A Piece of Jeremiah

I’m not in the least trying to be elitist, but precious few are the folks who catch on to what I’m doing on this blog.

Jeremiah wrote in his prophecies how few were his friends at the end of the Judean monarchy and through the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem. Because he wrote in dramatic Hebrew parabolic language, it’s hard to gauge facts, but we can certainly catch how he and God felt about it. As always, I deny having any of his stature, just some of his calling and some of his experience of isolation here at the end of the American Empire. Nobody has to lay siege to this country; we are destroying ourselves.

I’ve been working my way back through my notes on Isaiah in preparation for the next book. There is no driving sense I need to hurry. I do at least a chapter most days, and often three or four. Sometimes what I wrote really hits me hard these four years later. That’s a good thing, but it requires time to consider what it demands of me personally. I can’t preach what hasn’t ripped me to shreds first.

So yesterday I noticed I had never pasted my notes into the file for Isaiah 37. Going back through all my archives, I can’t find any copy of the original. On the one hand, I can’t recreate the frame of mind I had then. On the other hand, I simply accepted what is and went back through my sources and wrote a fresh review. Maybe it’s better; God alone knows. But for the past four years, it seems no one noticed, because no one complained that the file was empty.

In the past few years, only two people mentioned any interest in joining our home worship services. Neither of them ever showed up. A couple of people have sent emails about the static site where I (used to) keep all this stuff, and one person actually found my cellphone number there and called to thank me. A few folks on Facebook catch the links posted from here and one or two discuss it with me. From time to time, people will make comments here about the spiritual angle, and every week another one or two will subscribe. I don’t have time to reciprocate, and I really have no idea who is reading this stuff. Weekdays this blog averages around 150 hits daily; weekends a good bit less. My books are still being downloaded a few each week from Smashwords.

I’m not complaining. I went into this knowing it was quite alien to most people. It was hard enough for me to shift incrementally over the years from a purely Western Post-Enlightenment approach to the Ancient Hebrew. I had lots of help from really great teachers along the way as I intentionally kept myself exposed to the academic theology and philosophy scene. How hard must it be for others? There may come a day when the number of people paying any attention to this message will grow. All the more so if other people take up the burden, but I’m honestly not that interested in attention, only opportunity. The heart and soul of what I do is getting people to follow their own calling, not swallow my expression of truth.

Folks, the most important thing you can do is: (1) recognize the Western intellectual roots are morally bankrupt and cannot allow you to get as close to God as He wants. Then (2) learn to build your approach to reality on the one God revealed in His Word, the Hebrew epistemology in which God speaks. We have a rich opportunity because the future civilization replacing the West is wide open to such choices. No longer will you be summarily excluded as I have been in the past.

I’m not saying all the churches and religious institutions are evil. Some are, but even those aren’t wholly evil. Rather, they have built on the sand of Western intellectual assumptions and God is about to wash that all away. Sure, some vestige of those institutions will be around for the future, but they’ll be essentially dead. Don’t be a slave to the dead past. Christ leads us forward, bringing us closer to That Final Day, but we need to do our homework. He won’t come for a Bride not ready.