All These Things...Pt 2 of 2

Now is the tossing on the waves of a troublsome world

Christ is all our hopes for time and time to come. Hope is reasonable only as

it is scriptural. For it is by scripture that we have a good look forward. A look

that Jesus Christ is coming very soon, coming for all His people, to gather

together all His family, that we may be for ever with Him. We can bear hard

things without murmuring. We know the time is short. Now is the schooling,

then the eternal knowing. Now is the tossing on the waves of a troublesome

world, then the quiet harbor. Now is the scattering, then the gathering. Now

is the time of sowing, then the harvest. Now is the working, then the wages.

Now is the cross, then the crown. I have no power to discern the complete

purpose of God. But how deep is that little expression “God is love”. Christ

will open the mines connected to that sacred truth. And Christ will open the

minds connected to that sacred truth. Take heed that we do not make a Christ

of our faith. It is not to be sacrificed; it is not to suffer death. Our faith is the

eternalness of God. The beginning from everlasting. Scripture challenges

our faith by the assertion that everything, without exception, is of God. What

is not of the power of God? All things are of God. God is responsible!

Let’s put reason and thought to it so we can see amazing implications. God

is responsible for everything. He is responsible for the good and the bad.

Whatever happens, know God is behind it. If there is calamity in a city, will

calamity in a city

not the Lord have done it? He orchestrated it because. God pays punctilious

attention to every of even the smallest of things. There is nothing random

with God. Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive

evil? Who would limit Him, perhaps seeing Him as a one-dimensional God.

Life is at God’s discretion. We must understand the supremacy of God. His

election relinquishes the control of their thoughts and their words to God. The

wicked desires to kill us, but God constrains them. Why are all things of God

purposed in faith? Accordingly, we will not be judged by our actions and

inactions. We will be judged by our thoughts, which is where we reign

supreme. But it is God who allows us to carry out or not to carry out the

thought. God is the God of the heart, and He knows it is our thoughts that

determine who we are. This is how our belief depends not on natural human

investigation but on God’s own words and promises, the faith once delivered

to us. This is the acclaim bursting forth in the hearts of all who have come

into contact with the living Christ and have been freed from sin. It is extremely

satisfying when we can express ourselves completely and forcefully,

especially when we are uttering a deep conviction or are putting into words

a strong feeling of love for all these things that Christ is doing in our lives.

Upon reflection, we can appreciate that when God the Father speaks

eternally from His own depths, His “Word” is perfect, complete, and utterly

expressive of Himself, for His Word is Jesus Christ, the Son who became

man. We all should approach every passage in God’s word with a real sense

of expectancy. That the world might see us, his people, is in accordance with

the eternal purpose which God carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord. Christ is

the mystery of truths to be embraced in loving contemplation. And God is the

manifold wisdom of every cause which can never be resolved by

investigation but is to be savored and reverenced. All these things are hidden

from the natural mind. But are revealed to the spiritual mind in terms of faith.

There is a higher meaning to mystery accessible to those who know and are

higher meaning to mystery

initiated into the mystery and come to grasp some dimension of it; it is the

deeper reality of things. Mystery finds its principal role in the concept of

revelation. Built on the pillars of the covenant, God’s self-revelation makes

the history of salvation available to us, a history in which the God of Israel

with reason bestows the revelation of mystery. He not only reveals the

mystery of His will, but He communicates to men and women the mystery of

His personal triune life. In the Incarnation of the Son, God comes in person

to communicate Himself to humans. The Incarnate Son is the perfect

revealer of the Father and the mystery of the Father’s love for the world,

which is followed by the pouring out and sustaining gift of the Holy Spirit. In

the logic of revelation, there is no need for conjecture regarding what the

divinity keeps hidden because God takes the initiative to make Himself

known to His election. In biblical revelation, mystery no longer represents the

realm wherein God hides Himself but instead represents the rich sphere in

which He communicates and directs Himself toward us. Mystery ceases to

be a certain withholding of knowledge and instead becomes a certain offering

of knowledge. As in the Old Testament, the secret, or the mystery, refers to

the revelation of the “last things.” This revelation presents the relationship

between God and human beings finding its completion in the New

Testament, wherein the economy of salvation, is that part of

divine revelation that deals with God’s creation and management of the

world, particularly His purpose of salvation accomplished through the elect,

whose economy of revelation is dominated by the event of the Incarnation of

What Jesus tells us in darkness...

the Son of God. Mystery, then, does not deal with a knowledge reserved for the elect few. On the contrary, it refers to a message destined to be conveyed freely to all people through the teaching of the word. What Jesus tells us in darkness, that speak we in light: and what we hear in the ear, that preach we upon the housetops. We direct truth to all people, without exception. It is the offering of the personal life of God Himself.

We are at the final moment, and we are to know all these things by faith.

Please reason spiritually with this next set of words. Our faith, as it is of

Christ, needs to understand itself as dwelling in the realm of mystery, of that

which exceeds and overwhelms any language and concepts with which we

seek to understand it. We must never think that just because God knows His

election by purpose and we have reasoned with Him to come to this

understanding, that we are saved in that reasoning, in that understanding.

We are saved by faith. Our faith is in every thing that God purposes. This

includes seeing the death of our children, the sufferings of the world, and

knowing by faith that if these young ones suffer not death at this time they

might loose heaven in growing to hate their oppressors in later years. We

may ought to eliminate our desires in order to observe the mysteries. We

may ought to have desires in order to observe the manifestations of God’s

purposes. There is this great barrier in the repairing of the breach. It is the

lacking in wisdom because of the abandonment of reason. It is reasoning all these things that explodes our understandings beyond our apprehension and comprehension, not only because our knowledge has certain irremovable limits, but because in it we come upon a something inherently ‘wholly other’,

whose kind and character are incommensurable with our own, and before

which we therefore recoil in a wonder that strikes us chill and numb. This

Wholly Other in mystery is the unknown, but through forgiveness this

'unknown' becomes known, is disclosed, as 'The Holy One'. God is the

Highest Being that is the key to the meaning of the whole of being. And His

highest task may be known in His purpose according to election. Let us not

be overly concerned with the “what” for we know what the “what” is in His

purpose. We are to consider the “how”. For the “how” of it is based on our

accord with Christ. This accord requires and determines that and how the

faith enters into the deity of Christ. The faith of Jesus makes the whole of

being transparent to our human understanding. This faith in conjunction with

the principle of sufficient reason. Please, please, think on this; the result,

following from the intention, is the mystery in relation to the whole of being,

including, of course, the Highest Being. And so, where everything that

presents itself in the light of coherence, God can, for representational

thinking in the exalted and holy mysteriousness of His distance bring us into

His election by purpose. Let us not be arrogant in our thinking. May we fall

on our knees in awe before our Most High and Holy God.

What gives reason to all these things is that God is that which is our faith.

For if the revealed God is not simultaneously the hidden God, the life of faith

is itself threatened. If our faith is, then we shall never want to define God. For

we cannot worship what we can comprehend. This is that mystery which

remains concealed even in its unconcealment. We walk by faith, not by sight,

that faith may be converted into sight by the power of reason. Reasoning

narrows the gap between human knowledge and divine knowledge. When

any neglect the counsel to come to reason with God they deceive themselves

to be the sites of absolute knowing, to be the possessors and embodiment

Israel-Palestine Conflict

of absolute truth. This is the attitude displayed in the Israel-Palestine conflict. That their project becomes the end which justifies virtually any means results in violence, both literally and rhetorically. Faith lessens human zeal for violence for there is no confusing ourselves with God. The truth of faith enables those who have attained it to perceive the possibility of a revelation,

a higher view of scripture, in a way which is not open to those who have

never ventured beyond the frontiers of the realm of human intellect. Any who

fail to reason, puts God in a box and hearing is finished. The God who is a

Spirit and truth can never fit into our concept without remainder. Our

concepts are not adequate to God. If, on the other hand, we understand that

God and God’s works of purpose always overflow our understanding of them,

we just may remain open to ever new and renewed hearing of the Voice that

comes to us in revelation. How do you understand your faith? The answer is

always to avoid that which is not of God in the strictest sense. Studying with

others who resists reasoning is like studying the bible as divinely revealed

misinformation about God. The purpose of “misinformation” is to cause to fall

short. God is unknowable. Yet that does not excuse our conscience to forget

what truth we do know.

It is in all these things that faith must reign. In this concept faith is giving all I

know of myself to all I know of God. It involves my whole person suggesting

that as a believer I am not transparent to myself, and that God is not the only

mystery in this relation. I benefit from the understanding that I do not fully

understand myself, and that just as only God knows who God is, so only God

knows who I am. God’s reasoning is a great service to those for whom

thought is faith which seeks understanding. To God we say, “help me, help

me, help me” and “thank you, thank you, thank you”.

thank you God!

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