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CHAPTER TWO

SIX STEPS IN the TREACHEROUS MALL for MURDER

with TWO STEPS OUT and ONE RESULT:

Deliverance and Declaration, and Eternal Life

Psalms 22, 35, 41, 55, 69, 109

We start with an

EXPOSITION

OF CRUCIAL MESSIANIC ASPECTS OF PSALM 55

We see a socially ostracised figure, suffering in the midst of a shameful shambles of ill-will, an inward horror, as if pure water suddenly hit a swamp: it smells evil, is unfit for drinking, does evil. Trouble is inflamed about him, he is encircled with wickedness (vv.1-5).

More, he is betrayed by a close and smooth-talking friend, spiritual associate (vv. 12-14). Hell is the desert of such treachery as this, like a fast-spreading fungus, a puffy poison (v. 15).

To whom is such given ? It is as in Psalm 69, 109 and more, for those who have betrayed the Messiah, who being in His own Person both the salvation and mercy of God, on tricky misuse, becomes indirectly, but surely, a source of eternal judgment (John 3:36). Why is it indirect ? It is because as in Psalm 40, He came in a prepared body for man (vv. 1-3), died in it for man (Psalm 22).

Thus when this profound miracle of mercy is skipped, through insistent spiritual sedation or dismissal, the result is only what is deserved. If someone commits murder, you do not consider his 'good' deeds, but that he extinguished by his own decision, another life. If someone does it in effect and in his own soul, to the very Son of God sent as only Saviour, then we not only find murder, but murder of mercy, revocation of redemption that might have been, extinction of the way back to eternal life, and hence of life in its beauty, in exchange for death in its horror.

Thus just as the suffering figure seen in Psalm 55 had been wishing that He might have wings like a dove, and fly away, able to remain untouched in the wilderness (vv. 6-8), so now those and especially the one who disposed of Christ, anti-spiritual vigilantes, face unrelieved doom. There is a word on this in Psalm 55:9,15 and this is expanded in Psalm 69:22-28, and 109:8ff.. For His part, though bearing the reproaches of those who reproached God, and hence the sin which led to this, so breaking His heart, as in Psalm 69:9-12, yet not only is He redeemed from this by justice swallowing up the sin in His purity, and His death consigning its guilt but this redemption from the battle brings peace (Psalm 55:18-19). His persecutors in their challenge will bring on their own affliction (55:19,23).

Indeed, their very power will be rebuked, because they insist on just being 'me', living for themselves, refusing regeneration and restoration from sin to salvation.

"Because they do not change, therefore they do not fear God."

Breaching covenant (55:20), the forces of antipathy and hatred will be as those who insisting on not wearing protective clothing against radioactivity, and so are scorched for their wilfulness.

What then is the outcome for those who see and learn of these things ? It is this. You too may be maligned as a Christian, scandalously mistreated, sought after, hounded and harassed, and in alien places you may have severe temptations, your very name blackened. But there is the One, the Messiah, who has suffered far more, being infinitely pure and slowly degraded as far as man could go, and this before all, subjected to evil, spiritual misjudgment, yet rising in triumph, discarding death in resurrection, so that in His shadow, protection, we - safely clothed with His own given righteousness (Romans 5:17), should live.

Thus in Psalm 55:22, we hear this:

"Cast your burden on the LORD,
and He will sustain you.
He will never suffer the righteous to be moved," Psalm 55:22.

Trust in the Saviour is the end of the matter and of the Psalm (55:23).

EXTRADITION

In Psalm 55, we have seen that the LORD delivered the Messiah (55:16-19). We see more of this wonder in Psalm 41:10-11, 69:29; 22:21;109:31. Indeed, not only is He delivered, but He bears a vast cornucopia for man, having endured for sinners the shame on His name, body and the rejection of His mind by man, for man, as many as receive Him as He is. In Psalm 22, we have the simple fact. He cries to God to deliver Him (22:21), and we suddenly read he bare result:

"You have answered Me."

How beautiful is the answer to prayer, whether for the Messiah AS man, or for the sinner as man,calling on the Lord who so died for him. How lovely to rely on the reliable, amidst so much treachery, slander and violence, and to find faithfulness and answer from the Lord! It is like a kiss, a glorious wave in surfing from a high, multiple wave, a hug, a tenderness, action when all has failed, like a beautiful sunset on a stormy day.

Equally pleasant are the terms of reference, the survey of it all (Psalm 22:24):

"He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted;
nor has He hidden His face from Him: but when He cried to Him, He heard."

Information is one thing, and most helpful it can be; but explanation can be yet finer. You now know not only what, but why a thing or sphere of action has occurred; and the more glorious is the one whose it is, here God Himself, the more lovely is it to hear, and see, and feel, and regard the wonder of the wisdom and the quiet certainty of the power which was involved, the purpose and the profundity!

In Psalm 69:29, one of this centrally significant group of Psalms, you find this:

"But I am poor and sorrowful:
Let Your salvation, O God, set Me up on high."

DECLARATION

Since the whole point of this disastrous but triumphant sin-bearing, slander-taking, exposure of the rottenness in man is directed to man's salvation, we now come to the divine declaration from the lips which gasped for air as the suffocation of the crucifixion, foretold in Psalm 22, proceeded. Psalm 22:25 reveals this from around a millenium before Christ came.:

"My praise will be of You in the great assembly."

We find the parallel in Psalm 35:18,

"I will give You thanks in the great assembly;

I will praise You among many people."

In all these Psalms we have in greater or lesser measure: gross persecution, detraction, contempt, scorn, false accusation, hatred to the point of extreme odium, despite innocence of a translucent quality, purity in holiness, amidst tragic seeming assault, prayer for deliverance, even from death. This leads to raising up from disaster, even death (a specialty in Psalm 16), with condign judgment on those who in killing the Messiah have killed their door to life, amid declaration or the background of what has happened before all. Application to those for whom He died is shown sharply also from time to time. Sometimes called the imprecatory Psalms because judgment is all that is left when the consigned Saviour is dismissed (as in John 3:15-19,36), they might rather be named The desolatory Psalms of Messianic Triumph, because while the dismissive conduct of the condemned is fatal for them, yet it was freely done, despite the mercy, a sort of chosen programmatic putsch which failed.

The devil has longed for this from the first, and is defeated to the last, but not for the want of trying!

He sought to secure the Saviour in a path of sin (as in the temptations of Matthew 4), and quite literally to nail His body, so that ONLY the supernatural and divine power of God Himself could raise Him, to authenticate Him (Romans 1:4). Even to THAT point, God was faithful.

Thus Christ declares God's faithfulness, the Father who sent Him, the perfect word or expression of God to earth, providing a body through a woman. He does so with ardent thankfulness; for when you are utterly exposed, the intervention of God is like food when your last available calorie is speeding to depart. Willingly, delightedly, faithfully, He declares WHO delivered Him, that man might realise that the One who delivered even a SIN OFFERING, which is what Christ became (II Corinthians 5:20-21), will certainly deliver those who relying on Him and His work of salvation, call on the God. Of them also, it will be true (Psalm 22:21),

"Thou hast answered me."

As in Psalm 145:17-19, the Lord hears the cry of those who call upon Him, giving ear "to all who call upon Him in truth," and He saves them. "He will fulfil the desire of those who fear Him," in that cleansing, clean fear, which purges pretence and merges not at all with mixed motives!

Amen.

DECLARATION (cont.)

As we continue with Christ's Declaration, ponder the MODES and NODES of declaration, both oral and physical.

Of Christ, we read in I Corinthians 15:6, that He appeared before some 500 of the brethren, but the time comes when it is before all (II Corinthians 5:11), where declares this:

"Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men:
but we are well known to God,
and I also trust are well known in your consciences."

This was but part of His exposure of pity, precept, power, grace, patience, forbearance, life and Lordship.

Exposure Without Limit

From the exposure of the babe (Revelation 12:4-5,Matthew 2:16), to the exposure of the child in the Temple, for His mind and understanding, to the exposure of the power of God and the wisdom, in His vast healings and irreproachable words, despite Pharisaic rage, He proceeded, to the exposure on the cross, not only to hatred, contempt, mockery, raillery, but to a different kind of drip from that of the hospitals, the dripping OUT on PURPOSE , of blood while His chest contracted by physical forces as intended, and suffocation competed with agony and invited mortality for hours. There is a declaration to ear and eye alike.

Covering the Case

Is your situation worse than this ? Then consider, He ALSO bore the guilt of sin and expiated it by His death, so that He FELT cut off from His eternal Father (Psalm 22:1), with whom He had been from eternity (John 17). HE can be relied on, not only to cover your sins, when in repentance and faith in the living and unchangeable God you come home to Him, savouring what He has done in life and body and mind and soul for man, but to cover your case, however outrageous it may seem (Isaiah 44:22-23).

Consider an example.

Remember Peter, near death's door in prison, kept by four squads of soldiers, 16 in all. How monstrous the burden! But he slept till awakened by a special delivery of a deliverance which came to his form and took him out, on foot, in drastic deliverance, rather than in some kind of official gangsterism of a spiritually seduced King Herod! So he escaped. We do not even WISH to escape our part in His team, but we WILL escape in faith in Him, from what is merely an affront to His will, or a wily weapon of the devil (Isaiah 54:17), in order to complete the works He has assigned.

ETERNAL LIFE

LOOK at the declaration further from the Deliverer, and delve a little into its completeness. It has many gifts. There in the bearing of burdens you have, BY the Lord, the gift of eternal life, FROM the Lord, the call to a new nation, a new race, which in their part in time, will be like a generation: a generation not only in time, but over time, a race for each century which comes before Christ does, an aggregate of Christians bringing the message that He has done this (as in Psalm 22:30-31). The text is quite clear:

"A posterity will serve Him,
it will be accounted of the Lord as the generation.
They will come and declare His righteousness
to a people who will be born,
that He has done this."

Now it is they who declare.

What specific generation, generated group is this ? It is THE generation, His special people (Ephesians 1:11-14), spread throughout the Ages. It is no more any generation, than is an eagle any bird: it is bred to soar in spiritual places before the benignant countenance of the Lord; and if suffering now, it is on career in Christ, each one within it; and their eyrie is the Lord (cf. Deuteronomy 32:11-12).

It is redefined by I Peter 2:9-10, in what is almost a paraphrase. This is a 'generation' of the regenerate, a special category whose eyes are opened, hearts cleansed, lives adopted by God for His own people. Amid statements not of exhortation or aspiration, but fact and accomplishment, we find this:

"Those who seek Him will praise the LORD.
Your heart will live forever," Psalm 22:26.

Do you belong to this race ? It does not require special exemption from laws as now proposed for some Australians. It abides in Christ's word, at whatever cost, in His word, the witness to His wonder. This is the celestial race of Christ! created by divine authority, and not human indulgence, and it is this unchanging inheritance that every part of the human race needs.

This is the gift from the degradation of Christ, the life from the death, the elevation from His denudation, the kind conferring from what He gave up, the result of His declaration. It is as in Psalm 21, where David is seen seeking and gaining life for evermore (21:3-6). Here is the key, the entry to life, through the wide open mouth of death, atonement through the accolade that acknowledges that the Messiah has done it, taken the body given as predicted (Psalm 40), given it up for sin's atonement and taken it up again for the glory of declaration and what it includes, even everlasting life.

Christ has in this way "abolished death." Never forget that this scourge, curse on sin, disruption of the natural, rebuke to continuity by testifying we are not gods, this horror, is now no longer, if salvation in Christ is yours. In fact, Christ has not only broken the hold of death and this with reason, inheriting the savagery of sin and bearing it in place of His people (Galatians 3:10-13), but He has brought life to light. He demonstrated the divine life while the powers-that-be failed to find Him in His closely guarded tomb, watched by the women, whom He met, but instead was found by hundreds, then millions, whom He delighted. Nor is this all. LIFE shone through the wailing wall of death, but what if it then should go out like a flicker in due time ?

Not at all. It is not that. He brought life AND IMMORTALITY to light.

I have a brother aged 98, and it is a wonder how for all those 14 years older than I, which he has survived, how he has done it. God has permitted it for a good reason.

But then, in the end, what is the difference EXCEPT ... except you find immortality, as well as the abolition of death. Immortality ? amazing, what magnificence, that death

	cannot chew you, master your mind,
	smash your spirit,
	eliminate your existence,
	cause you to diverge from your God,
	harass you into cowardice or convenience.

It can be faced with unflinching face, a hollow, a dale before the uplift. NOT TO DIE is a wonder and a marvel for you, provided that your life is in the light. As Christ declared it (John 11:25-26),

"I am the resurrection and the life.
The one who believes Me, though he may die,
he will live. And whoever lives and believes in Me
shall certainly not die for ever."

IN HIM, there is total, permanent, unequivocal life, including not only the creation, but the resurrection (John 8:58), and it is out of the question for those in Him as adopted and received through saving faith, to perish. These are mutually exclusive zones. THIS rock does not move (Matthew 7:24-27), and those who trust in Him shall not be ashamed (Romans 9:33) or come into condemnation (John 5:24). This is "that eternal life which God who cannot lie promised before time began" (Titus 1:2, Ephesians 1:4, Romans 8:29ff.), premissed in Christ (Isaiah 52-54), and sealed by His Spirit in the hearts of His own (Ephesians 1:13), who thus have gained the inheritance which is His (Ephesians 1:11).

Otherwise, parking outside Him, it is like a special version of hell! Rejecting the offer of Christ, not desiring the environment that is His, there is no place but a continuity of sorts, a scorn and a scouring (Daniel 12:1-3).

When however Christ's gift is found, immortality in exuberance of vitality, His own, then love is sated, spirit is settled in life, not sloth, mind is met with glory, not deadness, comradeship abounds. Indeed you have your prepared place, your lot as with Daniel. Why then to have it eternally seems so natural, so necessary, so incapable of disjunction, rupture or ruction, that its mere presence is like a Summer balm, a breeze of blessing, a trumpet in the land and a rest by the ocean shore.

What a verse is this in II Timothy 1:10. But it is "through the Gospel," and this changeless (Gal. 1:6-9) gift of grace, by grace, to be received through grace, is purchased for publication, and Christ died for its declaration, that all men might freely come to God and become His children Then they may take their place, not as dust products from His creation only, but as spiritually adopted, accepted in the beloved (Ephesians 1:6). You are too great for this ? Is it possible ? too great for God! you want to be your own god ? Alas for you then, for grief then becomes your sister and sorrow your brother, not from birth defect or having no good parents, but for choosing the evil when the good is present, even God Himself.

It is well to consider dying, for it is no limited disease.

The Nature of Dying

Nothing is too much for praise for such an accomplishment. Dying is always most cursed, injurious, intemperate seeming, disruptive, dispersive; but living for ever, with the resurrection (Psalm 16) just as crucial and central as the crucifixion, different aspects of the total program for salvation, this is a transfer from Him whose it is and always has been, exquisite in mercy, divine in power.

In parallel in these triumphant psalms of suffering and transferred judgment, in Psalm 41:1-2,12, you see this of the break-through from death, which in itself, makes life utterly glorious, triumph over sin and death to conferred grace:

"As for Me, You uphold Me in My integrity, and set me before Your face forever."

Psalm 55:22 tells us in its coverage of the area and arena in view,

"Cast your burden upon the LORD, and He will sustain you.
He will never permit the righteous to be moved."

Indeed, proverbs captures this from its day:

"In the way of righteousness is life,
and in its pathway there is no death."

When Christ bears off the slayer, sin, the natural continuation of righteousness flows fervently on, the gift restoring to man (Roman s 6:23) what sin usurped. Death's divergence from the divine, becomes life's convergence by grace. Thus the blessed vision from grace, fulfilled in Christ on earth, becomes translated to its epitome in heaven; for it is there that Christians are citizens (Philippians 3:20-21). Founded in God through grace, they find the centre for faith directed to its blessed divine object. Those who so look (Hebrews 11:1-3), discover the radiance of Christ even when still on earth, for heaven is never ransacked, but exports in the interim, the wonder of God by His Spirit according to His word, in which He is ALWAYS faithful.

Yet there, it is we who become the imports, and so reside, even all whom He has adopted (Ephesians 1). We do not invade heaven. We are, on the contrary, imported selectively through faith by grace, as foreknown, tried and tested, exhibited as His own. Heaven's grace was exported to us, then we covered in the Beloved, the Saviour (Ephesians 1:6), who believe, are at His coming imported (Matthew 24, Revelation 19:8ff., I Thessalonians 4), pioneers and pilgrims, but 'strangers' in this world, at home in heaven, the ultimate haven, fresh from the resurrection, lit with His light for eternity.

Then, all thought of death passes like a turgid dream, and paradise opens like a flower, the bush ready to bestow, but not till the Spring does it come. That, it is the symbol of the time of the regeneration of all things (Acts 3:19-21), when Christ having completed His work on earth (Hebrews 7-12), brings home the foundlings found, that they might live in their prepared place, in the now visible surging of divine grace.

Design and Deliverance, from Crumpling to Consummation

We were never made to die in design, though it was an outcome that liberty permitted. Restoration is better than initial liberty, since it is not an open possibility, but a certain attainment. Life and immortality have now been brought to light! (II Timothy 1:10). Like putting pearls on perfection comes the addition: Jesus Christ has "abolished death," for His heirs (Ephesians 1:11). It is outlawed, bought off, met head-on, overwhelmed by deity, just as the atomic bomb brought a swift end to the last of World War II. Sin has however not been bombed out of existence, but suffered, endured, its full force taken, and removed. There is an abolition which is my own personal delight, a triumph which I for one, in the generation to come of Psalm 22:30-31, "declare" in terms of what Christ has done. Do not let your praise turn into daze: be decisive, and let it turn into salvation through faith in Him.

TEMPORALITY AND SERVILITY

Many are the trials before His Glorious Greatness Remains Alone

CONFRONTATIONS ALREADY COME,

AND IN KIND THAT WILL COME

In Australia, land of independence, sacrificial wars to maintain liberty, of individuality and entrepreneurial action, freedom from alien lordship, these challenges are now mounting in ways almost unthinkable fifty years ago. What evils and affronts have hit the nation from within ? Clearly there are many, but there is a current series ready to awaken the people of the Lord to their responsibilities. Treachery to truth had a focus on Christ, betrayed, but there are many applications.

1) There has been Institution of learning captivity in bodies of learning, secondary, tertiary, even younger. Knowledge is captured by the culture of political hacks, those who obey the mandates for man existing in their hearts, and minimise or extinguish the Christian part in the development of this country, and this of course was monumentally done by Rudd in the Great Apology. This failed to differentiate between the many Christians or Christian bodies which in the past had sought to deliver some aborigines from immoral impositions by their seniors, and give them opportunity to grow in knowledge and understanding, to see the world more broadly, and make their choices within that.

It would be just as foolish to pretend that no errors were made, or that only Christians performed many of the works of mercy, or that none ever erred, as to premiss the distortion that all were wrong, that everything involving displacement, voluntary or other, parent-requested or other, needs apology. Do you apologise to a road victim when you take his stricken form to hospital ?

Not only so, but naturalistic fantasy (cf. The gods of naturalism have no go! cf. The Time is Coming Ch. 4, *2) in precise and repetitive collision with fact, despite continual conflict with new developments, and unyielding evidence, proceeds to seize, with Government direction, the schools and colleges, like maddened bees or army ants. Not only have these mutually competing nature myths a protected status, to invade the class-room, but the refutation of this logical calamity and scientific breach is excluded. It is not to appear!

	This mental assault on minors,
	this removal of freedom of religion in basic spheres,
	insistence on untenable world views that escape verification,
	gross persecution in the name of education,
	mental and spiritual abuse to be endured in order to find a profession,
	this denial of rights of the child,
	this subversion by propaganda,
	exposure of the young to insufferable intolerance, and the
	replacement of evidentially based conformity to scientific method to preferred and partisan cultural flags

is, as it has been, a national calamity.

With unverified and even anti-verified ideas, it abuses political power to forward a cultural program with the zeal of the Nazis, the oblivion of the Communist USSR^*1and the folly that man so often manages, when he acts as if the God of creation were off the bounds of thought, this in a thoughtless fashion that cries for correction. It is God who will correct, but His servants must continue to attest the truth with all perseverance and longsuffering.

2) There has, again, been institution of a plan for aborigines to be past our law, a race apart with separate provisions, thus establishing racism in the most direct manner; while chants concerning some myth of ownership of the land are becoming popular even in government circles, as if God had nothing to do with the creation of this or any other land, and any who ever inhabited part of a land are ipso facto owners of all or exemplars to all, or select in some way, it becoming virtual sacrilege here to have the interchange of normal human discourse and learning. Political fancy and fabrication is creating barriers. Yet kindness, to any person or body, is one thing; racism however is another. It is a detestable warping leading only to one or another sort of indulgence or persecution as the case may be, flouting the challenge that all must meet, and creating two nations in one.

The stature of humanity is robbed, reason is breached, freedoms are compromised and prejudice rules. It demeans as well as elevates, distresses the indulged and oppresses the penalised, the residue.

This may be made a matter very duly, of referendum, to make duplicate races in the land, subject at will to different laws, in offensive oblivion of the fact there are already so many of different races with such different credentials and criteria that this is merely a divisive agenda.

3) There is also plan for the institution of THE AUTHORITY, well criticised by Henry Ergas in The Australian (p. 12 March 12, 2012), with supplementary analysis of trends by Cameron Stewart (March 10-11 in the Inquirer section of the same newspaper). This appallingly conceived master body would have unmitigated power to enforce culturally popular concepts, ideas, proclivities of ruling parties, without recourse, and with power to seek to enforce apologies when things written or spoken become undesired.

Were this ever to be indulged in, what would result ? This would subvert provisions in the Constitution, prohibiting the establishment of a religion, for naturally, there would be here to be found IN FORCE, a culture, through appointed culture speakers, discerning developments, descrying how things must be, replacing God as the ultimate and only possible source of morals^*2 without reductionism, as distinct from opinions, of ethics, as likewise logically of sustainable basis for truth^*3 in itself, whatever the individual convictions of members of The Authority: thus forcing obeisance to Caesar. Australia's culture king could then become the newly installed lord of criticism and its bases, augury of authority, a replacement morality source and centre, the nation the servant of this elevated savant, this group that gropes, and determines what is what and what not, what is admissible and what not, who must apologise and who not, and why.

Thus would come a naturalistic fantasy of humanism, using State power to enforce State ideas, direct or through the choice of appointees, capable of been made up by statistics, psychic preference, social connivance or any other type of desire or criterion that leaves out the original basis of coming together in this land. Who wants such a Bill of Wrongs, to enable some to dictate to all!

It is one thing to have a culture moving this way or that; it is quite another to have it laying down the law in its lore, and removing what offends its concepts, from news media, private or public, by usurping authority, religiously empowered not by name, but by power not exclusive of such adventurism. Whatever be the social or desired bases of The Authority and its Thought, whether codified in any Little Red Book or not, be these emotional responses, or preferred criteria of this or that kind, still the Hall of Nothing in these vital areas, can rule the nation.

THE HALL OF NOTHING

Such elevation if permitted, becomes a lax yielding of the prerogatives of religious liberty to all the potentials of a chop-cut attack. It does not matter what the motive is; it is the result which is in view, the power, the prerogative, which is appalling beyond measure. It does not matter that the present interest is news: can a religious body or group or party not use news to provide coverage, perspective, reasoned debate and application of faith ? If not, this is part of the institution of an intolerant and intolerable religion, a betrayal of the country and its often imposing history.

Why "Hall of nothing" ? It is because if you neglect God, as this at present appears to do categorically, and proceed with authority so absolute without even answer and review, you are based on nothing, but presumption, assumption, preference, begging. It is free just as the schools are bound in their causal procedure, to regard and extort the view and its inferences, that as to the ultimates, the stuff was just 'there' without ground, though materials are not self-sufficient by any test.

Returning to the matter of ground, you have none. Affirming 'nature' you lack its source, base for its laws, limitations, prescriptions and DNA commands with their contrivance. You thus are limited to fables, as predicted for our Age in II Timothy 4, strange and utterly unvalidated ideas, which reason cannot confirm, which explain nothing, and have no basis but in nothing, for anything.

Nothing however does not do anything; though many who inadvertently follow culture as if man were an invention of his own, or of his own empty concepts have acted as if it were otherwise. being free to follow, or at times even bound to follow such myths as these, with legal authority. This is the third step, leading to the Captivity of Australia. You need reason. If you want to expound systems of thought such as evolutionism and mouth-stopping powers in the religious areas, by all means express yourself; but do NOT tie the tongues or slit the News or other throats of other people. Being government, is not to be God! Certainly such errors as these should not proceed without a due Referendum to find whether the democracy has bought your ideas, first. Even if it did, it would still make truth liable, grounds excisable, argument monopolistic in type, and a mini-culture king.

Some people in this country still want liberty, and do not desire to see deception pretending to protect, when in fact with unutterable shame, it merely removes this very thing.

It is hoped that it will not come at this time, though this world is going to fall for a short time to just such exaltation of man, denigration of God, combination of religious and State power in a wanton thrust to control. It is nice anyway, that it is all pointing that way, one more indication that the time before judgment is not waiting. God has not forgotten us at all, and the warming of the oven precedes its charring (cf. II Thessalonians 1 and 2).

What is not so nice is the use even of private schools for the abuse of liberty and departure even from the UN Declaration against discrimination in matters of religion or belief, which is inherent in these practices. No one is supposed to suffer loss of opportunity through such considerations; but the children first, and now is it to be the adults, beyond even university, who will suffer from the claws of laws, whatever their purpose, such is the current confusion, which tears into truth both without warrant and ground.

Yet we do not trust either in Constitution or UN, but rather in the Lord who gave men the power to make either of the above, and relish the opportunities to witness and be faithful in the very midst of the predicted assault forces against truth, using the very means specified as noted, in II Timothy, and showing likewise the very qualities noted in I Timothy 3:1-5 for the same period, our own (Answers to Questions Ch. 5), and the fulfilment to amazing precision of the syndrome and prognosis, both, given in Romans 1.

Truly our God is both great and glorious, and has given to man such liberties as make one to marvel, profoundly above the conditioning and positioning and programs of man, however subtly, inaugurating the type of result in the type of construction. Men make programs. God makes men.

With God is the power to make liberty, and how profoundly has man had this jewel, and how proudly spoiled it. Let us then rejoice in the profundity of His wisdom, the greatness of His glory and the beauty of His holiness, the mercy of His salvation in Jesus Christ, and therefore seek with all our hearts to be holy (Matthew 5:48). wholly given to Him (Romans 12:1), with joy and the wonder of His blessed communion through His Spirit. This is to reinforce and illuminate us and direct our paths, till each having finished the life of service to God desired, finds in Him, already our source and our centre, the ultimate in beauty, who made even our power to appreciate it!

NOT PANDEMONIUM BUT PROPHECY

This is mere illustration as the forecast last days, last stage of the Age, featuring the political-religious power (Revelation 13,17) are finding our country out. History rolls to its terminus, like a late night train. Soon the Age will finish with the return of Jesus Christ as Lord and Judge. It has not been a smooth run, and anything but that. It has been what the prediction declared by Christ, for the interim (Matthew 24) as the Gospel rolls out through all nations, stated would be the case.

So has God covered history in advance, by a round thousand years before this salvation was transferred from plans in heaven to performance on earth, the spiritual triumph of all time in this smitten vale, with the proleptic, prophetic record in the Psalms. So has He covered it in prediction, some 3000 years ago, just as yet further back He foreshadowed it in Eden (Genesis 3:15, the protevangelion). So will He end the affliction as love promotes His Gospel, till all are saved who are His own (Revelation 6:10-11), on His regal return, like the Managing Director, when all road tests are concluded. Then will crucifixion yield to regality, and everlasting joy (Isaiah 51:11) be consummated past all contest.

Praise God, for He is not only great, but glorious.

NOTES

*1 See on Communism, the following.

Aviary of Idolatry, Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch. 5,

News 37. 44, 69, 97 (the exploiters, the fanciful,
the Communists, the de-godders and the realities), 98,
News 150 - Taiwan,

The Grating Grandeur and Aggrandisement of Man,
and the Meekness of the Majestic Messiah Ch. 2

Beauty for Ashes Ch. 6 (and Hong Kong, and the movement of nations in the last century a concern),

Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch. 8;
SMR pp. 925ff., 971-972;

Beauty of Holiness Ch. 3
(war and force, rising downwards, Tiananmen and truth),
Ch. 4 (liberty, Tiananmen, worship and its direction in time, its terms and code of truth); History, Review and Overview Ch. 1,
Impossible to Men, Open to God Ch. 5