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It is the Lord Jesus, not the lord genes. The lower case is lower in symbol and signification.

Genes are apparatus. Anyone can see that. They direct, are repositories of direction, correlate plan and program, data and direction, puristic editing and purposeful performance, being a posteriori a design of dimensions past human comprehension at this time, despite years of research. The techniques are stunning, the acumen of intellect is that of maestro, the ingenuities are routine, the provisions are multiple and multiplied on all sides.

The body itself is a wonder: one finds the genes are a planning board of an architect, duly complete, plus the engineering input of genius, and with this, the directive facilities for reproduction of both plan and building, to re-install body, plus provision for various unwanted inputs such as disease or disorganisation, notably in the case of brain damage where functions to a degree may be re-appointed to another area. Thus standard, it is yet capable of variation to a purpose, its continuity and functionality as far as possible, as specified. It incorporates numerous sub-systems, all tied together by neural connections, blood connections, electrical and fluid canals or circuits, and this is not all.

It incorporates provision for early learning, so that on the basis of its capacities, where there is no fixed program but merely provision for potential in capacity input receptors, there may be both a degree of specialisation and of increment in paths or programs. Thus a child subjected to imaginative stimuli may develop, we learn, new connection in the brain which before were merely potential lines, when very young. There is thus some degree of potential for increment in specialisation or facility from stimuli BECAUSE this is the program flexibility. This, like a young footballer where it is simpler experience and polishing of mini-mental programming: is a provision for growth in the hardware itself, not in system, but in chosen fields such as the verbal, where the potential becomes actualised, for example, in that direction.

All this, the bodily situation, is merely a relatively small part. But it IS a wonder. Beyond that, is the planning, programmed, multiple-consideration complexity of keeping the plan in its enormous data scope and patterning, with  its information capacity and activation aspects, and keeping the reproduction of the plan in such a way that the executive arm, which like builders in a site is to interpret and perform it, is likewise also reproduced for its automation of performance, so making a child available when the program for that is faithfully followed.

As knowledge progresses, first things like the appendix (cf. SMR Ch.2) and then things like aspects of the genetic structure which had been deemed unnecessary, come to be seen progressively as man learns, as having astute and important features, either for a given time or a given situation, or for preservation of some function or feature or its defence and so on ... It fits together with a spectacular splendour, enhanced by DNA miniaturisation, itself a reference standard leaving man's current constructive powers far in arrears.

There is no greater design on earth, at the material level; designers can only try to see how it has been done, and congratulate themselves after years of research, not that they have this expertise in their imaginations for themselves, but that they can even stumblingly begin to follow what HAPPENED in the interstices of this design that it so performs.
 
 

If this is not a design, then the word can have no meaning. We have seen these things in SMR pp. 210-211, 252Hff., 419ff., 422Eff. and as shown in the Index ; and the point is simply made. If a coherent, interactive, multiply co-ordinated, unitarily conceivable and operable whole exhibits an elegant and integral functionality with a discernible purpose or capacity to execute one, this is called a design. The level of the design is the next important feature. If it is at the level of a good matriculation scholar, we note the intelligence used, the scope of understanding exhibited and the practical degree of felicity, and award it marks.

If it is done by an outstanding researcher, then those of that level and even more singular at the theoretical level, and the practical, may jointly assess this and mark it.
 

• Whether this normal human assessment be for creative work in the response to reality,
• as in making the E=MC² equation, for all its limitations (cf. SMR, Einstein), but with all its virtues, to cover observable features in the constructive matrix of the material universe,
• or in response to imagination, as in the production of Alice in Wonderland (amusingly enough, by a professor of mathematics - and one can see the delicious playing with symbols in the form of words and pictures of reality in this delightful work):
• the design is estimable in talent, intelligence, imagination and effectiveness.

There can never be any practical and rational question as to whether it is a design; it is its standing which evokes investigation. It fulfils all the criteria of design. Only prejudice could try to make it something or anything else.

When in the human body we come to this situation, there is really no dilemma (except of course for those who try to see the sight and ignore the definition of design! cf. SMR p. 211). It is a design so vast in intelligence, imagination, purpose integration of many features to higher and greater scope of functionality, that the highest in the lands cannot manage to get back of it. They merely try to get in front of it and watch, or categorise, and spend years doing even that. It is therefore a design which is making humanity look not divorced, as if an infant before a professor, but of another category of understanding. This is stark originative skill. Ours is at best, limping interpretative response. That is however, all a matter of the standing of the design. It has more standing, at this level, than all and any of the minds of our race, of our engineers, of our theoreticians: much more. They are being educated by it, just considering it! That is how it rates.

When we add the circumstance that this design can reproduce itself, in ALL its elements, its sub-systems and their integrability into higher levels, up and up, till the functionality relevant to the name 'man' is found, and reproduce its implementation, as if the Twin Towers could not only make and keep their own plans, but keep on site their own engineers and then send them to reconstruct them, so that baby towers built themselves before our eyes, we realise that this is not magic. It is the usage as we are increasingly finding, and as Lord Kelvin so well emphasised, of causative logic over the whole of the spread of observable material events, where what you get out, is what you or some agent has put in.

It is not something divorced from reason because it is living; it is living because it has a reason. Those reasons are being studied with a zeal equal to that with which wars in this untidy race, are accomplished!

This too we have seen at length in That Magnificent Rock Chs. 7, 1 and 8.

All this is however but a small and relatively inconsequential aspect of the design. This is not to say it is not of great importance; but it is a provision like a concert piano or even platform. It is needful, to be sure,  if one is going to have that sort of physical avenue for expression. What the WHOLE, in its integral capacitation, then enables,  however, is the manifest issue, as with a car when on the road as distinct from being in the mere showroom.  It goes in a certain way, and with all its sub-systems admittedly intriguing, yet it allows transport so that the driver may arrive at designable destinations with facility and results according to ability to meet challenge, from whatever source the ability and the challenge.

THEN there is the MENTAL aspect. Able to organise, with the organisational basis apt for the purpose, the mind then can make its own errors without breaking the cranial apparatus. It is built to enable such things. It is not by any means wholly programmed;  but it is limited. It can work and analyse and consider the logical connections, foul them up or feature them well, according to its survey capacities, its estimating elements and its correlating facilities. It may however purposely, or unintentionally, with purpose hidden from others or at times from itself, when it is pathologically caught in some error of another dimension, even act to implement error.

This need not be from lack of capacity, but from presence of purpose.

The purpose might be to annoy the boss, to spoil the war effort, to show spite to the Creator because of an unsuccessful romance, work, creation, friendship and so forth, or to others, or to punish oneself consciously or even unconsciously and much more, in that inveterately and all but incredibly deep and at times dangerous way which exhibits the unconverted human spirit in its vast capacities and equally vast self-incapacitations, its reelings and seekings, its strivings and respondings.

Jeremiah declared this from the Lord (17:9-10):

"The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately wicked:
Who can know it ?
I, the LORD, search the heart,
I test the mind,
Even to give every man according to his ways,
According to the fruit of his doings."

It is possible to be first in a Class without this being the aim. At College, the author was almost always in this position for each year level, and in nearly all subjects; but as far as memory takes one, though it was assuredly pleasant to have this result (one could sit in a nice place at the back in some of the  years), this was not nearly as necessary as mastering the material. Not to understand would be appalling! One did not usually work particularly hard or for primacy, and others could far surpass one's hours at Matriculation one gathers, but one did apply oneself vigorously and with industry, because, again from memory, it would be unthinkable and meaningless not to do so. Here was material of interest and expressive of what went on, and here was opportunity to grasp it and apply it, and would one then sit back and not do so!

Thus the example warns us. Just because someone acts so that a given result is closely related to his/her actions, this does not by any means imply that this is the purpose. As noted elsewhere, the engineering genius with earth-moving equipment, Le Tourneau has indicated his ways. He would create and originate things because of their imaginative importance, their productive capacity and the functionality of their existence, and would risk much money not at all to gain money, but with the specific possibility of losing much from an abundant store! Creation called, money responded! His work was in and for the kingdom of heaven, it seems from what is written, and thus many wanted to join his firm, and were hoping to get in, for the spiritual conditions were excellent: a true concern and provision for welfare coming from the heart.

Profit, then, is far from being empirically the goad and guide to such free enterprise activity. It is common to act as if it were, even for some who are so indoctrinated by philosophy, that they in fact ignored their own generosities of spirit, their abhorring of many things that could be profitable but were not in their view ethical, their unwritten  bounds and purposes that would not be violated in principle, and sometimes even would ignore their own actual purpose in life, to conform to the principle so hypnotically spelt out by some. It was ONLY WHEN their purpose (to be a good doctor, lawyer, scholar) was taken for granted, and their ETHICS (to be kind, honest and so forth) were assumed DONE, that questions of profit could even begin to appear. Yet the propaganda of mammon rolled on and many might ostensibly submit to it in word, who were far from it in deed.

Some of course CHOOSE to make profit the criterion. It is one option. They become, as one Economics Lecturer once aptly said, though without perhaps enough discernment of the humour, complicated cash registers. That is, in theory. In practice, however, even many of these have such residues of conscience, such wounds of ethics, such frustrated spiritual aspirations that they do not really or fully conform, or if they go further than many, they are grieved and so drink much, or have society with those where sexual jokes are de rigueur (as if to justify a dulled existence), as one of these told me explicitly.

It is simply misrepresentation then so to confuse what may be needful profit margin for continuance with some primary profit purpose for the same. MANY such as in tennis, as an illustration of the principle, do not play PRINCIPALLY to win. They hope to win, seek to win, but their purpose may be mostly to excel, to meet strategy with strategy, skill with skill, and overcome. If they do not, they are not lost; they have lost. Next time, they will seek to be sharper. This too involves a further differentiation. The 'will to win' is not the same as having winning as one's primary purpose. That phrase may mean no more than this, that vigour and diligence, rising to meet challenge will not be lacking; but there it may stop. 'Enjoy the game and see what happens,' is the word of some.

Enjoy ? That too is a primary aspiration option.

There are many. Efforts to generalise in this realm are legion; and the actual purposes and primary springs of action in people is legion, and it is mere folly to imagine otherwise. It is true that some idols appeal to some, and the word 'idol' is used to indicate that it is clear even to the 'worshipper' or victim as such might more aptly be termed, that the choice of profit first, or winning first, IS an option and rather a debasing one, for it limits values to one's attainments, whereas one phase is merely one, and life is larger and better than this.

Such things are dealt with systematically in SMR Ch. 4, but here we merely are using them as illustrations of one overall point. There is besides mind, spirit. There is besides the actual mental capacity, the question of that to which it is to be DIRECTED by the PERSON concerned. This involves values, perspective, appreciation, purpose, criteria of life and of living, morality, ethics, discernment, decision and choose, apperception of what is to be appreciated in the first place, approach to God, relationship with God.

These areas and domains, they have a directive influence on the use of mind. If the man/woman be honest, and rational, rightly related to the Creator according to the design, which in this case is fascinating since it enables close fellowship with that Creator, which dimensionally leaves all the rest for dead as one would imagine as well as does discover, since He overarches to such an infinite extent what we all are and can do: then the thing is open and true. It is then not hidden and devious, delinquent in purpose or twisted in desire. But whether or not this be so, there is this region, this working of spirit in man.

This enables errors, not merely of the mind but UPON the mind which, poor thing, can be subjected to hidden purposes, yes at times hidden even from the person who does not walk in the light of the LORD. This can cause it extra tensions and lead to mental disease; and of course, the commonness of this situation is basic to the contention of some psychiatrists, that a degree of mental disease is resident widely in the populace.

The spirit not NORMALLY being at rest in the Lord, since most people do not KNOW the LORD, there is of course an inherent species of pathology. It may or may not modify the mind essentially in ability. There are clever devils, and we are used to them and looking at the methodology in the Twin Tower disaster, and words about future buying type operations on the Stock Exchange, perhaps by the perpetrators or their associates, to PROFIT from the tragedy, we are brought back to this simple fact. Not all minds are disabled because the spirits back of them are corrupt. There is however a warping of one kind or other, when the spirit of man is left free to wander. Thus, to take the case, as shown at length in earlier chapters and in SMR, the Moslem religion in the Koran as well as notoriously in history, often shows an implacable thrust into believe-or-blood approaches.

This is ONE of the results of not finding the LORD. Something else will fill the gap.

The need of man is for God for his Spirit, as part of the design enablings. Since sin makes this unpalatable, it is an immense matter to find Him, and is achieved only by His own mercy and grace. When this need is not met, then the very avenue for divine control or better, companionship opens itself to any philosophy, fantasy, religious or other, which may, inopportunely but justly, invade. Thus the tyrannical invaders of this world are themselves first invaded by tyranny, which further defaces the image of God within them. That is why they act as if it were virtuous to ruin young lives in droves, and make spastics out of the mobile, agonies out of the pleasurable and slow deaths out of vitalities. They are driven by spiritual folly, froth and evil.

This seizes them, procures them, activates them and flows like a tidal wave, on to their victims. The complacency of content at such scenes, sedate in the coils of comfort and obscurities of sleeping spirit, the more readily inherit them. Eyes that sleep may not wish to be disturbed; but the underlying causes of a world seeking to expunge Christ from His place and glory in it, will not suffer sleep for long.

One of the aspects of human spirits which is fascinating and abhorrent both, like cancer in the body, one of its pathological facilities is this: that it can act as if towards GOD with the non-divine and highly evil substitutes they can harbour. This may reach the point of actually being inhabited by an evil spirit, or it may stop at simply being brainwashed in principle, as in the myth that survival is arrival, and that it is an ethical duty to survive, at whatever cost to anyone else, or for one's religion to survive, even if millions die, or bodies are marred and lives invaded with riotous recklessness, as in the Inquisition, and in the epics of Mao and Stalin, in those other world dominion conspiracies (cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 30).

But God does not need any help in survival. It is by His salvation that man may continue, apart from everlasting destruction and contempt; not in any other way.

This domain of the spirit we have often considered (as in SMR pp. 18-41, 348ff., It Bubbles, It Howls, He Calls Ch. 9) and see invisible, and spirit of man in index). Here we are considering the concept and outworking of the LORD, and the spirit of man is the interface at its most eminent phase.

Thus man is not merely programmed. In part his body is, and in part it is semi-automatic, as seen when his mental distress can cause a bodily ulcer, through a measure of intrusion of one sphere into another. We have considered before the medical term, pneumo-psycho-somatic which  rather well interprets an aspect which has long been presented on this site. There is the body with its programs, there is the mind with its interventionist options, unconscious or other, there is the spirit with its purposive and celestial, terrestrial or malevolent preoccupations or perspectives. These are features, the omission of any one of which is rather comparable to trying to amputate or bring prosthetic devices for a leg, whilst not being aware there is one.

Hence many of the problems of psychiatry, made obtuse by Freud and others (cf. SMR pp. 611ff., and Ch. 4), who tend not only to be possessed by an element, but fail to see the plateau for operation of all the elements. Hence their work as Ch. 4 indicates, has been less than obviously productive according to some, at the practical level, and has become accordingly so expensive in the psycho-analytical domain, that pabula and pills are now more common, and this to CONTROL, not heal. As to that, it is predictable. Man without God, does not and cannot understand the nature of the design, and always will tend to isolate as theories so often do, some aspect, put it into disproportion and not even be able to find the criteria for re-investing it in purity and all modesty in its rightful place because, being a design, he is wantonly avoiding his designer, and hence is systematically excluded through spiritual rebellion from spiritual truth.

THAT, it is the truth of the God who made our spirits, about our spirits, inter alia!

Without this, one has lost the key, and tends to look rather foolish as one tries the windows of ONE'S OWN HOUSE, in a pseudo-burlgary attempt to find one's own station!

Man is not to be decimated by the confusion of any professional, doctor, philosopher, economist or teacher. He may be semi-programmed by such things, and often is. He ignores that ALL philosophers which pre-suppose dark forces beyond man in his mind, or limiting his perspectives, or even light-weight ones, exclude themselves from even systematically being ABLE to tell the truth. It is only where program ends that truth can begin in man.

If you are directed to perform in a given way, that is your limit. It is not for the program to estimate the program. It is to perform the mind of the maker of the program. It is a slave. Some are actually referred to as 'slave device'. Even if the program provides for 'learning' in the sense that a criterion or series of criteria are presented, and results deftly being found statistically, behaviour is to be altered accordingly: there is no essential change in the initial situation, only one of sophistication.

Thus, in such a case,  the PLAN is not of the program, but FOR it. The learning is not of its own devising, and the criteria are not its selection, but given TO it. It is then merely an adaptive programmatic device controlled by the programmer's mind and imagination: by its limits as well as by its abilities!

The program itself is blind, devoid of mentality, except as implementer of the purposes of another. We have considered some of these features already in Little Things Ch. 5.

For convenience to assist us to our present goal, we shall include two excerpts from this:
 

1) EXCERPT  1 from Little Things Ch. 5
 

To consider man, it is necessary to consider ALL his functions, and their synthetically apparent integrative activities.

When this is done, it is apparent that mere program defiles the very nature of man, whose unprogrammed powers are so profuse and powerful as to create endless discussion, abuses of power, intrusions of thought, innovations good and bad, to distort or interpret reality. Program does not talk to program in man; but man makes programs which do. Man can soar and rove in the unknown, and act intelligently in it, invent explanations never before known in the race, with buttresses of thought, scope of elevation and fascination of origination, staggering to the mind: because logical prowess and imaginative powers are NOT programmed, but potentiated. His programmatic aspects are not thereby reduced, but interpreted. In some things, man is his own interpreter, and in many, being isolated from God by sin, his misinterpretations are the very stuff of history. Imagine if you 'misinterpreted' electricity, by holding onto the main power line, with an aluminium ladder (of great height, very cleverly constructed) connecting you to the ground.
 

2) EXCERPT 2

Is purpose programmable ? Is the entire survey of multitudes of possible purposes, the intellectual/moral investigation of the same, programmed ? Is reason programmed ? Is error in it programmed, such as students often make ? HOW then is it error ? There is no such thing, if it be programmed, for it is all, in that case, simply the morally and intellectually void fulfilment of the program. Error is a misuse of terms. But man is full of errors, wilful, accidental, incidental, gross, slight, slithering or slothful. No logic chip MAKES you misuse logic sometimes, under certain purposeful considerations, knowingly. Indeed, to know is to be able to see a thing in place, whereas the program IS the place. It IS the limit. It IS the control. Its word stands. The individual has NO place. Error has no place. Happening alone has place. Man is absent.

That is one reason why the programmatic man is merely a misuse of terms. It does not account for rationally accountable, occasionally operative error, or, for that matter,  the rational survey of possible purposes, and the changes of estimation of moral priorities often made, in association with the methods of reason,  and other considerations such as destiny sought or found.

In fact, the whole concept of man, of purposes, of programs, of error, is itself OUTSIDE possible truth, unless there IS an absolute truth, and this cannot exist if the whole world is a whirl of inter-related relativities. The absolute would then by definition be excluded, truth unobtainable and discussion a waste of time: except that it is not a waste. The absolute truth is necessary as a ground, a condition of discourse rationally, of what is true, of the nature of things. Rationality exposes TRUTH, or can do so, in errors of logic, vocabulary, inference, on one side or the other, or both; but not consistently, if absolute truth is by hypothesis excluded.
 

Man does not invent truth. Man does not make a lordship, papal or otherwise, for himself (cf. SMR pp. 1053ff.). These are divine prerogatives. But when man seeks to direct man, in secular or religious hideousness, acting as if God (cf. SMR pp. 914ff.),  then there is a secondary infection. The sin which is endemic is then empowered by a sin which is corporate, and the mangy substitutes for the beautiful coat of righteousness in Christ (Isaiah 61:10, Colossians 3-1-3, Ephesians 1:6, II Cor. 5:19-21), received by personal faith, is made the required provision of mandate, as if Christ had not died for sinners, but stood ready to KILL them into conformity.

To be sure, there IS a death to the slavery of sin and the unsanctity of mere wilfulness, but this comes by no FORCE; Christ's kingdom is not of this world of FORCE, and His people are volunteers, albeit given sight by God (Psalm 110). People who WOULD not come to Him (Matthew 23:37 cf. SMR Appendix B, Isaiah 5, Ezekiel 33:11, Jeremiah 9, 17) are found all throughout scripture. Psalm 106 is a litany of such ways, in cumulative sum.
 

Accordingly, man can outwardly, to some extent, program man, when man becomes a philosophical masochist, yielding the things meant for God to the puny pushings of his propulsive fellows, and - to use Lady Macbeth's terminology, in a different sense - he so becomes 'quite unmanned'. It is a terrible price to pay. Far greater is the loss of the terrorist than that of those whom he would terrorise, for he has in this already lost his soul. Others may lose simply their bodies. That is infinitely less, the mere piano, not the pianist, the structure in which the spirit dwells, on which it manipulates, manoeuvres or manages, not the invisible and spiritual entity itself, answerable to God, from God, and addressed on its envelope, to God for judgment.
 
 

Nothing personal is in the end merely programmatic. Man is personal, and HAS programmatic provisions aplenty in his genes, chromosomes, neural synapses, electrical, electro-chemical, bio-chemical and coded contrivances for the construction of cells and the production of endurance over the years. He is NOT these however, but the recipient of their hard-working provisions.

Thus we are all but inundated, like some latter day flood, with news of our genome. Here is a map, here a designation, here you can see some of the organisation involved in the automatic production of your body. OH but how shall I be individual! they cry. DO this to me for much money, or that, and perhaps I shall BE marvellous or a genius or great sportsman, or able to make much profit or some other thing which others have done! How terrible to think it all depends on just that; but how wonderful to consider the scope for the FUTURE! In mind ? why that BHF, the bright and happy future which man has proposed for himself since Eden, and tried to build since Babel, by thoughts of the skies, while it is really the pinnacle of truth which he puts in the ground, and the basement of the visible which he puts in the air.

The truth as truth is the basement, and the result as the pinnacle is to find fellowship in the heavenly places, with God (Ephesians 2), and to have access by His Spirit in the name of Christ, even to Him who MADE the heavens, and does not need our airy constructions aspiringly setting ourselves on high, stuck up ornamentally in order to exalt us.

In The Advertiser, July 14, p. 49, we find that some are heaving some sort of a confused sigh of relief. Why there IS some room for individuality, they say, some variation in the genome. There are, we are told, as a result of "studying 313 genes - out of the 30,000 identified by human genome scientists", for each one, an "average 14 versions that can be inherited".

The variability of man is provided for as part of that munificence of architecture and equipment which makes for our wonderful assortment, so often misused in racial detestation or aspiration for imperial glory. This however does not even touch what matters most. The fact that pianos can come in 4 crown or 5 crown varieties of elegance, with this case or that, with this sort of damping or that, does not alter their instrumental type. When the master pianist sits down, the result from these is far beyond the efforts of the beginner on the most dazzling production.

Far from reality, man NOT ONLY in his philosophy, his religious extravanganzas, often delusively in the name of Christ, and often profusely in any other name he happens to think of; NOT MERELY  in his political putsches, of which he never seems to grow weary, though the new thing grows weary in its sin and sordidness, like the old:  but in his very person, falls victim to instrumentalism.

It is all in the stars, or in his body, or in his State, or in his environment, or in his genes or whatever other piece of terrestrial, cultural, educational or astronomical equipment comes his way. In himself he looks, as with Freud, only to find (rightly) how sinful he is, but (wrongly) that it is all this or that thing. It is all that and more; but not in that way. It is the sin of his spirit which is crucial not some obsessive aspect or component; and the particular exudations of evil from a deluded mind, or a misused body intemperately miscuing for his mind, or invading it with wrong patterns, these are but consequential.

Constantly, man is trying to TELL his fellows, THIS is the way it is, when his very theories about the way it is, can function ONLY if that is NOT the way he is. IF his mind is a captive to unconscious drives, his life to economic insistences, his life to survival thrusts, and his is a mere derivation from mindless nature, then there IS no truth with which to know, there is no clarity with which to abstract from this alleged base and cover for man. If you are down, there is no place to get up. If you are relative, there is no way to get the absolute; and the impossibility is merely doubled if you assume it does not exist. (Cf. SMR Ch. 3.)

Yet man continues to live upside down, and wonders why there is such pressure. But what would you EXPECT if you are standing on your head!

Nothing of man is IN ESSENCE programmatic. These are implements of scarcity which need thought; or of miscarriage of thought which need correction; or threats of life which need prudence. It is not however that any of these things are either mandatory or final. They constitute challenges. They drive to God. If you WILL not go, then you are stuck, and the world in its subversions in the spirit of our Age, to pander to such things, is STUCK. Like a car stuck in the mud, it roars, its tyres are shredded, its needs new ones, it pays for them, these are being shredded, its resources drift away, its varieties die, its young die in the uttermost pits of folly, following this or that deadly flag of confusion, to gain what it not thereby attainable, seeking for the sun in the pit, and looking for foundations in the air.

The programmatic, the utilitarian, these are matters of futility, and perhaps one should coin the term futiliarian to cover it all. It is the case of the myriad-formatted futilitarian philosophies of fancy. It is assured in advance of failure; but with such glory and glamour it is sought that one wonders at the ten millionth failure, seeking for something in nothing, and for nothing that matters, where it is to be found, that it continues. Such however is the rebellion of the spirit of man (as in Ephesians 4:17ff.), and such his rejection of the grace of God (as in Romans 1:17ff., with Ephesians 2), that the awful upside-down pudding of human racism, its elevation, inspiration, excitation, continues to stress its elegance, knowledge and power, and to be at the same time mere stick-jaw.

Some would FORCE you to be 'nice', and imprison you if you upset someone by saying things not found, by contemporary moral codes (shifting sands with every wind, vainglorious judges of ephemeral inconstancy), to be conducive to their contentment. Try that with medicine and see how your body goes. When, as in Victoria (cf.  Galloping Events Ch. 7, End-Note 1, News 156) you do for this sort of distortion of human liberty, then what you deserve is that pabulum of pretence which is deadly to life, since it is delusive and unwilling to face what is. Lively debate, the willingness to be detected and corrected, this is essential to sinful man. Merely distancing the 'upsetting' gospel, as could readily be done in such a way, makes it simply the harder to find God; and what a condemnation in a State which at its commencement made Christianity the "preferred religion" in its very mid-nineteenth century Constitution!

LOVE cannot be COMMANDED into being. A command can indicate its need; but it cannot provide its presence! It is not the lordliness of love but the Love who is Lord, and in His trinity, that love is shown. It is shown in word (His), and given in deed (His), so that the salvation is given (by Him - Romans 6:23, 5:15); and for men to try to make some sort of humanistic substitute for divine reality is as puny as it is impotent; and it is a prescription to distance the source of the actual love by which the actual results, in purity not pretence, in truth not carnal confusion, are to be found.

Now is the final day of the outrageously  oppressive and oppressively outrageous efforts of man, in this or that system of delusion, where power, propaganda, secularity, with its two coats added - that of religious secularity and secular religiosity, contrived creations of the dust, that merely clothe pretence - with his money first, control first, his primary aim of this world as the target, his power first, his (self-) worshipful scenarios using program, psychology and power: where all this multiplies like the locust. It is far more destructive.

These dreams, alas like locusts far from dreamy: they spawn in myriads, in place of wonder, worship and wisdom, love, life and reality, truth and humility before truth. Man as Lord is a failure and the featuring of it is a fulcrum for pitching him to the crevasse.

Thus the genome is no more or less than one representative of the reductionism phenomenon which is acutely hilarious, since it COULD only be true if man were NOT what the theory propounds him to be! When however as demonstrated in Repent or Perish Chs.  2,   7 and SMR Chs. 1-3,10, one finds that man in fact has access to absolute truth, then it makes him less than insane for constantly acting as if he had this (SMR Ch. 5), and it helps to explain him even affirming this or that as if in this domain, even doing so while denying his denials in this, that he is affirming it absolutely true that absolute truth does not exist, and other circus acts for the philosophical menagerie.

It is is also largely  in the subsidiary field of programmatic reductionism and instrumentalism as shown, making the surveyal a waste of time, since it is on godless assumptions, a programmed survey which comes from nowhere that has absolute truth. Even where God is in view, it is not wholly different, unless He be known; for to have a text-book is little help if it merely resides on the shelves, as do the Bibles of many of our race.

It is acutely sad that this delusion is moving among man, who in the name of 'science', which is after all only a specialised variety of effort to gain knowledge - man's knowledge of God's world, is often found not only deluding himself into a seduced form of self-abasement, but exalting himself as of godlike powers in the process! Thus he ignores the moral increasingly, and tends increasingly to act in effect with thoughtless ethics since he does not believe in them, except as a means of survival or advantage. Hence atrocities such as Islam so often for one, has performed, does perform and advises it will perform, are but functionalities of this fiction.

In this case, it is not that absolute truth per se is denied, but that the only valid exemplar of it is denied, reconstructed in absentia and placed in the pantheon of desire. The result however is just the same: man becomes programmed by his own thoughts, and basic inhumanity MUST arise, in some form other, since what man is fails to find its place FROM GOD, in the heart, which readily in such confusion and delusion, acts out its shame. It was so in organic evolutionism (cf. SMR Ch. 2), in Communism (see indexes), and it is becoming fashionable to be heartless, just as the death delusions of Revelation 6 require. In this, it is prophetically fulfilled.

The refusal, reported yesterday, of the Taliban religious referees to surrender bin Laden despite the concern of Pakistan which evidently had camps to train youngsters towards philosophies which readily erupt into such actions, is merely an illustration. Whether or not the 1000 new 'scholars' are to alter the situation, will be seen. So far, the embrace of the disgrace seems to continue.

Why surrender to justice someone whose many deeds and words are of no healthy variety internationally, even if vast strikes may otherwise destroy many in seeking to remove the military power base! Why not be emphatic, dramatic, dogmatic, why not ignore the requests for his surrender long ago, so far for years, always rejected! Why not further the Islamic jihad delusion, and the Koran rhetoric, as if man making war on man for his goods and for his lands were in some way a world must , a compulsion for Islam!

Why not grab and get and avoid in compiling an overview, the tortures of suffering! Why not proceed for glory! On that topic, remember Benevolent Brightness or Brothy Bane  82, which deals at some length with the seeking of glory, and touches on Islam and other fashions for the purpose, off course; and with this, Joyful Jottings 14, which surveys some of the more recent historical developments in this human glory genre, amongst other things.

Man seeks glory, defiles himself (cf. Biblical Blessings Ch. 7, Barbs, Arrows and Balms Appendix 1), defames himself philosophically to the point of validity incompetence (cf. That Magnificent Rock Ch. 5, SMR Ch. 3) , and then acts with all the ferocity of non-faith, by alleged faith so that he may fill in the space of God, in his heart, with wastelands plus tigers of tension and devastation. That, he calls it glory!

Not all are thus, of course; but the spirit of the Age is increasingly moving to a sort of combination of desperation, frustration, incompetence of spirit with passion of flesh, as if in the last analysis, the resolute rebellion against God, using every relativism or absurd absolutism based on relative premises, or contrary to all principles of any validity, were a sort of panzer division of vile and even revolting violence, sanctified by delusion. So is the disease of disfaith (SMR 172, 774, 999-1002C).

This, it is not in his genes, which he has had long enough. It is not in any of his many carefully or confusedly constructed religions; for they are but his outcomes. It is not in God who made Him, who indeed judges, but not that the earth shall belong to one race or human religious idol, as if the former had some priority, or the latter some validity. This is the move, in almost slavish seeming obeisance to the forecast of God in Revelation 13:4ff., 13:11ff.)

The Jews were as a show-case, not a parade (Isaiah 43:21). If they failed (Isaiah 49:7), so have all the rest. If they crucified Christ, and there is no extenuation for that, as a nation, then so do many other nations in their own hearts, reviling Him in word or deed, implicitly or explicitly, ignoring even His righteous principles, and ensuring carefully they utterly avoid 'love your neighbour as yourself', for behold things must be in the national, or  theTaliban or some other interest which seizes and seeks to contain.

Genes have not prevented the wonders of benevolence, the marvels of salvation, the testimony of millions, the triumphs of goodwill, the tireless labours of the saints; nor have they stilled the abominable distortions of Rome, Mecca or Moscow (now Beijing ?), in their various confusions of spirit, abortions of logic and reckless pursuit of what neither has evidence nor validity to its name.

Genes are equipment. They are not spirit (cf. Isaiah 30:1, 31:1-3)^*1A. Bodies are equipment. They are not spirit. Intelligence is equipment, and while valuable to spirit, it is not the same. Capacity is not purpose, and ability is not aim.

While this exotic folly of seeking clones of this or that great one proceeds, the enormity of it all is parallel to that in seeking life on Mars (that is, inherent life). The piano does NOT make the pianist; and though it may help, if an especially good one, have we not seen enough of misused talents, mistimed tirades and mischief of mind and seedy satiety of spirit to know that this is far down the list in the things so acutely needed in this world!

What is needed is God, is grace, virtue and humility, is non-violence, leaving to God, vengeance. He is just as well as able, and intelligent to the uttermost, as well as imaginative. The need is for patience and truth, for peace and power, for grace and goodness, for submission not to scimitars and jihads, but to God and His love.

The Lord is not gene, but Jesus. The command is not mere program, but to piety. The way is not genome but Gospel, which is the power of God to salvation. The provision is not superintendance of societies, but recreation of life (II Cor. 5:17ff.), by the God who made it at the first, so that it may endure to the last (Revelation 21:27, 22:14, John 10:27-28)^*1.

Peace is not another name for capitulation, but for an inner state of content in the forgiving and strong presence of the Saviour whose gift to the world of HIMSELF, being ignored in many, brings the end fast to this whole sphere. The world itself is a grand piano: and the race and the races play amazing tunes on it. It is nearly broken now. It is necessary to consult the handbook for its use, not the bomb, the targetable missile, not hate.

The re-possession of Israel in a State allied to one rejection of Jesus, is not really helpful as an aim on the part of another 'state' an Islamic State, already surfeited with oil and land worldwide, which knows no limit to its violence, whether to women in their restricted lives, or to man in his freedom to seek the Lord. This is just like Hitler, a beast seeking to devour body and soul. Its prophet has no attestation but this, that Christ predicted many false christs and false prophets. Its book has no confirmation but this, that Allah cannot provide the all might for his projects which he there claims. Its affirmation is thus its negation. It has no person, like Christ whom itself sees as righteous, to demonstrate the power and presence, the peace and truth of God, personally, evidentally and prophetically. It relegates people conquered in diverse ways as attested in SMR
pp. 1080ff., cf. 986ff., and makes a division at once, of what God has made, in terms of religious oppression, the worst of all; for it is a direct hit on the spirit of man.

Its name has been oppression, invasion and aspiration to territory; its words fork-tongued with talk of mercy but evidence of its removal. Its words do not stand in the mêlée of history, nor does its leader exhibit what others have not! Rather war and subjugation, with talk of heaven for invasion, this has been the way. It wants peace for a people to be formed for a person whose words are as ill-attested as the theory of organic evolution.

Where it must act, it lacks. Where it must show, it goes. Where it should stand the test, it fails. Where it presents a plan, it is devastation. It is an antibiotic of potassium cyanide, whose name against opposition is to kill, overcome, till ONLY ALLAH is honoured. This in the hands of man, it is not a pretty thing.

Nor is the devastation in New York.

This however is merely one of the beast components, leading to the end. Its task will soon be to help the world to unite more and more, on false bases, convenient strategies of agreement without Christ, so that a yet more terrible scourge than Islam now is or ever could be, will control all lands. The desires, illicit, implicit, of the 3 world conspiracies to rule, will all fail. It is far worse, if possible, than any of these, which is coming (Rev. 13, Daniel 7).

Meanwhile, it is CHRIST WHO IS LORD, neither spiritual nor physical genes. It is His word which stands, surveys and directs history which DOES IT, what it is there told. It is He who has provided both in life and in death the only answer God has ever propounded, which has never varied and never will (Galatians 1, Rev. 22:18-19, Matthew 5:17ff., Rev. 5:7ff. cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 17, Repent or Perish Ch. 2). Not violence but truth; not assertion, but attestation; not words alone, but personal proof, these things are from God.

If YOU do not GO to God, whether as an individual or a nation, then all your efforts are but null. Puppet or programmee, yours is then to be under the dominion or domination of the things only evil, whatever be the way in which they attribute to themselves, or their sons, a spurious glory, whether these sons be Muhammad, pope or Commissar.

It will pass.

The word of God does not pass Isaiah 40:8, I Peter 1:24-25).

It is the statute of liberty (Romans 8:1-3), which long outlasts the Statue of Liberty. Its law is truth. Its way is sacrifice, not of others, but of Christ, and then taking up one's cross and following Him who said, "I am the way, the life and the truth, no one comes to the Father except by Me" (John 14:6); and again, "Whoever he be of you, who does not forsake all that he has, he cannot be My disciple" (Luke 14:33). This is not a merry-go-round of swapped gifts, but a wholehearted surrender to God, who having made man, knows how to give back to him abundant life, such as the plan of perfection has provided (John 10:10). It is Jesus, not fake or fraud, falsity as prophet or politician, who is Lord. It is HE whose peace will prosper and continue.

It is worse than useless to seek security in numbers, in consensus. God is not afraid of numbers, and is not found by consensus. His word is the truth and His Son the only way. He cannot be patronised, incorporated or included. He is LORD.
 
 

Man is seen in his place. Now let us look with reverence and awe at the LORD.

He is as we have seen in SMR and many other places, omniscient, omnipotent, and does according to His own good pleasure; is incapable of change, immutable, eternal and truth. Now let us look a little further. He is also the source of all other than Himself, in endless resource and inscrutable capacity, without limit, Creator of kind and concept, as of construction and imagination in the processive perimeters of man and angelic beings. He is not to be paraded for inspection, but may choose to reveal Himself and manifest Himself by His word and through His Spirit; and has done so, as also definitively in the person of His Son (John 1, 3, Hebrews 1, John 14:21-23), rendered incarnate.

His lordship is thus intrinsic, ontological, and when the logical comes to bow at the throne of the ontological glory, it is not to present arms, or alms, for the cattle on a thousand hills are His, and He works and who shall hinder it (Psalm 50, Isaiah 43:13). It is first to worship (Revelation 5:9-14, Psalm 96). There is the beauty of His holiness because it IS holy, the splendour of His majesty because it IS majestic. It does not touch these things, as in degree, but is their source and original. REVEREND is His NAME! (Psalm 111:9). All lesser revering is sourced  in the basis of reverence. Accordingly, there is a glorious majesty in His kingdom (145:11), and His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom.

Kings are but exhibits; it is He who is the source of all splendour. The wise but remind us, at best; it is He who is wisdom (Proverbs 8, I Cor. 1:30) of such profundity that He can even be made UNTO US who receive and know Him, 'wisdom'. The end is His before the sequence begins (as in Ephesians 1:4, Isaiah 46:10) to the point that He can announce it before the clouds appear to herald its coming, and then bring in the clouds, first predicting their configuration as they come to announce the coming of the end of the Age (SMR Ch. 8, Galloping Events, Divine Agenda).

His knowledge depends on no instruction, since He made what knowledge is about, and for Himself, He declares I AM WHO I AM (Exodus 3;14, John 8:58). His Gospel accordingly and likewise, is without marring, management or fee, eternal and inviolable, without addition or extraneous condition. It is a gift of eternal life, bought to make it so, achieved in pangs, presented with pardon, in Jesus Christ His manifest expression and living word. There is no derivation, dependency or imbibing. Threefold in persons, one in Being, He despatches His word in written form, in propositions to be read, and then in living format, to show His own radiance in tempered and humble ways, that the young might find, the babes be blessed and all see how man should be, since God became one to show better things that sin could provide, or creation confer.

Hence without blasphemy, does the blessing come from the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (II Corinthians 13:14, Matthew 28:18) and His very name is threefold, though He be one. One Lord, one faith, one God and Father of all (Ephesians 4), His sublimity suffers no attenuation, His knowledge comprehending all before it begins, judging all when it ends.

THIS, it is the Lord. What reason could not but attest (SMR), revelation even surpasses, for reason could but see the least, and show where this is to be found; while revelation is where it is found, and this shows the actuality! Full of grace and truth was Christ (John 1:14) in such an amplitude, without measure His provision from the Spirit (3:34), that it was as exhibitive of deity in the prodigy of His incarnate Son as any could hope or imagine; for this performance was more than that of a maestro. It was the work of one whose heart is higher than any hill, whose wit beyond all intelligence, wisdom past all understanding and love the very basis of all love.

Of a certainty, He may discipline or even destroy as in the flood; but longsuffering and merciful, He does not willingly afflict the children of men (Lamentations 3:33). Having borne ALL for ALL who come to Him (I John 2:1ff.), and transferred their guilt selectively to Himself (Romans 8:32), He is the very opposite of jihad jaunts into the broken lives of the maimed, the vainglorious power to invade domestically, to wreak havoc as if this were the manner of man.

Nevertheless, where man, be he Moslem, or atheist, Roman idolater or Communist visionary implementing with hands of blood the protestations of the mind, resolves to avoid His word and witness, the everlasting covenant and the eternal redemption already accomplished as in Hebrews 8-12, then there is, as it is written,  no other sacrifice. Treading underfoot the blood of Christ brings rebellious terrorist and invasive junta alike, where false religion is their base, or their own thoughts more directly, in peril of eternal exclusion. Where the door to enter is excluded, entry is forbidden.

The LORD is He to whom many of the West have given short shrift, and more of the East, it seems, no time at all. While for a time, they may aggregate in their own chosen combinations and syntheses of 'faith', the judgment is to come. The scene of sovereignty moves to Europe, and the sentence on revolt to the Middle East (as in Revelation 13, 17, Daniel 7, Zechariah 12-14, Revelation 16). However, it is not the pathology but the glory which should be sought; not the penalties but the person who should be regarded, worshipped and adored. Flowers wilt, whether in the Middle East, Europe or elsewhere on this earth; but the glory of the Lord is forever.
 
 

*1A
 

Isaiah 30:1:

"Woe to the rebellious children, says the LORD, who take counsel, but not of Me; and who cover with a covering, but not of My Spirit, that they may add sins to sin..."

Isaiah 31:1-3:

"Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help,
And rely on horses,
Who trust in chariots because they are many,
And in horsemen because they are very strong,
But who do not look to the Holy One of Israel,
Nor seek the Lord!

"Yet He also is wise and will bring disaster,
And will not call back His words,
But will arise against the house of evildoers,
And against the help of those who work iniquity.

"Now the Egyptians are men, and not God;
And their horses are flesh, and not spirit.
When the Lord stretches out His hand,
Both he who helps will fall,
And he who is helped will fall down;
They all will perish together.

"For thus the Lord has spoken to me:

'As a lion roars,

And a young lion over his prey
(When a multitude of shepherds is summoned against him,
He will not be afraid of their voice
Nor be disturbed by their noise),
So the Lord of hosts will come down
To fight for Mount Zion and for its hill.

'Like birds flying about,
So will the Lord of hosts defend Jerusalem.
Defending, He will also deliver it;
Passing over, He will preserve it.' ”

Revelation 1:27:

"But there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of Life".

This is the word and domain of Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the Almighty (Rev. 1:5-8,2:8). There are no exceptions or intrusions. That is it.

Revelation 22:14 - (see The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 7, *4):

"Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter by the gates into the city."

John 10:27-30:

"My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.
"And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.
"My Father who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand.
"I and My Father are one" - and it is enlightening to see the reaction in John 10:33.