Salvation and Election

Posted on August 5, 2026 by ehurst

(This continues the previous post.)

Creation is obliged to glorify the Lord. It does that automatically. What differentiates humans from the rest of the natural world is the moral responsibility of doing it by choice.

ontology — The branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of being.

Again, we cannot comprehend the ontology of the created universe. We can study and try to make sense of what we can observe, but that cannot answer all the questions. No matter what we work out using our human capabilities, there will always be elements of our existence that make no sense. That’s because our human capabilities are within the Fallen Realm. And I’ve already said that the Fallen Realm compares favorably with a computer simulation.

Our world it not the ultimate reality. It is artificial. It is a working model, along with everything we can know about it. The proper Hebrew mindset in the Bible is that the best we can do is form a working model of things. The revelation of God is His answer to the needs of His people inside of a false reality. It gives us a baseline from which to approach things.

And revelation has always come in the form of covenants. From the beginning, ephemeral humans had a Covenant of Creation. After the Flood, they had a Covenant of Noah. The Covenant of Moses was a special implementation of Noah, applied to only one nation. (The Talmud was a corruption of Moses, so it was never valid.) Moses ended at the Cross, superseded by the Covenant of Christ. Today, every human is accountable to the Covenant of Christ.

The salvation that comes from embracing any covenant has always been a matter of human existence, not Eternity. Whether or not anyone sees Eternity is a matter of Divine Election. The Covenant is your obligation for life here in the Fallen Realm. Every human has a heart, the faculty for handling moral obligations to God. God requires every human alive to embrace Christ from the heart as soon as they develop to the point their heart is capable of making a moral commitment.

Don’t assume you understand the ontology of this. This is merely the biblical revelation of how we should operate. It represents the algorithms of the simulation in which we live. We cannot logically collate this with the Doctrine of Election. All we know is that election is a fact and so is the covenant obligation.

Meanwhile, we have a Hebrew parable that says our current mortal existence arises from a dispute between God and the Devil. God confined the Devil within time and space as punishment for the latter’s refusal to go along with God’s plan for us in the Garden of Eden. This mortal existence is a divine test case in which humans have the duty to prove that God is just in what He does, including the Devil’s punishment.

At the conclusion of this simulation, Christ will return. The Devil and his allies will be destroyed, treated like mortals and removed from existence. That includes the Watchers in Tartarus, the Nephilim roaming around, and a portion of God’s elohim staff. Then, we who are eternal will be restored to Eden and will replace the Divine Council, to boot. The parable says nothing about the final fate of humans who are not part of the Elect.

The parable also says nothing about the living flora and fauna, only that the natural world will be restored to what it was before humans made such a mess of it. Keep in mind that the Bible flatly says that the natural world is longing to see us restored to Eden and our authority to manage it. The only hope for the natural world, including mortal humans, is that you and I live by the Covenant so that we can also manifest God’s glory. It’s in the best interest of all Creation.

That sense of expectation and hope is wired into the natural world, but God demands that free moral humans willfully join in that hope. God’s promises say those who walk by His covenants will benefit in this life, in that life is much better, more consistent with the design of Creation. In the afterlife, we know that those who fail end up in Hell. We aren’t told what happens to those who obey that requirement, in that they are not differentiated from the Elect.

Should we assume they are Elect? That’s not supported by Scripture. It’s an ontological question that we aren’t supposed to ask.

Again, it’s not supposed to make sense. The whole point here is that we operate as if this is all true. There is no ontology of Election, only the implication that God has family in this world that is dominated by people who are not His family. Why the ephemera are here is never explained, so our duty is to deal with them as they are according to the guidance of the Holy Spirit and Scripture. Meanwhile, we should make no assumptions about the nature of the situation.

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Cain’s Wife and Election

Posted on August 4, 2026 by ehurst

People keep asking: Where did Cain’s wife come from? The answer is not direct. We have to go back to were Cain stood, in the sense of what Scripture tells us. We must restore to our minds the biblical outlook buried under centuries of obfuscation that results from humans avoiding God’s truth.

As we’ve noted before, one of our biggest problems in understanding the Bible is the persistent error of democratic assumptions. This is deeply rooted in western thinking and appears to us manifestly just. But it is not from the Bible; the Bible is relentlessly feudal. God’s Creation is fundamentally feudal in nature. God plays favorites.

It is this fundamental disjuncture that results in western biblical scholars coming up with all kinds of nonsense to explain things so differently from the ancient Hebrew people. This is why people like Heiser and Moreau dance all around the Doctrine of Election; they stand on the very weak ground of their human assumptions and reasoning. For all their mastery of the background of the Bible, they simply do not have Hebrew minds because they reject the fundamental assumptions. Instead, they weaken their view of Scripture and inspiration in order to dodge the inevitable requirement of believing what God says.

Our human existence after the Fall is not ultimate reality. When Christ returns, we will be pulled from this existence and transformed into our true created nature. We were not designed for mortality. In the Fall, we were thrust into this form. We did not lose our eternal form; it was masked under mortality.

Mortality means we are limited. A fundamental element of Hebrew epistemology is that, in this human form, we cannot possibly comprehend ultimate truth. The best we can hope for are parables, symbolism that allows us to act on God’s will. The ontology of things is not in our grasp. We must live “as if” on just about everything that matters.

Thus, as has been noted on this blog for many years, we must act as if Creation is alive, sentient and willful. That’s the correct approach. The miracles of Christ make a lot more sense from that angle. We can then begin to consider how to stand where He stood; the process to restore Eden and eternal norms can begin. The flesh must die, symbolically now and literally later.

What makes us capable of bearing the Spirit of Christ in this world is our inner spiritual nature that has been thrust into a highly limited human form. While the Gospel narratives about Christ after His resurrection point to an eternal form that looks and acts something like our current form, there were clearly distinct differences. He was not bound by the “laws” of space and time. He could appear when and where He wanted without having to take the time to travel the distance. He was in His eternal form as the first fruit of resurrection.

There is every reason to assume that our eternal form is like that. What we had in the Garden of Eden was like that. Given the scriptural declaration of Election, we should presume as if there have always been people who had no eternal nature. It’s not a question of them being chosen to remain mortal, but that they simply never had an eternal form.

They existed in the Garden as highly intelligent, but wholly temporal, creatures. They were part of the flora and fauna. Adam and Eve were not part of that until they were thrust into mortal form. Their original mission was to transform the natural world, to propagate God’s Edenic existence across the rest of Creation. They took a detour in agreeing to embrace the Devil’s offer. It turns out that his offer required them to become mortal and come under his dominion.

This is how the human race gained eternal people in the mix. Today, some of us are born with that higher eternal nature, while most are not. Those who lack the eternal nature are still part of the mortal human race that had been in the Garden all along. Cain crossed the boundary to live among the mortals, so his wife was from among them.

The mortals cannot tell the difference; they instinctively deny that there could be a difference. They are not wired to grasp eternal things. Scripture tells us that the Elect do not breed true in mortal flesh. How God makes that choice in each life born into the human race is beyond our grasp, but we are obliged to act as if this is true. The whole point of a Doctrine of Election is to make is possible for us to obey the Lord and form realistic expectations. Some people will never understand what the Spirit tells us in our hearts.

Meanwhile, since we cannot discern who is and isn’t eternal, we are obliged to act as if every human we meet could be an eternal in disguise. We treat them the same, not out of any democratic delusion, but out of practical necessity. The first question in a Hebrew mind is not the ontology of anything. It is, “What can I do with this? How will it glorify God?”

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Melchizedek Part 2

Posted on August 1, 2026 by ehurst

Re: Naked Bible 167: Melchizedek Part 1b

To a Hebrew mind, the nature of something – the ontology – is of little consequence. What really matters is the role a thing plays. What can we do with it? More to the point, how can it bring glory to God? While digging into the possible meanings of Melchizedek’s name and whence it comes is of little use in understanding his place in the New Testament, it can help to explain some odd details in the Old Testament.

For example, it can be shown that the second half of his name – Tzedek – is the name of a deity in the Canaanite pantheon, showing up under different names across the Ancient Near East. In essence, it points to an interest in cosmic justice, and was the name for the chief attendant of the Semitic deity El, known as Shamash in other languages, the sun deity. This indicates that some variety of sun god was worshiped in ancient Jerusalem for quite some time. It also helps to explain why solar worship kept popping up in Jerusalem all the way up through the time of Ezekiel, who in a vision saw sun worship still occurring just before Babylon destroyed Solomon’s Temple.

We see a rather natural confusion among Israelites about Jehovah being closely related to worship of the sun and Baal. It was quite strong during the reign of Manasseh and forbidden under Josiah’s reforms around 620 BC. Among the Hebrew prophets, the idea was to absorb the pagan elements into the reverence for Jehovah, but people who lacked full faith in Him would see it in reverse, that it was okay to worship God as if He were something commonly known among the pagans.

Keep in mind that throughout the Old Testament, the kind of talk that personifies Righteousness and Justice is not mere poetry. It’s the language of centuries of pagan worship, using such labels as titles for multiple separate deities. The Bible hijacks that language to talk about Jehovah to build up the faithful, but to those who lack faith in Jehovah as the sole Creator of all things, it serves as an excuse to confuse things and keep their fear-based religions alive.

See the following passages: Psalm 110; Deuteronomy 32:8; Genesis 12 and 14; Numbers 24:14-18; Genesis 49:10. It’s all about Abraham and his seed breaking the powers of the nations in Jehovah’s name. Abraham’s descendants would reclaim the nations disinherited at the Tower of Babel. Melchizedek gets thrown into the middle of all this as the symbol of what kind of New Kingdom would be formed from all of this reclamation of nations.

Even under the protocol of God’s division between priesthood and kingship, we have David as king in Jerusalem who touches the Ark of Covenant, normally permitted only by priests. David’s descendant, Jesus the Messiah, is the final executor of this restoration of the original protocol.

The Law of Moses was a placeholder, an interim passage between Abraham and Christ. The way Moses balked at God’s command to shepherd the nation (Exodus 3 and 4) foreshadows the weakness of faith among Israelites. God gets exasperated with Moses and by concession allows Aaron to take the burden of priesthood, despite his lack of character (think about the Golden Calf incident). Moses hesitates and complains, and the nation does the same thing to him every step of the way until Conquest.

The Two Witnesses are part of a parenthesis, an inserted interval between the two ends of history. Be careful not to read it back into any part of Bible history before Moses and Aaron. The early Hebrew church believed it remained normative for the New Covenant. In John’s Revelation it is part of the final witness to the world before the End. I believe it remains a part of our covenant lives until Christ returns.

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Covering: Having and Sharing

Posted on July 26, 2026 by ehurst

A question that comes up from time to time: What’s the deal with ghosts? This is a mystery only because western mythology is so bad in general and just awful on this question.

Context: The created natural world is alive, sentient and willful. We keep saying that. Jesus commanded the storm to be still because weather conditions are subject to His authority; creation obeys Him. Creation is God’s agent in one sense, but the main thing is that it is an active participant in the Thesis of the Unseen Realm. It has its own role to play in the broader scheme of things we face in this world.

The natural world remembers some people. Whether that person dies or is simply very far away, various locations on this earth will tend to remember certain people who left a strong moral imprint. Some are particularly bad and serve as a warning in that memory. Some are uniquely special in less harmful ways. But for good or ill, certain people are remembered in particular locations for reasons we cannot fathom.

As a simple practical matter, you can think of it as the resonance of a soul that had a strong moral presence. There’s nothing to fear from them. They cannot harm you by themselves. Creation may tend to respond to those memories in concrete and specific ways, but the only real danger is what you carry with you in the first place.

Ghosts don’t harm covenant people. If you belong to the Devil — and it’s both a sliding scale and a patchwork of specific moral weaknesses — he has authority over your existence. He can invoke his power over you to amplify the fear and danger that a ghost might awaken.

So apparitions and odd behavior from physical objects are just a part of this world as God made it. The Nephilim, the Devil, and sometimes the Watchers in Heaven will leverage these things to hurt people who have gaps in their spiritual covering. Your spiritual maturity within the covenant is your shield. Some of you can discern these ghosts and what lessons they may offer; it’s one of the spiritual gifts.

Another issue: One of the saddest things I’ve ever seen is a church that comes apart because of some pastoral scandal. One of the very biggest failures of church shepherds has been weakening the faith and resolve of the flock by making them dependent on the pastor’s presence and control. Even without spiritual understanding, a good psychologist can figure that out. One of the greatest harms humans do to each other is to foster inappropriate dependence. By the same token, the greatest ministries you’ll ever encounter are the ones that strive to make the people independent, self-reliant, capable of standing alone.

But beyond mere human psychology, the big issue here is that any congregation should be capable of moving forward without the pastor’s presence. He’s not the king; he’s the head of household. A real dad raises his children to not need him, but to love him and want him around.

I cannot count how many pastors I’ve met, or even worked with on staff, who did their best to foster dependence in the flock. I had several warn me not to teach anything that would encourage people to discover their own gifts and talents in the Lord. I’ve been kicked out of two churches for seeking to develop a stronger laity.

God hammered me about this very early. Even during my time in uniform, I strove to develop and promote my subordinates. It makes me downright angry when I see someone abusing their authority to hold down someone else.

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Melchizedek Part 1

Posted on July 25, 2026 by ehurst

For once, I’m not walking with Heiser very closely. I’ll be paralleling his podcast series on Melchizedek, but relying on studies from other authors. The difficulty I have here is that, if you really need footnotes and references, I no longer have much. Most of this comes from lectures at Oklahoma Baptist University in classes taught by Dr. Robert Clarke and Dr. Rowena Strickland. The rest will be from their associates at the same school, books and papers they suggested, and other readings I’ve picked up over the years. My study notes disappeared long ago. You’ll have to trust me that I’m not making up stuff.

Re: Episode 166: Melchizedek, Part 1a

First, a little historical background. Heiser’s disciple, Dale Moreau, makes much of how the Conquest was mostly about the Nephilim tribes scattered across Canaan Land. That’s only half-true. Some of the destroyed cities were notorious pagan shrines that had drawn the attention of those who traveled through those lands for centuries.

Think of ancient Palestine as not a destination in itself, but just a highway between truly important places. It’s a highway dotted with a few gas stations and motels with bars. The pagan shrines were an industry in itself, designed to siphon off some of the wealth these travelers carried. Instead of high toll road fees, they relied more on seducing the polytheistic traders with the likes of temple prostitutes and maybe some wine and wild potions, alongside the food and lodging.

The entrapment was made worse by the presence of incarnated Nephilim, but Israel operated under the assumption that the only reason the major shrines existed was because of the Nephilim. Thus, they could focus on the shrines and clobber any Nephilim they spotted in the process. To the pagan residents, the issue was that a new upper class (displacing the Egyptians) were seizing the land and subjecting the inhabitants under feudal dominion. However, instead of their peculiar collection of deities, the Hebrews had only one, and they enforced worship for Him alone under their Noah Code for Gentiles.

Israel did not destroy every city, nor slaughter every pagan tribe. They went after those who had built up shrines that would violate God’s command that they not tolerate pagan worship in the land they were to conquer. Some of the shrines were simply destroyed and defiled. Others were converted to Israel’s purposes.

By the same token, of the conquered cities that were destroyed, some were rebuilt with a Hebrew name. Others already had a name that the Hebrews could use for their own agenda, so it stayed. Heiser digs down into the name of Jerusalem and rattles off a lot of studies (some contradictory) but seems to get one thing completely wrong: Zion and Jerusalem were originally two different facilities, two different peoples.

The Jebusite fortress was just about halfway down the ridge, just above the Gihon Spring. When David seized the fortress, he didn’t slaughter the troops inside, just drove them out and subjected them to Israeli feudal control. It became the City of David. The terms eventually became a single geographical reference in Hebrew usage, but the ancient City of Urushalem grew up around the Jebusite fortress on Zion. By David’s time, the city had already been destroyed once under Joshua (Joshua 10), rebuilt and and then eventually seized from the inhabitants. But Joshua was unable to take the Jebusite fortress, so it remained occupied until King David.

Genesis 14 reveals to us Melchizedek as king of the ancient city with Canaanite inhabitants, probably in alliance with the Jebusites in the fortress, but they were a completely different people with a different culture. They both used the shrine Abraham visited above the fortress on the hilltop (Mount Moriah). But this was probably just an open space with an altar, with nothing marking it as belonging to any particular deity. It later became Araunah’s (alternative spelling Ornan) threshing floor, which David bought from the surviving Jebusite tribe to be the future site of the Temple.

Side note: Later references to “Jebus” point back to the founder of this particular tribe of people. So far as we know, they lived mostly in the area around that fortress, minus the western hillside across the Tyropean Valley where the city of Jerusalem stood. Any use of the name “Jebus” can, in Hebrew grammar, be an acceptable reference to the place — the fortress on the ridge.

After Abraham deals with the invading coalition of kings from the Mesopotamian Valley, he comes back and meets with Melchizedek. Heiser recounts a lot of conflicting studies over that name. As I’ve noted before, Heiser likes to get lost in the factual data, but seems just a bit out of touch with the ancient Hebrew philosophical background. It doesn’t matter where the name comes from. The Hebrew people treated it as a title, not a proper name. As far as they were concerned, it meant what it sounded like to them in their language.

That the Canaanites had various deities named Malk, Tzedek, and Shalem makes no difference. Yes, we recognize that, according to proper Hebrew grammar, against the proper grammar of the Canaanite languages (very similar to Hebrew), there are some strange possibilities. Notice that Melchizedek as king in Abraham’s time becomes Adoni-zedek in Joshua’s time. It’s a very similar title, but it may not have been the same tribe of people occupying the city. However, none of that mattered to Abraham nor his descendants who returned to conquer the land.

The figure of Melchizedek exceeds the facts; he became a mythic figure. He was a king and priest. We meet him several centuries before the Law on Mount Sinai, back when it was common for the senior head of household to also be the priest for his people. The two roles became divided at the time of Moses because he balked at keeping them both. Thus, his brother Aaron became priest, while Moses was made the elder of the tribe. God kept this arrangement — Two Witnesses — for the balance of human time in this world, though His Son reunited the roles in Heaven after His resurrection (already but not yet).

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The Damage Is Done

Posted on July 24, 2026 by ehurst

We were discussing offline the magnitude of the action in the Bab-el-Mandeb Straight. The Houthis struck the Saudi oil tanker Encelia in the southern Red Sea. There’s no confirmation of a second ship. So far as I can determine, that ship is an “Aframax” running just over 100K tons, what seems to be about middling size. The point of discussion was the impact this has on oil trade.

There are anywhere from 8K-10K oil vessels. Of those, only about half are currently active — something just over 4K. About 160 of them are stuck in the Persian Gulf right now. Of those not trapped, the breakdown of how many of each size-class varies, but the active traffic stats indicate that the Aframax size is about one-fifth (over 1K).

As a side note, there is a very substantial “shadow fleet” actively working, mostly smaller vessels. Ships sold for scrap are sometimes diverted to the shadows and used by nations like Russia trying to avoid oil sanctions. It is a growing portion of all the oil that Russia ships. From what I can gather, the primary means of keeping track of the traffic is insurance records, and Russia’s shadow fleet simply does not participate in the standard global insurance market.

The point here is that an expensive ship was lost, but from the photos is appears that the vessel was not fully loaded. A video I found shows most of the deck aflame. If it burned very long, the metal exposed to flame would weaken and the ship would require awfully expensive renovation to remain in service. The price of a replacement is around $50 million.

This single vessel and cargo is big enough to notice, but it represents something much bigger: The Saudis will have trouble selling their oil. They currently don’t have any way to ship out oil except their port on the Persian Gulf (blocked by Iran) and the terminal in the Red Sea (now blocked by the Houthis). The ruling family cannot afford for this to continue more than a week or so.

However, Iran and their clients, the Houthis, have gotten pretty good at this. All the bombs and missiles the US could drop on them won’t change much. That’s in part because the US doesn’t have that many bombs and missiles right now; we didn’t build up a good inventory for anything more than a brief action. Trump’s previous and current efforts with Iran have brought that small inventory down dangerously, and the Pentagon is broke.

Congress has already demanded that the warfare in Iran stop — twice. Trump has ignored them. Most Americans don’t notice. They are largely oblivious to the action along with the implications. We cannot afford to serve Israel like this. No human can see the breaking point, but it’s for sure we are getting to it.

Most of my readers are the kind of people who have been prepared for a while. There’s nothing I can add to that. You cannot count on having any more time. Indeed, the breaking point may not be that easy to identify when it passes.

It’s not just the political and economic instability that hits everyone, but those of us who aren’t Zionists will face the added risk of censorship and persecution. It’s here, folks. The pain may not manifest immediately, but the damage is done.

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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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