Leaving the Herd 01

Conversations and online reading convince me that, even among those who should know better, an awful lot of people still believe that some kind of bailout is possible. They talk and write as if they expect the Lord to provide a large scale solution to the ills of this world.

One of the biggest flaws is the fundamental assumption that God sponsors human rights and equality. Those values are flatly contrary to what the Bible says. This in turn rests on the blatantly false notion that humans aren’t actually fallen and, by default, doomed to Hell. Most people operate on the assumption that they are in a neutral condition, and have a choice.

By default, every human born is going to Hell. The only escape is by God’s choice. The Bible uses the language of “election” — God alone elects. You cannot choose Him until He first chooses you, and that choice is not automatic for every human born. Paul wrote at length about this in Romans 8 & 9, and people still flatly reject it, looking for any excuse possible to insist that the leverage rests in human hands. That false doctrine is part of our fallen nature.

Do you understand that God expects you to read between the lines of Scripture? It’s not just the words, but the broad image of what is portrayed by the words. That’s what Paul meant when he told Timothy to “rightly divide the Word”. Some truths are not openly stated because human language cannot carry the load. Only the heart can process moral truth; the brain is not up to the task. So, the only way you can figure it out is to have your heart receive it and tell your brain what to do about it.

Your heart is part of your eternal nature; your brain belongs to your mortal flesh. The intellect is part of your fallen nature, along with your five senses. None of that will enter into Eternity with your soul. And your conscious awareness is just a manifestation of the two interacting. Your conscious awareness works far better if it is rooted in your heart, not your intellect — thus, the term “heart-led”. If you are going to understand the metaphorical (symbolic or parabolic) language of the Bible, it must be processed in the heart, not the head.

Jesus always taught in parables. The ultimate truth of things cannot be expressed in words. Parables can be used to trigger perception in the conscious awareness of things the heart already knows, but the mind has refused to hear for whatever reason. If your conscious awareness has been awakened to the moral realm of the heart, then it will make sense of parables. As long as your awareness resides in your head, the whole thing is opaque.

Your mortal fleshly existence has only one valid purpose: It’s a tool for moving closer to the glory of God. In the process, you must learn to deny the fleshly nature whatever it desires. You must nail it to the Cross (Galatians 2:20). It’s a constant process that does not end until your mortal being dies. Your conscious awareness should be consumed with a desire to leave the flesh behind and enter the Eternal realm. Crossing that boundary is a reward; the duty of your life in this world is to push farther and farther away from the fleshly nature.

That includes walking away from the mass of humanity who have no eternal awakening in their souls. There is nothing good in humanity. It’s not a question of what they actually possess internally; they are doomed to Hell by birthright. There’s nothing you can do about that, nor can you even perceive their eternal state. Rather, it’s a matter of their orientation. All you have is the manifestations. The mass of humanity is on the highway to Hell. You must reject their orientation and all the trappings of it.

Well, a primary element in their damnation orientation is something equivalent to herd instinct. You are permitted, even encouraged, to embrace a shallow differentiation that doesn’t actually challenge the herd identity. But all the minor variations don’t mean anything; the fall within a very narrow range that is safe and doesn’t threaten the reliance on fleshly perceptions. Once you start listening to the eternal heart, you realize all of them are dead.

The only thing that distinguishes us is the grace of God. He will grant to you spiritual birth; the grounds and process of this are totally opaque to us. All we can possibly understand is that something changes internally and we are awakened by the Presence of the Holy Spirit. But that by itself does not change your life. It is the essential necessary equipping for the real work of redemption in how you think and act. It empowers you; it does not initiate the process of killing the fleshly nature for you.

Rather, the Presence grants you the choice. People without the Holy Spirit cannot choose righteousness. Any incidental elements of truth and righteousness that enters their lives is random, and it does them no good at all. They don’t recognize it for what it is, because they are wholly unable to process on that level. Some precious few might have a link between head and heart, but their spirits remain dead. Being heart-led alone is not enough. But being heart-led is absolutely necessary for those who are spiritually alive.

The only use you have for anything in this life is merely as a means to some transcendent end. Yes, tools are valuable, but only as tools. They are expendable. The farther you press into an eternal orientation, the less you care about this life and what belongs to it. You have an inner voice telling you that your time is short, and the only thing you can actually claim is the glory you have given to the Creator while you were here. Nothing else comes with you into Eternity.

Yes, the world around us going to Hell, and in every way. The social and political situation is degrading rapidly. No human, nor all humans together, than halt or even slow the process. God’s wrath is rising by the day, flooding every corner of human existence. Humanity is destroying itself. Worse, any day now the sun is going to puke on us. First is any number of small incidents that will eventually kill off our modern energy system. The electrical grid will be fried. Later down the road — about 20 years or so — the sun will experience a micro-nova that will rain down destruction on the earth.

I don’t believe this is the End. Rather, it will be a major reset rather like it was with Noah. Most of the human race will be wiped out. God will spare some small portion of the human race to start again. We don’t see the prophesied earmarks of the Final End.

Recognizing all of this, a proper spiritual orientation would be to prepare ways we can help the survivors live more like God intended. We must build a proper orientation on how to leave this world as a victor, not a fool locked into fleshly lusts. Whether or not you seek to survive the next 20 years of tribulation should be a matter of hearing from your heart, not your human calculus of survival. More than that, the means and methods of your preparation must flow from your spiritual awareness.

Because the only thing that really matters is not surviving itself. Rather, what matters is your testimony of faith in the God who created all these things and set up the cycles of destruction that serve only to demonstrate that His divine revelation is the ultimate truth. You can do things His way, or you can fail miserably and never understand anything that matters.

Stop following the herd into Hell.