Contemporary views of everything are manifestations of the psychological present. In our American society, it seems inarguable that we are interested and focused on sexuality, on prosperity and upon entertainment. Movies, for instance, provide an interesting and very gripping psychological present. We walk into these movie theatres that are dark and these magical images begin to appear on the big screen. This can have an overwhelming affect on an individual. They are a manifestation of someone trying to create for us a psychological present. Now in spite of the fact that God has created us as tensed mentalities and living within that limitation, he has also stated to us that this psychological present is not a criterion for truth. We see this in the events associated with 1 Kings 18, when Elijah has to face Ahab and the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel. He asks them, "How long will you halt between two opinions?" So he asks them to make a decision. This is required. Another great example is found in the apostle Paul’s letter to the Galatians in which he is persistent in saying that "you cannot reduce the words I am making known to you simply to my psychological present. These things were not my invention. Any other man did not invent them either. This has come from a tenseless source which is the Lord himself." Therefore, Paul interprets what he has to write as a basis for authority. This epistle as it goes out and is circulated among the churches will act as a kind of authority coming not from Paul, not from his psychological present, but from the Lord himself. Paul is persistent and assiduous in making that distinction. Then he would talk about those in the book of Galatians who are preaching a gospel that is not a gospel. I would submit that that which is not a gospel, but that which was circulating was to be sourced uniquely in the psychological present of the men who invented it. The presence of the Holy Spirit and our dependence upon the Spirit of God, Paul and others would indicate in the scripture, precludes reducing revelation to a psychological present. Or precludes us from trying to project something into a position of religious authority over us that is originated within the psychological present.

In the book of Exodus, Chapters 34-40, at the end of the book, when the tabernacle is being constructed and the two personalities, Bezalel and Oholiab, were chosen by the Lord to be the directors of the construction of this remarkable construction that the Lord was creating. The Spirit of God aided them. They could not reduce their work simply to their psychological present. That would have been prohibited and God wanted to ensure that what was created would be something free of human self-reference, which was extremely an important aspect of the creation of this containment. This is another reason why it has come to light in our discussions at this particular point as we are responding affirmatively, "Yes Lord you are enough for us because you are the containment of situational time and world time. He is the containment and since he is the containment, we will expect that containment to be without the presence of human self-reference. So we depend at the index column upon the basic work of the Spirit of God. No doubt that the coincidence of tenseless interpretations and the psychological present created by human tensed minds exists, but how we deal with this coincidence is altogether important. This suggests, at least to me, that faith is a movement from tensed minds to tenseless interpretation. But in spite of the fact that we do that, it’s very obvious that the coincidence will remain in place forever.

Tenseless interpretations are accepted by faith. They are accepted by an act of the will. Apparently from what we read in the book of Daniel and other places throughout the scripture, one they are accepted as valid over our own tensed interpretations of material content, that will protect us from reducing the things of our experience or the things of scripture merely to a psychological present. When people have tried to avoid operating on tensed interpretations as is evident in the book of 1 Corinthians 1:18 and the following verses, they were often referred to as "foolish." People of faith who have attempted to operate by escaping a dependence upon tensed interpretations and embracing tenseless interpretations, have often been looked upon as foolish. In the book of Daniel Chapter 3 Nebuchadnezzar considered the response of Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael as very foolish in the very obvious presence of the military power, plus the physical power that was at his disposal to get these men into that unfortunate situation. E. O. Wilson, who has written a book published recently called "Conciliation: A Unity of Knowledge," the late Carl Sagan, Dr. Steve Weinberg, University of Texas in Austin and other such thinkers also would see the presence of a kind of coincidence. On the one hand they see the reduction to the psychological present as the real basis for knowledge and they would refer to or recognize the opposite that might exist as the religious inclination.

A book entitled "Darwin’s Dangerous Idea" has suggested that those who operate on the religious inclination should be housed in zoo-like structures so that succeeding generations will be able to pass by and say, "Well that’s where we came from." Apparently the writer is quite serious about that suggestion. The reason they come to that conclusion is because they would assume that the religious inclination is not the basis for understanding anything. It’s merely a return to obscurantism or is basically human-based or ignorance-based metaphysics. So they would be so inclined to put the psychological present above religious inclinations. We suggest that they have miscued in the way they have bifurcated this. But they at least understand that there are both options in the universe.

I want to make a suggestion to us at this particular point which it seems valid to make. We are going to be forced to fight all sorts of battles in existence upon the earth. How we fight those battles is very significant. I wish now to draw attention to what I feel we can isolate as the true and pervading battleground upon which we have to fight. I make the suggestion that the true battleground isn’t the situation or the various situational times or situational time itself but perhaps it’s better thought that the real battleground is this doctrine of coincidence itself. Perhaps the true battleground for us isn’t the biologic reverses in life, the sickness, perhaps it’s not the crises that we face. Perhaps it’s not such events as we read of in scripture like at Kadesh Barnea—the actual walls up to the sky, the giants and being numerically disadvantaged. Perhaps it’s not facing someone that’s completely outside of our physical power to subdue like David as he faces Goliath. Perhaps it’s not something that would look rather hopeless like being pinned up against the Red Sea or a point of extreme anxiety and the desperation as was evidenced in Exodus Chapter 17 at the place called Rephidim. Perhaps it’s not even the actual presence of persecution and the execution of that persecution as we read of in 1 Peter 1. Perhaps the real battleground is the fact of this coincidence. How we handle the fact of the coincidence between tensed minds and tenseless interpretations may very well turn out to be the actual and real battleground upon which we have to fight.

Concerning this doctrine of coincidence then there are only two responses open to us. One is to respond situationally to the doctrine of coincidence in which case we will obviously convert situational time and the revelation itself into the psychological present. We will feel that we have done wisely in making that decision. When that occurs it will be among other things because it is very easy to do that, it is very natural to do that, and it appears to be something that we can agree is very rational to do. The other response is very different. This is a non-situational response to the doctrine of coincidence. Tenseless interpretations bring meaning to bear upon situational time and bring meaning into the limited domain of human intelligence. Scripture is to be used and seen as tenseless interpretations that make a difference in the way in which we understand all situational time and the way in which we in fact understand the exercise of human intelligence. Tenseless interpretations require a kind of transposition, a kind of transformation of souls. These things, quite the opposite of the psychological present and converting everything into that is not so easy to do. It’s certainly not natural. It’s something that the Lord has called us to do on the basis of faith, on the basis of this extreme act of the will, seeking knowledge from some source that is outside of human lived experience. It certainly does not correspond to what generally is referred to as human rationality.

Believers are going to deal with a doctrine of coincidence as they choose. We must be careful, however, about drawing a distinction between human intelligence on the one hand as a kind of instrument for dealing with situational time and putting scripture on the other side of the coin and expecting that to deal with what we think of as the spiritual realities. So if you have the two operating independently in their two distinctly assigned spheres that somehow or other we have been able to get the much larger picture here. One would make the suggestion that this division itself is nothing more nor less than the result of a psychological present trying to convert it into a psychological present. No doubt this is done often in absolute honesty, where the thought is not, the intent is not really present to try and limit the understanding of God or the role of scripture to some unique spiritual sphere that really has nothing to do with the daily exercise of events on the earth. Whether we are operating in honesty or not, we would still be operating in a kind of ignorance, an ignorance that is induced by a failure to comprehend our tensed position in the universe. There is a hope that we can come to a recognition of that, change, repent. It might be possible for us to think that we don’t need destruction so much as we need correction.

Unbelievers will deal with the doctrine of coincidence as they have always dealt with it. They’ll convert situational time into a psychological present and they’ll convert revelation itself into the same thing. In so doing they will seal their fate. The way we handle this doctrine of coincidence is important. Because if we don’t handle this in a non-situational way, it will always act as a bomb and eventually it will go off.

A pushed intelligence shaped by the non-situational intelligence of the Lord responds affirmatively to the question, "Am I enough for you?" This response is built on an appraisal coming from tenseless interpretations and nothing else. So we can concur, "Yes Lord you are enough for us because you are the containment of world and situational time.

1. Pushed intelligence responds affirmatively by saying, "Yes Lord you are enough for us because your propositions are the extension of your personality in the situational. (Daniel 9:4-19)

This text includes Daniel’s prayer of contrition. His prayer of repentance on his personal behalf but also on behalf of his people. The non-situational personality exists. This is the mind of God. It is in the absolute prior position. Now we come to this little 3-sided box which represents the world situation. And because of God’s grace and because of his willingness to share with us, he has pushed a representation of his personality into the world situation. And that representation of his personality consists of propositions of a vertical nature. When we read these words in the text, we understand as did Daniel that what they were confronting (what they were most proximate to in this universe) were the propositions that had been given to them from the Lord himself. Therefore, these propositions serve as the extension of the personality of the Lord in the situational order in which we live. In Chapter 9, this is demonstrated in this man’s prayer in terms of how he sees the blessings that could come to the people of God upon their repentance and upon their acceptance of these propositions. He also reflects upon the curses that had been extended. These curses were a manifestation of how God felt about their defection, about the way in which they had treated the propositions. We could view non-situational personality and non-situational propositions as a unity, as a whole of considerable proportion.

Scripture we know, therefore, is more than the sum of its parts. These propositions that we have been given are not any more changeable than is the personality of the Lord himself. He is immutable. He has always stated of his word that it has immutable characteristics. It is not to be mutated by its presence within the world situation although the people of Judah as we read in Chapter 9 of Daniel tried to do that. The prophets were sent repeatedly to the people, bringing propositions from the Lord, as is the case of Jeremiah. We know in Daniel 9:1-4 that Daniel had been reading the prophecy of Jeremiah. Jeremiah had come to the people and he was scoffed at, refused a hearing, his renderings were simply ignored. Yet he kept saying, "I am bringing to you the propositions from the Lord. And these propositions have to be viewed from a non-situational point of view. They are the extension of the non-situational personality."

Another great reason that the Lord would hold us accountable for the words that we speak and the things that we think, is because symbolic representations are contained within propositions which are extensions of our own personality. We are held accountable for that. Since circumstance does not render the propositions of God mutable in any sense, then we can depend upon them. We can depend upon those things that never change. That is one of the other statements that certainly comes to center stage in Daniel’s prayer in Chapter 9. He knows that these propositions are the extension of this absolute personality that renders all men subordinate before them. As he would state this in Chapter 9, he is quite aware of some of these things that God has done. We know by the time we get to Chapter 9 of the way that the propositions have confronted Nebuchadnezzar in Chapter 2 and Chapter 4 about his wickedness. He can depend upon these things and finally in the latter part of Chapter 4, just the last few verses 34-37, he will come to recognize this very truth. These propositions that have been proximate to him, since he’s not immediately proximate to God, have to be treated as synonymous with the personality of the Lord. Since that’s the case, we can depend upon both his promises to bless as well as his promises to curse.

When it comes to dealing with the world situation, we stand between the propositions of the Lord and the reality of the world situation. But we are most proximate to these propositions. Our relationship to those propositions will determine what takes place in the world situational environment. This is the reason why Daniel will say that the people of God had been ripped from their homeland, why the walls of Jerusalem had been destroyed and why the temple has been dismantled and all of the articles devoted to holy worship have now been carted off to the treasure houses of a foreign and a pagan king. We live proximate to the propositions of God. No matter what our leaders in Washington may purport to say or try to convince us of. No matter what the media generally accepts. The mind lives in proximity, much more proximity to the demands of God upon them, and upon the mind itself and upon us as people than we ever lived in proximity to the real space/time material content of the world around us. That is not generally appreciated by the world in which we live. Yet the Lord says it is quite true, "I will bring men to authority. I will relinquish that authority from them. I will bring them low or I will bring them to positions of great authority. I will summon forces that will bring destruction upon societies and upon cultures. I will bring affliction against you. He has stated this repeatedly from Genesis all the way through revelation. He holds men accountable. This statement tells us that we are more proximate to the propositions of God, whether we choose to accept that as a fact or not than we ever are to the world situation. This is the way the Lord has created the world.

That has a significant application all through human existence. It can be applied generally at very profound levels at all aspects of our human everyday existence. In our relationships in this world, no matter what constitutes those relationships, whether it has to do with money or employers or marriage or relationships between parents and children, between the church and all others in the world, we know that there is the propositions of God stand between us as individuals (and if we think of ourselves as a collective in the church, between us as a collectivity) and the rest of the world. The things that stand between a man and a wife are the propositions of God. That becomes the unifying factor in their existence. This becomes the triadic structure—the males who represent the eternal side, the females who represent the temporal order, brought together by the indexing propositions of God. When we come together in a marital situation, this triadic structure is there. And it is to that index, to those propositions that we bear the closest proximity; and therefore, a woman in relationship to her husband must be much closer to the propositions of God than she is to her physical husband. This is evidenced in 1 Peter 3 and other places.

The relationship that parents have to their children is intermediated by the propositions of God and parents are much more proximate to these propositions representing the personality of the unseen God than they are to their children. This shows up in many instances in the Old Testament. In Exodus Chapter 17 at Rephadim, they said, our children, our loved ones and our flocks and our families will die. And that’s the excuse for their unfortunate situational behavior in that context. In Deuteronomy Chapter 1, they criticize Moses and they actually criticize God and acted situationally. They thought that if they were to go up against the fortifications of the Canaanites, they would will be destroyed. They said, "They’ll destroy our loved ones, our children be stabbed to death, and the young ones that survive will be hauled off into Canaanite captivity and our wives will be destroyed and subjected to unfortunate use." Because the word of God was not the most proximate thing to them and their experience was, they forfeited all of the promises that God had made to them.

This won’t do for us living in the last quarter of the 20^th century and now experiencing what we are experiencing on an everyday and regular basis. Scripture acts as an interposition and as an interposition it is to be applied to all relations. We have to respect that interposition. Scripture occupies the intermediate position between the non-situational intelligence and the world of material content. Daniel knew that. So did Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael. And that’s why in Daniel Chapter 3 the interposition of scripture was respected. It stood as a representative of the personality of the God. It stands between the material content of the furnace and the non-situational intelligence of the Lord himself.

Belshazzar in Daniel Chapter 5 ignored and didn’t respect the interposition of the will of God. Scripture says of him that he didn’t honor the God who held in his hand his life and all his ways. Another way of drawing this unity is that absolute priority is the to one hand and the subsequency of the material content of nature stands to the other and in between stands the subsequency of the intelligence of man. When we occupy the position of subsequency, we come to valid and truthful and eternal representations of the world, which we can see and of the world, which we cannot see. And one of the conclusions that we reach is "Oh, yes Lord, you are enough for us. For your propositions are the extension of your personality in the situation."

This brings to a conclusion our study of the book of Daniel; at least brings to conclusion a provisional study of the book of Daniel. Hopefully this has been of some interest and help to you in your own personal relationship to the Lord.

As an exit question, it is most poignant. The Lord is everyday asking us the question in one way or another, but always persistently, "Am I enough for you?" One would be of the persuasion that we could answer affirmatively if and only if we have been reborn and transformed from tensed minds into this pushed intelligence, a kind of mind that is prepared to operate forever and ceaselessly upon tenseless interpretations. Thank you so much for your interest.