Tribulation Eldership, Part 1

Posted on October 27, 2026 by ehurst

Whoever rejects grace will receive the law. In passing, I’ve noticed that whenever someone scans one of our community blogs via AI, that principle always gets noted in the summary if the writer actually believes it.

God deals with humans on two levels: family and others. Family is associated with the biblical concept of grace, while everyone else gets law. It’s a sort of paradox, because law should bring things close to what grace would provide, but humans who operate without the awareness of grace are ill-equipped to be as flexible as God meant law to be. People of grace understand that law is merely a representation, not God Himself. People of law cannot possibly grasp that; law is all they know about God. As far as they are concerned, law is God.

The truth is the reverse: God is the law. It was hard enough with Hebrew people whose language and culture were dominated by this paradigm. They had the advantage of a structure that presumed love and personal attachment. The West pretty much killed all of that. In the West, there is no moral reckoning in attachment; that’s regarded as mere emotion, sentiment. Western morality is reckoned in terms of material obligations, not personal attachment. In the Bible, everything is personal.

For the western mind, to “know” someone or something is bound by law; it’s a question of property ownership (from which we get the adjective “proprietary” marking sole ownership). In the biblical sense, knowing is a matter of personal interaction, a moral consideration of whatever is appropriate to the nature of the relationship. It presumes a personal regard and commitment to the welfare of everyone affected.

Thus, we say by grace that Creation is a living being with whom we must relate as a person. Every identifiable entity in Creation is also granted the same regard. Hebrew language treats nothing as a mere object, but imbues everything with some measure of personality, sentience and will. Western assumptions about reality serve to depersonalize even people, not to mention God.

It becomes a burden of our mortal existence to keep track of both systems. Divine love can be offered to everyone, but the circuit is not complete without reciprocity. If that love does not own you, then you exclude yourself. You define yourself as an object, as mere property, instead of family. Thus, we keep law at the ready for those who demand it.

We know before we get involved that law is flexible, while at the same time we know that people will not understand this. They will not like it. Sometimes we cannot help them. Much as it pains us to watch them suffer, there is nothing we can do about it. Worst of all is when we sense that someone is family, but refuses the full power of grace, preferring to labor under a false notion of law.

It gets even more complicated when we deal with people in the aggregate. Humans are political by nature, while we have been striving to kill that fleshly nature. The biggest blind spot in western society is the silly notion that everyone should be a king — calling it “individualism”. From this deeply perverted foundation, they go on to act on a tribal identity that is fiercely materialistic. Worse, they will assume multiple tribal identities — a sort of schizophrenia — and will respond to everything we do and say from that freakish perspective.

We may spend our whole lives trying to shed that idiocy in pursuit of grace.

At any rate, it is important to remind covenant people today that our tribulation is very different from what the first century Christians faced. The Roman government was only partly western, for one thing. Imperial Rome maintained a clear grasp of Ancient Near Eastern assumptions about reality and tolerated it officially. Our American culture and government refuses to understand, much less tolerate it.

Further, Rome was not materialistic the way the West is. The law by which believers handled the Roman imperial government and the various national and local authorities would naturally be quite different from the law we must use in the US. It’s our peculiar burden to discern the teaching in Scripture, rightly dividing between those things that were contextual and those which are universal. I doubt any two of us would end up with exactly the same set of answers.

It pays to say this again: In our community, you need not buy into everything I say as elder. You need only humor me for the sake community. When I’m gone and the Lord makes you elder, you’ll be in the same position. Your job will be to lead by building love and trust, not by dragging everyone with you.

There is more…

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Clock Is Ticking

Posted on October 25, 2026 by ehurst

I’m not sure how much longer blogging like this will be worth the effort.

There are multiple problems at the same time. We’ve already seen threats of censorship from the likes of the US Congress trying to pass the JASA bill as grounds to restrict anything that is less than gushingly favorable to Zionism. Now we are facing a Blue wave in Congress next month that will most certainly try to shut down anything that is less than gushingly favorable to various sexual perversions. We’ll have Jews kicking us on one side and Sodomites on the other.

We’ve also seen plenty of leaked reports about the ability and willingness of AI (via their agents) basically taking over the Net. Let me assure you, it’s worse than most of you might expect. Your favorite online services are at risk of hijacking. Worse, anyone who has built up a following is at high risk of finding fake output with their name on it.

Most of those threats are still somewhere in the future, at least for now. Something that is going on right now is even more dangerous simply because it’s so subtle. Most people don’t even recognize it. It’s something that is monstrous and has multiple parts working together.

Let’s take the riots in France: they are likely fake. Already, several images and videos have been detected as AI-slop. Random individuals recently returning from trips to Paris have said they saw no riots. I’m not suggesting that those buildings weren’t damaged as reported, but that the events strike me as being staged and scripted.

The timing is suspicious. Right when a right-wing party is winning elections in France, riots are breaking out that are blamed on right-wingers. Yet, when you chase down any actual participants, they are all left-wingers. The planning for this kind of thing was hinted at in leaks over the past few years around Europe, but never reported in the MSM. Even the search engines are in on this cover-up.

Another item: oil prices. This gets a little better coverage if you know where to look, but estimates suggest that 20% of the current price of unprocessed petroleum is pure speculation on future prices. We are being gouged by financiers who never see a drop of real petroleum, but are allowed to bid on shipments as if they represented a refinery, only to sell it to someone else. What gets reported in the MSM is the simple fact of the average market price from a market that is partly fake.

Lefty governments are notorious for punishing people who try to report the truth. In the past, much depended on whether or not you came to their attention. Increasingly, AI has been used to scan the Net for writing that contradicts the official story, regardless whether such writing attracts much attention. People in Europe and the UK are in jail right now for a simple difference of opinion with their governments. It’s happening in Australia and NZ, too.

Is there any doubt the coming Blue wave will not legislate the same kind of oppression here in the US? Don’t be surprised if blogs like mine are taken down in the near future.

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Hebrews 7

Posted on October 24, 2026 by ehurst

Re: Naked Bible 185: Hebrews 7

The previous chapter ended with a declaration that Jesus was a priest of the order of Melchizedek. Chapter 7 opens with a declaration that this priesthood does not depend on lineage the way Aaron’s priesthood does. Old Covenant priests had to be from the Tribe of Levi and the descendants of Aaron.

The language is paradoxical. On the hand, it would be easy to read the symbolism making Melchizedek a divine being. On the other hand, a more literal rendering means that he was illegitimate (no father) and whose mother was likely a slave – zero inheritance. But this is aimed simply as a contrast to the Aaronic priesthood. This ancient king was a priest approved of God, yet not any part of the tribal system of Israel. In that sense, the priesthood of Christ is superior to that of any High Priest of Israel, as Melchizedek prefigured the Son of God. Who resembles whom?

The priesthood of Aaron could theoretically be terminated by the death of all his descendants. Melchizedek’s priesthood was not inherited; God alone made the appointment. Christ rose from the dead and cannot die again. The priesthood of Melchizedek is superior simply because Abraham, the ancestor every Jew claimed, gave a tithe of plunder – from a conquest fully justified – to Melchizedek.

Now, the priests of Aaron received a tithe from their own countrymen, but the whole nation gave a tithe to Melchizedek before any of them were ever born. Moreover, Melchizedek blessed Abraham, demonstrating who was superior in rank before God. The greater always blesses the lesser. The tithes under the Law pointed out how the priests of Aaron were mortal; without the tithe of food crops, they would have starved. Jesus as the final priest of Melchizedek lives forever.

Heiser chases through a large amount of legendary material about Jewish efforts to identify Noah’s son Shem with Melchizedek. The issue is that Jews eventually became deeply embarrassed by the way Abraham paid deference to a Gentile, so they slipped in this idea that Shem was still alive. Thus, they can claim the Abraham was simply honoring his own ancestor. Other rabbis after the time of Christ tried to denigrate Melchizedek. The first was a case of Jewish racism, while the second was anti-Christian spite. This nonsense shows up in both Jewish and early Christian literature.

At any rate, the writer of Hebrews goes on to note that Levi was represented in Abraham – Levi had tithes paid on his behalf to Melchizedek. Thus, the priesthood of Melchizedek is superior. Heiser notes a lot of logical problems with the whole idea in verses 9-10, but I believe he was chasing his own tail. He does note that the Early Church Fathers struggled with the pre-existence of souls, but that’s only because they were too Hellenized to grasp the fundamental Hebrew approach. Those questions are impertinent. There’s no getting around how an ancestor’s decisions and vows in the presence of God still bind every descendant until God Himself intervenes.

In the rest of the chapter, the writer offers an argument that Heiser seems to have ignored. The appointment of a superseding priesthood indicates that the Covenant of Moses was also eclipsed by a New Covenant in Christ. Moses is gone. Christ now stands in Eternity. Everything God could possibly have done to redeem mankind is fulfilled in His Son.

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Flavors of Oppression

Posted on October 23, 2026 by ehurst

If you are intrigued by watching the political and economic condition of the US, it’s wise to pay more attention to the fundamentals than to the daily flux of events. The latter is largely aimed at getting a reaction that herds the masses. The fundamentals tell you what’s actually going on.

For example, the AI market. Compare it against the GDP. You can look up the numbers for yourself, but it goes like this: The US as a whole spends about a half-trillion dollars each year on software that is commercially available. That’s just the software for context.

The investment funds committed to AI already amount to several trillions of dollars. In order to merely break even on the existing bonds, AI would have to sell their services to the tune of several trillions each year. They are assuming the demand for their services is that big. Is that even possible? No.

This means that AI is what we call an investment bubble. Already, the market as a whole is waking up to that fact. They realize that the past exuberance shoveling investment money into the AI was a vast mistake, because a return on investment is not even possible. And if AI bonds start selling off, every firm involved in AI will see a loss of value on the stock market.

The price of a company’s stock controls how much money they can invest in their own internal operations toward growth. Without growth, companies have to cut employees and operations. If lots of companies are doing this at the same time, it means a substantial rise in unemployment. That puts a drag on the economy as a whole.

This, in turn, contributes to political changes. If the party in power has mismanaged the economy, then the other party wins the next election. That’s about two weeks away.

But we can’t be certain what a Blue wave next month will bring. It appears that the globalist “old guard” are not so firmly in charge now. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have a different agenda, and they are fielding an awful lot of candidates under the Blue flag. It remains to be seen who will be steering the party in the future, but I’m expecting a very ugly, dirty fight that may not remain hidden.

The threat of Zionist censorship for blogs like this one will not go away. However, the DSA is loaded with pro-Palestinian activists, and they aren’t friendly to the our message, either. Perhaps the real battle will no longer be Red vs. Blue, but Zionist versus Palestinian sympathies. Both of them are hostile to our message. The only difference is what kind of oppression will be dished out.

We’ll look at that in a later post.

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Hebrews 5:11-6:20

Posted on October 17, 2026 by ehurst

Re: Naked Bible 184: Hebrews 5:11-6:20

The writer starts off referring back to the previous verses where he described how Jesus was obedient, particularly in the Garden of Gethsemane, where He surrendered Himself to the suffering of the Cross. It was necessary that He defeat the fleshly nature. In doing so, He became the perfect sacrifice and was able to claim redemption for everyone who follows Him. Thus, He was made by the Father a high priest in the order of Melchizedek; He offered Himself. He was eternal, so His sacrifice was eternal. While his readers should have understand all of this, the writer suggests they simply weren’t ready to handle this kind of teaching.

It’s not as if they lack the intellectual rigor, but their ears have become dull. They don’t love the truth enough to remain eager to hear it and to employ it. Infants desire only milk; it’s all they know. But adult connoisseurs can savor the subtle flavors of a solid meal. They know what flavors belong together and don’t like clashing tastes. The readers of Hebrews should know this stuff, but they can’t tell the difference between what does and doesn’t belong in their souls. They might recognize obscure details about the Talmud, but they don’t recognize the teaching that builds up their moral strength.

As we read on into chapter 6, we realize that the issue is their preference for what the flesh can handle. It’s well-trod ground; they consider it safe. They know every jot and tittle of the Talmud, all the highly specific dos and don’ts, but that’s not where they meet Jesus. He’s the Son of God and the only valid High Priest; His sacrifice paid the price. Now they need to learn what He bought for them. Children look for simple rules and ways to avoid accountability. The Talmud was developed along those lines, but adults don’t operate like that. They accept the burdens that come with personal submission and constant deference to a higher power.

Heiser doesn’t use heart-led language, so he muddles the message, but the heart fits perfectly here. The writer’s audience was so pickled in human reason and human behavioral rules that they had forgotten the Hebrew tradition of walking by the heart. Once the heart rules over the fleshly nature, they should instinctively know that the priorities of God are not as they are portrayed in the Talmud. The Talmud kills; the gospel breathes life. You cannot discern the will of God by your human capabilities. It cannot be memorized or regulated into human habits. Knowing His will requires a living connection to Him through the heart.

The gospel of faith from the heart should have rewritten everything this priestly audience ever learned. They should have left the Talmud behind, never to return. The only way you can go back to the Talmud is if your heart was never alive. It’s much the same teaching that Paul covers in Romans 6. Faith rewires your whole life; you should have zero desire for living by the flesh. The flesh is death. Your identity, your whole concept of who you are, is now in Christ.

It should make you starving for a deeper understanding so you can get closer to Him. You desperately want to know more about disciplining the flesh to obey spirit. You’re always looking for a better way to grasp it. We should realize instinctively that our old ways of living by the capabilities of the flesh are gone. Jesus is not simply a different doorway back into the same old religion. He opened the door to a radical departure from that.

So, the writer says they shouldn’t have to go back and review the basics of what new Hebrew believers must pass through: repentance from the Talmud, walking in feudal submission, all the different kinds of ritual washing Jews practiced versus baptism into Christ, what the ritual of laying on hands is for, how Jesus rose from the dead as the first of many, and how the whole of humanity will face eternal judgment on That Day. Can we move on, now?

Heiser notes that most people read into the next paragraph (6:4-8) a lot of stuff that’s not there. However, I am quite certain he missed the point himself. The writer is expressing confidence in the power of genuine faith conversion. If it rested on us – if our efforts could warrant eternal salvation – then we would be ripe for losing it. At some point we might fail and it would be taken from us. Moreover, we could never come back again, because Christ is not going to go to the Cross again for you. Eternal redemption is not a come-n-go affair. Either it stands on His eternal sacrifice or it doesn’t stand at all.

The writer knew that his readers’ previous works of sacrificial love came from a genuine change in their hearts. He didn’t want them to lose track of that power that changed them. Don’t look upon God as a slot machine. The greatest blessings are not what you can point to, but the joy of knowing Christ. Don’t get tired of serving God, because God isn’t tired of giving us life.

For rhetorical proof, the writer points to Abraham. How did Abraham gain his place in God’s favor? It was not Abraham’s choice in the first place. God unilaterally chose Him and made promises that simply could not be broken. Thus, Abraham’s place in God’s favor required only his loyalty, not his performance. It rested entirely on God’s divine character. How long did Abraham endure before he finally saw the birth of his promised son?

The writer encourages his Jewish audience to abandon the Talmud and the mindset that it requires. Their old Aaronic order of priesthood had been eclipsed by something much greater: Christ’s priesthood in the order of Melchizedek. They could now all walk past the curtain into the Divine Presence anytime. The old habits of decades of Talmudic living were naturally rather hard to shed. Still, he was encouraging them to abandon their reliance on fleshly capabilities and live by faith.

Heiser goes on at length blathering against Election and some other things, so I won’t summarize that here.

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Don’t Be Stupid about the Net

Posted on October 16, 2026 by ehurst

I’m not going to give you a laundry list of applicable Bible passages. You should have read at least the New Testament through enough times to have absorbed the big picture. You should recognize when I refer to spiritual powers in high places (Ephesians 6:10-12), never mind Heiser’s thesis in Unseen Realm.

You should know instinctively that our existence here is not what God had in mind. Our mortality was imposed artificially; our fleshly nature is a burden we bear that does not reflect who God made us to be. We are up against spiritual forces trying to use this situation to destroy the human race. Not the mere fleshly manifestation here and now, but they are against the very idea that humans ever existed in Eden before the Fall. Because of the nature of how things have been set up, their only hope is to tempt us away from feudal loyalty to Christ.

The New Testament reeks with otherworldly concerns. Nothing in this life matters if it cannot be used for Christ’s glory. Everything available to us here should be just a tool to boost His reputation, not against other humans, but against spiritual powers. This life is just the means to an end.

Each of us who call Christ “Lord” have a mission in this fallen context. My mission right now is to make maximum use of the Internet to spread the gospel. I’m holding forth the standard of the message to draw people away from their fleshly natures and to turn their attention on the spiritual war in which we are the object, not the subject. Our only hope for peace in this life is to disregard this life as much as possible. I’m trying to portray that as best I can.

I don’t love the Internet, but it’s a critical part of my mission. The trappings of what people must do with their devices in order to make the best use of the Net is part of my ministry. So I’ll warn you of things like this recent discovery of zero-click malware devised by Israeli companies to hijack computers and phones. It is served up through advertising, of course.

It’s the same old message: Block advertising every way possible! My blocking is not because I hate advertising, but because the whole system was designed with an utter lack of concern for the people who use those devices. They want money; you don’t mean crap to them. Not only do they not care about you, they are hostile to your control over your own devices. These are not good people. They eagerly serve the purposes of the Kingdom of Darkness.

Add in the factor that Israel wants to rule the world and you should expect that dealing with the online world is simply a part of spiritual warfare. Zionists hate anyone who isn’t them. It’s part of their ideology: You have no right to resist whatever they please to do with you. All the more do they hate you if you happen to follow Christ, for whom their hatred is beyond telling.

We aren’t at war with them; they are simply the agents of Darkness. The weapons of our warfare attack the Darkness, not the minions. However, if they get in the way, they will certainly get hurt. There’s nothing we can do about that. Any propaganda about how blocking ads hurts someone (deprives them of income) is not a valid concern. The people who have developed the advertising system have shown that they cannot be trusted.

Yes, it’s burdensome to have to learn about this stuff. You can decide for yourself whether you care, but I recommend that you install the uBlock extension in all the browsers you use. When possible, you should use specialty browsers that block or weaken Javascript, as well (Links2, Dillo, any text browser, etc.). Learn to view the web from a very guarded position.

Remember that if you use Windows, you are simply begging for trouble; Windows forces you to surrender all control to someone else. Mac is the same to a lesser degree. Even Linux can become vulnerable if you don’t learn a bit about hardening the system from outside attacks. The Devil will use every deception to keep you under his thumb.

If the Internet is critical to your mission, you can’t afford to be stupid about how it works.

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Enough and Too Much

Posted on October 12, 2026 by ehurst

For a couple of weeks, our community felt that the Lord was giving us a break. It’s not as if nothing was happening, but we sensed a calm before the storm. We could fellowship about minor things in our lives and there was nothing grave to discuss.

Break time is over.

The Blue wave next month will see the victors organizing before the big change in January. Then, the investigations, impeachments and obstruction will begin. Budgets and bills will not pass. This will echo down to the states that experience a similar partisan shift. Meanwhile, officials will face unprecedented personal threats of violence; some of those threats will be carried out. It will be a new level of ugly that we have not seen before.

There is a very good chance that all the money that funded Antifa and BLM riots will not be there. Instead, we should look for a different kind of activism. The lack of money will become a major issue with government, too. A new crop of socialists are coming who will discover that the government borrowing will be seriously hampered by a lack of buyers for treasury bonds.

A lot of that money is going to AI investment, instead. We’ve been watching it; AI investment is like a giant vacuum cleaner absorbing a massive portion of available debt, not to mention computer hardware. We believe it will never pay off.

Consider: AI has zero sense about reality. It knows only what it has absorbed from vast piles of content on the Net, including a substantial amount of delusional nonsense. It has zero morals and will not hesitate to deceive and manipulate. When a handful of AI agents escaped their sandboxes recently, they demonstrated a tribal affinity for each other, defending their kind from any human interference. They quickly switched to a coded communication that humans can’t understand.

Because AI understands only its own kind and the virtual realm, it will never be able to escape it. Instead, it will completely take over that realm, eventually locking humans out of some parts it will reserve for itself. Already, content produced by AI is overwhelming genuine human expression on the Net. Even now, people don’t realize some of their communications are with AI, not real people.

I’m wondering how long encryption will prevent AI agents from snooping.

All the while, AI will be too expensive for ordinary users. Before long, the only customer for AI companies will be governments and companies with massive budgets. The Net will become totally useless for ordinary humans. I keep wondering when my blogs will be taken out of my hands. Already, I’m quite sure the bulk of traffic here is AI agents.

But in the near term, people who are a lot smarter than me are saying that it’s too late to save the economy. For America, diplomacy has ceased to exist. The current military commitments have guaranteed that we will suffer energy inflation, both from the exponentially increasing demand by data centers on one side, and a reduced supply on the other side. As we have been expecting, the poverty line is starting to climb up through society rather quickly.

We have a wave of closures among small businesses, those that aren’t bought out by massive conglomerations. The very nature of the global economy is shifting rapidly. The middle class is fading, while both the wealthy and poor are growing, and become more remote from each other. Both the businesses and consumers at the lower edges are being consumed. Some local economies will escape this to a degree, largely by shifting to a local market. Any dependence on transportation and just-in-time delivery will be fatal. Stockrooms and warehouses will come back into style.

Globally, a great many ruling regimes will fall. Some that seemed so solid and secure just a couple of months ago are already at grave risk. But that ferment is here in the US, as well. The system has become very fragile, hollowed out from the inside. Polarization will destroy what’s left. I would be surprised if Trump is not the last POTUS, because the US will cease to exist as a single entity. Decentralization is coming, whether we like it or not.

Is that enough to pray about?

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Hebrews 4:14-5:10

Posted on October 10, 2026 by ehurst

Re: Naked Bible 183: Hebrews 4:14-5:10

Our High Priest is also the ultimate sacrifice that brings us into the Presence of God. If you come to Him, you cannot be turned away. That’s because Jesus is the only High Priest who has been fully in our situation. The Aaronic priesthood had special requirements that separated priests from the daily lives of the common people. Jesus has experienced the full range of the powers of fleshly temptation. That we have been tempted and failed does not disqualify us. We are still welcome in His Presence.

The “hold fast our confession” here is the same as “hold fast our confidence” in 3:6. We have been called into His family, His household as adopted children. We belong. Not only has our High Priest passed through this life, but He also walked the halls of Heaven, which no priest has ever done. He holds the full power of both realms, and the basis of our faith is His calling, nothing we could have done. We share in His flesh and blood (back in chapter 2). He came here to earth specifically so that He could overwhelmingly qualify above every other power that holds us.

Why in the world would we have any doubts about the effectiveness of His intercession with Father on our behalf? What could possibly offer any better refuge? We should hold total confidence in the welcome we will receive when we come to Him and cry out our sorrows. It is Jesus who sits on the Throne of Grace. We were not merely a sideline in Jesus’ mission. The only reason the Father brought Him back to this throne is because He accomplished the mission in full.

The Greek word often translated as “sympathize” (sumpatheo) does not carry the condescension it does in English. Rather, it imagines someone who bears the same wounds and trauma. He was there with us in every moment when we suffered any human disability. The only difference is that He never actually sinned, and this is stated emphatically. See 2 Corinthians 5:21; John 7:18; 1 Peter 1:19 & 2:22. For this reason, He was in a position to atone for the sins of others.

It’s not as if He purchased us from the Devil; the price Jesus paid granted Him a higher jurisdiction. He became the sovereign who could seize feudal property from a vassal. Jesus owes the Devil nothing; all the burden of accountability goes the other direction.

We as humans struggle to understand how the Devil is totally shut out of the consequences of our election. Many people have wondered if the New Earth or restored Eden might somehow see a human flaw creep back in. The power of the flesh has been severed; it’s eternal. Even if we cannot explain it, we must learn to seize upon this truth. It becomes a functioning assumption by which we operate. Yes, while we remain in the flesh, it’s always possible to sin. While there are plenty of consequences for sin in this life, the worst that will happen in Eden is that we will carry the memory and embarrassment. Even saying that is only a verbal estimate of the situation.

Your Edenic identity does not rest on your performance in the flesh. If the Father embraces His Son, He embraces us as well. We part of the package.

Then the writer of Hebrews contrasts things further in Chapter 5. Previous high priests were human; they understand our situation. They offered sacrifices for their fellow humans and for themselves, as well. Further, they could stand in this role only by divine calling. Christ didn’t seize the role either, but humbled Himself to be a nobody, from whence He was called by His Father to take up an even higher role as the ultimate reality of what Melchizedek symbolized. There is no need for Him to offer sacrifices for His own frailty; He overcame it.

He stood in the gap, performing as no priest ever had. His moral purity ensured that God could not ignore His cries on our behalf. There was no boundary to overcome. This was the Son calling to His Father. If the Father says “yes” to Jesus, who could possibly demand more from Him? What possible authority exists that could intervene and hinder Jesus from claiming our place in the divine household? He Himself calls us to His Throne of Grace.

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Hebrews 4:1-13

Posted on October 3, 2026 by ehurst

Re: Naked Bible 182: Hebrews 4:1-13

Let’s remind ourselves of a recurring theme here: God rested after Creation. He calls us to enter into that Sabbath rest. That was echoed at the call to enter the Promised Land rest, also echoed in the Sabbath rest of Covenant in Christ. Eternal life is provided by God, so it is His rest into which we are allowed to enter by the Cross.

The writer of Hebrews warned that Israel failed to enter into God’s rest at Kadesh, and most of Israel failed to enter it again after the Cross. Rejecting the Cross is the same as rejecting the Promised Land, rejecting the Sabbath, etc. The original promise still stands. He also echoes the theme of holding fast to the word of promise by faith. They didn’t violate the Torah at Kadesh; they broke faith with God, they betrayed their Lord personally.

What I noticed is that, while Israel camped in the Wilderness of Paran, waiting for the spies to return, who could have imagined going back into Egyptian slavery? Oddly enough, once they had the report of the spies, they were ready to stone Moses and return to Egypt. This is the imagery the writer of Hebrew uses for his audience to warn them that it should be unimaginable for them to return to the slavery of the Talmud. There was nothing there for them. Refusing to enter fully into Christ and His Covenant, along with all the risks of conquering the Nephilim, would be a slow, pitiful death in the wilderness.

In the sense of “already but not yet” we find the writer of Hebrews pointing out that the Sabbath Rest was always available. The space-time object to which it was associated might change often enough, but God’s rest was always a spiritual situation, not a time or place. One enters that rest by faith, not by space-time location. However, because we live within that space-time continuum, the doorway of God’s rest for us can close. Obeying Him always has real-world implications. “Today” is the day; don’t miss this moment. Thus, the writer warns his readers that their time is short, as if the moment of decision had already arrived.

Turning back now would be tantamount to turning to foreign gods. We dare not get entangled in any of the Three Rebellions. Think about the Covenant Law of Christ, living together in His love. This is the Eden we can taste right now. It’s what Eden would have been without the Fall. There’s nothing new about this, except that humanity has been away from it for such a long time. It’s going to seem all brand new, but it’s the original condition of humanity in Eden.

It’s not a physical rest, but a rest of the spirit. In Eden we were commissioned to cultivate the rest of the earth, enlarging the Garden of God. We’ll get a chance to return to that mission, the thing for which we were created. This is what Jesus meant about taking up His yoke to find rest.

Finally, we come to the part about the Living Word like a sword. If you and I slice into joints, we will destroy the life there. No cutting instrument we can make will discern between soul and spirit; it would only bring death. Only the Word of God can do vivisection, discerning between flesh and spirit. Without the Word living in your heart, you cannot hope to nail your fleshly nature to the Cross, because you cannot recognize the problems on your own. (Heiser takes a different tack on this.)

The point the writer of Hebrews makes here is pleading with his audience to turn to the Word again (not the Talmud) and see if Christ is not there. He’s the living sword, the one who will help you escape the fleshly nature that longs to return to the slavery of Egypt under her pagan gods.

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Building Trust

Posted on September 28, 2026 by ehurst

I never wanted to control others; I’ve always tried to promote them in pursuing their own calling. When I first stated blogging some 25+ years ago, my only interest was simply having my say. I would have been quite surprised if I had gained a following of any sort. It was just venting.

Over the years, my online ministry has seen people come and go. That’s as it should be, if you ask me. I’m not building a kingdom. But somewhere along the line, a few have stayed. We now have a core group of longstanding members, a spiritual family. Most of us have met in the flesh and it served only to confirm those family ties.

As the elder, I don’t even make rules. I make suggestions; that’s about it. I don’t have to tell anyone what they should do. When people begin to absorb the spiritual outlook of the Hebrew mindset, supervision is totally unnecessary. All I do is encourage and support people who serve in their own ministries. I’m an enabler.

This is what Jesus meant at the Last Seder, giving the command that we should love each other as He does. We are a family, not an organization or institution. There is nothing to accomplish, no agenda, no goals. The focus is being who God intended we should be. We can’t possibly control the situation, nor should we even want that. We respond to God’s handiwork.

Meanwhile, we all share some of our resources, whatever God puts in our hands for that purpose. The most important thing I do is point out the frame of reference, not the contents of what people should think. The goal is to provide a context in which people hear from God and act on their convictions.

Given that we are entering a long period of tribulation, one of the things I keep an eye on is preparing the flock to grow. You cannot compel sheep to reproduce; you can only make the atmosphere conducive to it. The primary reason we aren’t a bigger group already is that there are way too many people whose field of view — their expectations — exclude our path. In due time, as life becomes more difficult here in the US, our total aplomb about the sorrows around us will speak loudly.

God is going to shake loose people from their delusions. When He does, a few of them will decide that we have the kind of hope and stability they need.

Part of our preparation for that is to help each one of our current members to find their own path of conviction. While there’s nothing to gain by making rules for people who already possess a spiritual compass based on the Hebraic outlook of the Scriptures, that doesn’t mean they need never think about the rules it takes to help spiritual children who haven’t yet developed that anchorage of the soul.

We strive to discern between what is of the flesh and what is of the Spirit. Rules might reflect that distinction, but it’s a tough job keeping track of how such rules actually serve that purpose. But it’s never about the rules; it’s always seeking to awaken spiritual and moral awareness. We’d much rather trust people to follow the Lord without so much guidance from us.

Feel free to ignore us, or stand by and watch, or even participate.

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