ChnMind 2.1 Constitutional 101 for God's Kingdom

The Constitution of God's Kingdom

The subject of the constitution of God's Kingdom is of vital concern. It is currently not an area of widespread study, although in the past sought to address it under the rubric of “Christian Economy”. Many, many Christians are either ignorant of how God's Kingdom is constituted, or they are terribly mistaken. This has to be addressed—and addressed head on.

Our Lord taught us to pray, “Thy Kingdom come”, yet unless we have a clear biblical understanding of how God's Kingdom is constituted, or what it looks like, we will be of little use in living consistently with our prayer. Thus, in present days, Jerusalem remains fundamentally unclear and confused as to what the Kingdom “looks like” and what its citizens should be doing in order to bring the Kingdom to pass. A corollary is that, more often than not, Christians get caught up with Athenian concerns, running Athens's agenda, using Athenian stratagems. The recent involvement of Christians in politics, even in the formation of political parties, has aptly demonstrated this to be the case.

Athens, for its part, is also a kingdom--the kingdom of this world. It too has a constitution. Within its constitution are nestled many constitutional variants of rule, power, and authority—including secular democracy, liberalism, conservatism, monarchism, socialism, capitalism, greenism, libertarianism, racism, feminism, fascism, communism, republicanism, and fascism. Many times the variants are often blended together in a confused mess.

All of these variants are kissing cousins in the sense that they share a common fundamental constitutional belief—that is, that man is the highest reference point and ultimate authority in the universe. The kingdom of Athens's constitutional options are mere variations on that one Great Article of Faith. The debates are essentially inter-mural and have to do with whether rule and authority ought to reside in man as collective (the State) or as individual.

The focus of this series of essays is to trace out from Holy Scripture the constitution of God's Kingdom as opposed to the Kingdom of Athens. It is only when we have a very clear understanding of these things that we will be able to work powerfully and effectively upon building Jerusalem upon earth into the city which will indeed become the joy of the whole earth.

Let us then start with some of the most fundamental and basic Scriptural concepts.

1.The Kingdom of God is the domain in which Christ rules as absolute Lord. This means that since the Ascension of our Lord to the right hand of God, the Kingdom of God embraces the entire realm of creation, or the universe. Jesus made this clear when He pronounced: “all authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.” (Matthew 28:18) His apostles expounded this with such language as:

“ . . . when He raised Him from the dead, and seated Him as His right hand in the heavenly places; far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet” (Ephesians 1:20—22)

“He is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation. For in Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the first-born of the dead; so that he Himself might come to have first place in everything. For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself.” (Colossians 1:15—20)

2.The Kingdom of God is so universal that it embraces everything, both extensively and intensively. Unlike any human wordly Athenian kingdom its realm and domain extends to all nations and people, kingdoms and dominions, cultures, races, every single individual soul (whether passed from the sight of mortal men, or still living, or yet to live), every part of every individual right down to the numbered hairs on their head, every atom and sub-atomic particle, and even to every thought and intention of the human heart. This is what is implied when we pray, “Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”

3.The Kingdom of God is therefore much broader than the Church. One of the most stupid and consequently debilitating struggles of Christendom up until the Modern period (that is, the post-Enlightenment period) was whether church or state held higher authority. To one extent or another, more often than not, both institutions claimed the higher divine right and both sought to lord it over the other.

In fact, neither has authority over the other. However, Christ is Lord of both church and state--and all other reality. Both church and state are component parts of the Kingdom of God, but both alike are under the authority of the King, Himself. The Kingdom is greater and more extensive than any of its constituent parts. No one institution can encapsulate the breadth and depth of Christ's reign.

4.The Kingdom of God is a spiritual kingdom. This is to say that the Kingdom is controlled, imbued by, and animated by the Spirit of the Lord. While the Kingdom has both material and immaterial elements and components, all alike are spiritual. The Kingdom is not other-worldly: it includes all worlds and realms, the material and the immaterial.

5.The Kingdom of God is both a present and an emerging reality. It has an aspect of growth and maturation. While the Lord rules over all men now, for example, He rules over many in sovereign power whilst they remain in heart disobedient rebels. Their rebellion will not be successful, nor will it continue indefinitely. But as His Kingdom comes and intensifies, more and more are converted to serve Him from the heart. More and more people take every thought captive to Christ. More and more run willingly and faith and hope and love in His service.

This “yet, but not yet” aspect of the Kingdom is part of the perpetual pattern of creation. Creation is not static, but changes, develops, matures, flowers. Hebrews expresses this so plainly when we read:

“Thou hast put all things in subjection under His feet. For in subjecting all things to Him, He left nothing that is not subject to Him. But now we do not yet see all things subjected to Him. But we do see Him . . .crowned with glory and honour” (Hebrews 2: 8,9)

However, the decisive battles of the Kingdom have already been fought and won. The former ruler of this world, the Devil, has been cast out. All else that follows is denouement, extension, application, mop-up. It is the difference between the battle that destroyed The One Ring, and the battle to cleanse the Shire.

6.The Kingdom of God is going to last in its present form for a long, long time as the realities of the reign of Christ are brought to pass and worked out in all creation. The Covenant is to last at least a thousand generations (therefore, approximately thirty thousand years Exodus 20: 5,6 and Deuteronomy 7:9) and so it has only just begun. The revelation of the full glory of God's lovingkindness and covenant faithfulness requires such a long time to be manifested because it is so great and awe inspiring. A mere hundred or so generations from the time of Abraham to the present is not sufficient to demonstrate the greatness of our God.

As it says in Deuteronomy: “Know therefore that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps His covenant and His lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who love Him and keep His commandments.” (Deuteronomy 7:9)

Our object, then, is to describe what that Kingdom will look like upon the earth as it grows, develops, and matures both now and in the thousands of years to come. As we get our understanding of what Jerusalem will look like we will have a much better idea of how we are to work and build in the present. It is when we see the plans for the overall building that we are able effectively to dig the foundations or raise the next piece of framing. It is when we understand the plans that we are also able to order the progression of the building work. Just as the foundations need to be laid before the framing goes up, so there are things that must be accomplished first in the Kingdom, before other things can be achieved and realised.

In two short millennia, the Gospel has spread to every part of the world. It has influenced some regions, nations and cultures intensively and extensively. But it is just the beginning. In the next thousand years much more progress will be made. The Kingdom will become more evident, more influential, more in manifest control. The next thousand years after that—still further. Then further yet again, and so forth.

One of the reasons why Jerusalem is so culturally powerful is due to this “short haul-long haul” perspective. Some cultures think in terms of years, others decades. Occasionally one finds cultures which think in terms of generations. Only in Jerusalem, in the Kingdom of Christ the Lord, do we find a people who are to be so short-term focused they seek to redeem every moment for the Lord, making the most of the time because the days are evil.

But equally, only in the Kingdom of Christ, do we find citizens whose eyes are to be on tens of millenia, and who live knowing that the fruits and influence of their lives will echo and magnify for a thousand generations to come.

Abortion is Illegal. Yeah, right.

Athens: a City of Death Filled with Necrotic People

So, a High Court Judge has ruled that most of the abortions performed in New Zealand are illegal. Athenians have been caught with their pants down. There had been a widespread conspiracy, from the time it was passed, to disregard the law—so widespread, it became an open secret—and now no-one in Athens cares anymore. Virtually everyone has taken part in the conspiracy to subvert the law: politicians, doctors,the medical establishment, feminists, the media, the Abortion Supervisory Committee, Parliament—you name it.

Then a pesky judge has the temerity and gaucheness to state what is obvious—actually, the whole thing is illegal. Well strike me pink.

So here we have it. The bottom line is that in the pagan city, such as post-Christian New Zealand now is, the law will not restrain the practices of paganism. Even when, due to some political quirk of the day, on the odd occasion laws might be passed carefully restricting pagan practices they will be immediately disregarded. Paganism, when it becomes the dominant religion, will not be denied. Pagan practices will continue, no matter what the law says.

Abortion is one of those touchstone issues which separates slag from the refined metal. There can be no agreement between Jerusalem and Athens on this issue. Jerusalem knows and believes that the Creator God alone has the authority to declare not only what a human being is, but when a human being is conceived. He has not delegated to man the responsibility or right to so determine.

Athens, on the other hand, insists upon the right and authority of Man to determine what a human being is. The issue between the two cities is one of authority of religion. For Jerusalem, authority originates and turns upon the Living God. For Athens, authority originates and turns upon Man.

So Athens is remarkably consistent in its religion, regardless of its particular “policy” on abortion. The authority to determine when the unborn child has become human, or whether it ever becomes human, is variously declared to belong to the mother (“a woman has a right over her own body”); the “considered” corporate scientific opinion of the day (“human life begins at the first trimester, second trimester, ten days after birth—whatever); political consensus (“life is deemed not to have begun if the mother's pregnancy threatens her physical or mental well being”); or the parents (“if it's a girl baby, we will terminate it, or drown it after birth”), etc.

All these permutations have been found at various times within Athens, the City of Unbelief. But there is one common fundamental religious principle in that City: Man determines and decides who or what is human. But, we can go further. Historically Athens, has always advocated consuming and destroying its own children to one degree or other.

Amongst the Unbelieving Athenians, probably today the most respectful of life is Islam—that is, Islamic life. Yet embedded deeply within Islamic scholarship is the belief that the child in the womb does not become a human being until after it becomes a soul, which, in turn, occurs after conception. No-one is sure when that actually occurs—or how many days into the pregnancy. Up until that time, whenever it may be believed to occur, abortion is fine, because the child is not a human being. This is very similar to modern western secular Athenian views.

Ancient Greek and Roman cultures routinely killed their own children if they were not deemed appropriate—before or after birth, it mattered not. In Rome, the most common method was exposure of the child in the local rubbish dump.

Modern pagan New Zealand stands in principle exactly where ancient Rome stood. Man will decree, determine, and dispose of man. The pagans always consume their own children. They have done it since the Fall. They will do it until paganism dies out, and Athens is no more.

So, what should Jerusalem's response be to the Athenian practice of child-murder in New Zealand?

Firstly, we must be emphatically clear: for every drop of infant blood shed, for every killing of an infant in the womb, the Lord will wreak His vengeance. This is what needs to be declared without equivocation to Athens. God will have His vengeance, and it is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the Living God. Either God will have already had His vengeance upon the Person of His own beloved Son, offered up as a substitute for His people, or He will require it upon all who have murdered children, whether in the womb or without, and persist in their Unbelief. He will require it of all complicit parties: the doctors, the politicians, the judges, the extended families, the fathers, the mothers, the false comforters.

Secondly, we must acknowledge that Athens will not stop this vile practice. Neither law nor sanction will prevent it. They are literally Hell bent on it. Athens is a city of death. It cannot help itself. It will always revert to killing its own children. The pagans are consuming their own. In so doing they are killing themselves, so that their own lines and its evil influence will be wiped out. “You want to kill your children? Have at it, then. You have always done it. You always will. We know you control society at present. We know we live in a post-Christian world. You will have your way.”

Therefore, the second response of Jerusalem to Athenian abortion needs to be to walk away from it. We need to shake off the dust from our feet against that vile City. With the words of the Lord, we need to say, “Let the dead bury their own dead. We, however, will follow Him in life.” Within Jerusalem, every child is loved and is precious in our sight—before birth, and after birth. We pray over each child in the womb. We marvel at the image of God, already fearfully and wonderfully made, that is about to come forth as His servant in the world. The whole community rejoices in the birth of one child and regards it as a precious trust. We take solemn vows at the baptism of each child, promising as a community to love and raise this child in the fear and admonition of the Lord. We promise the Lord that we will do our utmost to support the parents. We want nothing to do with the vile practices of paganism.

Thirdly, we need to say to Athenians, “You don't want your children? Give them to us. We want them. Don't kill them. We will raise them. What you hate, we will love”. Or if people would prefer to have their children and let them live, but things are so dark, that they cannot see a way forward, and so are contemplating abortion, we in Jerusalem need to be there to help them find a way. In Christ, there is always a way.

Ever since Adam fell, there has been blood on the human trail. In the temple environs of ancient Jerusalem, rivers of blood flowed every day. Substitute animal blood for the atonement of sin. Blood flowed at Golgotha. Substitute human blood belonging to the Lamb of God that all who believe in Him might be cleansed and forgiven. Blood flows like a torrent in Athens every day—in our hospitals and doctor's surgeries—which are supposed to be places of healing. Human blood. It is the bloodguilt of sin. It is the ultimate child sacrifice to Moloch, to the god of our own selfish “rights” and pleasures.

If the blood of one murdered person cries out to God from the ground, such that He never forgets it, but sets Himself to require an accounting, what cry must then come to God's ears from our wretched nation? What volume of sound must come to His holy ears—every day?

To Athenians—men and women—who bear the scars and guilt and anguish arising from having killed their own children, we say, “Flee the wrath to come. Leave that wretched city. Come to the city of the Lord Jesus Christ who alone can take away your blood guilt. And He will. He has promised it. Enter into the walls of the City of God. Its streets are wide. Its avenues broad and on each side is growing fruit for nourishment and food. It is a clean city. The blood of the Lamb has washed away all our sin. He will delight to wash away yours as well. He will restore to you the years that the locust has eaten.”

How Far Will the Madness Go?

Another Victim of Modern Policing

Last week we blogged on the need for citizen policing, here. We argued that the development of a professional police force has had some very non salutary consequences. In particular, the modern police force has left our communities weaker and more vulnerable than ever before.

This has come about because the modern police force has been promulgated over the top of the right and duty of citizens to protect themselves and their property from criminal attack. Citizen's rights have been removed while the exclusive and monopoly rights of police to use force to apprehend criminals has been increasingly asserted.

This has gone so far in New Zealand that citizens now face criminal prosecution if they take reasonable steps to protect themselves or their neighbours. It truly is a world gone mad. But this week it just got much worse. This week we have reached a new low in the manifestation of the weakness and vulnerability of people under the operations of the New Zealand Police Force. We have also seen that the Police Force is now showing signs of institutionalised cowardice.

We are conscious of needing to utter a caveat. We believe that there are hundreds of rank and file police who are deeply frustrated by the quagmire in which they are required to operate. We hope that this post will have the effect of giving them a voice—saying what they would like to say, but cannot. We respect you. We thank you for the work you seek to do so competently and well. We believe that the New Zealand Police Force, as an organisation has increasingly dishonoured the uniform that you wear, and we share your shame.

This week we were confronted with a cowardly murder. The facts as reported in the newspapers are as follows. Three murderous thugs held up a shop in Manurewa, deliberately shot an unarmed, unresisting shopkeeper, then ran from the shop laughing. Later the shopkeeper, Navtej Singh, father of three, died. His blood cries now out from the ground for vengeance.

The police and the ambulance service arrived soon after, but were not allowed to enter the premises for 26 minutes. They waited outside while Mr Singh's life ebbed away. Inside were Mr Singh's wife, his business partner and a friend. They had assured the police that the murderers had left and were alone with the dying man. Eventually the police went in; then they allowed the ambulance service in to attend to Mr Singh a further ten minutes later. For over half an hour medical help was withheld from Mr Singh. He later died.

We ask, why? It turns out that the police were following the procedures manual. Yup—they were doing things by the book. Apparently, the book says that in such a situation the police are not to enter the premises until it is clear that the wicked have departed. It took over half an hour to clarify that the wicked had indeed decamped. The phone calls from Mr Singh's ministrants could not be relied upon: they had to be checked out. After all, it might have been a trap.

Zen Tiger, at New Zealand Conservative, commenting on this disgraceful incident, wrote “I am beyond making rational comment.” We understand exactly what he means. The whole incident leaves one speechless. However, we are neither as refined nor measured as Zen. So here goes. Please overlook our anger as we write.

Firstly, see where the modern policing philosophy has led. It began by removing from citizens the rights and duties to defend themselves as the most vital front line against crime. It monopolised the duties of policing to a professional police force, which, given the ubiquitousness of crime, meant that the community was left exposed and vulnerable. The police and the government over promised, and could not possibly deliver. Not in a thousand years. Now, it has degenerated to the point that if the crims are ravaging and mutilating your family in your home, the police procedures manual requires that the police wait outside until the criminals have finished their “work” before they will attempt to apprehend them and protect their victims.

Secondly, the New Zealand Police demonstrate daily that they have become an uber bureaucracy. In an uber bureaucracy, personal accountability, responsibility, and initiative is systematically expunged. A comprehensive set of procedures, rules of practice, and directions controls all that is done. The only responsibility of a policeman or woman in the uber bureaucracy, that is now the New Zealand Police, is to ensure that they follow the book. Any disastrous outcome can be dismissed with the presentation of the ultimate, iron clad justification: “We followed the procedures.”

In an uber bureaucracy, cowardice rules. No-one takes responsibility. All want to shuffle accountability to the “system.” It's not our fault. No-one will put their head above the parapet for fear that the bosses will cut it off. They will not cut off any heads below the parapet. Keep down, Stay safe. Cowardice! People dying. Life at risk. No worries. There will be no come back as long as you follow the book. Cowardice. Institutionalised cowardice. It is always the way in an uber bureaucracy.

Large corporations learned this the hard way years ago. They had to learn it, or they risked going out of business. Those that did not learn it, very quickly faded away. In order to satisfy customers, in order to do a half-way decent job, in order to recruit and retain quality staff, corporations learned you had to empower staff to make decisions and take initiative for themselves—particularly when at the “front line.” So, for example, it dawned on corporations that if they gave a discretionary spending limit to front line staff handling complaints, so that within that limit the staff member could make an on-the-spot decision as to whether to restitute or compensate a complainant, marvellous win-win results followed.

So, in the police force, in the war against crime, where is the delegation to the section leader, the NCO, the commander authorising him to exercise responsible judgments on the spot? Recall, by the way, that this is one of the hallmarks of successful armies in the field. Those that have delegated authority to NCO's or squad leaders, entrusting them with common sense, honed by years of training, and empowering them to make instant decisions, have proven to be far, far more effective in the field.

The question that is begged in this recent debacle is whether the New Zealand Police trust their Senior Sergeants, their Commanders, their squad leaders, in the light of all their experience and training, to make sound, smart, front-line operational decisions. Do they trust them to sum up a situation and make appropriate, common-sense decisions? We can answer that question. Clearly they do not. Which is to say, clearly the senior managers of the New Zealand Police force do not trust themselves or their staff. Cowardice comes from the top.

Thirdly, this shocking situation is an outcome of the politicisation of the New Zealand Police Force—which is the sole responsibility of the Labour Government, since it has overtly embarked on a strategy to bring the police under political control—and which responsibility in its turn must be sheeted home to one Helen Clark. There is a causal connection between Clark's disgusting and immoral slander of the Police Commissioner, Mr Peter Doone in her deliberate actions to "have his head on her platter" and what unfolded on the streets of Manurewa last weekend.

There is a causal connection between Clark's predilection for commenting on police actions, prejudging outcomes, publicly blaming police for their perceived failures, ensuring that compliant officers are appointed to the top jobs, and the uber-bureaucratisation of the entire police force. If you know your political masters are going to get stuck into you, cowards will get behind the parapet, write a manual, and hold the manual up above the trenches. “It's the Manual's fault, sir. But it's easily fixed. We will just write a few more rules and regulations every time something untoward happens, and Bob's your uncle, problem solved.”

In the war against crime, it has become safety first, safety first, safety first. The public's? No, our safety. The Police. We have to protect ourselves from criticism. The public be damned.

How to fix this? It is not easily done. It will require “root and branch” change. Here, though, are a few suggestions:

1. Take steps immediately to de-politicize the police force, and remove all institutionalised and ad hoc interference in the operational processes of the Force.

2. Commission a consulting report by a completely independent body such as the Boston Consulting Group or some other experienced management consulting team to review the management, culture, operating principles and practices of the Police with a view to having it comply with world's best-practice management standards.

3. The Minister of Police would need to hold the Commissioner totally accountable for the implementation of the recommendations of the Report over a certain time period. Regular progress reports should be given to the Minister.

4. We do not believe for an instant that the dire problems of the Police Force will be solved by throwing more public money at them. This is the great fallacy of the Left. Because they believe in the omni-competence of the State's bureaucracies, the facile and stupid solution offered to every malfunction is More Money to build a bigger bureaucracy. We believe instead that a properly constituted Police Force would cost less public money. We suspect that there are huge savings to be made. For a start all those manual writers and the committees that currently produce, vett, and amend them could be discharged.

5. Empower police on the front line to make professional decisions, and gear their training to enable them to make those decisions appropriately. Then, support them in their actions.

When an action goes wrong, and it is deemed that an inquiry into how the engagement went wrong is needed, the inquiry panel must be completely independent of the Police (for reasons of its credibility and integrity). It must be chaired by a Coroner or a Justice of the Peace. The other members of the panel, however, must be those who have suffered as victims of crime. This would prevent such inquiry panels being taken over by the naïve who have never suffered at the hands of criminals and who tend to expect the police to be perfect at all times. The panel needs to populated by realists, not naïve utopians. Victims of crime are far more likely to be realists. The responsibility of the panel would be, like the Coroners office, to make public, but non-binding recommendations, to the Police Commissioner.

5. Re-institute the principle that the first line of defence in the war against crime is the citizen defending his own life and property and those of his neighbours. Empower us all to act. Re-institute it as a duty. If you can entrust twelve ordinary men and women to make decisions about the guilt or innocence of one charged with a crime, you can entrust those same ordinary people to do the right things when confronted with crime. It will not be perfect, but like the jury system, it will be right far more times than it is wrong. Then, relegate the Police to the second line of defence against crime, and ensure that their duties and responsibilities are adjusted accordingly.

As Mr Singh's blood cries out for vengeance, we say, It is enough. Something has to be done. It has to be radical, root and branch, and quick. Will a real Prime Minister and Minister of Police please stand up.

Will the public of New Zealand please stand up and insist once again on your right to carry out your duties and responsibilities, and stand in the front line against crime.

Global Temperature Falls, Again

Global Temperature Update: More Time, Please

The global temperature statistics are now out for May. They show that the month was the coolest in twenty-two years. The longer term graph previously published has now been updated. The satellite data—which of course reflects actual measurements, not computer model predictions—shows that over the past sixteen months, the change of temperature in the lower troposphere has been -0.774 degrees centigrade. This is equal in magnitude to the generally agreed “global warming signal” of the past one hundred years.

Click on graph to see in full.



In other words, the data show that since 1998 there has been a rapid and large cooling of the earth's temperatures reversing one hundred years of global warming.

It is around about now that the protagonists of the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) start to engage in caveats, qualifications, and denials. This is normal. It is the way science ordinarily proceeds in the minds of individuals and the scientific community at large. When you get some unexpected, rogue results, the first response is usually to go back and research harder and test some more.

One qualification put forward by AGW theorists is that one has to distinguish between weather and climate. Climate is long term, gradual (and often intergenerational) changes to the world's temperatures. Weather reflects shorter term impacts due to winds, ocean currents, and other cyclical influences. Thus, the caveat runs, the recent sharp decline in world temperatures reflects weather changes (shorter term cyclical influences) not climate change.

However, this begs a rather nasty question. If the decline in global temperature since 1998 is caused by weather, why would the rise in temperatures in the last quintile of the last century not also be caused by weather, rather than climate? Why would rises in temperature reflect climate influence, whereas falls reflect weather influences? At the very least, if a distinction between weather and climate is valid, far more thorough work now needs to be done to break out climate from weather influences in the data of the last fifty years. If that were done, it is likely the whole computer modeling college would need to be rebuilt.

The upshot is that the qualification distinguishing climate from weather has huge implications for AGW theories—which need to be rigorously worked through by those theorists. One hopes that the tide of strident demands for action on global warming in the face of the imminent doom of the planet would subside while that work is being done. We are not holding our breath, however.

Secondly, there are those who have argued that such recent variations and sharp drops in temperature are accommodated in the climate computer models. The models, it is argued, allow for and have factored in such variability, including such a drastic and rapid drop in temperature—where one entire century's warming is reversed by a mere sixteen months of cooling.

However, this also begs a rather nasty question. How many standard deviations from the predicted mean do the models tolerate? That is to say, how much variability is allowed? How long does the deviation from the predicted mean need to persist before the model is invalidated? Here we approach the heart of the problem. If AGW theories are to be taking seriously and accepted as having a scientific foundation (that is, be accepted as reflecting causality in the real natural world) they must be able to declare the terms and conditions under which such theories would be falsified. That is a necessary (although not sufficient) precondition of such theories being taken seriously and researched diligently.

The more temperature variability the models allow for and tolerate, the less open they are to falsification. The longer substantial deviations from the projected temperature mean can be tolerated, the more the models appear to be tautologies.

If we were to say that it is absolutely certain the sun will either rise tomorrow or it will not, no-one could challenge us. But clearly, by the same token, we can be dismissed as irrelevant, for we have not added one jot to human knowledge. The prediction, because it covers all possible permutations, is true by definition, but utterly useless. On the other hand, it matters a great deal whether the sun actually does rise tomorrow or it does not. There would be radically different effects and consequences. It is very important to know which is going to occur.

Similarly with climate change predictive models. If the models, say, have been constructed so as to accommodate fifty years of radically cooling global temperatures, we can confidently say that they will never be falsified; they would be true by definition—but utterly useless. Meanwhile, living conditions will alter radically if indeed we do get fifty years of global cooling.

It is important, therefore, to know whether the radical cooling of global temperatures in the last sixteen months, and the cooling trend evident from 1998, can be tolerated by the models—and for how long. Meanwhile our judgment on the models needs to be, at the very least, suspended—and all programmes based on them halted—immediately.

Meanwhile, we need to start thinking about the implications arising from global cooling. As has been pointed out, cooling is potentially far more devastating and threatening to human life than warming, just as starvation is far more threatening to humanity than running out of oil. (Not that we need big centralist government programmes and initiatives, mind. They, with all the best intent in the world, always end up either making the problem worse, or causing problems of far greater magnitude elsewhere. The wretched testimony of biofuel mania is sufficient evidence.)

It would be ironic, would it not, if the whole world were to run full tilt at counteracting the threat of imaginary global warming, while all the time cooling is the greater and real threat we face. The devastation arising from such folly would be catastrophic indeed. But not unexpected. It is a well declared principle of divine providence for the Lord to allow people, cultures, and nations to reap the fruits of their folly, hubris, and madness.

The upshot: APG protagonists and theorists have far more work to do testing and verifying their science before one more dollar is spent or one more programme initiated to combat global warming. Just as the UN has now called for a moratorium on all biofuel investment and a removal of all subsidies for biofuels (which will kill the pseudo business stone dead), we now need to see it call for a moratorium on all anti-global warming programmes, initiatives, institutions, and activity until further notice.

The threats and dangers humanity faces under potential significantly colder temperatures are too great to allow policies and programmes formulated upon such poorly constructed and inadequately established theories of global warming to continue. Robust, contestable scientific proof and substantiation is now required.

Fire the policy analysts. They have been terribly premature. Let the real scientific effort begin. Advocacy and alarmism need to give way to thoroughgoing research, testing and analysis.

Meditation on Text of the Week

A Glory Too Great to Bear

Let them fear Thee while the sun endures
And as long as the moon, through all generations.
May he come down like rain upon the mown grass,
Like showers that water the earth.
In his days may the righteous flourish,
And abundance of peace till the moon is no more.
Psalm 72: 5-7

It is critical to have the correct perspective on time—and in particular upon the time of God's Kingdom. Throughout most of the twentieth century the Church remained preoccupied with the “end times.” There was a widespread expectation that the Final Advent of our Lord was nigh, that human history was about to end, and the great final battle of Armageddon was imminent. These ideas, usually tied to the fortunes of the nation of Israel in the Middle East, have now waned somewhat.

It is not uncommon for such speculations to co-incide with dates or times regarded as momentous or significant. The turn of a century is often a favorite. The end of a millennium is usually a doozy. At the close of the first millennium AD, the western church had a widespread expectation of the Final Advent. The pope of the day (Sylvester) presided over a dramatic midnight mass and maintained an all night vigil at the last day of the millennium so that he would not be asleep when the Lord returned. He (along with numerous others) was wrong.

Speculations such as these turn out to be childish fancies, driven more by Christians reading their newspapers (or historical equivalents) than the Scriptures. But they are damaging to the Kingdom in at least three critical ways. Firstly, they all necessitate a wresting and distortion of the teachings of the Scripture. Any theology or “ism” which results in a distortion of the Scripture is both evil and destructive. Secondly, it distracts God's people from proper, diligent, faithful service. When people become convinced that the world is about to end they are likely to take their eyes off their day to day, year to year, decade to decade responsibilities to God as His servant and steward. Finally, when the speculations do not eventuate a widespread spiritual cynicism results. Those who had been seduced by the speculations risk ending up disbelieving the Bible completely. Others become deeply cynical towards their teachers and leaders.

The imminent end of the world is simply not taught in Scripture. At times when God's people are more informed by the Bible a “long-haul” view of history comes forth. For example, in 1559 John Knox was corresponding with John Calvin, asking for advice on issues regarding the administration of baptism. Calvin's reply and advice was based on the truth that the Covenant of Grace would continue for a thousand generations. Calvin used this fact as a premise in his discussion of the particular issue. But the “self-evident” manner in which he did indicated that for Calvin and the leading Reformers, the matter was beyond doubt.

So, let's think this through. A thousand generations, assuming that a length of generation is around 30 years, indicates that the Covenant of Grace will last at least thirty thousand years. Now this does not indicate the eternal heavenly state, because it is measured by generations. The human race is continuing to marry and bear children. So, since we have now entered the third millennium, we have only just begun. There is roughly at least another 27 millennia to go.

Where did Calvin get this idea from? It is derived from the Ten Commandments (and parallel passages). The Second Commandment forbids making any graven image of God, then: “you shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” (Exodus 20: 5,6)

The parallel passages of Exodus 34: 6,7 and Deuteronomy 7:9 confirm that when the commandment speaks of “thousands” it is not meaning merely “thousands of people” but thousands of generations. Notice the explicitness of the language: “Know therefore that the Lord your God, he is God, the faithful God, Who keeps His covenant and His lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who love Him and keep His commandments.”

Note that the manifestation and revelation of the glory of God's lovingkindness and faithfulness to mankind requires a thousand generations, it is so vast and incredible. Let none be in doubt: the Lord will not short change the time so as to truncate the revelation of the extent and glory of His faithfulness and His covenant keeping.

To us, today, we find ourselves marveling at the glory of God that He would keep covenant with us today, calling us the sons and descendants of Abraham. Yet we are a mere three thousand years later. Nevertheless our mouths are stopped and our hearts almost cease beating as we consider the weight of divine glory that we, three thousand years later, would be called sons and daughters of Abraham, and therefore inheritors of His lovingkindness. What kind of God is this, we wonder? How great can He be?

Imagine the depth, extent, and weight of glory that will be evident by the time the thousandth generation has come forth. It is beyond our ability to comprehend. Eye hath not seen. Ear hath not heard.

Our Text of the Week approaches the question from a different perspective. Psalm 72 is one of the royal Psalms, extolling the reign of God's King upon earth. Solomon himself was a type of this king. The New Covenant scriptures confirm that it is the Lord Jesus, Who comes forth as David's greater son, Who is granted this universal throne over all the nations of the earth.

The respect, fealty, and blessedness of His reign is to last as long as the moon—“throughout all generations”. During the days of His reign the days of the righteous will flourish and there will be an abundance of peace till “the moon is no more.” The extent of His reign will cover all the nations of the earth, from sea to sea. All kings will bow to Him; all nations serve Him (Psalm 72: 10,11)

This long, glorious, extensive and universal reign is not an unhistorical reign in the the heavenly realm, for it is a characteristic of His realm that the cries of the needy are heard, the afflicted are helped, the poor and the needy receive His compassion. He rescues their life from oppression and violence; their blood is precious in His sight. There is an abundance of grain; the city will flourish like the vegetation of the earth. His Name will increase as long as the sun shines. The whole earth will be filled with His glory. In other words, the glory of this King and His kingdom comes into human history and captures it, taking it over.

As we look about the world today, the conditions and reality described in this Psalm are far from fulfillment. The Kingdom has made only a small beginning. The full glories of His throne, which will come during the realms of the sun and the moon (that is, before the time they are no more, as described in Revelation 21:23 & 22:5), have yet to be seen.

No, the earth is not about to end. The very greatness of the Lord necessitates that He has to reveal far more profoundly, far more powerfully His glory. It is intrinsic to that revelation that He show mankind the glory of a divine lovingkindness that lasts unto a thousand generations of the human race. It has only just begun. Yet, even now, we can hardly bear it. It is too wonderful for us.

And in the greatness of that revelation, the glory of the Son of Man, Who kept covenant that God's lovingkindness might last to a thousand generations of sinful men, will shine forth as mankind has never seen it before. The glory that the apostles beheld, the glory as of an only begotten Son, full of grace and truth, will pale in comparison to the glory that is to be revealed upon the earth as His Kingdom comes.

The Loser Letters #3

In this third Loser Letter, A F Christian chides her atheist Bright colleagues with their "me too-ism" over acts of kindness and charity. Don't even go there, is her advice. The Brights need to choose their battles wisely, and this is one to be avoided at all costs. Read the third letter, here.

Sabbath Meditation

The Grace of A God Bound and Obligated

We have noted in earlier posts that the Reformers developed the concept of the Means of Grace. This understanding of how Jerusalem or the Church was to work has largely been lost today. It needs to be recovered.

The concept of the means of grace is important because it tells us how God works in our lives, conforming us as individuals, and the Church as a whole, more and more into the image of Christ. Once we are clear on how God works in our lives, we can willingly co-operate, thus making the means of grace even more powerful and blessed. Our responsibility is to take up these means of grace, use them, and believe that the Lord will use them to bless us with His presence and transforming power.

The means of grace are not magic talismans. They do not manipulate the Lord in any way. They are not a kind of incantation. They are rather institutions put forth and established by God Himself as the means by which He comes to His people and blesses them, accomplishing His salvation within them, their families, and their communities.

We have said that the greatest means of grace is the Sabbath day—greatest because the first. On that holy day, as we observe and celebrate the Sabbath all the other means of grace are available to us as well, and on the Sabbath all the other means of grace are especially effective and powerful. It has pleased the Lord that it should be so.

A second means of grace is the Word of God. God's Word not only constitutes reality out of nothing, it also shapes, governs and conditions that reality once created. Once again, the Word of God is not a magical talisman. Rather, it is God's revelation of Himself, His plan and accomplishment of redemption, and His promises.

The Word of God, and in particular the promises that God has made in His Word, are the foundation and ground of all faith. We can believe because what is said in His Word is absolutely certain; it is absolutely certain because God has said it. The Word of God is more real, more solid, more dependable than anything else in the universe. Heaven and earth may pass away, but His Word will never pass away. His people are thus to live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

God binds Himself to His Word—He cannot be or do otherwise, since He is the God of truth and truthfulness. Once spoken, never forgotten. Because of His Word, God allows Himself to be bound to us. His Word creates a binding obligation upon God to do as He has promised, to be what He has declared, to accomplish what He has foretold. As the Word of God is opened to us, as we believe it and take it seriously with all reverence, so God becomes obligated to be and do as He has spoken to us.

So, for example, as our Lord has promised, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” and we believe that, so it proves true indeed: He never does leave nor forsake us. Our whole lives are transformed in principle by that one promise (and it is just one amongst many, many promises). As we take up that promise and build our lives upon it and in terms of it, so we are transformed more and more into the image of Christ Himself. We progressively become the people that we are meant to be.

God's Word comes to us in ways that are particularly powerful on the Sabbath day, in public worship. Here His Word is opened and proclaimed to us. Here we are exhorted to believe and obey. The binding and transforming nature of the Scripture is vividly evident in the lives of the community, of those with whom we join in worship. The Spirit of God moves over the congregation, opening ears and understanding, increasing faith, hope and love in each heart.

It is particularly true that on the Sabbath day, in the midst of the congregation of the Lord, the Word of God, in the hands of the Spirit, becomes living, effective, and sharper than a two edged sword, piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, judging the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Hebrews 4: 12).

It is significant, is it not, that this utterance, the word concerning the Word, is given to us in the very passage that speaks of the Sabbath rest of God's people.

On this holy day, may the Word of God, by His Spirit, live amongst us in great power and blessing. As the Emmaus disciples professed: “were not our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us on the road, while He was explaining the Scriptures to us?”

The S-Files

There is an Education Minister on Deck

S-Award given to Julia Gillard, Minister of Education, Australia

Contra Celsum is pleased to nominate Julia Gillard, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education, Australia for an S-Award to acknowledge some of the most refreshing utterances heard from a Minister of Education in a long, long time.

Citation:

Recently, Julia Gillard delivered a speech to the Christian Schools Group in Canberra.

Below is an excerpt from her speech:

Above all, we have to ensure we are teaching young people the right things in the right way.
This includes early emphasis on reading, literacy and numeracy, the foundation learning skills.
To improve our performance in this crucial area, the Budget allocated $577.4 million over four years to a National Action Plan on Literacy and Numeracy.

I have to say, when it comes to teaching something as basic as literacy, I'm somewhat old fashioned and a strong supporter of a practical and rigorous approach. I think the teaching of phonics, grammar and punctuation are an important part of the learning process. . . .

That clarity and rigour is something that we should aim to apply to the whole curriculum and underscores the importance of our national curriculum policy. One of the criticisms often made of educationalists is that to help disadvantaged children, they are too often prepared to 'dumb down' what is taught. In my view, dumbing down is the cruelest joke we can play on someone who has to battle against the odds to succeed.

My life has been far from a battle, but as someone from an immigrant family from a coal mining village, whose own life has benefited from studying in the final year of high school demanding academic subjects like English, Maths, Chemistry, Physics and Economics and then at university law and arts with an economic major, I am a passionate believer in the benefits of the rigorous study of traditional disciplines.

Such studies provide the basis for understanding a rapidly changing world. But more than that, they are a civilising and individually uplifting force that requires no wider economic or social justification. They foster creativity, inquiry, research skills and expression. And they play a big part in imparting values to our young people.

I want students to:

• have an understanding of the logic that lies behind computers;
• have a grounding in narrative history so they can make sense of world events;
• read Shakespeare's plays and modern literature to help them know themselves as well as they know the world; and
• develop high-level numerical skills and be capable of mental arithmetic.
  

I also want students to imbibe some of the great liberal values that come from study like:

• like honesty and intellectual courage;
• standing up for others;
• aspiration, ambition and humility; and
• respect for democracy, individual rights and difference.
  

The details will properly be left to educators and experts, not politicians. But ideas like these will be broadly reflected in the new National Goals for Schooling in Australia to be released later this year and in the new National Curriculum, to be completed in 2010.

Now, one has to wonder what will happen to her ideas, once the “educators and experts” get to work on the National Curriculum. Nevertheless, it is both refreshing and encouraging to see an Education Minister declare that:

1. Dumbing down of subjects is the cruelest joke one could play on disadvantaged children.
2. Formal teaching in phonics, grammar and punctuation is an important part of the learning process. (One can just hear the choking in our own Ministry of Education)
3. She is a passionate believer in the rigorous study of traditional disciplines; that such study and such disciplines provide the basis for understanding a rapidly changing world.
4. The study of narrative history gives students the keys to understand current world events.
5. Reading Shakespeare's plays and literature helps students to know themselves and understand the world in which they live.
6. Mental arithmetic capability is necessary.

Also refreshing was Gillard's public recognition of the significant contribution which Christian Schools make to the educational landscape in Australia. She said: “I know that many of our Christian schools play a hugely important role in helping children and families to overcome disadvantage. It is often a role driven by their sense of purpose and social mission.”

Such sentiments would never be uttered in New Zealand given the current stranglehold of the secular humanist Teacher Unions over the Ministry of Education educational and curriculum policies.

As mentioned above, it remains to be seen what will happen as Gillard's views and wishes go through the “Yes, minister” process. However, it remains refreshing to hear such commitments from an Education Minister who appears to be worthy of the name. It is a long time since New Zealand has seen anything of similar ilk.

We believe that if Gillard were to succeed, the Kiwi exodus to Australia would quicken yet again.

Julia Gillard: S-Award, Class I for actions in the course of duty that were Smart, Sound, and Salutary.

Would a Real Green Party Please Stand Up

The Environment is Too Serious a Matter to be Entrusted to the NZ Green Party

We at Contra Celsum believe that the cause of the environment is wretchedly served by the NZ Green Party. We suspect that the time has come for a truly genuine, serious, and responsible green political party to be formed in New Zealand. It is time to wrest the environmental brand and mantra away from those who are using and abusing environmental responsibility to foster a world-view and agenda which ends up being dangerous to both the environment and to humanity.

For whatever reason—and this remains an enigma—the NZ Green Party has never been required to be rational or consistent or coherent in its positions. It has been tolerated as whimsically loopy. In the long run, this has served us badly because the large majority of the population can never take their MP's seriously, whereas concern over the environment ought to be a serious and weighty business.

The most deeply held tacit conviction of the NZ Green Party appears to be that the state (law, coercion, taxes, regulations) is the original and ultimate power in the universe. By rules, laws taxes and regulations, the Greens believe, human nature and behaviour can be changed. Thus, Bradford and her colleagues believe that criminalising parents for corporal discipline of their children will result in a fundamental change to human nature, such that violence in society will reduce. To make New Zealand more environmentally responsible, Norman is advocating selective taxes. The Party constantly is calling for rules, regulations and bans of one kind or another—cannabis excepted, of course.

A second, deeply objectionable aspect to the NZ Green Party is its studied ignorance of, and myopic blindness toward, the real world. The Greens advocate a kind of economic autarky in which New Zealand needs to become self-sufficient in food, energy, and anything else. (We note that autarky as an economic policy has never been advocated, except in the case of those states whose control over human life is frightening, to say the least. Modern examples are Myanmar and North Korea. Historical examples are Soviet Russia and early twentieth century Turkey. All were, and are, abject failures. As an economic model, autarky is thoroughly discredited, and is advocated now only by those who are willfully blind or naively stupid.)

In the NZ Green Party's version of autarky, we are to dismantle the dairy industry (we export over 90 percent of the country's dairy produce) and instead use the land to grow those foods we currently import (wheat, rice). If you inquire how this is to be accomplished, refer back to the NZ Green Party's most deeply held belief in the omni-competence of the state to create out of nothing. “We” of course means that the government is to dismantle the dairy industry, and create wheat and rice substitution.

Since we need exports in order to pay for imports, presumably dismantling the dairy industry will mean that we can no longer afford to import steel, automobiles, machinery, airplanes, electricity turbines and so forth. But that's OK, because autarky means that we will just have to turn to and become economically self-sufficient in these things as well. We will just have to manufacture them for ourselves. Let's start ripping up those iron sands on the west coast. (If you are beginning to think that the position is becoming eerily reminiscent of Stalinist Five Year Plans you would be right. If you believe in the omni-competence of the State and you want to deny economic reality and create an alternative that has New Zealand withdraw from the global economy, the only possible way is to have a centrally planned and organised economy.)

If autarky is marked by one massive failure it is waste—an incredible waste of human and economic resources. Autarky implicitly denies the concept of competitive advantage. It asserts that all peoples and nations have equal distributions of resources, equal climatic conditions, equal topography, etc. Even to state the concept is to see it reduced to absurdity. Consequently, whenever autarky is practised, it leads to incredible costs, inefficiencies, and waste. Let us be clear: waste is always environmentally destructive. The NZ Green Party is the enemy of genuine environmental care and protection.

A third deeply objectionable NZ Green Party trait is its constant recourse to special pleading and resulting inconsistencies. Here is a classic. At its recent conference, co-leader Norman enunciated a fundamental principle of NZ Green Party equity and property rights. He was calling for a tax to be applied to water use by businesses. (This, of course, was yet another example of the NZ Green Party's belief that it can remake the world through the involuntary force of government.)

However, the fundamental principle enunciated by Norman was striking: “if you use a public resource to make a profit then the public should be paid rental for that use.” In this case the public resource was water. The public (aka, the state), according to the NZ Green Party, has ownership rights to all water, since water is a public resource. When the Living God sends rain down upon the farmer's carrots, from the time the drop leaves the cloud, the public owns it, and the farmer should pay a rent for the use of it. Spare us the humanist idolatry.

But, no, let's take Norman seriously. Or more to the point, we wish that he would take himself seriously. Is he really listening to himself, one wonders? If water is a public resource, then the wind and the sun must also be public resources—that is, owned by the public (state).

If Meridian Energy sets up an electricity windfarm, Norman's dictum requires that they must pay a special tax (rental) because they are making money out of a public resource. What! The NZ Green Party has been prattling on about wind power for decades, despite being told repeatedly that wind power is unreliable, costly, and inefficient. No matter. It is renewable, and non-polluting. Norman's dictum just blew electric windfarms off the planet. He is calling for their being hit with an extra tax, because they use a public resource. The public (aka, the state) will need to be paid special rent for the use of wind.

The same would apply equally to solar power. The sun, in Norman's Alice-in-the-Looking-Glass world, would be publicly owned. Any power generated by a business using solar energy would need to be specially taxed. There goes any hope of renewable energy sources making any contribution to New Zealand's energy needs. At the stroke of Norman's pen they are suddenly made more non-economic than they already are. Oil is looking much more attractive.

But what about hydro power? Same again. Norman's dictum would require a special surtax on the use of water for hydro power. It is using a public resource to make money.

Further, one cannot help being highly sceptical at this apparently convenient Norman distinction between a corporation using a public resource to make money and a private person using a public resource to provide goods and services to one-self. Norman was very particular to stress that this was an important distinction and that he was not advocating taxing water for private consumption. Why? Why the special pleading?

If I were to set up my own solar powered panels, would I not be using a public resource—something that is owned by the state? Why would I, as a private individual, not be charged a rent? Presumably, Norman would argue that as a member of the public I actually have personal and private ownership rights in the sun already. So, I should not be charged rent for what I already own. But why would a money making corporation not equally also enjoy such ownership rights?

But let's run with this a while. This would imply that as a member of the public of New Zealand I have personal and private ownership rights in everything in which the state claims an ownership right. I would be entitled to use these things for my own private benefit--without charge. See a Crown BMW going by (hopefully with a NZ Green Party politician inside)? Grab it and use it. You have an ownership right already.

Absurd? Yes, but no more than the loopy principle of the Norman dictum that if you use a public resource to make a profit, then the public should be paid a rental for the use of it, where “public resource” is sufficiently vague as to include the natural world: water, air, sun, wind, sea—and all the rest. Does Norman really believe that Man, the Public, the State is god? It looks suspiciously like it.

In summary, either the Norman dictum should be taken seriously or not. If serious, then it will price renewable energy off the market, so the NZ Green Party has just shot a big hole in its own foot. It is just one more example of NZ Green Party inconsistency and special pleading. Loud laughter.

But if it is not to be taken seriously, then the Party ends up being the butt of one more round of jokes and ridicule. More loud laughter.

New Zealand very much needs a green party with credibility, gravitas, and intellectual rigour, a party which is neither naïve nor utopian, a party which can lead meaningfully in public debate on reasonable and believable policies to protect against needless, wasteful environmental damage; a party which not only lives in the real world, but has the substance to deal effectively with it, rather than one which lives in Alice's Looking Glass.

New Zealand desperately needs a green party that with sufficient gravitas to carry the respect of everybody, even when not in agreement. New Zealand needs a green party that is not the footstool of the liberal utopian loony left wing. Would a real green party please stand up.

Modern Policing Creates Vulnerable Communities

The Need for Citizen Policing

In universal human history police forces are a relatively recent novelty and a departure from long confirmed, proven and established social conventions. Unfortunately, due to a widespread ignorance of history, modern police forces today have become entrenched in society. We cannot conceive of living without them. Having not learned from the past, we are condemned to be imprisoned in the errors of the present. As a consequence of modern policing, society is weaker and more vulnerable than ever before.

How did this come about? Firstly, let us argue the case on modern police forces having the unintended consequence of making society weaker and more vulnerable.

In the days after 9/11, when commercial flights re-commenced in the US, a story is told of a flight captain addressing the passengers before takeoff. Naturally, everyone was nervous, wondering if terrorists with box-cutters might be on the flight. The captain said, “Up here in the cockpit, we are going to be doing our duty. No-one will be allowed through the cockpit doors. We will be flying this plane. We will be doing our duty. If anything happens back in the cabin, I expect all of you to do your duty.”

No policeman on the plane. What then? The captain “empowered” the passengers with an authority to enforce cease, desist and arrest orders on any passenger who stepped out of line or did anything illegal. The captain was authorising the passengers to used necessary force. Note also, however, the captain's admonition that the passengers were to do their duty.

Before the invention of the modern police force every citizen was understood to have a duty—an obligation of citizenship—to identify and apprehend and, if necessary, (in such cases where life was threatened and self-defence was appropriate) kill people committing criminal acts. Every citizen was required not only to uphold the law themselves, but to ensure that everyone else in their circle did also.

This is a fundamentally Christian concept. Self-responsibility leads to expectations and requirements with respect to self-government. Self government leads to expectations and duties concerning the government and protection of one's family, kin, and neighbours. Duties to protect friends, family, and neighbours included, necessarily, duties to identify and apprehend criminals, or those who were threatening the life, limb, or property of family, friends, kin, and neighbours.

Then along came that innovation, the modern police force. The idea behind a professional full-time police force is that it would concentrate resources, enhance professionalism and expertise, and make the capturing of criminals more effective and efficient. It was also rationalised to be a protection for citizens. A corollary of the modern police force is that it is to have a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force (an astute observation by Max Weber). No longer need a citizen be lumbered with an obligation and duty to apprehend criminals: the police force would take over and do it for him. This would make him safer.

As time passed, the duty of every citizen to identify and apprehend criminals was occluded. The police force saw itself as a monopolistic entity controlling all elements of policing. (Governments always have tendencies towards monopolistic behaviour). The special expertise of the police force was glossed into a universal belief of the incompetence of non-police—that is, the public. The ideology of the police evolved to where it regularly warns citizens against “taking matters into their own hands.”

In former times, the admonition “not to take the law into your own hands” meant that no-one had the right to be judge, jury and executioner. If a criminal were apprehended by the citizenry, he had to be handed over to the judicial authorities for trial. Now, under modern police ideology, that admonition has been changed and extended. “Not taking the law into your own hands” today means not doing anything (except contacting the police) to apprehend criminals.

It began with citizens saying to the police, “We are delegating our duties and responsibilities to lay hands on criminals and offenders to you.” It has ended with the police saying to the citizens, “you have no hands.” Now it has gone even further: if citizens do take direct action against criminals, the police are almost certain to prosecute them for criminal behaviour. The citizens duty to self-police has now become a crime in itself. The police have a monopoly upon force.

The consequences are blindingly obvious to all who stop and think about it. The community is eviscerated, it believes as it has been repeatedly told, that it is weak and vulnerable and incompetent. The use of force is certainly evil, and in almost all cases a crime. The community is now as weak and vulnerable as the police have been prophesying. Consequently a result of having a professional police force is that our communities become more vulnerable, weak, intimidated, threatened and violated by criminals. A second consequence is that crime is institutionalised. Career criminals prosper. Gangs are laws unto themselves. The police square off against the professional criminals for their perpetual wargames. The playing field is the backs of citizens and communities. The citizens are incompetent to do anything except sit there and take it.

A second consequence is that public disrespect and resentment of the police festers. Police boasts about offering comprehensive universal protection are seen as empty. They are regarded as incompetent, stupid, bumbling, bureaucratic, self-important, arrogant, out of touch, defensive, and generally ineffective. Why is this? Because police ideology has led them to over promise and under deliver. Police ideology arouses public expectations which it can never meet. As a consequence, the community generally regards the police as a failure. This is a great shame, but an inevitable result of modern police ideology.

Think about this. In a Christian social framework, when a member of the public complained about police ineffectiveness, the wider public and the police issued a legitimate counter challenge to the complainant: “OK, what are you doing about it. Are you doing your duty?” In modern Athenian society no such counter challenge is possible: the police simply have to wear the charge. Police ideology leaves them with no counter-argument or defence. The result: widespread cynicism about the police.

Every so often a dose of sanity dusts down upon the edifice of police ideology. It dawns on the police monopolists that they are incapable of protecting all citizens twenty-four seven. While the sanity dust lasts, the police realise that universal and comprehensive policing is a utopian idealist myth. They realise they need help. So, the police introduce programmes such as neighbourhood watch groups. But these wax and then wane. Why? Because you cannot grow an island of accountability and responsibility on a sea of dis-empowerment and community irresponsibility. You cannot talk out of both sides of your mouth and be credible.

The prescription to bring long lasting change is not hard to discern.

1. The ideology of the modern police force needs to be tossed out the window.

2. Both the government and the police need to acknowledge that they are incompetent to deal with crime and protect the citizens, without the universal mobilisation of all citizens against crime.

3.Citizens need to be confronted with their fundamental duties and responsibilities of citizenship, which include the duties of protection of life and limb of self, family, kin, and neighbours. They need to be charged repeatedly to carry out these duties.

4.Citizens need to be given immunity from prosecution if they employ reasonable force in protecting themselves and apprehending criminals. Any prosecution of a citizen that may occasionally result from using force in their protection of life or property, or in the apprehension of a person committing a crime, must be tried by a jury of their peers, who will determine “reasonableness.” In other words, the test is a common-sense one: “If I were in that situation, would it have been reasonable for me to do xxx.”

5.The police force needs to be reduced in size and restructured to focus on a role of supplementing citizens in their policing activity, not replacing them.

Will modern Athens heed the prescription? Of course not. Athens does not believe in individual responsibility—therefore, it has no foundation upon which to build a belief and ethic of self-government, family government, and neighbourhood government.

No, modern Athens will do what it always does. Faced with policing failures and inadequacies, it will throw more tax payers money at the problem. More money. More waste. No progress. Crime will not abate. Communities will continue to be preyed upon.

And that's OK. It's karma. After all, in darwinist theology, the weak and the vulnerable must be preyed upon, in order that the more fit of the species may emerge.

Fallacies of Argument

The Fallacy of False Cause

We live in an ignorant and terribly uneducated age. Regrettably, propaganda and social engineering occupies a great deal of the curriculum bandwidth and has been substituted for true education and providing people the tools of learning.

One symptom of the affliction of widespread ignorance is the tolerance of logical errors or fallacious arguments. In public discourse people are now allowed to get away with murder.

One of the most common fallacies of our time is False Cause. It is simple. The co-incidence of two factors or events is taken as evidence or proof that the one causes the other. The fallacy lies in that mere co-incidence does not establish a causal relationship: causal relationships have to be proven, not asserted. How could anyone make such a stupid mistake? How could anyone be sucked in by such shoddy thinking? Millions, literally.

Consider the following fable to illustrate the fallacy and its folly.

Scientists in Loco Land, a small landlocked African country, had been studying the length of the days, and nights. They had taken innumerable observations of the time of sunset, and noticed that at certain times of the year, the sun set later each evening, and at other times of the year, it set earlier. This was indeed a puzzle.

They searched their cultural archives, and found that this phenomenon had been occurring for centuries and that many explanations had been put forward, none entirely satisfactory. However, they determined to solve the matter once-and-for-all. Therefore, they purchased some sophisticated scientific instruments, clocks and the like, and began to make some precise and more regular measurements.

They noticed that for months the sun went down earlier each evening. But, then, the results of their observations changed. Suddenly, after a period when the sun appeared to go down at around the same time, it then began to go down later each day. By the time six weeks or so had passed, the trend was irrefutable. The days were getting longer. But, what had caused the change?

There had to be something new, something different, which had caused the sun to go down later each night. It became a bit urgent. They began to fear that night time would disappear completely; the nation would not be able to sleep. Tempers would fray. Crime would rise. Huge social dislocation might occur. Some even suggested that they were facing the end of civilisation as they knew it.

Suddenly, the most eminent and respected of the scientists, had a Newtonian-apple moment. He was focusing upon what might be new, what might have caused the change in the time of sunset. A week or so ago, he had been wandering in the streets, thinking, thinking. At the time of sunset on that particular day, he noticed a small boy beating a drum. As the boy beat the drum the sun went down for the day.

He spent several days asking some questions, and found out that the boy had had a birthday recently, and his mother had bought him a drum. No-one else had one. It was a great hit. When was his birthday? About six weeks ago. And when did he beat the drum? He went out and beat it every evening as the sun was going down. Any other time during the day? No—just in the evening. It was the only spare time he had to play with his drum.

Excitedly the scientist rushing back to tell his colleagues. He had found the answer. The sun had started going down later each day, and almost to the day, that the boy had started beating his drum. The boy's drumming was causing the sun to delay its setting. It had to be. It was the only new factor.

His colleagues were both ecstatic and humbled. They knew they were in the presence of greatness. Together they saluted their colleague, and nominated him for a Noble prize. It was duly granted, to much fanfare.

The fallacy of False Cause. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. After the event, therefore, caused by the event. The sun set later after the beating of the drum; therefore the drum caused the later time of sunset. As you read the fable, no doubt many of you thought, how could anyone be so stupid. Precisely. Yet almost everywhere, on every hand, people are sucked in by this particular fallacy.

The fallacy of False Cause is a fallacy of presumption. It presumes a causal relationship from co-incidence of factors. The fallacy is ubiquitously on display in social and scientific research. People who eat pork are significantly statistically more likely to get heart disease. Ergo, pork is a cause of heart disease.

Maybe. Maybe not. The mere coincidence of the factors does not establish a causal relationship. It has to be proven to be established. Otherwise, it just remains an empty, unreliable, and shoddy presumption.

The biggest mother of all fallacies of False Cause is found in the debate over climate change and global warming. The global temperature is (was—it hasn't risen since 1998) rising. Are there any “new” factors that might explain this phenomenon. Yes. Industrialisation has released significant “new” carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Human industrialisation is causing global warming. This claim is as fallacious and stupid as the claim about the sun and the boy's drum—as it stands.

The mere co-incidence of the two factors does not prove causality. Guesses and hunches do not count. In order to be believed and accepted it has to be proven that man made carbon dioxide atmospheric release is the cause of global temperature warming. The mere observation of the co-incidence of the two factors being offered up as evidence that the one caused the other is a childish fallacy.

It is shameful that respected scientists and public figures are allowed to get away with such shoddy, primitive thinking. Instead of being lambasted, ridiculed, and shamed they are treated as enlightened prophets and guides. Such is the unenlightened decrepitude of our age.

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. After the event, therefore caused by the event. The Fallacy of False Cause. One of the most common fallacies of all in our superstitious, pseudo-scientific age.

Meditation on the Text of the Week

Giving God No Rest

Now shall not God bring about justice for His elect, who cry to Him day and night, and will He delay long over them? I tell you that he will bring about justice for them speedily.
Luke 18: 7,8

This promise of God's delivery of speedy justice to His elect as they cry to Him is uttered by our Lord to give the point to a parable which He told “to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart.” The parable is, of course, the story of the widow and the unjust judge. It is one of the most misunderstood and misused parables of our Lord.

The widow represents the weak, defenceless and vulnerable. She was being illegally exploited by an oppressor (Luke 18: 3). She was seeking lawful protection from a judge who was himself corrupt and venal and who cared not for right or wrong. Every day she appeared before the judge. She wore him down. For his own peace, he decided to give her legal protection.

If an unrighteous, evil judge can be persuaded to give protection to a defenceless widow through constant importunity, how much more will our utterly righteous heavenly Father give care and protection to His beloved, suffering sons and daughters.

Oftentimes this parable is taken out of its biblical context, and made into a generalised teaching concerning importunity in prayer. God will hear and answer if we just persist in praying, is the alleged general principle. But this is a misleading abstraction. It is neither a good, nor necessary inference.

We must be careful to take the lessons of this parable from the context. Jesus has been warning of the coming catastrophic judgment upon Judea, as the Son of Man appears at the head of His armies. In the meantime, evil Judea would continue on for many years after its rejection and crucifixion of the Son of Man. It would be like the days of Noah: “they were eating, they were drinking, they were being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark” (Luke 18: 27) Life would go on as usual for many years yet.

But a certain definitive time would come, just as the definitive day that Noah entered and sealed up the ark, and the definitive day that Lot left Sodom—then came the judgment. Then the Son of Man will be revealed. At that time, get out! Leave the city and country! Flee! Do not look back! “On that day, let not the one who is on the housetop and whose goods are in the house go down to take them away; and likewise let not the one who is in the field turn back. Remember Lot's wife.” (Luke 18: 31,32).

It is in this context that the Lord gives us the parable of the unrighteous judge. In a world of evil, ripening for God's judgment, the righteous are always oppressed and hated. They are ridiculed and mocked. They are stripped of legal protection. They suffer terrible injustices. When that happens, the Lord instructs us to pray daily until God's deliverance comes. He also promises that God's coming will not tarry. It will not be long. He will not delay long over His beloved children.

It is in these circumstances that we are to importune the Lord night and day for justice and protection.

But are there more general principles we can learn to apply to a wider set of circumstances than the ones in our text? Yes—but very carefully, and cautiously. It is appropriate to be importunate in prayer when we are convinced that what we seek is God's will and dispensation for us. It is appropriate to be importunate when we know that what we seek is God's clear revealed will for us.

So, if one falls ill, should one pray without ceasing for healing and restoration to health? No. One should pray once, twice, thrice. It is enough. (II Corinthians 12:8) It is heathenish to believe that by much praying one can make God listen and bend His will to ours. “And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words.” (Matthew 6: 7).

But in our illness, should we pray daily for strength to endure, patience to abide, grace to continue to serve? Yes, yes and yes. For these things are clearly commanded in Scripture. So much praying in our modern times is about getting, achieving, or changing things. Far less is about the achievement of God's will in our lives and communities as a result of circumstances or providences it has pleased the Lord to bring upon our lives.

We must never seek to bend God's will to ours. As stewards, we must ever pray to bend our wills, purposes, efforts, and labours to His will. Only then can we pray in faith, believing, so that we might receive.

In this light, the parable of the importunate widow is very instructive, for amidst oppression and injustice to God's people, it gives biblical warrant to pray without ceasing, not only that we might become more conformed to Christ as we suffer and that His strength might be glorified in our weakness, but that we might be delivered out of unjust oppression.

God has explicitly revealed that it is His will to come to deliver His people speedily from unjust oppression at the hands of wicked men. And so, in this circumstance, we are commanded to give the Lord no rest until He delivers His people, as He has promised.

The S-Files

S-Award given to Chris Comeskey, Barrister

Contra Celsum is pleased to nominate Chris Comeskey, Barrister for an S-Award for his important call to revamp New Zealand's prosecution system.

Citation:

1. The past twenty-five years have generally been poor for the New Zealand Police. There have been allegations, and subsequent proof, of criminal activity within the force; there have been prima facie (but unproven) instances of corruption; the Force has suffered under the deliberate policy of the Clark regime to politicise the Police to make them an organ of government policy; there has been significant staff turnover, and deep demoralisation within the ranks; there is a growing public unease that the Police force has increasingly become an organ for the espousal of political correctness; and there has been a public perception that the Police are little more than the roadside collection division of the Inland Revenue.

2. Over this period there has been a litany of failed or suspect convictions. The Arthur Allen Thomas Affair started what appears to have become a trend, where Police have prosecuted cases, and more often than not, have achieved convictions which subsequently have resulted in a deep public unease about the actual guilt of the accused. The cases of David Bain, Peter Ellis, and Scott Watson are front of mind.

3. In the past week we have seen three high profile murder cases all thrown out of court, with juries returning verdicts of Not Guilty—in surprisingly short time frames. While the causes are always complex, one residual gnawing common thread of doubt centres around the apparent tendency of police investigators to form a view (often early in the piece) of the most likely perpetrator, then to conduct the investigation in such a way as to marshal evidence to support the conjecture. This is a deeply flawed modus operandi, an opens investigations up to errors of bias and prejudice. It is classic gilding the lily.

There are no doubt correlative factors, such as media and public pressure to “get a result;” political masters “breathing down the neck” of the top police brass (and so down the chain of command) to resolve the matter so that the government's poll ratings are not affected; the reluctance to have too many scarce resources tied up in one case when they are urgently needed to be deployed elsewhere; and that most human proclivity for ambitious lead detectives to further their careers by concluding investigations successfully, as evidenced through arrests being made.

4. Our Police Force (and the complementary institutions of prosecution) stand in need of a significant overhaul. It needs to be a “root and branch” overhaul, not just the useless and entirely wasteful bestowal of more (and more and more, ad nauseam) money upon the Police. One of the most significant and deeply rooted of all problems is that the Police represent a state bureaucratic monopoly, coupled with a quasi-military operating culture. You could not imagine a recipe more likely to produce irrational inefficiency and incompetence.

5. One critical solution is to introduce more contestability, more adversarial checks and balances into the prosecution system. To that end, Contra Celsum believes that lawyer Chris Comeskey's call recently to create a public prosecution office, separate completely from the Police Force, and independently funded, is one of the most constructive suggestions made in a long time.

Comeskey points out that we are one of the last countries with a British legal system not to have a separate public prosecution office. The operate in the UK, US, and Australia. The whole idea of such an office is to introduce scrutiny and contestability whilst Police are conducting investigations and preparing cases. They first have to satisfy Public Prosectors that the case will withstand contrary scrutiny, and that it does indeed represent a standard of proof “beyond reasonable doubt.”

Under our current system, trial lawyers are drawn from private law firms; they are effectively clients of the Police. There is very little effective contestability. Which partner from a law firm is likely to turn down a case, simply because it is weak? They know the Police will simply move to the next solicitor in the next firm with a Crown Solicitor's warrant. How would that help the law firm meet budget?

According to the NZ Herald (29th May, 2008) Comeskey was quoted as saying:

There is something wrong with the way things are investigated. The police are rushing off with too little, too soon and ending up with nothing as a result. The second difficulty which flows on from that is you have (legal) firms scattered through the country which hold Crown Solicitor warrants and that's not done anywhere else in the world, and probably for good reasons. Under the set-up we have, the police are the client of these law firms and whatever the police ask for, they are granted.

A separate prosecution office will definitely cost more money. But it would be money very well spent. If it improves the process of investigation of crime and the credibility of resulting prosecutions it is a no-brainer.

New Zealand definitely needs more contestability within the criminal justice system. While a separate prosecution office will not solve all problems it should be part of a root and branch change.

Chris Comeskey, Barrister: S-Award, Class I for actions in the course of duty that were Smart, Sound, and Salutary.

The Loser Letters #2

Some Little Contradictions and How They Grew
Loser Letter #2

Mary Eberhardt

In this second letter, Mary tells us that she was a cradle Dull (that is, raised as a Christian) until she was taught at College that Reason and Logic belonged to the Atheists. But in grasping the nettle, Mary found there were a few stings that festered for quite a while. Enjoy the second letter, here.

ChnMind 1.28 The Tower of Babel and Its Imitators

The Curse Upon Babel and Its Lifting

The New World Order. One world government. Human history has seen a succession of universalist empires come and go. These have all had one ethic in common: an ambition of universal rule over all human life.
In the ancient world, a succession of such empires followed hard upon the heels of the other. They were the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Alexandrian, and finally (in the sequence) the Roman Empire.

In the Christian Era, we have seen the Islamic Empire, the Third Reich, and the universalist Communist empires. Comparatively, the last two, modern manifestations have fortunately been relatively brief and ended as spectactular failures, notwithstanding the devastation they wrought upon the earth in their relatively brief lives.

Also in the modern world we have had ersatz universalist empires―a kind of coalition of the willing. These have included the United Nations―a crazy kind of bureaucratic global federalism designed to decommission the nation-state by successive delegation of state's powers to an international bureaucracy. The United Nations is a sick joke, a parody of probity, a cesspool of corruption, malfeasance, and pettifogging―where the naked ambitions of super-bureaucrats run wild.

A second example has been the universalist claims of the Roman Catholic papacy. These claims and aspirations have appears to have waned in recent decades, but maybe they are just awaiting more favorable climes, before they recrudesce with new vigour and aggression. At its worst, the historical papacy was a kind of ecclesiastic doppelganger to the modern, secular United Nations―with equally disastrous characteristics and results.

A third example of modern ersatz universalist pretensions is the belief that history has stopped progressing with the development of modern liberal western democracy, that mankind has reached its apotheosis, and that the entire world will now be conformed to the ideals of a modern, secular democracy. This has belief has expressed itself as the Manifest Destiny of the United States―to be in the vanguard of the masses (one is tempted to say, “proletariate”)―and make the world safe for democracy.

All of these universalist pretensions and aspirations―and there are many more―have one thing in common. They are all echoing aftershocks of the first one-world-universalist-empire. They are all variations and permutations of a regressive, back-to-the-future move. They all walk after the spirit of Babel. They all represent―to one degree or other―an attempt to unite mankind again under one universal rule, which, as Tolkien so graphically portrayed, is the ultimate satanic seduction:

One Ring to rule them all
One Ring to find them
One Ring to bring them all
And in the darkness bind them.

Genesis 11 records the attempt and its aftermath. Firstly, a connection is revealed between the use of one tongue or common language and the aspiration to build a tower that reached to the heavens and a city that united mankind into one. The new human race, descending from Noah, reached the point where they established a united consensus of purpose―facilitated largely through their having a common language. “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach the heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name; lest we be scattered over the face of the whole earth.' (Genesis 11:4).

This, it seems to us, is the satanic countermove to the Lord's establishing the institution of the civil magistrate to punish murder after Noah's Flood. Since the antediluvian “every man doing what is right in his own eyes” was now forbidden and would no longer be tolerated by the Lord in history, and since the civil magistracy was given to prevent this occurring again, Unbelief rode the opposite pole, and rode it hard. The countermove was to create a super-state, a super magistracy that would bind mankind into one entity by force.

This universalist, totalitarian city would have produced as much evil as the period of lawlessness before the Flood. As we have seen, in the postdiluvian world, which is the world as we know it today, evil was to be prevented from assuming regnancy in the world. It was to be restricted, controlled and governed. The Tower of Babel was mankind's attempt to shuffle off God's restraint, replacing no-governance with totalitarian super-governance. The potential for evil implicit in this move is conveyed in Genesis 9: 6,7 where the unity of purpose of fallen man, represented and made possible by a common language (and culture), would lead to a removal of all restraints upon evil once again: “Behold they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them.” In other words, the Lord reveals that in their unity, there would be no restraint upon their evil and what it would produce.

Thus, the Lord confused the common speech into a multitude of languages, so that people could no longer understand one another. This then resulted in a scattering of mankind over the earth and a decentralisation (and consequent) weakening of the forces, ambitions, and aspirations of evil. To this day, all attempts to create a universal language (Esperanto, for example) have failed. All attempts to deny the integrity and validity of nation states, people groups, diverse cultures, and diverse languages have eventually failed. All fulminations against patriotism, love of people group, tribe, or nation-state have been brought to nothing. No world-empire has succeeded in achieving and maintaining one-world-government.

Hitler boastfully proclaimed a Thousand Year Reich. It lasted twelve years. Those empires that lasted longer ended up collapsing in on themselves by the weight of their own corrupt decadence. In almost all cases it is the diversity of people groups within empires which play a large part in their downfall. Consider, for example, the emasculating effect upon Rome of the marauding barbarian hordes. The Soviet Union dismembered so quickly in the end due to the re-assertion of former sovereign nations and peoples.

The Scripture reflects this biblical view of universal history, when Paul says to the ancient Athenians: “and He made from one every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times, and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.” (Acts 17: 26,27)

The Tower of Babel and its aftermath provides the template for universal human history. Mankind was scattered around the world, divided, separated, confused, and decentralised. This was a critical divine institution to restrain and govern human sinfulness. It is a wonderful institution of common grace. Those who would want to turn the clock back and rebuild Babel are consequently doomed to fail in the most abject manner.

It is significant that when, in the history of the ancient world, there were four successive universalist empires (Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek and Roman) Daniel was given, through Nebuchadnezzar's dream, the Lord's commentary upon and interpretation of this stage of history. The dream had one single huge statue, of which the Babylonian Empire represented the head.

It was indeed a universalist empire, as Daniel acknowledged: “You, O king, are the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the strength and the glory; and wherever the sons of men dwell, or the beasts of the field, or the birds of the sky, He has given them into your hand and has caused you to rule over them all.” (Daniel 2:37,38). In Babylon, the Lord had allowed a partial rebuilding of the Tower of Babel. Daniel's description clearly alludes back to Babel―which, of course, was in the plain of Shinar―the very site of ancient Babylon.

Nebuchadnezzar was Babel redivivus. Three inferior empires follow. The last, the Roman, is an admixture of iron and clay; it will not achieve the strength or intensity of unity represented by Babylon. Rome is forced to revert to post-Babel type: “And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of pottery, so some of the kingdom will be strong and part of it will be brittle. And in that you saw the iron mixed with common clay, they will combine with one another in the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, even as iron does not combine with pottery.” (Daniel 2: 42,43)

In this momentous period of human history, God was demonstrating to all who care to learn, that Babel will not be rebuilt. In the end, even the most powerful empires end up being admixtures of iron and clay; they cannot cohere; they break apart.

But that is not all. At this time in history something truly remarkable and unique occurs. “And in those day of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever.” (Daniel 2:45). In the dream, this kingdom, represented by a stone made without hands, falls upon the iron and clay feet of the statute and crushes the entire statue. The empires became like chaff carried away on the wind. But the stone, the Kingdom set up by God, became a great mountain that filled the whole earth. (Daniel 2:35).

Thus, the Lord has indeed established the one-world-empire. But it is not man made. This universal kingdom shatters and breaks all Babel-like kingdoms and empires. It is a kingdom filling the whole earth, created and governed by His Spirit, transforming men, cultures, governments, and powers from the inside out. But what of the impediment of divided language? It is here that the miracle of Pentecost is so pregnant with biblical meaning.

Gathered together into Jerusalem at Pentecost were people from all over the known world. They were divided by language. As the Spirit fell at Pentecost the apostles miraculously spoke in their languages. Note how the text emphasizes this aspect most carefully:

Now there were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men, from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together,a nd were bewildered, because they were each one hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and marveled saying, “Why, are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we each hear them in our own language to which we were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya around Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs―we hear them in our own tongues speaking of the mighty deeds of God.” And they continued in amazement and great perplexity, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” (Acts 2: 5―12)

Notice how the text labours the point. Whenever Scripture does this, it intends that we would not miss the significance of what is taking place. It is a loud cry of “pay attention!” At Pentecost, through the miracle of the Holy Spirit falling upon His people, the Lord restored the gift of one language to the human race. But this time, the one language was not mankind united in conspiring to do evil, but it led to the reverse: it led to God's people using all the diverse languages under heaven to speak the same message, with one accord: a declaration of the mighty deeds of God. Thus―in many languages, there is one common, united message. Babel is reversed. The gift of tongues was really the restoration of one common language, through one united heart, bound in one Spirit to the worship of the true, living God. So, the universal empire that would fill the whole earth had come.

At Babel, one language led to one common purpose to evil. God acted to force many languages, leading to a hopeless diversity of opinions, cultures, and views―thereby restraining evil. At Pentecost, with the inauguration upon earth of the New Kingdom―the true One World Empire―the Spirit miraculously wrought the one common purpose to praise and worship God into human hearts, leading to many languages being used to speak the one message, uniting mankind into one common good.

But this is a divine kingdom, not made or manufactured by human hands. It is wrought by the Spirit. It is completely dependant upon Him and His work. It is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.