"It is Finished": the Sixth Word from the Cross

“It is Finished”: our Lord’s Sixth Word from the Cross

What is history? That simple question covers a multitude of complexity, profundity, richness, and depth. In the end, the question touches upon everything that exists.

Fundamentally there have been two answers to the question. One answer has offered meaning to history outside of history itself. It has talked of a perfect ideal (god) beyond history, beyond mankind. This has ever been the province of the Greeks and of pagan thought. Ultimately, this world-view denies the importance or significance of history because it looks to something beyond history. But we live and breathe in a historical world. The Greek view ultimately destroys mankind because it destroys the milieu of humanity and the warp and woof of our existence.

The second answer looks to history itself to give meaning. It sees history as a canvass upon which the Living God has painted a picture of Himself and of His creatures. Within the global tide of human affairs upon the earth runs a stream which ultimately becomes a mighty rushing torrent embracing all mankind. That stream is the history of God saving His people—which ultimately expands to fill the whole earth.

In the whole course of human history, along the full traverse of the history of redemption—which is real history—stand utterances or events which are the pillars of all else that exists. As we come to the sixth word from the Cross, “It is finished” we are faced with such a word.

This word shapes all human history, all human existence. It gives more meaning to life than a thousand thousand works of art, books, or musical scores. It dwarfs the affairs of government. All else lies beneath, subject to its glorious light. In case you have not realised it, your life is utterly shaped by the sixth word from the Cross. Millions upon millions of Christian brethren and sisters throughout the whole Christian era have found this one word (in Greek it is one simple word) gives more meaning, more hope, light, joy, courage and triumph than any other.

If ever there was a word that shook the very foundations of the world, that cast down kingdoms, that raised up the poor and wretched of the earth, that liberated men from sin, that brought them from the dungeon of degraded despair, and that forever broke the bastions of human pride—it is this one word “tetelestai”—it is finished!

Small wonder, then, that our Saviour having gone to Hell in our place; having borne the full weight of guilt for all the sins of all His people for all time; having emerged from Hell with that cry of dereliction that finally accomplished all things to do with our redemption—small wonder, that He asks His Father for something to moisten His lips. He is about to make the utterance before God in the hearing of the angels, the Devil and man that will provide the foundation of everything else. He needs to make the utterance clearly, unambiguously, strongly. It is too important to mutter or whisper. He needs to drink in order to speak forth.

We note that Matthew and Mark tell us He shouted these final words in a loud voice. This utterance is not the word of despair or pain or frustration. It is a word of pronouncement. It is a word of declaration. In this sixth declaration, the Lord is our Hero, our Champion, our great Priest-King.

How we marvel at the carefulness of our Lord Messiah. He is acting in His official capacity as our High Priest. Every word has meaning. Nothing may be neglected. He does all things well. In order to do them well He needs help. He needs to moisten His lips so that He can speak clearly, so that God and man, angels and devils may hear. May hear, and be left in no doubt.

We have said that this sixth word is one of the most significant utterances of all history. We will return to that thought in due course. But first, let us consider the form and meaning of the word itself, then the audiences—that is, those to whom it was spoken. The tense in Greek is quite particular. It signifies the end of what had been a process. The tense indicates the terminal point of a journey, such that while the journey had ended, all the accomplishments of that journey would continue. We use a similar construction in English, for example, when we say, “the wedding day had come.” We imply a deliberate process which had led up to that final day—which in turn would shape everything afterwards. So with this tense used in “tetelestai”. Whatever the Lord had been going through, it had now finally and completely come to an end.

Secondly, the word itself indicates finality. It means to bring, or come to an end, to complete. “It has been finished!”

Next we need to consider, to whom is our Lord speaking? First, and most importantly, our Lord is speaking to His Father. His work as Messiah upon earth has come to an end. His course of suffering as our substitute those long years has been accomplished. It has ended. We cannot do better than recite the words of the Heidelberg Catechism: “That during His whole life, but especially at the end, Christ sustained in body and soul the anger of God against the sin of the whole human race.” That has now ended. It has been finished.

Yes, . . . .especially at the end. We have meditated upon His descent into Hell. Upon how He stayed true and did not sin. We have reflected upon how He bore our punishment, sustained by His love for His Father and for us. The full price had been paid. It is finished! It is over!

He speaks this Word with all the authority that God has granted Him. Notice He does not say, “I have finished”, but He speaks impersonally—“It is finished.” There is great significance in this. It takes us back to the eternal contracts that lay between the Father and the Son—contracts for our salvation.

So often our Lord during His public ministry, has spoken of the understandings, the arrangements, the terms of contract entered into by the Father and the Son. Note, for example, this wonderful language of the High Priestly prayer: “I glorified Thee upon the earth, having accomplished the work which Thou hast given Me to do. And now, glorify Thou Me together with Thyself, Father, with the glory which I ever had with Thee before the world was.” (John 17: 4, 5). This is the language of covenant, of binding arrangements, of terms and conditions, of mutual commitments, of agreements, of a divine pact!

Our Lord implicitly evokes all of that covenant’s terms between His Father and Himself when He says in a loud voice, “It is finished.” It has been done Father, as we agreed. Praise be!

Now, dear Christian: note this, and note it well! The Father does not contradict, but confirms. He gives two immediate “words” of amen: the darkness ends and the veil of the Temple preventing access to the Holy of Holies is ripped apart. God confirms that the terms of covenant for our salvation have been completely and perfectly fulfilled—that it is, indeed, finished.

Within three days, the Father will provide the third (and greatest) amen by raising Him from the dead.

In the second place, our Lord cries out to the Father in the hearing of the angels. The Psalms speak of the angels of the Lord encamping around those who fear God. All during His life, our Lord was specially and constantly ministered to by these holy messengers and servants of God. In the Garden of Gethsemane, in particular, Luke tells us that an angel from heaven appeared, strengthening Him in His agony of heart.

But while Scripture does not explicitly state, it is obvious that the angels had been directed away from Him on Golgotha. He was alone. It was all part of the road of dereliction and being forsaken of God.

Jesus was utterly confident of His ability to command the angels. Even when arrested, He rebuked Peter’s attempt to rescue Him, saying “Or do you think that I cannot appeal to My Father and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” (Luke 26:53) And who can forget the terrible power of these wonderful beings. In one night, just one angel had destroyed the army of Sennacherib and 185,000 died at his hand. Twelve legions, or 72,000 of these creatures, could destroy the planet. And, we add, would have destroyed the planet, if He had not first prayed, “Father, forgive . . .”

On Golgotha they had all been withdrawn. No longer could they look upon Him with love and favour. But now Jesus announces that it is over. Once again they might resume their ministry to Him, and join with Him in His triumphal procession as He is about to enter Paradise.

Thirdly, He speaks to His Father in the hearing of Satan. For a time during the hours of darkness He had been consigned to the dominion of the evil one, to the powers of Hell, to the despite of him who utterly hates all mankind, and in particular, the Son of Man. That serpent of old had bitten His heel. That bite brought with it a pain beyond our comprehension or experience.

Our Lord’s sixth word carries great meaning for the devils. In their hearing also He pronounces that it is over. They have not triumphed. Rather, He has triumphed over them. He has not joined with them in their despite, their despair, their hatred of God. The head of the serpent has been crushed. All that is evil in the world, all the works of the Devil, all the influence of the Prince of Darkness and the powers of the air will now be removed and destroyed as a consequence of Messiah’s pronouncement: “it is finished.”

Finally, He speaks in our hearing, for our benefit. It is for us principally and primarily that He has asked for the sour wine, that we might hear and witness what He says to the Father. For the Father sees and hears in secret. Our Lord might have spoken these words, “it is finished” in His heart to His Father. But no—these words are to be spoken out, publicly, in our hearing. Ever the Shepherd, ever concerned for the welfare of His beloved sheep, it is for our sake that He speaks out loudly.

Tetelestai! It is finished! What a comfort and consolation those words have been to the Church down through the centuries. How often we, along with countless Christians, have meditated upon them in our dark watches of the night. If there is one Greek word you should know, one Greek expression you should make it your business to understand, one Greek word that has become the sublimest word in all history and human language it is “tetelestai”, the sixth word from the Cross.

Man is born to sin as the sparks fly upwards. It is ever part of our existence to try to cover our sins, to make our own atonement for them. It is ever our temptation pridefully to seek to add to the work of our Saviour. Or, when the pendulum swings along the arc of sin, it is ever our want to despair and doubt that enough has been done, that our sin is truly covered, that we are washed clean and that our sin is utterly taken away in the sight of God.

But this sixth word cuts through it all. How often we find faith and hope in this word. I hear it spoken so clearly, powerfully, meaningfully, as if I were standing at this very moment at Golgotha. It is the sum of all my hope. It is the assuaging of all my doubt and fears. It enables me to sit clothed and in my right mind. It is to me more precious than life itself. Because of this one word, goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

His work of atonement has been completed. It is over. It is done. On His shoulders, as He walked through Hell, He carried the guilt of Adam’s first sin. He bore Abraham’s lies. He bore the guilt of David’s murders. And to my fathers' sins, mine were added and heaped upon Him, and He bore them all. He stood before the bar of God’s justice and having stood there and having gone to Hell, He returned and said it had been finished. It had been completed. He wanted me to hear this word. He knew I needed to hear this word.

And so, I have been set free—and not me only, but all His people.

There are three great proclamations in Scripture of things being finished. All three are pillars or foundations of history and of our collective life. The first is found in Genesis 2:1: “thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts.” Because creation was completed, God rested; so the Sabbath was established. Creation completed is the first pillar of history, of our lives.

The third great proclamation of things being finished is found in Revelation. The seventh angel pours out the seventh bowl and from the throne and temple comes a loud voice, declaring “It is done.” (Rev. 16:17) As a result, judgment falls upon Babylon, and we are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev. 19:9) and the eternal Sabbath.

The beginning of history. The end of history. Between these two is the central pillar which upholds the bridge of history. The central pillar is the triumphant cry of our Saviour to the Father at the end of Golgotha: “It is finished.” It is indeed a word that shapes the entire course of mankind upon the earth.

It utterly shapes the life of the Church, of every believer. I say again, it is the most significant word that any man has uttered (or will utter) in all the long years of mankind upon the earth.

This is the undoubted Christian faith. Thus it was confessed by our forbears, in both formal confession and in hymn.

“. . . we justly say with the apostle Paul that we know nothing save Jesus Christ and Him crucified; we count all things but loss and refuse for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord, in whose wounds we find all manner of consolation. Neither is it necessary to seek or invent any other means of being reconciled to God than this only sacrifice, once offered, by which He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.” (Belgic Confession)

“Hark the voice of love and mercy
Sounds aloud from Calvary;
See! It rends the rocks asunder
Shakes the earth, and veils the sky.
‘It is finished!’ ‘It is finished!’
‘It is finished!’ Hear the dying Saviour cry
Hear the dying Saviour cry!

“’It is finished!’ O what pleasure
Do these precious words afford;
Heavenly blessings without measure
Flow to us from Christ the Lord;
‘It is finished!’ ‘It is finished!’
‘It is finished!’ Saints the dying words record.
Saints the dying words record.”
Uncertain author

You too, dear Christian, mark it well, and enter into the Sabbath rest of our Lord. Let that great triumphant cry from Golgotha guard your heart in the dark watches of the night and never forsake you as long as you shall live.

Become Obese--Your Government Needs You

Obesity: A Pseudo-Epidemic and Its False Cure

It's official. We have a new epidemic. It's called obesity. The threat is dire. The consequences unspeakable.

Athenian politicians and governments love apocalyptic epidemics. They allow them to take on the patina of being “Great Redeemers”. They are saving us from ourselves.

Recently, the NZ Government introduced an “anti-obesity” bill into Parliament. Yes, the government is going to ban fatness. The Public Health Bill claims to provide new ways for the Cabinet or the Director General of Health to act against the suspected causes of obesity. First it was tobacco. We didn't say anything because, well, tobacco is dirty. Then it was alcohol. That hurt a bit more, but, what can you do? We still did not say anything. The government knows best—and let's not forget all those super educated health professionals (aka highly paid bureaucrat—consultants.) We placidly and supinely let the government restrict, ban, control, and propagandize. We let politicians tell us what to think.

Now it is food. It's too late to do anything now. We have already let them in. The doors are wide open now, and they cannot be shut.

What will happen? Well, we will have taxes on obesity-causing food. We will have restrictions on advertising food and drink that cause fatness. We will have endless sermons and lectures and pontifications from politicians, governments, bureaucrats, and other go-gooders. The fast-food industry as we know it will be black-balled. Subsidies will be given to “Tofu Take Out” joints.

Why? It is a simple question. Why is the government engaging in this new evangelical campaign—apart from its own moral self-righteousness? Money. Western governments are concerned about all the collateral diseases that accompany obesity, for which the taxpayer will have to fund treatment. Billions will have to be found for treatment of heart disease, kidney disease, diabetes, and other diseases that result from obesity.

Enter the fly-in-the-ointment. A recent authoritative, scholarly paper produced in Holland, published in the journal PloS Medicine (“Lifetime Medical Costs of Obesity: Prevention No Cure for Increasing Health Expenditure”) has demonstrated that obese people cost the health system less in the long run. We could also add heavy drinkers and smokers to this list.

Why is this? Obese people live shorter lives. Healthy, gym addicted, diet conscious people live longer, but tend to die from longer term degenerative diseases. It turns out that total lifetime health spending is greatest for healthy people. In other words, if the government is successful in making us more healthy in its attempt to reduce the socialised medicine spend, the more the costs of socialised medicine will rise. The government has been, and increasingly will, waste millions of your dollars trying to make you healthy. If it is successful, it will end up spending even more than it otherwise would have.

Ban fit people. Tax gyms. Subsidize fatty foods. Run tobacco education classes in schools to teach children the pleasures of the delightful weed. Become obese. Your government needs you, fat. The taxpayer needs you. Love those rolls. Let's have beautyflab competitions. I can just see the new TV reality shows now.

So, the economics don't stack up. Public health care costs are ballooning because we are living longer and more illnesses and diseases are treatable with increasingly sophisticated procedures. It turns out that trying to make us less obese by controlling what people eat will only make the problem worse.

Athens is stupid. Stupid in the extreme. But some will object. Should not Christians be concerned when people are in poor health? Surely the command, “Thou shalt not kill” requires us to do all we can to assist others to be healthy? Yes and yes. Surely, then, Christians should support socialised medicine and regard the anti-obesity campaign as laudable and do all they can to support it. No and no and no.

There is just a tiny, small matter of responsibility—personal and familial responsibility. Bluntly put, if you eat the wrong food and become obese you will likely die prematurely. Those are the consequences of your decision. If you feed your children garbage, they too are likely to have all sorts of severe health problems. You are responsible. You are accountable. If you want your children to die early, feed them rubbish. You will be allowed to face the consequences of your stupidity and folly. That is the truth. That is the authentic Christian position. The loving thing to do is to work within the rubric of personal accountability and responsibility because people are better off for it.

I can just hear the “tut tutting” Athenian liberals as they take another sip of pinot gris. “There are many who don't know how to take responsibility for themselves. They are victims. They are oppressed. We have to take responsibility for them.”

This is none other than the twenty first century version of the “white man's burden.” It was arrogant paternalism that led western nations into the reckless colonial era. The consequences are still with us today. But taking over control of countries and territories was justified as having a duty to “help them.”

A similar arrogant paternalism of western liberals has lead to a host of institutionalised evils, socialised medicine amongst them. The consequence is that it has encouraged virtually entire generations not to take responsibility for themselves and their dependants. It's always someone else's fault. Parents are now whining about food companies advertising on TV—wanting the government to “do something about it.” That will help solve our children's eating problems.

Try turning the TV off if its that much of a problem. Take responsibility. Take ownership. Be a real parent for a change. Try putting a decent meal on the table and if the kids won't eat it, take it away and tell them the next meal will be in five hours time. Lock the fridge in the meantime.

For too long successive generations have recited daily the modern Athenian liturgy:

High Priest of Athens: “We will fix it. Don't you worry. Just vote for us.”

People: “Right-oh. You fix it then. How much will you fix, by the way?”

High Priest: “Cradle to the grave, mate. Don't you worry. Cradle to the grave.”

Only it never can be sustained. It never works. It only creates bigger and larger problems on a nation wide scale. And they are here now.

The so-called national obesity epidemic is an outward physical manifestation of a widespread spiritual malaise of self-indulgence, irresponsibility, and a hand-to-mouth gratification. It is a vivid picture of the best that Athens can do. Generations have been taught to believe that others are going to run around them and their children, making things right for them. Cradle to the grave. Omni-competent, infinitely resourced governments will do the trick. We will love you. We will care for you. Just vote for us.

But Jerusalem says, that way may seem right to you, but its end is death. Stop it—now—for your own sake, and the sake of your children. You—yes, you—own the problem. Take ownership. Fix it. Be a real parent, for a change, not just a playactor. If you and your children are going to survive there are some things that are going to have to happen on your watch—and one of them is that you and your children are going to have to eat decent food—that is, if you want them to survive.

Who loves more? Jerusalem or Athens?

"I Thirst": The Fifth Word From the Cross

“I Thirst”: our Lord’s Fifth Word from the Cross

Our Lord's fifth word from the Cross marks a transition. Something has finished. Something different is beginning.

The passage of time is always significant in the Scripture. His coming into the world had been in the fullness of time—when everything was made ready. Jesus, Himself, spoke of His time during His messianic ministry—that it was not yet.

The apostles were always couching sermons and teaching in the frame of “In the past . . ., but now . . .” Consider the wonderful beginning to the Letter to the Hebrews: long ago, in the past, God spoke to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, but in these last days, He has spoken to us in His Son . . .

In what were the last days of the Jewish kingdom we have been spoken to by God in His Son. He is the exact representation of God’s nature, and He upholds all things by the Word of His power. He ascended to this position after He had made purification for our sins.

Our desire is to reflect carefully upon the seven words God has spoken to us in His Son, while He was upon the Cross, while He was making purification for our sins.

We have said that each word is weighty and filled with deliberate meaning. Each utterance is an official pronouncement.

In order to grasp something of the significance of these words, we need to see each word in terms of the passage of time as it occurred on that dread Friday.

Yes, there is a passage of time at Golgotha that is meaningful and significant. Too often we view the crucifixion of our Lord as an undifferentiated single event.

Yet the gospel accounts are quite deliberate. They are careful to point out the hours and the passage of time. We read of the third hour, when the crucifixion began; the sixth hour when darkness fell upon the land; and the ninth hour which was when the darkness ended. The third hour was nine o’clock in the morning; the sixth hour was midday; and the ninth hour was three o’clock in the afternoon. The fact that the Gospels are so careful and deliberate to record these details tells us that these times and the passage of time is very significant during the crucifixion.

Thus we may say that at Golgotha on that fateful Friday there are really two blocks of time, three hours each. These two periods, were sharply divided—literally as different as night and day. Daylight attended the hours of nine in the morning until twelve midday. It was during these hours that Christ carried out His last official duties toward mankind generally, His people in particular, and, finally, toward His mother.

The last three hours—from midday to three in the afternoon—are hours of stygian darkness that convey all the watchers to the very edges of Hell itself. But our Saviour does not just draw near to the horrors of Hell. He enters Hell in those hours. But not just Hell itself. He is cast into the fartherest reaches of the pit of destruction, to its deepest most desperate extremities as the guilt of all the sins of all His people for all time are laid to His account.

The spectacle is so terrible that no man can look upon it and survive. We have been told that it is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the Living God (Hebrews 10:31). Moreover, the Apostle says that our God is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29). In those hours of darkness, our Lord was both terrified and consumed. He had fallen into in the hands of God in the sense spoken of in Hebrews; the wrath of God was upon Him, was being poured out upon Him; days of vengeance had come to Him and fallen upon Him. We believe no living man could have witnessed this and remained in sound mind.

Towards the end of those three most terrible hours that the creation has ever witnessed our Saviour cries out, “My God, My God why hast Thou forsaken Me?” We have spoken of how that cry conveyed the depths of His suffering—the despite of desolation, of being cut off from God and His blessing—only to face the opposite—His wrath and curse.

But we have also spoken of the wonderful victory implicit in that cry. He does not hold back or cease from loving His Father, from actively seeking Him, from clinging to Him, from trusting Him, from addressing Him as, “My God.” May we say this carefully and reverently—He does not hold back in those dreadful hours from loving His Father, while His Father execrated Him, cursed Him, and hated Him for our sakes.

How vast and deep must the love of God be for us! How supreme is the Saviour’s love for each one! We can begin to understand something of what Paul means when he prays that we might begin to know the unknowable: that we may be rooted and grounded in the love of Christ and that we may be able to comprehend the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ, which surpasses all knowledge! (Ephesians 3: 18,19)

In the final hours before the Cross, we find our Saviour’s characterisation of the extent of His love for us typically understated—and therefore all the more powerful and compelling. He had instructed His disciples to love one another. Then He gave a measure for love: “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13) Then He added, “you are my friends, if you do what I command you.”

In those hours of darkness when He was hidden from us we understand something of the manner of His laying down His life for us—what it really meant to Him and what it cost Him. We have thought about what it meant to go to the extremities of Hell, to experience utter dereliction, and to be broken. So we come to understand something of how great His love is for us. He went to Hell for His friends, so that they may not have to go. Not only is it amazing that our Lord calls us His friends, but His love and passion for us went far beyond anything that we have ever been able to do for others!

During the days of the Old Covenant a mark of singular honour was bestowed upon Abraham, our father. He was called the Friend of God. Now the Messiah extends that honour to all His beloved people. “You are my friends . . . ” And He has proved it at Golgotha. Friend of God, am I. No-one can take that title of honour from me. None can remove it from you. Not death, not life, not angels, not principalities, not things present, not things to come . . . not any created thing shall be able to remove that title of honour bestowed upon you. His friendship proved and won not just by His dying for you, in your place, but the manner of that death. A death so terrible that no man could look upon it and live.

Towards the end of those three hours of impenetrable darkness, our Saviour “shows His quality.” He expresses His anguish to His still beloved Father. His suffering has not for one moment become mingled with unbelief. He is utterly broken, but He seeks God in love, need, and complete dependence.

And by the ninth hour it passes! We know this because John is careful to tell us: “after this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished . . .” (John 19:28). It was at this time that Jesus delivered the fifth word from the Cross. The word is “I thirst”. This word is followed by the final two utterances, “It is finished” and “Father into Thy hands I commit my spirit.” The Gospels tell us that these three utterances were all delivered at around the ninth hour—in other words, close together. They were all spoken after all things had already been accomplished. Thus, we learn that the Cry of Dereliction is also a sign of triumph, of ultimate proof through suffering of the merits, glory, the faith, and holy worthiness of our Saviour. He has triumphed over Hell; He has continued to love God; He has remained spotless and sinless throughout the extremities of bearing sin for us.

At the time of the ninth hour, at the end of the darkness, with the Cry of Dereliction all things had been accomplished. It is over!

However, we find John’s record of the fifth word a little puzzling. In the first place, we should ask, To whom was it addressed? We believe it was a prayer to His Father. While the prayer was heard, and answered, through the instrumentality of man (which is so often the case in our prayers) we believe that at this hour of the Cross, our Lord had ceased dealing directly with His people. He was, rather, totally focussed upon His work as High Priest presenting the only atoning sacrifice that has ever been accepted by God. Therefore, it is to God He cries, “I thirst.” It is a prayer of need.

This prayer confirms the holiness of the Son of Man. He does not cease for a moment, even though He had just returned from the most terrible torment inflicted upon Him by His Father, to relate to God as His beloved Father, Whom He loves and trusts utterly, and upon Whom He completely depends.

Secondly, the prayer, “I thirst” does not seem to fit with the Gospel commentary with which it is introduced. We read again: “After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished, in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, ‘I thirst.’” Our question is, How does this word relate to the accomplishment of all things and the fulfilment of the Scripture?—for it is very clear that John relates them.

We need to understand that while the battle has been won and our Saviour has triumphed He still has some last tasks to perform. He has to pronounce formally and officially that the battle is over, complete and finished. We will say more of this next time.

Secondly, He, as the forerunner of all His people, must also, like them, taste the first death. He has just tasted the second death, eternal death, and triumphed over it. He has been resurrected from it, as it were. Now He must taste the first death. His body must die, that He might be the first born from the dead of all of us so that He might have the pre-eminence.

This is the reason, we believe, that from the human perspective Christ died so quickly—though He had suffered an eternity of punishment. We know that crucifixion was normally a long, lingering death—often lasting days. But once He had emerged from Hell, having accomplished all things, having suffered an eternity for us, nothing further was left to do, except for His body to die.

But it is important that we all understand—we, the angels, and all other creatures, that this death of His body is not a mere giving up, an acquiescence. Rather He will lay down His life by His own volition and choice. He had been granted the authority to do that by the Father. In this fifth word from the Cross Jesus is gathering Himself for these last tasks so that the Scripture might be fulfilled and He might do all His duty. He is gathering His strength so that He might consign Himself to death.

Think again of these words: “I lay down My life for the sheep. For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. No-one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from my Father.” (John 10:15—18)

You cannot read these words without being impressed by their emphatic, insistent tone. The Father loves the Son because He determined, He chose, He willed to lay down His life for the sheep. He is not a victim in the sense of having terrible things happen to Him, beyond His control, that He did not deserve. Sometimes Christians have missed this. They have tended to sentimentalise the Cross. “Poor Jesus. He did not deserve this. I shouldn’t have let it happen. I am to blame.” Thus, they guilt-manipulate themselves over the Cross, and they never experience its liberating power.

This is not the teaching of Scripture. Jesus is not a weak victim. He insists that He be sacrificed. He has been granted authority over this. He demands it. He controls it. He chooses it. His heavenly Father gives Him that right and privilege.

Only in this light does the Cross transform from a thing of terrible dread to something of great glory. For the Cross becomes a thing of insistent, demanding love. Long before you and I ever lived, our Saviour demanded, insisted on the right to die for us. Dare we say this: He counted it His great privilege to die for us, His friends—such is the extent, the depth, the height, the breadth of His love for you and me. Only in this light does the Cross become something truly liberating—something in which we can truly boast, and about which we can become proud—for it manifests the love of God and His Christ for us in a way that nothing else does. That which is so great that it is said to pass knowledge becomes both seen and known at Golgotha.

Now many of us spend our days in mourning and great poverty of spirit. We know our sinfulness and moral depravity. We can get so burdened by our daily self-experience. This ought not to be. Beyond all our wretchedness, greater than all our sin, is this fact—that the love of Christ for you is so deep that He would rather taste the most extreme anguishes of Hell than lose you from His presence and fellowship. You, with all the Church, are that precious to Him.

At the end of the ninth hour, Christ is passing from being the victim of sacrifice, to the Lord of glory. All things have already been accomplished, and He now, once more, assumes control. By His own authority He has laid down His life. By His own authority He begins to take it up again. He needs to fulfil the final obligations of the Scripture—He needs to present the sacrifice of His body. He needs to carry out literally the sacramental sign of “This is my body, broken for you . . .”

As one writer has put it, He will not accept death as a fate, but He will perform it as a deed. He will present His offering before the Father as our High Priest. Central to these last tasks is the duty to pronounce to all creation the realities of what has just happened and is about to happen.

To do this He must pronounce. He must speak forth. He must declare.

But His throat is parched. He is terribly weakened. He must will life in the body away. He needs help to perform these last official duties. So He cries out for help to His Father. “I thirst”. The soldiers’ drink was a ration of cheap, sour wine—vinegar—usually mixed with water and eggs. One of them puts some on a sponge and lifts it up so that His parched throat might be cleared and He might speak.

We note the contrast between the earlier offering of wine and myrrh before the crucifixion began—a concoction to drug and dull the pain. But He did not take it. He would enter into the full cup of suffering. Now the pangs of Hell are over, He has triumphed, and He seeks help to speak. So, now He accepts the sour wine. Now He gathers up His strength to cry out with a loud voice the last great two triumphant utterances from Golgotha. He will leave that terrible place triumphant and victorious.

We have been “with” Him, as it were, as we have witnessed and heard His utterances from the Cross. We have been taken through the hours of daylight and we have watched uncomprehending throughout the hours of darkness. But time has moved on. Now we sense the darkness lifting. We sense the worst is over. We sense the far off sound of the silver trumpet’s dawning call. Our hearts are lighter.

Truly, it has been darkest before the dawn. We will now wait eagerly to hear His last two words, for in them lie all our hope and faith.

ChnMind 1:18 The Future of Marriage in Athens

Can Athens Restore Marriage?

“What goes around comes around.” There are many aspects of life that tend to display circularity. Fashion is one. Last year's fad is dead and gone―but, chances are, it will be revived and re-presented in a few short years time. If double breasted suits are out of fashion, just wait. Leave them in the wardrobe, and shortly they will come back into fashion.

Maybe marriage and stable families are like this. For the past three decades marital breakdown in Athens has increased markedly. The one man-one woman lifelong nuclear family looks like it is disappearing like the land-line phone system. It is tempting to think that this will be just another fashion, however. In time, the nuclear family will make a come-back. The pendulum will swing again.

Such optimism is pollyannerish. Athens cannot restore the institution of marriage and family. It simply cannot do it.

In the first place, consider the religious fundament of Athens―the foundation upon which all its life and culture is built. The principle of human autonomy, of man as god, of man as the master of his fate is the essence of Athens. Historically, this has worked out into two basic political and sociological constructs: either Athenian society has tended towards individualistic or collectivist organisation. In the case of the former, the autonomy of the individual against the collective or the corporate predominates. In the case of the latter, it is collective man, usually manifesting itself as the government, which predominates.

The twentieth century manifested both poles of human autonomy. It produced some of the worst collectivist tyrannies in all recorded human history, resulting in the most bloody, deadly century ever. Fascism and communism (together with their variants) was a twentieth century phenomenon. But as the century drew to a close, collectivist options disappeared from the world. Francis Fukuyama expressed this develoment as “The End of History and the Last Man.” (New York: Avon Books, 1992) He has often been misquoted―but he was arguing that the Hegelian dialectical rationalistic view of history had produced its last synthesis: democratic, liberal, free, individualistic man was taking over. The whole world, implied Fukuyama, would become democratic―that is, would embrace western liberal democracy. This would mean the end of history as we knew it. The final synthesis had been reached. The dialectic of history was over—or so he believed and argued.

Fukuyama was right at least in this: the end of the twentieth century had seen Athens, in the West, and increasingly in the East move to organise societies around the rights and autonomies of individuals. What is new (in terms of historical development) is the predominance of autonomist, individualistic, rights based nations and societies, on the one hand, at the same time as those societies were successful in casting away the vestiges of Christian influence, on the other. Since we are in uncharted territory, historically speaking, we do not know what lengths of devastation and destruction this will lead to.

But, at least one result is clear: monogamous, life-long marriage and the nuclear family has broken down―and the change is irrevocable as long as the two conditions stipulated above co-incide. Not only does Athens not want to fix the problem―it could not, even it tried. You cannot build the institution of marriage upon a foundation of asserting one's individual rights. The fundamental religious dogma of Athens―that I am the captain of my soul, the master of my fate―once it becomes consistently reified into a society organised along atomistic, individualistic lines (which has now happened at the “end of history”)―cannot maintain the institution of marriage. It is spiritually incompetent and unable to do so. Modern Athens, can no more return now to marriage than it can give up on its most fundamental religious dogmas and prejudices.

Fukuyama is right. We now have seen the Last Man―and the Last Man is so devasted and corrupted that he simply does not have the religious and moral fibre to sustain marriage. Once the social supports for the institution of marriage have been stripped away through the attenuation of Jerusalem in liberal western democractic societies, marriage is collapsing on every side.

A second reason why Athens is unable to restore marriage is the psychological and spiritual damage wrought upon the children that are produced under Athenian social arrangements. If modern unbelieving adults cannot sustain marriage, their children are ten times less likely to be able to do so. “Living arrangements”―whether the biblical institution of marriage, or Athenian parodies―are the most powerful conditioning and socialising influences of all upon children. God created it to be so. It is part of the fabric of the world, which cannot be shaken, and which cannot be escaped. Either the socialising impact is positive or it is not. Either way, the impact―its depth and pervasiveness―is virtually inescapable. We are comprehensively conditioned while children by the living arrangements and experiences wrought upon us.

Young people are deeply and permanently affected by the marital breakups of their parents. They are affected in such a way that they have become incapable of entering into marriage as defined by the Scriptures (that is, lifelong, monogamous, leaving and cleaving of a man and a woman). Leon Kass, in a remarkable essay, captures the problem:

The ubiquitous experience of divorce is also deadly for courtship and marriage. Some people try to argue, wishfully against the empirical evidence, that children of divorce will marry better than their parents because they know how important it is to choose well. But the deck is stacked against them. Not only are many of them frightened of marriage, in whose likely permanence they simply do not believe, but they are often maimed for love and intimacy. They have had no successful models to imitate; worse, their capacity for trust and love has been severely crippled by the betrayal of the primal trust all children naturally repose in their parents, to provide that durable, reliable, and absolutely trustworthy haven of permanent and unconditional love in an otherwise often unloving and undependable world. Countless students at the University of Chicago have told me and my wife that the divorce of their parents has been the most devastating and life-shaping event of their lives. They are conscious of the fact that they enter into relationships guardedly and tentatively; for good reason, they believe that they must always be looking out for number one. Accordingly, they feel little sense of devotion to another and, their own needs unmet, they are not generally eager for or partial to children. They are not good bets for promise keeping, and they haven't enough margin for generous service. And many of the fatherless men are themselves unmanned for fatherhood, except in the purely biological sense. Even where they dream of meeting a true love, these children of divorce have a hard time finding, winning, and committing themselves to the right one.

It is surely the fear of making a mistake in marriage, and the desire to avoid a later divorce, that leads some people to undertake cohabitation, sometimes understood by the couple to be a "trial marriage"--although they are often one or both of them self-deceived (or other-deceiving). It is far easier, so the argument goes, to get to know one another by cohabiting than by the artificial systems of courting or dating of yesteryear. But such arrangements, even when they eventuate in matrimony, are, precisely because they are a trial, not a trial of marriage. Marriage is not something one tries on for size, and then decides whether to keep; it is rather something one decides with a promise, and then bends every effort to keep.

Lacking the formalized and public ritual, and especially the vows or promises of permanence (or "commitment") that subtly but surely shape all aspects of genuine marital life, cohabitation is an arrangement of convenience, with each partner taken on approval and returnable at will. Many are, in fact, just playing house-sex and meals shared with the rent. When long-cohabiting couples do later marry, whether to legitimate prospective offspring, satisfy parental wishes, or just because "it now seems right," post-marital life is generally regarded and experienced as a continuation of the same, not as a true change of estate. The formal rite of passage that is the wedding ceremony is, however welcome and joyous, also something of a mockery: Everyone, not only the youngest child present, wonders, if only in embarrassed silence, "Why is this night different from all other nights?" Given that they have more or less drifted into marriage, it should come as no great surprise that couples who have lived together before marriage have a higher, not lower, rate of divorce than those who have not. Too much familiarity? Disenchantment? Or is it rather the lack of wooing--that is, that marriage was not seen from the start as the sought--for relationship, as the goal that beckoned and guided the process of getting-to-know-you?

(Leon R. Kass, “The End of Courtship,” http://www.ldolphin.org/endcourtship,) p.4.

“Maimed for love and intimacy. . . . Their capacity for love and trust severely crippled. . . . They believe they must always be looking out for number one. . . . (N)ot generally eager or partial to children. . . . Many are, in fact, just playing house-sex and meals shared with the rent.” The children Kass is describing are now participating in modern Athenian “living arrangements” mark II—that is, second generation. Those children that are produced by the mark II generation―what will they be like. If their parents were maimed for love and intimacy, their capacity for love severely crippled, etc. what will they be like? What will modern Athenian “living arrangements” mark III exhibit?

Kass is giving his observations and experience of US college life. But what he describes is virtually universal in the western (post-christian) world. For example, a recent demographic survey in Australia underscores the point. Unmarried women now outnumber married women for the first time since World War One--when a large proportion of marriageable men were in the trenches in France. Moreover, the analysis revealed that 51.4% of women were opting for a "singles" life-style in a new phenemenon called "Bridget Jones meets Sex and the City." The survey estimates that 25% of Australian women will never have children, and that there has been a rapid rise in "Single Person Urban Dwellings"--that is, people living alone. This trend is expected to increase rapidly. (Sydney Morning Herald, March 12, 2008) Marriage is breaking down rapidly in Athenian society and Athens will not be able to stem the tsunami.

A third reason why Athens will not be able to restore marriage, the genie having been well and truly let out of the bottle, is found in the ordinary patters of God's government of human cultures and societies. When a society deliberately spurns the Living God, as ours has done, consequences follow―and those consequences usually last decades or longer. The Bible speaks a great deal of the curses of the Covenant. Just as God promises blessings to the people that fear Him and serve Him, He also threatens curses upon societies that deliberately and wilfully turn away from the light that He has given them. And western liberal democracies have had a great deal of scriptural light―centuries of it, in fact—but have deliberately turned away.

The curses of unbelief can fall upon a society from external factors―war, disease, or natural disasters such as earthquakes. But they often fall through the internally worked out consequences of disobedience to God. Thus when God warns repeatedly that He will “visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me” (Exodus 20:5) we should understand that the evil consequences of a generation fall upon their children―to their harm and hurt―such that they depart further from God, and so bring greater damage upon themselves and the next generation, and so forth.

The comforting thing in all of this is that this anger of God, His cursing of a people who have turned away from Him, does not last for ever. It normally is worked out by the third and fourth generations. But how does it end? It ends when a culture or a people become so devastated and broken that they have nothing left, no hope. All their idols have been shattered and lie around them, while they sit in the dust. In despair, they might remember God, and they may repent and turn back to Him. That is how the curse ends. But Athens cannot end the curse. Athens is the curse. It will end only as people flee the fallen and devastated city and hasten to Jerusalem.

There were those who dwelt in darkness and in the shadow of death,
Prisoners in misery and chains,
Because they had rebelled against the words of God,
And spurned the counsel of the Most High.
Therefore He humbled their hearts with labour
They stumbled and there was none to help.

Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble;
He saved them out of their distresses.
He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death,
And broke their bands apart.

Psalm 107:10―14

Can Athens restore the institution of marriage? No. It is impossible. The whirlwind has come and is coming. God alone can restore biblical marriage to us. And He will. In His time. As it pleases Him. As He pours out His Spirit upon a wretched and broken people. Maranatha. Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus.

The Cry of Dereliction

“My God, My God Why hast Thou Forsaken Me”: our Lord’s Fourth Word from the Cross

In our vocabulary-impoverished age we no longer often hear the word “derelict”. In an earlier age it was most often used to refer to buildings that were abandoned, forsaken, and broken down. At times it was used as a noun to refer to the homeless alcoholic—and referred to a person who was likewise abandoned, forsaken, and broken down.

The Church has called our Lord’s fourth word from the Cross, "My God, My God why has thou forsaken me" the Cry of Dereliction. It is an apt title, insofar as human language can be called apt when we are speaking of Golgotha—for we struggle to comprehend or describe what is now taking place. We acknowledge that when it comes to the Crucifixion of our Lord, we quickly reach the limits of our comprehension and understanding.

Yet the word “dereliction” is meaningful and helpful. It indicates that our Lord has indeed been abandoned and forsaken, and that He has been broken. Not merely abandoned by mankind. Not merely by the members of His table—those who had enjoyed closest covenant bound fellowship with Him. But, most terribly—abandoned by God, forsaken by Him, and consequently utterly, utterly broken.

In the first three hours of crucifixion, our Lord had uttered just three words—all to His fellow creatures. The first was a word of restraining grace, asking the Father to suspend judgement for the terrible thing that they were doing to His only begotten Son—until such time as they knew what they were doing and had done. He was giving an opportunity for His enemies to repent—and, praise God, we have indication from the book of Acts that some subsequently did repent of their terrible deeds that day (Acts 15:5).

The second word is to the hateful criminal who is subsequently converted. He repeatedly pants out his plea amidst his agony, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom”. Eventually, Jesus responds and pants out His benediction to His new brother, “This day, you will be with me in Paradise.” That blessed word brings comfort to all believers, everywhere, in all generations. That word confirms beyond all doubt that salvation is of grace alone. Our brother-thief is utterly helpless, can do no good work, can perform no sacrifice, act, or religious ritual. He is outside the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Yet our Saviour pronounces his salvation and inclusion in the Kingdom. It is the most vivid illustration in all of Scripture, in all of redemptive history, that salvation is by grace alone, through faith in our Lord Jesus.

We have said that the conversion of the thief brought our Lord solace and encouragement in those first three hours, for always His great love and desire upon earth was to gather His sheep. If the angels in heaven rejoice over the repentance of one sinner, how much more the Son of Man inwardly rejoiced in those desperate hours at finding this lost sheep and bringing him home.

Before the darkness fell, however, He had one last official duty to perform. He had to break all earthly ties with His mother so that when she saw Him again, she would no longer think of Him as her son, but she would believe in Him as her Lord and Saviour. She would no longer be known as the mother of our Lord so much as our beloved sister in Christ. All during His earthly ministry, His official duties had caused a separation between Him and His family. That separation is now complete and irrevocable. He abandons His mother—not, however, to dereliction, but to the loving care of one of His apostles. Even as takes upon Himself the official High Priestly duty of substituting Himself for all the people, in order to perform this work, He substitutes John for Himself.

He is on the verge of making atonement for His people. He will now commence His great High Priestly work. He has one more duty to perform before entering behind the veil away from the eyes of the watching congregation: He must fully assume the High Priesthood after the order of Melchizedek. That High Priestly order knows no human descent. Melchizedek, says Paul, was “without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, he abides a priest perpetually.” (Hebrews 7:3).

Our Lord is entering fully into that priestly order. In Psalm 110 we are promised: “Thou has made him a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.” And so our Lord firmly cuts off his earthly descent. Now He severs descent from His mother. He is now without descent from father or mother. He is ready to assume the high priestly order of Melchizedek.

Once that severance is complete He enters fully upon His High Priestly work of sacrificing Himself in our behalf. The darkness falls. He goes to Hell. The darkness fell at noon and lasted three hours (the sixth hour to the ninth hour, Luke 23:44). During that time the veil of the temple—the curtain between the holy place and the Holy of Holies—was torn asunder. His people could now come freely into the presence of God. But let us think further about how this wonderful privilege was won.

Let us begin by asking, Why did darkness fall? In the first place, we see a connection with the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle. Before the face of God no man could come, except the High Priest once per year. For everyone else, the face of God was veiled and hidden. Sinners could not come near to the Holy One. The darkness at Golgotha is the ultimate fulfilment of the veil in the temple and all it represented. Our Lord is now being dealt with by God. He, as our High Priest, is dealing with God in our behalf; in these matters we have no place or part to play—although in them we have a most vital interest.

Further we sense that the darkness has something to do with the horror of what is transpiring. All the guilt of all the sins of all His people is being laid upon the Saviour. As the sin-bearer, He is being punished by God the Father. As the sin bearer, He is enduring the torments of Hell which in turn carry and execute the eternal wrath and hatred of God, the Judge of all the earth, upon sin and sinners.

No living man—none amongst us—can adequately grasp the depths of utter devastation, the extreme extent of suffering entailed. For we know that there are degrees of suffering and punishment in Hell. We believe that our Saviour suffered to the uttermost because of the enormity of guilt put to His account. He suffered more than any other before Him or after Him. The suffering was so extreme, so terrible, that the darkness graciously hides it from us for it is too terrible to look upon. Isaiah prophesies that His appearance was marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men. We believe this to be literally true on Golgotha. He was one from whom men hide their face—because the horror of the sight is too great to bear. The darkness spares the watchers, His sheep—it is a collective hiding of our faces. Had the disciples seen His face in those hours it would no doubt have driven them to insanity.

No living man has ever experienced forsakenness by God in any complete sense, apart from One. Even when God brings chastening judgements upon peoples and individuals, the sun still shines, food still sustains.

Let us try to express something of what was happening during those hours of darkness. Let us do so with fear and reverence, for the darkness is a warning not to intrude, nor to speculate. We believe that all that has been happening is summed up in the words of the cry of dereliction—which He utters towards the end of the three hours of being in Hell. Our Lord was, in every absolute sense of the word, forsaken by God.

In the Gospels it is one of the few sayings of our Lord that is recorded phonetically from the original Aramaic, and then translated into Greek (and ultimately, for us, into English). “Eloi Eloi, lama sabachthani”. This is deliberate. It helps to transfix these words in our hearts for all time. How often these words run through our minds as we meditate upon the Cross.

But, in addition, these words are a formulary. For Jesus is quoting the Scripture—and the deliberate citation in Aramaic is designed to reinforce that fact for the Church. It is wonderfully fitting that our Lord should quote Scripture at this time. Many of us have experienced depths of great suffering, and at such times, the only thing left oftentimes is to express those depths in the words of Scripture. Only the Scripture can convey our passion. That is why the Psalms are priceless. Jesus seeks to give expression to His anguish, and He takes hold of the words of Scripture, and utters the opening cry of Psalm 22.

Our Lord is taking this whole Psalm upon Him, not just the opening words. It is like announcing the text put before a congregation. His extreme weakness and the resulting breathlessness of crucifixion mean that He cannot quote more.

We can say safely that David’s cry of desolation and suffering is a foreshadowing, a forerunner of David’s greater Son. But the elements are there, in David’s experience, at least superficially. David complains that God has deserted him, does not answer him, does not deliver him. He laments that he has been given over to the ravages of the wicked, the evildoers are tearing him to shreds and his life is in tatters. Once he was close to God, once God heard and delivered him, but no longer. But yet he believes still in God and he vows that upon his deliverance (for God cannot break His Word) he will praise God in the midst of the Church.

We say again that David’s experience and lament, terrible though it be, is only a type, a pale reflection of what Our Lord is experiencing at Golgotha. In taking up the opening words of this psalm, our Lord is taking the whole psalm to Himself—the lament about not being heard, the complaint about being torn apart by the cruel despite of the wicked, the fact that God did not answer. All are there. And so, by implication, is the expression in the Psalm of faith in His Father that He will not be lost forever, and that He will be restored to the congregation of the Lord.

We cannot fathom the depths of His dereliction, nor the suffering that resulted from it. We do know, however, that to be in fellowship with God is the highest joy and greatest blessedness of mankind. Every believer has tasted something of that. We also know that our Lord throughout His life experienced that closeness and fellowship and it was His great joy and delight. He often spoke of it. His experience of God, His knowledge of God, His communion and closeness with His heavenly Father was throughout His life far, far greater than anything we have ever known. The Son loved the Father and the Father loved the Son.

Consider the words of our Lord at the raising of Lazarus: “Jesus raised His eyes, and said, ‘Father, I thank Thee that Thou heardest Me, and I knew that Thou hearest Me always’ . . . “ (John 11: 41,42). That statement illustrates the deep intimacy between the Father and His Christ.

Now the hour is come when God no longer hears Him. But Jesus does not cease from raising His eyes and praying in faith.

We will have more to say about this later, but we begin to understand that in those hours of darkness the Father has left the Son, but the Son does not leave the Father. He does not stop believing. He does not stop seeking. He does not stop crying out. There are two pictures in Scripture which go some way to helping us understand the significance of this.

The first occurs in Job. The extreme sufferings of that holy man are documented in Scripture and the point comes where his wife utters the counsel of Hell: “Job, curse God and die!” Job was rejected by God; his boast, his hope, his faith in God were nothing more than cruel mockeries. His wife catalogues the natural and ordinary response of a sinner in such circumstances. God has let you down. Curse Him. That is, God has rejected you. You reject Him! Get your own back!

As Jesus experiences the full dereliction of God forsaking Him, the full weight of divine vengeance upon the sin He now bears, He becomes utterly broken. But in this terrible hour He is also being tempted—like as we are—to retaliate in anger and unbelief. “Curse God, and die!” is Satan’s counsel.

The second picture occurs in the Garden of Eden after the Fall. Man had sinned, and yet God seeks for man, but man hides himself. Now at Golgotha, in the darkness, this is reversed. It is God Who has rejected the Man. It is God Who has hidden Himself from the Christ. But it is the Man Who seeks, Who will not let God go, Who continues to believe and hope, Who refuses to curse God and give up. He cries out to His Father.

Out of the great darkness, He comes to God, though God does not bid it. He is not summoned, but He believes in His Father, and He comes. He speaks to God, though God is silent and will not, cannot, answer. Yet. He continues to believe that He will be heard. He calls out in the darkness.

Satan wants Him to curse God and die. But He will not comply. Instead with a loud voice He cries out, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me?” He still believes. He still clings to God.

He loves His Father still. Adam hid. The Second Adam will not hide. He clings to God, though He is the bearer of Adam’s sin—and yes, of all his descendants.

What glory and triumph is conveyed in one small word in that Cry of Dereliction. It is the word, “my”. “You are My God. I will not let You go. I love You still. I believe in You. I believe in Your goodness. I believe that You are faithful to Your Word.” God has forsaken Him. God has let Him go. He is utterly spent and broken beyond recognition—for us.

But still He clings to His heavenly Father. As we contemplate this, the waves of emotion break out over us.

“Alas! and did my Saviour bleed,
And did my Sovereign die?
Would He devote that sacred head
For such a worm as I?

”Was it for crimes that I have done
He groaned upon the tree?
Amazing pity, grace unknown,
And love beyond degree!

“Well might the sun in darkness hide,
And shut his glories in,
When Christ the mighty Maker died
For man the creature’s sin.

“Thus might I hide my blushing face
While His dear cross appears;
Dissolve, my heart, in thankfulness!
And melt, mine eyes, to tears!”

The Long Dark of Winter

The Earth is Cooling—Rapidly!

The official temperature statistics for 2007 are now in. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, and RSS) have released updated data. All show that 2007 saw a sharp drop in global temperature.

2007 was one of the coldest years on record. China had its worst snowstorm in over one hundred years. Some American states recorded the highest snow falls since record keeping began. Baghdad saw its first snow in all recorded history. (http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Monitors+Report+Widescale+Global+Cooling/article10866.htm)

Note the steep drop over the past twelve months. Another couple of years like this, and we will be urged by responsible governments to buy SUV's and leave them idling all night to increase global gas emissions. Imaginet—coal fired power stations will be viewed as the new saviour of the world. And, oh, I can just hear the sneering amongst the febrile mass media—this time against the new deadly enemies of humanity—the global cooling deniers. Imagine all the bureaucrats, the think tankers, the prognosticators that will be out of jobs. All the rules and regulations that will appear not just embarassingly quaint, but straight out cockamamied. What will we do with our emissions trading scheme? Where will Greenpeace be when you need it?

No doubt we will shrug our shoulders and see it as one more madding day in Athens—that great monument to human folly. Jerusalem, however, will see it for what it is: those who disbelieve God can end up believing anything—no matter how preposterous or stupid—and usually do.

There are a number of reasons why I have always been an anthropogenic global warming (“APG”) sceptic. (“Anthropogenic” meaning “human caused global warming.”)

The primary reason is grounded squarely on the covenantal faithfulness of God Himself. There has only been one apocalyptic calamity in all human history that destroyed mankind—almost completely. The Great Flood of Noah was the one and only occasion. (Genesis 6—9). In the aftermath of the Flood, the Living God made several declarations. The first is that He declared He would never again destroy every living thing. Thus, world-wide devastation and destruction of humanity and of life itself is simply not going to happen. He declared: “I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth, and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done.” (Genesis 8:21)

Despite the persistent prevalence of human sin, God will withhold universal judgment, life and the earth will be preserved. Humanity as we know it will continue upon the earth, until the time that the Kingdom of God be fully come.

Secondly, and particularly pertinent to global warming, God declared;

While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. (Genesis 2:22)

The seasons will cycle, and this will include an annual cycle of cold and heat.

Thirdly, to assure us of the certainty and infallibility of God's declaration concerning the climate and the seasons, and the continuation of mankind upon the earth God sets the sign of the rainbow in the heavens.

And God said, 'This is the sign of the covenant which I am making between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all successive generations. I will set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth. And it shall come about, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud, and I will remember My covenant which is between Me and you and every living creatures of all flesh; and never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh.' (Genesis 9:12—17)

Thus, claims that mankind is facing apocalyptic calamity that will lead to his and the earth's destruction should be excluded as possibilities from the start.

A second consideration leading to scepticism concerning AGW has to do with the sociology of knowledge. It turns out that all investigation, research, and learning takes place within pre-existing contexts and frames which predispose researchers to find evidence confirming the general frame with which they start. Thus, there is a strong bias towards discovering what one is looking for in the first place. This has always been the case—it is unavoidable.

That which is regarded as self-evident to an age or culture or academic discipline is usually the result of social conditioning rather than the hard evidence. The fact that other people with whom I associate or who form my window-on-the-world reference group believe some things to be true is likely to make those beliefs seem self-evident. That is not to say that hard evidence for a particular view or belief does not exist—but, it is to say that the conviction and certainty with which I hold a view usually arises not from the weight of evidence, but from the sociological context in which I live and move.

Hard scientists do not escape this conditioning phenomenon. The most effective scientists, however, have disciplined themselves to be self-conscious about the phenomenon and of the potential for, or actuality of, spurious conditioning. They have also, probably, read long and deep in the writings of Karl Popper (and others) on the unavoidable tentativeness and uncertainty of all scientific knowledge.

Unfortunately, the world is full of less-effective scientists who have to face very mundane things such as securing tenure at teaching institutions, research grants, winning peer approval, getting published—and otherwise furthering their careers. These very human realities always impact to a greater or lesser degree on the progress of scientific knowledge in general and the work of any scientist in particular. These realities act many times as the Achilles heel of proper scholarly scepticism and objectivity.

But the Achilles heel of scientific inquiry and research becomes dangerously exposed when scientists are enlisted by public policy advocates (also known as politicians and their retinues). That is precisely what has happened with the issue of APG. To further a political cause it helps to have to have access to money. The state has money (taxpayer's money). The Uberstate (the United Nations) has oodles of the stuff (also tax payers money). To get access to money one technique that can be very very effective is to shout “Doom!” loudly enough and sufficiently often. It helps, of course, to build a modicum of academic respectability to the threat and so facts and data will be selectively cited. Because professional scientists also have basic human needs and aspirations, it is very easy to secure their complicity. And because of the phenomenon of self-evidence being a function of social conditioning—they will comply willingly and will be able to maintain, at the same time, the utmost professional self-respect.

A final reason for a very healthy dose of scepticism regarding APG claims is the influence of very powerful organisations who have ulterior motives, to say the least. Large environmentalist organisations because they are fundamentally ministries of propaganda should always be treated with considerable scepticism. They have an axe to grind: it is big and they grind it ceaselessly. Power and influence come from notoriety. Notoriety comes from breathtaking, sensational claims. Sensationalism arises from jeremiads constantly trumpeted, warning of the imminent doom of the planet. The cavalier way these environmentalist jeremiahs treat evidence and truth is now well documented.

Another major axe grinding group that has entered the fray is the mass media. As environmentalist groups have discovered, the media know that notoriety and sensation sell. They increase circulation. If you were an editor of a national daily newspaper and you had to choose between two stories—one threatening doom to the planet due to global warming which requires urgent action, now! to prevent annihilation, and the other arguing that the evidence for APG is equivocal and needs to be carefully weighed—and your owners rely upon circulation for revenue, and your bonus is tied to circulation increases, which story would you be more predisposed to select? Now, that's a hard one. Let me think.

That is not to say that the media will always stay on the side of the APG brigade. It is instructive that the evidence sighted above of rapid and radical global cooling in 2007 has been ignored by all mass media in New Zealand to date. Not a peep. But, let a hint of scandal or notoriety start to emerge about APG propaganda, or let a few notables opine that thousands of people are going to die as a result of a coming ice age—then it will become a truly celebrated issue.

We do know that the earth has gone through both warming and cooling phases in the past. These were manifestly not the result of human activity. After all, Greenland did not receive its name from being covered with snow at the time. We know farmers were successfully raising crops and animals there in the early fifteenth century. Global warming with attitude. We also know this was followed by much colder periods.

In early 2007, jeremiads were proclaiming that 2007 would be the warmest year yet. Only it turned out to be the coldest in living memory—and in many cases—well beyond living memory where long run records are available. But I foresee a new global threat on the horizon—the pollution that will devastate the planet arising from years of accreted egg being wiped off the faces of multitudinous chattering classes.

The Christian Exodus from State Schools

The Unmasking of State Schools

The Southern Baptist Convention appears to be giving up on the public school system. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and a candidate for the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention has been urging Christian parents to have an exit strategy from public schools. He argues that public schools are going to become more and more hostile to the Christian faith. Therefore, it is time for the Southern Baptist Convention to work to set up a competing education system of schools and home schools.

In a blog posting back in 2005, he reviewed the debate that was starting to emerge at the highest levels in the largest evangelical denomination in the United States, as a resolution calling for Southern Baptists parents to conduct an audit of their local public schools with a view to removing their children was under consideration:

Those who fear that a resolution calling the public schools into question would be seen as extreme have a powerful argument behind their concern. After all, Southern Baptists have been eager advocates for the public schools in the past, and thousands of faithful Southern Baptists serve as public school teachers, administrators, and board members. Beyond this, millions of Southern Baptist families send their children to public schools each year. A resolution perceived as opposed to the very idea of public education would offend many active Southern Baptists, some of whom would scratch their heads in amazement that the convention would even venture into this territory.

On the other hand, the momentum is clearly on the side of those pushing for this resolution. Every week, new reports of atrocities in the public schools appear. Radical sex education programs, offensive curricula and class materials, school-based health clinics, and ideologies hostile to Christian truth and parental authority abound. These reports are no longer isolated and anecdotal. Forces opposed to what Southern Baptist churches and families believe dominate the public school arena--especially at the national level where policies are made and the future is shaped.

There is more to this, of course. The crisis in public school education has prompted some to reconsider the very idea of public education. Some now argue that Christian parents cannot send their children to public schools without committing the sin of handing their children over to a pagan and ungodly system. Fueled by a secularist agenda and influenced by an elite of radical educational bureaucrats and theorists, government schools now serve as engines for secularizing and radicalizing children.

Albert Mohler, “Needed: An Exit Strategy,” http://www.albertmohler.com/commentary_read.php?cdate=2005-06-17

The mask of state education is being stripped off. Underneath is a face implacably hostile to the Christian faith.

For decades Christians have supposed that they can redeem or rescue the state education system. By working within it, they believed they could reform it from the inside. Such brethren (and, now, predominately) sisters need to be honoured and respected for their commitment, their zeal, their hope, and their tireless labours. Nevertheless, we have to say their hope and belief was naïve. It was never going to happen. Never.

State schools are founded upon the myth or lie of neutrality. Ostensibly the state education system favours neither one religious belief over another. It purports to be even handed and neutral towards all. This is what the state educational legislation and ideology means by education being secular. Of course in New Zealand, way back in 1870 the Education Act decreed that education in the state system was to be secular. This has never changed.

But here is the point: when the state education system set itself up to be secular or neutral towards all religions, it was in fact adopting a deeply religious position. It was thereby asserting that man is the ultimate determiner and final arbiter of truth. That religion is as old as the Garden of Eden. The Serpent of old persuaded Adam and Eve to step outside of God's pre-interpreting commands and look at the world with a different pair of spectacles in which man would be like God, knowing good and evil for themselves.

The essence of schooling is teaching and imparting knowledge. The secular school's starting point is that man is god over all knowledge and defines it for himself. This is a deeply religious conviction. It is a pervasive religion. It lies at the foundation of all state schools. The Christian faith can no more be built as a superstructure on this rotten foundation than the crippled Titanic could stay afloat in the North Atlantic.

Naturally, since there are billions of non-Christians on the planet, each believing at root that Man is the arbiter of truth, the result is every type and stripe of knowledge and belief, of religions and mythologies, of isms and idols. In the religion of unbelief this is to be expected. As each individual determines truth for himself, a million flowers will bloom, to paraphrase Mao.

Secular education, state education, in the end does not really care which flowers bloom—as long as they are the product of man measuring truth for himself. The diversity of flowers is a natural part of the rich tapestry produced by man as god. Debates amongst unbelievers are in-house discussions only. Secular education can thus make room for (tolerate) a reinterpreted parody of Christianity. As long as “Christianity” is promulgated as just one more interesting idea, that may be true or may be false it will be tolerated by unbelievers. They may regard it as primitive, quaint, unscientific, ignorant—but in the end, if it is true for you, that's all that matters, since you are the authenticator of your own truth.

But, the real Christian faith will never be tolerated by state educational systems. For the Christian faith alone cuts at the root of the humanist belief system—it cuts at the root of the myth of man as god. The Christian faith alone declares that God is the determiner and conditioner of all truth, all reality, every atom, every particle, every moment—of all existence. Man's fatuous claim to determine truth for himself is therefore both a nasty joke and a cruel lie.

To adopt a position of neutrality towards the God of the Scriptures is to take up a position of enmity toward Him. There is no middle ground. As our Lord says, “He who is not with me is against Me. He would does not gather with me, scatters.” (Luke 11:23) As time has passed, the mask of neutrality has been ripped away from the state education system. It is increasingly showing itself as the Great Deceiver. Its hostility towards the Christian faith and Christians is more and more overt.

Mohler points out:

In his book, A Common Faith, Dewey advocated a radically secular vision for the public schools and the larger public culture. His concept of a humanistic faith, stripped of all supernatural claims, doctrines, and theological authorities, would replace Christianity as the dominant culture-shaping worldview. "Here are all the elements for a religious faith that shall not be confined to sect, class, or race," he claimed. "Such a faith has always been the common faith of mankind. It remains for us to make it explicit and militant." (Ibid)

Dewey's objective is being realised. The common faith of mankind (that is, common to the Seed of the Serpent or, mankind-opposed-to-God) is set against Christianity. Dewey saw it, and grasped the nettle. Increasingly the false faith is becoming explicit and militant.

Christian schools alone can teach in a truthful construct. Christian teachers alone can teach children about the world that actually exists. Christianity alone deals with things as they really are. State schools peddle lies and errors. They cannot help it. Their animating spirit is the Father of Lies, who has lied to man from the beginning.