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EPILOGUE

 

SOLEMN FARCES AND SACRED REALITIES

Le Carré in his book The Secret Pilgrim, invents at the last Chapter, a foul character whose only desire is to gain, whose mode is to fight, for whom winning is great, losing possible, both to be considered, exploitation a nothing, vice non-existent, hypocrisy lodged  in every other moral option, pain a consequence of no consequence, satisfaction a congratulation made by himself, since he envisages none other worthy of giving it. He can exploit arms sales to nations, careless of results, untroubled if both sides clash the more, loaded with a dynamic of devilish indifference, with withered heart and spiritual death reeking as a thing to be gloried in, gratitude for grumps, man for thumps, and godlessness a glory.

Here is depicted a snapshot of the sewer of the psyche; but it has some value in this, that it is the moral outcome of organic evolutionism, which ignores the basis of capacity, the nature of design*1, the objectivity of morals*2, the institutional relationship of anything to objective  goodness, the ground of concern and the potential goodness of  authority, through the necessities of our construction and the requirements of their constriction. It is indifferent to what does not come from its nothings, beggings of the question, array of myths, unverified hypotheses, drugged ideas and deletive suppositions. Here is its unqualified man. He is not concerned with the results of a valid basis, but exhibits the ephemeral devilishness of consistent nothing-and-negativity as that ultimate base seeks to be invented and inventive.

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Here, instead of having man as a mix-up
 

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who has, having been made by nothing at all,  really, a negation of anything which is suddenly filled in from something, arriving for inscrutable reasons and no grounds, beautifully equipped with pressure, being, space, force, explosive power, creativity as a result of explosion, and freedom as a result of necessity, including thought as a result of thoughtlessness, being itself both analysable by construction and this by the mind of man, similarly 'made', in a great swell of resultants from no cause, all told in the proper fairy-tale manner,
 

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they take a parallel and less obvious course.

It all 'arises' (the way E=MC2 and all the other comprehensive laws 'arose'), somehow from somewhere which dare not be mentioned and must be mythicised, a suppositious being, call it 'nature' if you like,  which has had a wonderful trip, free of rational causation, itself 'founded on nothing', and possibly nothing itself at first, in the midst of time which likewise came from nothing, and this through logically pseudo-analysable steps which came from nothing, with great prospects maybe, or not. Modern muddled man finds it utterly indifferent, as is his supposed origin, and logical thought ceases here abruptly for the most certain of reasons: the actual non-mythical and eternally sufficient God must otherwise be faced! (cf. Romans 1:17ff.). Having moved along on these irrational modes, from irrationality, modern man is now tending to invent another lurk.

What is that ? It is this: now that (by nature-myths) man can see, he decides that the sight obtained from no site, must be indulged by inventing new morals, which will assist his greater lordship, growth, survival and stuff like that, by being very different. He will change the supposed course of things. Thus what COULD NOT have made him, in logical reality, now becomes what MUST BE made by him, as a subordinate, while the irrationalism of his imagination takes over, and he institutes now not only his basis in nothing, but a basis for something new, which he will invent.

In terms of modern and confused man, that genre ripe for power, he now yearns to instruct 'nature' which has no base, of the basis which he, man, who has no base, since nature has none, proposes for all things. An utterly irrationally based being thus becomes the rational source for a rationally run universe of cause and effect, law and conformity, freedom and enormity to choose from - or else, even goodness; and he chooses to dictate via government. What is to be dictated ? what 'we' think is to be dictated. What do we think ? It is what governments assess concerning what this and that person, group, cultural aspect, thrust of thought or anti-thought, thinks or anti-thinks, all together. It is all wrapped up in a bag of authority, and released like an angry skunk, tail raised, ready to impart its imaginative and crafty movement to dictatorship.

This MUST be forced on people. Biblically not only is this the foretold case, but it leads quite understandably, to the worship of man, and then to that of one representative man. You see some of this in Revelation 13, II Thessalonians 2, Daniel 2 and 7. II Thessalonians 2 speaks of the 'lawless one' , who come with "únrighteous deception among those who perish." It is he who shows himself that he is god!

It takes a little time, but it is now spinning along like a sport-car on a super-European highway!

As to the plan of subduction by subterfuge, overthrow of liberty so that godless irrationality may program man, It must be forced in, but in appearance, freely (or else by obvious dictator). In the former case, it makes first of all man the measure of all things, then our segment the measure of our things, then the governmental body the measure of measurement methods, and so worshipping ourselves, based on nothing for no reason, we use self-assessment by prejudiced people (unless they know the truth) to determine what can and cannot be said. Ultimately it comes to thought, too, since words may slip out and so legal action by taken,  much as in the Brave New World, and as in some of the current convenient dictatorships in the non-free world.

It is highly unintelligent, except for its craftiness. After all, the Bible attributes the program to the devil who deceives the nations (Revelation 20:3).

How does the dizzy program, manipulative but baseless, proceed ?  Such contradictions of his non-base, modern man is to ignore, while he wallows in the moral turpitude of untruth, while he announces what truth is, as in the normal antinomy. These are footfalls on the way. At least he does not turn himself into a god! He thus stops short of the norm many make for man. But it comes; and to come, it needs preliminaries, and we are by every appearance, seeing some now*2A.

Here, instead of having man as a mix-up who has, having been made by nothing at all,  really, a negation of anything which is suddenly filled in from something, somewhere which dare not be mentioned and must be mythicised, a suppositious being who has had a wonderful trip, free of rational causation, with great prospects maybe, or not: he is utterly indifferent, as is his supposed origin. Not for him is a current lurk.

What is that ? It is this: now that (by nature-myths) man can see, he decides that the sight obtained from no site, must be indulged by inventing new morals, which will assist his greater lordship, growth, survival and stuff like that, by being very different. He will change the supposed course of things. Thus what COULD NOT have made him, becomes what MUST BE made by him, as a subordinate, while the irrationalism of his imagination takes over, and he institutes now not only his basis in nothing, but a basis for something new, which he will invent.

Such contradictions of his non-base, he ignores, and wallows in the moral turpitude of untruth, while he announces what truth is, in the normal antinomy. At least he does not turn himself into a god! He thus stops short of the norm many make for man.

Thus,

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just as nothing spawned him, with a great deal of cruelty and power and mind enough
to make minds, wonderful indeed for something that is not there; and
 

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just as nothing contributed in stages the stuff of diverse kinds, forms  and information, its laws, its formulations,
its formulae, its mathematical domain, its power to designate, symbolise, command, model and modify,
to invent thought and to enable morals so that better things,
even than those creatable by nothing,
might also come to be, these alongside man and the creations of man,
such as the truth of these propositions,
which also must come  from  nothing, and hence be valued at nothing,
since nothing has nothing to offer;
 

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just as all these things are totally contrary to what made man, 
oddly acting inadvertently,
being there to be inadvertent,
and invented purposes, which never knew anything till they appeared for no cause:

so
 

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these things,  spawn of vacuity, are now made into persons
with proposals to which life must now listen,
so that its course altered, many might survive or thrive or do something a little better than now.
Thus man, on this basis a mere nothing, prepares to dictate to  this multi-competent absence,
what it should do, if it were only there to do it.

He does not follow the inanity to urbanity. There is NOTHING there, he knowledgeably opines in his ignorance, so thus there is nothing to do or be thought. Just grab, get and smile if able.

So does unreason dictate to imagination, which failing to enter reality, shamefacedly obscures all for a generation with good reading glasses, and shut eyes, just  like those in the day of Christ the Lord (Matthew 13:15ff.).

That is the inanity of the causeless construction without constriction, the legalities without thought, the legislations (as for law) without legislative power, the order without ground, the thought laws without thought, the discernment without devising and the capacity for knowing the truth (such as the above is deemed), without there being any, or any possibility of it, in the plethora of mere relationships as imaged and imagined.

Le Carré's invented character does not follow the inanity to urbanity. There is NOTHING there, he knowledgeably opines in his ignorance, so thus there is nothing to do or be thought. Just grab, get and smile if able.

In fact, however, construction of the entirety of worlds requires as its rational cause, ground, base and basis:

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not pressure (without cause) and
 

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not concentration in a singularity (without a single basis for anything),
 

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not reductionism without rationality to account for what is,
as distinct from vague notions beyond the reach of logic.

Instead, any rational script of origins for such a scenario, likewise,  does not involve, ready-made, a magnificence of compression involving force and format, the atmospherics into which the thing can be expanded when it explodes, or the co-ordinates for its accommodation, along with internalised artifices in concentration which in such pressure,  make for subversion of form by force, nor power to explode into form and conformity, or to restrict following release, into modes and modules, brilliance beyond fantasy, moulding force with the implements of mind, enabling resultant creations to observe without an underlying reason, to function or to invest in tiny tidiness through coming from nowhere and going everywhere flits like a maze of magic. Needed is  constriction and containment, direction and dynamic, information and its release, so that what acquires these things gains them from an adequacy, not a mere question begging singularity, from what is indeed singular in power and wonder and logic and intelligence and artifice and thrust, and one that includes mind, matter and spirit as its consequence, and contains enough to make the same in cohesion, in one being called man.

Talking in terms of phrases which assume all that has to be shown is mere evasion. It is then that such moral madness as in the case of the character of Le Carré arrives, and many nations begin to act rather like that, and so destroy each other for the simple reason that they do not even know where they came from, and hence become like galahs on a high, incapable of knowing how to continue or to get anywhere relevant to what they are. They sport with taut, roll with fantasy, reel with angers, tangle with untruths, lie with leisure and surface from the depths of desire with follies that while they congratulate the liberty of imagination, confront the race. Without FURTHER illusions, the abominable millionaire found in the last Chapter of The Secret Pilgrim, simply exhibits the practical result of irrationality and reductionism, and presents a reduced human, for non-delectation, a horror to behold.

Thrown back to reason, however, we find that constructions require constrictions, and that there are limits imposed on their facilities, agilities, proclivities, agencies, motors or rotors, dispositions or conditions, so that there is what is good for them, and what is not; there is what their information, in law or DNA posits, and what is contrary; there is what facilitates and what destroys. There is GOOD and bad.

Not only is this however the case in the physical configurations, conditions and characterisabilities, but it is so in the mental and spiritual domains and functionalities. There is what is good for it and what is not; what destroys, or compromises or realises its power, performance and facility and what hinders, frustrates or deletes. There is a moral mandate for man, and a consciousness*3 of these things which does not meander, though like bones, it may be broken and harassed till, as now, in large numbers, he is confused and like someone on the brink of losing consciousness through a medical condition, is so in the mental, spiritual and moral realms, both singly and jointly.

Modern man  has been largely hijacked by myth, till frequently killing becomes thrilling and madness is ranked as entry level to heaven, or if not, to self-promotion and desire, so that merging in his own mind into  matter and nothing progressively, man becomes in his imaginary retrospect, ready for a devastating prospect. That is one only of the problems to be faced when reason is removed, truth is merely imagined in a model which precludes it, and affirmed with whatever preoccupation substitutes for demonstrable reality.

Hence you get the sort of bluster that Le Carré's character exhibits. It is so terrible that the one meeting this imaginary character on diplomatic business (a character perhaps deployed for a deeper purpose), in the Chapter concerned,  is given to wonder. Has he, in his secret service career,  been fighting the wrong war ? He ponders whether what he has been preserving at such cost, would have been better deleted. He has been deluded of course, and the unblighted appearance of such figures of degradation and confusion, are mere exhibits of the moral meanders in place of clear moral concepts, which have become nationally popular, as the Cold War begins to depart and other wars to arrive, are after all, what is left!

Many have been fighting the wrong war, using lies and sophisticated bypasses of moral issues in order to 'win', instead of following the advice which was scripted on American dollar coins, to trust in God. It has been so obvious that (relative) freedom and self-determination is better than tyranny (which in potential it certainly is), that the idea of moral lawlessness has tended to be tossed about, meaning therefore tossed out,. Allied with increasing degradation towards the reality of God, there has come an indifference to design, whether of the body or the mind or the soul or the spirit, or the whole, and an air of disregard so vast, that the question arises: WHAT NOW IS regarded!

Thus a national identity crisis begins to follow that of youth and others, a while back, as a special feature. Where it HAD been clear to many in general direction, with strong Christian backing for freedom*4, now the national consciousness or conviction or allowance becomes strongly secular and even increasingly humanistic. The backing has become more like hacking of the same, and improvised substitutes circulate and fizz, arise and fall, embroiling nations as uncleansed premises invite vermin. Truth in the mind of many sinks almost to the level set by Pilate, who knew a little about convenience irrespective of conscience! Screens to prevent perception of base motives, corrupt characters and saleable souls may be still intact in many; but appearance is less and less without heart. Thus, more than is the case for the debased character depicted by Le Carré, plastic may cover pretence, and covers may be socially erected; but behind the screen, what is there ? In many it is to establish the family, the dynasty, the security in finance and reputation, in business, so as to be acceptable and powerful, deploying all to get much.

Such is the result and reward of the arrant naturalism, which having no morals for sale, leaves open anything from futility to ferocity, from individual lust to social lordliness, as people allow forces soon outside their control, to offer themselves in the artificially created void. Christ's seven worse devils appear at the door, and tyranny purged, social tyrannies emerge, as if we have not had enough of them, the all-knowing and almost utterly ignorant State of many ideas and little understanding, avaricious to control man. However, man without God is like many other things of potential significance, void if detached.

As with the body, so with society: don't watch it, ignore what is its design, and soon you are bordering nigh death, and deserve it.

When however man begins to look back to reason and corresponding revelation, that indicated by reason (cf. SMR), then there is found reason for this amazing mixture of tenderness and terror, intelligence and abuse of force, the delicate with the corrupt, the blessed with the blasted so conspicuous on this earth. It is like anything else subjected to hurricane, to forces which do not preserve. Man is amidst such things because he has only to look within to see the mirror of nature in this, there is tenderness and horror, sin and love, grace and harshness ready to combine in confusion or varied prioritisations. With such often debased ingredients,  man is as ruined amid wonder, as is the natural world. It is indeed just as the apostle Paul depicts it under divine guidance in Romans 8:17ff., and 5:1ff. (cf. I Corinthians 2:9-13). Man's mind like his body, is subject to blasts, and when this is without God, then his soul tends to becomes numb, his spirit impassioned or imbued with false ideologies, things of nothing, so that the issuance in actual life becomes simply confusion: its very image.

That leads to frustration and in some, cynicism (cf. SMR Ch. 3), leading to extravaganzas of folly, as in the militant Moslem movement, as was with the Nazi movement, and as is in the Communist one (as noted in *1 of Ch.  2  above). It stirs toward treachery, dishonesty, devices of deception, deviousness, unreliability, hatreds, immoderation, exasperation, violence and vileness alike, and such do we find broadly, and not a little in our present governmental modes. It reminds one of the end of such a line as forecast in Romans 1, complete with syndrome and prognosis, increasingly like the profile of our own country! In II Timothy 3, you see the faded religious charade forecast for this late part of the Age, as a thing of increasing popularity, and again, it is almost as if drawn from current news!

God does not rely on force to maintain or gain His position. Force outside Him EXISTS only because of export from His power. Without Him is nothing, and through Him everything (cf. Romans 11:11:38, Revelation 4:11). His power is such that nothing can even exist without His consent (Hebrews 1:3,Colossians 1:17), whether it be for blessing or cursing (Galatians 3:10-13), our current portion. Accordingly, there is, much residue of the former, on the one hand, and present heightening of the latter on the other, as provocations soar. Yet facing all, there is the same remedy, from the Creator to us as His creation, for our deliverance within our creaturely status, through the Redeemer. In Him is epitomised the objectively signified word of God and His Gospel (cf. *2 of Ch. 5 above, with Barbs 17).

It is well to be acquainted with our source, with His word in the Bible, with His only begotten Son in Jesus Christ, by faith, for without this, you CANNOT even please God (Hebrews 11), who has created the entirety of the mind, soul, body, hope and ministration to man. Omit His goodness, and soon you may scarcely know what goodness is, being confused concerning the good of anything. Ignorance is not bliss, but bane, and to pour it into the mind of man concerning his origin, meaning and destiny is anaesthetic before death.

Wisdom calls (Proverbs 3, 8), but folly will not listen.

Many however listen; some heed: it is a crisis of millenia, now at its international reward of endless sprees, as mankind comes to his lees, in the barrel of intoxication. God has created man, love and remedy for misused liberty. He has been patient, but not for ever is man to become ever drunker amid the nations. He has met extremity before (Genesis 6, Hebrews 11:7, Matthew 24:38-39). Water flooded; fire burns (II Peter 3), but the latter is not yet. This Age of grace and the Gospel is not  yet over in its application and merciful provision.

The glorious God of truth and peace, Maker of beauty, source of duty, cleansing like the seas, though He takes much, clean without compromise, His is the refuge for the implacable, the release for the resistant, the redemption for the enslaved and the peace for the purged. There is one place for any race, Christ crucified; there is one path for any feet, that of Christ as Way, Truth and Life (John 14:6). It works with power, dowers with grace and is man's place, when not recklessly astray. Living is not metabolism, but a marvel, when God is not an idea or ideology merely, but known as Pastor, Empowerer, Shepherd and friend (James 2:23, John 15).

Now let us see these things more  specifically in terms of the odious character in The Secret Pilgrim.

 

FROM BRAGGART TO BELIEVER

LE CARRE'S  BRAGGART ANATOMISED

It is simply not true that a man is set in a universe, or finds himself in a universe where he is the centre. This is where individuality which is a fact of life, becomes individualism, which like socialism, truncates truth. Objectively, past inclination and special  pleading, to act as if the only point in mind is to be what a person can do to furbish, furnish, forward or fulfil oneself is a work of oblivion. The centre of the universe, for unlimited concern, is not one person whose birth and death is outside his or her control, whose gifts are chosen by another,  whose affairs are of unfadingly splendid significance, who if a prince could not be higher. Not so is the emplacement of man. Acting as if it were so is both choice and delusion. Delusion detaches from  reality, but reality does not forfeit its impact on  delusion.

What then is such a deluded fellow, often high for a time in might, but tragic in plight. 

He is an individual amidst billions of others, made up physically of billions of cells with trillions of connections, a thing universes are never seen  to create, with laws which only mathematicians could nominate, or physicists, if only they had the nous to think them up, before being there, and apply them in the universe of which, in fact, they only later become a part.

A special  appointment to harry, harass, invade, invest, direct, manipulate,  lie, conceal, secure, breach at will is not found in the midst of the appointed means of maintaining physical life, nor in the rational  survey of the situation. To do whatever one happens to will, resembles driving in whatever gear, direction, relationship to traffic one happens to prefer, so long as one lives. There is no sanction for that, and the totality of events have no such signification, for that merely leads to mess, calamity and crisis, risking  all to satisfy will, which in turn merely exists  amid other wills, for which someone with intelligence had to supply the bill, the cost of production and inculcation and operation and  maintenance.

Since without doubt,  no individual is the centre of the universe, to act as if one were is mere subterfuge, presumption and gambling; moreover it is gambling in arrogance, since the results of such irrationality have not been costed, except in two regards, history and God. In history, amid the nations you see the cost in strewn ruins like Autumn leaves, the colour not picturesque but of blood. In the Bible: you see it in the costed items of Babylon, Tyre, Nineveh, Moab, Edom and in a complex manner, but a precise one, of Israel (Isaiah 13, Ezekiel 26, Nahum,  Jeremiah 48, Obadiah, Deuteronomy 27-32, Leviticus, Hosea, Romans 11).

If a person chooses to imagine, in the production of the universe, as it is:

bullet that what is never seen to happen, has always happened*5,
in phylum production,
 
bullet that information production*6, an indispensable mainspring to life, has  always happened,
though never seen without intelligence to do so,
 
bullet that laws that are never found to establish themselves, in material information,
in fact  always did that,
 
bullet that existence which CANNOT come from nothing did not require cause,
though everything else works on that basis, including reason itself,
the current tool of investigation (cf. Causes, SMR Ch. 5):

then there are results of this inflammatory dreaming.

It is then that the jangling, fact-free follies are going to come home to roost in the beleaguered intellect, the irrational life and the formatively forlorn, shorn excerpt from reality, living in illusion. Reality does not  always hit hard, but it hits expertly. Ignoring or bypassing truth does not eliminate it. Naturally, it works the other way around, since that is the work, and this thing does work, indeed the basis of information and formation and conformity and rationality and reliability on which all science is based, both in reason and its object, not only informs, but inspects wilful  deformity (Isaiah 1), as any creator might well  do!

Actually,  if truth were given  a moment, for any puzzle, series of events, episodes, it is necessary either to gamble that  it may not strike home, at least  for a while, or  to find the cause. If not, one is languishing in the midst of powers and forces which, being what they are, will call up the consequences of wilfully lingering in illusion. When one is in the midst of laws and language, by which one's physical being, prior to death, exists, then either they make themselves from whatever, or they are made. The 'whatever' cannot be nothing, which HAS nothing, including a future or a potential. Therefore, If these things make themselves, before they were there to do it, various proofs are needed.  The first is that it is a contradiction in terms, which clears the decks. What then was there from the first. Something adequate for the results, including the laws of logic which require results, and hence rationality and information-production and mind and power and  engineering capacity and architectural wisdom and purpose and intention and  much more.

But let us revert to the efforts to avoid all this in principle  already lethal. Let us imagine nonsense, as rationally as could be. These laws, then, or their ilk, being invented. Let us see it, let us be followers of scientific method, and measure production, watch it happen, induce it, see its background and its modes of institution in detail,  compare hypotheses, select the most conformed to what is happening. Well then ? In this, NOTHING is happening.  Exit science. There is no observable cause,  testable procedure, observable step by step self-instituting action, induce it as one may (without just using the results as if they were the cause, which is a classic case of begging the question).

Let us ask some detailed questions. First, WHEN are things without law, seen making law, merely material things ? When are things material  seen without law ? When are they seeing showing how they got laws enough to BE there at all, and how space and time arise from without it ? Place non-space and non-time  somewhere that is not space and try it out. Let us be very scientific.  Let us see these irrational happenings occur, and not be seduced by mere imagination without basis,  without logic, without example, without methods  and without form or formation, information or other modes of first begging the question. What is THERE ?

A sufficiency is there which is none of the things which can come only by creation or by begging the question, which is just intellectual confusion or  dishonesty.

But if they were  able to be  found, one asks, secondly, HOW are they found to do it ? Thirdly,  WHY are they doing it ? and what are 'they' in this nascent and non-formed, not informed and non arranged irrational thingummy ?  When such things are never found, being stripped into virtual nullity, and no things are EVER seen  to do such things,  and there is not even a possibility that they could do it being without even cause and effect, a vast formation not there for grabbing illicitly in such an exercise. Indeed, since if it comes from nothing by definition, this is impossible, and if from something, then the result cannot be the cause, a mere confusion, then imagination which short-circuits thought is no excuse for an answer.

The minimal power of conferring existence on what has to have it conferred, is one which incorporates  all the functional capacity displayed in the product, including mind, spirit, law, organisation, communication, communication receptors, and in the world of thought, communication analysers and  responders. Such facilities must be not beyond it, and capable of production as a consequence of the causal thrust  of such a Provider.

 But remove causality, then you have to have this invented  also,  and to provide reason for this forsaking of reason, which if successful, would not allow any result or origin but say, Blah! which is not very informative. But then, since information is a major player in life itself, what can you expect  when you rule it out to find how it was created! Logic cannot be  created for a reason, for if it were not there, reason would not be relevant.  ALL efforts to create it, therefore, are irrational, seeking to account for a situation where accounting is not yet relevant. It uses what it dismisses,  as yet to be made, and seeks to find reason for non-reason doing what it supposedly did, so contradicting its own premises, making of  all of this,  merely an exercise in logically illicit naturalistic fundamentalism.

Returning however to reason, to find what  rationality both allows and requires, we cease dabbling in the self-contradictory and look for what is self-affirmative, both in need and attestation, which is always relevant in any enquiry.

The adequate, necessarily  EXISTENT basis  is normally called God, but the rose by any other name is not different. You have to consider God, and not merely yourself, the therefore eternal sufficiency and not a temporary insufficiency, which leaves nothing before it, and hence after it, which is not what we observe.

Who, being adequate for one and for all,  is it that speaks into  DNA, in summary and brilliantly microscopic modes, in intensively rational symbol-summons-result mode, a language which constructs each generation by logical, visible, brilliant and intensively contrived means ? That is what is seen happening. Who is it that enables the constructively programmatic to blossom into the personally critical and investigative, and so constructs or enables construction that the thoughts of man to  determine how to live not just with and for yourself, but with billions, amid billions of cells, unified into one working piece of apparatus, then made available to a person for thought and will and understanding, so that it is not merely a product, are a functional, meta-physical asset. Who but a person, knowledgeable in personalities and conversant moreover with what it takes to produce them  as  well  as their apparatus for manifestation, movement, deployment and will ?

You have, if conscientious, to find if not in your body, which merely shows the necessity of finding, but in or for your universe, its cause. If you do not choose to do so, this is a reckless and potentially ravaging decision; and there is no easy or irresponsible way out. If you want to be irresponsible, the result is readily available for inspection in the multitudes of aspects of life. Not being with it guarantees only illusion, confusion and  corruption. Care is needed. Reason as one gift, needs to be used, not abused, and followed, not disjoined, so that in scientific  method, its results may be tested.

When you survey all things, it is apparent that in the domain of religion there is no one piece of communication which provides and requires that one take it, for testing. There is simply no other such communication which gives means for scientific method and logical astuteness in its investigation, and dominates the field, but the Christian Bible, the one that focusses Christ as predicted, as performer, as predictor, as coming Judge. The Bible indicates that we owe responsibility for our individuality and use of the universe and its contents to its Maker, a fact scarcely surprising. If we fail to do this,  wilfully, then the  cost of our production is not met by the misuse of the result, namely each one of us. Results accrue and are provided for inspection.

If we do consider this, then at once we realise the error of arrogant presumption, or careless indifference, or mere imagination  when tests are provided, seen now clearly through this a singularity of expression, known as the Bible. We repent, unless provocatively and perhaps invocatively wilful, arbitrary and pseudo-god-like. Failure to do so for ignoring, deriding, detesting,  departing from this Being is in itself as every moment, an arrant and basically hostile act.

One of the aspects of repentance, is to turn from  false assumptions and contradictory considerations or practice to seek the truth, which accords with what we are. This both rebukes our past, ignorant conduct and our breaches of moral law, which is simply how the Creator has made us, and how to work in that defined field. We thus realise the personal affront and folly, for we are persons, and turning to the Creator, accept whatever it is that He offers for such cases of extravaganzas of foolishness as we have all exhibited.

This is Jesus Christ, as recorded in prospect,  performance and retrospect,  as well as future action. It is He who for reason has the advantage that His is the most monumentally attested history in existence, and it is a continuing history in fulfilment of each prediction as its  time comes, and in power according to His principles (cf. Ch. 9 above).

We find that He has something called love, defined in I John 1-5 and I Corinthians 13 in a way to make its nature rather obvious. It is the opposite, almost exactly, of the confused rhetoric that is found in the LE CARRE character of the last Chapter of The Secret Pilgrim, when this type of approach is in view. With this,  He has sought for man, and not merely notified him; He has as a person, come for man, and not just called. He has taken the format of a man, and not just instructed. He has died for man as in  Titus 2-3, John 3, concerned that the world be not condemned in so doing. He would like all men to be  reconciled  to Himself, instead of being waywardly wilful. There is a cost however.  This is that one find one's place, and keep to it.

Imperial ? yes, imperious ? no. The call is to become children of God, not marshalled units of His power. It is all personal, since we are made as persons, and He  made us and acts in this domain as personal, a person-constructor being infinitely above a person constructed. This means in turn a fall-out with arbitrariness, individualism and socialism and communism and every other leverage to use nature against its Maker, human nature or any other. It means acknowledging that God is God. This could prove difficult for beings with wills and power to discriminate, reject, self-parade and the like, such powers as those being part of being a person; and these abilities, empowered by freedom,  belong to each one of us. We can defy or defile logic, personality, truth and reality: the latter limited to what it allows, as notable in the case noted in Psalm 22 and Matthew, for example.

However, when it is found, in this same comprehensively-accounting Bible that this is the culmination of all the possibilities of being made a person, and that the intention is love, and the result is to know God not as dictator but Father, then all the self-discipline resulting (as when a scientist uses as such persons sometimes but not always do, scientific method), is both natural and necessary. To be a child of God is not a stomp in a marsh, but a movement on a highway of holiness, of dedication, and indeed of love, where one is informed as well as formed. For this, you need travelling equipment and facility to understand its ways. This,  called regeneration (John 3, Titus 3), is part of the divine process available, first to be born at all, then to be born specifically and freely from God, as a willing tributary of His creation, not merely a butt of His power.

This makes well that on being so formed, we who believe are made children of God through faith in this same God, via His method of introduction and immigration, Jesus the Christ, the Saviour, who died the just for the unjust to bring us to God. Thus, in this way, we have a new, and sequential act of  creation performed on ourselves. This changes the natural direction of our severed hearts, to those in unison, though not mechanically or merely programmatically, but by inclination, fitting for persons.

We are, then,   regenerated, this the second such act in our existences. We are correctly said to be born all over again.

This is like a strangled plant, first introduced to the sunlight. The results for us, are both outside ourselves, in the light, and inside, in the natural and inbuilt power to respond; but in this case, there is more than light needed: there is need of regeneration of the defunct apparatus of relationship, which was sick and morbid, moribund, so that it might walk in the light, like a connected and corrected piece of apparatus, but this, the user and potential comprehender of  apparatus, like the pianist who needs the piano and normally the stool, but yet plays in a mode and miieu of thought and feeling unlike either of those provisions! This is associated with the provision of eternal life.

This is not will and caprice, to grab sundry bits of what God has made, and try to force them  to  make other bits, and reason as well, but devotion and dedication with resolution to the God who made all the bits, and procedures FOR THEM whether in our billions of cells, or trillions of connections, in each one of us, in the language of DNA FOR us, to be;  and then, past all that, proceeded in the directive, protective language of the Bible, TO us  In the latter, will relates, but wilfulness does not belong. There is a place for will, in learning to love, meaningless without it, and mere illusion where any kind of programmatics is involved.

It is so nice that we who value liberty have a reason for this, the liberty of our Creator of persons, who has made us apt for communication in comradeship with Himself, again, not arbitrarily, but as children of the profundity and magnificence which is His. Here is where illusion ceases to be fantasy, and truth becomes operative. Here is where account is relevant, reason is present from the first and to the last,  revelation uses it, man is told through it, for even beyond time and space, it is logically prior to any use of it! In an ordered way, therefore, God makes and relates. In a disordered way, man dissipates and arrogates,  distorts and reverts to what is now a deformed mind, as when a mere embryo, an unformed one. The latter is not relevant to guilt, but the former is very much so!

But some do repent and relate and realise and become children of God, not by presumption but by prescription clearly stated in the Bible. This is available for all, divinely desired for all, but in terms of the very nature of persons and personality, love and its meaning, not forced on any. It is not that man is autonomous as if a god, but the will  of man is created for a purpose, and it is vitally relevant even when the God of creation FOREKNOWS who are His won, with a heart as shown in Christ in  Luke 19:42ff., in the epistles as in Colossians 1:19ff., and in John 3, in that judgment is NOT for that for which came into this world, but what He came to  REMOVE, IN LOVE, which is willing to enshroud but not deny its very nature in self-violating compulsion. God knows beyond our attainments, beyond the lairs of sin, before man was even made; and as He DESIRES us all, NONE has any excuse for rejecting the pardon provided.

Thus is the Gospel of grace, and its reception with repentance, and the return to reality and discipline, which is always present in life, when it is not merely shredded. The KEEPING does not depend on us, any more than the first birth depends on us, for keeping our physical DNA thereafter. As I John 3 tells us, of the SPIRITUAL seed which is imparted when believers find the born again status provided, this seed STAYS  in us. Doubtful faith fiddles;  actual faith accepts freely the free gift. What is accepted does not depart. What is provided is salvation, not possibilities (Ephesians 1:11, 2:1-10).

This MAKES individuals, sound and spiritual, real and realistic, receptors now of grace as before of law; and it fulfils the longings of the heart: not the passion to be AS God, but the desire to know Him, be with Him, act as made and rejoice that it is as His children that we are placed. This, then, is not as mere consignees, but those where His love finds operational place, as foreknown by Him who made our units and connections, our unitary personalities and our multitudinous opportunities. Since this truncates arrogance and wilfulness, it involves no small death as well as regeneration. Like  tumours  removable from a healthy body, some things go; like organs, some stay.

If you prefer the darkness of confusion and illusion, it is yours freely. It is yours already, until regenerated in Christ Jesus' name (John 3:16-19).

What then of the odious braggart in view, in the last Chapter of The Secret Pilgrim ? He is  like a mouse fleeing with savoir-faire into the mouth of the cat, while congratulating itself on its finesse. It is like garbage seeking a garbage bin, and rejoicing in its own gameness in grabbing it.

In one way it is fitting; but in another, the fit is the wrong one. It fits person-destruction amid shame, which in Daniel 12, we find is everlasting shame. Some things are eternal, some are not.

Thus after all, actual garbage does not do any choosing. With humans, the status can be sought, and it is alas in more than one way that it applies,  Seek and you will find!

To be sure, we are in the hands of God who is beyond us, but He has been at some pains to become one of us, yet without sin, God AS man, and to have surveyed the whole in advance, so that He knows His own (II  Timothy 2:19, John 10:9,27-28, Romans 8:30ff.).This makes disbelief all the more appalling, in this, that He WOULD have all reconciled and redeemed (Colossians 1:19ff., I Timothy 2, Ezekiel 33:1), but forcing none, takes those whom He knows in essence and before time, as His. It is the fault of man only,  if he falls away from his glorious opportunities; and none is debarred by mere circumstance, in the knowledge of Him who having all power, uses it to gain His will. It is, in this case,   that all might be reconciled, but not by force. An enforced gift is an invasion, not a donation.

His willingness and desire is that all might come, but not as hypocrites. It is to find the lost, but not merely nominally. If then YOU do not come, in the end as in the beginning, there is only one responsible for that;  and those who insist on contrariety can have what they choose, and live with it,  in the fruits of self-will, everlasting destruction. But why ? The illusionary gift of some personal, social or national culture ? Well done, but there is none in this above another. It is in that case, culture or Christ, for no culture is by any means subjecting itself altogether to Him: and it is He the king, not culture as the chosen paths of this or that segment of fallen mankind, which is the gateway entrance requirement, as in Luke 14:27-33. Giving a name to what you do is not finding the name of God, but of yourself, if you want it that way.

If you do not trust your Maker, whom do you trust ? Yourself ? the arrogant centre of the universe, with universal power to know and to understand  ? Mere confusion. You trust God as one person another, as Maker by made, as Father by child; for then your trust is no more in yourself or your appointees, but in God, everlasting, the Father of lights and the source of even the capacity to understand, who lacking nothing, gives everything, whether a rod for the back of folly, or a rule for His own nation, a kingdom of priests with direct access to God, one made up of redeemed persons,  able to bear the light, and to love it, as His own, He their source and ambit, their destiny and desire.

Christ for these is the Guarantor, the Spirit the seal, His salvation the everlasting felicity, functional and realistic, healing the soul and empowering the spirit, enabling peace in its vast wonders, and friendship in its ultimate regard.

 

THE SLITHERING SIGNS

OF SICKNESSES

THAT SUNDER SOCIETIES,

AND APPEAL  FOR RUIN

Mankind amid the nations has had many spiritual pathologies, and it is well to expand our theme more broadly in conclusion.

Without the God of glory, you have the foundation-free, who exult in their exhibitions of slyness, calamity prevention, insularity or communality, the passionate, the concerned, the secret, the subversive, the secular and the spiritualistic, the ideologically baseless with a counterweight of cunning, the hypocritical and the hallowing, the emptily worshipping and the hand-wringers, and many more, all taking hold of some phase or facet of appeal, if not some element of truth, for some allied to a construction of inanity and urbanity, which is presented as a saviour for society. Captioned by captiousness, ordered by lust, conceived in confusion, baseless in reason, careering in test-free religion, where passion replaces truth, these elements conceive plans, concoct religious rules, or proceed through them. They mould methods for control of people, whether by making community god and then manipulating community (just as, in essence,  Communism did, mixed with cunning and deceit), or make up a god of power, whose mission is control, though test-free, a device used by many.

In this slithering emulsion and mingling of many things, what is to be found ? It is a volcanic emission of striving societies mixing dishonesty with probity, kindliness with a desire for captivity of their patrons, hopelessness with misty vision, manipulation with devious methods, capitulation to this or that with militancy against all things not conforming, these things even with efforts to control life, as in the desultory desire of making up from the myths of organic evolutionism, a contrary variety by the same evanescent means, milled by imagination, which is easy to do mentally, but impossible logically, and never to be found. This production of products called man, is to be one that will work, by command evidently, in a chosen direction, in opposition to that imagined so far. So it goes, but it does not move. Dreams operate; but not their desired destinies!

Such is the type of loved dreams of opportunism and manias of impotence masked in courage and conviction, with coups and take-overs, with sectional appeals and agencies  to match within government, by dubious unities promoting division, the part of the whole, until the results, equipped now with atomic bombs,  speak for themselves.

It does not work. as political, social, military, financial, manipulative, missioning, mission-less agencies try this and that,  seeking some kind of unity, of agreement, or at least co-ordinating body, as in Communism, where people who greatly benefit from personal power, do not need to be elected by those over whom they absolutely rule, or in those religions that anoint or appoint rulers of absolute sway, whose word is law, with or without social convulsions, and  who can deprive parts of society by command, institute or remove 'rights' and achieve their own wrongs. These readily become undisciplined except by their own party's desire, ruthless and alight with a sense of destiny to control.

Such national things often come under the name of Islam*7, with various divisions seemingly more important than life and death, divergencies and conformities, until it arises again as an oil-rewarded bastion of imperial power, not yet united, but with a longing to dominate this world as real as Hitler's or Stalin's ever was. In man, such things often have happened, simply for one reason in the end: man without God has a sense of majesty which he readily invests in himself, his party, government or vision, the more deluded because truth is denuded and sin rules.

For this, such governments, imbued with some form or other of this kind, can threaten to eliminate Israel; and indeed, Nasser of Egypt was an earlier worker in this line, in the national 'interest', or delete the USA as in the bin Laden episode, where the USA was to cease favouring Israel or else suffer untold woes. The USA lives, bin Laden is dead; but a mainly Muslim nation supported in blatant manner, that same bin Laden, while receiving vast US funds,  so that deception, whatever its national roots or cause, has been practised, and the giant USA is being attacked by relative pygmy powers,  who in their numbers and deceits are helping it to decline, with no small joy in some cases.

Thus powers-that-be as busy bees, and antagonisms that act, like swarming ants on a corpse, both rebuke and expose the confusions, confiscations, murders, regimes of ruthlessness and religions of force, that preceded or even established them. The the mêlée becomes like the radiating smokes and vapours from an atomic bomb, dangerous and spreading, lethal and looming, product of furies and cause of calamities like a convection current, circulating its poisons. In this way, frustrations are felt, ambitions are foiled, inspirations are indulged, all from no proven source, none admirable, until there are those not hesitating to deploy atomic bombs at any cost, passions to prevent passions, or to apply them, all mixed, as it moves toward the point where exasperation becomes a cyclotron for increasing desperation.

Welcome to the increasing gravities of the woeful wanderings of the end of the Age. So great are the perils, so ludicrous the assertivenesses, features of culture, nationalism, ideological sensationalism and the like, all expressions of what the Bible solemnly and repeatedly calls "the lie" (as in II Thessalonians 2:10, Romans 1), that the capitulation to come, to one universal and idolatrous control,  can readily be seen as a development. ONLY this or ONLY that is to become the call, for otherwise look what will happen!

bullet Forbearing to rely on God, to trust in Him,
to follow His proven word, the Bible,
and HENCE to focus kindness, grace and purity,
consideration, love and wisdom, testability and liberty to perform tests;
 
bullet failing to relate to Jesus Christ, the sole Saviour provided for this world,
from God, of God, as God providing ransom for man,
many peoples turning away from the light of spiritual day
to the devious enterprises of darkness,
which know no bounds to their deceptions and dynamic directions to mankind;
 
bullet forming bastions of power and modes of unity through desperation,

such forces amid man move to their destiny. It is shallow in spirit, broad in coverage, manic in kind, but moving to universal control in aspiration, though the time be short for this sort of deployment. It has not changed its spirit, but only its form for convenience, moving through deception to tyranny, this a common course.

 It is quite clear in the Bible as now in the movements of the times. ONE body is to rule, with ONE required religion emanating from the Governing Power*8, which will USE religion as a force to bolster the State as in Revelation 13. It will move from paper money to methods of control by numbers (cf. SMR 906ff., 967ff.), and so seek an absolutism which unlike Communism, no stranger to that, will feature religion and use it. After all, part of the bankruptcy of Communism is that it is reductionistic, and ignores the mainspring of life and of man, in strangulating efforts to squeeze into reckless, heedless power, a control mechanism, which neither satisfies nor agrees with the heart of man, which in the end, has no love for impatient and impenitent tyrannies*7.

They learn, they progress in their regress; they invent methods of co-ordination and subordination, they prepare.

In the end, the attack on God becomes quite explicit (as in Revelation 19:19), just as the attack on Christ, after the Cross, via the slaughter of Christians has been, and now is. Indeed, it grows more and more  extreme as the Bible makes clear in prediction: Revelation 11:17-19 implies it, Revelation 12:10-11 shows it, John 16:1-4 pastorally shows its ruthlessness, and John 15:20 its basis. "The servant is not greater than his lord," (John 15:20), Christ declared. If they persecuted Him, they would do it to His servants.

If they showed ruthless efforts to extinguish Jesus the Christ in the midst of His colossal goodness and applied power for the needy and the sick, the desolate and the desperate, then what will become of His servants ? Multitudes of wickednesses will compete with vast domains to extinguish them. At this present time, before the matter becomes really organised, you have such figures as these, recorded in Israel My Glory, September-October 2011, p. 41, "every five minutes a Christian dies for his faith". This is taken from the statistic of 105,000 Christians "killed each year solely because of their faith," found by the human rights representative, Massimo Introvigne.

From January 5 to December 31, 2011, that author has served as the "Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions" of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe). He has written widely on religious topics. However he may define 'Christian',  the flow of events is clear. For that matter, for intrigue, murderous lust and deviousness, the St Bartholomew's Day massacre some centuries ago, brings in numbers of the slain of this order, while the Inquisition has evidently far surpassed this (cf. Ancient Words ... Ch. 14).

Now with Moslem attacks because of a failure to regard Muhammad as he claimed, however slight the evidence and unjust the ground, assaults on churches even in India, withering restrictions on Christians in the Middle East, slaughter of Coptic Christians in Egypt, exclusions and inhibitions, restrictions and condemnations, prohibitions leading to an underground church in China, a new wave of this specific kind of international  terrorism is growing. In imperial type actions, such as those of Communism, Islam or Romanism, each in its time, some together, there is not merely one form of assault. It is social, financial, psychological, ideological, dogmatic, political and often slanderous.

Just as it is said that in the recent Queensland election, the former Premier after a time was no longer heeded, given ear, decisions having been made, so biblical Christianity (as distinct from religions based on the Christian name and not on Christ Jesus) is being belched out like gritty steam from a steam train, with heat and force pushed away. Nations move to secularism, Romanism, Islam, Communism, imperialism, something or someone the criterion without any demonstration of truth, but only of power, and that writhing in contests.

As the fear of man grows, and the captious efforts to control mankind augment, so the one power to come, a mask for the devil and a midwife for ruin, will exercise its rumbling force for a short time, before this essence being exposed, the Lord will smash its power, because of truth and judgment according to it (I Thessalonians Ch. 1 and 2, Revelation 19, I Corinthians 15:20-25).

Confusion may have had its masterpiece, in the murderous midst of the play Macbeth, but this is to be an international, and indeed a worldwide case. Just as drunkenness does not excuse murder, so political drunkenness does not give absolution for  slaughter, but rather is the ground of guilt, with exhibits of mass murder, repression, suppression and death such as recent movements in Russia, China, Africa, Cambodia, and the Middle East display.

 

SACRED REALITIES

This is the predictable and the predicted result of the simple fact that the light of the world (John 8:12, 9:3-4), in truth and with His own attestations unique and unanswerable (cf. John 8:46, Matthew 22:46, with  SMR, TMR), has come and shone and shown and provided all that renegade man needs. It is He "who gives light to every man coming into the world," having come not to rule it, but to give it opportunity before His rule,

bullet

"was in the world, and the world was made through Him,

bullet

and the world did not know Him."  

That is and remains its position, even though some are delivered, for

bullet

"as many as received Him, to them He gave the authority
to become children of God, to those who believe in His name,
who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh,
nor of the will of man, but of God."

For everything but the necessary and Eternal God, there is a beginning; and for all there is an apt ending, whether in Him or outside, basking in sin or belching violence, masking truth or ignoring it, slithering in social stands or sleeping in disastrous indifference.

It is well to start right; but if not, then it is better to end well. In Christ, there IS no end, eternal life which is His, being in His gift, and that is the final phase to be desired, It is so,  not because of eternity, a vast gift, but because of its nature, that of God Himself, the Father of all (as to creation), and " Saviour of all men"  (as to opportunity and provision, I Timothy 4:10) but "especially of those who believe,"  (as to personal place in His presence as a child of God, forever). This is in the realm not merely of God being great, which He undoubtedly is, infinite in understanding, power and wisdom, but glorious!

He is shown through the Bible and the Lord Jesus Christ, as in life before Him,
and His due and constant impact on a carefully guarded and predicted history,

to be

not only One of sovereign grace, as many like to call it, but what is far better,

a gracious sovereign
(I Timothy 4:10, I John 2:1-2),

whose OWN choice is to be

kind and forbearing, patient and longsuffering
(Ezekiel 20:8-22),

not willing that any should perish but pleased that all become reconciled to Himself
(II Peter 3:9, Colossians 1:19),

realistic to the point of becoming in format a man, that He might deliver man (Hebrews 2, Philippians 2, Titus 2:11, 3:4),

exhibited in Jesus Christ, His everlasting Word poured forth
(John 1:1-4, 8:58, Micah 5:1-3),

understanding and sensitive to the cry of faith (Psalm 145:18-19),
and the forlorn repentance that seeks Him out with resolution and receptiveness
(Matthew 13:20-21, Hosea 7:14-16,  Jeremiah 29:13),

filled with longsuffering, persevering
(Psalm 86:15, Romans 9:22),

not a bus conductor to find fares but a doctor to heal souls
(John 11:22-29, Zechariah 9:6-7),

not grasping but liberal
Ezekiel 34, 47, Exodus 34:6),

not mean but majestic
(Psalm 145:5-7),

filled with goodness but asking for channels
for the flow to be fulsome and functional
(Isaiah 1:16-20, Romans 12:1-2),

profound and infinite in understanding
(Psalm 147:5, 139,142:3, 145:17),

unable to be gulled, free from guile (Psalm 18:26),

insusceptible to cunning, wise beyond all manoeuvre
(Psalm 11),

testing but not testy
(Judges 2:3-4, 3:4, Ezekiel 20,II Chronicles 32:31),

filled with the splendour of opportunities for man (Isaiah 48:18-20),
for whom He is empty of mere constraint and compulsion,
except where sin asks for it and receives its own pension!
(II Chronicles 36, I Kings 17),
yet is He compassionate in His call
(Matthew 14:14, Psalm 103, Isaiah 42:3).

Even then, He loves liberty and tests it to the ultimate
(Judges 2-3, II Corinthians 3:17),
intimately and openly,
also privately and particularly
(Psalm 139:23-24),
and never makes breaches of mere force in the armour of will,
but wisely waits
(Isaiah 30:18, II Chronicles 32:31),
that He might be found (as in Isaiah 55).

He is One who

calls, just as it is He who

disquiets that He might quieten with truth
(Proverbs 1, Zephaniah 3:5,17),

exhorts that He might satisfy with mercy
(Isaiah 55),

makes stinging rebukes that He might make His own followers
steadfast and unrebukable (II Samuel 12:7ff.),

is champion of charitableness of heart
(I Corinthians 13),

is redeemer from wrong
(John 19:21-30).

Knowing all from  the first (Romans 8:30ff., II Timothy 2:19),
He is faithful to the last (Revelation 19:11, I Thessalonians 5:24, Hebrews 13:8);
while seeking all (Matthew 22:9, Colossians 1:19ff.),
He wins many (Matthew 20:28).

 

In Him is found One

whose knowledge is joy (John 16:22, Galatians 5:22),

whose presence is peace (Isaiah 48:17ff., Philippians 4:4ff.),

who knows a heart of stone when He sees one (Revelation 3:2),

as with Nabal, whose heart became as a stone (I Samuel 25:37-38),

and calls to break up the fallow ground (Jeremiah 4:3, Hosea 10:12)

who is inimitable in warmth of heart (Psalm 37:1-4),

who is disposed to be merciful just as gravity
is disposed to draw lofted stones to the ground (Micah 7:19ff.),

who became man in format for salvation
and is Judge of all men
(Philippians 2, John 1, Acts 17:31, John 5:19ff.,Matthew  20:28, Galatians 3),

unremitting in mercy,
relentless in  realism,

who will by no means clear the unacquitted guilty
(Nahum 1-4)
who are found by Him
to despise in their hearts,
or  to be indifferent  to
His proffered mercy and its channel on the cross.
 

Nor yet will He cling remorselessly to the sin of those pardoned for ever
(Hebrews 8:12,Psalm 103, Micah 7:19ff.),
but diligently sustain them forever
(John 10:98,27-28, Ephesians 1:11);

for in Him is redemption,

realised, practical, performed,
personally paid for,
eternal, relentless in reliability (Galatians 3, Matthew 20:28),
secure in sanction (Ephesians 1, I John 5).
It is delighted in assurance (II Timothy 1:12, Psalm 23, 46),
to be received by faith (Romans 3:23-25):
for without that, there is no relationship (Hebrews 11:1-6).
as even many a dog is apt to realise.
Faith, in humility, grasps its object (cf. Jacob, Genesis 32:24-28),
rejoices in conviction and delights as God evidences Himself
to heart and mind, soul and spirit - Hebrews 11:1-2.

Yet He

raises the beggar from the dump (I Samuel 2:8),

makes princes out of nobodies (Psalm 69:33, 40:17, I Samuel 16:7),

elevates the poor in spirit (Matthew 5:3, Isaiah 66:1-2),
who trust in Him and tremble at His word,

rewards the pure in heart with Himself (Matthew 5:8), and

makes marvellous pathways out of troubles amid testimony (Psalm 107),

knows how to surpass even the uttermost in thought (Isaiah 40:13),
with blessings undisguisable and profound (Ephesians 3:20);

but is implacable in  righteousness
and brings truth to  victory (Isaiah 42:3).


In Christ is shown grace upon  grace,
like a  spotlighted cast, but  all in One (John 1:16-17),

culminating on  the cross (Galatians 6:14),
triumphant in the resurrection (Luke  24:38-39),

ruling on His return (Isaiah 42:10, Isaiah 11, Psalm 72, Matthew 25, Revelation 20),
as Spring grasps the seasons,

turning bodily resurrection  into immortality (I Corinthians 15, II Corinthians 5),
and mercy into wonder (I Corinthians 2:9, Revelation 21-22).

Praise therefore the Lord,

for He is good and His goodness never fails.

Call upon Him, for He is not hard of hearing,

but do so in truth, for He is not slow to discern,

and seek His mercy, for He is keen to provide it,

and seek it where it may be found,

where He has placed it (I Corinthians 3:10-11),

in the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6),

whose death on the Cross is

the entire and only redemption
(Acts 4:11-12, Hebrews 2:1-3),

whose resurrection is the gate of opportunity for man
(Romans 10:9, Ephesians 1:19),

whose haven is heaven,

where people justified by faith,
by grace without works
(Romans 5:1, 3:23-27, Ephesians 2),

live by grace for ever and ever
(Revelation 22:5, II Timothy 1:8-12.
II Corinthians 5:1-8, John 5:24),
this mortal mould meeting its available immortality,
and this corruptible condition becoming incorruptible,
this stricken tent replaced (II Corinthians 5:1-7),
with exceeding  joy (I Corinthians 1:42-49, I John 3:1-3, I  Peter 4:13).


 

 

 

NOTES

 

*1 See Deity and Design ... See also Ch. 5 above, with references, for the survey of the methodological purity and comprehensive available when the index validity and verification is followed, without fear or favour, with one consummative, all-satisfying result from any and every test.

On verification and validation, found among religions, uniquely in the Bible,

see indexes, including:

TMR    5  7 , It Bubbles ... Ch.    9, esp. *1A, The Bright Light ...  7,
 
Repent or Perish, Ch.  7, pp. 152ff.; Ch.   2;
 Christ, the Wisdom ... Ch.   6; BAB 29,  19;
A Spiritual Potpourri Chs.  1-3;  SMR   3,   
Little Things
Ch.
 5,
  Wake Up World! ... Ch.  5, End-Note 1A,
Tender Times ... Ch. 11;

Barbs ... 2919;  
TMR 9, Grand Biblical Perspectives Ch.   7,
What is the Chaff to the Wheat!  Chs. 3, 4, 10, 11
,
Deity and Design, Designation and Destiny Chs.   3, *3, 
 8
 

*2

See for example, News 19, SMR Chs. 3   -   4, together with SMR Ch. 4 Extension on Great Burials. See The Mastery of the Mystery of Man.

 

*2A

See for example the new highly discriminatory Anti-Discrimination Bill 2012, in Australia, and the anti-Press-liberty parallel move, which has thrilled the newspaper and some TV leaders with angst, outrage and confrontation with the government. On this, refer to such sites as: Not only is God Great but Glorious, Ch. 8, The King's Counsel, Ch. 1, and What is New, February 2013. As these dates suggest, this has been a very recent development, and it has moved past the original publication of this volume, but here represents an update.

*3

Regarding liberty, moral mandate and consciousness in man, see:

Glory, Vainglory and Goodness Ch.   1, Christ's Ineffable Peace Ch.    1,  Grand Biblical Perspectives Ch.     7. The second relates closely to Le Carré's creation. The others also provide basis for understanding of the issues involved.

 

*4

See *3 above.

Freedom is a wonder, but it is not to be God, and God parodies the presumption often found in its use in Ezekiel 28:9: Will you still say you are a god when I slay you ?

It is beatific, however, when compared with the societies of force and and tyranny, whether socially contrived as threatens in Australia, or simply thrust into the manacled multitude. It is, moreover, completely irrelevant as a concept without the Maker of it and of mankind. Limits to liberty of mind leap into action, outside the mind, inside it, psychic dominions threaten, cultural claws strike, uninhibited desires mock it, illusionary aspirations downgrade it. It is still there in principle, like a car in the garage, and can be 'used'. However without God in the genius of its generation and the meaning of its operation, it is like a body in plaster, without its natural norm and mode of operation. Glimpses of norms occur, in the fallen and unredeemed mind, hopes and aspects come like swallows flitting; but the ditching of reality leaves the meaning dim.

Return transforms everything. In the image of God, we are subject to Him; in the grace of God we may find fellowship with Him; in the caprice of madness, man may seek equality with his Eternal Maker, but in vain. Making a new world and god is mere folly, exaltation as if from inhalation of strange drugs. WHEN however man instead of rebelling, is redeemed, and so resumes his place before God, then the liberty to BE what you are, a being of independent thought and understanding, which is based in, sustained by and implemented through God who having made it, desires it, becomes vitalised. It lives and moves and acts with wisdom, amid truth, furnished with understanding, relishing the close association with the ultimate royalty, author of reason and basis of truth.  Instead of haunting itself in the shadows, even becoming susceptible to denying itself with its own freedom, a magnificent folly indeed, it now operates as free!

*5

See Denton, The Priority of the Paradigm, in his work, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, and in particular pp. 352ff., including the summary: "The concept of continuity of nature has existed in the mind of man, never in the acts of nature." Professor Stephen Jay Gould faced with horror the appearance of vastly more basic designs in the 'Cambrian Era' than are now left. He ponders with dismay the point on his basis, this: "Instead of a beginning and a constantly expanding upward range, multicellular life reaches its maximum scope at the start, while later decimation leaves only a few surviving designs," p, 233 of Wonderful Life. "How, he expostulates, "could such disparity have arisen in the first place," p. 227 (op.cit.), and he does well to ask. It is precisely NOT in the name of what observably  and testable NEVER has the power to make itself, let alone before it is there to do it, but of the God of heaven that the work is done. As famed Professor G.G. Simpson put it:

It is as if the curtain were rung down suddenly on the stage where all the leading roles were taken by reptiles, especially dinosaurs, in great numbers and bewildering variety, and rose again immediately to reveal the same setting but an entirely new cast, a cast in which dinosaurs do not appear at all, other reptiles are supernumeraries, and all the leading parts are played by mammals of sorts barely hinted at in the preceding acts (from p. 42 of Simpson's Life Before Man).

 

For this and similar data, see Bk. 1, Chapter 2, *36, 37. See also p. 106:

"Gaps among known orders, classes and phyla are systematic and almost always large," Simpson, The Evolution of Life, p. 149 in Vol. 1.

Instead of using 'heaven's name' in astonishment as the precise contradiction of facts, when it comes to organic evolutionary theory, as Gould did again and again, he would have done  better scientifically, to look without pre-formed ideas, deadly when irrational and imported into science as if gods in their own right and rites, at the facts and seek in heaven's name what is outside nature and the necessary source of its nurture.

The impossibility of such dreams as his, and many others less frank or honest in admissions, has been a specialty on this site. The facts empirically and the focus of reason have but one result. That is what one comes to expect of the truth, which dominates thought, though some seem to prefer being 'indominitable' in battle, as if carried forward on mere but pitiable misplaced dogmatism and desire. 

 

*6

See for example Mini-Messages with Maxi-Output Ch. 6,  with Ch. 5 above. See in this environment of considerations, also:

Evidence and Reality Ch.   3, 1497,   Waiting for Wonder Appendix,, HDD  4; The Lord of Longsuffering ... Ch.  7, *2  The  Lie has a Limited Shelf Life Ch.    1.

 

*7

See *4 of Ch. 8 above.

 

*8

See for example, on such developments: SMR pp. 647-706, 743ff., 750Bff., 902-959