Rantatouille Caveat Lector

Entry #001 - December 2004

Philippians 2:5   Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
Philippians 2:6   Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
Philippinas 2:7   But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:

Colossians 2:8   Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.
Colossians 2:9   For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.

John 20:27   Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust [it] into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.
John 20:28   And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.

Matthew 27:46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Crudely expressed, God suffered a short bout of self-imposed schizophrenia in His resolve to redeem man. The all-powerful and righteous Godhead looked down from His heavenly throne upon the cross on which God the Son hung, carrying the grotesque multitude of sins of all mankind. To the mortal mind it is inconceivable that the Holy God would take on the unholiness of his rebellious creatures and then punish Himself for it. But it seems His own Law demanded such an epic sacrifice, and none other.

Luke 24:25   Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken:
Luke 24:26   Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?
Luke 24:27   And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

Acts 26:22   Having therefore obtained help of God, I continue unto this day, witnessing both to small and great, saying none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come:
Acts 26:23   That Christ should suffer, [and] that he should be the first that should rise from the dead, and should shew light unto the people, and to the Gentiles.

God would not have incarnated an angel in human flesh and used that as sin offering for eternity past and preset, because:

No angel has authority to forgive man.
It is incompatible with His own divine statutes to punish one creature for another.
Angels are finite creatures, therefore angelic sacrifices would have to been offered routinely like animal sacrifices. Jesus’ infinite sacrifice, however, was one to end all others.

God would not have freely ignored and acquitted sin, for His perfect Justice demands that sin be punished.

But we do not imagine that God is trapped by His own Law, as was Darius the Persian monarch when he sealed the Prophet Daniel’s death warrant. The standard is God’s, and God is the standard. The Law belongs to Almighty God Himself, and it is easily within His power to free man from its fatal bondage. What is the sin of all mankind compared with the boundless mercy, righteousness and power of God, but a speck?

It is a beautiful paradox – easy it must have been for the Lord to impute all sin upon Himself in the form Christ, yet painful it must have been to be punished for the very sin which He hated so much. In Jesus’ atonement is seen the epitome of Divine justice and compassion.

Hebrews 4:14   Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast [our] profession.
Hebrews 4:15   For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as [we are, yet] without sin.
Hebrews 4:16   Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.

#002- 13th November 2007 Tuesday 4 pm

Statements like "God is good" or "God is just" sometimes build the misconception that there exists some separate, cosmic moral-judicial system to which God is subject, and by which He is evaluated. But is not that God falls on the good side and Satan the bad; Rather, good falls on God's side and Satan falls outside.

God's character, actions and whatever He approves are - by arbitrary definition - "good"; whatever He disdains is evil. God is always right because He decides what right and wrong are. His character is definitive basis for justice and morality, not the other way around. Such are the absolute prerogatives of supreme position.

#003 - 12th August 2007 Sunday 6 pm

If Divine Justice may be satisfied simply by meting out punishment - even if upon innocent substitutes for the guilty - then it is a contradiction: merely a cold, legalistic ideal concerned with the indiscriminate exchange and balance of penalty currency. Then mankind could simply evade judgement with buck-passing and scapegoats.

But the ancient Jewish animal sacrifices were not convenient currency with which to buy forgiveness; they were ritual symbolism of genuine repentance and atonement. These were graphic demonstrations which instilled contrition for sin and foreshadowed the culmination of Divine judgment and amnesty in Christ.
Hebrews 10:1   For the law having a shadow of good things to come, [and] not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.
Hebrews 10:2   For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins.
Hebrews 10:3   But in those [sacrifices there is] a remembrance again [made] of sins every year.

Hebrews 10:4   For [it is] not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.

Hebrews 10:5   Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me:
Hebrews 10:6   In burnt offerings and [sacrifices] for sin thou hast had no pleasure.

The arbitrary imputation of guilt - and transfer of punishment - from guilty to innocent is not the injustice it apparently embodies, if the very Author of Justice -the Supreme Judge- would offer Himself as the Innocent Substitute. Indeed, in a generous gesture of free pardon, the Judge "passed the buck" to Himself, becoming the ultimate Scapegoat to redeem man.

Even so, substitute punishment is unjust and unprofitable unless and until it invokes repentance, gratitude and obedience in the substituted.   
1 Samuel 15:22 And Samuel said, Hath the LORD [as great] delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey [is] better than sacrifice, [and] to hearken than the fat of rams.

Jesus' amnesty to man is no license to indulge with impunity in sin, much less an anullment of Divine Moral Law. His propitiation grants the believer full liberation from the Law's penalty, and thus perfect incentive to strive in full obedience. Where before there was fatal fear at the slightest transgression, there is now grace for the repentent soul to perservere in piety.

#004 - 29th July 2007 Sunday 2 pm

Hell is not so much a punitive imposition upon unbelievers as it is the effect of their self-separation from God. It is not so much divine vengeance against them as it is their own self-created Godless reality.

To renounce God is to believe that human life is of purely random and chemical origin, and to argue for a fundamentally chaotic and unjust universe - hell.
John 12:44   Jesus cried and said, He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me.
John 12:45   And he that seeth me seeth him that sent me.
John 12:46   I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness.
John 12:47   And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.
John 12:48   He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.
John 12:49   For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.

Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin [is] death; but the gift of God [is] eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Revelation 20:13 And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.
Revelation 20:14 And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
Revelation 20:15 And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

#005 - 7th October 2007 Sunday 5 pm

Believers often assume too much about living and deceased non-believers. But nothing is known about that fleeting moment between biological life and death, sometimes even the months prior (if the subject is brain dead). Nothing proves that God rejects last-minute desperate faith, or that an instant is inadequate time for His intervention.
Luke 23:42   And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.
Luke 23:43   And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.

2Peter 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day [is] with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

This is written not to give false hope or doctrine, but to caution Christians against speculation on destinies of the deceased, because that remains exclusively Divine knowledge for present time. Uncertainty still shrouds the eternal fate of professing believers and non-believers alike. No mortal can guarantee that every baptised, self-professed Christian enters heaven, for God alone sees through outward profession of faith into the soul.
Luke 13:25 When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us; and he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence ye are:

Just as some non-elect mistakenly believe themselves otherwise, so some elect may not realize their own status until the point of death.
Matthew 24:24   For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if [it were] possible, they shall deceive the very elect.

It is a grave disservice to fire off evangelistic threats of hell like militant cultists, and label every non-believer a resident there.
Matthew 7:1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.

#006 - 29th July 2007 Sunday 2pm

There is a clear distinction between unbelieversand non-believers, between those rebellious against the truth and those unconvinced of it, between the deceivers and deceived.

#007 - 11th August 2007 Saturday

Ephesians 2:7   That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in [his] kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 2:8   For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: [it is] the gift of God:
Ephesians 2:9   Not of works, lest any man should boast.

It is a commonly propounded Christian argument that other religious and secular philosophies promote good works exclusively for the accumulation of self-merit, and are therefore pretentious, capitalistic and egocentric. Yet history has seen numerous instances of good work performed for its own sake - or an arbitrary abhorrence of evil - by individuals who know or care nothing of their own interests, let alone salvation.

#008 - 26th May 2007 Saturday

Adam's descendants never bargained for his sinful legacy, but had it thrust upon them by heredity. Subjected to intense suffering in this perverse reality, it is natural and reasonable that their minds had space for only rudimentary considerations of survival and escape from pain, rather than spiritual powers and principalities. Surely God is not so capricious as to conveniently extend their torment for eternity simply because circumstance obscured Him from them.

#009 - 9th May 2007 Saturday

Revelation 20:13 And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.
Revelation 20:14 And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
Revelation 20:15 And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

This suggests that at least some resurrected non-saints will be found written in the book of the life and spared the second death.

If Jesus proclaimed Himself to be the way, the truth and the light, then that must persist even in His office of Judge. It is not impossible that many unbelievers will be converted at the sight of Him, in desperation under judgement.