How Covenants Work: Background

Posted on December 1, 2020 by ehurst

There is a Spirit Realm and there is our Fallen Realm — two entirely different entities. Humans can not possibly comprehend the former, and can’t escape the latter. Indeed, the reason we cannot comprehend Eternity is because we are fallen. However, there is a divine revelation, a moral sphere that doesn’t warrant capitalization because it’s not really a domain unto itself. Rather, it is the invasive extension of God’s hand into this world. It’s the space where the Spirit Realm overlaps the Fallen Realm.

We can talk about the Fallen Realm of existence factually. We can describe it. We can’t even understand, much less talk about the Spirit Realm. We can discuss the moral realm only by parables. We can indicate features of the moral realm, but we can’t describe it factually. The human soul is capable of sensing divine truth within this realm of existence through the heart.

We are wired by God to sense His revelation in the heart-mind, as it were, even without spiritual rebirth. Granted, that’s very difficult, but it is part of our design. The idea was that we should pursue divine truth in our hearts until we gain recognition of our spiritual nature. It was a demanding process, and was a critical element in what the Covenant of Moses was supposed to provide. And while it was possible with the Covenant of Noah, it was much more challenging because it lacked the specifics and the concrete approach offered in Moses.

This is part of what Jesus did coming into our realm of existence. By His death and resurrection, we were granted the opportunity to discover spiritual birth before digging into the Law Covenants. But the whole point is that, once spiritually alive, we are supposed to now bring that anointing back to the Law Covenants so we can understand them better, and engage in the blessings of shalom. Every moment of human life in shalom increases God’s reputation; it calls attention to Him and His revelation. He has skin in the game; He benefits from our living by His revelation.

Still, Moses was tightly bounded: that people, that time, that place. It was never designed to fit any other context. It was a very clear statement of what Noah had implied all along, but giving it such clarity meant it could only be one precise example of all the very many different things Noah could be. Noah is the generic version; it’s still binding. We see the image of God still displaying the rainbow over His throne to emphasize that (Revelation 4:3).

The final clarity of God’s revelation was the Person of Jesus Christ. He came to fulfill Moses in the sense of bringing to life what Moses was supposed to accomplish. Instead of a narrow contextual statement in factual terms, He presented the full meaning of Moses and Noah together in moral terms. We refer back to Moses so that we can understand how it promised the Messiah, and what He would be and do for us. Nobody lives by Moses today; that covenant was closed at the Cross. It had a distinct shelf life.

Noah is not closed. It lasts as long as rainbows in the sky are possible. Noah is Christ in the form of law. To have Christ in your heart means you have Noah in your hands. Noah, as exemplified in Moses, is what being a Christian looks like. Humans can’t see Christ in the flesh any more, unless they see Him in His followers. And His followers use Noah/Moses as the reference points for what Christ looks like.

When you commit to following Christ as your feudal Lord, you commit to manifesting Noah. We can talk about the Covenant of Christ, but that moral covenant pointing to a spiritual reality has a law component that applies to the facts of his world. You have brothers and sisters in Christ who should respect all of that. You deal with them via moral truth, the parable expression of Eternity.

You have a domain He gave you, and you use it for His glory. It belongs to Him and you are His steward. In a certain sense, fellow believers entering that domain of your service. In doing so, they submit to your moral authority; otherwise you cannot bless them. It is typically an ephemeral thing, but some people will eventually submit more permanently to the moral authority of some elders and pastors in a covenant community. The sheep of your flock know what to expect because they understand Noah.

When you deal with folks who do not follow Christ — as best you can tell from the witness of the Holy Spirit in your heart — coming into your domain, they don’t have that connection to Eternity. You can’t count on that moral sensitivity. Rather, you are compelled to handle them more specifically by the Law of Noah. Alternatively, a lot of your presumed brothers and sisters are so badly crippled in their moral awareness, they also must be handled mostly by Law. Now, since Noah is rather generic, that means you’ll need to offer some kind of expressed provisions of Noah’s Covenant, written and/or spoken in words. And yes, some fellow believers need reminding, too, but it’s really essential with nonbelievers. They have nothing else to go on.

So we tend to organize our faith communities around a covenant statement of some sort, something that echoes Christ on one level, and Noah on another. Rather like Moses, it’s a contextual expression that points to a mystical connection to the moral realm, which in turn points to the Spirit Realm. It would naturally differ between communities because the context is different.

This is the background for a post on my other blog (it’s gone).

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Don’t Hesitate to Slice

Posted on November 30, 2020 by ehurst

It’s a very old truth, cited in ancient sources: Evil will call your bluff and try to wear down the righteous. Righteous men seek to be merciful, and evil seeks to exploit this.

There is a very real difference between being stupid and being evil. Sooner or later, stupid will surrender. Evil never does. We learned this in our last Bible lesson about Jezebel and Elijah. Jezebel was demonic evil, not just some stupid misguided bitch. Elijah expected her to surrender after God’s victory on Mount Carmel, but God was not surprised when she didn’t. It’s odd how Elijah understood the necessity of bloodshed on the priests of Baal and Asherah, but didn’t understand how the thing that made them worthy of execution was rooted in Jezebel’s lust for power.

So the resolution of Elijah’s retreat to Mount Horeb was God promising to end the terror of Jezebel’s power using other fallen humans as His weapon. He was preparing to raise up a ruler over Damascus who would eventually destroy the Omride Dynasty. He was also preparing a usurper for the throne of Israel. He was also preparing a successor prophet who would be more determined than Elijah, someone ready to take the sword even more than Elijah had been.

Why do you suppose God condemned Israel at Bochim (Judges 2)? It’s one thing when fools rush to shed innocent blood, but it’s another when the righteous hesitate to execute justice on evil. The key is not to get lost in debates about what mercy requires; it was a mercy on the rest of Creation to remove the unspeakable evil of the Canaanites. If you can’t tell the difference between stupid and evil, you deserve the loss of all shalom. And if your convictions don’t give you the power to execute justice, pray that God will raise up someone who can.

The question is not mercy, but discernment. If you do not see how Christ on the Cross represents the same God who called for genocide in Palestine, then you don’t know God at all. If you don’t see how the Cross condemns genuine evil on this earth, you cannot see at all. This was part of the Covenant of Noah, as well: Mankind serving God must be willing to execute divine justice in capital punishment. Stop assuming a genuine follower of Christ cannot bear the sword. Don’t assume the mission of Elisha would disqualify him as a follower of Christ, any more than David’s mission of conquest was somehow un-Christlike.

Jesus used a whip where the Covenant required it. That was what the context demanded for divine justice. The question rests on the context of the covenant and the threat. Neither David nor Elisha nor Joshua were defending mere human comfort. It was a matter of defending shalom. It was keeping peace with God. This is the same God who will destroy the whole world when He sends His Son back.

You cannot make peace with demons. Christ said that the majority of this world belonged to Hell before they even died. God’s wrath fell on Jesus as a proxy for all, but only the penitent can claim that sacrifice on their behalf. We are told to expect that anyone can become penitent, because God refuses to tell us who is or isn’t Elect. But everyone’s life on this earth is forfeit from birth, so this isn’t about saving your human existence. It’s about promoting the glory of the Lord, so during that lag time before the presumed potential of repentance of any random human, the issue is whether their evil crosses that line of no return. Human life is not sacred. God has said the covenant elders must be ready to defend shalom God gave them to the death, and that means sometimes to someone else’s death.

We know that we must turn the Flaming Sword of the Spirit on ourselves before we can use it on the domain He places in our hands. Our lives become forfeit to divine glory, and this is grants us the authority to hold a domain on God’s behalf. When some other person enters that domain, they are subject to that Flaming Sword. You must oppose evil no matter whom Satan has chosen to bear it. We hope it slices the evil out of their lives. If that person is unable to disconnect from that evil, they die with it.

Jesus said that if your hand belongs to evil, cut it off. He said if your eye is wedded to evil, poke it out. That implied that if your life belongs to evil, you deserve to die. How much of you belongs to the Devil?

If the Lord puts a sword in your hand, literal or metaphorical, be not slow to use it. Be quick to use it on your own sins, so that you can justify holding it in the first place. But when you are called to lead, it means you exercise dominion over sin in others who enter that domain. Divine justice cuts off sin, and sadly that means it sometimes cuts off people. Don’t be slow to defend the Lord’s sovereignty in your life.

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Law of Moses — 1 Kings 19

Posted on November 28, 2020 by ehurst

Sometimes we need to remind ourselves to think like an ancient Hebrew in order to get a better picture of what the text of the Bible is telling us. For example, it’s not necessary to envision Moses directly on the one and only Mount Sinai. The Hebrew language was never meant to be that precise, so it could have been any of several high peaks in that area. Nor is it necessary to assume that Horeb and Sinai are the exact same peak, but rather the same general place where several mountains run together.

Somewhere in this general vicinity was the Burning Bush and the stone Moses struck to bring forth water. Today there are shrines all over the area claiming to mark each of these features. Personally, I’m convinced that God avoided that kind of precision because it takes a small mind to be like that, and small minded people would idolize the place instead of the God who made the place. If you went out there today, it’s for sure you could hike up every peak in the area and experience God’s Presence pretty much the same on each one. What’s important is to realize that God called people there to meet with them, and in our lesson this time, it’s Elijah the Prophet who hiked down into the area.

So after Elijah had outrun Ahab to the city gates at Jezreel to testify to the triumph of Jehovah on Mount Sinai, I’m sure he basked in the celebration of those who were yet faithful to the one true God of Israel. Meanwhile, Ahab came home and reported everything to his wife and high priestess. It mattered to her not a whit what God had done. For her, this was a hard-driven commitment to destroy the worship of Jehovah in Israel. So she sent a messenger to Elijah with a very real threat to treat him the way he had treated her acolytes. Nobody, man or deity, would stand in the way of her plan to enslave the Northern Kingdom to the worship of her chosen deities.

Given Jezebel’s known behavior, Elijah decided it was time to get out of her jurisdiction. He fled to Judah. Not just Judah, but he fled to far southern edge of civilization in Judah, to the well and village at Beersheba. He left his attendant there in town and moved a day’s hike off into the wilderness to protect the man from being seen with him by any of Jezebel’s spies searching for the prophet. He camped out under a broom tree, a bush that can grow almost tree sized with a thick foliage to protected from the heat of the day.

Elijah had gone from the heights of exultation to the depths of despair. We can imagine he expected Jezebel to be humbled by his victory on Mount Carmel, but she was not just any woman. She was demon driven, and no evil was beneath her. Truth never was a consideration for her; it was all about the power. Elijah’s expectations were misguided. And to be honest, he should have stayed to face her wrath, for the same God who atomized the offering and altar on Mount Carmel could have protected Elijah. The prophet was about to learn that hard lesson.

So Elijah awoke from his siesta at the touch of an angel. The angel invited him to eat the meal prepared, a big slab of flat bread cooking on a flat stone above a fire. There was a clay jug of water near his head. So Elijah consumed the meal, then feel asleep again. The meal was repeated again, but angel noted the second time that Elijah would need the nourishment for his big journey — a pilgrimage to Mount Horeb where it all began some centuries ago with Moses.

It depends on where you think Mount Horeb is, but the journey was at least 150 miles (240km). Elijah felt no need to eat again, but hiked the whole way and spent a very long time in a cave in that area, perhaps the same one where God kept Moses from being killed as He passed by in all His divine glory. The Lord was about the manifest Himself again.

A Word from the Lord asked Elijah why he was there. His reply was a note of self-pity, but no more hyperbolic than would be typical in the mouth of any other Hebrew. Still, it was not accurate, in that Elijah claimed there was no one else to stand for God in Ahab’s kingdom (Jezebel’s actually). As you can see in later chapters, there are others, and will be many more eager for the training when Elijah starts an academy. But at this point, Elijah comes very close to accusing God of allowing His message to be silenced. Why had God not already taken this evil woman down?

So the Lord called Elijah to come out and stand at the entrance to the cave. Now, what happens next is more a miracle of timing than of the nature of the events. There is a massive string of faultlines running through the Gulf of Aqaba and up the rift valley past the Sea of Galilee. The place was then and still today is notorious for earthquakes. We also know that some earthquakes come right behind a major storm, though we aren’t sure how they relate. And after an earthquake, no one is surprised to see lava being tossed in the air. So all of these events were common enough for Elijah to recognize that there was no particular message from God in them.

It was an exercise of faith to stand in the face of all that threat. However, when the quiet sound like a voice came past the cave, Elijah knew that was a sign of God’s Presence. He therefore covered his face as the proper protocol before a great Lord. It was a confession that he was unfit to gaze upon God’s face.

It’s not obvious from any English translation, but when Elijah was asked again why he was there, his answer was in the same words, but not the same tone. Now he is confessing the truth of the situation, and waiting on God to give the next command.

And that command was to hike around the east side of the Jordan Valley to Damascus, outside of Jezebel’s easy reach. In Damascus he was to anoint Hazael (an established figure) as the future King of Syria. Then he was to find Jehu (a high ranking nobleman serving in Ahab’s army) to become the next King of Israel. Then he was to go and find Elisha and anoint him as his own successor.

It wasn’t disobedience to contact Elisha first. The command to anoint the other two could legitimately be passed on to Elijah’s successor, who did eventually perform the rituals later. The point was not that Elijah had to handle these matters personally, but that they were a part of his office, not simply a discrete mission. Elijah would oversee the prophetic ministry that would declare to the human authorities what God’s plans were for them. God told Elijah that the wicked fools currently reigning would be punished through human agency that He controlled, whether it be Hazael, Jehu or Elisha, and God wanted everyone conscious of His authority to steer things.

But just to get Elijah’s facts straight, God told him there were a good 7000 who still did not worship idols in Israel. That’s a tiny number, when just the able-bodied soldiers alone amounted to over a million under Ahab’s command, never mind the civilian population on top of that. So the number of faithful was small, but it wasn’t just one.

Elisha was from the town of Abel-meholah, just a short way up a wadi from the Jordan Valley, on the West Bank, not too awfully far from the old royal capital of Tirzah in Ephraim. The area includes a wide flat, arable space in the wadi just above the Jordan Valley and eastern end of the Jezreel Valley.

It never required more than two oxen to pull a single plow. The narrative depicts Elisha guiding one of twelve plows, and was likely near the road. Elijah walks by almost unnoticed and drops his cloak on Elisha, without a word. It was a common symbolic act; Elisha was literally “vested” with the symbol of Elijah’s authority. The younger man understood immediately what it all meant, and no one could mistake Elijah — a hairy athletic man who was famous for wearing a camel-hair tunic and wide leather belt holding it down. It was a rather like wool, but a distinctive light brown color and little more coarse, even fuzzy. It was also a common symbol of mourning for sin.

In more practical terms, Elijah was handing Elisha the heavier outer cloak to carry for him, as if the younger man was his personal attendant. Elisha was hardly insulted, but ran after the prophet who was still walking along the road as if nothing had happened. Elisha begged for a chance to celebrate his new appointment with his family, something that might easily take a week or two. It was a tacit invitation for Elijah to come and stay for the festivities. Elijah’s answer was something along the lines of warning Elisha this was hardly a social promotion. It was an invitation to accept a harsh service with a man who was known for austere habits.

As a part of this exchange, we should assume the prophet told Elisha where he was headed. The younger man went back and, as son of the owner of the field and equipment, slaughtered his oxen team and used the wood of the plow to boil up a large stew. It was common to have a lean-to field kitchen out there somewhere, so he cooked up a celebratory meal that was also somewhat an offering to God. Once he had shared it out, he took off in the direction Elijah had gone. The narrative says he became Elijah’s personal attendant.

Part of the reason for the austerity in Elijah’s manner was a tacit declaration he did not profit from this ministry. He lived close to the bone for to make it clear there was no bribery to induce his message. Modern Western scholars quickly reduce a part of this whole thing with Jezebel to mere politics, but her driven demeanor points to something more religious and demonic.

It’s a common depiction of what feminism looked like in the Old Testament. It was consistently condemned as defiling the true God of Israel to have a woman blasphemously equated to Him, in the sense of worshiping female deities. However, the rituals for those female deities were consistently and exceedingly vulgar and depraved. Hebrew Scripture thus paints any hint of feminism and female deities together as a major defilement. Jezebel is a classic archetype of this kind of thing.

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The Native Fruit is Rotten

Posted on November 28, 2020 by ehurst

I can recall a house where I once lived. Out back was a lovely apple tree. The fruit was quite tasty and I did all I could to protect that tree and keep it healthy. However, after a few years, it was dying, decaying from the core. The last crop was thin and rotted early. Eventually I had to cut it down lest it become a hazard. That’s how it is with apple trees. They have a distinct life cycle, a sort of clock in the DNA ticking down. You can speed it or slow it, but not by much. In the end, it will surely die regardless how large it grows. Even if suckers appear on the stump, they’ll never be anything like the original, because the stump is very nearly dead.

It’s a doctrinal issue that belongs on this blog. A great many Americans are complaining that the globalists are seeking to destroy Western Civilization. This is a lie. The globalism we see today is entirely Western. Just because you don’t like the fruit doesn’t mean the tree didn’t grow properly. What we see now as bad things coming is the native fruit of the tree that was planted.

You cannot save Western Civilization by taking it back to some previous stage of development. Sorry, but the life cycle of civilizations doesn’t work like that; the stump is dead. The thing develops and follows the DNA in the cells. The current nasties — communism, feminism, SJWs, etc. — are the latter stage of a civilization that is dying. They didn’t come from outside of the tree; they aren’t grafts. Those things were inherent in the seeds of the West. The aging has set in and the tree will never be young again.

This is how those who most strongly resist the globalists and their commie proxies are not our allies. They want to restore what they imagine is the more ancient Christian West. Those who seek to save Western Christianity are dreamers longing for something that was already far, far away from New Testament Christianity. Even if these reactionaries succeed politically, they cannot prevent the West from dying. It never did have God’s favor, so it’s just a tool to be used and discarded in His plans.

We rightly regard this movement to save the West as an idolatry. It’s a waste of time and energy. As things go in this world, you know that it being a waste is precisely why a great many will devote so very much time and resources into it. “All is futility and striving after the wind,” said Solomon of human dreams not based on revelation. It didn’t keep him from striving to the point that it bankrupted and exhausted all the people in his nation. Knowing the truth doesn’t prevent idolatry; it requires actually embracing divine revelation. God divided Solomon’s kingdom because it was too big and gave rise to the idolatry of human greatness.

Western Civilization stands firmly on the imagination of human greatness without God. It’s another Tower of Babel in itself. The globalist efforts to finally pull it all together is paradoxically the death knell. But this is where the West has always been headed. This is the native fruit of its DNA. Complaining that this or that influence is destroying the West is missing the point entirely. The West is devouring itself. Only the culture that God built can last until Christ returns, and that culture is far, far different from the West.

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Shedding False Guilt

Posted on November 27, 2020 by ehurst

It’s important to understand biblical anthropology. What does Scripture say or assume about human nature?

We are souls. That’s a complex that can be broken down somewhat, but Scripture (and ANE culture) seems to assume that it’s mostly a matter of having a spirit and a conscious awareness. Your conscious awareness is not confined to your head — your intellect — but is above that. The Bible most certainly makes much of how the flesh, and the fleshly nature, is separate from your soul. Thus, we have Galatians 2:20 talking about how your will must enslave the fleshly nature.

Your fleshly lusts are not a part of soul. We bear a fallen nature that deserves death, and by agreeing with God’s wrath on it, we begin to pull away from it. Our “witness” is standing with the Lord in condemnation of something that is scarcely controllable by any means.

When you recognize that your fleshly nature has all kinds of evil impulses, your conscious awareness can condemn it, almost as if it were external. It’s just the baggage with which you are saddled in this life; it isn’t really you. When you build a sense of separation from it, you are in a position to dismiss the false guilt coming from Satan.

False guilt is some burden God does not require you to carry. It’s a lie from Satan meant to disable you from claiming the full measure of shalom. If your conscious awareness condemns the sin in your flesh, you stand in a position to use God’s power to restrain the flesh. It’s not as if you could just let your flesh do what it wants and be free of guilt. You have an obligation from God to restrain that flesh, but you do so in His wisdom and power, not your own.

So the impulses and desires are not what get you into trouble with God. He knows all about them; it’s the Curse of the Fall. But your soul’s firm desire to restrain your fleshly self from running free is exactly what makes for peace with God. You might feel bad about your failures in keeping that control in place, but if your desire belongs to God, He counts it in your favor. He will empower you to act on that holy desire.

Don’t accept condemnation on your soul for what your flesh desires. Agree with the condemnation on sin. Nail that fleshly self to the Cross. Go ahead and hate it; turn the Flaming Sword on it. Know that some day you’ll be free from that burden.

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Conditions Not Ripe Yet

Posted on November 26, 2020 by ehurst

When I talk about how the elements of the Garden Temptation and the Fall are so clearly manifested in Western intellectual culture, I’m not giving you a complete analysis of the Fall, nor of Western Civilization. Rather, I am characterizing Western Civ as accursed of God, as is typical with the parable language of the Bible. This makes it sound like Western insistence on the primacy of reason (secularism), and how humanity is the measure of all things (humanism), is the pinnacle of the Fall.

Thus, I’m trying to address the context of where we live today in the West, but by no means have I tried to give you all you could know about the Fall. If you were raised in a non-Western culture, you might come up with a rather different picture of the Fall. You could emphasize something else about the Fall and make it sound like certain characteristic sins of your non-Western society are the ultimate evil.

This is as it should be. Don’t let my prophetic denunciation of the West blind you to what the Fall says about human nature. The underlying issue is not whether we should trust in Aristotelian logic, but trusting in human capabilities of any sort.

You’ll notice that the Tower of Babel wasn’t really much about reason and logic. It was about developing a religion based on human perception. Think about the sequence of major events in the Genesis narrative. The whole concept behind the Tower of Babel was basically a ziggurat, an observatory for something rather like astrology. This was very shortly after the Flood. In order to get that much rainfall from the sky (“forty days and nights”), there had to have been some truly epic cloud cover above the earth. And once it was precipitated from the sky, that cloud cover didn’t ever go back to what it was before the Flood.

This is why the rainbow as the symbol of the Covenant of Noah was such a big deal; there were no rainbows before that moment, yet there is a rainbow at the final revelation at the White Throne Judgment. That’s because the direct sunlight shining in our sky had been permanently occluded by clouds before the Flood. So suddenly that permanent cloud cover was removed and now we have these lights that show in the night sky. Today we call them stars, but they had been invisible until after the Flood.

So when humans undertake to reject divine revelation, it’s not unreasonable for them to assume these new lights in the skies are somehow deities who knocked the clouds out of the sky so they could reveal themselves. And the ones that travel around (planets) are telling us things. So Nimrod developed this plan for a giant ziggurat so they could figure out how to interpret these messages from heaven. This is not all that logical by Western standards, but not too surprising, given the sequence of events.

Secular humanism is just a blip on the timeline of human existence on the earth. It’s just a passing fad, and we can condemn it using Scripture, which reaches back to the very beginning in the Garden of Eden. Secular humanism is a Western artifact, and when the West is gone, secular humanism will go with it. Have you noticed how it’s brother, atheism, is fading so fast? Granted, some portions of atheism and secular humanism will probably stick around for the next civilization, but there’s a really good chance that future lies from Satan will meet the culture where it is. Instead of idolizing Aristotle and human reason, fools will worship other things. Mysticism will make a comeback, however deeply flawed.

Whatever it is you make of John’s Apocalypse and other passages about the Return of Christ and things at The End of this world, you don’t see much sign of secular humanism and the idolatry of human logical reasoning. Rather, you see more of human idolatry of just about anything except the Lord. We also see signs of demonic powers unleashed, and that is not a feature of secular humanism. Rather, it’s a sign of people consciously seeking out Satan.

The current Satanism — the real thing here in the US — is really just secular humanism with fancy robes. They call it “Satanism” simply to mark it as anti-Christian in a cultural sense. And the so-called Church of Satan, not actually a part of Satanism, is just a parody of Catholicism for the most part. Whatever we see in eschatology is something much more consciously seeking to touch the Spirit Realm but outside the guidance of Scripture and revelation. It seeks to get back to the Tree of Life without passing through the Flaming Sword or the Cross.

This is a major consideration why the current tribulation is not the Final Apocalypse. The secular humanism inherent in Western Civilization is not the very soul of the Fall. It’s just the current manifestation of it. Something will have to replace our Western epistemology before Jesus comes back.

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What To Write About?

Posted on November 24, 2020 by ehurst

Prophetically, I cannot tell you whether Trump will remain in the White House. I sense that God is watching the situation behind the scenes and making up His mind based on choices made by critical players. In the long run, it makes no difference — the USA is doomed. In the short run, it will affect what I write about, but not the underlying message.

So if Trump stays, I’ll be writing a lot about neocons and Zionists, along with encouraging people to defend their existing government from commies. If Biden is sworn in, I’ll be writing more about the idolatrous globalist agenda, and will include a lot of talk about how to handle persecution.

But here’s the underlying message: Don’t accept any explanation from the government. Both sides in this tug of war over the White House are liars; they might occasionally let the truth slip out accidentally, but don’t count on it. They are pathologically incapable to telling the truth willfully. God’s wrath is falling on the USA.

Trump wants to attack Iran. It appears he is ramping up for that very thing. I maintain that this would be a disaster, that God Himself opposes such an effort. I don’t have any details, only that I am utterly certain He will not allow it to succeed. We will lose a significant number of troops, along with their equipment. Even without this, him staying in the White House will provoke an armed communist revolt.

Biden wants to crush any dissent, and confiscate all private assets. Harris has vowed to her pagan deity that she will disarm the people and send them to concentration camps if they fail to bow at her feet. This will naturally provoke a right-wing armed uprising.

In other words, there will be war either way, and destruction here in the USA. That is something I will state as a prophetic word. It won’t be the same level of intensity everywhere in the USA, but it will come. I can tell you right now that some states will quickly move to withdraw as far as practical. There will be some places that are quite safe and the local economy will continue to function. However, much of the “just in time” delivery system will seize up and freight will stop flowing across many state lines. Some consumer goods will disappear from the shelves altogether. Some places will be worse than others on the remaining goods.

I ordered from eBay a fancy handlebar for my bicycle. It wasn’t available from any stores locally, so far as I could find. Things are already tight. The package should arrive on the first of next month. Anything later than that would be at high risk of never arriving, because the warfare could begin any day now. This is why I suggest you learn how to adapt, to plan for a highly localized existence in the real world. I can’t say what it will be like on the Internet; I’m praying the Lord keeps the lines of communication open.

I will tell you this: In terms of how you live from day to day, it will be far better when states secede and an armed right-wing backlash arises to confront the commies. The longer it takes for either of these two to happen, the more painful it will be for everyone. That’s both prophecy and common sense.

I’ll say it again: This is not the Roman Empire. The coming oppression and persecution is not the same thing, and does not call for the same response as in the New Testament. There’s nothing wrong with defending what’s left of the American government and American society until the Lord takes it away.

Meanwhile, as long as I can keep posting on either of my blogs, you’ll be reading messages about trusting God and preparing for whatever flavor of war and chaos is coming. May the Lord have mercy on us.

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Despair Costs Too Much

Posted on November 22, 2020 by ehurst

This is a dry spell. There’s no evidence for the fleshly mind to see. That’s the test. God is hoping you’ll cling to Him and know that He will never abandon you.

Though the fig tree may not blossom,
Nor fruit be on the vines;
Though the labor of the olive may fail,
And the fields yield no food;
Though the flock may be cut off from the fold,
And there be no herd in the stalls —
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.
The Lord God is my strength;
He will make my feet like deer’s feet,
And He will make me walk on my high hills. (Habakkuk 3:17-19)

Here is a word of encouragement: We will see tribulation and turmoil here in the USA. It will come soon. But whenever God unleashes His wrath like that, He always grants at the same time greater miracles into the hands of His people. It’s all the same fruit, growing on the same power. His wrath is a two-edged sword that cuts out sin, and His people rejoice while the world groans.

I made it a prayer request that we ask God to release signs and wonders in our covenant community. That was so that you would have an expectation for what God always does. In times of distress, His power is greatest. We have to shake off the fleshly comforts to have room in our lives for His miracles.

Don’t despair. It’s a waste of time, and time is short right now.

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Law of Moses — 1 Kings 18

Posted on November 21, 2020 by ehurst

Three and a half years is the ancient symbol of tribulation. God’s choice for how long the drought lasted speaks volumes to anyone of Hebrew heritage. Elijah had survived the famine starting out near his hometown on the Wadi Cherith until the drought had taken away any residual flow. Then He spent the balance of the time in Zarephath in the home of a widow. This was a coastal town in Phoenicia between Tyre and Sidon. When the time comes to confront Ahab, Elijah comes to find him staying in his winter palace in Jezreel.

Keep in mind: Ahab is king, but his wife Jezebel is the driving force behind the throne. We get the impression he’s only as forceful as she wants him to be. He’s not a cartoon figure about it, but surprisingly lax on his own, or even wimpy at times.

Elijah first encounters the King’s Chamberlain, named Obadiah. This man happened to be faithful to Jehovah. He had privately and secretly funded the maintenance of a hundred surviving prophets of Jehovah in a couple of caves somewhere in the kingdom to spare them the murderous slaughter at the insistence of Jezebel. We have no idea how many did not escape her clutches, but it would have been quite a few. The population of the Northern Kingdom was roughly three million or more at this time, and there would have been plenty of active prophets from several generations supporting their mission. Keep in mind that Samuel had built several prophets’ academies a couple centuries prior to this, dividing them between Israel and Judah.

So Ahab took a bunch of servants, and Obadiah another bunch, and they spread out in opposite directions from the Jezreel palace, looking for any sign of greenery to indicate where they might find water and feed for the domestic service animals. Obadiah had not gone far when he encountered Elijah. The text in Hebrew notes with emphasis just what a shock this was for the chamberlain.

Elijah instructed him to call his lord, but Obadiah was reluctant. This was not a good time to provoke the king with a goose chase after a prophet notorious for disappearing the way Elijah did. Ahab, under pressure from Jezebel, had sent emissaries searching for Elijah to all the weaker neighboring kingdoms, demanding they swear an oath that they had searched and not found the prophet. But Elijah promised he would camp out right on that spot because he had a word from the Lord to deliver to Ahab. So Obadiah delivered the message and Ahab went back to meet Elijah.

Ahab made a tart comment about how Elijah had caused all kinds of trouble for the kingdom, implying the drought was Elijah’s fault. But the prophet reminded him that the only trouble in Israel came from betraying the God who had made it such a powerful nation and gave them the land. Seeing that Ahab was leading the nation to serve the various imaginary manifestations of the sky god Baal, the same deity who had failed to bring rain during the past few years, he should call the prophets to come and represent their deities against this one prophet of Jehovah on Mount Carmel, one of the major sites of Baal worship.

Given how these things go, we can bet that 450 prophets of Baal, along with 400 prophets of the Asherah, all sumptuously supported by Jezebel, would be a fair equivalence of how many prophets of Jehovah she had slaughtered. Elijah was proposing a test that no one could ignore.

Keep in mind that it took several days for this meeting to be arranged. Messengers went out across Ahab’s domain, announcing this big event. While it’s simply impossible that every resident would have liberty to come up to Mount Carmel, we can be sure a representative sample of ruling elders, nobles, and other people of leisure showed up. Mount Carmel has several peaks divided by ravines, some rather steep. There would have been among these peaks a common ancient shrine where a large number of people could gather to watch. When the crowds came, the chief leaders would have been in the front rows. Elijah confronted them with a question as to whether they would make a choice, but they stared in silence.

So this test was arranged in the idolaters’ favor. They got to choose from two bulls for their offering, and would go first in calling on their deity to send fire from the sky. Was he not the lord of the heavens? They did their thing from mid-morning to noon, when Elijah mocked them. So they went into a frenzy, which was common in their rituals for another couple of hours. Nothing happened with the offering. When the prophets wearied, Elijah called the people away from their altar and asked them to assemble before the place where he had waited for this show to wind down.

Tradition tells us that the “evening offering” was around 3PM in our reckoning. At this time, Elijah gathered the uncut stones from the old altar to Jehovah; this altar had been desecrated some decades previously when the worship of Baal was restored under Jeroboam. The symbolism of twelve stones for the Twelve Tribes was a poignant reminder that Jehovah was God of the whole nation, not just Judah. It was an elaborate ritual in itself just to set things up. This included digging a trench that could hold something like 20 liters of water. Then he cut up the bull and had water poured over it repeatedly until the trench was full.

His prayer was simple, asking that God remind all the observers present that He was the only real God, and that He had commissioned Elijah to speak for Him. The fire fell and consumed everything down to the ground, including the altar, evaporating all the water in the process. The people duly prostrated themselves before Jehovah, declaring Him to the one true God of Israel. Upon this highly emotional moment, Elijah commanded that the prophets of Baal and Asherah be seized. The people took them into custody, and Elijah led them down the slope on the northeast side of Carmel to the Wadi Kishon, where these idolaters were slaughtered. This was exactly what the Covenant demanded.

Ahab stood by and let all of this happen, of course. Had he been a man of real action, he could hardly have restrained Elijah from commanding the people like that after such an embarrassing demonstration of how wrong the king was. So Elijah advised the king to go back up to the spot on the hill where he parked his chariots and eat his picnic dinner, because Elijah could hear a heavy downpour coming.

With nothing better to do at that moment, Ahab went back up and did so. Elijah then went back up to the big flat spot where the fire had fallen from the sky and began praying with his face between his knees on the ground. He sent a servant to check from the higher peak, gazing out toward the Mediterranean Sea to find any clouds. Each time the servant came back to announce there was nothing, Elijah prayed a little longer, and then sent him again — seven times. When the servant finally reported seeing a tiny patch of cloud over the sea to the west, Elijah sent his servant to warn Ahab to pack his stuff and head back to Jezreel, lest he be caught in a storm.

That single cloud rapidly spread into a massive rain front that blew on shore. So Ahab headed down the winding road that dropped down the slope and into the valley below. Elijah was miraculously empowered and ran straight down the side of the mountain on foot, then continued loping cross-country, along the fifteen miles or so of fairly flat plain to the City of Jezreel. He arrived ahead of Ahab’s chariot convoy, and was able to announce in the city gates what had happened up on Mount Carmel.

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Summarizing Our Virtual Church

Posted on November 21, 2020 by ehurst

I was inspired by Jack’s post to review some things unique to Radix Fidem and our virtual church. Keep in mind that Radix Fidem is not part of the Protestant-Catholic-Orthodox continuum. It’s not about religion itself, but a study of how we approach religion. Then again, the online covenant community with which I participate is based on Radix Fidem, but has gone on to make certain decisions and does constitute a religion of sorts. Radix Fidem is an attempt to be more universal to the human condition today, but our particular religion is not meant to meet every need, only ours. However, that means we remain generally outside that continuum of existing mainstream institutional religions. Radix Fidem is the approach; our virtual community is one specific destination.

Our community is composed mostly of refugees from Protestant Christian religion. Some still attend various brands of Protestant church, and there’s nothing wrong with that. As elder, I would never pretend to own anyone’s religious allegiance. Ours is a wholly voluntary association and is hardly exclusive of any other religious connections. Nothing we do will interfere with your real-world church attendance. But what we teach can get you into big trouble if you share it in some real-world church settings.

We don’t believe that conversion should have to be a crisis. In most people, it takes place rather slowly. That’s the whole point: We hope you are awakened at some point, and then begin the process of committed searching in your heart for where your convictions lead. We aren’t trying to bring you more tightly into our group; we are trying to set you free to follow where God leads you. We aren’t converting you to our virtual church. We know that only a minority of those who are touched by our message will want to get more involved in our community, and even some of those will eventually move on to other things. That’s normal.

And we separate conversion from spiritual birth. Spiritual birth is something God decreed outside of our time-space continuum. For us as individuals, it’s a matter of discovering what God has already done to include us in His eternal family. It’s not a transaction; we simply become aware of it. Because this whole thing is a miracle of grace, there’s really not much we can do about it beyond pointing it out, and discussing what Scripture has to say about it. There’s no particular decision to make on that, except for you to commit yourself to whatever claims it makes on your soul.

Instead, we emphasize that commitment. We talk about it in biblical terms: It is a feudal allegiance to someone who redeemed you from slavery. It is not a logical decision, but one that comes from the heart. You commit yourself; that’s what the word “faith” means. Your brain can convince yourself to do a lot of things, but it can never rise to the level of commitment that defines the meaning of faith. We talk a lot about how the heart is a separate sensory organ with faculties that the mind hardly knows. This is what we mean by the “heart-led way.”

We believe the published Bible is as much the Word of God as any written document can be. It holds a special status above all other human writing, endowed with unique power to change the soul. Yet it remains a human product, and so requires a bit of effort to investigate how it was transmitted from those who composed it to those who print it for us today. God didn’t see fit to preserve the originals, so we should have some concern about the transmission. However, the people who wrote these documents bore an outlook that would reject Western notions of “propositional truth.” Truth is not contained in the words; truth is in the message indicated by the words. Therefore, courtroom precision on transmission and translation isn’t necessary — and that’s a good thing, since it is impossible. We are each obliged to be aware of the issues involved, but we put our faith in the God who inspired the writing.

We are accountable to Him for what is recorded in the Bible. We know He speaks through that written record, but that He could easily speak to us without it. Rather, He has chosen to bind us to the written record, with all the uncertainties about the text and translation. It’s part of the essential business of communion with Him through others. Without a covenant bond between people of faith, there is no way to experience the full range of what God has promised. You see, there is a grand uncertainty about those in our covenant family. In this, the Bible is as close to being a person as any physical object can. It is a presence of the Person of Christ. It’s a central figure in every covenant community, because it is the last common tangible manifestation of our Savior.

Nothing our God offers to His children on this earth takes place outside of the covenant community. Granted, it may be just you and your copy of the Bible at first, but there are no Lone Rangers in faith. Sooner or later it is unavoidable that genuine faith should attract other people who want a part of that. How we then go on to create a community is critical. The Bible portrays it as an extended family household, not of shared DNA, but of a shared covenant identity. It should look and act like a clan — feudal, tribal and held together by a common covenant. A covenant is valid to the degree it reflects the Covenant of Christ, but it’s meant to answer the particular needs of the context.

In our covenant community, we celebrate the blessing of divine revelation. It is the answer to all our questions and needs. We call it Biblical Law (or Law of God) so emphasize that it’s meant to change our human behavior. The power to change a fallen creature is divine, but the indicators of how that behavior should change are pretty well expressed in writing. We are supposed to examine that writing and do our conscientious best to understand how that applies our current situation. A critical element in that endeavor is seeking to reshape our minds and our reasoning to match that of those who wrote those words. We are supposed to think like ancient Hebrew people. The packaging of revelation is part of the gift.

Embracing that gift is its own reward. We could say more bluntly that the Law of God is its own reward. It makes us more like the Son, and nothing else can compare with the richness of that blessing. This defines what is our best interest. It is shalom: peace with God on His terms. All the natural worldly implications of that peace with God are just that; they are not the peace itself. We obey because we really want to, not because of what it might bring into our human existence. When I ritually bless anyone on this earth, I’m really saying that I want for their lives to conform to divine revelation.

So we don’t much care for happiness and goodness as this world defines it by various human reasonings. We don’t listen to the psycho-babble about what humans estimate religion should do for us. The revelation isn’t that hard to obey if you are committed. We are walking away from sin because it’s a trap. We reject any attempts to redefine what “sin” means, but champion the definitions in the Bible. We are not looking to make the world a better place. We are fallen creatures; this life is supposed to suck. This world is slated for destruction; God will wipe away the memory of all that humans have accomplished since departing Eden. That is, He’ll wipe away everything except the scars in His Son’s hands. Those will be there eternally to remind us what an awful thing the Fall was.

So the whole purpose of following Christ in this world is not to chase down spiritual birth for ourselves or anyone else. There is absolutely nothing any human can do to make that happen. Nor do we bind each other under human institutions of religious identity. Rather, we pursue the vision of what God says He can do in our human existence to bring us closer to the ideal of His Son. We expect that to mean small feudal covenant households of faith with highly varied flavorings and features that meet the context in which each household exists. There can be no single human institution that covers all the variety of things God will demand from His children. Yes, theology and practice must of necessity vary between these congregations.

Nothing in this world can ever be so concrete that it answers all questions and concerns. Faith in the heart is the only sure thing. Our fleshly existence is just a world of questions that cannot be answered with any finality. This is why we say we are otherworldly, that we are Christian Mystics, because the only assurance we have is inside our souls. It will never make sense on a human level, because humanity is fallen.

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