Radix Fidem Blog

Our Commission

Posted on August 2, 2025 by ehurst

The New Testament clearly references the Old. Jesus was constantly correcting false impressions of what the Law of Moses required of Israel.

It helps to gain a Hebraic concept of the terms. Whenever you see the word “law” used in that context, you should insert the word “covenant”. The point is “law” was not legislation as we think of it, but a sovereign-vassal treaty. Further, God became sovereign quite specifically because He rescued the nation from slavery. He owned them; they were His property. It was ANE feudalism, plain and simple.

If you read through the history and prophets of the Old Testament, you’ll see how God tried again and again to make the nation of Israel into a large household fit for His name. Only rarely did they rise to the occasion. God warned that He would eventually have to renegotiate His covenant with Israel (Jeremiah 31:31-34). Finally, He sent His own Son to demand that renegotiation of the Covenant. The Old Covenant died and the New was born. Right up to the Cross, Jesus warned this was coming.

During the Last Seder, Jesus said that this ritual meal would be displaced by something fitting a new covenant (Luke 22:20). Then He announced that the code of the covenant would be shortened. There was still the original requirement of feudal submission as vassals to Him; that was assumed. He added that the whole of His personal law for the New Covenant was that we should love each other as He loves us (John 13:34-35). This was an echo of His teaching that everything in the Old Covenant could be summed up that way (Matthew 22:34-40).

The western mental reflex to focus on thinking or doing misses the point. The distinction is false. From the Hebrew outlook, everything was a matter of submission and obedience to the Master. Jesus did invest a lot of time teaching, but it was aimed at restoring the ancient Hebrew orientation. That western obsession with thinking versus doing had crept into rabbinical teaching and Jesus tried to pull the people back to their very personal devotion to His Father. What He wants is our loving commitment to pleasing Him; that’s what “faith” means.

The Old Covenant is couched in terms of priorities. The people were commanded to embrace those priorities; it was not about detailed rules. It was declared in terms of what they knew already. When Jesus walked back through the covenant priorities, He updated the imagery to match what the people already knew 1400 years later. He corrected a lot of false impressions, but His core teaching was always faith in God that resulted in a drive to live certain ways.

He was careful to distinguish between what the flesh could do and what it wanted against the clear priorities of the Father. It was never a question of performance, but of the desire to draw close to the Father. He kept calling Jehovah “Father” in order to establish the image of that personal closeness, that we should be like children clinging to Him.

And why do you suppose Paul spent so much time teaching? It was because Diaspora Jewish believers had a lot of false impressions to wash away, nonsense they had picked up living among Gentiles. Meanwhile, the Gentile believers had even more nonsense. It’s clear from his experience in Corinth just how alien covenant faith was to the people there. The things they took for granted required a detailed examination, a total renovation of thinking. It was hard enough for Israel still on the Exodus trail to ditch the misleading suggestions of the Devil and his allies on how to live in this world, living in a culture that wasn’t too terribly far from Eden. Gentiles in all their many ways, having been misled by false gods, had a very long way to go.

By the time we get to John’s Revelation, we see how he all but despairs of persuading the churches in his care to cling to the Hebraic outlook. He wrote a vision that simply makes no sense at all unless you embrace the Hebrew epistemology. It was never completely lost but frequently ignored. From time to time through the past two millennia of church history we see brief glimmers of light and hope, but here we stand today with a vast burden of religious mythology that alienates us from that primitive faith of the Hebrew people.

Our shared conviction is that the Lord is stirring the pot these days. Random believers are being led to consider the question of what separates Christians today from what Jesus taught His disciples. For now, just asking that question is much more important than the particular answers at which folks arrive. We don’t pretend to have all the right answers. What we do have is a very strong experience of blessing and power that is clearly different from what has been seen in a very long time.

The real issue is feudal submission: “But a time is coming – and now is here – when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such people to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and the people who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23-24).

That was a message Jesus gave to His nation’s presumed enemies. It was the foundation of the message He told His followers to take to the whole world. It’s universal in the sense that, in theory, every human could embrace that call to worship in spirit and in truth. But the New Testament warns over and over that only the Presence of the Holy Spirit can fulfill this demand. We’ve been warned that only a portion of humanity will ever receive the Spirit.

We belong to a Kingdom of resurrected souls, God’s Chosen in Christ.

Posted in teaching | Tagged covenant, faith, feudalism, Hebrew epistemology, New Testament, old testament, submission to God, the Covenant of Moses | Comments Off

The Covenant Is Everything

Posted on August 1, 2025 by ehurst

It’s been a quiet couple of weeks for me. I’m still riding the bikes, but mostly so I could go out to my prayer chapels around the county. The thing weighing most on my heart has been identifying the biggest single issue that should characterize the ministry of Kiln of the Soul, and the legacy of the Radix Fidem way.

Of course, it’s the Covenant.

This is the place we start with anyone who isn’t familiar with our community. Not merely the existence of the Covenant, but that the Covenant is everything. It’s the foundation, the starting place for what Christ is doing in His people. We must work to establish this understanding. Without the Covenant, God’s involvement in human existence is random. All of His promises reside in the Covenant. Without that, we have kept Him at arm’s length.

It’s not a question of what God does; He’s been doing the same thing since day one in the Garden. This is where we stand; it’s the only way to enter His Presence. If we do not embrace the Covenant, we place ourselves outside His promises. All of the talk about God’s great power and love mean nothing until you enter the Covenant.

And by its nature, the Covenant is feudal. It’s submission to Christ. Without His Lordship via the Covenant, you are not a functioning part of His household, His Kingdom. It’s not a question of what you believe intellectually; this is the crux of saving faith. That word “faith” means your feudal submission to Christ.

That’s the first half of His Law within the Kingdom. The other half is that we love each other as He does. That’s what Jesus said to the Rich Young Ruler and to His disciples at the Last Seder. It gets mentioned in other places in the New Testament. The Covenant defines who is your “neighbor” that you must love sacrificially. It’s our tribe. If you don’t claim the Covenant, then I am not required to take seriously your claim to follow Christ. You aren’t family.

If you count yourself part of this community, that’s what I hope you’ll be able to emphasize to everyone with whom you discuss Christian religion on any level. All that orthodoxy, in all of its competing flavors, is not the issue. It’s whether you are living in submission to Christ as Lord.

I’m praying that this message explodes into the religious consciousness of all humanity.

Posted in teaching | Tagged Christian Law, Christian religion, Covenant of Christ, faith, kiln of the soul, kingdom of heaven, radix fidem, spiritual family, submission to God | 1 Comment

Sins of the Heart

Posted on July 26, 2025 by ehurst

Scripture refers to a hardening of the heart. It need not be wholesale; you can be hardened against the Holy Spirit in specific issues or areas of your life.

An important lesson we should review often is found in Galatians 5:13-26 —

13 For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity to indulge your flesh, but through love serve one another. 14 For the whole law can be summed up in a single commandment, namely, “You must love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 However, if you continually bite and devour one another, beware that you are not consumed by one another. 16 But I say, live by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh. 17 For the flesh has desires that are opposed to the Spirit, and the Spirit has desires that are opposed to the flesh, for these are in opposition to each other, so that you cannot do what you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, depravity, 20 idolatry, sorcery, hostilities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish rivalries, dissensions, factions, 21 envying, murder, drunkenness, carousing, and similar things. I am warning you, as I had warned you before: Those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God!

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Now those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also behave in accordance with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, being jealous of one another.

Can you picture what this looks like? It seems to me that it’s been quite rare anyone has portrayed this kind of temperament in movies or on TV. We get all kinds of crap that perverts this image according to any number of human secular biases. Imagine someone who is so self-secure and comfortable in their own skin that nothing gets to them. Not emotionless with steel discipline, but displaying emotions that serve as a testimony of faith.

Such people don’t stress others with dark clouds of anger and threats — even when someone does it to them. Those who are really in charge of their own souls will not panic or flare up at someone else’s stupidity. They have patience against such nonsense. If you feel your heart racing when someone else acts crazy, you aren’t there yet.

Do people dread seeing you? Does your presence set them on edge? Make sure you don’t set out to create that tension, or that you are so careless with your emotions that you contribute to the problem. Paul says your presence should radiate love, joy, peace, and patience, among other things.

You don’t get an exemption when dealing with your own household, in which you are convinced everyone delights in setting you off. Even if they do, you should not surrender your soul to their manipulations. You should be like slate. Have you ever seen a slate floor? It takes many years of heavy foot traffic to wear even a small amount from the surface. Abrasions seldom leave a mark. They cannot hurt you if you choose to be like slate.

God supplies all your needs. It’s just stuff. The things of this world are expendable, and people who abuse God’s provision are only hurting themselves. You should want to disengage and get some distance to avoid His wrath on their lives splashing onto you. If they cannot be moved by the Spirit, you want no part in their human existence.

Meanwhile, people should get to know you as someone who is affable, calm, relaxed under pressure, capable of guarding what God has given you without animosity. Love your covenant family as you love yourself. Have compassion on outsiders who are headed to Hell. Give them a taste of Heaven so they’ll know what they missed.

Keep your heart wide open to the Holy Spirit. Don’t hinder His work in you. This is spiritual warfare; this is how we keep the Enemy from controlling our lives.

Posted in bible | Tagged Fruits of the Spirit, Galatians, heart-mind, peace with god, spiritual warfare | 1 Comment

Subterranean Rumbling

Posted on July 24, 2025 by ehurst

As always, this is not prophecy, just my reading of the moral currents.

As we should have expected, the political revolt of the Epstein Files is growing. It has legs, and it could destroy Trump’s presidency. Since he is not man enough to admit his past sins and move forward for the good of the empire, he will be forced to divert attention away from the scandal. About the only way he can do that is to take America to war, as close to a full mobilization as he can get.

This is what rulers do. Trump’s pal Netanyahu has been doing this for several years now. The moment Nutty stops, he’ll be put on trial. He has no moral principle, no further agenda than saving his own skin. Trump is no different.

Don’t be simple minded about this. It could easily be primarily an economic war that simply uses military muscle to enforce it. All it takes is a White House declaration that some foreign power violated an agreement the US insists is in place and this becomes an excuse for military action. It’s very much in style today for strategists to imagine they can finesse things and play the game of brinksmanship. They play it both ways. Remember the phrase — “but it doesn’t rise to the level of impeachment.”

I’m only guessing here, but I suspect August will not pass without some declared foreign crisis that demands everyone’s attention. It will fester and grow until there is no room left for noise from the partisan revolt. Everything will be indexed to the need for distraction, not any real threat from abroad.

It’s just possible that this crisis will pass, but another will follow closely. There is no saving the empire. It is rotten throughout. The system cannot be corrected in sufficient measure to make it keep running in the current context. However, it will appear to keep working because of the depth and breadth of self-deception in America. It’s just like the days of Noah, wherein the fools never saw destruction coming. If you view it with eyes of flesh, you won’t see it. If you operate from the heart, you’ll feel the tremors of God’s wrath shaking the ground.

If there’s ever a time to seek the refuge of the Covenant, this is it.

Posted in tribulation | Tagged evil government, moral consciousness, oppression, politics, war | 1 Comment

Rejection Is the Goal

Posted on July 21, 2025 by ehurst

Let me paint a picture with words.

The doctrine of Divine Election is both, flatly stated and presumed throughout Scripture. God will have mercy on whom He wills (Romans 9:14-18; Exodus 33:19). That’s not just an eastern proverb meant to encourage a certain attitude applicable in some limited contexts. It is fundamental to our understanding of God. You must get it through our heads that not every living soul is precious in His sight.

Nor can you pretend to grasp the grounds on which He makes such decisions. He made some vessels for destruction; His plans and reasoning are beyond us. Given the whole of Scripture, you should understand that a majority of the human race, from Genesis to Judgment Day, were made for destruction.

The foul doctrine of individualism keeps people from hearing the Word of God. It’s the false notion that every human is equal before God, the silly attempt to place a judgment against God should He fail to give everyone an equal opportunity to make their own eternal destiny. This is another lie from Hell and is part of what damns Western Civilization.

Further, it’s not just Eternity alone that is so selective. Do you not grasp that Jesus Himself said the majority of the human race will never find peace with God in this life (Matthew 7:14)? And parts of Romans 9 are more about walking in divine truth in the here-and-now than in Eternity. Paul was making the point that both Eternity in Heaven above and the blessings of Covenant life here below are a matter of Election. You cannot come to the Covenant of Christ unless/until you are called.

The Great Commission is not to win the whole world, but to present the message and see who responds.

The focus of activity in churches is not getting people into Heaven. We must wipe from our minds the massive pile of theology that assumes we have any part in that as humans. The sole purpose of church is to gather and enjoy the Covenant provisions. This is the core of our call to world; if we are not conspicuously consuming the divine heritage of God’s family on this earth, we have nothing to say.

We are obliged to build a distinction between the family of God and rest of the world, which belongs to the Devil. The distinction of going to Heaven is not visible to anyone. What people can see is how we walk in the Covenant. Do Americans even know that the Covenant exists? The vast majority of American church folks aren’t even aware of it. We have long substituted a repressed western middle-class materialism for the Covenant. We worship stuff and fear death. Aging is primarily thought of as being no longer productive for the economy.

Instead, we worship youth, as well. Folks, children are not born innocent; they are born into the Fall. Weep if you must upon the loss of a child’s life, but our American culture is morally little different from the fires of Moloch. American life is the biggest threat to American children. If you really cared about children, you would build a very different world into which they can be born. The best thing you can do for children is to clearly portray moral distinctions, not load them down with material comforts. How many of them are born already defiled by the lack of covenant parents to give them a moral covering? Those children belong to Satan.

The only way you can do anything at all for humanity at large is to separate from the society at large and build up a community that is clearly different, in which both children and adults are guided to a different orientation. Do not expose yourselves to the temptations of the world until you are strong enough to march in like a privileged servant of God Almighty. A cosmopolitan childhood is not a blessing from God; a sheltered life is a blessing until you are ready to face the mind-numbing moral chaos.

We have such a very long way to go, and the task is too big for mere humans. We need to pray and seek the Lord’s guidance and power to overcome our own fleshly natures. Stop investing yourselves into this world at large; stop throwing pearls to pigs. Your soul, your life, your resources — all of it belongs to Christ. Stop assimilating to the filth of Hell in the world around you. The primary mark of our progress is when people around us notice we are different and start to reject us.

Posted in teaching | Tagged America, childhood, covenant community of faith, Covenant of Christ, curses and blessings, divine election, materialism, the Fall, The Great Commission | Comments Off

Sabbath: Celebrating Freedom

Posted on July 19, 2025 by ehurst

Leviticus 23:3 — “Six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there must be a Sabbath of complete rest, a holy assembly. You must not do any work; it is a Sabbath to the LORD in all the places where you live.”

First, we need to understand that no other culture in the ANE had a sabbath; the seven-day cycle is conspicuously absent from both Mesopotamia and Egypt. Every day was a workday except for certain holidays, some based on traditional rituals and some as declared by ruling powers. Thus, Israel in captivity under Egypt had to make bricks with no acknowledgment of Hebrew holidays.

Among church theologians, there is an inescapable link between Sabbath and Creation. In their minds, the sole reason for honoring the Sabbath was due to a literal seven-day Creation. However, this verse in Leviticus makes no reference whatsoever to Creation but points back to Israel’s release from Egyptian slavery.

The key word in the Hebrew text is “work” — melachah. This is not the concept of physical exertion, but of having been ordered to do something by an authority figure. It is related to the word for “messenger” (mal’ach), someone sent by authority (i.e., an angel). Both are derived from the root word l’ach: the verb for sending or dispatching. The emphasis is on celebrating that you belong to God and He’s ordering you not to work.

The legalistic nonsense of the Talmud makes it all about doing anything physical. You may recall Jesus clobbered that idea. When He was criticized for allowing His disciples to pick and eat heads of grain passing through a field (in itself a lawful form of human grazing), He asked the Pharisees if they would hesitate to rescue an animal that fell into a pit on the Sabbath. The issue was not the exertion, but in Leviticus it was whether anyone in authority compelled you to exert yourself. Nothing in Moses stopped you from performing charitable acts on the Sabbath regardless of the amount of effort it required.

Granted, the Sabbath was a memorial of entering God’s final rest, the seventh day of Creation. But in this context, it was especially sweet to connect it with God’s redemption of His people from slavery.

Note in passing: Leviticus is rather tightly linked to Exodus the book and the event. Deuteronomy, when talking about the same issues of law, is more tightly linked to the Promised Land and the Mesopotamian influence there. Thus, there are small differences between the specific requirements between Exodus-Leviticus compared to Deuteronomy. Also, the latter notes that most celebrations were a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, while the former is based on a mass encampment on the way to the Promised Land. The changed situation required adjustments in the Law of Moses.

Now, I want you to notice how God planned for the human needs of the priests in the offerings. They got to eat the Bread of Presence and a portion of most offerings. While on duty in the Temple, they couldn’t engage in work to feed themselves. Jehovah paints Himself as a good father taking care of His own family, certainly better than the treatment they got in Egypt.

This kind of compassion shows up again in the Jubilee celebration. Leviticus 25:3-15 lays out the system for restoring things to their default condition. The underlying issue is that God owns the land, not the people. They are leasing it, so to speak. Without the Jubilee reset every couple of generations, you would have whole swathes of people who remain enslaved under their own kind, wallowing in poverty because they lack a predatory motivation.

Obviously, this punishes people who tend to act as predators. Jubilee dampens their enthusiasm, knowing that it will all go back to where it was. Granted, the Jubilee passages in Exodus 21 and Deuteronomy 15 do focus on alleviating cyclical poverty, but Leviticus emphasizes that God is the owner of everything and everyone.

And this is for an agrarian society. Notice that the landholding was not reset in cities. If you choose to live in an urban environment, your protection from multi-generational poverty is gone. There’s a sense in which God simply does not promote what we call civilization. Rather, He works hardest to protect people who are utterly dependent on Him.

The Jubilee reset symbolizes a return to Eden, the way things ought to be.

Posted in bible | Tagged compassion, Jubilee, Leviticus, Sabbath | Comments Off

Go Forth and Make Mistakes

Posted on July 14, 2025 by ehurst

A movement of the Holy Spirit is not the same thing as a formal commission from God.

The ancient Hebrews would have understood our concept of memes. They had plenty of them. Do you recall, “Is Saul also among the prophets?” Saul had gone out in search of his father’s livestock, and stopped off to inquire of the Lord through the Prophet Samuel. While there, Saul was caught up in the Spirit and prophesied.

Samuel had established his Academy of the Prophets. He taught that rituals by which God revealed His will, but they also absorbed the background of prophetic literature. They needed to grasp the ways God spoke — the themes, protocols, terminology, etc. Samuel could not make them prophets; only God did that. But he could teach them the ways of God and how prophecy worked. Saul was not a prophet, but he did have a good lesson on prophecy at the academy.

Those who studied at Samuel’s school were called “Sons of the Prophets” — disciples of the prophets. Let me clarify something: This is my calling. I’m a disciple of the prophets. I have shared words of prophecy by the power of the Holy Spirit, and I am acquainted in the ways of prophetic messaging, but I have not been called into the Presence of God’s Council the way the biblical prophets were. I cannot say, “Thus saith the Lord.” Instead, I have a prophetic discipleship ministry because I know the territory on this side of the Eternity. I have received that gift.

Recall the types of Spiritual Gifts: The Holy Spirit gives offices, ministries, specific manifestations, and specific individuals. I’m not in the office, but I have the ministry and have experienced the manifestation.

I suppose this is a good time to point out that the difficulty with manifestation gifts is that they can be faked by humans and by the Devil. I’ve observed people who would, say, speak in tongues but the effect of their ministry was overall negative in the community of faith. The gift of tongues does not provoke you to an inflated ego unless it comes from someone other than the Holy Spirit. Nor does He move people to envy any such gift. He provokes awe and humility.

That’s not the same thing as a division that comes as a result of humble expressions of the gifts. Ineffective structures will fracture in the Presence of the Spirit. It demands a lot of us to discern for ourselves (and those we cover) how we must respond to anything like that.

The greatest challenge is that none of this can be objectified. You cannot write or describe a set of guidelines that work for everyone. That’s the whole point. A political division in an existing human organization is not evil in itself. Paul and Silas parted ways with Barnabas and John Mark. Sometimes that’s the right answer. They still loved each other, but should not have been working directly together. In other places, Paul withdrew fellowship entirely. That’s how the Spirit works. It was never a question of who was right, but what the Spirit required of Paul. So it is with us.

In general, discernment is a challenge because you cannot use your intellect except as a mere tool, a helper. It can serve, but is not fit to rule. Your conscience is part of your fleshly nature; it requires training and discipline to hear correctly from the convictions. A false conscience sounds the same as conviction until the conscience has been schooled, rather like the Academy of the Prophets.

Your convictions are a lore of truth coming out of your spirit. Your conscious mind does not start out with a solid connection. It takes time and experience. And frankly, it requires copious amounts of failure. In the past, I’ve been so sure something in my soul was the Word of God, but it failed the test of what God actually did. Satan took advantage of my defiled upbringing that gave me a false conscience.

This is by far a much bigger problem for westerners that it would be for the ancient Hebrews. It’s one of those things that peeks out at us from between the lines of things like Boman’s book on the difference between Greek and Hebrew thinking. The Hebrews had far less baggage to manage in that area of life (though they had their own baggage of other kinds of problems). Their equipment for the convictions-conscience interface was better.

This is the reason the New Testament makes such a big deal out of spending time in the company of Covenant people. They should be forgiving about things that require more work to gain useful experience. They should help critique the likely outcomes of those cues coming from your conscience. They’ll help you gain spiritual consistency. In the New Testament, we don’t have a commission from God to stone false prophets; we have a family that helps us learn from our mistakes.

Go forth and make mistakes.

Posted in teaching | Tagged decentralization, faith community, moral discernment, prophecy, Prophet Samuel, school of the prophets, spiritual discipline, spiritual gifts, Thorleif Boman | Comments Off

Retreat Is a Treat

Posted on July 12, 2025 by ehurst

This week’s Bible lesson will bend the definition a bit. From time to time Jesus would break away from the burdens of ministry to be alone with His disciples. Getting away from the daily grind to give more space for God to speak and move in your life is very biblical. This week, the Kiln of the Soul community met in our first retreat. Indeed, it is the first time any of us have met face-to-face. We’ve been here since Wednesday afternoon, and it’s been nothing short of miraculous and very refreshing. This is one of those unforgettable experiences, a spiritual mountaintop.

We chose a place in southeastern Oklahoma near Robber’s Cave in Wilburton. It turned out to be a very good choice, a cabin with sufficient isolation for us to feel like we’ve gotten away from the rest of the world. We didn’t plan anything; there was no schedule. We just wanted time in each other’s company. Sure enough, the random chatter that naturally arises from such an atmosphere had called forth a lot of questions that needed answers. I’m not a fan of excessive guidance that fills the time with something you didn’t choose for yourself. I’m quite certain Jesus and His disciples didn’t have a schedule or agenda on their retreats. They were simply being a family.

On the one hand, given the chaos looming over America, I cannot say whether it will even be possible to do this again sometime. On the other hand, I certainly hope we can pull it off. There is nothing like simply having time together in one place and experiencing those unguarded moments that make people very real to each other.

Granted, we didn’t advertise this first meeting. It was meant to be rather private with long time online members. The next time we will try to open it up for a wider audience. I’d be surprised if it was very large in the first place, but God alone knows whom He will move to get more involved this way. I could get used to ministering this way. More importantly, I know of no better way of catching just a taste of that close family atmosphere that identifies the Covenant Christ, learning to love each other as He loved.

Posted in religion | Tagged covenant family, Covenant of Christ, fellowship, spiritual retreat, teaching | 2 Comments

Reprising John’s Revelation

Posted on July 10, 2025 by ehurst

Jack asked:

You’ve mentioned that a significant part of John’s Revelation laments the fading of Hebrew influence in church doctrine. Can you please recommend some of the more important sections in Revelations for further study?

In some ways, the Harlot riding the Beast in Revelation 17 is the key passage of the whole book. The reason this isn’t obvious to more church folks is because they come to John’s Revelation with a load of eschatology instead of letting John have his say. Why did John invest so much effort invoking all the OT imagery? Why is the whole thing so mystical and symbolic instead of straightforward?

Consider what John had been doing all this time when he was exiled to Patmos. The Jewish revolts in Jerusalem brought the wrath of Rome and Jews were run out of the city. Christians, remembering the warning Jesus gave about Jerusalem coming under siege, fled to where they knew a strong Christian community could be found. While some headed to Antioch, it seems the majority went to Ephesus. John had recently come to the city and took up the yoke of guiding the extended community inland in Asian Minor. After some years of this, John came to the attention of the authorities. The most likely scenario is that he was challenged by Roman officials to offer incense to the image of Caesar, and refused.

In all of his time there, consider what kinds of problems he encountered. Paul’s letters plus Acts gives us a clue to what sort of nonsense John faced. Pair this with a careful reading of the Christian scholars who wrote shortly after John’s time. The church drifted quickly into the arms of secular concerns and abandoning the otherworldly focus of the New Testament. This was locked in when the church leadership was seduced by Constantine, and become a significant part of Roman politics. This is directly counter to what Jesus taught, carefully avoiding the politics of His own nation. Politics is ostensibly what nailed Jesus to the Cross.

This is how the church became the Harlot riding the Beast. John saw this coming. The whole book of Revelation is a call to return to mysticism. You cannot understand the book as a description of future events; it’s a symbolic declaration of how God does things — present, past and future. You cannot understand Revelation without a Hebrew orientation. The whole book is one long lament of what to expect from God because the Hebrew outlook was tossed aside, when it is inherent in the Word of God.

Not that we must seek to shift our psychology; I doubt that’s possible. Rather, we should become aware of that different outlook and operate by the logic of it. From Boman’s book we learned that Hebrew brains didn’t operate visually, but morally, versus the Greek minds that always formed a visual image of everything. Hebrews didn’t have mental pictures like that. We can scarcely imagine such a thing. But we can learn to suspend our trust in that image-making and trust our convictions bubbling up through our subconscious.

The church leadership who learned from John never picked up on that difference between the Greek and Hebraic style of thinking. They never picked up on the symbolism but walked away from studying the Second Temple literature that informs John’s Revelation. Those “Early Church Fathers” were not good scholars; they neglected a wealth of inputs they desperately needed, and began forming doctrine based on a Hellenistic worldview. This is why they saw no reason to resist the siren song of cooperation with Constantine. They willingly became the Harlot Church because they didn’t understand what John said about it.

The Book of Revelation was confusing without John’s Hebrew background. It was a subtle Hebraic way of warning believers not to leave the Hebrew outlook behind. I cannot point to sections of Revelation that offer a clear warning, because avoiding clarity of that sort was the whole point. It’s the book as a whole in the context that explains this. Sorry, Jack, I can’t offer anything more concrete.

Posted in bible | Tagged Apocalypse, Early Church Fathers, eschatology, Hebrew epistemology, intellectual background, politics, revelation, Thorleif Boman | 2 Comments