Dreams and Purpose

Posted on May 19, 2020 by ehurst

I’m writing this in the wee hours of the morning. I was awakened by a simple decline in the need to sleep. During that period of time when my conscious awareness was slowly returning to a waking state, I crossed a boundary area where a dream was waiting for me. It was a significant dream, a message from God. It carried that signature of significance, demanding that I pay attention to what transpired.

Telling you the dream wouldn’t mean anything to you. It was one of those symbolic vignettes that evoked some of my waking awareness of the world, but with a jarring disconnect from what I knew to be real. That disconnection was the revelation. In ways impossible to explain, my awareness that this couldn’t actually happen in real life triggered a recognition of what could and should happen. It signaled to something lying dormant inside of me, waiting for this moment of half-waking awareness to open up the message the Lord left for me. The dream pushed me into a place where I could get a line of sight that showed me a piece of the puzzle previously missing.

This much of the dream would be meaningful to you: It was about a man and his ambitions. What I saw him doing, his interaction with me, and the things I saw were distinctly not characteristic of this man. Rather, the image of this man characterized what he appears to be doing in terms of my own existence. His identity won’t help you understand; the dream was not about the man, but my impression of him. The Lord was using him as an avatar for something about me, something that He has been trying to separate from my sense of calling and mission. That it became a separate person in my dream indicates how far I have come from the days when that was me.

The reason for all of this struggle, and how long it took me to get here, is that my mission and calling is wholly unprecedented in my own awareness. All of my education and training have pointed to a certain kind of mixed career that, while it was the closest approximation I was going to find in this world, was certainly not the calling itself. What the world gave me was represented by the avatar in my dream. It was the identity, the territory through which I had to pass in order to move in the right direction on a very long journey.

By the way, my obsession with cycling in particular, and fitness in general, is connected with my premonition that I will live a lot longer yet. I need to keep this fleshly body in the best shape possible so that it will serve as a good tool, not as a burden to be dragged around behind me. Cycling is the primary avenue left after all the things I’ve lost along the way. Also, cycling serves as the single best way of keeping my communion with Creation alive. Cycling gets me out away from the interference of human noise so that I can hear the voice of Creation calling. It’s another kind of fitness. I would have kept cycling if all I could get were battered used Walmart bikes, but this fancy one I have now vastly improves my ability to get out and stay fit both ways. It calls to me and evokes my desire to ride.

At any rate, the dream has prompted me to review some things I’ve covered in the past. I’m convinced the Lord wants me to talk about those things. I may never really understand how I gained the attention of so many fine children of God, but while I have that attention, I need to make sure it gets used for a divine purpose.

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Law of God — Joshua 6

Posted on May 16, 2020 by ehurst

First, a few reminders are in order. Jericho is one of the most ancient sites of human occupation one can find on the earth, all the way back to Neolithic times, at least. It was a fairly high mound already before Israel invaded Canaan Land. And so far as anyone can tell, the Amorites occupied this mound at the time. Keep in mind that the Amorites are best understood as a class of people, not exactly an ethnic nation. The name comes from one of the Sons of Canaan, but at the time of the Exodus, that name came to represent a group of opportunists, often dwelling in tents, always cheating, stealing and raiding. They would have justly been regarded rather like today’s Gypsies. If they built much at all, it would have been mud or mud bricks. Archaeology indicates they hadn’t been there long enough to do much building, only a decade or less.

Their use of the Jericho mound would not have left much archaeological evidence. However, Jericho was a shrine city, or Israel would not have bothered with them — this is a religious war. Whatever else we might know about the Amorites, their pagan idolatry was loaded with depraved practices. Jericho was the ancient version of a tourist trap, a place that was warm and dry most of the year, yet highly favored with very generous flowing natural springs. It was a tropical paradise with lush growth and year round fruit. The Jericho shrine was most likely one that featured prostitutes of various types, and the place was decorated with lurid images of what one could have for a price. Calling Rahab a prostitute is nothing more than saying she was an Amorite; it was just part of their culture. They used the shrine to sanctify their predatory greed and low morals.

This explains the austere commands Joshua gave his troops. Please don’t envision brass instruments; the priests blew hollow ram’s horns. These would make a high-pitched, almost squealing noise that anyone was likely to hear over the normal buzz of human activity. In this case, it was the only noise anyone heard from the procession during the six days of preliminary marching, perhaps with taunting from the walls. The symbolism was unmistakable to anyone in those ancient times: This massive army of infantry with their sacred totem could quietly march around the city walls without any opposition. They controlled all the land outside the walls. In the pagan minds in the city, the trumpets were summoning spirits to battle, quite nerve wracking to those trapped inside.

The procession came every morning just after daybreak. While the Hebrew text is typically vague on some details, we can get a sort of picture of this event. Only the full time professional warriors were involved, without any of the lightly armed conscripts that made up the bulk of the army. Most of those professional troops led the march, with the priests and Ark of the Covenant at the rear, followed only by the standard rear guard (something like one fifth of the armed men bearing a heavier defensive armament in this context).

On the seventh day, the same procession repeated seven times. Sometime during that last circuit, something caused the mud wall to dissolve and it collapsed into sand piles that poured down the slopes of the mound. It was a simple matter to charge up the rather gentle slopes of the ancient hill. Whatever shook the wall down would have dissolved the rest of the mud brick structures. All that was left standing were tents and wood structures, all of which were torched in the attack. The people and livestock were slaughtered except for Rahab and her household, according to the promise made by the spies. The only plunder was items of gold, silver, bronze and iron, all dedicated to the Tabernacle treasury. It was for sure everything they found was stolen from somewhere else; Amorites rarely even made their own pottery.

This tested the discipline of the troops who would lead the rest of the army in future battles. Considering what happens next, we can safely say Israel’s troops played by the rules this time. Joshua laid a public curse on the city mound. We find out later that it comes true.

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Start with Me (Reprise)

Posted on May 16, 2020 by ehurst

We all have gifts and assets from God. If your gifts are noticeable by the world at large, you will be tempted to use them according to worldly values. The greater any of those gifts are by the world’s estimation, the greater the temptation. It tempts you to use that asset as your sole means of interaction with life, and it tempts you to pride.

Faith cannot arise without humility. Humility is an integral part of how faith works. And without faith, it is impossible to please God; you cannot return the Eden. Humility is nailing the fleshly nature or “carnal nature” to the Cross; it is turning the Sword of the Spirit against your own soul. Both of those parabolic images point to the same thing. The Bible uses other terms, like “death of self” (or denying self) to indicate things that cannot be explained. They are miracles, rooted in the Spirit Realm and defying explanation. Faith puts a death sentence on Adam-in-you, in order to give life to Jesus-in-you.

If you can enter into that faith, then you have more than all the most talented geniuses in the world. They have this fallen world, a world already awaiting the sentence of destruction. We have Eden, the world for which our Father made us, and which humanity abandoned in order to have this world. Don’t envy those who have the reins of this world. They don’t even grasp Eden. Yet those whom the world despises can have Eden if they take up the Cross of Christ in faith and humility.

I’m sure you can think of people who are very talented and have no faith. Just look for people who never apologize, or whose apologies come across as performance art, not as a matter of faith. They are people who could never admire faith because they don’t recognize it for what it is. They don’t see what a great treasure it is.

Scripture leaves us with the image of Eden guarded by the Flaming Sword of revelation. That’s not to block your entrance, but to restore faith before you try to enter. You take that Sword into your own hands and use it against your own fleshly nature. It’s the means by which you discern the thoughts and intentions of your own soul, by which you judge your own sin. This is why I say you should pray the wrath of God down by asking Him to start with you. You know from that experience with the Flaming Sword that it heals whatever good thing God has placed in your life, and slices off everything you got from the Devil. You long for His wrath, because you know what great good comes from it. You know that His wrath is His blessing.

That His wrath tends to fall on all at once is simply the nature of wrath. Everyone gets a chance to be cleansed. But some will have sold so much of themselves to this world that there will be nothing left. They are too tightly wed to things that will be burned up. It’s not that we are so eager for their demise, but we realize their demise was determined by their own choices.

Every human born is capable of faith and heart-led surrender to Christ. For reasons no human can comprehend, we know that many will not turn. There is no logic for this; it simply is. So we embrace the truth of revelation regarding this and move forward, asking for the final end of all suffering, calling out “Maranatha!”

There is not a thing you can do to help them, except to shine the light by living Maranatha, all day, every day. Come Lord and judge all sin, and start with me.

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Redemption and Wrath

Posted on May 14, 2020 by ehurst

A couple of things weigh on my heart today.

My Radix Fidem message has some opposition, to no one’s surprise. It’s quite rare that I would simply cut someone off for resisting the message. Our mission is redemption; we are obliged to keep the door open as much as possible, for as long as possible. That’s why I tolerate a certain amount of crap in the comments. The world is crappy and we should expect a majority to remain against this message and mission. How we handle persecution is part of the message.

God can heal any damage Satan’s minions can inflict. I’m an example of that myself, and I pray the Lord never let me forget it. A critical element in ongoing redemption is that we become eager for the wrath of God on ourselves. His fire of holiness burns away the dross. If we do not follow Him through the fire, we cannot be made whole. Suffering is aimed at driving us into His arms. How long did we tarry before we ourselves turned to Him? I confess I was very slow to catch on, and I’m still just starting to get some of it.

But this world is doomed, and we should never pretend God will allow us to save any part of it. The whole idea is to get people to detach from it. I experience a recurring vision that represents the doom on America: A large pleasure ship in the sky floats over the land, looming quite large. In its shadow is a festering storm of demonic activity — temptation and wrath. But this pleasure craft presumes to fly in war against genuine battle ships of the sky. Those battle ships remain out of view in my vision, yet I sense they are there somewhere behind me as I gaze upon this scene. I know that what follows is a pitiful destruction of the massive pleasure ship.

This represents to me the chaos brought to this country by the globalists. They cast a long shadow of madness and destruction, but their time is short. They suffer a delusion about how things will proceed. They have no clue to what’s real, but manufacture their own false reality. Very few of them really know what’s going on; they keep a herd of beguiled fools in their service. The sad thing is that those in their thrall will be crushed when this big pleasure ship is shot down.

This thing is very near us. A primary symptom is social madness. Who knows what sort of desperation people hide under a veneer of doing okay? People on the edge will be pushed over; you should expect random implosions as this darkness spreads over the US. It has already begun, and the tempo will accelerate.

Keep your eye on the redemptive mission.

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The Law of Moses — Joshua 5

Posted on May 9, 2020 by ehurst

The passage is short, but it requires a lot of context.

Keep in mind that the Conquest of Canaan Land was not a standard military invasion. It was purely a religious war aimed at destroying the major pagan temples in the Promised Land, those that were known to influence the broad religious habits of the people. The intent was to reduce resistance to the observance of the Covenant once Israel occupied the land. Every time this occupation went well or went bad, the underlying issue was whether Israel had destroyed a major pagan influence. While there were a few nations condemned to extermination, a significant population was allowed to stay under the terms they would accept feudal domination by Israel and would keep their idolatrous practices out of sight.

The Land of Canaan had a very wild mixture of tribes and nations, and the majority were known for ritual practices that were downright disturbing. Even the Greek and Roman empires of later times regarded them as debased and repugnant — including brutal child sacrifice and sexual rituals hard to imagine. The call to Israel was to “cleanse the land” of the worst of these demonic influences.

While the text of Joshua could be interpreted to put a lot of weight on ritual purity, anyone with a passing knowledge of the Ancient Near East would know that this was mere symbolism for something much deeper. It was commonly understood that the people of Israel were held to a high moral standard, and accountable for a very personal loyalty to Jehovah.

In the first few chapters, we have Joshua succeeding Moses as ritual head of the nation. Up to this point, leadership was simply chosen by God. Moses had been a Levite prior to Aaron’s anointing as the first High Priest (there were no priests before that time). However, Moses had been trained as a son of Pharaoh, which included military expertise, among other things. In theory, Jehovah was Israel’s King, but His proxy was more like a simple warlord in effect. Joshua was from the Tribe of Ephraim, which was already a major source of military might in the nation.

But the point of this conquest was religious. This was to be the conquest of Mosaic Law, but the foundation of that Covenant was the much older Covenant of Abraham, a covenant of personal loyalty between two people. This was why we keep seeing references to the “land promised to Abraham.” Also, keep in mind that this was hardly the only military activity in this region. Pharaoh had only just recently marched through to crush a rebellion of sorts, and had taken a multitude of troops as captives back to Egypt, mostly to slave away at the same work Israel used to do some forty years previously. This weakened the military readiness of the land just as Israel was about to move.

A primary miracle here was timing. Israel crossed the Jordan River during the barley harvest. That meant food for plunder was widely available, lots of unleavened grain. It also meant that the Jordan was at flood stage, which offered the perfect opportunity to hold a demonstration of divine power. There were plenty of observers already on hand in the highlands above the Jordan River to watch this ritual stuff. They had been tracking Israel for quite some time. The priests carrying their nation’s divine throne (Ark of the Covenant) touched the water and all the flow from above stopped, while the water in front of them drained away downstream. This was shocking to the spies watching. None of their myths and legends even came close to this.

As the chapter begins, we are told that everyone on Israel’s hit-list was shaken by this miracle. Their one natural defense during barley harvest meant nothing to these nomad invaders of Jehovah. Quite literally, the demon spirits that provoked them to fight had deserted them. God made the initial investment; it was time for Israel to ante up and make their own sacrifices to remain pure enough for God to keep fighting on their behalf.

This was the Middle Bronze Age in that part of the world, but God demanded Israel use more ancient flint knives for the ritual of circumcision. It was actually the better tool; flint was mined in this area for small blades well into the Iron Age. More importantly, it was to show Israel that this was from the Covenant of Abraham, who himself would have used a flint knife for this ritual. And since no one had the nerve to attack them, they could afford the time to rest up and heal.

The nation had not been permitted to perform this ritual after their failure to obey forty years prior. So the reference to “a second time” was likely recalling something that took place at the foot of Mount Sinai back when it become mandatory instead of merely typical. So this was the second catch-up to ritual purity that God demanded during the Exodus.

Now they were fit to observe Passover, the celebration of their identity. The reference to the “reproach of Egypt” symbolized several things. It was not about the Egyptians, as they practiced circumcision, too. It referred to Israel still having their hearts trapped in Goshen. As long as Israel was wandering in the wilderness, they were still nothing more than escaped slaves. They weren’t allowed to celebrate any of the important rituals that gave them a covenant identity during that whole forty years. Now they were about to inherit their Promised Land, and the privileges of the Covenant were restored. Crossing the Jordan was an echo of the Reed Sea Crossing. Camping in Gilgal (Heb. wheel or circle) was an echo of Mount Sinai. They were coming full circle and under a great burden to keep their end of the deal. They were certainly able to obey, and God expected it.

The text notes that directly following Passover, they were able to observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread by virtue of plundering grain from the undefended land outside cities that had begun to close up for siege.

To verify that God considered them provisionally pure enough to represent Him, Joshua met with his counterpart from God’s personal bodyguard, the angels. The symbolism of taking off sandals in this context is rather like someone entering the carpeted tent of the ruling sheikh. It betokens voluntary exposure of oneself to the will of the ruler. One of the first things a captive surrenders is his footwear so he can’t run away; he can only wander as far as the carpets of his master. Further, the very ground is His personal domain, so you are not permitted to soil it with your dirty shoes. Today’s Arabs still recognize this symbolism where intentionally touching or slapping something/someone with the sole of the shoe is the ultimate insult. It’s connected with ritual welcome by washing feet, shaking dust off the sandals, etc.

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Daniel the Man

Posted on May 8, 2020 by ehurst

The Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) rulers as a whole operated with far greater wisdom than is common in governments today. Their assumptions about reality were radically different from anything in the West; they held to an entirely different epistemology.

In a royal or imperial ANE court, the most valuable servants were those whose motives were transparent. That is, the ruler could calculate in advance how his advisers would faithfully cling to their own self interest. Wise rulers knew that anything approaching altruism was a matter of someone recognizing that their own best interest was the prosperity of the ruler. Those who were transparent about their assumptions and proclivities — men with a firm self-knowledge — could be trusted to support whomever was on the throne without deception.

And anyone who ascended to a throne would have to know how to discern the hearts of the previous court advisers. They considered people their single greatest treasure. You can replace stuff, but you can’t easily replace seasoned servants. You can’t afford to toss out just everyone on the court staff; you would need someone versed in all that happened previously. And good managerial experience was frankly rare and expensive, so a new ruler was on the lookout for talented men already in service to the court who would honestly shift their loyalty to the new guy. Meanwhile, the best court servants recognized that their self-interest would require embracing the reality of who now sat on the throne.

Only the most arrogant fools would slaughter the whole palace staff and court advisers. History is littered with failed rulers who ignored this well-established precedent.

Daniel the Prophet in the courts of both Babylon and Medo-Persia was the kind of wise court adviser who was famous for not being a slavish yes-man. He faithfully sought the emperor’s welfare in all things, but from a unique perspective. And it became clear that his estimate of reality was superior to that of his opponents. Daniel was convinced his God was at work in this context, and knew that his own best interest was tied up in the truth as revealed by Jehovah. It followed that everyone else’s best interest basked in the light of the same truth. He was loyal and devoted to his imperial master from that frame of reference. While the ruler might not know how Daniel would answer particular queries, he knew that Daniel would not deceive him.

From the biblical narrative, we get the feeling a lot of other court advisers had the tendency to hide their motives on some issues. Daniel had sufficient conviction to die for his devotion to Jehovah, and would have died rather than betray the interests of his earthly master. He was transparent.

Daniel was able to cling to his identity within an alien environment. The environment was pagan to the core. Daniel’s training was a deep reading of the imperial library on all manner of highly varied pagan religions, the mythology of every competing religion encountered by the conquests of Babylon’s army. A healthy portion of the imperial revenue went to paying for the research and recording of whatever passed for mythology and legend in every place the army marched. The Babylonian library was massive, and Daniel had to become familiar with the various petty kingdoms over which Babylon ruled, so he would know how to implement imperial policy without provoking significant resistance in any of the many varied locales.

As a young man of noble/royal lineage growing up in Judah, Daniel would have been acquainted with what was then regarded as manly arts. It would include martial arts, but also something of civil engineering, administration, and most certainly the legacy of Hebrew covenant identity, both written and oral. He was one of the young men adopted by the Babylonian court, as part of the normal process of conquest — take the best of whatever resources the conquered kingdom offered, including personnel. The well fed noble and royal progeny would have been physically larger than those born in poverty, and much better educated and familiar with political power, as well.

Hint: The Babylonian image of manhood was not the trim bodybuilder common among Westerners. The ANE ideal was more burly and bulky, while still athletic — rather like a human Clydesdale. A flat tummy was a social liability in most settings (though they had use for a few lithe and fast runners as couriers and spies). This explains the issue with Daniel and his companions over the imperial rations. The court required big burly men, and Daniel and his buddies had to look like that without eating the meat ritually offered to pagan gods before serving. Once in a position of authority, they were then at liberty to maintain their own kosher meat sources.

But by the same token, Daniel and his buddies had to be so immersed in the pagan outlook that they kept total aplomb in the face of things they found abhorrent. There was no place for the dramatic shocked recoil at any of the nastiest stuff they encountered. Babylonian lore included a lot of what we would call “black magic” today, some of it thoroughly repulsive. Further, they had to know how it fit into the bigger picture of imperial administration. Secularism did not exist anywhere in the world at that time, so everything was larded with pagan ritual that everyone took quite seriously.

Of course, our modern Late Western society only gives lip service to secularism; it’s just another pagan religion in disguise. The point is that we face a lot of crap today, and we could use some of Daniel’s aplomb and self-honesty about things we cannot possibly change. But our Western habit of dramatic shocked recoil is easily the stupidest element of our social discourse. It’s actually a pagan ritual, and a very bad one. It’s an attempt to use magical power to sway others, a dishonest ploy to gain some desired outcome that benefits one’s own little tribe. Keeping that clear in your mind can help you in serving Jehovah.

It’s really sad that the world we live in necessitates deception. We have precious few people in power who actually want to discern reality. Instead, they are deeply infected with a sick lust for controlling reality and shaping it to their whims. Our culture is built on betraying trust, despite the propaganda to the contrary. Our society is fake about a lot of things — most things, in fact. A false veneer is the trademark of middle-class materialistic culture. Our world discourages introspection and transparency, and rewards duplicity.

If there’s anything we could do to improve our practice of biblical manhood, we could learn a lot from Daniel.

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Pondering the Path 04

Posted on May 4, 2020 by ehurst

At this point, the Radix Fidem path clearly alienates the vast majority of Westerners with any inclinations to Christian religion.

What we offer is a path back to Eden; that’s what the gospel is now, and has always been since we were kicked out of Eden. That path is focused on helping spiritually born people claim the full inheritance promised them while on that path. It’s all about that path. Since we cannot possibly know who is or isn’t spiritually born, we have to proceed on the basis of awakening it by walking in those blessings ourselves. We can’t put them on the path; they have to want self-death for themselves. That is, we can at best awaken someone to the awareness they were spiritually born, if indeed they were.

Even that is a miracle of sorts, but at least we can grasp some of how it works. We help people discover their eternal identity. Living like a child of Heaven triggers that recognition in other children of Heaven, or at the very least, it causes them to wonder about things. Since most of them ignore their own convictions, we have to wait for God to push through their mental resistance. Our sacrificial approach to living will trigger a resonance in their hearts. Thus, our mission is awakening the awareness of the heart-led path of faith.

Western Christians are conditioned against this. To be honest, my experience is that self-conscious pagan believers understand Radix Fidem quicker than anyone, because most of them already understand the heart-led way. Their hearts are devoted to some other deity, but they understand how faith works, at least. And a part of our heart-led (conviction led) path of faith is communing with God’s Creation, something very common among pagan believers.

Scripture takes seriously the language of listening to the natural world celebrate the Lord. At some point we ourselves realize that our hearts can hear that worship, so we start taking that more literally. “The trees of the field clap their hands…” We aren’t surprised that Balaam’s ass spoke, because people in Balaam’s culture also believed in a sensory heart. They took such things for granted, even if they were all pagan idolaters. And how do you think Job, or dozens of prophets, heard from Jehovah? Typically it was through the sensory heart of conviction. Most Christians today have no clue what a “vision” is in biblical terms, and can’t discern the difference between normal dreams and a word from God, because they aren’t used to sensing when something comes from the heart versus the mind or sentiment.

By now, this review has hit the high points on everything that makes us so completely different from the mainstream of organized Christian religion. If we make much noise about this stuff, we can be sure only a very few will respond. And how were you led to Radix Fidem? I found the path by small degrees, a step at a time. God blessed me with some kind of talent for putting it in words that speak to a few folks.

To be honest, I think we would be really uncomfortable if there were a rush of folks who thought Radix Fidem was somehow fashionable, lots of folks who had neither faith nor heart-leading. How quickly would that presence corrupt everything we have? How long would it take for some huckster to hijack every term we use? We need to be careful to build a community that resists such a thing by its very nature, lest we end up as corrupt as some churches.

Pagans won’t join us without a miracle touch from the Father, but the same could be said of church folks. It would take a major shock to break them loose from their cherished orthodoxies. That day likely to come, but only God knows if any of them would then turn to Radix Fidem. I suppose it would help if we had some publicity, but that can be dicey, too. It’s too easy right now to get the wrong kind of attention. I suppose if some high profile person joined us and actually embraced a heart-led path of faith, we might make some progress on the publicity front. The Lord may yet draw someone to join us with a talent for publicity, but it’s in His hands, not mine.

If we accept that God is our Chief Publicist, then what’s left for us is to play along with God’s work like loving children. We do our best to mimic the things He shows us we should do. And if the moment is right, we proudly announce that He is our Father. We stand ready to answer questions about it, and maybe correct false impressions. That’s the Great Commission. That’s the path I’m pondering every day. What’s the next step along that path?

And I’m done. You can ask questions if you like.

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Pondering the Path 03

Posted on May 3, 2020 by ehurst

Scripture promotes one particular image of Christians, still in their fallen fleshly form, as children in the household of God. As any good father, He encourages us to hang around Him when He works. We can scarcely understand much of what He does, but He grants us the privilege of having a child’s part in that work. We are along for the ride, and our presence often hinders and slows the work, but it seems important to Him to include us when we can behave ourselves and observe His guidelines. We get to be there and delight in helping Him do things He could do better without us.

God reveals to us that His primary work now is redemption. A critical element in redemption is vindicating everything He has revealed so far. His revelation says that, in the Garden, we chose to reject His revelation in favor of our own reasoning. We made ourselves our own gods, by elevating our reason to His place. We pretend that reason is Him. The problem is that reason is a chimera; it is not the pure and objective wisdom it claims to be. It is actually motivated entirely by our own internal lusts, so whatever path of logic it takes still brings us to the same sating of lusts that we would pursue without bothering with reason. It’s just that reason provokes a false sense of communion with others who reject revelation. The result is a common agreement to reject revelation, regardless of how the resulting competing “reasonable” agendas create chaos. Reason lies; it cannot possibly discern the fullness of reality. God’s work of redemption is to restore His own place on the throne of the soul, because He is the sole source of reality.

When His children begin to mature, hanging out in His workshop with Him, they realize just how little they can actually do. He alone can breathe life into a dead human spirit. There is nothing anyone else can do. He is not some slot machine waiting for someone to push the right buttons in order to give that gift of life. The whole operation is entirely on His terms, at His discretion. We cannot possibly understand what’s behind it.

That’s because the whole thing is inherently personal. Indeed, if there is one key to understanding God and His Creation, it is that we would invest a living personality into everything in the universe, at all levels. Reality itself must be viewed as a person, sentient and willful. Jesus rebuked the storm, as if it were a being who must obey Him personally. The mental habit of personifying everything is built into the human soul by God, so it takes an act of willful rejection to remove that from our understanding of the universe. Creation is not passive and lifeless; reality is not objective and malleable to human will. You cannot reduce life to biochemistry; there is a vital life force in all matter, and you must account for it to have any hope of understanding things. Ultimate truth is not a thing, but a Person.

This is a critical aspect of Hebrew epistemology.

And that epistemology goes on to say that only through your heart can you communicate with God and His Creation. Not the heart of Western mythology, which is the seat of mere sentiment. In the Bible, your heart is a separate faculty, the seat of commitment and faith. It’s the repository of conviction; the divine imperatives written in your DNA by the finger of God Himself.

Even modern science recognizes that the human physical heart is a sensory organ. The instruments can detect heart-specific electromagnetic activity between ten and fifteen feet out, but it appears that the heart itself can interact with other entities from farther, like a field that weakens but never quite dissipates out to infinity. This symbolizes how the “heart” is usually considered in Scripture. It’s the one part of your human nature where God speaks; He does not address Himself to the fallen human intellect. He requires that we force our minds to kneel to our hearts, from whence He reigns in our lives.

So we can talk to the animals, and trees and birds and rocks, just as Jesus spoke to storms, just like His Father spoke Creation into existence. But they aren’t likely to answer with a voice our human ears can recognize. They respond to us on the wavelength of the heart.

There’s something important to note about God speaking Creation into existence: It wasn’t the power of words. Jesus laid that to rest when he healed the paralytic let down through the roof. He noted to the Pharisees present that anyone can say, “Your sins are forgiven.” The words don’t mean much. And a lot of people have tried to say, “rise up and walk” to no effect. But Jesus used the ritual pronunciation of those words as a focal point for the recipient’s faith, and so that the other people there could witness the moral authority in action.

It’s not that rituals and words have no meaning, but that they have no power of their own. Ritual is an expression of our own need to focus the moral power God invests in His children. We speak to nature audibly and it responds to our hearts. That’s the way God made things. It doesn’t have to make sense to us; it makes sense to Him. This is the work of our God. Ritual and protocol have a critical place in our fallen lives as a part of the path of love and obedience.

Oh, but there’s more.

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Law of Moses — Deuteronomy 30:11-20

Posted on May 2, 2020 by ehurst

The basic concept is not so hard to grasp. God made us for better things, but we are fallen. The human race, consistent with its nature, chose to follow human reason instead of revelation. The only recovery from that fall is to restore the primacy of revelation. Revelation lays out a path of return to Eden; the path ends when the fleshly body is finally dead. So that path requires from the first step embracing self-death as the final destination.

The first generation outside the Garden of Eden knew how to get back inside. They understood the necessity of self-death. As generations passed and human numbers proliferated, the distance back to Eden increased. There were more and more variations on how to take other paths that led nowhere. At some point, precious few humans could find the way, so God came up with a plan to make it more obvious once again. He extended a call to Abraham and made some promises about restoring that clear path. That promise led to this moment when Israel camped on the east bank of the Jordan River, about to cross over and conquer the Promised Land.

All the way through the Exodus, as noted in previous chapters here, the people kept acting like the revelation was too demanding. It required changes from a people notorious for fighting all change, a people who frequently drifted back from any progress they had made. Yet nothing God commanded was so radically different from what any human ruler would have demanded, and a whole lot more generous than human ruler could have offered.

Moses proposes a very reasonable question: Just how hard is it to give your loyalty to someone who brought you out of slavery? How hard is it to serve someone who wants to make you the greatest nation on the earth?

So the focal passage begins with Moses noting that the covenant provisions are in writing, plain as day for anyone to read. It had been quoted to them enough times that they should have memorized it by now. No other deity had ever done this for any nation in human history, though a good many human rulers had done something like this. This divine revelation wasn’t murky and difficult to understand. It didn’t require entering some trance state where the spirit left the body and risked dying to glimpse it. The nation wasn’t required to travel across the sea in some brave quest (the Hebrews had not a single sailor at this point, so sea travel was by the far the most feared and poorly understood). Those kinds of action were common in the Ancient Near Eastern mythology as the ways people might gain access to divine revelation.

No, this covenant was in writing right here in their own language, in terms they already understood. They could speak it out loud and they could discern what it required of them. It wasn’t as challenging as they made it out to be. It’s really simple: Do you want to live on the earth long enough to find your way back to Eden? You most certainly do have the capacity to commit to Jehovah as your feudal master, and to treat Him as your new adoptive Father. All you have to do is act like you belong to His family. That was by no means a foreign concept to them.

The rewards were more than words could tell. But if you couldn’t bring yourself to be loyal to Him, then you should expect Him act like any earthly ruler would and remove all those covenant protections and abandon you to your fate outside His covering. Think about how quickly and easily the Israelis provoked hostility from others.

Moses called as witness every spirit being in the heavens, and every sentient soul on earth, and all Creation itself: Here it is folks, right in front of you. Cling to Jehovah as your Lord and Father, and everything you could possibly use will be yours.

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Pondering the Path 02

Posted on May 2, 2020 by ehurst

The name I’ve given this path is Radix Fidem. In case you’ve forgotten, you can check the tab marked “Radix Fidem” near the header image of this blog, or read the longer version in booklet form. It still outlines the path I’m taking.

Where am I going in the first place? I’m following the Great Commission:

And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen. (Matthew 28:16-20 NKJV)

A little context here: The gospel was no longer something for the Covenant Nation alone. When the Temple veil was torn in two, that ended the closed national covenant, and translated it to a global covenant rooted in Heaven. They were to make disciples from the whole of humanity.

The reference to baptism is an ancient Hebrew ritual of cleansing by which someone becomes ceremonially clean and fit to enter the Temple. The whole point of going through the ritual was just that — to be ready to come into the divine Presence. It was a symbolic action that arose from ancient customs used across the entire Ancient Near East (ANE), both with deity worship and in approaching human rulers. Jesus had already made the point with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well that the geographical place didn’t matter; it was a matter of worshiping Him in sincerity, connecting on the level of the Spirit Realm. So the issue of baptism is the same as any other ritual, in that it gives us in our fallen human state a focus that calls us up out of ourselves onto a spiritual plane.

Finally, Jesus told them to teach the whole world to “observe” (Grk: tereo — to protect and guard against loss) all the things Jesus “commanded” (Grk. entellomai — a charge given by a superior). There’s nothing here about “getting folks saved.”

Over in John’s Gospel, Jesus did mention the business of being spiritually born. In a private conversation with Nicodemus, a member of the governing Sanhedrin Council, Jesus answered the elder man’s confusion. On the one hand, the elder had been soaked long in Talmudic teaching. On the other hand, it’s obvious Jesus exercised divine authority, even while deconstructing that Talmudic teaching. To Nicodemus, the Talmud was the Covenant Law, so it was tantamount to Jesus challenging the law of the nation. The poor man was confused how Jehovah could authorize that.

Jesus cut through the debate: Without spiritual birth, one cannot hope to even know God or understand anything about His Kingdom. This would not have puzzled any scholar of ANE mystical lore, of which Hebrew language and philosophy was supposed to be a part. Poor Nicodemus had lost his way. Whether he had received a proper education in ancient Hebrew traditions didn’t matter; he wasn’t using it. He was trusting entirely too much in the Hellenized (Aristotelian) reasoning approach that had been applied to Hebrew Scriptures, resulting in the legalistic Talmud. His comment about being born yet again when old showed he had lost touch with the mystical epistemology of his forefathers. Judaism wasn’t Old Testament religion. Some rabbis surely knew the ancient Hebrew ways, but the arrogance of rationalism disparaged the ancient Hebrew mysticism.

Jesus chided him about that. He explained as a reminder to Nicodemus that there were two realms of existence, one worldly and literal, the other spiritual and parabolic. Again, that would have been natural to someone with a proper ANE education, and it’s how God revealed we should understand things. In the back and forth that followed, it was Jesus’ turn to marvel — that someone appointed to the Sanhedrin Council could have lived so long without such an awareness. How could Nicodemus hope to teach the Covenant to others if he lacked the fundamental consciousness on which the whole Hebrew culture was based? The very definition of being Israeli was a mystical covenant with a transcendent being. Judaism made a false deity of human legalistic reasoning.

The conversation, at least as John records it, transitions to a declaration of why God sent His Son as the Messiah. I would insist it’s a lazy translation into English to express John’s simple Greek grammar in verse 16 as “believe in Him” when the phrase should be “commit to Him” in the sense of one who submits to a feudal master as a servant. It’s not enough to give assent, as the word “believe” implies. It’s a whole commitment of the self on the grounds that one has been delivered from slavery — “saved” (Grk: sozo verse 17).

We do not “get folks saved.”

We do live an eternal life, a life characterized by a fiery passion for making our transcendent Lord look as glorious as He actually is. We seek to provoke an awareness of the heavenly realm. Everything Jesus taught was under the Covenant of Moses. It was already inherent in the published records that manifested God’s divine moral character. But Israel had forfeited her national identity, had reneged on the terms of her covenant, and the original purpose of this calling on the nation was translated to a covenant of redemption in Christ for all humanity. The fundamental purpose of the Covenant of Moses was always to bring the gospel to the world. Israel was supposed to live as a nation that manifested the ways of God as the path to redemption from the Fall.

We should emphasize the continuity between the law and gospel. When the Apostles disparaged “the law” they were talking about the Talmud and Judaism’s legalism. The Old Testament was the only Scripture the church had for several decades. Surely a written revelation could never deliver you from slavery, but obeying it would awaken the meaning of spiritual birth if you had that second birth. It could allow you to lay claim to the full divine heritage of blessings that came with such a rebirth.

Jesus never said anything about how to obtain spiritual birth. That’s because it was a common understanding across the entire ANE that only a deity could make that happen. Paul goes on to affirm in Romans that no one in their fleshly nature can even desire spiritual birth; it is the death of the fleshly nature. It has to be done to people by the hand of God. It has always been an ineffable mystery how God does this, and why He chooses whom He chooses. The whole thing is a miracle beyond human understanding and certainly beyond human control.

What’s left is to seek ways to awaken the power of that divine miracle in those we encounter. Not that we could ever actually know for sure either way, but we can know when someone else walks in the lifestyle that derives from divine revelation. This is a major shift away from the mainstream, and we should expect a lot of resistance. We should expect to see very few people embrace this path.

And there’s more to come on this.

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