"The Earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof"
(Psalm 89:11)

The PREDESTINED Pencil

INTRODUCTION

My purpose in this paper is to explain why I worship the God described in Part One of this series, a God described as "violent and vengeful."[1] I want to do this first by showing the love of God as I see it in the world around me, focusing especially on God's control (predestination). In subsequent essays I will describe how I am affected by God's predestinating love in my own life more personally.

A WORLD OF MIRACLES

A tree is a miracle. It is evidence of the predestinating sovereignty of God. No one on the face of the earth knows how to create a tree.[2] Each of the trillions of molecules in a tree are sustained by God and animated by His Spirit-Cloud[3] to work in unique ways, creating "systems" with their own special functions, with none of these molecules self-consciously desiring to be a tree or to produce a tree, but functioning as God has predestined them. I am then left in awe by the tree God has created. It is an amazing display of natural harmony in an environment uncoerced by man.[4]

A pencil is a miracle. It is evidence of the predestinating sovereignty of God. There is not a single human being on the face of the earth who could from scratch create a pencil like the one I can buy at a store for a couple of pennies.[5] This sounds incredible, especially since there are billions of pencils produced every year. But no pencil is produced by one single person, from start to finish. Nor is the production of a pencil overseen and dictated by a government bureaucracy called the Ministry of Pencils, nor is there a Pencil Czar. Each of the millions of human beings who are a part of the pencil-creating process work in unique ways, creating "systems" with their own special functions, with none of these people or systems self-consciously desiring to be a pencil or to produce a pencil,[6] but functioning as God has predestined them.[7]

THE RULE OF LAW

There are many people today who speak of the "Rule of Law." They aren't the "man on the street" (you might have guessed) but rather the politicians in the capitols and the professors in the ivory towers.

I like to speak of "The Rule of Law" too. For me it means a world created by God, governed by His Law, in which all creation follows God's purposes (Law) for them.

For others, especially those who worship Man rather than God, it means the rule of the law of man, the totalitarian sway of statist planners and their rational designs over all creation. For them, "law" represents their acts of planning, coercion, and force which bring "order out of chaos" as it is imposed on those "underdeveloped" people who resist their New World Order.

Micah's "Vine & Fig Tree" Prophecy

As an anarchist, I find predestination by a Personal God to be of great comfort. The pencil — a product of God's predestination, a visible example of goodness created not by an earthly "archist," nor directed by a human "Pencil Czar," but by the Triune God of Scripture — gives me hope. The pencil helps me imagine the day prophesied by Micah, in which archists have given up their competitive machinations and begin to be God's servants.

The phrase "Vine & Fig Tree," comes from the Old Testament Prophet Micah. Below is the prophecy, from the 4th chapter. Click on the word or phrase that interests you, but be sure to come back to learn about the predestined pencil.

And it will come about in the last days
That the mountain of the House of the LORD
Will be established as the chief of the mountains
And it will be raised above the hills
And the peoples will stream to it.
And many nations will come and say,
"Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD
And to the House of the God of Jacob,
That He may teach us about His ways
And that we may walk in His paths."
For from Zion will go forth the Law
Even the Word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
And He will judge between many peoples
And render decisions for mighty, distant nations.
Then they will hammer their swords into plowshares
And their spears into pruning hooks;
Nation will not lift up sword against nation
And never again will they train for war.
And each of them will sit under his
Vine and under his fig tree,
With no one to make them afraid.
For the LORD of hosts has spoken.
Though all the peoples walk
Each in the name of his god,
As for us, we will walk
In the Name of the LORD our God
forever and ever.
In that day, saith the LORD, will I assemble her that halteth,
and I will gather her that is driven out,
and her that I have afflicted;
And I will make her that halted a remnant,
and her that was cast far off a strong nation:
and the LORD shall reign over them in mount Zion
from henceforth, even for ever.

Micah speaks of the Rule of God's Law in the hearts of all people, and the subsequent shalom-blessing of God upon our lives. The pencil is an illustration of this blessing.[8]

THE PREDESTINED PENCIL

I was predestined to jot a few notes for this essay with a "Trusty 916 No.2" pencil, "Made in U.S.A." by the "Empire Pencil Co."[9] Not a single one of the millions of people involved in the creation of this pencil were aware that I would use it in this way, nor did they so intend.

OREGON: BIRTH OF A PENCIL

Not one of the laborers who were planting cedar sprouts back in 1951 knew that their labor was going to produce a pencil which I would use to describe the Providence of God. Even the entrepreneur who purchased thousands of acres of unused land and planted hundreds of thousands of tiny trees did not know what would happen to those trees. All he knew was that in 40 or so years, he could harvest his crop and sell it for more than it had cost him to grow it. Maybe all he cared about was money.[12] His foresight, combined with the risks he took in acquiring the cedar sprouts and hiring the planters, ultimately led to the gift of my pencil.[13]

Then in 1991, saws and trucks and rope and countless other gear were used to harvest the trees and cart the cedar to the railroad siding. I know too little about the making of saw blades to describe God's Predestination of their manufacturing. I can only vaguely imagine the numberless skills that went into their fabrication: the mining of ore, the making of steel and its metamorphosis into saws, axes, motors, chains.

I've met loggers in Oregon and can imagine the logging camps, the beds, mess halls, the food they consumed while harvesting the trees. Each cup of coffee the loggers drank could tell a story every bit as miraculous as the one my pencil can tell.[14]

I know that rope is made from hemp, which had to be grown like the cedar trees, shipped, turned into strong rope, sold to the rope distributor, who had a printer print up his catalog of all the different kinds of rope he had collected for sale to those who needed them, which was read by our cedar entrepreneur, who purchased what he needed to tie the logs onto the trucks that carried them to the next stop in God's plan for my pencil.

SAN LEANDRO: THE FORMATIVE YEARS

The logs are shipped to a mill in San Leandro, along with all kinds of other products which depended on the rails, the flat cars, and the powerful engines, whose ancestry I cannot trace. The tracks were laid by thousands of dedicated laborers, and the schedules each train must follow to avoid collisions were carefully planned by hundreds of skilled specialists and communicated over electronic systems of communication. God made sure they were all in place, knowing that they were helping to bring me my pencil.

Here the cedar logs are cut into small, pencil-length slats less than one-fourth of an inch in thickness. These are kiln-dried in ovens too complicated for me to describe, operated by people who know much more about drying wood than I, having been born, raised, educated, and given just the right opportunities by God to ensure that they would be in San Leandro drying the wood for my pencil.

Because people over the years have bought far more cedar wood when it was tinted than when it is a pallid white, the laborers in San Leandro, knowing they will increase their sales, tint the wood, then wax it, then dry it in the kiln again. I don't know where the tints and the wax comes from, all I know is that God made sure the raw materials were gathered, the finished product shipped to a distributor known by the mill operator so that they could be purchased and used to fabricate a pencil I would need in order to write this essay.

The next step:

• "Free Energy" Links
• Genius of Nikola Tesla
• The Institute For New Energy
• WIRED 4.03: George Gilder

(17) Government involvement in this project necessitated the theft of land ("eminent domain") and property ("taxation"), and radical alteration of the environment. Many people were thus "victimized" by these sinful acts. But we question the morality of God's predestination only by supposing ourselves to be more omniscient and moral than God. || [Return to text]

Total Predestination
CONTENTS

Isaiah's Doctrine of Predestination

Edenization of the Earth: Reversing the Stalinization of Life

GO EAST, YOUNG PENCIL

The wood for a "Mongol 482" would then have to be shipped to Wilkes-Barre, PA. Railroads have had a tremendous impact on the last few generations in America, with millions of people having their lives moved by the Hand of God in just the right way such that railroads could be built across the continent so that in late 1991 wood could be sent from California to Pennsylvania to be made into my pencil.

Once in the pencil factory each slat is given eight grooves by a complex machine, after which another machine lays leads in every other slat, applies glue, and places another slat atop — a lead sandwich, so to speak. Eight pencils are mechanically carved from this wood-clinched sandwich.

The factory itself represents capital worth millions of dollars.[18] It is probable, unfortunately, that not all of this money was saved up by those who, for the sake of building up capital for future service projects, consumed less than they earned. Some of this money may have been stolen from others through a process called "Fractional Reserve Banking." Those who built the factory may have been more interested in monetary profit than in serving others in obedience to God's Law. As Jesus might say of them, "Truly I say unto you, they have their reward."

But as the Bible says, "The borrower is the slave to the lender" (Proverbs 22:7). Sometimes slavery is voluntary, as well as difficult. In their quest for money, they may not have seen the wonderful ways God's predestination works in our world, and may not have been able to enjoy life to its fullest, the way God intended for us to live.[19] They may have had to work overtime, under tight schedules; they may have lost much sleep over whether they could make the payments on their loans; developed ulcers when they saw how much interest they were paying; and they may have led very unhappy lives, working day in, day out, to keep their indebted factory in business. "There is no rest for the wicked" (Isaiah 57:20-21).

How ironic, then (to return to my pencil), to find that the "lead" for my pencil[20] was predestined to be found, mined, and shipped from the island of "Serendipity." Actually, "Serendib" was the name of the island when Horace Walpole coined the term "serendipity" back in 1754.[21] Later called "Ceylon," and now "Sri Lanka," it has been a major source of graphite, which makes my pencil write.

But sometimes slavery is less voluntary than the slavery of American "capitalists."[22] Strong men, calling themselves "the government," conscript human beings into involuntary service.

We are commanded to follow the model of Jesus, should we be taken captive (1 Peter 2:18-25),[23] but this command to "submit" does not mean that the act of conscription is morally legitimate.

If an unBiblical slave-holder offered to sell me the product of slave labor, I would shop elsewhere, even at higher prices. Sometimes it is impossible for me to extricate my purchases from those industries which have used unGodly means to produce their product, oppressing many along the way.

At other times, I realize that when men are slaves to sin, their covetousness drives them to become the slaves of men. When faced with this tragedy, I remember the proverb, "The wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just" (Proverbs 13:22).[24] I know that God creates Pharaohs and other "vessels of dishonor" whose sole purpose is to bring glory to God and blessings to the "vessels of mercy."

I think about the conditions in which the miners in Serendib, laboring close to the equator, must work. I might consider them woefully underpaid; they might be happy to have a job at all. God will deal with their employer (James 5:4); and while his life may be cursed, I am blessed, for "He that by usury and unjust gain increaseth his substance, he shall gather it for him that will pity the poor" (Proverbs 28:8).

GOD ORDAINS THE STATE

Throughout this essay I am writing rather idealistically of a "laissez-faire" world in which people are free to act in ways which produce the pencil I need to write about them as predestined actors in God's cosmic drama. Alas, the world is poisoned by slavery and statism. There is no such thing as a "free market." I have explored the Biblical doctrine of the State in other papers. Let's review some of the concepts as they pertain to my pencil.

First, God is sovereign over the State; He predestined it.[25]

Second, for every person enslaved by the State, there are three people who participate in the enslaving: the slave-driver, the government politician who sanctions the activity of the slave-driver, and the "constituent" (voter) who benefits from slave labor and elects the politician and his cronies to baptize the slave-system with words like "rule of law."[26] Enslavement of the innocent by the State lasts only as long as the LORD has predestined it,[27] although the organs of propaganda for the New World Order say their system is eternal.[28]

Third, those who think they can satisfy their covetous lusts through impersonalist statism are at war with God's Law. They are eventually destroyed by the State they construct. Thus God predestines His vengeance upon them by the State which they so "freely" desired.[29]

Fourth, after destroying its "enemies," the State thinks it's the "king of the hill." It is only the king of a hill of dung, however, and it dies the death of all parasites; its destruction (which some would say is a "natural" result of its violation of "economic" law) was predestined by God.[30]

Finally, in the end, the Godly benefit from this whole panorama of human action and history.[31]

BACK TO MY PENCIL

After benefiting from the labor of shipbuilders, dockworkers, ship captains, lighthouse keepers and harbor pilots,[32] the graphite from Serendib is mixed with clay from Mississippi, in which aluminum hydroxide is used in the refining process. Then wetting agents are added such as sulfonated tallow — animal fats chemically reacted with sulfuric acid. After passing through numerous machines, the mixture finally appears as endless extrusions — like from a sausage grinder — cut to size, dried, and baked for several hours at 1,850 degrees Fahrenheit. To increase their strength and smoothness, the "leads" are then treated with a hot mixture which includes candelilla wax from Mexico, paraffin wax, and hydrogenated natural fats. Paraffin wax is a petroleum product. General Schwarzkopf recently admitted that the murder of 200,000 Iraqis and the whole Mideast war was "over oil." In another paper I wrote about how God predestines war, but I didn't mention that my pencil was one of the by-products of that war.

The Oregon Cedar receives six coats of lacquer. Do you know all the ingredients of lacquer? If I were to tell you, would you know where to buy them all? How to mix them? Would you have thought that the growers of castor beans and the refiners of castor oil played a part in the creation of my pencil? God predestined them all.

The ferrule is brass. The black rings are black nickel. And the crowning glory of my pencil is rather inelegantly referred to in the trade as "the plug." After my free will makes embarrassing mistakes with my "lead," God predestines me to erase them. An ingredient called "factice" is what actually does the erasing. It is a rubber-like product made by reacting rape seed oil from Indonesia (once called the Dutch East Indies[33]) with sulfur chloride. Rubber, contrary to popular perception, is used only for binding purposes. I could also trace the lineage of the various vulcanizing and accelerating agents. The pumice comes from Italy, the pigment which gives "the plug" its color is cadmium sulfide.

"THE INVISIBLE HAND"

It is a source of great delight to me that neither the logger, nor the chemist, nor the digger of graphite or clay nor any who mans or builds the ships or trains or trucks nor the one who runs the machine that does the knurling on my pencil's bit of metal nor the president of the pencil company performs his singular task because he was ordered to by the Pencil Czar, nor any other archist who dictates the production of pencils.[34] The entire miraculous process took place freely under the guidance of an "invisible Hand."

Only God can make a tree. Only God can sow the seeds of zinc, copper, graphite, under tons of hills and mountains. But to each of these miracles which we find in nature an even more extraordinary miracle has been added: the configuration of creative human energies — millions of tiny know-hows coming together naturally and spontaneously in response to human necessity and desire — and all in the absence of any human master-minding. Since only God can make a tree, I insist that only God could make a pencil. Man can no more direct these millions of know-hows to bring my pencil into being than he can put molecules together to create a tree.

But if these millions of know-hows were not created by a personal, loving God, as described in the Bible, then the scientists, generals, dictator-Presidents — all following the lead of the Nazis and the materialists — are correct. They are — we are — nothing but the random and meaningless confluence of chemicals and water, which over time has developed the idea — the delusion — that we can make rational, moral, choices. In the cold, purposeless universe of the evolutionist, morality is an illusion, and meaning is vanity. All is chance.

In future essays in this series, I will argue that I am not the being imagined by the defenders of "free will." I am not a lump of randomly-concocted molecules floating meaninglessly in a cold impersonal space-time continuum, in which some god may or may not have known that I would come into being and definitely does not know what my next move is. I will argue that I am a creature of the God of the Bible, predestined for glory, created in God's Image, and sustained by the angels who also worship a predestinating "violent, vengeful God."

(29) Ezekiel 29:19-20 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will give the land of Egypt unto Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon; and he shall take her multitude, and take her spoil, and take her prey; and it shall be the wages for his army. {20} I have given him the land of Egypt for his labour wherewith he served against it, because they wrought for me, saith the Lord GOD.
1 Chronicles 5:26 And the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria, and the spirit of Tilgathpilneser king of Assyria, and he carried them away, even the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh, and brought them unto Halah, and Habor, and Hara, and to the river Gozan, unto this day.
2 Samuel 17:14 And Absalom and all the men of Israel said, The counsel of Hushai the Archite is better than the counsel of Ahithophel. For the LORD had appointed to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel, to the intent that the LORD might bring evil upon Absalom.
Judges 9:23-24 Then God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem; and the men of Shechem dealt treacherously with Abimelech: {24} That the cruelty done to the threescore and ten sons of Jerubbaal might come, and their blood be laid upon Abimelech their brother, which slew them; and upon the men of Shechem, which aided him in the killing of his brethren. See my essay, "God Sends Evil: Why Calvinists Should be Anarchists." || [Return to text]