, since the act does not work.

Thus arrived the infamous follies of the German scholar Welhausen, in which he sought to indicate that there could be no such literary and legal advancement as would make it POSSIBLE for Moses to KNOW so much as to write the laws and to include the lore which is to be found in the legal systems of the Pentateuch. He was of the genre of the evolutionary myth (correctly so-called as in SMR pp. 252Iff., and exhibited Wake Up World, Your Creator is Coming... Chs. 4 and  5, and That Magnificent Rock Ch. 8). The myth controlled his thought, but history did not; logic did not: it was an affront to fact to impose such concepts. This was of course shown when EBLA was discovered, in even more glamorous a way than had already been shown by the testimony of Hammurabi, with his marvellously complex laws.

As Dr Clifford Wilson shows so well in his 'the impact of ebla on bible records' (modishly titled in small print), around 2300 B.C., there was such a sophistication of legal, mathematical and commercial operations as to produce a vast library of erudite kind. This PRECEDED Moses by over 800 years! Abraham in all his development and mental agility, lived around those times, or a little later. Not only so, much of the ACTUAL Biblical nomenclature and implicit custom in Genesis, not to mention the words similar to Genesis 1:1, were there found. It fitted. It matched with amazing perfection. Names and places abounded in correlation between the discoveries of Ebla, and the implicit or explicit ways in Genesis.

This reinforced Kitchen's^*2 whole point: know what you are talking about it, and talk about it as it relates to what it is saying, not to some egregious philosophy. As we see, such philosophies ally themselves with nothing so well as irrationality, and live nowhere long (except in the minds of those for whom the severities of scientific method are not duly applied, for whatever reason, as shown in the above references).

Wilson, formerly a senior Lecturer at Monash University, has been personally involved with much archeological digging, with great and small.

When one considers the FINDING of the HITTITES who were for long not known to secular contemporary literature in our times, and this endorsement of Biblical records, the excavations of Professor Garstung and recently, Dr Bryant Wood at Jericho, and the prodigious correlation with Biblical statement ... and so on (but see SMR for these treats and similar, on pp. 68ff., 377-385, 712ff., 945ff., 1003ff., 1082ff., 1180-1186C), it is apparent that philosophy has indeed been a substitute for both simple logic and hard digging. The philosophies of mythology, which end up as a mythical novelty of the twentieth century, still clinging on like dying vines, abound; but it is time they were comprehensively demythologised. They are illogical, self-contradictory; they smuggle in propositions which they use to remove opposition, but which first remove themselves. This they fail almost routinely to notice, or if they notice, to acknowledge.
 

·       As we note in Repent or Perish Ch. 7, SMR 999-1003,  pp. 374-385 and indeed in the entirety of Ch. 3, in SMR pp. 422Eff., and in Answers to Questions 5, pp. 116ff., Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming...Chs. 4 and 5, and numerous other places:

·       it is ONLY the logical realities of a creator who is ADEQUATE for what happens -

·       and not the naturalistic mythology which talks demurely in terms of what neither in form, in force, in structure nor in observation CAN or DOES create itself (a difficult task, in any case, and nothing is first itself debarred by definition alone! cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 29) -

·       which suffices.

All else is exactly and precisely myth: the development of a scene and scenario of thought, with or without historical association, but with a certain vivid or hopeful note of action, which is neither logically adequate for what it portends, nor equipped with technical interface to produce it. It is a musing, a roving, an imaginative reflectiveness, filled with action, here non-persons, 'forces' apparently real or conceivably once extant, which without any evidence to support it, stir thought and makes the ignorant happy, or sad, or in some way contented with the innovation. It serves its clientele; but it is NOT a logical structure. THIS is the nature of the myth which avoids the Creator, and would make a magical power to descend, unobserved and unobservable, without ground or testable element, onto the scene to ...
"explain" it.
 
 

WHAT DOES HAPPEN

When however we have a book which is eminently testable in detail of spade and conspectus, in hundreds of thousands of words of depictions of the past, present and future, filled with predictions and principles in the best manner that is so fitting for that other model, a SCIENTIFIC hypothesis, and without descending to that level as a PRODUCT, which performs at that level as a PRESENTATION, then of course this must be tested. It must be seen if it will validate itself or not; whether its claims are consistent with its performance or not. In the Biblical religion of revelation ONLY is such a privilege accorded in vast and unflinching multitudes of manners. If then that is from God, then of course we are out of the purlieus of philosophical confinement. First, methodically, people can TEST it.

It has lasted for some 3 and one half millenia unwounded, and HISTORY is its laboratory which shows as we watch, thousand year stride by thousand, what it says happening. It predicts that God (Psalm 45) is to send the One who is to be sacrificed for sin (Isaiah 53), and indeed the basic course with numerous precise details, of the history of the race. It focusses on the end of the Age, which by its words is ours; and it discusses this in just that detail which any testable item needs, to be validatable^*3.

This we see in SMR Chs. 8-  9, and in numerous other places.

It presents a CHRIST to come who HAD to perform miracles, rise from the dead, be slain by His own people, in the process piercing His hands and feet, who would produce a GOSPEL which is specified in advance, which would circuit the Gentile world which in turn would provide its own predicted procedures to doom, for its neglect, as similarly earlier shown for the Jews. Like an operation, it is useless as a basis for blaming the doctor if you do not have it.

All this is found in the above reference to prophecy and principle, and far more. Hence, available for test is the PERSON of Christ, for whom ONE slip in behaviour, in morals, in knowledge, in error on any topic of life, when under scrutiny as the Messiah would instantly have ended His unassailable career. This test for Him,  as God in flesh, was a stinging opportunity and it was used to the full, even to the point of seeing what happened ... when He was literally stinging when metal pierced, as predicted, His hands and feet.  What happened HAD to be like that; the environment of people, of terms, of truth, of rejection, of power, of willingness, of place and so on: it all had to be or the Bible was wrong.

It has never been impugned by reason. Indeed, not only this, but the subsequent developments in deep and often detailed measure, and profoundly so for our own generation (see SMR Chs. 8-9), had to be. They were and are testable. They pass with honours. What happens is in the tone and tenor as well as in the detail of the predictions. The principles apply. The results accrue, and we are living them.

Hence the projections of world history are as open as a book. It is all shown. It could be prevented by powerful man trying to show God wrong; but it is not. The resurrection could have been rubbished, though predicted for a millenium. He could have been smashed into small pieces; kept in irons, exhibited as a corpse. But it was not se (cf. SMR pp. 931ff.).
 
 

THINGS THAT DO NOT HAPPEN

NOTHING is EVER carried off against the Bible, which serenely smiles while the vilification and demythologisings proceed from those whose inadequacy of thought, infelicity of logic, contradiction of concept make it ESSENTIAL that their demythologising be demythologised. Theirs is the myth, and the word of God is the ONLY LOGICALLY POSSIBLE source of truth. Its actuality is shown moreover not merely by its millenial invulnerability, its constant confirmation and that the more dramatic in the midst of endless endeavours of wits to invest it with error, but by the necessity that that God whose being is assured from His words (as in SMR Chs. 1, 3), should have divulged His answer to the world so constructed in behaviour and spirit, as it now is (as also shown in the above chapters on Biblical prophecy, 8-9).

It is found (as likewise shown in detail in SMR Chs. 1,3, 10) in ONLY one place which meets the specifications of the case. THAT place confirms itself in the concerted, programmatic performances of Christ and history, which have had, in science, in any art or endeavour, almost limitless opportunities to find a refutation, a sustainable criticism; but these have failed, and it has stood. In Barbs, Arrows and Balms Chs. 1-3, we see some of the all but incredible antilogisms indulged in by those who seek to escape. There is systematically, however, no escape; except in myths. These are fine so long as they are not believed to be true: as an art form or poem. Logic requires something better for truth.

The Bible moreover divorces its account of the creation from just such things as those mythical wanderings,  with a rigour and vigour so great, that one has had to memorialise and demonstrate it in
The Biblical Workman Ch. 7, A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 9, SMR pp. 485-498 (cf. a useful additive in Creation, Vol. 19, No. 1, Dec. 1996-Feb. 1997, pp. 23ff., dealing with alternative writing that could have been used).

C.S. Lewis shows similar things concerning the New Testament presentation of Christ, also at the literary level which, in terms of myths and non-myths, was his field at Cambridge University (SMR pp. 380ff.), and notes the great divorce between this literary presentation and the contemporary methodology for fiction, the difference like that between sun and moon. Again, in SMR pp. 857

ff., we see something of the New Zealand scholar, Professor Blaiklock in his assessment in the same arena, and of Lewis's exposure of the artless subjectivity which presumes to re-create without knowledge on the basis of mere philosophic preference, a character whom the records do not attest, no nor history, secular or otherwise.

The endless endeavour to make a Christ who was to be raised from the dead by imagination, perform miracle by imagination, impress thousands by imagination, inspire death-defying and fearless conviction on the part of those who, seeking the Messiah, were satisfied they had met Him (as required in Isaiah 29, 35, 11) in some of His illimitable healing and truth presentations, never seem to cease. These mythologies of the mind, which seek to displace the testimony of literature, of history, of the manuscripts (see SMR Appendix C), of Paul in living memory of the crucifixion and the profound preliminary events, and to make of Jerusalem a city of idiots, moved by desire, incapable of performing it: these need to be laid not to rest, for to them no rest can be accorded, but to their just doom.

Worse then this, if possible is a further consideration. Such antics represents is plagiarism of personality, propositioning without possibility of procurement, invented persons, wrapping them in the papers of the mind,  and using the name of an actual one. Dummies thus are made; but they do not live. They are the services of the imagination, delving inebriately into history, forgetting their place. C.S. Lewis makes a mockery of the very idea of seeking to determine past the writer, his intent and his forces operative from life, on his mind, so that one could see back of it, invent. Making minds is  God's business. Man was never good at it. It is beyond his domain. NOT ONCE has any commentator rightly done this to him, Lewis notes! (cf. SMR pp. 858-859).

• "Reviewers both friendly and hostile, will dash you off such histories with great confidence; will tell you what public events had directed the author's mind to this or that, what other authors had influenced him, what his over-all intention was, what sort of audience he principally addressed, why - and when - he did everything... ... " ; and he adds:
• "not one of these guesses has on any one point been right."

This has not only been his observation concerning HIMSELF and his own books, but concerning those of his friends. NIL score. What is absurd also does not work! This too one would expect.
 
 

THINGS THAT DID HAPPEN ...EVEN THEN!

We are not the only people who are benefited by the possession of minds. One has only to read St Chrysostom's sermons, Augustine's works, or sundry other things in ancient literature, to realise that profundity and wit of the ancients, which their architectural works alike attests. The evolutionary myth, or its implication, that they of Jerusalem were so dumb, devious and puny, who produced and listened to Cicero of Rome in his day, that they playfully dismissed eternal damnation as liars for the mere joy of the thing, or unaccustomed as the grieving relatives may be, engaged in delusions of grandeur, making Christ rise and convince even Thomas by some floating experience, and then acted on these: this is as inept as other romancing, when fact is the aim. Seriously, they COULD not tell the difference!

Would fans of Tiger Woods invent a hole of 18 hops in ONE, when his power left, and he could only totter with arthritis about the course! Is THIS the troop who ADMIRE and are CONVINCED by performance, after severe test, who so act when the performance is gone, and gone while the sun is still at noon! Hardly. It is not we alone who have heads on our shoulders. THIS myth of making anyone fools if they lived a while ago, is one of the leading edges of the demythologising of demythology.

The further myth that people would LIE in order to MAKE their preference into what it was not, to invent a Christ, in order to inhabit hell AS liars, and without the presence or peace of the GOD who defines Himself in the Scriptures they lived and preach and taught by, is another edge to be applied. (See SMR Ch. 6.)

	When however we resume normal testing, we find that
	the power and the successful proclamation in Jerusalem
	of the precise things which, were they untrue,
	would have been instantly dismissed as mere verbal garbage from a collection of obviously lying rotters,
	but being true would be expected to draw many thousands; and that, men who would not budge, when they declared the resurrection of His body:

this is in entire factual agreement with both expectation from such a base, and every record.
 

That, being invulnerable to refutation, because the facts would not admit of it, and the proponents constantly asserting it  with all frankness, fervour and practical factuality of mode, assuring with simple exhortation and careful speech that it was founded on evidence (as in John 3:11, Acts 4:19-20, 5:29ff., in parallel with Isaiah 41,43,48 where God insists: TEST ME OUT, and TRY MY WORD and SEE if you can show ANYTHING to compare, even to touch its accurate depiction, inviolable performance), the fact of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ proceeds with that same contented continuance one would expect of the word of God. It MAY be hated; it MAY be assailed; but then Christ was. If it WERE not, then how could it be His! Indeed, it was HE who said, Like servant, like master. That is, the servant is not greater than the master; if they have done it to me, they will do it to you.

"Remember the word that I said to you,
‘A servant is not greater than his master.’

"If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.
If they kept My word, they will keep yours also" (John 15:20-21).

Indeed, the parallel does not cease there. As in John 16:2, He declares that the time will come when he who kills you will conceive that he does God service.

	From the Roman Empire, to the Holy Roman  Empire,
	from the Inquisition to the exposition of Islamic violence over the centuries, almost leading to the subjugation of Europe, even to this fastidious fanciful exposition*4 from over 6 centuries after Jesus Christ of some new christ, accommodated in the Koran, founded on no empirical evidence and not adhering to the better test of truth there has been the prelude;
	in Communism with its sub-human conceptions and actions to the new militant Islam and even now in India, a militant Buddhism, it has been so.

With Christ however, God's empirical exposition in the flesh, through the flesh, in Person and on the spot, it has been different; for here,

there was

	not violence but virtue, for violence is not needed when truth speaks, and that things of beauty, it has ways of its own;
	not lashings but logic,
	not spiritual direction by earthly power, as in Romanism and Islam in so much and so often,
	not an untested, untalking, untried, unempirical christ of the imagination, as in the Koran, but instead there was
	One who spoke and did what was prescribed for His identification for centuries, and met each occasion with the full assurance that deity needs, the power thus uniquely to be exhibited with the precision which knows no rebuttal.

Yes not only persecution but death has been grossly and fluently provided for Christians, for the servant indeed is not greater than the master, as Christ proclaimed.  

That is abundantly fulfilled.  

CEASE, in effect, God indicates in these passages in Isaiah, stop making myths out of your minds, and OBSERVE what is written and CONSIDER its impact on history, and then REALISE that this is the product of the ONE WHO KNOWS. Then believe. STOP using idols of the imagination in order to pretend (cf. Isaiah 48:5ff.). Be practical and observe. See who says what and what happens. Do not writhe or contort. Indeed, God is clearly stating that they were so devious that He was keeping back some data to the present point, so that they could not claim their idols had told them. Such it was; such it is. This is the way with myth immersion, and in particular, nature myth immersion. On nature myths, you may care especially to read News 82 (cf. The gods of naturalism have no go!).  

Thus in the New Testament there are many who try to make Christ a result of legendary accumulation which, when it has its issue, becomes myth, so that His recorded, attested and applied works which continue to this day, might be attributed to some idol or other, whether naturalistic or mystical, depending on taste, since anything goes when myth arises and facts are disdained. In other words, since Christ is presented as the ultimate acme and alpha, the Lord of creation and the God of judgment, those who on principle ignore the principles which require just that God (cf. SMR,  TMR), mythicise their minds and operating on automatic presuppositional pilot, become immune to reality.

It is now as it was in the days of Isaiah: then they ignored the whole history of the Lord's dealing in supernatural power, wisdom and direction, protection and deliverance with their nation, just as now in many nations, they wish to ignore in a way entirely parallel the works of Christ, making history a plaything and reality a dream, the better to enjoy their imaginations.

Indeed in HIM, is all mystery answered, all power expressed, all depiction performed for the mind and testing of man.

Mere myths of the twentieth century mind (carried over  into this century by permission of philosophy, which does not care much, for it is ever innovating, and has many spare cars lying about), then seek by such means, their own expression as we noted at the commencement of this exercise. Thus they create their MYTHS, even while seeking to evacuate history from factuality so as to enable a mythology of the imagination to arise and create Christ. It is always easier to create the boss in one's mind; for then you do not need to obey him, and how could such a boss as you so create, ever dismiss you... eternal you!

It sounds fulfilling, but it is merely the miasmic fraud of distorting, undisciplined mind.

Thus while the Old Testament requirements had to be met (as in Isaiah 11, 29, 35, 52-53, Psalm 16, 2, Zechariah 3:9, 9:6ff. and so on), involving a plenipotentiary of the standing of God Almighty Himself, God the sent (Isaiah 49:16) as the prophet indicated, the PERFORMANCE could not take time to distil. The wine could not ripen.

It was all or nothing. He did it or He did not. He met the questioners, did the miracles, could not be trapped, had the intrinsic and mediated power to overcome ANYTHING which was contrary to such an identity, OR HE DID NOT. ONE error was more than enough. Death was the lot of the pretender (Deuteronomy 13). THAT was the mere legal penalty. The abhorrence of the imposture was a far more vital and deadly thing.

In this performance-based milieu, He came; to those who looked He came; as to those who tested, both friend who watched and believed, and foe, who watched but could only by murder unseat. It was a fait accompli by the time of the resurrection. As Albert Schweitzer (cf. SMR Ch.6), for all his own errors, so well points out, it is impossible to dissever Christ from His supernatural background, scriptural eminence and role. Remove this from the total assemblage, ensemble, and there is nothing left. It comes from behind, interprets every phrase or symbol of weight, is illustrated, applied, reinforced at every level. It is cardinal, critical, long standing, clearly defined, elaborately confessed.

THIS was that Christ. There WAS nothing to grow, except this: that when HIS BODY was dead, so that NO mediation of power through His LIFE was still possible on this earth, YET God the Father would act to sustain, verify and validate, authenticate and FULFIL Psalm 16. The FLESH of the prophet, the body of the Master, the corpus of the Son of God would arise from the grave without life lost, would not ROT as the Psalm foretold so fearfully frankly; and He would resume in bodily format, physical and capable of physical touching, handling and clinging, eating ... or, were it not fulfilled,  life would lapse. What was foretold was almost brutally frank, simple; and what Thomas required was precisely the same, Thomas who upon investigation declared of Christ: "My Lord and my God!" (literally, the God of me).

He would thus rise, as depicted and predictively required in the bluntest of terms (rotting was not to occur):  or He would not. It was a matter to discover by the doing.

Legend was out of the question. God is the God who does. So He says; so He claims, so He asks us to check. COULD Rome, could JERUSALEM STOP HIM! Atheism had a glorious opportunity, for the contest was foretold some 1000 years before, giving plenty of time for handling it when history came - IF THEY COULD! Empirically what was the result ? Was the body found ? was it bound ? was death the finale ? could they triumph in showing fraud ? in showing the body itself ? in keeping so small a thing with such a vast significance ? Was 1000 years too little notice for the dissidents to have, in order to manufacture a plausible face in inuring themselves to fact ?

In fact, no. That is the point. His body was not available on demand. For murder, yes; since He came as a sacrifice and this was part of the plan. For post-murder trifling ?  No. That was not in the long predicted scenario. GOD WOULD RAISE HIM as in Psalm 2, 16. COULD they stop it ? The tomb was by request of a rich man, was not some obscurity; the women marked where it was (how not, when eternal prize was here! and One loved altogether! - Luke 23:55). Indeed, being practical, the women observed not only the rich man's tomb, where He was placed, but HOW He was laid. The time for anointing would come shortly.

Such was the set-up.

GOD WOULD LAUGH (Psalm 2), He said, in the face of this bare-faced and barren assault on His power, and on His Messiah. Was this annulled ? Did He overcome all the powers of the world and simply DO IT!

Could the enemy, then, stop Him, from acting, and ... from laughing ?

They did not. That is all. Christ walked off. He was not available for morbid display AFTER He finished the display on the cross and was buried.

Thus the legendary approach to the mythology manufacturers (for Christ being alpha and omega, creator and king, explained everything, and surpassed all myth), is like the student who does not realise yet that he is in high school, and that there is a thing called a laboratory where things happen ( or do not happen). You have to study the case, and ... see. You have to examine the verifications and the scope for them, and the confirmations and the scope of them.

• Leaving however the rational requisition that the word of God must be present and  true, as demonstrated in SMR Chs. 1,3,10, and the historical, literary, paleontological, biological, chemical, physical, archeological and social confirmations, the teachers of myth proceed with their own manufacture, with the smoke screen
• of calling that myth which lacks EVERY ingredient of myth,
• and using for their own part,
• what has EVERY PHASE of it, as they present.

YOU COWARD! says the bully while he runs! It is rather like that. Calling names, however, does not create facts. It merely creates a peal of laughter as the bully runs. Myth-makers do not escape by alleging this of what lacks the ingredients, and performing for their own part, with what has them.

But what DO they say, those who so teach ?

It is in effect, just THIS.
 

WE DO NOT KNOW (that is, all people), but this WE know (ourselves who teach) that you CANNOT know and we know that nothing can stand but our myths, new or to be begotten yet, which with ever inadequate bases and resources, ever and anon,
will produce worlds out of various whirlings of things
too obscure to be named,
too unavailable to be imagined,
too removed to be reconstructed, which,
with various processes
too distant to be observable,
and various laws
too hard to be formulated,
performed various things which are never seen.

As a result of this travail of 'Nature' which came from nowhere in particular, and nothing, there have 'arisen' all the things that are. Thus did disorder produce order, nothing produce something, disorganisation produce organisation and dead inertia produce brilliant thought.

But that ?

IT IS A MYTH. That is precisely what a myth is, except for one thing: this is a very dull and barren myth which scarcely deserves the name. There is only a lot of mixed up verbiage signifying that if logic were dead, then the world might have lived in that way. In that case, however, even speech would not be possible, for it presupposes logic in its grammar and conceptual symbolising and inter-relationships. In that case, even the myth could not be uttered. On the whole, it may be the worst myth ever invented, so lacking in ingenuity, possibility, consistency AND imagination, colour and personality.

It is better dead. It is best buried. Its demythologisation is a service to all. Let it rot.

The body of Christ, however, it arose, and it did not rot, but to dabblers in death it provided the spice of life,
not really a frustratingly unavailable result of the greatest work of construction ever seen on this earth, in physical format as a structure, but a challenging opportunity to be allied to the Almighty who made us able to think about Him, seek Him and find Him, or being averse to reality and necessity alike, to maunder as those lost, meander as those witless, or seek to extinguish the people of Christ, by various laws on information and expression, or by knives or ... indeed, whatever is convenient.

It lasts a little while. HE and HIS last for ever. That is such a simplicity, the hosts of darkness and of light, following culture, ideas, frustratingly incapable logical failures, or the Lord of life, identified, exhibited, demonstrated, not in the flash of a moment, but over the millenia in forecast and fulfilment, in personal action over years on this earth, and in His own words to that generation as to this, which now feels the vigour, the rigour and the rigors of reality, as what He has said, all too evidently, afflicts a world that whirls in thought, and wallows in iniquity. It is well He is still available on His age-old terms, as predicted, predicated of Christ, empowered by His word (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5).

It is good of the Lord so to continue His opportunities. Jerusalem as in Luke 19:42ff., lost its own opportunity, before suffering a 1900 year exclusion from its land, prior to its predicted return to it (cf. It Bubbles... Ch. 10, SMR Appendix A, Ch. 9). Gentile nations similarly have their own opportunity. It is the same God, the same Gospel; it never changes whether as foretold by Isaiah or propounded by thousands to this day. It is enshrined in His word which endures for ever (I Peter 1).

It is a great kindness of God that in Christ there is always room for more, till the time comes, as it did to ancient Jerusalem in A.D. 70, when judgment sits (II Corinthians 5:17ff.).

 
 

NOTES

 

*1 *2 *3 *4 *5

*1
The Dead Sea Scrolls (see Second Thoughts on the Dead Sea Scrolls, F.F. Bruce) showing the work of Isaiah preceding in their implications, the Christ who fulfilled it; and the prophecy of Daniel (SMR pp. 886ff.), exhibiting the death date in advance, which history can only confirm, are mere examples of the ease and ingenuity combined, which attest in their simplicity the hand of the Almighty. It is not really like any other hand. Its wounding for the sin of those who receive Him, is also not like any other wounding.

As He said (in advance in Zechariah 13:7), when predicting just this around 2500 years ago and around 500 years before it happened: "These are they with which I was wounded in the house of My friends."
It was indeed a strange way to greet Him. It had already shown in Zechariah 12:10, predicted of  the time when the Jewish people would be back in their land (after dispersal as predicted in Luke 19:42ff., and implied in Luke 21:24), that repentance which would in the end come to a large segment of the Jewish people. The time is post-crucifixion, for the simple reason that you cannot repent of doing something before you do it. That WOULD be a myth. It was GOD who so protested, we see, in 12:10, for it is HE who is pierced. Blood is so very unmythical.

No myth could hope for such a territory. As C.S. Lewis puts it, myth became fact. As one would rather prefer to put it, the necessities of man, were met by divine invasion, to deport sin, and import righteousness. IF God would not remove man from the earth with his lying and fraud, both attacks on the realities God saw fit to create and to sustain, on the factuality which HE invented, then necessarily involved was a remedy (or removal, which not occurring, left this option alone).

God does not deny Himself. If He did there would be such a turbulence of infinite impact that He would not even be.

The very assumption that He WOULD deny Himself postulates a contrariety in His being which assumes a conflict of what IS with what is wanted. THIS implies something created and with a dower of what is not desired. THAT is merely to say it is NOT of God that one is speaking, when so dreaming. God does not approve of lying, caricature and evasion. It does not simply leave it be.

This is traced in detail  on this site, but especially in SMR Ch. 1, and in sundry places (such as Repent or Perish Ch. 2, SMR pp. 41-47, 100-101 - *30, *31, A Spiritual Potpourri  6,  12, 16 - cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 6). That remedy was a logical necessity. It became an historical reality. This is the antitype of myth. It is the ONLY ultimate non-myth in the field of religion. Without it, all is myth, human effort to find what is in fact in one place only. Of necessity since this is not the place God has assigned it, it is dealing with the ultimate and original things, the meaning and the matrix of all, without having it. That, in the terms of reference, of necessity must meet the concept of myth, for it induces a composition which does not meet the case. It does however add this, which must likewise be declared. It cannot meet the case; it must fail do so. It is 2+2 = 5 trying to mix it with mathematics. It is liable from before it commences.

It is just and simply not the way things are disposed. God is not disposed so to dispose them. It is therefore myth. It is painful myth. It has helped to produce that arrogance, both national and personal, in the hands of the delinquent Darwinism which has often been its pal (cf. SMR pp. 125ff.), which certainly is a very proper implication of its error, were it to be believed. It has led, in the first flush of its territorial positioning, when young, likewise to assumptions of progress, which in kind, is precisely what man is NOT showing. It is NOT very bright to have something which is the constructor of all marvels, become dead because it felt like it. Some hypothesis!

Progress in KIND ? Man CANNOT show it, because he is a design. God having designed him, man is not apt to re-design himself. When he tries, he merely fails; and three world wars in the past less than 100 years are merely evidences and attestations of his incomparable folly in living by myth and magic, instead of by truth and fact, by the assured revelation of the ADEQUATE GOD without whose word neither truth nor creation can be.

The cheese on the omelette is this: God predicted the mood of our times, scripturally shown to be what He deems the 'last' (see Answers to Questions Ch. 5). He predicted the naturalism, the anti-supernaturalism, the decadence from the Bible, the hatred of a universal flood, of creation by a present and active power, who had it finished. It is all there. It is the irony of the most exquisite kind, that not only did God SHOW for a thousand years the thing unbelievers HAD to do to falsify His word, STOP the resurrection, and so of course produce the corpse; and then proceed precisely as planned; but He also exposed some 2000 years in advance, the mood and methodology of the end. In principle it is also scathingly exposed in Romans 1:18ff.. That, it is finesse. it is the precise opposite of myth. It is a surgical skill, an anatomical precision. It is the work of the one who knows, it all... Without total control, ONE error could lead to INCALCULABLE repercussions in time. They have not happened. What He says, goes. He has not made one error. That, it is what you would expect. It is good to test. It is better to learn. It is best to believe.
 
 

*1A

Professor Lewis also speaks with some insight in Christian Reflections , pp., 82ff., 'The Funeral of a Great Myth'. As funerals go, it is a very pleasant one, and like Cawdor in Macbeth, nothing became it in its life, like its leaving it. Though the myth was always lean on logic and licentious with rationality, its departure from a scorched globe, as here heralded by sobriety, is by no means a thing of gloom. Like royalty, it has maintained itself at a very high price. In this case, it has been without return.

Without dabbling in organic evolution (which like tar tends to cling to the clothes of the nature myth crew, and you tell the reek of it afar off cf. SMR Ch.2, That Magnificent Rock Chs. 1, 8, A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9), Lewis looks at his own field, mythology and literature, figures and symbols, their invention, their exhibition, their development.

Here he observes that long before the devious dabbling in evolution (though to him it is simply a field apart) in the mists of biology, the myth was there. It surged and lurched with zeal in many fields, and its progressivism, like that of New York in the 1920's, became a thing of glory, of tendresse or tower. It was built. MAN MUST AND WOULD go upward (cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 18,  26). Was in fact the Empire State Building, erected with cheaper and more earnest labour in the beginning of the depression, with labourers available like leaves fluttering: was it another Babel, bigger, nearer the top, more expressive of the limitations removed, the sky the limit, literally, but also figuratively, as the inane seeming competition with the Chrysler Building and the Manhattan Bank, now kept moving into a post-boom glory ?

At all events, whatever examples are found the myth per se, is found in literature long before these times and the 19th century itself. So says Lewis. "The central idea of the Myth is what its believers would call 'Evolution' or 'Development' or 'Emergence'..." He proceeds a little later: "The finest expression of the Myth in English does not come from Bridges, nor from Shaw, nor from Wells, nor from Olaf Stapledon. It is this...". He proceeds to quote from Keats' Hyperion, part of which reads:
 

"So on our heels a fresh perfection treads,
A power more strong in beauty, born of us,
And fated to excel us, as we pass
In glory that old Darkness."

One notices the humanistically idolatrous and blind incoherence of "born of us" As born, we are given a bearing. Being born alas, O humanism, does not arise, nor does begetting surprise the powers that be with its glory. You have to have what it takes. Even in being born, you merely receive from what has it. Where it got it, is from adequacy; and what you do with the endowments of birth is not limitless, but according to gift. You cannot make without the entirety of necessary capacities. The capacity to mythologise is not one of these, except the only object be verse, or worse. But let us resume our application to Lewis.

"On the continent," he continues, "we have Nibelung's Ring." Soon he is moving on to Wagner, whose emergence humanism is as arresting in thought as a cane toad, just as his life alas appears to have included the misuse of the wife of a supporter (though this does not make his music without thrust). Of this musician, Lewis writes: "The tragedy of the Evolutionary Myth has never been more nobly expressed than in his Wotan: its heady raptures never more irresistibly than in Siegfried. That he himself knew quite well what he was writing about can be seen from his letter to August Rockel in 1854."

Thus, observes Lewis, from these and allied phenomena, the myth long preceded anything that could be called scientific (and as we have shown, continues to act in abstraction from it, now as before cf. That Magnificent Rock Ch. 1). He cites Professor D.M.S. Watson on the BBC, in his observation that Evolution "is accepted by zoologists not because it has been observed to occur or ... can be proved by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation is clearly incredible" (BBC April 1943). The sole ground, in that case, for its reception is metaphysical not empirical, Lewis notes.

EVERYTHING, says the myth (Lewis op.cit. p. 86), is moving upwards. It universalises what it never found, and preceded its hastily donned white coat long, with its generalisations of desire. Reason is  to 'arise' from instinct, organic out of inorganic, poetry out of howls and so on, with the whole gamut of imaginative enterprises which research cannot duplicate, nor understanding sustain. Almost zero to almost infinity is its claim. (Actually, nowadays, total zero or nothing is the beginning; but it does have fluctuations as we saw in That Magnificent Rock Ch. 7, so justly exposing its lamentable lust and undetectable rationality.)

This lust however is not really any reflection of anything actually seen, noticeably observed or rationally constructable. It is merely the whim of heart, the thrust of levity, the levitation of thought without the blast off of power, the intricacy of rocketry or the knowledge on which it is based.

Lewis notes that if the oak tree grows out of the acorn, so the acorn falls from the oak. The small 'produces' the great, and the great 'produces' the small. It is what however produces the system which is the point.

Now of course we know that the small contains the code for the great, so that the creation of the code is basic to the operation of the small, and contains in instructive symbolism, all that is to follow. It is the INPUT which precedes, not the small. That is conceptual, coded, symbolic, enterprising and original, what is called a creation in any terms where obscurantism does not corrupt vocabulary (cf. SMR
pp. 252 Hff.).

What makes the myth impossible, however, says Lewis, is not merely the lack of evidence. It is that it assumes that reason itself is merely an arising, of no absolute validity: a party to relativity, an expression of what is not meaningful. If mind is an irrationalist derivative, then its dictates are not sustainable. How ludicrous to say, 'I will prove that proofs are irrational', he proceeds. If these are a result of accrued mental habits from heredity and biochemistry, then it is a matter of saying, by implication, 'I will prove that there are no proofs'.

Of course, more should be added here. REASON requires God as we saw in SMR, and only its denial allows escape. It is then that the area of thought of Lewis' point, applies with a vengeance. Again, the concept of relativity of all things implies inability to find the absolute because then it is not there, so that the knowledge which is above reactionism and reductionism being non-existent, it is not to be found. Thus the capacity to determine WITH IT, what the case is, such as universal relativity, is lacking. Hence the theory is not a possibility of logic. It is a simple self-contradiction such as school teachers seek to detect in their year 11 classes in particular. Hence it is silent, while rational grounds take over and return us to God. That of course does not put us WITH HIM, but with the concept. To find Him is not so easy.

It is a matter of enormous cost on His part, and counting the cost on ours (Luke 14:27-33). Truth can hurt, and this especially when repentance bruises pride and does not exempt rationalisations. It can hurt when its embracal leads to loss of salary and to all social intents and purposes, significance. Yet is it infinitely worth it, for what purpose attaches to honour and approval when the honour is dishonourable, and the approval based simply on desire.

When God in His NON-PLACE (for space is what He made) but in His sovereign glory and unique majesty is to be found, it is only by invitation and this by concession, and that by payment, and that by Christ, to cover the multitude of iniquities which separate from Him, such as this Evolutionary Myth, a direct descendant from Babel.

Lewis however proceeds to an important aspect of the myth in human literary products. He indicates that the thrust of lust is very appealing to human pride and pomp, selling (which seeks ever to be off with the on and selling the new), and glorying, but that it appeals, this myth to "every part of me except my reason" (op.cit. p. 93). In fact, indeed, one must remark, to be more realistic about the works of man, and more knowledgeable about the full orb of the myth, that this progressivism of unprincipled lust is merely one side of the lazy myth, this something for nothing social welfare state anti-intellectual facade. The other part is the death, Lewis proceeds, the degradation, the tragedy, as in Siegfried, where the heroics end in death; and "Roland died at Roncesvaux...  All this time Nature, the old enemy who seemed to be defeated, has been gnawing away, silently, unceasingly, out of the reach of human power." The sun will cool ...'Universal darkness covers all'. It is "the more debased versions of the Myth that end" in glory. The full orb embraces tragedy.

In reality, let us realise, this arena is that of nature mythology; and in realism, where one is clinging to what DOES in fact do NOTHING to MAKE itself, but is wearing out, with the Second Law of Thermodynamics smiling grimly, where devotees cling to an old coat as their mummy and daddy, it is merely to await its rending ... and their own  falling! In fact, it is as useless to 'blame Nature', perversely capitalised in impudent personification of what is treated as impersonal (and it is, except for the persons who have been placed in it); for its 'vengeance' is per se, merely the bursting of an illusory bubble invented in the mind of man, for which 'nature' is not responsible, but the sallies of futility called sin, mischiefs of irreverent, irrational mind, soaring spirits, drunk with hope and staggering with pretension. There is always a price to pay for unrealism.

It is true that there are divine judgments. Nature expresses sometimes, these things; but they can be quite direct. It is unwise to call for judgment. It is better to seek for mercy and to love righteousness, and abide in the truth. It is not strained (cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 7). It is content. However the curse on the earth continues and the call for it continues, like a waltz (cf. Biblical Blessings Ch. 7). Not least in the call is the idol of the Nature Myth. It blighted Israel as it blights our own so 'sophisticated' civilisation (cf. Jeremiah 2:27-28, 10:11). Such licenses of lust and invasions of imagination into a field not its own are endemic to sin, and sin is endemic to man; such that redemption is not an option, but a necessity. Baring one's breast to necessity neither softens it nor improves one's breast.  

Lewis for his part attests in his own field the fuller extent of the myth, its bane as well as meretricious glory. This was so beautifully and of course, grimly in tragedy, expressed in the October 1929 sudden fall, in New York Stock Exchange so melodramatic as the rise was dramatic: the fall not least ?  from that almost hysterical and grandiose vision of upward limitlessness and marvellous democratic people power prevailing. It was, a TV presentation observes (August 3, 2000 ABC^*5), many years before the Empire State Building was able to make a profit. It was a declaration, a statement out of the thrills of the boom, built in its immediate recession, amid its exposure of vainglory. It was, the program observes, many years before the US economy recovered. One cannot help observing that the date it gave was very close to the thrust of World War II. Tragedy thus begat tragedy and glory was stained with blood.

Tragedy is certainly a part of the Myth when the Myth is part of the world. Lewis' job is well done is showing that it is also a part of literature, both in its grandiose illusions and in its artistic reliefs and returns to reality, which are so vividly found so often, as in the expression of the singeing of the wings of Icarus. This hero, fleeing from enemies, flew too high in his escape, the power of an actual sun melting the wax of contrivance; and thus he entered the Aegean without glory.

So man, fleeing from God as if He were an enemy, is seen ascribing to himself a modicum of divine power, beyond merely being crafted for fellowship with God. So acting, without embarrassment, he simply defiles his environment, defaces his soul, degrades his spirit and then demonstrates this in the twentieth century (cf. SMR pp. 839-840), where the vainglory merely exemplified in the New York thrust and crash, is shown in yet more costly fashion in the innumerable corpses littering the playgrounds of idols, political idols preceded by metaphysical idols (cf. SMR pp. 125-127, 307-308), interpreted by pseudo-scientific myths (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 7, esp. pp. 125ff.). These, as Lewis is quick to show, were long alive before some scientists sought to grasp them in the most profound abasement of scientific method the world may ever hope to see.

One observes, then that the twentieth century was a season of greats: great self-gratification, great blasphemy, great aspirations and great debauchery, devilry and disaster. They did it in a great way, dimensionally, but not morally. They reached the drama of great anguish, with the zest and gloom of great angst; but their anxieties justly increased, while justice decreased. Yet the cost did not decrease.

The twenty first may not have to wait long for the assessment, the end of Term.

Myth is not really adequate for building anything, but illusion. It is far better to return to reason and thus to God; but there is more than reason, not less, which is required. It is repentance as well as realism, it is return as well as rationality, it is redemption as well as restoration, as with Nebuchadnezzar after his crawling like a beast on all fours, to acknowledgement of the power which DOES create (Daniel 4:28-37), the mind which DOES construct codes and animate life, the Spirit which DOES require truth and alone can provide it.
 
 

*2 POETRY AND PERFORMANCE:
THINGS GOD COLLATES

IN addition to this aspect, but closely allied to it, is the reality of the way the bible proceeds.

In fact (and facts are ALWAYS SO important!), the Bible exhibits profoundly and repeatedly the phenomenon called 'resonance' (see Answers to Questions 9). This involves and implies a notable use of concordance of concepts, symbols and events, so that, for example the phenomenon of typology richly occurs.

Thus Joseph is LIKE Christ in SOME ways, and this forms a partial pattern. He is MOLESTED by his brothers, being sold as a slave; they are JEALOUS of Him, because of His FATHER'S preference for and strong joy in him. He is even solemnly slandered by those in power (wife of Potiphar), and subjected to false judgment (for years interned in prison). There his feet are hurt (Psalm 105:18). He is forgotten even by those who should befriend him (as Judas, and the flight of Peter and the others at the arrest), as in the case of the Butler who, by Joseph's interpretation of his dream, is to be, and is then in fact restored from prison to power. He is later remembered, as when the disciples returned. He then achieves power in a totally magnificent and overawing fashion. There are many such cases in which the parallel to Christ is staggering in detail, in spirit and in essence. These are called TYPES of Christ.

God, as one put it - what is He is a poet!

In other words, our poetical propensions as a race are not without precedent in our president and Creator, shown in His word.

• But GOD can, if He will, put poetry into history.

Some refer to this in one phase, as 'poetic justice'. It is however more than this to which one is here referring. If God wishes to MAKE of history a teaching lesson, by making certain features indicate what He is going to do, using one person as a prelude to another (as is explicit in the case of John the Baptist - Matthew 3:2, and applied in I Corinthians 10), then that is His unique privilege. It is UNIQUE because only He has that combination of knowledge and power which makes the parallel sufficiently instructive and striking to create the phenomenon in any systematic way, such as is the case in the texture and mode of the Bible.

This being the phenomenon, the genre, the literary-historical genre, the unique prerogative because of the unique power of the God who made us, of the Lord, then it is advisable to NOTICE it, as in any discipline, when it happens. Ignorance is NOT bliss; while to be soporific and unaware is not scholarly, nor is it safe. (Cf. SMR pp. 1081ff., 68ff., 377-378, 1185ff..)

In Daniel, precisely this feature occurs, and not once. We shall however  note one example in this book. In the case when Daniel is trapped by envious courtiers who do not admire the precedence and priority given to him, and this doubtless all the less because he deserved it from his wisdom and wit, and this abased their own pride and pretensions: there is here such a type effect.

First, they are jealous for THOSE reasons. Second, they want his power. Third, they decide to attack him and that this can ONLY be successful, because of the pure nature of his life and living, by getting at him on the fidelity he displays towards God. Hence they invent a religious jibe to trick and beat him. The King is to allow NO ONE to pray except to himself for a certain period. Daniel prays to God, fearlessly, in full view; and is taken. The King, by virtue of the nature of the laws of the Medes and Persians is himself powerless to alter the law. Daniel MUST therefore be thrown to the lions. They however cannot do what they would normally and so do not tear him to pieces. He comes out unscathed. Meanwhile, the king, greatly disturbed because of his profound and well based, regal admiration for Daniel, cannot sleep. Early he comes and asks as day breaks: COULD your God whom you constantly serve, deliver you ! Daniel indicates that this is so and proceeds from the den.

In parallel, the envy of the priests against Christ is noted in the New Testament, their decision to trap Him on His claims, their necessity of killing Him because of 'blasphemy' which is the law, which being from the Lord Himself, cannot be changed. It is not really applicable with Christ, since He was in FACT GOD on earth. But this they will not see. Hence the law is applied with rigour. More precisely, however, it seemed that it should be. In reality, IF the thing predicted in God's name, and in accord with His law comes to pass, that is NOT the ground of death. It is verification of veracity. Christ WAS NOT ABLE to be falsified in lack of power and precision. It was not able to be shown that He was NOT what He claimed. It WAS in the Bible that God WOULD come to earth (Isaiah 48:16, Psalm 45, Zechariah 12:10, 3:9).

It was unscrupulous, as were the courtiers of Daniel's day.

Hence it was, even at that a false assault. So too was it unnecessary for the King of the Medes to have MADE the law. In both cases, there was error. In both cases, it was made to APPEAR, moreover, that law required it! In the former case, it was a wrong law. In the latter, since the law was God's own, it was a grossly false application in which the evidence was categorically ignored, and the happening as predicted, blindly passed by. Actually, the very date was warning enough. God is so precise that this was an index of the most major kind. So in our own day is the abundance of testimony of His return, this time not by date but by a pattern of events including the unique and unrepeatable. This too is ignored. (See SMR Ch. 8.) Thus there is a parallel within a parallel. This is one of the features of resonance, that it can re-echo, several times. It is a theological, and figuratively, an acoustic marvel! It has a certain majesty; and the ring of truth is about it. It is not some carping effort of the ambitious young Ph.D. student to establish his doubtful wares. Rather does it have the majesty of power and the dignity of omniscience.
 

·       In parallel, again, in Daniel, the error of the king in himself being deceived is like the error of the priests in themselves being deceived about Christ.

·       The tricksters who trapped Daniel are interested in their own power and advancement.

·       The High Priestly party in the New Testament in interested (John 11), explicitly in SAVING THEMSELVES and power and advancement for what they want.

·       Christ is not able to be finished by death, though He is incarcerated with it in the tomb. The disciples are troubled, and come early on the third day (the one He predicted - see SMR Ch.6, in accord with the predictions concerning Him in the Old Testament, as noted in I Cor. 15), to find ...

·       And what do they find ? It is this, that His Father whom He served continually (John 8:28) WAS able to deliver Him.

·       What did the King find ? Daniel intact and praising God as the supernatural source of the overthrow of the plans of the plotters by the use of that divine power.

·       Daniel was then promoted to highest honour and adverse assault on his God made punishable.

·       Christ, for HIS part, at the epoch early in the morning,  is then found raised from the dead, so that Peter in preaching assures them that they must believe in Him or perish. "God has made this same Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ" - Acts 2:36.

In both cases, moreover, the incarceration unit, den, tomb, is SEALED. The power of man is displayed in form; the power of God is displayed in fact. That is the way it always is. This is no exception; but it has a didactic point, and this is both prominent and normative in much of the Bible. God has the power; He is a teacher; His power is extraordinary; not surprisingly, in view of His protested love, He USES that power to make His point (as in Isaiah 41,48, explicitly).

What then ? The Daniel episode is preliminary, the other consummation. The one is a pointer, the other the target of the display mode. The one is SAFE, the other is resurrected. The one is delivered; the other delivers. Death is doomed. It is a deserved doom so its doom involves the damage to its ground: guilt. Death is doomed. It is a deserved doom so its doom involves the damage to its ground: guilt. Christ bears this for those who receive this, His ministry of pardon.

·       To mistake this genre of power and unique capacity, which God repeatedly uses, for something else is pure ignorance ... if indeed, ignorance can be pure. It is one of the paramount methods of USING HISTORY to teach the meaning of history.

·       It is done with Moses in the Red Sea and plague matters, in the striking of the rock (representing Christ), from which the water (representing as in John 4, and in Ezekiel 47 - Biblical Blessings Ch. 5  - the Spirit) comes. It appears when Moses, exasperated with the mutinous mouthings of the people, strikes the rock in order to obtain the water, not once but twice,  and does not honour God in so doing, that this too speaks. (Must we fetch out the water, rebels! is the sense of his outraged action and speech!). It speaks,  for this is like masses: it is a question of doing what is NOT permitted in one's OWN name, instead of relying on what Christ did in HIS own name and HIS own way (as in John 10:11,18. Hebrews 9:14,23-10:14).

·       This is like treading underfoot the blood of Christ, crucifying Him a second time. While Moses did not do THAT, in the symbols concerned, this is the direction of flow. Hence he did not enter the promised land. It was not a spiritual exclusion, of course, but a geographical parable. THIS sort of thing is excluded to the very uttermost, so that even if an angel preaches another gospel, it is excluded (Galatians 1 says so).

·       That (here symbolic) exclusion of Moses is what is announced.

·       In all these things, all but innumerable, flowing on like a stream in settled course, we find the lesser signifying and preparing for the greater, as in Primary School before Secondary, God teaches.

To take the supernatural intervention of Daniel as odd, in a book from a Being who IS supernatural and who is SHOWING it in the ways HE PROTESTS and EXHIBITS evidentially and continually, as something to be assessed in terms NON-SUPERNATURAL, is like a student of mathematics ASSUMING that his work CANNOT be numerical, and must really be about fish (cf. Highway of Holiness  Ch. 8,   Ch. 10).

Hence there is this intrusive obstructionism which Kitchen speaks of in his own field; and it occurs in other ways in parallel.

This is only one of them.

It is integral with the resurrection of Christ. That too could never be shown other than the supernatural record indicated would be the case. God in competition with Jerusalem and Rome did EXACTLY as He pleased, and NONE could countermand or interdict, overrule or deride His long prior pronouncement of what He planned, and WOULD PERFORM (cf. Isaiah 43:13). He explicitlymakes Himself eminently testable on all these things.

The derision, as in fact predicted in another and augmented irony of power and protest (Psalm 2), was from God.

It is not in vain. It is not for nothing. It is that the people might receive with adoration and worship the REMEDY for sin which God has provided this remorseless globe, that He so touches the orchestra of feeling and fact, prediction and power, trumpets here, harps there. It is His kindness which makes Him firm. Many a teacher knows the same, in essence! The power one has, one uses within righteousness, to make it happen, the student to learn, the lesson to be absorbed, the meaning to be mastered, the result to accrue for good in the life of the student, in his/thought, understanding and growth.
 

*3
(This is taken largely from A Spiritual Potpourri 15, to which the reader may wish to refer. The concept is basic.)
 

So much is said so ineptly in the field of religion, that it would be a good idea to use some definitions. Thus cultural religiosity, man-made religions and so forth, could be called, as now, religion, religions. On the other hand, God directed declarations, intimations, announcements to our race, and all that concerns Him, could be called:

"meta-religion".

These would be in the area where there is open test, clear evidence and impeccable logic, so that in nothing does it lack. This is the religion of more significance, beyond the intellectual pabulum of mankind, the imaginative temporary fillings in his mind. It is knowledge of God, starting from His word, His universe and His will as declared. (See SMR Chs. 1, 3.)

Here is the religion which

• attests ITSELF,
• works,
• does what the Speaker says - ALWAYS.

Here is the religion which

• is fearlessly ready to face and outface any opposition, because there is nothing at all comparable, because there is only one God, and He knows His own mind.

Hence it is the religion where

• when God speaks, it is so.

(See SMR Chs. 2,  3, 8,  9, 10; That Magnificent Rock Chs. 1, 7, 8)
 

• when God predicts,

it happens.
 

The ONLY ONE who could have this record is the One who does have it, God Almighty, declaring Himself and doing what He says; and none stops Him, for none is able (cf. Isaiah 43:11).

Meta-religion, that which deals with objectivity, because objectivity deals with it, has such criteria.

• Based on the immediately inspired written word of God,

• it is the offspring of the Almighty.

• Brought from heaven to earth, it is founded on the work of Christ, co-Creator and Redeemer, the Living and Eternal Word of God.
   

As for Him, He is flawless. HE

• manages history,
• directs the future,
• declares what is coming, appeals to mankind,
• provides even in the flesh the need,
• demonstrates resurrection and
• prepares for the judgment of those to find then the God who made them, in blessing or reprobation, according to the case:

and THIS is the condemnation that light has come into the world
and men have preferred darkness;
and THIS is the commendation, that those who receive the Lord Jesus Christ are accepted in Him. (John 3:15-19, 5:19-23, Acts 17:31,Ephesians 1:5-6.)

It is not in some merely mental way to downgrade people who have manufactured gods, or who receive them. It is rather to remind them spiritually and in reality that this is what they are - and what their 'gods' are. Judgment, declares Paul, is "according to truth" (Romans 2:3, cf. Proverbs 1:30-31). It is effected wherever, on Christ vicariously in the love of God, or on those who refuse Him, for there is no other salvation under heaven given among men, by which they must be saved (Acts 4:11-12, cf. John 8:23-24). It is not to glorify God to imagine He is what He is not, or does what He may be demonstrated NOT to do. That is merely a lie. God is not fond of lies, being Himself incapable of lying.

{See SMR pp. 44-45, 88-89 (*22), 92ff.(*27), 313-315, 269, 580-583;That Magnificent Rock, Ch.7, pp. 159ff.; Titus 1:2. }

This is a glorious incapacity,
for lying involves a derogation of the minimal majesty that God Almighty necessarily has,
and voluntarily uses, as shown.}

Another definition of meta-religion:

That which is able to both challenge and withstand the strongest challenges of men:
as from another category, before which their unaided thoughts melt like metal in the furnace.

One of the demonstrations of The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, to which may be added That Magnificent Rock, is this:
 

that in any contest,

	there is no competition concerning truth, only noise, in comparison with the word of God, the Bible.
	there is personally, an incomparability which applies perfectly with the Son of God, Jesus Christ, the living word of God incarnate;
	while the control of God, the prophetically predicted history
	comes equipped with what is often a  (literally) painfully obvious presentation, but essentially with a necessary and benevolent one for mankind, continuously attested.

What so acts deserves a name, without ambiguity.
To fail to give it one, is mere semantic omission.
Hence we give it one here.
 

*4

1) See More Marvels ... Ch.     4, esp.  *4, 

Divine Agenda Chs.    6,  3 (an overview of religious truancies, including Marx, Darwin and Koran);

Highway to Hell (Koran citations in both, with ideational parallels in perspective,  in the former;  and in the latter,  futile depravities in endless ideologies such as Sudan has shown so significantly, Islam ablaze without glory),

cf. Overflight in Christ Ch.   1 (and the Koran's musings);

SMR   pp. 829ff. , 1080.

 

2) See also:

Dancers, Prancers, Lancers and Answers Ch. 3, *1A
misconceptions about the Cross, variable and mutually conflicting, on the part of the Koran

Lord of Life Ch.  3 (and force), 1081ff. (and faith), Outrageous Outages  ... Ch.   5; 

His Wounds Opened Eternity Ch.    4;     3

Stepping Out for Christ Ch.    9,  

Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch.    8 (in perspective), see also *1,
 

1493 (esp. Britain and sharia);
 

Jesus Christ, Defaced ... Ch.    5,

Acme ... Ch.  9 ,

Great Execrations ... Ch.    3, 

SMR p. 1O88D - three major religions in some ways in concert, astray.
 

News 138,  Beauty for Ashes Chs.    4,   7,  

SMR pp. 1074ff., esp. 1079, 1081ff.

These latter show this religion, with the other three major conspiracies  towards the ultimate - why conspiracies ? It is because men conspire, or breathe plans together for a control, rule or oversight not ordained by God: these are breaths of man, and the breath that matters is that of God, in and by which all scripture is inspired by Him (II Timothy 3:16, Isaiah 8:20), in the Book of the Lord (Isaiah 34:16), the Bible, and sustained and implemented by Him (Matthew 26:54ff.). Other ideas for rule are always unruly, since they always tend to use power for what neither reason nor truth compels...

3) See further:  SMR pp. 822ff., esp. 828, 986ff..

 

*5

THE BIG PICTURE: New York, A Documentary Film (Final)  - Cosmopolis 1914-1931.