They Don’t Belong Anymore

Posted on July 20, 2026 by ehurst

The fundamental Hebrew thinking about sin is all about communion. If you scroll through Leviticus, you notice that blood sacrifice does not cleanse the sinner. Rather, a ritual sacrifice is necessary to decontaminate the sacred space where God comes to meet with His people. It reminds humans that they are mortal and imperfect against God’s holiness. We are dragging around a fleshly nature that is no friend of God.

How many times in the Old Testament did people commit sins that should have been a capital offense, but they managed to come into God’s Presence afterward? It’s because they remained fundamentally loyal to God, despite their failures to control their fleshly natures. Retributive justice is not God’s nature. The key to living in this world is personal feudal loyalty to the Lord. We keep saying it: Everything is personal. The rules are merely an expression of His desire to hold your heart.

Stop thinking in terms of trespass and debt. The fundamental problem of human existence is finding peace and fellowship — with God and with His Creation. It’s not about individuals at all, but a necessity for the community of faith. There are no Lone Rangers in faith. Sin is a threat to the stability of community and communal faith. You have a duty to others; your personal private sin can threaten their communion through defilement.

Let’s look at some implications of this.

Numbers 15:22-36 — God commands that those who commit unintentional sins or sins of weakness can confess and restore fellowship with Him. Notice that the first point made is for the covenant community as a whole, the community offering. That’s the focus in the first place. The community as a whole can be pardoned; God will look past the mistakes. Even private individual mistakes must be addressed through the community priesthood, because the issue is a threat to the community as a whole.

The assumption is that you care about the communion of the community with God. The deliberate sin of defiance and rebellion is a threat to the stability of the community. It can poison that stability; you no longer care about them. The biggest threat is to drive a wedge between the people and God, to alienate them by generating a false perception about God’s character. Someone defies God because they feel like He owes them something He’s not giving, so they seize that thing for themselves.

Thus, the man caught gathering firewood on the Sabbath was trying to take care of his own needs without regard to how it would defile the community. The incident is placed in the context of discussing defiant sin, so we must assume the man was defiant about asserting his personal needs against the communion of the covenant provisions. Couldn’t he just ask for some spare firewood from his neighbors? He didn’t simply forget that it was the Sabbath; he didn’t care.

Now, expand this to the entire list of death penalties in the Old Testament. Think about how each of them was a threat to the stability of the community in terms of alienating them from God, encouraging others to seize for themselves something they felt God failed to provide. Some of those deaths came at the hand of God Himself because they were a direct insult, but most of these sins demanded that the community act to remove the threat.

Numbers 11 — This is the manna versus quail episode. Who led the outcry for meat? It was the “mixed multitude” of people who traveled with Israel but were not part of the Covenant. They infected the nation with their attitude that God wasn’t providing what they needed. Notice how they didn’t reverently plead with God for favor; they demanded it by insulting God.

Most English translations paint the wrong picture here. This was part of an annual quail migration in the area. God diverted it toward the camp. The birds normally flew close to the ground (6’/2m) and were easily captured, and then roosted everywhere in masses overnight. The rabble of outsiders were the ones who lusted for the meat and stayed up all night catching them. They were the ones who laid them on the ground to fester in the heat of the day, and probably failed to cook them properly to kill parasites and bacteria.

The passage notes that they buried those who had an insatiable craving for the meat.

Acts 4:32-5:11 — Ananias and Sapphira were craving the attention that church members gained by contributing to the common household welfare. Context: A very large number of Diaspora Jews had come for the Passover when Jesus was crucified. Those who were wealthy enough stayed around until Pentecost. This made the city and surrounding areas quite crowded with visitors renting every available space, plus tents everywhere.

The ones who responded to the gospel message followed typical Hebrew instinct: They created a bond with their new spiritual family and tried to stay as long as possible. This was some time after Pentecost and they were ready to cut ties from their past lives. Many of them began selling their business properties in the lands abroad where they had lived up to that point. Some local Jew would buy the property and travel or send agents to claim the property. The sellers would take the proceeds and hand it over to the elders of their new family.

What Luke describes is not communism, but household feudalism. No one was required to do this; it seemed like the only sensible choice to help the church handle the sudden influx of folks who had grown up abroad and had no other local connections. Ananias and Sapphira suffered from social envy. They wanted the accolades given to those who sacrificed, but didn’t want to sacrifice so much. It wasn’t that they retained any money, but that they lied about it; they lied to the Holy Spirit residing in the community. They had something to hide that alienated them from the communion of Christ and His people.

1 John — John had been there to see that event with Ananias and Sapphira. His letter addresses the major issue of fellowship and communion. That’s what we get from 1:3 of this letter. He goes on to say we are to be a community of divine glory (“light”), escapees from the Kingdom of Darkness.

He sticks with the ancient Hebrew focus on community, all the more so given the command of His Lord at the Last Seder. This whole letter is about fellowship and what it requires. We are all humble before Him; we must recognize the necessity of dragging around a fleshly nature that resists the Spirit. If we are genuinely committed to Christ, He will not separate from us; the door of repentance is always open (1:9).

The second chapter is all about spiritual family having the power to resist returning to spiritual slavery. The primary failure he focuses on is denying Christ in the sense of defiance about what He has commanded and what He promised under the New Covenant. It’s not about us as individuals, but it’s all about His family.

In chapter 3 it’s the contrast between slipping back into slavery versus learning to love the family of faith. Obviously, the business with sin is focused on how it threatens fellowship and communion. “It’s not about you” or what your flesh wants or claims to need. Chapter 4 follows the same pattern, ending with “God is love.” The one who claims to love God must prove it by loving God’s family.

Then in chapter 5, we should stay out of Satan’s clutches. Indeed, we pray for each other to that end. Nearing the end of his letter, John warns that it’s possible for some sins to lead to death. He uses the word “death” (Grk. thanatos) broadly, indicating both literal and figurative death. Given what he’s said up to this point, it’s clear that someone who cannot put the Christ and His family first is “dead” in his sins.

It echoes Hebrews 6 and the warning about forsaking Christ after having experienced the power of the Holy Spirit. The primary root of such an awful thing is deciding that something the flesh demands is more important than the loving communion of Christ’s family.

John didn’t need to define what a “sin leading to death” was at that point. He had already painted a very clear picture of it throughout the letter. It’s not that we cannot pray for people who turn against the Lord and His communion, but that John recommended against it. Someone who defies the command of Christ is no longer family; there’s nothing you can do for them.

Under the Covenant of Christ, we no longer execute such people. Rather, we “kill” them by ostracism or excommunication. They don’t belong to the Covenant any more.

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The Ascent of Abraham

Posted on July 18, 2026 by ehurst

Re: Naked Bible 164: Paul’s Ascent and Angelic Torment with David Burnett

In 2 Corinthians 11-12, Paul mocks the boasting of those who call themselves “apostles”. Among other things, he said that he was a Hebrew (ethnic identity), an Israelite (covenant identity) and a seed of Abraham — something entirely different. He mentions in Galatians what a true child of Abraham is: someone who carries the faith of Abraham and believes in the promises he received.

Thus, Paul taps into something very special that most modern believers don’t grasp. Within the Second Temple literature is a book called Apocalypse of Abraham. It references Genesis 15 where God takes Abraham outside to look at the stars. The odd thing about the Hebrew language is the grammatical ambiguity of “outside” — it could mean outside of the body, outside of the world, as in a vision of celestial things. Further, when Abraham is directed to look toward the heavens, it could easily be translated “look down” — as if Abraham is above/outside the created universe.

Granted, this is likely somewhat an embellished tale, but the tradition was that Abraham was in the Eighth Heaven. We already know that other New Testament writers would sometimes refer to rabbinical mythology in a literary sense, using the terminology of something to call to mind a much bigger concept than what the words alone mean. So, it is not necessary to insist that Paul actually took literally those traditions, so much as he was using it like poetry to reference things his Hebrew audience would recognize.

The Scripture text refers to Abraham as a prophet. Given the wider context of what he saw from that situation, it is likely he caught a glimpse of the future events that would climax in the victory of his seed. Naturally, that includes the Messiah. That’s our victory as the Elect of Christ’s Kingdom.

Elsewhere in Second Temple literature, Abraham was encouraged to think of the stars — symbolizing the elohim powers in God’s court — as beneath his feet. It was rather like having a good pair of sandals and able to tread down thorns. Thorns are an ancient symbol of the troubles of this world caused by the interference of those higher powers — “thorns and thistles the ground will produce for you.” Thus, Abraham is being told that his seed will someday walk on those powers, as Paul notes in Romans 16 (the Devil under our feet). Back in Genesis 15, his seed will displace those powers: “So shall your descendants be” like the stars. More than just numerous, his descendants will displace the heavenly powers.

This is part of what Paul is indicating by his “fool’s boast” in 2 Corinthians. He shows the inversion of how God works. Christ’s victory was the Cross, so our victory is defeating the flesh the same way. If we catch a vision of what Paul endured as carrying his own cross, then we see how we can defeat all the powers and authorities that opposed Christ.

As with Christ and Paul, we choose to suffer willingly; that’s the victory. We stay here in a world not made for us and turn it all upside down. We are no longer trapped here with the Devil and his allies; they are trapped here with us. We don’t win through marketing, the three Bs (bodies, budgets, buildings) and having a TV channel with church programming. We don’t use earthly powers. We win through the blood of Christ, the Word of testimony, and by not caring about this life.

Paul didn’t see the Eighth Heaven, but the Third. It was enough for him to be granted a vision of this war via spiritual powers over the authorities of our Enemy. Paul received his thorn in the flesh, a reminder that he was still in this world with a mission ahead of him. In an inverse way, he’s “boasting” that he merits a personal tempter lodged in his own flesh. God’s power is perfected in our weakness, our humility about who we are and what is due us.

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Responding to Questions

Posted on July 13, 2026 by ehurst

I received a few questions I felt were worth sharing.

Though I’m not a fan of either TPUSA or Candace Owens, from where I stand, it seems that the dispute stems from some senseless secrecy. TPUSA has been hijacked and is hiding stuff that would destroy their new campaign. Meanwhile, Candace is just being herself, which includes making noise about things that may not matter at all in order to keep the spotlight on herself.

I got another dose of skin-crawling shock when I saw Michael Heiser’s widow on SkyWatch TV. This is just another faux Charismatic huckster operation. The host started out selling books and videos on training dogs. He also played guitar in a band, I believe — you can find YouTube videos featuring him (Joe Ardis Horn). His father was an osteopath who sold books and videos on goofy End Times prophecy stuff. These folks are associated with Jim Bakker and Steve Quayle, of all people. At any rate, Heiser’s widow was on the show and speaking their language. This does not bode well for the organization that stood up to carry on Heiser’s legacy.

Side note: There are some genuine people of faith in the Charismatic movement. They don’t make that much noise, but they aren’t too happy about the fake ones that do. By no means do I denigrate the gifts of the Spirit; I use them. They are very real indeed, unlike some of the attention hogs who are in it only for the money.

The global economy is a mess. The stock markets here in the US, in particular, are wholly manipulated. The data you see is fake in the sense that it has no connection to economic reality. This manipulation leaks over into submarkets like petroleum, commodities, etc. I’m not really in a position to gauge who to blame, only that the markets do not reflect the fundamentals of our economic condition.

Something will break in the next year or two, and we will suddenly discover what the real economic price of things should be. The biggest problem is that income for the majority of Americans will not stretch as far as it appears to right now. My convictions warn me that the genuine poverty line should be a lot higher than the official one. The majority of consumer goods are not honestly priced. Something is keeping the prices down artificially and that something is getting pretty ragged.

The national debt is being propped up, and this is the primary source of the disconnect between markets and the real economic condition. At some point in the coming months, the mechanism for propping it up will break, and it will be very unpleasant. While the economy will not simply stop working — it never does — the evaporation of the fantasy will come as a shock because most Americans have no idea.

Don’t get wrapped up in the names and faces for the mid-term elections. The one take-away is that it will be a mess. The balance between the parties is not the real issue, only a symptom of the system itself breaking down. People are scrambling to keep the gravy train coming, but the source is dying. It’s cyclical for both politics and the economy. Stay inside the envelope and things will last a lot longer, but everyone is pushing too hard to get more from a system that has no more.

Our system could keep working, but we’ve already pushed too far (on both sides of the partisan divide). The system is now unstable and coming apart, but nobody in power wants to confront that issue. Thus, it will break, but the timing will be a real surprise because nobody knows how to calculate the thresholds any more. Greed displaces wisdom.

I stand by my previous predictions from years past:

1. We now see who/what is in the role of the Antichrist for our times — Zionism. Don’t blame Jews in general; a substantial portion of them are not Zionists. The Jewish covenant has been taken over by Satan and he is using them to destroy Western Civilization. It only takes a minority of Israelis, driven by an insane zeal, to herd the whole bunch into destruction. The biggest problem is the Zionist ideology; the Israeli flag is the Mark of the Beast right now.

2. The State of Israel will be destroyed by its own leadership. Never mind how; the mechanism doesn’t matter. Their corruption is the key issue.

3. As Israel slides into oblivion, Big Eva is coming apart. There will be an exodus from the mainstream churches that support Zionism when the bulk of the membership realizes they’ve been duped. That exodus has already begun.

4. As the western system of control fragments, major corporations will collapse. For example, Microsoft will not survive much longer as European governments switch to Open Source OSes and software. Apple is also under pressure, as are many social media providers. The revenue stream will collapse for a lot of big corporations; the AI market is not immune.

Trump is currently the single best representation of the Beast, and Zionist churches are the Harlot. Trump is quickly aging into senility, so his team will try to maintain the beastly control — a team that is itself unstable, as their flaws manifest in catastrophic ways. Only a tiny handful of people in government have the talents to rise and meet the chaos, but they aren’t in charge of much. We have too many idiots and frauds hogging the top positions.

It’s not even a question of their policy decisions. They don’t know how to govern. They can’t sell their ideas; they are incapable of rallying people behind their work. They have no idea where the Overton window is. For example, the JASA bill — even if it passes, the resistance from the opposition will strangle enforcement. From the population at large the response will include bloodshed. Even the Zionists are blindly overreaching.

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The Parable of Simulation

Posted on July 11, 2026 by ehurst

We need to say this again: The Hebrew mindset does not seek to know the nature of things. It seeks only to know its duty within a given context.

Thus, Paul enunciates the Doctrine of Election. He doesn’t answer all of our western minds’ questions. Rather, he gives us just enough to figure out how to approach serving the Kingdom of Christ.

That’s how doctrine works. Theology is not the same thing; that’s a quest to discern definitions that satisfy a Hellenized brain. It’s all about questions that a Hebrew mind would not consider in the first place. In other words, theology is mostly invalid. It’s okay if you need to work out something internally, but you cannot pretend that you gain truth from theology. In the Hebrew mind of Christ, truth does not work like that.

Unlike theology, doctrine is a frame of reference that allows you to operate in this life. It’s not about absolute truth; it’s about functional orientation. It gives you just enough to get the job done. It’s not meant to inform you how things are, but to grant you a provisional perspective. Doctrine says, “Act as if this were true.” Never mind whether it is true, just act like it is.

Thus, I have taught for a long time that you should act as if all Creation is alive, sentient and willful. That’s part of how Jesus calmed the sea storm. He spoke to it as if it were a living thing that would respond to His valid command. Stop trying to figure out whether the natural world is actually alive; that’s the wrong question. Pretend it is.

Treat it like a simulation, like you are living inside a game. The only real question is for you to discover what a valid command would be in any given context. The difficulty is overcoming the work of the fallen Watchers. You see, they taught a bunch of cheat codes. Using cheat codes will degrade your game-karma, as it were. The simulation knows the difference between a valid command and a cheat code. This is a demo run.

When the Devil offered the first cheat-code, the only way to accept it was to enter the simulation in which he was provisional master. That meant leaving the Garden of Reality and entering this dark realm of mortal existence — simulated existence. Everything you accomplish here will eventually be reset. God is keeping score; He will eventually reboot the system and start from scratch. The next iteration will take into account the score and the flaws that are revealed. The design of the natural world (the basic game design) doesn’t change, only the defilement of nature from human play within the game is ephemeral. On the restart, God will set the course of the game on a different track.

Indeed, God will patch the flaws that showed up during the first demonstration run. He’ll remove the Devil’s track from the game, along with the Devil and the Abyss. The Watchers, their Nephilim children and the cheat codes will be erased. The NPCs won’t be back (the non-Elect).

This kind of parable seems to fit our mental frame of reference in explaining how the Hebrew mind sees reality. Like any parable, it goes only so far before it breaks down. Still, perhaps you’ll get a better concept of how Jesus thought about things.

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Enemies of the Zionist State

Posted on July 9, 2026 by ehurst

There are three bills in Congress that should have your attention: National Defense Appropriations Act (NDAA) for 2027, National Intelligence Act (NIA) for 2027, and the Jewish American Security Act (JASA). Those three together represent a surrender of the US government to the State of Israel. It means staffing IDF officers in the Pentagon, merged intelligence with Israel, and new federal offices to protect Israel from negative commentary. That third one includes any protests or any verbal dissent against the US government for doing all this. This post would be illegal after JASA passes.

I learned recently that the NIA has already passed out of committee onto the floor without a hint of dissent from either side of the aisle. This is treason by any reasonable definition. There will be no national secrets kept from Mossad, yet they will withhold secrets from us.

This is not what gets my attention. What matters to me as elder of my faith community is the threat of censorship. I’ve been teaching the Bible for 25 years online. I am not a Dispensationalist, which means I cannot support Zionism. However, Zionism is about to take over my country’s government policy. There’s no difference between the Judaizers of the New Testament and the Zionizers of today.

I once believed the most likely threat to my testimony was Zionist church folks. That turned out to be half-true. Zionist church folks in government have rushed to give Israel control officially. While the law as proposed does not explicitly make my teaching illegal, anyone with bureaucratic experience knows how that works. As the efforts to shut down commentary unfriendly to Israel fail, the next step is going after the people who are writing this commentary. But that will take awhile.

You see, if the most popular social media platforms get squeezed or shut down, writers with half a brain will move to services in countries that won’t play along with US/Israeli demands. I know that my message is a mandate from God. I am not allowed to go quiet. I’ll find hosting in China or some other place that won’t censor my message to America.

Initially, this conflict will be infowar, just as I predicted a long time ago. The gospel message is inherently infowar against the Kingdom of Darkness. We are seeking to awaken God’s Elect so they can break their chains and flee the Devil’s slavery. Paul wrote that the Jews have been hardened for the time being; they are naturally aligned with that dark empire. The Zionists will not tolerate resistance to their agenda.

Indeed, they will go after all my readers, as well. Reading this blog? The feds already know that, if they choose to become aware of it. Do you send email to me once in a while? That’s also recorded somewhere. Now that the threat is obvious, it’s time to start taking evasive action.

Use a VPN when you browse the Net. I realize that some services balk at this, so you can turn it off when necessary. Still, it’s in your best interest to do as much surfing as possible behind a VPN. Mozilla, Vivaldi and Opera (and a couple others I don’t use) have built-in VPN. You can set it to open the curtain for sites you choose: MS Office, YouTube, banking, Facebook, etc.

I recommend encrypted communications. Get Signal app for your phone (texting and calls). It runs as a separate chat app. You need to convince your closest associates to join you on it, particularly for discussing faith that will become illegal. By the way, you can install Signal on your desktop and link to your phone. You’ll be able to type your chats on a regular keyboard.

Learn how to use OpenPGP plugins for your email. You must create a key for each email address where you plan to use it. In fact, if you want to send me an encrypted message, use my email address here (ehurst@radixfidem.blog), we can exchange encryption keys privately and encrypt our correspondence. As a half-measure, we can also all get accounts on the same encrypted mail service — I use Proton Mail (br073n@proton.me). It’s free and any messages we send on their service is kept encrypted in-house. They have apps for phones and tablets, plus Windows/Mac/Linux desktops.

If you are going to use encrypted correspondence, jump into it 100%. Do all your routine traffic encrypted when possible. That way the snoops know only that you communicated. They have no hope of knowing what was in the message.

It appears that the underground militia types have been riled by these three bills. Some claim that they are already prepping for conflict with government agents. I like to watch them, but I’m not any part of that. But they have a point: Both major parties have become a threat to honest followers of Christ. The Democrats are being taken over by socialists, an existential threat to genuine faith of any kind. But now the Republicans have become an existential threat to anyone who isn’t Zionist. There are some states where you can be arrested simply for saying publicly why you don’t support Israel.

The Thesis of the Unseen Realm is easily the strongest response we have to Dispensationalists and Zionists. The ancient Hebrew outlook we seek to recover is uniformly against both of those doctrines. Just repeating the wealth of genuine scholarship about the ancient Hebrew perspective is going to get us in trouble if the JASA passes.

We are soon to be enemies of the State. Get ready for it, folks. By the way, my convictions say we will be alright, but that it will be a rough ride.

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The Gift of Truth

Posted on July 8, 2026 by ehurst

The word “unchurch” has been used by several different organizations. I wasn’t aware of any of them when I decided to steal the idea of “uncola” and apply it to church. I wrote up my concept 20 years ago; my original document is here (HTML document). It’s a bit long and reflects where I was at the time. Not much has changed, except that I’ve extended the idea somewhat.

The whole point was that I had encountered people far too often for whom mainstream church was simply not where they belonged. What they needed was something that didn’t exist. I was trying to deconstruct the historical expressions of church and get to the crux of what it was supposed to do.

Having established that much, I now want to take the next step and think about an “un-seminary” to educate the leadership for such nonconformist faith communities.

The biggest problem right away is that the mainstream educational institutions are even stickier than the mainstream churches. We don’t need stuffy professional standards and certified degrees to get this job done. What we need is simply the curriculum and materials available for those who want them.

This would never work unless you are a self-starter who can stay with the studies; you must be driven. I know that such a thing is possible because I’m one of those people. My biggest problem is not the work; it’s the price tag. Next to that is the strict control you would expect from sectarian overlords who can’t stand the idea that someone might not end up a carbon copy of themselves. They demand you jump through all their hoops and get your tickets with all the proper punches.

Granted, in recent years we’ve seen folks like Michael Heiser who have dropped an awful lot of writing and videos on the Net for free. A few of his associates also offer copies of their stuff where you can get your own if you know where to look. Still, it amounts to very little compared to what is possible and needed.

I’ve been doing what I could since I first got on the Net. It’s not that I’m such a great scholar, but what I have, I’ve always made have free for everyone. I want to see more people with better expertise doing that on some scale. Neither Jesus nor the apostles charged for their teaching. God always provided their needs. I can testify that I’m doing just fine, myself.

We already have very expensive institutions (seminaries and churches) that represent keeping leaders very comfortable. We need churches that don’t cost a fortune to operate. We need high-level education in the Bible that doesn’t require going hundreds of thousands into debt. The solid academic background necessary to grasp the Hebrew mind of Jesus Christ should be as free as the Blood He shed for us all.

I’ll keep doing what I can. When I can get my hands on an electronic copy of anything that fills such a need, I’ll be glad to offer it to anyone. Yes, I must be careful to avoid getting sued by copyright holders, so I can’t just post links to a private repository. Still, I’ve managed to avoid the hassles so far because it’s all done privately. I plan to keep doing that as long as possible.

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Talking about Unchurch?

Posted on July 7, 2026 by ehurst

How many different ways can people worship Mammon?

American culture is inherently materialistic. The Enlightenment arose from a period of time when European middle-class people were finally doing well enough to get a decent education. They liked the pretense of upper class wealth, but lacked the inward character of nobility that aristocrats often learned. The middle-class merchants wanted the comfort and respect without the actual patrician frame of mind. Eschewing actual nobility was a major element in the Enlightenment philosophy into which America was born.

By default, American children absorb materialism very early. God alone knows how I managed to escape that. As a child, I often gave stuff away to my friends. It was simply an instinct. During those years, my family was homeless part of the time, so I never took seriously the idea of having stuff. I was always focused more on gathering experiences.

As I walked through my early adult years, I never worried too much that some of my career choices would lead to poverty. To this day, I am not embarrassed that my kids grew up in ratty old housing during their early years. A part of me knew that I was passing up chances to be more well off because those options included things that felt morally wrong for me. Trust me: I have no regrets about that.

The Lord provided me an opportunity to get a good education. I didn’t waste that; I got good grades. My final GPA was 3.8 out of 4.0. But I always knew that my mission was to bring the high intellectual stuff down to the level of folks I grew up with. There are still a huge number of people out there who are homeless, as I was at times, and their numbers are currently growing. Among them are God’s Elect.

So, it disturbs me to this day that those with solid biblical scholarship seem utterly unconscious of this vast audience they never touch. It’s not that they aren’t willing to try, but too often it just doesn’t register with them the barriers they have raised. For example, some of the best books in the field of biblical studies cost almost as much as my bicycles.

Honest truth: I have no conscience at all about having pirated some of those books by patronizing Z-library and Pirate Bay. There is no way I could afford those books. By no means do I envy people with a high income and comfortable life. I don’t wish them ill at all. What I wish is that they were aware that they never even think about how they have been taught by the system to expect their high incomes, as if they could not possibly minister without it.

Everyone they know, all the people with whom they were educated and with whom they rub shoulders today, live in the upper-middle class. They are desensitized to the disparity.

Well, there are a few like me who scavenge that expensive education second-hand and we are trying to pass it on to folks who might not be welcome in their churches. I’m not referring to people who are merely smelly and dirty; I’m talking about people who are homeless because they find themselves excluded by the mainstream of society for other reasons. These are people who aren’t willing to make the moral compromises the system demands. Or perhaps they simply have peculiar social habits that offend the mainstream. Not everyone homeless is a crook or moral slimeball.

Many years ago I wrote about something called “Unchurch”. I need to drag that stuff out and present it again here.

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Root of Legalism

Posted on July 5, 2026 by ehurst

he weekly Bible Study post “The Evil Eye” from Saturday provoked a serious discussion for our community conference call this afternoon. Some of the discussion bears repeating.

The prophets say that the Israelis were a cranky bunch. The reason for a law code was to make tolerable to God the kvetching cranks who made up the bulk of the tribe. Had they been morally mature and actually desiring peace with God, He never would have needed to pound out a fat code on Mount Sinai. The same prophets reminded Israel often that if they could just grow up and embrace a heart-led commitment of feudal submission to God, mistakes could be worked out.

At any given time, it seems that the majority of the nation always needed the same kind of guidance we always give juveniles. You have to make rules and constantly adjust them because kids tend to smart-alecks. They are always jockeying for leverage, operating from a sort of passive selfishness, seeking an advantage of their elders or superiors.

They also have a serious problem with covetousness. They can’t stand the idea of uneven treatment. No one can have something they don’t get, and it’s not just material things. They can’t stand someone getting praise they don’t get, regardless of how well earned it may be. Envy is their other name. It’s a zero-sum game where one man’s gain was another man’s loss.

Most Hebrew peasants were the same way. It got to the point where those who were morally mature among the peasants were very careful to avoid receiving public praise or rewards of any kind. They knew their fellow peasants would flare up in envy and covetousness. It was very juvenile.

That’s where legalism comes from. Pharisaical legalism was simply the lack of moral maturity, the deep personal connection with God. It was juvenile envy. People who were really at peace must have stolen it from someone else, so the Pharisees were constantly seeking ways to make others miserable. They kept piling up new rules to protect the code from being transgressed. They imagined the Law as some kind of entity standing alone that was fragile and needed protection.

Juveniles love to appeal to some kind of impersonal logic, a presumed master over all. They wield it like a club to keep everyone from getting comfortable when they feel so wretched and without inner peace. People who are at peace have a tendency to live and let live.

Juvenile envy is the root of legalism.

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No Turning Back Now

Posted on July 5, 2026 by ehurst

Somewhere rooted in my older memories is the crux of a short story I once read. Earth scientists had been trying to make sense of transmissions between several star systems. In previous years, they were able to understand some of it. Suddenly, everything became senseless noise. Upon asking someone in the military, they were told that when all traffic is encrypted, it’s a sure sign the parties are at war with each other.

Until recently, I was able to read the economic and financial news sources online and get a picture of what was going on. These days, nothing makes sense. The stock markets are wholly unconnected from the fundamentals of the global economy. Even fuel prices are no longer a reflection of what is happening in the petroleum markets. Nothing makes sense right now.

I’m convinced this is intentional. If nothing else, the whole idea is to prevent us little people from estimating when things are going to hurt us. In other words, while the politicians don’t want to get their hands dirty, they have declared war on the population at large.

It has been popular with prepper types for decades to suggest the ruling elite have been at war with the rest of us. That was the reason for the formation of underground militias for such a long time. That population is aging out and most of those militias faded away. The government has stopped using the methods that gave us Ruby Ridge, Waco and the Bundy Ranch events.

Part of it is that almost everything is now centered on the Internet. First, the elites trapped everyone in the Net by requiring a smart phone just to interact with government services. Meanwhile, just about everything you can buy for daily human existence is being folded into online markets. There are whole swathes of the consumer market that can no longer be accessed via brick-n-mortar shops. Just having money you can spend is increasingly a matter of connection to the Internet.

Ask yourself: How many of your closest friends do you even see in person? Can you communicate face-to-face with your most important contacts in this world? Does “privacy” mean encrypted apps on your devices?

I’ve said for some years now that the future of war, including civil war, would be informational. The biggest threat to your future existence will come via the Internet. Whatever bad things are coming your way, it will have taken place first through electronic networking before it actually touches you physically. Even petty criminals are dependent on networked communications. Crime prevention could almost entirely be a matter of tracking human network communications before crimes are committed.

Thus, I made much of the JASA bill in Congress. The whole threat to our faith community is informational. We are at risk of being censored. Hiding behind this is the danger of being officially labeled a terrorist so that banking and government services will be cramped, including my entire personal income and medical care. Given previous government behavior, there is a risk all my devices would be confiscated somewhere in the future.

All of this comes because my faith and convictions demand I resist being enslaved to the government of Israel. Calling Israel “the Synagogue of Satan” is a matter of faith and conviction, and the government plans to make that illegal. Our government is at war with me because I don’t embrace the Dispensationalist heresy.

What this does is put me on a war footing myself. While watching to see if the JASA makes it into law, I’m preparing to resist censorship and whatever else comes in that package. Lots of leisure activities die right away. Every spare waking moment is consumed first in prayer about this threat, and then in preparations for avoiding the censorship. Somewhere out there on the edge of that is consideration how I might avoid arrest and detention.

There are a lot of open questions, such as which agency becomes responsible for enforcement, and likely procedures. How big would such an operation be. A major consolation for me is that I am such a minor figure, with a fairly small audience. It’s likely I would become a target somewhere behind thousands of others. I can assure you that the Palantir database being constructed right now (if not already in existence) has my name, because I have come to federal law enforcement attention in the past for wholly bogus reasons.

You need to be aware of this: If you have communicated online with me at any time in the past 20 years, that database will indicate it. Everything is being swept into the huge vacuum and processed as data. I can’t really know how good Palantir works, but reports indicate it holds together just fine and has delivered on smaller scales in the past, collating a vast diverse collection of database types across hundreds of federal and state agencies.

The gospel mission hasn’t changed. What’s different now is the setting in which the mission is pursued. It won’t stop until I’m dead or the State of Israel is destroyed. There’s no turning back now. Even if JASA dies in committee somewhere, Zionists will not stop trying one means or another to control all comments about their agenda by anyone anywhere on earth.

Is this a good place to mention the Vernam Cipher? Look it up; it’s the only unbreakable encryption so far. It works best for paper communications; there are variations. For relatively secure online encryption, the simplest is GPG/PGP. Make sure you exchange keys via sneaker net.

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The Evil Eye

Posted on July 4, 2026 by ehurst

Re: Naked Bible 162: The Evil Eye

The notion that one can bring about harm to something or someone through a nasty expression on the face while gazing at the object is perhaps the most universal superstition across every human culture in history.

However, in Scripture the concept waffles just a bit between actual power and simply expressing displeasure. It seems to signal an evil intent. Often, the nearest translation into English is an expression of envy or stinginess. There is something about projecting evil intent that signals a resolve do do harm. Heiser cites the mythical example of Sauron’s eye in the Lord of the Rings series. If the eye catches you, you are in trouble.

Examples in Scripture abound. For us, it’s mostly an idiom.

1. 1 Samuel 18:6-9 — When the men arrived after David returned from striking down the Philistine, the women from all the cities of Israel came out singing and dancing to meet King Saul. They were happy as they played their tambourines and three-stringed instruments. The women who were playing the music sang,


”Saul has struck down his thousands, 
but David his tens of thousands!”

This made Saul very angry. The statement displeased him and he thought, “They have attributed to David tens of thousands, but to me they have attributed only thousands. What does he lack, except the kingdom?” So Saul was keeping an eye on David from that day onward.

Saul looked upon David with en evil eye when he noticed David managed to get more positive acclaim from the people. In this context, the evil eye signaled an intent to harm David.

2. Numbers 23:11-13 — Balak said to him, “Please come with me to another place from which you can observe them. You will see only a part of them, but you will not see all of them. Curse them for me from there.”

Balak asked Balaam to move to another location where he could cast an evil eye upon the Israeli camp in order to curse them. The literal translation of the Hebrew text points to an expectation of using the evil eye.

3. Job 40:11-12 — Scatter abroad the abundance of your anger. 
Look at every proud man and bring him low; 

Look at every proud man and abase him; 
crush the wicked on the spot!

God challenges Job to use an evil eye to actually bring down someone who is wicked, something God can clearly do without effort. God could certainly use His gaze as a blessing, as well (Psalm 25:18-20). In Job 7:19 he asks God to turn His fierce gaze away so Job can catch a break.

4. Proverbs 23:6 — Do not eat the food of a stingy person, do not crave his delicacies…

The actual Hebrew phrase “evil eye” is hidden by English translations. The literal translation would be, “Don’t eat food from [someone who has] an evil eye.” Likewise, 28:22 would read, “The evil eye hastens after riches” as opposed to someone with a “good” eye who is generous and giving.

5. Deuteronomy 15:9 — Be careful lest you entertain the wicked thought that the seventh year, the year of cancellation of debts, has almost arrived, and your attitude be wrong toward your impoverished fellow Israelite and you do not lend him anything; he will cry out to the LORD against you and you will be regarded as having sinned.

Read literally, “Beware lest your evil eye does evil to your brother…” Later in 28:54-57, referring to a warning what Israel might experience if she is unfaithful, God says, “The tender man among you will do evil with his eye against” his family. Contrast this with Proverbs 22:9 which should translate as, “Someone good of eye…”

6. Proverbs 10:10 — The one who winks his eye causes trouble…

“Whoever bites/stings with the eye…” Also, Job 16:9, to “sharpen the eye” like a weapon. It’s not just a bad habit or bad character, but it’s a stronger intent.

In the New Testament…

7. Matthew 6:22-23 (& Luke 11:34-36) — “The eye is the lamp of the body. If then your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is diseased, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

Unlike the modern concept of lighting coming into the eye, the Hebrew image was light coming out of your eyes. It’s a question of what is inside of you. See Daniel 10:6. It also shows up in Second Temple literature.

We know that we are wired to respond in some measure to way people look at us, what their gaze and face portray. It’s not so much the power of the evil eye, but the nature of human response.

In ancient Hebrew culture, much as today in any honor/shame society, it was common among peasantry to be hesitant to accept too much praise, too much reward, etc. because there would always be envious people around to give the evil eye. Never flaunt or gloat among your peers. There was this notion that one man’s gain was another’s loss unless it was shared. Among peasants, everything was in shortage. This is why “evil eye” is associated with envy in those cultures.

Thus, a good eye is the characteristic of having no hidden motives. There’s no coveting. Casting an evil eye is simply showing the darkness inside of you.

Galatians 3:1-5 — You foolish Galatians! Who has cast a spell on you? Before your eyes Jesus Christ was vividly portrayed as crucified! The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? Although you began with the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by human effort? Have you suffered so many things for nothing? — if indeed it was for nothing. Does God then give you the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law or by your believing what you heard?

Heiser relates how Paul hints at believers sandbagged by the influence of Jewish and pagan false notions about how to gain salvation through mere conduct. Paul uses the term “bewitched” (baskaino), which shows up only once in the New Testament Greek and once in the LXX OT — back in Deuteronomy 28:54-55, where starvation could make some men “begrudge with his eye” (literally “bewitch with his eye”) their own family members to point of engaging in cannibalism.

Paul uses the same image from Deuteronomy to point out just how deeply accursed someone is who clings to legalism. They will end up cannibalizing their fellow Christians, they will “bite and devour” each other out of selfishness and envy. They cannot see clearly the crucified Christ who was so utterly open and guileless. Instead, they keep looking for hidden meanings and keep turning it all back on themselves and their personal benefit. They are bewitched; someone has cast an evil spell upon them. The Judaizers were like sorcerers, the kind of people who would cannibalize their own kin.

Instead of magic amulets to ward off the evil eye, all you need is the Cross in your heart.

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