W
W W W World Wide Web
Witness Inc. Home Page
Contents
Page for Volume What is New
LORD ? Who else !
Dimples or Disasters in the Olympics ?
Not really. Over-dramatic I mean. It IS the issue which will not go away, even when, on this earth, man does.
It may be thought of as unnecessary; but Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Napoleon, The UN, these do not think it unnecessary. The British Empire did not think it unnecessary. The US did not think it unnecessary to determine this little matter. The matter ? Precisely this: WHO is LORD OF ALL!
Now to be sure, Empires do not of necessity lay down this claim; though they often act as if they had done so, and the answer was to be found in this or that empire or nation. Others go further, and assert that their nation or country or philosophical contraption which controls or is deemed, rather, to control the nation, is LORD. That is, what it is, things do. Communism had this inglorious conception. It was subject to moral and human contraception. It died before it was born; Marx's heaven on earth was not even a haven, except for profound immorality, man acting with inane insufficiency, as if he were God. Koestler's Darkness at Noon captures, like a snapshot, the inglorious galoot of a political system which has to convince people of what simply is not so, in order to retain its immoral ascendancy.
God is simply irreplaceable.
Of course, there are other methods now.
OTHER METHODS ? you ask. Yes, now
that the Olympics are here we see remarkable jumps, contests, speeds, skills,
heights, depths, dilemmas, defeats, and we are told that it is time
to:
CELEBRATE HUMANITY.
It can be made to have quite a catching look, but it is most unwise to be caught, in this! We really are... so advised; you can see it on the screen or the page. It seems almost acceptable as you see exploit on top of exploit (including, it seems, the mini-exploit of using vanishing drugs, ones which leave few traceable externalities when they are done, in the midst of blood hound methods to catch up with them).
But what does it mean, this celebration
? You see YOUTH, and STRENGTH and WILL and COURAGE and CONTEST and ENDURANCE,
and people TOGETHER and a sort of amity or kindness (lovely to see the
Dutch and Australian girls, after ONE lost and the OTHER won, embracing
from opposite teams), and find people having trouble EXPRESSING precisely
WHAT is so marvellous, but indicating that it is so anyway, as they are
interviewed after their own performances..
Marvellous ? The sense of amity
instead of calamity, effort in rules that abide (for a time), composition
of peoples in ordered contests to achieve results within the capacity of
the race, a sense of glory somewhere, in something (but where ?). There
is the question.
THE CELEBRATED HUMANITY ?
In rugby matches you sometimes hear the almost swooning sense of greatness in the deep, emotionally profound cascades of sound, from heights to depths, swaying in the multitudes like winds among the corn (the AIR DOES move and IS diverted while the corn sways, oh purist!). It is like hymns with vigour. It has a sense almost of tenderness, of glory slightly inhibited, of muted appeal, of wonderment and of togetherness, even in contest. It is undoubtedly religious in kind, and the new phrase (or new to the headlines), CELEBRATING HUMANITY is close to its genesis, genius and genre.
The Australian, such courage, the US, such skill, the Dutch, such determination, the Russian, so strong and so on. The song has verses you see. The peculiarly appealing song made by Qantas (this is not to comment on Qantas but on the song) has something of it too. It shows you youth in combination, in sweetness of disposition, in diversity of site and shows that Australia is home to such diversity, with a sense of Home, Sweet Home and at the same time, of the grandeur of the vastness and the delight of the homeland in its marvels of ... creation ? That is the point.
ALL these things may in their places
be admirable, but do they keep in their place ? Let us not blame THEM!
Are they being put out of place ? Does the land MEAN something stirring
to the soul. ?
Is YOUTH something unleashing to
the emotions ? Is humanity itself, in its highest achievements and especially
in its potential achievements and performances, GLORIOUS!
Alas, this error has been made from the first. Since the devil, that profoundly puny but exceedingly exalted foe has started his business, that Satan, that adversary, the SITING OF GLORY HAS BEEN A KEY FEATURE OF OUR ENTIRE HISTORY. Celebrate HUMANITY! You may rest assured that this is not the end. Humanity did not INVENT itself. It cannot EVEN NOW do so, not even with the ground plan before it. It cannot make a soul. It cannot make a spirit. It is dealing with pianos. You need pianists. In other terms: it is dealing (without much success) with the matter of the instrument for the spirit of man, and is not even aware in many cases, of the latter.
Time Magazine has on various occasions attested a marvellous facility, in the infelicitous function of oversight in this matter - oversight in the sense of failing to perceive it at all, in its beguiling presentations of the machinery, ex man - cf. SMR pp. 348ff., 316D-G, 20ff., and see Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming... Epilogue). Much journalism speaks as if the DNA sequences are MAN!
It is a fashionable vogue and folly, when man is being fashioned amiss.
What unutterable folly does man here attest! The piano, the wonderful grand, the Stradivarius (do you KNOW just HOW it was made ? Ah, such a wonder of a violin!) are not the violinist, the pianist. The spirit of the man is not the wonder of the instrument. HE BRINGS IT OUT, to be sure, but the instrument is not the expression, the tenderness, the passion, the glissade of THOUGHT which the sound evokes.
It is, what it in fact is called, an instrument. Man is the musician. In his very capacity for error he gives the show away. BECAUSE he can err, thus we see in action the obvious fact that he can have purpose, and fail. He can have comprehension and be astray; he can even have apt comprehension and fail in its execution, and know it, and find out why; or not find out why, because his mind is clouded with the contemptible philosophies which make agents out of instruments, and agents out of nothing, and know and understand nothing, and even make it a mark of majesty in man, that he knows nothing.
At other times, when the journalistic mood takes on, man is wonderful and knows (just about) anything you care to name, or will soon... and so. Look at the DNA, they say, are we not marvels! Look, soon we shall have some idea of the coded structure back of the production and reproduction of our bodies. Are we not ever so cute, is not there a certain beauty of marvel and marvel of beauty about our intelligences, our science (knowledge gained in a certain way), indeed our ... we blush, but frankness wins, we will say it - OUR SELVES! MAN! Celebrate humanity!
So the siren call of pride and ignorance
continues. We did not even MAKE ourselves. We can only just begin to understand
the ways in which the brilliance of the Maker is coded for CONTINUATION!
The Creator is avoided as if He
were an aseptic instrument in an operation, and this, in voidance of scientific
method, of logic and of reality (as in That Magnificent RockCh.
1, shown in detail, SMR Chs. 1,
10 and 3 and elsewhere, for example,
A
Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9). He
forgets himself, as Hume did (SMR Ch. 3 as above). He also FORGETS GOD!
THE CELEBRATED OMISSION
THAT is what is so tinny!
Putting himself above all, he
goes under (Romans 1:17ff.)
It is the old question: Brag and be bagged, or humble yourself and find out.
Man without God is as you see him: shrouded in wars, like the industrial heavy smoke of coal in the 'good old days' when deadened lungs, being not in vogue, did not matter. He is glittering with glamour, when not dying in millions of hunger or political-military oppression. He is filled with wisdom when not failing to reduce ozone destruction sufficiently fast, because he is so wonderful in understanding that the incidence of cancer really is but a passing memorial to his destiny. He is covered with knowledge to the point that Ph.D.s arise like scum on the surface of polluted water, attesting the depths of chemical concentrations below. They know it all.
They know approximately nothing. In what way ? you ask. In this way: you have only to look at the popularity driven drivel of much journalism to see it. It is ASSUMED that God is not there, does not matter, does not do good or evil (as in Zephaniah 1:12), is to be swept aside in cultural conformity to peace on earth, or in political stability programs, since wars of religion are ah SO difficult! (Christ as Saviour did not create war, but died on the Cross. War is created by sin, and its sanctions can be various; but THIS war He won by Himself, and the product is peace to those who follow Him.) Sometimes He is attacked; more often immersed in the profundity of superficiality, instrument ridden manias that chatter on as if the ONLY thing that REALLY mattered was NEVER to think!
Absolute truth of our ignorance is propounded at almost the same sentence, or paragraph (in obeisance to the religion of mankind, the celebrated humanity) as is absolute assurance of our knowledge. We are SO knowledgeable that we forget God, ignore our creation, side-step our logical deformities in so doing and then brashly praise OUR SELVES! Man is marvellous! In what way is he marvellous ? In his knowledge! What does he know ? This, that he does not know. Remarkable!
So the ambivalence, the vacillation of being a know-all and a know-nothing continues. There is no rest for these waters. He is filled with pride in accomplishment and abasement before the universe. Naturalism is a religion sometimes almost codified (as seen in The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 10, part II). The natural fact that what is not there does not create what is: is sometimes even formally ignored (as shown for example in That Magnificent Rock Chs. 7, 8). The logical necessities of sufficiency for all things are transmuted into the unnatural credo that you get all from what you do not have, even from what is not there, and that vacuity is action.
Its noisy and blustering braggadocios are like the hail of cubic metre blocks from an angry sky.
Such manias may be seen in man, at the very MOMENT of declaring his own greatness! Alas it is written in the presses of this world, almost like the swayings to and from of a nausous storm-tossed ferry on high seas! It move first one way, then the other, and rolls as it goes. They seem to forget each lurch one way, in the unsublime lurch in the other direction. It is rather like a dunce advising you with solemn mien, preferably in some prodigious essay, of the exalted nature of his own understanding. It is worse than pitiful. It is pathetic.
It is also a profound rebellion
against the Lord.
MAN - AH BUT!
There is a tragic element about
this. The whole point is missed.
It is not only the logical folly.
It is folly concerning the LORD.
In what way is it folly concerning the Lord ?
In this way, it is. The LORD DID BECOME MAN.
What then is the fact ? It is this. It is not only the case that the ALL-Sufficient and Eternal God made that creation called man who is so busily running away with himself, like some psychopathic 'teen-ager, filled with a sense of self-importance and power which is the very REASON why he is doomed! He has to DEVELOP this teen-ager, and realise, as recent research shows, that his liberties require knowledge, that his capacities of understanding need to mature before he acts merely to wreck the whole by his precipitancy of youth.
So man. He needs not to become superman, Hitler alas failing in this as much as George Bernard Shaw. Neither they nor their race are doing much about this glamorous proposal! Their corpses rotted and the corpse of human glamour rots amidst its glitter. It is not very nice, it is true; but that is the way with corpses.
Man needs to become AWARE that God is NOT a fool. If HE were, how much more His product! God is filled with a wisdom which does not change, being not susceptible to growth and the realisation of potential for the most simple reason that potential is a geared and founded thing, and NOTHING has geared or founded the FOUNDER (cf. SMR pp. 26ff.). In this practical wisdom - which this world did not know or realise (I Corinthians 2:8), God overarched, like the rainbow, the wild and endlessly unproductive if not inane attempts of man to plumb the depths without the Maker of them (called philosophy in many of its phases - cf. I Cor. 1:20ff., and Isaiah 29:14ff.). He did more than speak. He did much more than predict. All this is relevant and astonishing, but He did more.
God exercised His powers beyond humbling Himself to behold the things of man. He came.
God CAME TO EARTH AS MAN. That is the central fact. He did not come as pig or angel. He came as man. He did not come as illustrious president, with five course lunches, or dictator with motor-bikes or oil rich with cadillacs like confetti strewn on the paths (or, more aptly for motion, following them). He came as man and the essential humanity was stressed in this, that He came not as rich, or powerful in passions of tribal, national or other glory. He came such that what man is, He was yet without sin (Romans 8:1ff., I Peter 2:22ff., Hebrews 2). He came so that the political, social and religious powers could range themselves in their humility ? and loyalty ? and fidelity ? for or against Him.
He came without the disciplinary sanctions of majesty. NO duress would threaten them, and no POWER would control. HE AS MAN would be THERE!
They, too, as forms of human power, pretence and glamour, glitz and riches, prestige and pomp, and all the rest would be there. Individuals would be there also. God as man came, as I Timothy 3:16 puts it from the Lord: "And without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached to the nations, believed on in the world, received up into glory." That is the scripture which the Lord in His providential preservation of His word has left showering through the teeming manuscripts, till few remain which do not attest it.
As Paul puts it in Philippians 2, CHRIST was in the FORM OF GOD and took as a messianic, a serving, a redeeming option the FORM OF A MAN, so that as man He could meet the fatalities for man, the justice due, and breaking it by being broken, overcome so that in justice, mercy could bloom and man be pardoned. (So: Hebrews 1-2.)
In the meantime, He SHOWED the reality
of God direct, in this format, saying as became One who is deity, "He
who has seen Me HAS SEEN the Father" (John
14). That was the tenor of the emphasis of His reply to Philip who wanted
to see God. What God is, Chrfist is - you are not cheated when, wanting
the One, you gain the other! Such is the tenor of Christ's reply to Philip.
THE CELEBRATION OF THE MAN,
JESUS CHRIST, GOD AS MAN
And do you notice where, for all His humility, the glory and the power are ? Do you see that it is not HUMANITY which is to be celebrated, for its celebrations are vitiated and viscous with visionless pretension. It is GOD AS MAN who is to be celebrated. It is time to change the caption thus:
CELEBRATION OF HUMANITY,
becomes
CELEBRATION OF CHRIST AS MAN, GOD
IN FLESH.
THAT is what is to be celebrated. It is something FOR celebration that He who is LORD OF ALL (Acts 10:36) exhibited Himself AS A MAN!
His barriers were innumerable, His opportunities for the contest, but one: no repeat or re-run, no practice was possible (Luke 11:53ff., John 18:36ff.). God does not fail (Zephaniah 3:5). It was enough.
"The word which God sent to the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ (He is Lord of all), that word, I say, you know... How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit, and with power, who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the evil..." GOD the sender and GOD the sent in perfect and eternal harmony exhibited in this way the beauty of God's own fellowship (for HE is not alone, but a trinity). Isaiah 48:16 puts it quite categorically, when the LORD speaks of being SENT by the LORD!
The insistence that there are many gods (see SMR Ch. 1) is as foolish as this, that the One who is God has to be without internal companionship! " I AND MY FATHER ARE ONE", said Christ, whose statement led to the Jews wanting to visit His format with stones, since they did not believe Him, rightly esteeming that this implied that He was equal with God (John 10:30-33).
The equality of honour between Christ and His Father (John 5:19ff.) is not accidental or incidental. It is basic. It is also beautiful.
There is love there: love not without subject, not without object. It is dynamic, deep and eternal (cf John 15:9, 16:15, 17:1-3, 10, 23- 25 - yes even before the world with its very concept of time that passes, was founded!).
There is glory, not grasped or greedily propounded, but intrinsic, authentic, eternal.
It is not CELEBRATION OF MANKIND
but CELEBRATION OF THE LORD AS
MAN,
that is cause for rejoicing.
]
It is that
which is objectively needed (cf. That Magnificent Rock, Ch.
5, SMR Ch. 1). Neither the tinny
majesty of self-glorifying lords, nor the pervasive platitudes of a glorified
race, humankind, is the answer. It is all a lie. That is a mixed bag and
it has holes in it as well. It is the triumphant majesty of Him, who having
made all, took the post of Lord of all (Acts 10:36, Ephesians 1:19-21,
Philippians 2:1-9-11, Matthew 28:18, Romans 9:5) as HIS OWN (Philippians
2:6,9 jointly) and was accorded in TEST what was His in TRUTH (Mark 12:1-10).
Thus we find in Zephaniah 3:15 that
it is the LORD, your GOD, who is in the midst, the KING of Israel; and
that He will be in the midst of a poor and afflicted people. These are
those who have learned not the pomp of pretence, and the push of self-admiration
('going about to establish their own righteousness' - Romans 10:1ff.),
but to know and receive the LORD AS their righteousness (Jeremiah 23:6,
II Cor. 5:17-21). Of Lords, there is ONE (Zechariah
14:9)*1.
It is HE who is to be KING over all the earth! He is ONE LORD, and His
name is ONE, says the prophet. And what do we read of this ONE ? This:
"the
LORD shall be King over all the earth; in that day shall there be one LORD,
and His name one." If anything was ever unequivocal,
that is. Yet the KING is to be the descendant (after Mary's contribution
of flesh) of David: Psalm 72 telling us this:
"They shall fear You as long as the sun and moon endure, throughout all generations ... He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth ... Yes, all kings shall fall down before Him; all nations shall serve Him ... He shall redeem their soul form deceit and violence ... His name shall endure forever. All nations shall call Him blessed... And blessed be His glorious name forever; and let the whole earth be filled with His glory. Amen, and Amen."This King is of the seed of David (Isaiah 11:1-10) according to covenant, and in His rest, shall the nations rejoice (Isaiah 11:10). WHO IS the king ? It is clear from Psalm 2, where the rebellion "against the LORD and His anointed" proceeds, moved also by the kings, that it is the SON, of whom it is written, "Kiss the Son lest He be angry", and again, "You will dash them with a rod of iron" (Psalm 2:9). Begotten from the dead ion vindication and victory, in triumph and in truth (as in I Cor. 15:20-21, Revelation 1:5,17-18), He has this as His sustained place.
BEHOLD THE KING! WORSHIP HIM!
Thus in Zephaniah 3:5,17, it is the LORD who is in their midst as we cited, and yet from Matthew 18:20, it is Christ who will be in their midst, even when He leaves for the time, this earth. To the LORD will every knee bow (Isaiah 45:22-23), HE being the ONLY GOD so that neither is there ANY OTHER (Isaiah 44:8), nor does HE KNOW of any other: hence the determination. Yet it is to CHRIST that every knee is to bow (Philippians 2:1ff.). It is HE who is THE first and THE last (Revelation 2:8, Isaiah 44:6), even "the LORD, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of Hosts". There is NO OTHER. This He affirms with a repetition as to those all but moronic in mind; but it is still not enough for the blindness of the deaf, and the deafness of the blind whose faculties are dimmed in the face of His insistence. This ? You do not have to be a school teacher to know its name: rebellion.
But with God, rebellion does not alter rule; it merely requires costing where compassion attends, and it is costed, in the Cross.
There is ONE LORD and there is Christ who is LORD OF ALL. Quite simply there is this empathy, sympathy, harmony, unity, oneness of disposition, nature and Being, so that when God sends His everlasting word into flesh, and begets by the Holy Spirit, He is not begetting what is not there, but the One who, being begotten INTO FLESH, then says, that God loved Him before the foundation of the world, and that HE HAD glory with the Father then. It is transmission, not creation; for the whole of creation - even everything that possibly CAN bear the name of creation, is HIS creation (John 1:1-3).
It is THIS pre-eminence (Colossians 1:18) which He has in ALL things, that being Christ's, is given to a man, that man, the One who came, THE Lord, The LORD*2 and THE God (Matthew 28:20, John 20:28), THE Prince of Life (Acts 3:15), incarnate, so that man is not lost in the dust-bin of circumstances, garnished irrelevantly with pride, but shown in an elevation truly divine, yet this is NOT through grabbing it, but through receiving the One who HUMBLED Himself to BECOME in the FORM of a man, that many might from this our race of mankind, being redeemed, be brought to the knowledge of the Lord, to their God, and to that eternity, bathed in that glory which is God's, but which to His adopted children will be like the light of day (Revelation 21-22).
THAT IS HOW Christ can in all things have the pre-eminence and be LORD of all when there is only one Lord and He ? He is God. Thus, intrinsically immortal, though divested of the form of flesh in the crucifixion, He took it again, being buried and then raised, for "it was not possible that He should be held by it" (Acts 2:24 i.e. death).
THAT equally is how YOU who are mankind, need nothing of this wilful self elevation, this atrocity of believing in yourself, as the Olympic cult and culture tends to make it, only to be removed with withering satire and due scorn from heights of imagination to depths of shame (as in Daniel 12, Psalm 2, Mark 9, 12). You need the humbling of Christ, who became of our format and lived amongst our race as a man, and through Him and the redemption from sin, not least the sin of pride and absurd pretension (cf. Psalm 19:14), to find yourself a child of God (I John 3:1ff.). What manner of love, as John declares, has been shown!
What manner of love has the Father
shown to us, that through His only begotten Son, we might be called the
children of God, exclaims the apostle. We have, he declares, "seen
with our eyes... looked upon, and our hands have handled"
this very word of God incarnate (John 1:1-14), this "eternal
life which was with the Father and was manifested to us".
It is He who was from the beginning (I John 1:1), and He it is who is to
the end, whose name shall endure when the earth passes, and which was before
it came.
THAT is the HUMANITY which needs to be glorified
for the apt and sufficient reason
that HE IS GLORIOUS.
THAT is His nature.
What is yours ? Are YOU glorious
? Really ? Or are you a sinner ? Actually. When you repent, seek the Lord,
and when you come, then come to HIM, not to some sawn-off shot-gun creation
of the mind. THAT does not save, for there is to be a famine. It is one
God will produce. Listen:
HE is the One who was to come,
has come, of whom this would be said! It is the LAMB who is the temple
in Revelation 21-22, WITH the Father. Both have ONE throne (Revelation
22:3). It is to HIM with the Father that glory is for ever to be given
(Revelation 5:12-13), though NO glory that is God's is for ANYONE to be
a gift (Isaiah 42:8).
What is foul, a foul as in a sport if you like, a false claim, a clamour without right, for MANKIND, is a felicity for Christ; for Christ, deity, became a man, and we are mankind. Therefore those of us who receive HIM, receive the meaning of mankind, the source of the glory, the prodigy of the wonder, the origin of the praise WITH humility, which He, even He has shown. It is HIS, and to Him it belongs (Philippians 2:1-10). His by nature, He assumed our nature that from that nature's ills delivered, we might be accorded a new nature, and find in Him, the supernatural, the communication which re-creates, even that which is by the word of the Creator, who is God alone (Isaiah 45:12, 44:8,24, 46:9).
It is then, ONLY THEN, that as true athletes we can begin to compete in the glorious enterprises of God, to outdo mediocrity with reason, to bid higher the bar of endeavour with modesty, and to attain to the glory of God, what the glorious God has put into us, that we might use it, in all unity of the brethren and acclaim of soul, for the wonders which GOD has wrought. As Christ put it, when we have done ALL, THEN, being redeemed, we are but unworthy servants... but there is more. IF we abide in Him, and watch His ways, then He calls us friends.
The very air is filled with glory in His presence. It only needed to be ... SITED! not sighted as in flesh.
The very air is filled with glory
in His presence. It only needed to be ... SITED! not sighted as in flesh.
Not thus seen in the vanity of carnal eyes, or slighted in the abyss of
wilful ignorance, but received in its place, the eternal source, is the
Saviour, king and Lord - ONE LORD, who is Lord of all:
"The Lord is one, and His name
one" - Zech. 14:9.
The very air is filled with glory in His presence. It only needed to be ... SITED! not sighted as in flesh. Not thus seen in the vanity of carnal eyes, or slighted in the abyss of wilful ignorance, but received in its place, the eternal source, is the Savour, king and Lord - ONE LORD, who is Lord of all: "The Lord is one, and His name one" - Zech. 14:9.
THAT is the One: serve, worship, delight in and find your base, basis and creed, power, purity and purpose, in HIM!
Man
need not be lost. His Creator, God, became one of his race, that a better
race might be run, that of the redeemed, who celebrate Christ (Philippians
3:20-21), the One who IS! has been and will be (Revelation 1:5-8, 2:8,
4:8, 22:3).
NOTE:
Reference: See also intimately in this field: Benevolent Brightness or Brothy Bane 82
*1
Zechariah 14:9 is fascinating.
We read in Zech. 14:3 that the LORD (the divine Being of whom there is, as we have noticed, ONE) will go forth and fight against the nations afflicting Israel. We find moreover that "His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives", famous for the being the site of His agony preparatory to His immolation as a sacrifice for sin. This Mount is then to be split in two (it currently is reported to have a fault). We find next that "the LORD my God will come, and all the saints with You" (Zech. 14:5). This is the message of which Revelation 19 so graphically, and in such detail, advises us. Then, as in Psalm 72, Psalm 2, the LORD is to be King and to rule on the earth, which is what we find in Isaiah 11 and 32 also.
In this setting, then, we learn from Zechariah this important fact. The LORD, whose feet are to alight on the Mount of Olives, and who is to be "King over all the earth", a Being whom we identify therefore without controversy as the Lord Jesus Christ (Psalm 2, Revelation 20:4, Isaiah 54, Acts 1:11, Matthew 24:38-44, 24:31ff.), and in fact as to format, seed of David as in Isaiah 11. HE being King, and being present, and having returned to the earth as He left it, according to decreed plan in Acts 1, is now given further specification."The LORD is one, and His name one."
The
thought that perhaps the Lord might not be one, or that His name might
not be one; that there would be some kind of bifurcation, duality of kind,
inherent plurality is scotched. It is killed. The opposite is true. The
LORD is the One who comes. The LORD is the One who rules. The LORD is the
One who is King. The LORD is the One who is returning in like manner as
He went. HE is the One who is Christ. Further, HE is ONE. His NAME is ONE.
And the NAME in question is LORD, the name of absolute deity.
Christ,
the King, IS GOD. End of story. God internally has society; but as a Being,
He is One. When CHRIST is in view, HE IS GOD, without qualification. Now
in His glory (cf. Luke 24:26, John 7:39), His NAME IS ONE, and HE IS THE
LORD.
To fail to concur is to be a pagan or an idolater. Let us consider this thing. If you do NOT worship this LORD, then you are a pagan. If you DO worship Him, as required for the Being called the LORD, but yet do not believe HE is the LORD, even this King, even Christ, then of course you are an idolater.
"Her
prophets are insolent, treacherous people" (Zephaniah
3:4).
The
avoidance of all humanism, paganism and unbelief for COMPANIONSHIP and
FELLOWSHIP is an entire requirement of the word of God, from Numbers 16,
where it is dramatic, to Romans 16:17, where it is categorical. Unwise
is he, is she, who disobeys.
Not only is the Judge of Israel, whom they smote on the face as in Micah 5, the ONE whose goings forth, proceedings have been from eternity, and the ONE who is designated GOD (elohim - Psalm 45), the King of Israel (Zechariah 9:9, 12:10, Isaaih 11:1-3), the Saviour who is God ALONE (Isaiah 43:10-11, Acts 4:11-12), but
Hence He, Jesus Christ, is both LORD and GOD.
That
is how the arresting and wonderful resting place asserted to be found in
the Messaih (Isaiah 11:10), is that which is God's own (Isaiah 26:3-4),
who HIMSELF confers rest (as also in Matthew 11:27ff.).
That
is likewise how Christ reveals the Father to whom HE will (Matthew 11:27)
and the Father gives to Christ whom HE will (John 6:37,44). They are, as
Christ says, ONE (John 10:30). They work as ONE, the honour is ONE, the
station is ONE (John 5:19-23), and He who speaks as Christ is the I AM
(Exodus 3:14).
To
reject this, His lineage of eternity as God the expression, the word, is
to reject WHO HE IS. If you had a mother from Poland, then to reject this
is an index to you, is to reject you. YOU are NOT someone who had a mother
NOT from Poland. Then the ONE who is designated as you, if not that one,
is a fiction. So here, the ones who make gods and exclude Christ as God,
make what is not there. What therefore is to be worshipped but not there
becomes an idol. The ONE however who is there is the One who came AS Christ,
incarnate by His desire and love, God the sent from God the sender (as
in Isaiah 48:16).
"You worship you do not know what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews... God is a Spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth".
Thus the HISTORICAL REALITY of God's revelation through the Jewish prophets, and the ignorance following from rejection of the same, is linked with the fact that Jesus Christ Himself is the Messiah, the ONE who is to reveal categorically and directly, the truth IN PERSON. In contrast with all this spiritual ignorance, such as the woman attested, saying, "I know that Messiah is coming, who is called Christ: when He has come, He will tell us all things," is His simple and ample declaration. "I who talk with you, am He!" (John 4:26).
All is
always resolved, as in all truth, when you come to what the reality is.
It shows itself, what it is, by what it does (if you do not find Him more
directly also, and first, as in John 14:10-12), by its consistency, insistency,
and by what it has done.
Coherence
in causality,it is all one. It says one thing. It can say nothing else. God is Almighty and the Almighty is God, and He has revealed Himself in ONE way, in ONE redeemer, and IS HIMSELF ONE and ONLY redeemer and Saviour, and says so, and acts so, and came so, with no competition in word or in deed. Like all reality, HE must be accepted for what, indeed for WHO HE IS.
in reality,
in the harmonious independent splendour of the Creator's majesty,
in experimental activity in the heart and according to the promises of God,
in life and its adventures,
in attestation checkable in the revelation of the Bible,
in predictive action, in moral grandeur and action according,
in person in nobility and sinlessness as Christ,
in redemption,
in resurrection of the body He as Creator first made,
in healing,
in helps innumerable,
in His speech of Christ coming,
as Christ come,
as Christ predictive:
"Who
is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ. He is anti-christ,
who denies the Father and the Son".
The Christ, being begotten, and HE ALONE (John 3:16), into the womb of a virgin for His vast redemptive enterprise (Ephesians 1:10), His insertion into the midst of sinners in flesh, in person in power, in humility - for reality need not boast - was gracious action alternative to our destruction, while His answers, His infallible truth, indefectible dynamics, glorious lowliness, His declaration in person of the truth (as in Ezekiel 34) came AS authentic work of the effective Shepherd, for He is saviour alone (as in Acts 4:11-12).
Not
man, but GOD, HE is our Saviour, our Lord and our King; for there is none
other, but He. The LORD is ONE and HIS NAME is ONE!
We
celebrate DEITY! And we are grateful that HE CAME as one of us, for our
salvation (Hebrews 1-3), and as such, with exquisite delight, we receive
Him, the Christ.
In terms of
Christian Apologetics,
this is verification.