150-160 (edited)

150. “Book”
Shall I book? And add one more book to Your celestial store
which indeed fills all the worlds and those unseen and more
of which no single world itself contains
the glory of You they rightly sang
and crowned each one their song with honors due only You.
And if I may,
how would “mine” stand amid the worthy rest
who sang Your name more soundly
and versed Your song more proudly
than I could ever will or do,
I who can’t even finish this
with a modicum of sense or bliss?

Signs

151. It is indeed a crooked and perverse generation that seeks after a “sign”, or a “confirmation” from God, {Matt 16:4} or else some kind of emphatic, manifest appeal to the senses of man by which such “sensible” ones will not only establish their so-called “faith” but have such faith continually maintained therein and by. From the onset, such a generation posits God and His faith – without which it is impossible to please Him – lower than the flippant whims of their arbitrary senses which, as evidenced by their very want of a sign without which they will not believe because they cannot.

152. If belief is ever established among one who seeks after a sign and actually receives it, their continuing “belief” will incessantly demand and be thus beholden to the endless need for signs to persistently justify and thereafter solidify their so-called “faith”; solidity which is no true solidity at all (at least not the kind that comes from God), but “solidity” which will be as centerless and transcendentally purposeless as the whims of the senses which inform and underlie the supposed belief.

153. If a sign is used to establish and justify a man’s faith that he both sought and “received”, inasmuch as such a one will inevitably base the entirety of their faith upon the confirmation of the senses to whom the sign appeals, they will inescapably found every “spiritual” product that might be produced from such signs upon the “will to power” and upon whatever arbitrary end that such a will might lead. For, within the domain of Reason, the senses – which delimit the entire horizon of possibilities within this domain – can only in their most emphatic and essential form be animated by mere “feelings” of superiority and supposed strength. These “feelings” are the sensual manifestation of the will to power and will always seek to express themselves in greater and more profound measure than that which they previously achieved. Their achievement, however, is only oriented toward “more and greater of the same”, this “same” which is and can only be mere “powerful feelings”, each without a specific aim or unifying goal to any one of their disparate actions.

154. As such, he who bases his so-called “faith in God” upon the answered appeals that might be intuited by the senses has no real faith at all and will be marked by ever more insistent demands for ever more powerful (and arbitrary) signs, those which, in every way, become the gods of such men.

155. The unbelieving, those who are earmarked before the foundations of the world for everlasting darkness, will always seek a sign and in the mere machinations of seeking such a sign will only hasten their perdition and lead them further from the reality of Truth which will never conform to the finitude of the temporal feelings produced by man’s senses.

156. In the senses there can be no ultimate Truth. For true faith is “the assurance of things hoped for and the certainty of what we do not see”, {Heb 11:1} not the confidence of things that can be expressed and apprehended by and through the senses.

157. The opposite of sign-seeking is God-choosing: i. e. the confession that He sovereignly elects whom He will, the confirmation of which is realized through the sanctifying, though often subtle, power of the Holy Spirit who does indeed manifest in the life of the redeemed. The Spirit principally manifests in the change of a person’s habits and wants, loves and hates, goals, aims, and eagerness to obey Him who so wills and does. As it is written, “the Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly.” {Matt 6:3, emphasis mine} In this context, the ways in which the Holy Spirit sanctifies the life of a believer will eventually manifest openly.

158. Signs and wonders are demonstrations of power intended to communicate the power of God to power structures and the power relations that dominate man and society, whether seen or unseen.

159. If I am so feeble of faith that I ever demand a sign, I will know that my faith has been revoked and my name blotted forever from the book of life.

160. Yet, wherever God on the earth seeks to newly establish His kingdom, it is always attended by demonstrations of power; demonstrations which are typically directed at the unseen forces who lord over a given jurisdiction; forces which are not necessarily flesh and blood but are the principalities and rulers of the air. {Eph 6:12}

161. For was it not said by the Babylonians and, before them, the Sumerians, that Noah’s deluge which washed away the ancient world so frightened the gods that the vast majority of those gods fled to the outer reaches of the cosmos and the distant recesses of the stars (from which they dictated to man through astronomy)?