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"The Mountain of the House of the LORD
Will be established as the chief of the mountains,
And each of them shall sit under his
Vine and under his fig tree
With no one to make them afraid."
Micah 4:1,4
No more let sins and sorrows grow
Nor thorns invest the ground.
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found.
Isaac Watts
Two hundred years ago, all great scientists believed the
world was created by God as described in the book of Genesis. Isaac Newton wrote more
books about the Bible than he did on physics and mathematics.
Two hundred years ago, children rose when an adult entered the
room. Today, teachers fear their students
might be "packing heat."
The shift from creation by God to impersonal evolution,
like the shift from respect for other persons to violent selfishness, was
not based on "science" or "the facts." The shift has been a moral
shift. Our "scientific" paradigm merely
excuses our practice.
The human race originated in a Garden — the "Mountain of the Lord" — a few
thousand years ago. Life and incomparable beauty were the free gifts of God. But they had
to be received on God's Terms. Man chose to be his own god; His fall into sin was a fall out of the Garden into a barren wasteland.
God invites Man to experience Redemption, or Salvation: the restoration of man to his original Edenic purpose,
new empowerment to turn from sin to peace and justice, and the providential bestowal of health, comfort,
freedom to worship God, and agricultural surplus.
But sinful man would rather rob and plunder his way to
"salvation" by paving the Garden and erecting the Machine. Rather than
exercising harmonious Godly Dominion over nature, Man seeks industrial/military domination
over the creation, and nature is cursed. Forsaking Creationist Culture (God's Blessing of
the Meek), Man embraces evolutionist competition for scarce resources in a barren
wasteland (the "Survival of the Fittest").
"The facts" don't force us to abandon the Garden and
Biblical tradition. We choose the wilderness and modernist mythology because we want to
"be as gods" (Genesis 3:5).
We live in an individualistic age; we seldom think about
our relationships with other people, to say nothing of our relationship to the creation
around us. America, a nation of 80 million people who claim to be "saved," tends
to think of "salvation" as nothing more than personal peace and eternal
affluence. The Bible would have us think more about our life as a Church — a community — and less about the life hereafter.
The word we translate "salvation" may also be
translated "peace," "victory," "prosperity," and
"health." "Salvation" is something we should experience here and now. Vine & Fig Tree is a Biblical word-picture for
whole-life salvation. We are saved when we trust in Providence — the personal work of
a benevolent God — and believe His Word, walk in terms of His Covenant, and ignore
the plastic promises of the Merchant-State. God saves us only when we surrender our
"right" to save ourselves.
"Getting saved" is thus not an easy decision for
most modern, "scientific" industrial, patriotic people to make.
The Spirit is returning a chosen people to Wholistic Creationism. We are being empowered to resist the Tempter's mirage of the self-centered, self-created industrial paradise. We are bringing our lives under the rule of an ethic which leads to the Cross, but which holds the promise of Resurrection and "Eden-ification." We view ourselves as stewards of God's Property, not as would-be gods, dictator-landlords.
The "garden" of Man is always plastic and
unlovely. It is held together by the chains of coercion and tyranny, and genocide.
The Garden of God is a reality of beauty, held in place by the
Word, the Spirit of Reconciliation. As Man is reconciled to God, he forgives others as he
has been forgiven, and together God's People live in harmony with God's cosmos. The entire
universe becomes His Temple, the earth His Garden-Footstool.
God will not let His creation purposes be defeated by the
Dragon, whose minions wander from Eden to build their Fortress-State. The Creation shall
be restored.
We must choose between the Garden-City of God and the wilderness-ruins of man; between Jerusalem the Garden and Babylon the Machine.
The Christmas Conspiracy Embraces All of Creation
Next:
The Christmas Conspiracy: Joy to the World!
Other Resources on the Garden Archetype
Vine & Fig Tree
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Desert Hot Springs, CA 92240
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