W W W World Wide Web Witness Inc. Home Page Contents Page for Volume What is New
CHAPTER SEVEN
Infinity in Thought May Readily be Taught
Infinity in Fact is to be Found in Deity
Time, gentlemen, time! Such was the not seldom unwelcome call that could be made at the end of an examination period. Well do I remember being astounded when one was not, in a public exam, allowed even to put a new booklet in which one had been busily writing the last quick thoughts, back into the group to be collected! That case to my sorrow, left me with a Second Class Honour, the only such diminution in that series.
How time can harass, or bless - "In my time... ", "there is a time for that!" and so on.
It can be a burden intolerable to some, in prison, in hospital as in the inhospitable duresses of this world, in its curse, condemnation and conquest-orientated captiousness, captivities and containments.
As seen in Ch. 6, above, and in particular in the end-notes, to bring into creation, per se. the nature of infinity creates anomaly. It is always bounded by the work, will and activity of the Lord. He is the causative origin of all, whether fixed or free, including time itself, however it be envisaged, and nothing is there but He Himself, before our time had denotation, to create as He will, leaving such traces as He will, as artisans may, but He more so, since th every laws are for His own composition, the container unit of forces, formulations and functions which are to be made to exist, co-operate and function.
There is then a before and an after, in whatever mode of sequence or particularisation the Lord chooses, being Himself, as Jesus the Christ, quite able to overcome the time of death, the marred space of containment as He disappeared from sight after intimate dealings of a practical kind as with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and continue His risen life, re-corporealised, the rotting removed from the continuing format, vitality triumphant in that self-same body which entered the tomb (I Corinthians 15:1ff., Acts 2:22-32).No more was He subject to the entire ordered and organised chronological and spatial limitations of this cursed earth, for He could at will use it or transcend it, eat or depart. That is not to say that time and space per se, as we have had them, are cursed; but as they have come to be, they have an injection of curse. What the changes would be from before the curse, we do not know, except that the age of man in time, decreased in rather a notable curve, from hundreds to tens of years.
God is beyond it all, as an architect or author, but not without concern or capacity to inhabit it as He will, as He did, and to re-establish the regality of His Creator's composure, having borne sin, and having nothing more to cover but the converts with His grace, power and guidance. Such was His love that neither was this world then dismissed, its mission dispensed with, nor was time immediately annulled in its terrestrial significance; for the Gospel had to reach to the uttermost parts of the earth, to its components, and His mercies had to be shown to all, whatever, then as in the Old Testament times, might be their false gods, or their self-worship in manufacturing their own whether in cultural norms, conformities or disconformities, delving into the worship of will, determinism, voluntarism, or ignoring the will, as if it had never been put there, in order to be available for weal or woe, as known to God before all time, but highly significant in time. The day had to come when each would either be ashamed of Him, or accepted in Him, and if there had to be any found out of due time, like Paul relative to his apostleship, being later than the others, then this too could be done, in accord with the foreknowledge in Christ, and the predestination accordingly wrought.
But the time will come when our species of event passage will be supplanted, and no more will its inheritance of a cursed condition based on sin, be the case.
In all this, God whether incarnate or not, has the last word, being the first Word, and having all in His sovereign hand, so that His SO great love to the world in Christ, and in no other, would become His sovereign attainment, based on atonement, His choice in terms of His principle, coming as Saviour NOT to judge but the the world might be saved. Without inhibition, He took the containment unit of man, yet without sin, without prohibition, He visited death that He might remove its contingency on sin, and without decomposition, He brought back His body to life, having finished His work, beyond the grave before leaving pending return (Acts 3:19ff.), to occupy the place of Prince of Peace, even on this earth*1.
That is the schedule of Deity towards man, and He is from everlasting to everlasting, taking such voyages in virtue and making such container units and delimitations schedules as His creative majesty determined, whether as in man, to create limit in one who could envisage and think of Him, meaningfully, without contradiction or confusion, when freed from the sovereignty of sin, or be befuddled through failure of faith to operate. Infinity is His, and it accompanies Him, being voluntarily foregone in any phase or function, at will, in any such voyage but never absent inherently.
Infinity is His, for one must lift up the intellectual eyes to realise that what is the source of all, has no source, or it would be confined by its own source, which means it is not there, which gives no source, which gives all without cause, which contradicts logic, scientific method and explanation. All comes not from nowhere, this a mere contradiction in terms, contrary even to the degenerative fact in this universe, but from a logically apt source, wiht no bounds therefore, being father of spirits, king of eternity, and Lord of all. What then of the creation ?
Infinity in the creation as such, however, that is not in this present age. What does it mean ? No beginning, no end and no containment. This is God's alone. Infinity is not in ANY creation, since what is to do the creating is prior to what is created, so that it might BE created. Thus, anything to do with the structure and function of earth, an orb created for test, for exhibition of truth and the formation of wonder and fertility, belongs to its source, not to its course. In the mind of God as ultimate cause of it, before it was made (Ephesians 1:4, Romans 8:37-39, Genesis 1), spoken into legislated existence as seen in the DNA in life, and found in the architecture and functionalities of servant matter, this universe is a derivative, a container unit of the thought of God, finite, bounded, confounded in much (Romans 5:1-12), governed in depth but not in haste (Psalm 1), a laboratory for inspection of spiritual deposition, vital composition and historic transmission.
Here lay the end of the innocence of the first creation, gifted in the case of man, with body, mind and spirit with an amplitude for function beyond mere instinct and direction, so that even God could be envisaged and His glory heard, as declared by the heavens, without voice (Psalm 19), His being appreciated when darkness was not there, and His wonder found despite darkness when the Gospel came (cf. Barbs ... 17). Here lay the fall, the failure of such ocular, tangible, sensory perception, such auditory, such mental, such aesthetic, such logical ability, in the midst of such a divine provision; and here lay with it, like grave-clothes, the exceedingly enclosing consequences of sin, both in judgments as required, and in the evils wrought by each man, that they might ricochet as in so many leading on to actual physical irradiation as is currently afflicting Japan and warning more who seek to manage this earth. It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps, and when without God he seeks to resolve all his problems, he is in the irrational realm, for it is as if he were to INSIST on finding the ACTUAL value of the square root of minus one.
Some things do not exist; some cannot exist in the mode of God's making; and life in peace without God is one of those things.
In wars, in vendettas, insolence, insolvencies, false reliances, presumptions, arrogancies and all the other features of failure, man persists, with perverse political machinations to overcome, and to overcome what does not overcome, till man is quite overcome without overcoming, being denuded of deity and quasi-regal only, in neglect of his Maker, either worshipping false gods, or his own will, or the creation or anything else to hand, so long as it is hands off to the Creator-Redeemer, that he might wallow the more freely in the binding curse he so inherits.
Yet there is some of the magnitude of God's creation yet left as in beauty and magnificence, and this attests Him*2 despite its being subject to curse, gradually moving to an advanced attrition, a disassemblage in part*3, a diversion and diversity in some things, a scarcity in others, that we know as our current locale. It is precisely as in Romans 8:17ff., as in Romans 5:1ff., and its developments where human hatred, odious inventions and wicked imaginations begin to rival the case before the world-wide flood noted in Genesis 6, is increasing complicated by the ricocheting curse of its inhabitants, the one for the other, with lethal odium. This is frequently levelled at disregarded combatants, each vying for the most impressive denudation, devastation, dominance. Thus does mortality seek to improve upon its own pathology, and accursedness to advance its degradation.
From everlasting to everlasting, however, this is the domain of the Lord. Psalm 90 tells us of this glorious fact. It is not in the finitude of limited and delimited creations, such as those of our time and our variety of space, as imagined and deposed by God in the creation of our universe, that His mode and form of Being exists. We do not know the habiliment of eternity, but this we know, that it endures, that there is the King of eternity* (), whose ways do not change (cf. Habakkuk 3:6, Psalm 102, Hebrews 1).Subject to nothing, exhibiting His Being in whatever way He shall choose, inventor of matter, and certainly not bound to this degradable composite, the whirling and the more static in space, but beyond it, He is well able to express Himself in these humbling means. He has done it in word, in power, in person, in a body for the sake of rescuing man from its mortal confines (as in Hebrews 2), for the sake of that immortality which with eternal life, which He has brought to light for fallen man (II Timothy 1). His powers of humility and graces of holiness are inherent in His eternal Being, and for man to imagine that having carried out the crucifixion as divinely planned, on Him who is divine purposely and purposively presented, he can now rule the world is the most fatal and fateful presumption.
This quasi-regality in man, the limited, the non-infinite in his finite world, lurking like a thief in the darkness to secure it for his own will and ways, despising mercy, ignoring pardon, placing his confidence at will as if this were lord and not a divinely enabled facility, misued: what does this do ? It seeks to rule and to unburden itself in the glorious realms while ensuring in its rebellious irrationality*, that it loses not only eternal life, each so occupied unrepentant, but inherits confusion (cf. Matthew 24:22). In all this, there is a wickedness not the less because God is beyond the persevering malice or mischief of man, for whom repentance is the immediately missing ingredient (Luke 13:1-3), and redemption the necessity change of status (Acts 4:11-12), in Christ Jesus, who came once and for all, to achieve all for all, that any might come.
In accord with this, Paul declares this in II Timothy 1:
"Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord,
nor of me His prisoner, but share with me in the sufferings for the gospel according to the power of God, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling,
not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace
which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began,
but has now been revealed by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ,
who has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel ..."
"From everlasting to everlasting, Thou are God," yes before the mountains were brought forth or man was created (Isaiah 45:12,18). Here it is that eternity belongs, and with it, infinitude if one wishes to use our current terminology as conceivable towards our sort of time, though it outlasts it and has a more comprehensive and unlimiting mode in its very base and basis for action.
Infinity is suitable for God, if such mathematical confines and their removal to the unbounded, are to be employed. His distinctness and distinctiveness, as that of an author who may, or may not, decide to introduce himself among his own characters in a novel, openly or not as he chooses, is of His own eternal form. Accordingly, flesh and blood are not able to enter into the kingdom of heaven (I Corinthians 15:50ff.), but they may through the atonement by faith inherit it! (Ephesians 1:11). They need transformation such as is to be provided in our resurrection to the format for eternity, prepared by Christ (John 14) and kept for our day (II Corinthians 5), for the continuity of limitless life assigned to the redeemed in heaven (Revelation 22:5), and the removal of what might dash it, as in Revelation 7 and 21:1-8.
Immortality, the incapacity to die, will thus replace potentiality, as at the first, and loss as in the second phase of the fall; and assurance comes to those who find Him, as in Romans 8:37-39, II Timothy 1, I Corinthians 15, where the two modes are contrasted, the one as the consignment of sin and the other as the relief of salvation.
Its simplicity and majesty alike appear, whether in Ephesians 1:11 or I Peter 1:5-7. The bogus and the superficial, let alone the artificial, these have no place there ( Revelation 21:8); but there grace has its place (Revelation 7:7) through the atonement (cf. Revelation 5:8-14) .What has place there has it with a new grace, where particularity, individuality, is not penalised by the limitations which sin breeds, but opened to the eternity which grace gives.
Like a nightmare, without grace, is this world in its cursed limitations. Let us be clear: delimitation and particularisation are a boon, not a curse; but like other things in life when cursed, what had been blessing becomes bane most readily, so that the Christian lives and walks in this world indeed as a stranger, a sojourner, a pilgrim (I Peter 2:11), one on mission under the auspices and aegis of his or her Creator-Redeemer, watched over, ready to do combat with wolves, not spiritually sedated, but awake, alert, not unaware of the devious devices of the devil (II Corinthians 2:12-17).
Indeed here we pass our time as ambassadors (II Corinthians 5:20, I Corinthians 11:1), giving the content of the Gospel, given the grace of calling and calling to many to come. Thus in II Corinthians we read this:
"To whom ye forgive any thing, I forgive also:
for if I forgave any thing, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes I forgave it in the person of Christ;
lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices.
"Furthermore, when I came to Troas to preach Christ’s gospel,
and a door was opened to me by the Lord,
I had no rest in my spirit, because I did not find Titus my brother:
but taking my leave of them, I went from there into Macedonia."Now thanks be unto God, who always causes us to triumph in Christ,
and makes manifest the savour of His knowledge by us in every place;
for we are to God a sweet savour of Christ, in those who are saved, and in those who perish.
To the one we are the savour of death to death; and to the other the savour of life to life."And who is sufficient for these things?
For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God do we speak, in Christ."
To be brought, then and therefore, from the confines of this container ship, the earth, and voyaging on its often polluted waters, to the acme of wonder and the glory of eternity, where there being no limit to continuity, is infinity FORWARDS (that backwards being for God only), and this not in abstraction as if it were a thought, is the outpouring of the grace of God to man, as many as believe in Him whose it is. Here man is bought and worught so as to inherit particularisation of body to eternity.
Here he is assigned address of denotation, not mere connotation, given grace to be able with Christ the Head, to be subject to true Majesty with delight, and to have freedom in consent, to love and to be loved amidst glories uncontainable and yet specialised and personal. This, it is to move from the Primary School to the higher education in life itself. In the finale, it is not just to show the truth, but to find it fully exposed amid those who know Him already, whose it is. Here we move from seeing somewhat dimly as through a glass, to seeing God face to face, as in I Corinthians 13, Revelation 22:4.
Here time can dilute nothing, nor space puzzle; for our communion is direct and unimpeded (Revelation 22:2-3, I Corinthians 13:12). In heaven, those limits vanish; and even now, neither time nor space nor things future nor past nor any other thing, we are persuaded with those who know Him, can separate us from the love of Christ (Romans 8:36ff.). If creation with its forms and formats challenges now, in its sheer wonder, then when this earth scurries off (II Peter 3), and a new heaven and new earth are created (Isaiah 65:17ff., II Peter3:13, Revelation 21:1), it is far more. Then it was a past composition and a past way, but now, that is beggared, its yet wonderful elements and aspects of the time that was surpassed. The temporal surges to its end; the eternal has reclaimed its own in Christ. The eye then beholds that which arises beyond even that which was before corruption set in, relegated by that which surpasses, as one lives in Him who is from eternity to eternity.
With Him, one then lives amid the infinitude of His magnificence, one not limited to mere mathematical sequence, for that is instituted and mental, and this is spiritual and personal. It is the realm of Him who is from everlasting to everlasting in its form, and we who are redeemed, come to inhabit it.
Confusion of the wonder of eternity with the waywardness of a cursed time in a confined space, of the place of testing, as in a wind tunnel, with flights in a new liberty of action: this is a thing basic to naturalism in its slavish desire or waywardness, to denude God of His glory and to worship what He has made instead of the Maker. What is it like ? It is as if, in a former time, one were to be so absorbed by some picture, say of Monet, and having an opportunity to meet with Him and watch him paint and survey his paintings, yes and have a portrait done of oneself, instead, one grabbed one painting, and with this seized, departed in scurrying haste. Thus one in that case prefers a period piece, held close to one's grasping heart, lost the realities that beckoned in the obsession with what has been, after all, a highly limited particular. If in addition it were speckled with mould, the case is scarcely improved.
When dealing with Him who is from everlasting to everlasting, concepts of infinity are apt and point to the magnificence to be revealed and already known in heart; but when confining oneself to this particular universe, this created thing, this earth and its heavens, it is as anomaly that such things are idly brought into the forms and modes of it. The Lord has stretched out His handiwork, and the mind of man has to let this speak to Him. It is, as in Psalm 19: the 'where' in some translations is not in the text - there is no speech or language, their voice is not heard, is what is written. It is thus that "the heavens declare the glory of God").
Their voice is not heard, and yet they speak volumes to the ready mind concerning the glory of God, so that finding God where He IS to be found, in the Gospel of grace, one may cease be a natural foundling (Ephesians 2:10-12), ignorant of God who made him, cease imagining revolt with abandon, touching things eternal like the paws of a dog on the clean carpet. Thus in Christ by grace, one comes to understand at last Him who IS the first and the last, the beginning and the end, alpha and omega for all creation (Jeremiah 9:23-24). Institutive, creative, investing in His product, God has done mightily to make man able to seek the truth, or to twiddle the dials of his own mind, and invent eternity where delimitation is obvious, and dismiss it where the Creator has no space for it, being beyond it as its author, so creating a confusion unsublime.
Confusion reigns on earth; but diffusion is the way in the midst of the years as Paul announces in II Corinthians 2:14-17 : a fragrance comes through the abiding Christian saint. It is an aroma of death to the dying, a warning like the eye of the aghast doctor seeing death written large in some cancer; but it also has place as a perfume signifying life to the living, as its resources, indeed its source becomes apparent through attitude, action, word and deed, the power of God, the grace of His goodness and the peace of His dispensing. As the Gospel comes with its divine grace and glory, peace through the gory, life through vicarious death, in Christ Jesus, God's most eminent enterprise in the sending of Him to this earth AS a man, much more follows. So does liberty replace confinement, and the savour of things to come make its delicious presence felt, as man once more becomes reconciled to God. Now it goes and is spread out in this world; then He came Himself come as He said He would (Hosea 13:14), without sin but for it, to engulf it where it is confessed to Him as Redeemer and Lord, and to dispel the evil dynamic by His own presence (Hebrews 2:14ff.).
To have eternity to praise, serve and delight in Him, where sin has no face to show with its distorted glare, no curse with its distortive barrenness, this is the height of creation, the consummation of containment and the essence of wonder.
NOTES
Even in the Psalms, many written about 3 millenia ago, God has made it very clear what was to be in basic terms, including those of His post-crucifixion, post-resurrection return to rule on this earth. Below is a compilation of such content, ending in the last two categories with material germane to our current interest in His returning to rule, with various references. Of course there is far more than just in the Psalms, such as in Isaiah 11, 32:1ff., 9:6-7, Acts 1:7ff., Micah 4, Malachi 3-4, Revelation 19-20, 5:10, 20:4; but it is well to see the vast period of time in which THAT time is displayed.
THE ROAD TO, FOR AND IN SALVATION
THE SWEET PSALMS -
20 Here in View
SPIT OUT THE BITTER
AND KEEP THE TRUTH
FOR HE HAS BORNE THE BITTER
A PRELUDE TO ISAIAH IN TIME AND IN TEACHING
1.
The Necessity of Salvation Psalm 49
2.
The Case for It Psalm 139
3.
The Preparation for It Psalm 40
4.
The Motivation for It Psalm 102
5.
The Construction of Constrictions Leading to It Psalms 41, 55, 69, 109
6.
The Containment of Conditions Enabling It Psalm 91
7.
The Effectual Cause of Its Operation Psalm 22:1-21
8.
The Transfer of Guilt for Its Effect Psalms 32, 69:7-9
9.
The Empowerment to Secure It Psalms 16, 118
10.
The Result from Its Being Secured Psalms 21, 22:25-31
11.
The Life in the Lord, Perennially Available Psalms 23, 1
12.
The Background for Life, both Before Time and In It Psalm 90, esp. 16-17,
cf. Matthew 21:44. Here He who was crushed by sin, when bypassed, becomes the crushing, since where mercy is manipulated, judgment is not! Thus man, as sinner, needs to be 'broken' that he may be built (Psalm 51:17-19), confounded to be founded. Like seed, he must be ruptured to live; like deep-hidden diamonds, he must be brought up from darkness below, to the day before light moves marvellously through his midst; like aloe, he must be pressured before the balm is found (Psalm 51:17, Isaiah 66:2), the blessed life.
Thus in Matthew 21:44, If you 'fall' on Christ, you are broken, perhaps only to be rebuilt - the living foundation stone securing the change; but if He falls on you, a punitive act where mercy is a frozen asset because of unbelief, then you are ground to powder. You see something of this in Psalm 109, where ultimate rejection brings final ravagement, a grinding to powder.
Rejecting the source and meaning, the Maker and Saviour for your life, does not, just as it cannot, leave you intact. That is not the least of reasons why Psalm 102 is such good news. God looks for man, for the prisoners whom He may release, a basis thus brought which as in the following Psalm, 103, means sin's power, recourse and guilt is infinitely far removed (as far as East from West). That is to be relished, for sin is not merely disobedience, but fatuity, not only rebellion but a dynamic propelling to ruin, like masked gun-men seeking to lead to the pit. In salvation, Christ endured the ultimate discomfort, that His people might receive the ultimate comfort, and His passion was not rationed, but regal.
13.
The Exhibition on Earth of The Rule of the Saviour Psalm 72, 18, 67, 68:30, 98:9, Isaiah 11,
Revelation 5:10, 20:414.
The Exhibition in Heaven of the Eternal Deity of the Lamb, the Saviour - Psalm 17:5, , Romans 14:9, Ephesians 1:4-13 with Colossians 2:9 and Philippians 2:1,9-11 with Isaiah 44:23, I Thessalonians 4, Daniel 7:11-14, Revelation 5:13, 7:13-17, 21:22, 22:3,5,12-15
See Beauty of Holiness, including Preface, Possess Your Possessions Volume 7, Ch. 2. See also News 70
Jeremiah 4:23ff. gives a sense of judgment, and in so doing, it sketches out the way of disassemblage, as if that of creation were now in reverse, bringing back the scaffolding for the building, reminding one of blessings received, and that they with us on trial, in a test-laboratory historical situation in which God sets times and bounds for men, if by any means they might seek Him, the whole a vast canvass of painting, where love beckons, truth invites and passion incites, where wisdom is to be prized but beyond all, God is to be sought and found, just as He has sought and found many, on personal tour. This was in His coming, in His goings (cf. Luke 15, I Peter 3:18ff.), it is by the power of His written word, as by sending of His Spirit (as for example in Acts 2, as foretold in Isaiah 32:17ff., and to occur again and again, in particular, emphatically for Israel when its time comes, no less, as in Zechariah 12:10-13:1) and as specified to come and keep on coming as in Acts 2:17, taken as prediction from Joel 2. Here in the redemption He has purchased in Himself for one and for all, to be offered to the uttermost (as in Colossians 1:19ff., Matthew 28:18-19), closing where there is no foreclosing, there is more even than a RE-ASSEMBLAGE, for it is a regeneration which comes amid the departing embers of creation, as sin strangles and faith finds, while there is time (cf. Isaiah 55).
The Lord has toured the universe, not as a mere majesty, but as King of the heart, crucified for the purchase of a kingdom of those willing, volunteers in His day (Psalm 110), seeking, saving, and His gracious actions in this way continue to the time of judgment (Revelation 22:17 repeating the appeal like some vast carillon from heaven, so near to the finale of the Bible).
On genome deterioration in the meantime, see The Vitality ... and Redemption Ch. 1.