Here is my complete paper of comments on and ideas about Thomas Brooks' book. It also includes ideas about how the work is applicable today.
Thomas
Brook's 'Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices' is an easy
reading 160 page workbook for recognizing sin, its source,
consequences, and overcoming sin. As part of the course on Spiritual
Warfare recognition of sin and its source plays an important, salient
role. As in 'Holy War' by John Bunyan, Brook's approach is more
oriented toward defense against sin and snares of sin than in
defining what sin is, as one might expect to find in the course on
'Sin'.
Brooks
enumerates four salient features of Satan's assault upon man's soul
as he tries to wrest it away from salvation and eternal life with the
Lord unto pure worldliness and evil as an end-in-itself. Brooks also
provides remedies to the attacks.
1)SATAN'S
DEVICES TO DRAW THE SOUL TO SIN-12 devices and remedies
2)SATAN'S
DEVICES TO KEEP SOULS FROM HOLY DUTIES, TO HINDER SOULS IN HOLY
SERVICES, TO KEEP THEM OFF FROM RELIGIOUS PERFORMANCES-8 devices and
remedies
3)SATAN'S
DEVICES TO KEEP SAINTS IN A SAD, DOUBTING, QUESTIONING AND
UNCOMFORTABLE CONDITION-8 devices and remedies
4)SATAN'S
DEVICES TO DESTROY AND ENSNARE ALL SORTS AND RANKS OF MEN IN THE
WORLD-5 devices and remedies
Brooks
has an important chapter about sin masquerading as virtue, and that
stimulates some deeper philosophical thinking about what sin is, what
original sin was comprised of, how its correction was implemented and
how sin appears to be for human beings as an existential encounter.
As
an entry to that consideration one might inquire if all sin appears
to be a pleasure. If in fact all sin seems to be a pleasure and if
human beings generally pursue pleasure then it seems understandable
that many people would do away with discrimination between different
kinds of objects or activities of pleasure where some are considered
good and some are regarded as evil. Do human beings ever do anything
for-themselves they regard as evil, or isn't it instead always
something thought to be good (even if one suicides to make a 'better'
circumstance?
Socrates
pursued virtue and would have had no trouble in saying that a man
should pursue virtue instead of pleasure. If pleasure coincides with
virtue well-enough, yet if a pleasure is in conflict with virtue
choose virtue. Classical virtue may have a realm-of-forms and
neo-Platonic foundation, and that is not worldly. It's theoretical,
abstract and disregards pleasure when it must to the point of
favorable comparison with the illusory regard in which material
reality is held as maya or moksha by Hindu and Buddhists. Sakyamuni
as a philosopher held reality to be illusory with nothing following
life. His way of thinking was comparable to contemporary physical
cosmology regarding the cosmos as a phenomenal steady-state of
entangled particle-waves arising from virtual energy in a
spatial-field with no permanent meaning or existence beyond the
temporal.
The
pursuit of pleasure rather than enlightenment of virtue or cosmology
is for classical philosophers including Buddha an abnegation of man's
higher calling to transcend material being and understand reality and
mankind's place in it. Socrates felt that man's place in the Universe
was a stage on life's way as a fractional element of the divine
spirit existing in a protocol level of the Universe-project by The
Intelligence (comparable to the Holy Spirit). Buddha thought nothing
existed beyond or followed the temporal phenomenon. Christian virtue
is different than either, and yet has similarities and differences to
numerous to mention here.
Christian
virtues are ontological duties following the will of God being.
Christians resist sin keeping focused on the revealed will of God for
human living. It has been compared to being a soldier on a mission
eschewing worldly pleasures and disregarding pains and privations in
order to complete the mission, or as Paul said, to win the race and
the prize of eternal life with the Lord. The Christian life is
definitely not one of simple pursuit of pleasure except that the
highest good-God and salvation for a Christian-is also the greatest
pleasure. It is not a material pleasure though.
Here
one discerns the problems of what the good is, and of the inability
of humans to do anything besides choose what they think is good and
not evil for-themselves. Logically and rationally none could
paradoxically Paul said that none are good-no not one, and Jesus
paradoxically asked 'why dost thou call me good, none are good save
the Father in heaven'.
Original
sin's correction or containment was for Adam and Eve to be downloaded
into temporal space-time from some sort of Paradise without it. For
the spirit to be inextricably bound in flesh with all of its temporal
thermodynamic urges and requirements is to experience sin and the
biological drive for pleasure. Pleasure is a primitive sense
experience of what works for the good of an organism. Maybe an amoeba
feels some pleasure as it devours some micro-organism.
Scientists
like to say that life is just getting more energy input, yet I think
that nearly all organic life must be pursuing that with pleasure as
the motivator reinforcing behavior. For human beings to have
spiritual awareness though they must think at a higher level and move
beyond physical pleasure to philosophy and spirit. Wisdom is of God,
and leads one to spirit and God, and that is good.
When
God created the Universe after each day or phase of creation He said
that it was good. Mass-energy for itself that God formed the Universe
of is good, yet when human experience of the temporal Universe has
their spirit implicitly entangled in and formed in mass-energy it is
challenging to contemplate spiritual affairs or to know what that
might be. The philosopher David Hume was an anti-sophist in effect
urging people to cast into the flames books with metaphysics. Hume
regarded metaphysics as nonsense. Modern anti-Christians and atheist
therefore like David Hume a lot since anything spiritual seems to be
metaphysical non-sense for the just-worldly. What
is wisdom to man is foolishness to God.
Today's
cultured despiser of religion- often atheists with a sensible organic
self-limitation-despise the concept of sin. Sin is more than simply a
discrimination against pleasure. Sin is not limited to existential
temptation to-oneself; sin can occur in a dialectical paradigm
wherein what is pleasure for one is harmful to another.
Sin
is a meta-social delimitation marker for right conduct too. To avoid
sin has social consequences for the good, while choosing to sin often
has bad social consequences. An easy example is murder; the Joker
might enjoy murder-art yet his victims not at all. Adolph Hitler
probably thought he was pursuing good and pleasure, yet 50 million
people died as a consequence and hundreds of millions more were
wounded or displaced. Sin is a socially transmitted disease like
herpes or H.I.V.-it goes around and comes around; the spiritually
discerning soul eschews it.
Sartre's
'Being and Nothingness' is tome of first-person description of
conscious experience. Nothing is expressed on sin or of ontology in
the book. It is a technical -analytical description of the phenomena
of mind. His sequel 'The Critique of Dialectical Reason' describes
how people interact socially from an existential point of view. One
could use 'The Critique' as a template for how sin-particular and
general-circulate quite readily. Of course there are meta-Diabolic
elements at work besides we are informed in the Bible. One discerns a
large social awareness disconformity between sin as existential
pleasure phenomenality and sin as a dialectical social currency with
grave consequences.
Just
being in the material world as a part of it without thought at all
would make cabbages if the human race. Rational thought is
fundamental for human beings. Spirit is greater than and the
foundation of the material. Christians have that as an article of
faith and so did classical virtue. Thus one returns returns to
Brook's 'Remedies Against Satan's Devices'; sin is the organic form
of pursuit of pleasure only-a regression to full amoeba-hood morally,
with disastrous consequences for the human spirit, and the hope of
the human spirit for reconciliation unto God through the atoning
sacrifice of the Son.
Brooks
wrote the following on page 22-23;"Remedy (4). Seriously to
consider, That even those very sins that Satan paints, and. Seriously
to consider, That even those very sins that Satan paints, and
puts new names and colors upon,
cost the best blood, the noblest blood, the life-blood,
the heart-blood of the Lord
Jesus. That Christ should come from the eternal bosom of
his Father to a region of sorrow
and death; that God should be manifested in the flesh,
the Creator made a creature;
that he who was clothed with glory should be wrapped with rags of
flesh; he who filled heaven and earth with his glory should be
cradled in a manger;
that the almighty God should flee from weak man—the God of Israel
into Egypt;
that the God of the law should be subject to the law, the God of the
circumcision circumcised,
the God who made the heavens working at Joseph's homely trade; that
he who
binds the devils in chains should be tempted; that he, whose is the
world, and the fullness
thereof, should hunger and thirst; that the God of strength should be
weary, the
Judge of all flesh condemned, the God of life put to death; that he
who is one with his
Father should cry out of misery, "My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?" (Matt.
27:46); that he who had the keys of hell and death at his belt should
lie imprisoned in the sepulcher of another, having in his lifetime
nowhere to lay his head, nor after death to lay his body; that that
HEAD, before which the angels do cast down their crowns, should be
crowned with thorns, and those EYES, purer than the sun, put out by
the darkness of death; those EARS, which hear nothing but hallelujahs
of saints and angels, to hear the blasphemies of the multitude; that
FACE, which was fairer than the sons of men, to be spit on by those
beastly wretched Jews; that MOUTH and TONGUE, which spoke as never
man spoke, accused for blasphemy; those HANDS, which freely swayed
the scepter of heaven, nailed to the cross; those FEET, "like
unto fine brass," nailed to the cross for man's sins; each sense
pained with a spear and nails; his SMELL, with stinking odor, being
crucified on Golgotha, the place of skulls; his TASTE, with vinegar
and gall; his HEARING, with reproaches, and SIGHT of his mother and
disciples bemoaning him; his SOUL, comfortless and forsaken; and all
this for those very sins that Satan paints and puts fine colors upon!
Oh! how should the consideration
of this stir up the soul against
sin, and work the soul to fly from it, and to use all holy
means whereby sin may be subdued
and destroyed!"
Brooks
commented on the way sin may approach gradually as is so evident
today in the American media where each advance of sin culturally is
explained as 'the new normal'. Sin has become a kind of partner of
science in the U.S.A. without scientific recognition of the diabolic
impact. Scientific progress is exploited as evidence to support the
eradication of moral criteria. A Universe without a divine presence
that is entirely measurable and manipulatable by human action is
reinforced constantly. Nothing in science is capable of studying the
spiritual. In fact the spiritual cannot be defined in physical terms
although researchers have studied the brain with imaging technologies
during prayer to learn what regions might be used and what
biochemical responses could produce euphoric or tranquil states of
mind.
The
human mind does exist within a physical brain housing unit (skull)
and may consciously and subconsciously have a relationship with God.
The relationship is entirely of grace though-God provides all
communication required, all divine instructions given through
revelation. In physical terms of power the relationship is mono-polar
that like gravity flows in just one direction (toward the heart
matter in the case of gravity). Numerous physical means for God to
accomplish one-direction control of this Universe and of its social
issues are theoretically possible and appear to the thinking
individual rather easily. For instance the entire history of the
Universe could have been predetermined, or God could have the
allegorical 'tachyon' channel to subtly talk with select people. With
radio one hears an example of one-way communication. With a superior
spiritual communications and control 'technology' God can interrogate
and shape the mass-energy of the Universe in conformity with his own
choosing from among possibilities He made himself. That raises the
question of why God chooses anything or creates anything to choose
from. It also may bear indirectly on the subject of why evil exists
though God is perfect.
The
problem of exploiting science to support the reduction of moral
standard accountability to divine standards reminds me of when
cosmonauts orbiting earth in the early 1960s said they had visited
heaven, looked around and didn't see God anywhere-that was an almost
primitive misinterpretation of the Bible's use of the word 'heaven'.
To
be fair though evolution is a stumbling block for many fundamentalist
Christians who share the opinion of the Diabolic applications of
science crowd that evolution theory is in direct contradiction to the
Bible account of creation and actually, it is not. Dr. Science
quality quack creation pseudo-science harms Christian evangelical
missions work to save the lost. It isn't necessary for Christians to
disprove evolution in order to defend the point that God created the
Universe. God could have evolved 14 billion years in 14 seconds if he
had a will to-his mastery of matter and energy is beyond any human
comprehension. Popular education is based on evolution science and it
has a kind of self-evident truth about it that dogmatic, hierarchical
priesthoods without proper hermeneutic templates find impossibly
difficult to explain without quack science to contradict it directly.
Popular
movies with evolution themes saturate public imagination and they
offer fuel to the Diabolan fire to burn down the Christian mission.
The film 'Lucy' with a cute blond named Scarlet Johansson playing the
lead role is about evolution-with eponymous reference to the first
human-like ancestor skeleton found living around Lake Tanganyika 3.5
million years ago-a short Australopithecus female about 3.5 feet
tall. The star of the film 'Lucy' is a modern woman who, like that
3.5 million year old fossil excavated by Lewis Leakey's son Richard,
is named 'Lucy'.
The
second chapter of Genesis has Adam and Eve created outside space-time
in a place named Eden. They are then thrown out of Eden and into a
world that was created in stages-evolved-in chapter one. It is
possible to argue about the values of the time literals of chapter
one (e.g. how long is a day before light or stars were made), yet to
interpolate Bishop Usher's calculations into chapter one is a mistake
made by the Diabolic and the fundamentalist set-and the latter are
also wrong about interpreting the time and symbolic referent values
of the Revelation quite commonly (pre-tribbers have it wrong).
At
any rate Lucy accidentally ingests an illegal drug designed by the
Japanese Yakuza in enormous quantities that have the side effect of
making her brain use 100% instead of the normal 10%. Morgan Freeman
is a kind of scientific narrator explaining evolution's biological
history on Earth during the film. There are flashes of predator-prey
actions and comparisons to moderns in the same roles. Lucy will
evolve herself to the highest condition eventually in record time.
She
evolves millions or billions of years ahead intellectually speaking
in a day or two with the magic smart drug. So therefore logically she
understands quantum mechanics itself and makes herself into a quantum
computer to reshape reality. That's a neat trick that I have though
God could do, yet one sees that it would be science and immoral
Diabolans that would have that divine kind of power in the brave new
world (a point not made in the movie 'Lucy').
Unknown
perhaps to the producers of Lucy- another skeleton was dug up a
couple of years ago 40 miles north of Lucy's burial site that is two
feet taller. It is a male named, I believe, Mr. Big who would have
towered over Lucy.
Mr.
Big was 5.5 feet tall and lived in the same time period 3.5 million
years ago. Mr. Big was probably the brains of the outfit and was the
same height as the average 19th century Brit. Maybe Brit brains
advanced in 3.5 million years somewhat since they invented fish and
chips whereas the Tanganikans probably ate fish sushi style, yet
'Sir' Elton John's moral reasoning has taken a turn Mr. Big might
have regarded as undignified.
There
are fewer murders in modern Britain than there were in the Middle
East of 10,000 B.C. when Jericho began to be settled. Mass war
capacity has increased with homosexuals on U-boats, Tridents or
whatever ready to push nuclear missile trigger-buttons in a kinder,
gentler way. High-tech Megadeath is so civilized. It takes a while to
build up, like catastrophe theory mathematics, while in the
interregnum from doom atheist organizations extol the love, peace and
humanhood of sin and faithlessness. The film starring Lucy should
have had Mr. Big playing the sadistic, chauvinist, and little-better
than a chimpanzee-sort-of-guy named Caesar.
A
world with no religion too would lead to a Universe run by and for
Satan evidently-and that would be consistent with what is known about
the primary Lord of Looseness from reading scripture. On the other
hand, with enough Priesthood of Believers organizing maybe that is
the way a Christian majority will arise. A Christian majority using
ecological economic leadership (it is more than classical economic
abstract market management and includes an environmental 'hands on'
approach neither Luddite nor oppressively stagnant as a kind of
Egyptian, dynastic 'time-freeze' cultural stasis of conservation).
Thus
one notes why Hollywood and the Federal government have decreasing
trouble advancing morals that are not consistent with divine
standards. Especially in the same sex marriage issue, a history of
Hollywood and media, television and federal promotion of
homosexuality built to a crescendo this month with former athlete
Bruce Jenner's cover on Vanity Fare in a bikini as a castrated
makeover into a neo-woman. With 'Sir' Elton John leading the British
homosexual advance and with the Rhodes Scholar influence of Bill
Clinton the decline of U.S. moral norms was inevitable without an
active priesthood of believers existing as an ecclesiastical backbone
for the church.
Brooks
wrote on page 24; "Sin gains upon man's soul by insensible
degrees.”The beginning of the words of his
mouth is foolishness, and the
end of his talking is mischievous madness." (Eccles.
10:13) Corruption in the heart,
when it breaks forth, is like a breach in the sea, which
begins in a narrow passage,
until it eats through, and cast down all before it. The
debates of the soul are quick,
and soon ended; and that may be done in a moment that
may undo a man forever. When a
man has begun to sin, he knows not where, or when,
or how he shall make a stop of
sin. Usually the soul goes on from evil to evil, from folly
to folly, until it is ripe for
eternal misery!"
Devices and Remedies
Brooks
describes many devices that Satan uses to snare the human soul and
take it down. Brooks also present remedies to each device. One of
the devices given is that of presenting examples of famous sinners
who later were forgiven. Brooks explains that such a device can lull
the soul to incautious acquiescence in sin. The reader finds that
profound repentance followed those famous sins.
Brooks
explains that the Satanic device luring men to sin with examples of
famous sinners such as David or Peter who were still forgiven, in
order to trick the soul into believing that little (or large) sins
are forgivable and not to worry much about doesn't show the huge
repentance of those men to their one-time huge sin.
Brooks
page 31; "And therefore, though you may escape temporal
judgments, yet you shall not
escape spiritual judgments: 'How shall we escape, if we neglect so
great salvation?' (Heb. 2:3) says the apostle. Oh! therefore,
whenever Satan shall
present God to the soul as one made up all of mercy, that he may draw
you to do wickedly, say unto him, that sins against God's mercy, will
bring upon the soul the greatest misery; and therefore whatever
becomes of you, you will not sin against
mercy."
Brooks
wrote on page 30 that;
"Remedy
(2). The second remedy against this device of Satan is, solemnly to
consider,That God is as JUST, as he is merciful. As the Scriptures
speak Him out to be a very merciful God, so they speak Him out to be
a very just God. Witness His casting the angels out of heaven and His
binding them in chains of darkness until the judgment of
great day.* Witness His turning
Adam out of Paradise. Witness His drowning of the old
world. Witness His raining hell out of heaven upon Sodom. Witness all
the troubles, losses, sicknesses, and diseases, which are in the
world. Witness Tophet, which "has long been prepared; it has
been made ready for the king. Its fire pit has been made deep
and wide, with an abundance of fire and wood; the breath of the LORD,
like a stream
of burning sulfur, sets it ablaze." (Isaiah 30:33) Witness His
treasuring up of wrath
against the day of wrath. But above all, witness the pouring forth of
all His wrath upon
His bosom Son, when Jesus bore the sins of His people, and cried out,
"My God, My
God, why have You forsaken Me?""
and
"The
third remedy against this device of Satan is, seriously to consider,
That sins against God's mercy
will bring the greatest and sorest judgments upon men's
heads and hearts. Mercy is God's
Alpha, justice is His Omega. David, speaking of these
attributes, places mercy in the
forefront, and justice in the rearward, saying, "I will sing
of Your love and justice."
(Psalm 101:1). When God's mercy is despised, then His
justice takes the throne!* God
is like a prince, who sends not his army against rebels
before he has sent his pardon,
and proclaimed it by a herald of arms: he first hangs out
the white flag of mercy; if this
wins men in, they are happy forever; but if they remain
rebellious, then God will put
forth his red flag of justice and judgment. If His mercy is
despised, His justice shall be
felt! The higher we are in dignity, the more grievous is our fall and
misery."
Brook's
'Remedies...' page 30-"Ah Lord! this mercy! humbly beg, that
whatever you give me up to, you will not give me
up to the ways of my own heart;
if you will give me up to be afflicted, or tempted, or
reproached, I will patiently sit
down, and say, It is the Lord; let him do with me what
seems good in his own eyes. Do
anything with me, lay what burden you will upon me, so you do not
give me up to the ways of my own heart. Augustine says, 'It is a
human thing to fall into sin, devilish to persevere therein, and
divine to rise from it. Deliver
me, O Lord, from that evil man—myself!"
Of
the many devices that Satan has used to dupe the soul to sin, one of
the more challenging is the example given unto the suffering, poor
Christian of the prosperity of wicked men (and women) who follow not
the ways of the Lord, prosper and are entirely without interest in
God. In theory the Christian is tempted to give up and adapt to the
corrupt practices of celebrity debauchees and godless predators of
the time. Brook’s comment about what the reprobate or lost lack is
very good writing, and I will post a paragraph of that…
Page 44 ‘Precious Remedies’; “Yet
all this is nothing to what they lack. They lack a saving interest in
God, Christ, the Spirit, the promises, the covenant of grace, and
everlasting glory. They lack acceptance and reconciliation with God;
they lack righteousness, justification, sanctification, adoption, and
redemption. They lack the pardon of sin, and power against sin, and
freedom from the dominion of sin. They lack that favor with God,
which is better than life, and that joy which is unspeakable and full
of glory, and that peace which passes understanding, and that grace,
the least spark of which is more worth than heaven and earth. They
lack a house that has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
They lack those riches that perish not, the glory that fades not,
that kingdom that shakes not.”
Issues about worldliness and how to be
in the world with regard to God are a substantial part of the
empirical challenge of human existence. Often the challenge is
presented as a choice between worldliness and spirituality yet that
criterion is somewhat disingenuous. Obviously it is a difficult to
clarify disjunctive since the spiritual too are in the world and
experience all of its demands with those that choose to be entirely
worldly and without spiritual interest. I think the phrasing and
criterion of the choice is itself in the province of Satan.
Christians are in-the-world yet not-of-it. The lost are in-the-world
and are-of-the-world.
Earlier I have written of consciousness
and sentience as being of a spiritual nature different than mass and
material for-itself that is apparently not sentient or conscious. The
awareness of being in-the-world yet not-of-the-world is obviously
like the relationship of mind to being-in-the-Universe-of-matter yet
not-of-it. Sentience differs from inanimate matter.
When Adam and Eve ate of the tree of
knowledge they transitioned apparently from a naïve condition of
self-awareness in an Eden of a different space-time composition than
the material Universe to a self-awareness of a deeper nature (aware
of their own nakedness) with an infinite potential to learn. God
commented that they had become as little Gods and relocated them to
the containment facility of the Universe where thermodynamic
worldliness and consumerism of all matter and energy that exists is
an implicit aspect of the structure. Within that Universe-on-fire
consuming itself original sin is inherent. Mankind are inevitable
drawn toward the energy stream of pure worldliness even seeking
fission, fusion and zero-point energy immersion in it-perhaps as self
evolving to quantum computers making forms of pleasurable experience
for-itself (as an archetype of the human conscious being). Mankind
was cast out of Eden to stop them from eating of the tree of
life-eternal life as well. With the hungry nature of inquiry and
disobedience to God Adam and Eve were cast into an environment
resembling themselves with gravity hungering to attract other mass
and consume it to a black hole forever ready for more.
In-the-spirit of faith in God and the
sacrifice of the Lord to atone for the problem of original sin (and
subsequent sin) the Christian is set-apart behaviorally and
self-consciously from worldly behavior. Worldly behavior that is not
reclaimed from the draw toward pervasive Universal thermodynamic
field characteristics has abandoned spiritual accountability
for-itself and is condemned to eternal hell. It seems as if Satan is
always reinforcing aspects of worldliness that usually draw humans to
them and uses those attractions to renormalize spiritual inclinations
for solely worldly thought and behavior.
Worldly behavior is in opposition to
spiritually directed. Spiritual behavior may not be supportive of
numerous worldly political and social goals of the lost, and the lost
may therefore view the spiritual as worldly foes. A Sunday morning of
beer drinking, football and wrestling isn't the same as attending a
priesthood of believers liturgy.
Sin becomes sin only when spiritual law
exists Paul observed. Spiritual laws intervene in worldly behavior
that causes cruelty and destruction to human beings and the human
spirit. It's probably not a coincidence that spiritual law intended
to draw the human spirit back to a transcending trust in God also
discourage human behavior that is destructive to the self and others.
Sin labels behaviors that cause the
destruction of the self, of others, and of spiritual awareness of God
and his will for humans to be in a right relationship with him. His
perfect goodness requires perfect obedience and order, yet that
liberates, for God is absolutely good, right and just. For a human to
be in-the-world and to be only worldly is fundamentally to be a raw
savage, thermodynamically immersed animal without moral reservations.
Even worse than that, the thermodynamic animal with no good
whatsoever, given a human level sentience intelligence quotient, has
the capability for unlimited lies, dissimulation, deceit and
wickedness, believing it has no transcendent moral authority (God) to
be concerned about, if it even thinks that far. It is free to develop
itself and its technology through innumerable permutations of
‘progress’ until it becomes a quantum computer Cyborg or
whatever. None of that direction is good for humanity , yet humanity
with a majority saved through the grace of the Holy Spirit, the Lord
Jesus and God the Father would have better prospects empirically and
existentially in a post-space/time dimensional sort of way.
Just God has the wisdom about how to
address the thermodynamic and sin criterion ultimately, and just God
knows how mind as spirit with physical being characteristics to
support it can exist for eternity without burning everything up
applying entropy transformations to make practico-inert substances
and event-processes.
Being in-the-world yet not-of-it means
that Christians have a deeper spiritual awareness of the creation
that God made (the Universe and its content) as good, since God made
it as an event-process in a thermodynamic stream, and God is good
creating good. With God tempering the problem of original sin to a
subdued level through the salvation of the Lord a better humanity may
be able to negotiate their existence in the thermodynamic Universe
with better Christian ethics and social relationships enabling safer
progress through the shoals of materiality transitions from
organization to disorganization of inherent energy and mass.
It is a paradox that as society
prospers through the grace of the spirit and as society generally
achieves a better condition it has sometimes become entirely worldly
again, drawn toward attractions of the spiritless realm of
thermodynamic content as an end-in-itself. Practico-inert
manufactures and evolved objects permuting form and content through
blind chance (rather than the Queen of Heaven in this century) seem
opulent seductive and irresistible.
The human experience today has massive
common social thought and beliefs disseminated through electronic
media and replicated micro-socially as monkey-see, monkey-hear,
monkey-do. The oppressive pressure of incorrect or inadequate
intellectual criteria assaults individuals including Americans in
continua of corruption. Plain worldliness as conscious applied
philosophy and religion is an existential oxymoron of form since
awareness of the world only arises with sentience that is a basic
spiritual phenomenon differing in character from the forms of
inanimate worldliness.
Mass social worldliness devoid of
regard for the problems of sin directs the course of social progress
toward world-lines with enhanced prospects for mass destruction,
materially speaking. Regardless, worshipers of blind chance
thermodynamic primacy speak of comfort and safety while Godly ethics
are deleted from their concerns.
Even so, people cannot be saved by
spiritual laws that are externally structured. Such laws can only
bring the soul to awareness of sin and inability to adhere to all of
the laws of God they need to exist as God would have them exist. Only
the sacrificial love of the Lord and faith in the Lord given by the
spirit of grace that writes the laws of God upon hearts can draw the
Christian along correct paths in this world and beyond. Only in
transcending spiritual trust in Jesus Christ can the grace of God
reach into the individual’s life and bring him into the sole
project transcending space and time and move him from the city of man
in-the-world into the city-of-God in the kingdom of God. The kingdom
of God is forever transitioning to eternity from the temporal,
worldliness of the Universe. Its phase changes may be sudden, or it's
descent from heaven as a new Jerusalem may be a gradual evolution of
change. Phase change ordinal actualizations inferred from scripture
often cannot be made with certainty.
The kingdom of God is within, because
God transcends worldly constructions and appearances of mass and
energy in any temporal Universe, and God knows where those that are
of His flock are. God is within the heart of every Christian, and
every Christian is in the kingdom of God, that is, where God wills it
to be, when and how.
The choice is not really between
worldliness and pure spirit someplace else metaphysically speaking.
Some people would be worried about giving up security in the world
and relying upon faith in spirit. About that the Lord said that those
who save their lives would lose them. The choice is between a
thermodynamic worldly alienation without spirit, or faith in the
living God of spirit and truth. Faith in the living God provides
Christian ethics incidentally that better human society and
technological-environmental utility.
Thomas
Brooks examines one particular Satanic device to snare the soul that
has wide-spread use today. One use of the device occurs in the attack
upon Genesis in order to make just-worldly cosmology opulent and
desirable in comparison to the parchment of Genesis.
“DEVICE 1: By
presenting the WORLD in such a dress, and in such a garb to the soul,
as to ensnare the soul, and to win upon the affection of the soul.”
Satan seems to use confusion about the
construction of the Universe today as a way to draw people to
faithlessness and frustration with the Bible. Those that wouldn't
know a proton from a quark leap to faith in electrons and football to
disdain Genesis. The media love that. There is no need for
frustration.
It is true that some theologians use
12th century scientific assumptions in interpreting Genesis and limit
God a priori to means of construction readily understandable to the
3rd millennium man. That wish to a void scientific research and rely
entirely upon the theological work of the past to understand Genesis
tends to reinforce secular, atheist, arguments that the Genesis story
is obsolete-when of course it is not; it is the interpretive
paradigms or scientific assumptions shaping hermeneutics that are
obsolete. Though cosmology and physics require intellectual effort to
understand, a theologian ought not defend his own intellectual sloth.
Brooks councils that Christians ought
to have humility in spiritual matters in order not to leap into error
for-themselves. Brooks writes that Christians should not go beyond
scripture. Regarding spiritual concerns I agree. Speculation about
spirit that is not revealed by God can lead to error. The Universe is
however more of a physical concern although it is possible to infer a
spiritual foundation for matter. That question of how God who is
Spirit creates mass that is something else (probably) is likely an
unanswerable question. It may even be improperly formed. With
humility though it is useful to know enough about cosmology such that
Satan cannot back one into a corner and dictate one’s hermeneutic
to oneself, perhaps requiring that one have a three or four thousand
year old scientific database and accept that God too is limited to
that.
There
is a theoretical cornucopia for considering God's spiritual means of
constructing energy, mass and dimensions. The Bible says that He said
the word and that was enough. One can understand that vibrations of
string theory could have commenced then with particular frequencies
given to strings fluxing an inflation of the Universe with the new
content. particular means might be inferred logical from what Genesis
says to only a limited extent. One also has the material Universe to
consider as a kind of artifact of God's creative impetus.
Scientists
consider only the remnant of creation that is the familiar Universe
of mass and energy, form and substance and extrapolate with theory
from the observable about what makes it work. The question of how it
originated is entangled with how it works. Because science is not
theology it cannot meaningfully address abstract theological
speculations concerning creation. Contemporary M-Theory, Emperor
Theory and String Theory do consider hypothetical meta-physics of
extra-dimensions as if they were mathematicians considering abstract
forms of geometry, algebra, and topology with calculus, yet that has
some verifiability issues. dialogues. This is just another of what I
am sure are millions of potential credible methods that God could
create and sustain a Universe that is conformable to Genesis. I will
not strictly correlate the physics to Genesis day-phases herein.
This is just the technical presentation for another theoretical
mechanics outline version 7.1.
Spatial
dimensions add up to time. This is a conjecture about reality and the
construction of the Universe. That is, to clarify, about the content
of how it exists-not a question about if God created it or not. The
Universe outside Wal-mart has some sort of means of being not made in
China. Physicists contemplate an infinity of Universes, Higgs fields,
particles, waves, quantum uncertainty and so forth as content
enabling stuff comprising mass and energy. Cycles of shaping and
forming the play-dough of matter with wonderful illustrations of
stars and galaxies producing wonderful dust, elements and etc.
replete with smart creatures able to think and watch football or shop
at Wal-mart, even listen like programmable fuzzy robots to NPR. I am
not writing about all of that nor making ontological arguments. I
believe God created what is through one means or another. This paper
is more like asking the question; did God use a 9 iron or a wedge to
get the ball into the hole?
Space
and time seem to coincide in expansion. One wonders about the nature
of time and how it differs from space, or if it does; as time appears
to increase like space in another way-a dimension called time where
one can move forward.
If just spatial dimensions are moving
and a conscious observer experiences the intersection of moving
dimensions as time, can time be said to exist externally, or isn't
time just a subjective perception of the observer even though it is a
real experience?
If
none of the dimension sheets intersected there would be no
possibility for the existence of time. Maybe consciousness requires
change of intersecting dimensions and the experience of time to
exist.
It
seems possible that like two-dimensional ants living on a
two-dimensional world-sheet pushed forward by a large finger, it
would not be possible to measure the force moving the entire
dimensional world sheet from outside the world sheet-even if another
world sheet is passing through it, such that there are really just
two one-dimensional world sheets that added together seem to be a
solitary two-dimensional Universal world-sheet. If the world-sheets
have changing topology, of the dimensions generate energy through
inter-dimensional contact, there is still no way to measure the power
of God pushing the world sheet dimensions along their course.
So
as a Christian thinking about this, and about the perennial matter of
what component of the experience of reality is subjective and what
objective, the 'let there be light' matter indicates that light was
perceived by God when it was made to exist. For human beings or other
beings in-a-Universe light would be a way of experiencing an energy
field of a particular sort. Such energy would not appear as light
does to a human though without an observer experiencing photons as
human do, unless of course some other particle or wave in a field
could cause a sensation similar to that caused by photons such that a
human would think of it as light. That energy could be caused when
dimension plates intersect as virtual energy to stimulate Higgs field
quanta, and time could be thought of as discrete, relative positions
within the temporal transition of dimension sheets.
Physicists have a term-concepts named
configuration space and phase space that I can use to refer to the
condition of dimension sheets. The configuration of content and form
of a dimension sheet is static or fixed. When dimension sheets
intersect they stimulate changes, and the changes can be called phase
space. Phase space with energy and matter thermodynamical changes is
an emergent phenomenon of intersecting dimension sheets. I suppose
the relational angles at which dimensions intersect might effect the
phase space configuration (a useful retro-term).
A
question I would have about phase space is to what extent
constructions in phase space are more that emergent phenomena of
time? Would phase space constructions exist in a meta-phase
configuration? Could emergent matter-energy construction in phase
space redistribute content from one dimension sheet to another? Might
dimension sheets change relative size in that event?
Plainly one has no idea how many
dimension sheets could exist or why they should 'in the beginning'.
It could be like an infinite deck of dimension-sheet cards the Lord
used to construct a 'house of cards' of a temporal, expanding
Universe from a singularity of one dimension; increasing until His
purposes are served; perhaps after determining what souls will go to
eternal heaven, and for whom the bells will toll in hell.
Doubting,Questioning and
Uncomfortable Conditions
Brooks illuminates eight Satanic
devices in the section of Doubting, questioning and uncomfortable
conditions. Yet Brooks also makes probably the most concise statement
about sin and its relationship to the saved Christian that I have
read anywhere outside the Bible. The clarification is a fine
theological statement en passant though that was probably not Brooks
intent. His intent instead was to affirm that the doubts and
questions a Christian may have in uncomfortable conditions are rather
common. I will post the quote from page 87;
"Remedy
(1). The first remedy is for weak believers to consider, That though
Jesus Christ has not freed them from the presence of sin, yet he has
freed them from the damnatory power of sin. It is most true that sin
and grace were never born together, neither shall sin and grace die
together; yet while a believer breathes in this world, they must
live together, they must keep house together. Christ in this life
will not free any believer from the presence of any one sin, though
he does free every believer from the damning power of every sin.
'There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk
not after the flesh—but after the Spirit' (Rom. 8:1).
The law cannot condemn a believer, for Christ has fulfilled it for
him; divine justice cannot condemn him, for that Christ has
satisfied; his sins cannot condemn him, for they in the blood of
Christ are pardoned; and his own conscience, upon righteous grounds,
cannot condemn
him, because Christ, that is greater
than his conscience, has acquitted him.
My sins hurt me not, if they like me
not. Sin is like that wild fig-tree, or ivy in the wall; cut off
stump, body, bough, and branches, yet some strings or other will
sprout out again, until the wall be plucked down."
Brooks
in developing remedies to sin explains what sin is to a certain
extent. He explains that it strikes against the dignity and majesty
of the Lord and hence against the well-being of man.
Reading Brooks with the particular way
of language use common to the era it occurred to me that language use
of a given era is tied to the particular technological and physical
infrastructure as well as the social. Sexual imagery in social
relationships comprise a substantial part of ancient cultures and
still of some languages that are genderized.
One might decide that a spear is
masculine-'el spearo' and that a car is feminine if it has bucket
seats and large headlights 'ella cara' (I am making up these example
words). Brooks writes that 'the devils breasts are fruits of
wickedness'. I had not given thought to the devil as anything besides
masculine, yet of course in the transgender era where Bruce Jenner
opted for financial promotion to pseudo-womanhood a masculine devil
could be thought of as feminine too. I only note this because the
idea of sexuality and relationships that occur in the Bible and to
recent times reflect common sorts of understanding that might be
comprehended by anyone since they are so very basic.
The church as the 'bride of Christ
expresses the close relationship the Lord has with the saved rather
than a sexual relationship, yet it is used throughout Christian
history to describe the relationship of Christians to the Lord.
That brings me to consider further a
few more ideas. I have recently used the idea of God as being a
computer operating system writer and people as existing like program
elements within the operating system that cannot even possible every
see the author directly. If the author wrote a program avatar of
himself into the system that he communicated with then maybe
characters living in some program would encounter the author
directly. The author-programmer might also put his holy spiritual
helper for humanity within the system if he wanted, with some sort of
protocol written in so that it is mostly a meta-system,
behind-the-scenes phenomenon viewed by the human characters in the
program.
In Bible times no one would have
written about computer operating systems or used such references as
allegories, and that I think is a reason why they are absent
(obviously). Jesus used simple language to express complex thoughts,
and the language was full of terms from construction, social
relationships such as husband-wife and royal-subject common to the
era.
The Lord's ideas though were notably
different, and better than anything else expressed in writing
anywhere in written material for at least 1800 years, and in my
opinion remain unsurpassed. Not even Shakespeare constructs the
subtlety and complexity of thought expressions as did the Lord.
I am thinking in particular of the
Lord's reference to not Moses providing bread, but the Father in
heaven, and that Jesus is the bread that came down from heaven that
gives eternal life. The historical comparison and depth of
understanding is rich, and the theological meanings very deep too-
elegantly said with simplicity.
Moses is said to be an historical
precursor of Jesus in some ways delivering the faithful from bondage.
The chosen people were sustained in the desert with manna from
heaven, and they underwent chastening and correction for straying now
and then from the obedience from faith. Moses delivered the chosen
people unto the threshold of the promised land, and Jesus delivers
Christians unto the kingdom of God. The people of God in the desert
were chosen and in effect, the elect. The people of God saved through
faith in the Lord were also chosen people, and elect; faith must be
provided by the grace of God. Destiny for anyone, the providence or
provision of world-lines follow the design of God. The providence of
God outwardly for humanity does not always indicate His inward
providence of faith for the chosen. The wicked may prosper while the
faithful are thrown to lions. Brooks wrote that those Christians
sacrificed were more afraid of the lion of sin and faithlessness
within than of empirical lions without.
Relationship-based allegories and
analogies are fundamental in Biblical theology I think. The Father,
Son and Holy Spirit are perhaps reference-terms of a relation-based
character understandable to human beings in this era.
I was rather surprised that reading
Brooks would prompt some theological thought beyond the immediate
topic of defense against sin yet it does. And I suppose I should not
have been surprised as the topics that Brooks addresses are deep and
fascinating.
I believe there must be quite a
difference between computers and their cold artificial intelligence
and that of actual sentient beings if such can be said to exist in
the former case. So it might not be a good idea to compare God to a
computer operating system author anyway. God as the Supreme sentient
being is impossibly difficult to describe for less-than-omniscient
beings, thus the Biblical era language that continues in gender
inflected languages too the present on sex relationships is better
than modern language relationship with terms like user, consumer,
producer, owner, operator, predator, prey, inventor, machine
language, etc.
I considered God the Father and Jesus
as The Son in theological, sexed relationship terms and had to ask,
if Mary was the Mother of God on Earth for the temporal birth of the
Lord, then who is the Mother of God from eternity, since Jesus is
co-eternal with the Father in all directions of eternity as infinite?
I should mention that infinity can be
of different magnitudes with some greater than others perhaps. If a
line beginning at point 0 extends too infinity on the positive side,
isn't it less substantial in size than one that extends to infinity
on the positive and negative sides?
It is possible that all infinities
equalize in size once they begin to exist, if they are in quantum
form and when made to exist do so immediately in all of their
fullness to the nth degree. So even if a line that is infinite in one
direction is made to exist in its fullness immediately upon being
generated to existed at point time=0 is theoretically of less size
since it might have a finite point at its theoretical starting point,
even so it is of the same size as a line that was unbounded in tow
directions rather than one. In some respects one would think that a
one dimensional or one-direction line that is made to exist in
quantum fullness in every state of being must negate its own
beginning point at time=0 and seem to have no beginning.
Not to go too far off topic here; if
Jesus is co--eternal with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and if God
is One, then it is likely that the Son-for-others, and the
Spirit-for-others may be such because the term concepts are such as
may be comprehensible to less-than-omniscient beings. The Son and the
Holy Spirit are real persons and roles made to appear and
relate-to-others, yet each in-themselves exist as with God for
eternity. God's omniscience and omnipotence lets him foreknow the
relationships selected for actualization from eternity.
The use of representational language
and complexity of expressions of theological structures made in
simple ordinary language by the Lord is notably better than anything
that would be written for quite a long time. Even today people in
writing and the political world may have difficulty or an inability
to use deep interdisciplinary ideas combing history, philosophy,
theology, science, sociology and so forth into simple too understand,
ordinary language with brevity.
Consider the Matthew 15 & 16 where
Jesus gives the 'keys to the kingdom' after the first explicit
declaration of faith by the first disciple-Simon (as well as his
brother Andrew who was also chosen at the same time to follow him).
the catholic church has tended to take the meaning literally as some
sort of conveyance of keys after the death of the Lord to exclusive
control of a limited distro Christian franchise. Instead the
symbolically reborn, renamed Peter was given the keys to the kingdom of
God for being the first Christian of true faith. Every other
Christian would also be given the keys to the kingdom when they were
saved. The kingdom of God is within the Lord said. like the keys to
interpreting a code or the keys to winning at basketball with
attention to fundamental, Peter and all other Christians are given
the keys to enter the kingdom of God. All that a Christian does in
the temporal world has reverberations in the eternal life that has,
so far as the kingdom of God is concerned, though not yet fully
actualized in appearance, already started.
'Precious
Remedies' as a Christian Ethical Primer
'Precious
Remedies to Satan's Devices' may be the best work on practical
Christian ethics in the theology course. In describing the Satanic
devices, Brooks must present a correct posture or bearing for the
Christian to have in order that he may recognize and negate the
Satanic devices to induce sin. The 160 page book is written with a
very, regular, orderly style and is quite subtle in its recognition
and expression of the kinds of devices Satan uses to undermine
Christian being-in-the-world.
Brooks'
book is a kind of early existentialist work I think. I am sure would
surprise most that encounter that opinion as many have certain idea
about what existentialism comprises such that it is more atheistic or
assertive rather than descriptive of subjective phenomenalism.
Existentialism describes the phenomenal experience of existence from
the first person perspective. Sartre borrowed Descartes's paradigm of
examining the cogito from first principles and just went farther with
it as a French, Nobel Prize in Literature professor of philosophy
might be predisposed.
It
is from a rather existentialist point of view that a Christian views
Satanic devices that attack him and even challenge his own
interiority. Existentialism is concerned about the self-mind view of
exteriority; the empirical world, and of heightened self-awareness of
how the perceptions are translated physiologically into idea
in-the-mind that comprise the experience of existence. A Christian
must consider his own motives, emotions and ideas and consider if
they are consistent with Christian ethics. Brooks urges the Christian
to judge himself rather than others, to have humility and regard
exteriorities and inward tendencies to sin with an objective
Christian lens always seeking to renormalize behavior unto the
expressed will of God. Brooks notes that many Christians cannot
really love their fellow Christians or walk together spiritually the
99% of the distance on which they agree rather than not at all
because of the 1% where they disagree (obviously not including
apostasy as just 1%).
Christians
accept divine revelation through the word of God as transcending the
temporal and empirical realm of exteriority and even regard it as
responsibility for their own phenomenal experience of mind existing
with a physical body to support it. The Satanic devices that attack
the Christian seems to be an exterior spiritual contest that Satan
has to try to make a hostile takeover of the exterior, temporal realm
in which a Christian soul in his body is temporally embedded. Yet of
course the saved Christian soul-or his conscious experience of being,
regardless of what actually makes it up, actually exists as
self-awareness for the Christian, and as a saved individual of faith
in The Lord is regarded by the Lord as existing in the kingdom of God
concurrent with its presence in-the-temporal-world phenomenally
experienced.
Perhaps that is analogous to a matter
of allegiance wherein a general would recognize the loyal members of
his army even scattered amidst a hostile sea of opposition forces. A
better metaphor is that of a Shepard recognizing his sheep, and the
sheep recognizing the Shepard's voice as it calls through the
darkness of the temporal world of sin, thermodynamics or social
strife incited and sustained with sin.
"IV.
DEVICE AGAINST POOR AND IGNORANT SOULS" -Brooks page 129
I found this device of Satan remarkable
to read about. Just as Brooks describes ways that saints may be
troubled in the chapter before, he finds the problem of ignorance to
be of extreme importance. Ignorance is a way that is a broad road to
destruction, and that today is especially fascinating since there are
those that believe Christians are ignorant of many empirical things
that would render there faith difficult to believe, if they only
knew.
My
Barnes and Noble Nook
has a feature on the library page that lists four of the top 100 best
sellers at the Nook store. Presently the number one book cover is of
one titled 'A God in Ruins'. Annoying as I find that title, it is
representative of Brooks device of ignorance. many of the ignorant
have utter contempt for God and feel they can say and do whatever
they like and that no god is present to supervene since Saint Darwin
said so, and many other scientists have confirmed evolution.
Evolutionists have the idea that conceptually speaking this Universe
isn't big enough for both God and science to exist simultaneously and
that scientific evolution has won the gunfight at K.O. corral.
The problem of ignorance does pertain
on both sides of the equation of evolutionists vs. Christian
fundamentalists though. I have decided to write my thesis on the
topic of evolution vs correct interpretation of scripture, and the
problem of ignorance is especially relevant.
Evolutionists do not know how to
properly interpret the book of Genesis and for that matter neither do
most fundamentalists. Neither side comprehends philosophically
speaking the plethora of possibilities that God has as an omnipotent
being to order the quantum Universe in whatever fashion He likes.
That matters quite a bit on the issue, for each tend to have a
particular idea, mostly shared equally and erroneously of what the
first few chapters of Genesis are about and how they occurred.
neither is either subject especially
cognizant of the written history of the book of Genesis or where and
when it was composed. All of that matters. Perhaps I should sketch
that here...
Abraham was given information from God
that made it with him to Zion. He also had cultural information from
Sumer. Abraham's information made it culturally to Jews in Egypt who
provided it to Moses through cultural and oral tradition.
Moses probably invented the aleph beth
and wrote down the ten commandments and other materials given from
God. The works and life of Moses and the Jews given in the
Pentateuch about the desert times following exodus are passed down to
the time of David. Moses said that a future king of Israel would be
devoted to God and study scripture and would write down everything
Moses passed on.
King David likely fits that role. He
probably gathered and correlated the Jewish historical materials and
established a process to formally bring them together and write them
down. That work might have continued into the court of Solomon and
Rehoboam. it would have been an exacting and laborious process done
with reverent devotion to detail and order. The J book might have
been the first formally completed product of what would be the
Pentateuch.
So even though one may have a
reasonable idea of the historical order of composition of the Bible
there is still the matter of interpreting it properly. The first
chapter of Genesis with creation, the second chapter with the
creation of Adam and Eve, and on to the flood story and more normal
history thereafter is not very well understood by many. People wonder
if the words are representational or literal; if they should be
interpreted with values meaningful to people of that era when they
were composed or in modern terms. Earth for instance in the year 2000
B.C. probably meant 'land'. If the whole land or whole Earth were
said to be covered with water that would be a normal way of
expressing the point about a civilization being drowned by
flood-perhaps in the late Wisconsin Ice Age circa 10,000-15,000 B.C.
Today people expect it to meant the entire nearly round planet called
'Earth' was covered with water higher than the highest mountain. That
expectation is to select and isolate one particular meaning from all
the meanings it really may have.
People expect the first six days to be
Earth time periods before even the Universe existed. That just isn't
reasonable. Geology has epochs and eons as time values each of vast
length. Days for God may be of any time period independent of Earth
time. There is simply a physical space-time disconformity that really
exists between time=0 and Earth time even within relativity theory
where space and time are a continuum of dimensions comprising a
whole. Time is distorted as one approaches light speed, and God is
working faster than light-not even comprehensible within Einsteinian
parameters with light being the fastest theoretical speed.
Without going on about the problem of
time values here too much, it might suffice to say that the days may
be representational terms as good as any for periods when God worked
and order of assembly over time that is not inconsistent with the
most general parameters of the physical theorists ideas about
cosmology developing incrementally over time changing into various
forms. Why should any expect 3rd millennium B.C. presentations to be
made in 3rd millennium A.D. terms that may not be proven correct
anyway in another thousand years?
Adam and Eve were seemingly made
elsewhere than in the Universe God evolved or made to exist in
phases. They were dropped into thermodynamic space-time from outside
it, and they started a civilization that was drowned in a flood, yet
their kids survived the flood with them and they merged into the
existing people of the world that were not chosen people evolved from
the line of Adam and Eve.
Ignorance of the Bible and of physical
cosmology has consequences that Brooks writes about well in another
context. in addition to the numerous excellent remedies to Satan's
terrible devices Tomas Brooks excoriates the problem of ignorance
that was a stumbling block to faith in his day as it is now.
"Fourthly, As Satan has his device
to destroy gracious souls, so he has his devices to destroy poor
ignorant souls, and that sometimes, By drawing them to esteem
ignorance, and to neglect, slight, and despise the means of
knowledge. Ignorance is the mother of mistake, the cause of trouble,
error, and of terror; it is the highway to hell,and it makes a man
both a prisoner and a slave to the devil at once. Ignorance unmans a
man; it makes a man a beast, yes, makes him more miserable than the
beast which perishes. (Ignorant ones have this advantage—they have
a cooler hell.) There are none so easily nor so frequently captured
in Satan's snares—as ignorant souls. They are
easily drawn to dance with the devil
all day, and to dream of supping with Christ at night. 'My people are
destroyed for lack of knowledge.' Hosea 4:6."
I have enjoyed reading Thomas Brooks
excellent book this summer. Thomas Brooks wrote of a general category
to ensnare all sorts of men (and women) of various ranks in the world
and it's forth remedy is remarkably subtle once more. It is important
to remind oneself that humility is more valuable than self seeking.
That too easily leads one to value the temporal and temporal content
more than the Lord and God and brings one to a bad temporal cul de
sac with nowhere to go besides hell, as it were, at then end of life
if not before.
After I make another post from Brooks
on this topic I will write a little about Lot.
"Remedy (4). The fourth remedy
against this device of Satan is, solemnly to consider, That
self-seekers are self-losers and self-destroyers. Absalom and Judas
seek themselves, and hang themselves. Saul seeks himself, and kills
himself. Ahab seeks himself, and loses himself, his crown and
kingdom. Pharaoh seeks himself, and overthrows himself and his mighty
army in the Red Sea. Cain sought himself, and slew two at once, his
brother and his own soul. Gehazi sought change of clothing—but God
changed his clothing into a leprous skin. Haman sought himself, and
lost himself. The princes and residents sought themselves, in the
ruin of Daniel—but ruined themselves, their wives and children.
That which self-seekers think should be a staff to support them,
becomes by the hand of justice an iron rod to break them; that which
they would have as springs to refresh them, becomes a gulf utterly to
consume them. The crosses of self-seekers shall always exceed their
mercies: their pain their pleasure; their torments their comforts.
Every self-seeker is a self-tormentor, a self-destroyer; he carries a
hell, an executioner, in his own bosom.
Adam seeks himself—and loses himself,
paradise, and that blessed image that God had stamped upon him. Lot
seeks himself (Gen. 13:10, 11) and loses himself and his goods. Peter
seeks to save himself and miserably loses himself. Hezekiah in the
business of the ambassadors, seeks himself, and lost and his life
too, had not God saved him by a miracle."-page 112
Lot is more of a self-seeker than
Abraham. Abraham opts to follow God and Abraham give his brother Lot
a choice of land. Abraham is blessed by God more so than Lot. Lot is
something of a dead end comparatively, a little more like Ishmael,
yet he seems to have a certain dispensation about him or rather grace
that overflows from God's choice of Abraham as the true line for the
chosen people to grow.
It is somewhat interesting to consider
the extent that things go wrong for Lot. Of course he is not Job, yet
even so the city he moves to becomes totally depraved. Angels are
sent to rescue Lot and his family yet eventually even Lot's wife is
killed being turned into a pillar of salt by her own choosing willful
disobedience to the commandment of God not to look back-perhaps
wishfully-at Sodom and Gomorrah. After Lot does escape the doom and
sleeps his daughters fiddle with him and conceive continuing the
tradition of depravity.
In a sense Lot is once more an example
or representation of the doom of humanity beyond the elect, chosen
people of God. Abraham is that line of the elect and of the billions
of saved Christians as numerous as sands on the beach or stars in
the sky eventually-a large number. Lot-contaminated by the corruption
of the world yet saved even so, and by ever so narrow of margins,
with the full regard of God sending angels to rescue Abraham's
brother and family, is that Christian targeted by Satan's devices who
through the grace of God is given another chance to return to the
kingdom of God. God is merciful.
