My Virtual Sowing Strategy

Posted on April 13, 2020 by ehurst

I do have a multigenerational strategic view on some things. My two primary enemies in that sense are globalism and Zionism. They are two feuding sisters, each vying to be the sole harlot riding on the Beast, and each trying hard to enslave the churches. Their goals are almost the same, and their methods tend to be very similar, and they tend to work together whenever it suits them.

Each of them — and yet both of them together — are the biggest threat to the gospel message. They aren’t a threat to faith, but they both hold a concerted long-term strategic goal of silencing the gospel message so that people touched by the Spirit never find their souls. Keep in mind that Satan’s primary goal is not capturing the world; he has as much of that as he ever will. Rather, his primary goal is denying believers their divine heritage of shalom. In ways we cannot hope to understand on our human level, Satan profits from that denial of access.

This is why a major component of my calling is as some sort of information hacker. It’s my mission to keep a clear path for the convictions of the heart to dominate the intellect. I’m struggling to de-fortify the mind from fending off the supremacy of the heart. The single greatest advantage we have is that the mind knows instinctively that it belongs under the heart, so a critical part of what I do is making this obvious, to ensure the mind cannot deny the truth of it. We have to feed our minds, not with the right facts, but by constantly referencing wisdom over knowledge.

We all know wisdom when we see it, but very few of us could define it in useful terms when asked. That’s because wisdom is the link between the mind and the heart, and it rests on your personal divine revelation. In other words, wisdom cannot possibly be the same thing for every person; it is inherently personal and individual in nature. You aren’t supposed to be able to define it except by demonstrating it in word and deed.

Thus, wisdom is the perception and doing of the morally right thing in any given context. It is reversing the Fall, and reasserting the promise of divine revelation. Divine revelation is what God wants us to know about the nature of Creation, or reality, if you will.

And both globalism and Zionism claim to be a better manifestation of divine revelation. Both seek to capture Christian religion, trying to replace the gospel with idolatry. Both hearken back to the Tower of Babel, with a very firm insistence that humanity must be united behind one great moral purpose that is not moral at all. The whole point behind the Tower of Babel narrative is to definitively state that God wants us to live in millions of tiny clusters of individual tribes. Centralization is inherently Satanic.

While we find much truth in the underlying theory behind most conspiracy theories — that human conspiracies do more to explain current reality than almost any other political notion — we do not cling to the idea that the answer is changing the political situation. You cannot defeat the evil sisters of globalism and Zionism by political agitation and war. Granted, God is pleased with the destruction of globalist/Zionist structures, and the death of their practitioners, but those are not primary means of the gospel mission. Reading conspiracy theories is okay, but don’t run with them to action that is guided by fallen reasoning.

The primary tactic is presenting the truth of the gospel in how we live. That’s both action and word. The tendency to distinguish word and action is a part of the broader lie of Satan. God spoke Creation into existence — that should give you a clue as to how action and word are inextricably bound together. We live the gospel as a way or reuniting the truth in our souls.

Because of how the Internet works in God’s plans for His people, our primary expression is the words we send across the Net, but always with a binding connection to how we live. My mission is to sow the seeds of that truth across virtual space. That seed will fall in a lot of places, but it takes root and bears fruit only in the good ground God has prepared for it.

In terms of the immediate tactical context, globalism tends to be a bigger threat by virtue of proximity. In time and space reality, we have a bigger problem with globalists. That doesn’t mean I’ll forget about Zionists, but right now I’ll spend more time attacking globalists in particular, and centralization in general. Because of what I know about Satan’s mission, I have a primary concern with setting free the people of Christ trapped in organizations that refuse to fit His definition of “church.” Those organizations have a knee-jerk reflex to centralize.

If a church cannot operate in a decentralized fashion, particularly now that we have the Internet, then it’s not much of a church. So it’s not hard to grasp how this COVID-19 is going to force churches to correct at least that one mistake, lest they collapse. If we cannot commune together in the virtual sphere to stay connected in the Spirit Realm, there is no basis for being yoked together in the flesh.

Posted in teaching | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on My Virtual Sowing Strategy

Law of Moses — Deuteronomy 8

Posted on April 11, 2020 by ehurst

We continue with the passionate warning Moses gave to Israel about keeping the mighty works of Jehovah in their minds. They couldn’t see Him, but they had seen all the ways His sovereign mercy brought them out of slavery and made them a great conquering nation.

If nothing else, Moses reminds them that to this very day, roughly forty years after the departure from Egypt, they had been living off manna. This remains one of the oddest, most inexplicable miracles in the Old Testament. It provided sufficient nutrition to replace everything they could have eaten back in Egypt. It was their only food, and fed them alone in a place where food was scarce for individuals, let alone a whole nation. Nothing we have seen since that time comes even close.

Moses reminds them that it was meant to put them in the proper frame of mind to serve their God. He was testing whether He could get them to trust and obey Him as they would be expected to serve any human ruler, even though His demands were often far less stringent than was typical of kings. There were really very few things completely new to them.

Some desert sheikhs used the language of adoption of a people by covenant, but no one had ever heard of a deity doing such a thing. So they were His family, and the only way to make sense of this chapter is to play along with the image of a sheikh adopting adult children as heirs. There would be playful declarations of talking to them like children.

Thus, He sent them to bed without supper once in awhile so they would recognize who was in charge. What mattered is they imprinted on obeying Him like children would a natural father. Food going in their mouths was never the issue, but what came out of His mouth. We note that in the Hebrew text, there is no “word” here, but a much broader insistence that everything that comes out of His mouth should be of interest to them. There would have been dozens of wordless expressions and mouth noises that had meaning, and it was important that they learn to take subtle cues, instead of legalistically demanding clear statements at every turn. This higher demand prevents them falling back on juvenile semantic games of “gotcha.”

He saw to their every need, so that during the 40 years of the slave generation dying off in the wilderness, nobody had any real problems. They didn’t even get blisters and their clothing never wore thin. Just as a father disciplines his children, so the Lord tested His nation. They should act like loving children of their Father. We forget how close and reverent children were to fathers in that time and place, wholly unlike the smart-mouthed brats of our day.

So when He brings them into a plentiful land, they should naturally be quick to remark what a wonderful God they served. What a joy it is to be the Chosen of Jehovah! Don’t let obedience slip away, like something you dropped somewhere in your life and quit thinking about where it was. Don’t stand up proud like kids pretending to be something really special, the ruler of all they survey and a terror to the rest of humanity. Know when to stop pretending and bow before the God who gave you all of this.

It is God who grants shalom, who puts it in reach so that genuine effort actually yields something of value. He is the God who makes sure everything turns out right, even when you muck it all up. God keeps His promises under the Covenant; don’t you forget your end of it. If He can crush the nations who opposed His will for you to conquer them, He can just as easily disperse you across the whole world.

Posted in bible | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Make It Your Own

Posted on April 10, 2020 by ehurst

I’m not going to cite a bunch of footnotes, but long time readers will recognize some of what I reference here.

God has never promised to warn us about everything He’s doing. He did promise we could always know enough to be faithful and harvest His promises in any context. He said there would always be prophets to help His people get a grip on that awareness.

The gift of prophecy is primarily a gift to the community of faith. It’s God’s choice to use specific people for this mission. A word of prophecy can provoke faith in those who previously exercised none, but most of the time prophecy is for the ears of those who are already listening. It was never meant to be consumed privately, though sometimes it is heard only in retrospect, where the prophet points to the record of what the Lord showed him before it happened. The point is to teach people to listen in the first place, not to magnify the prophet.

The reputation of the prophet does matter, but only because the whole point is fidelity to the message from Heaven. Anyone can speak for God at any time; the burden is on the hearers to recognize the voice of God in their hearts. There are prophets called for a specific message, and there are prophets called for specific periods, and there are prophets called for life. There is also the gift of prophetic insight, not in the sense of specific messages from God, but in the sense of an ongoing stream of awareness shared with others.

I claim to have that last kind of prophetic gift. Some of the things I’ve proclaimed strike me as a very specific warning from God, but for the most part, it’s the broad pattern of how I see things in the first place. It’s not meant to glorify me, but to allow me to participate in the relentless glory He shines on all the world. A part of my message is that you shouldn’t need me to point out what God demands, but I’m glad to share what I have so that you can enter into that world of moral discernment for yourself. I’m demonstrating what He can do for you, by showing what He’s done for me. Don’t elevate me; treasure the message.

While I reject the legalistic approach Western minds take to such things, I’ve tried hard to be faithful to the message and careful to distinguish between a specific prophetic word and a more general prophetic insight. The difference is in what God wanted me to do with the message, in terms of how I should share it. It has been some 13 or 14 years since I first very specifically warned that the US government had best leave Iran alone. Any outright attack would result in outright failure, just like that episode under President Carter, when our helicopters crashed in the desert. Mine was not a new message, but just a restatement of what should have been obvious. That mess in the Iranian desert was not a fluke; the participants were under the authority of demons, an authority granted by the evil choices of their leaders. It makes no sense to me in terms of what I know as a human, but it does sound to my heart like the way God does things. I stand by that prophetic warning still.

There are some other things I wrote that were more general in nature. I knew we were headed for tribulation. I suspected it would be something political, resulting in economic disruption, but I never could see the triggering mechanism God would use. Our problem is not a virus plague, but the government’s reaction to it. I said more than once that it would be a surprise, something unexpected. Just before the start of this calendar year, I remember a firm warning that this year would be the most visible first manifestation of that tribulation. I was frankly hesitant to post that because I know what kind of fool I’ve been in the past, and how I got things so very wrong. But it was like the fire in my bones that I had to offer that message in one way or another.

So I stand in awe at how God has been faithful and merciful to my readers in prompting me to write about the work He has been doing, and warning about His wrath. And even more awesome is how those things have turned out to be accurate. Not with any sharp precision, but if you accepted my choice of words with a grain of salt, you should have been able to see that my predictions have been generally consistent with God’s current activity among us. Not to toot my own horn, but I want to point out that at least some of you could also see these things coming if you would exercise your spiritual gifts.

We are in an economic collapse, one that is limited in depth. We won’t starve, but lots of luxuries have already disappeared. There is already a good bit of rumbling about rebellion against a centrally controlled and oppressive government. I still say there will be bloodshed arising from that, but we haven’t gotten much yet — I’d love to be wrong about that. I said mainstream churches would face an exodus, but I had no idea it would be mass closures over a panic like this. This action is still unfinished, because it should have something to do with the State of Israel, which has yet to shock the world with something unconscionable. I’m utterly certain she will do that, but I have no idea what or when it will be. It could be a series of things.

I’m still certain the US will break apart, including some open warfare between states and regions, and some against the central government itself. I’m all for decentralization, but I wish it didn’t require violence. Had we some wise officials in the federal government, they would have already planned for a dissolution and would be making it happen in an orderly fashion.

I maintain that Trump missed his chance to keep the US together a little longer. It should have been his successor who would see it shatter, but now it’s more likely on his watch. I can tell you that a mass arrest of the worst criminals in government, Hollywood, etc., will not work. It would require targeted assassinations, and that includes a lot of people you’ve never heard about. It’s not about lefties and progressives, but something much deeper in the globalist idolatry. Trump had the mandate to set that purge in motion, but for whatever reason(s), failed to execute. Instead, he got off track by sucking up to Zionists. It’s the Zionism that will ruin his name. I don’t have a clear picture of how it will happen, but it’s all tied in with a premonition that Israel is very near to destroying herself through unspeakable moral folly. Zionists are exceedingly crafty, but their arrogance is off the scale.

The way I see it, we are about a quarter of the way toward something just short of an apocalypse. It won’t end civilization, as has happened a few times in the past, but it will be messy. You won’t like the future at all, so this is a good time to die. Still, God has plans to keep a few prophetic graybeards around to raise the warning for the future generations. I’m not trying to preserve my writings so much as share a legacy of wanting to hear from God, and maybe something of how we start to hear better.

I’ll be quite content if you forget about me, but if what I have to say now rings a bell in your soul, make this message your own.

Posted in prophecy | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Shadowing a Working God

Posted on April 8, 2020 by ehurst

We don’t deny instrumentality; we deny that it is the only principle at work.

The human intellect is a good servant and dreadful master. It can do a good job as long as it is not in charge; there must be a transcendent guide to set the course. There must be something within us that pulls and pushes from a source that the mind does not understand. We call that the heart, or convictions, depending on the context of discussion. We argue with the prevailing culture that says the heart is merely a repository of sentiment. The boastful pride of intellect is that it believes it can ignore the sentiments, but it never does. It builds from sentiment without giving due credit, and cannot see how it has nothing to work from without sentiment. Sentiment is just a strong affinity for certain parts of our human experience, the very foundation of our human sense of identity. Human reason has no point of reference except experience, so the starting point is to recognize it consciously.

Until we recognize what we are made of, it’s very difficult to move beyond that. The structure of our identity is the reference from which we build our conscious awareness. It is utterly necessary to recognize that our minds are not us, and we are not our minds. We must be able to abstract our true sense of self from the intellect, because the intellect is not entirely reliable; it is incapable of the objectivity it pretends and worships. The mind assumes the mythology of objectivity, as if it could reason its way to some referential structure that is bigger and better than it’s own individual experience. If we allow the mind to lead, it will create a false god, a false transcendence that is actually under its own unconscious control.

For us, the heart is the only faculty within us capable of touching the transcendent. It’s not as if there is no common reference point we can all share, but that it exceeds the capacity of the intellect to find it. Finding it requires recognizing that the conscious self is not restricted to merely what’s in the mind, and certainly not a mere matter of natural appetites. We aren’t forced to honor the false dichotomy of intelligence versus emotions; there is no real separation between those two in the first place. The only real alternative is recognizing a sense of conscious awareness that can stand aside from the mind and choose a higher level.

Because of where we stand historically and culturally, it is a monumental work to touch that higher level. And once we begin feeding from that transcendent level, we are fiercely beset by a whole world trying to pull us back down from it. But it’s not just for our own protection that we learn how to answer that attack. We also have a divine mission to help our attackers by shattering their frame of reference, so that they can also become open to a transcendent path.

It’s part of my divine mission to seek ways of expressing these things so that you have a conscious awareness of what’s at work. A major flaw in common thinking is that instrumentality explains everything. And while many good minds admit we don’t always know what mechanisms are at work, their goal is confined to just discerning the causal mechanism, under the false assumption that there are no other factors at work that we need to worry about. This is why something like evangelism is so messed up. It’s an attempt to bring down the miracles of God into a mere study of mechanisms.

What is behind this command from Christ to go into all the world and share the gospel? During one discussion on predestination, someone once told me, “You make it sound like there is nothing we can do.” In other words: What’s the point of evangelizing if the activity itself does not produce the results we hope to see? At that point, I realized that her whole mental orientation was on the matter of instrumentality, which is actually not at all in Scripture. How does evangelism work? Because if you don’t answer that question properly, you cannot possibly know how to go about the task itself. You might stumble upon a certain measure of effectiveness, but you’ll always be hammering away at the wrong thing, and you’ll never fully enjoy all the blessings that go with it.

The point of evangelism is being obedient. Being obedient means you are involved in what God is doing; you are placing yourself in the center of His will for you. You are engaged where His shalom stands waiting for you. Evangelism isn’t a separate thing from that; it’s a part of the same package. Don’t compartmentalize it. Personal redemption is a divine miracle; it is entirely the hand of the Creator. God is going to do that work, with our without you. If you obey Him, then you are like a little kid who delights in hanging around the Father as He works. He’s glad to teach you as much as He knows you can handle, and lets you in on the joy of getting these things done, but He doesn’t need you to do any of it.

So evangelism is best understood as an effect, a by-product, not a special thing we do. It cannot be separated from the bigger picture of obedience to Biblical Law. Being an “evangelist” is not properly a special vocational calling. Rather, it describes someone whose divine calling puts them in the place of seeing God work at harvest time. God decides who gets to experience whatever part of the process, but He calls all of us to obey Him regardless of the individual differences in His commission to each of us.

Furthermore, harvesting souls is not simply changing people’s minds to decide they want to be born again. Nobody is capable of choosing that, Paul says in Romans 8. Our evangelistic efforts will never breathe God’s breath into a dead soul. What we can do is appeal to the soul that God has already touched. Don’t assume the work of the Spirit registers in time and space according to our awareness. Miracles take place outside of time-space constraints; all we can see are the results in a specific time-space moment. It’s okay to mark the time and place you became consciously aware of the Holy Spirit in your soul, but don’t assume He wasn’t there before that moment. Our “harvest” of souls is simply a question of perception, not the whole reality.

So the whole work of our testimony is to awaken perception for ourselves and others. In essence, we are trying to bump our perception into a better conformity with reality as God created it. We hope the process puts us in place to celebrate with others who seek the same blessings. We don’t “get people saved” — we awaken their conscious awareness to the work God has already done.

It’s pretty hard for a fleshly mind to relinquish the pride of accomplishment. It’s whole nature is to seek a godlike control, to assert a claim to competence in deciding all things relevant to our existence. That’s the very nature of the Fall. Stop trying to get things done; stop trying to seize control of the processes. Rather, seek peace through obedience. Stand where you are supposed to stand and leave the rest to God.

Posted in teaching | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Another Big Step

Posted on April 6, 2020 by ehurst

This is my vision. Share it, steal from it, ignore it or even attack it if that’s how you feel led, but this is the fire in my boiler and it’s full steam ahead for me.

Radix Fidem is fundamentally a virtual covenant community of faith. There will inevitably be localized manifestations, little groups who meet in the flesh, but the underlying nature of this thing is virtual. And during this plague, virtual is all we have. This is a time of training and exploration. How will God work through us to obey His will? How can we exploit this; how can we maximize what God has given us? What is He asking us to do as His children?

Keep this in mind: The inherent nature of Radix Fidem is mystical and otherworldly. We have seen the long history of failure as, even those of good spiritual intention, have utterly failed to change the world. We look at the much vaunted “Christendom” of Western history and see that it never was Christian. While the powers that were did managed to hijack the term “Christian” and give a very unspiritual meaning, that doesn’t change how un-Christlike the results were. And today we are saddled with a whole nation of church-going folks trying to take over the kingdoms of this world.

That is a hellish concept of Christian religion. It is not possible to convert a kingdom of unbelievers. And Christ warned that genuine faith would always be relatively rare, so the notion of a converted nation is flatly anti-Christian. This is a lie the Devil told early and the church leaders bought into it. It’s one of those traps with lures that we should never have desired in the first place.

The Kingdom of Heaven is a kingdom of hearts, not bodies. All those bodies are doomed flesh belonging to the fallen world. When Christ returns, everything fallen humanity has done will be wiped away. That includes all that so-called beautiful art that so many strive to preserve. Enjoy it; let it speak to you, and then let it go. Make some new art that will in turn be destroyed again some day. It’s all ephemeral, and the quicker we get used to thinking that way, the better. It’s not the art, but the artistry and inspiration that comes from God. Nothing we cook up will ever match what God has done in the natural world, and what He continues to do when He changes things. Creation is not a clock wound up and left to run; it’s a living project in God’s hands, a live dramatic presentation.

This is really big, folks. I cannot make it appealing to you; only God can do that. But this is like a moving mountain plowing down everything else in my life that doesn’t belong to the vision. I am intent on building a way of religion and community that exploits the Internet, not an unstable and dying social order. I’m trusting the Lord to touch whomever He wants in on this thing. Nor do I pretend I will steer the whole thing myself. If you get involved, you have a say and I am duty bound to hear it. It’s as much yours as it is mine. That doesn’t mean I abdicate my role as elder, but I believe my track record indicates how I carry that role, and how much I prefer to defer to others who have an interest. I want a share of the blessings God has placed in your life.

Nor is this the next big thing; it’s the same thing I’ve been doing all along. However, I confess that I sense the time is ripe for the next step along that same path. And it feels like a big one. I sense that God is about to reveal something we could not have expected, something that will eclipse a lot of what lies behind us. So if you intend to hang around and watch, I’m giving you a clue that in the near future I’ll be driven to some new efforts. No, I still don’t see it in front of me, but I do know where I have to stand to meet it when it comes.

Here are some things I can suggest: We need talents from God to promote the message in the virtual realm. We need to build a lore of Kingdom living. Given that we cannot, for the time being, build a literal society that demonstrates Biblical Law, we need to build a virtual lore that can in every way possible replicate that. We need stories, real testimonies, fictional works, videos, music, graphics, etc. that can portray the society we would have if it were possible for us all to be in one geographical place. We need a testimony of faith that can be passed across the network, stored and shared via the Internet.

I’m not doing this. I’ll play my part, but this won’t happen if I’m the only one doing the work. I’ll serve to coordinate and keep things on track, if you’ll let me, but I can’t just pull this out of myself. If you want to see a virtual lore of Biblical Law, then start by praying for it. Then listen for when the Lord tells you what your part is.

And if you are going to continue hanging around my blogs, be ready to hear a lot more about this.

(No, this doesn’t mean an end to the mission of Bikepacking in Oklahoma; these things are on two different levels.)

Posted in eldercraft | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Another Big Step

Don’t Blame God

Posted on April 5, 2020 by ehurst

So far as we can tell, one of the earliest theological controversies in New Testament times was the business of God’s sovereignty and our temptation. The real issue was the difference between the ancient Hebrew intellectual traditions versus the Hellenized rationalism of many very scholarly converts.

Jesus’ brother, James, addresses the issue in his letter to the Diaspora Jews who converted to following Christ.

Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him. Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures. (James 1:12-18 NKJV)

What isn’t obvious is some of the background to this controversy. Everything about the Old Testament shouts that God portrays Himself as an eastern potentate, a nomad desert sheikh whose actual authority is imperial. The very label “Lord” itself signals this ancient eastern feudal image. This seemed so obvious to the Old Testament scribes that they seldom bothered to state it. Look at Exodus 15:3, where Jehovah is compared to a warlord, which is the primary title and function of most nomad desert sheikhs. The logic of Hebrew traditions is parable, symbolism based on significant elements of daily existence. Ultimate truths about the Spirit Realm could not possibly be described and delineated; they could only be inferred through symbols.

The Hellenized thinkers were used to concrete linear logic. That is, every intellectual issue had to be resolved in linear steps. It’s the standard “if-then” logic we learned in math and science in school. That’s fine for concrete facts, but God is outside of that realm entirely. He cannot be analyzed by logic.

The ancient Hebrew tradition symbolizes Satan as God’s left-hand servant, the enforcer and jailer. Thus, Satan cannot tempt anyone without permission from God. If God says OK to anything, then the source is God, according to that simplistic logic. Thus, all temptations come from God. Some converted Jews were actually preaching that. The implication is that God’s will is irresistible, so what are we to do?

Another thing missing from the picture is the subtle difference between words in the Greek text translated into English without the subtlety. From our quote above, the first incidence of “temptation” (Greek peirasmos) refers to a trial or testing. However, the second “tempted” (Greek peirazo) refers to trying to trap someone, a slight change in Greek spelling, but quite different in meaning. Let’s see how that works if we use nontraditional wording:

Blessed is the man who endures testing! When he has been proved, he will receive the Crown of Life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him. Let no one say when he faces a trap, “The Lord is trying to trap me.” God cannot be tested by Satan, nor does He try to trap anyone Himself. But each one is trapped when he is drawn out (of safety) by his own fleshly desires and seduced…

Paul reinforces this in 1 Corinthians 10:13 — “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.” (NKJV)

The proper image here is that every wise ruler sets traps out beyond the perimeter of his desert encampment. That’s Satan’s job for God. He baits the traps with lures desirable to fools. If an enemy approaches, he is likely to be caught in these traps. But if one of the Lord’s own people tries to check out the lures, he will be caught in the trap through his own folly. He should know that those lures are not valid, and that his master hasn’t denied him any good thing available, as James puts it. You have to put aside your spiritual armor and sneak out from under God’s protection (“covering”) to get into trouble. As long as you remain at your assigned post, everything’s going to be just fine.

This kind of parabolic language should be obvious to any New Testament Jew. Over time, the Jews lost touch with that legacy as they become more deeply trapped by their own delight in trusting Hellenistic reasoning. Today, most Jews would not recognize such imagery as parable. Sadly, very few Western Christians recognize it, either. If you employ symbolic logic, James’s argument is pretty clear. If you approach it with linear logic, you’ll discard the imagery in search of legal definitions. Worse, Westerners define feudalism as evil, as if God must have been forced to use that because humans had not yet evolved enough in their civilization. No, God commanded feudalism because that’s how we are wired, because that’s how He made us.

You already know where the boundaries are. You can know where God has assigned you to serve. You should know that what attracts fools is never good for you. If God hasn’t put it into your hands, you don’t need it, anyway. Your flesh can get the best of you, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Don’t blame God for the desires of your fallen fleshly nature.

Posted in bible | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Don’t Blame God

Law of Moses — Deuteronomy 7

Posted on April 4, 2020 by ehurst

We are no longer a political nation on this earth, but a spiritual kingdom infiltrating and overlaying the whole world on a higher level. So the lesson here is symbolic of something spiritual and moral in nature. Here we find moral truths in parable.

First, the Lord establishes the meaning of being His Chosen People. We are going to invade a land promised generations ago as the inheritance of His Covenant. That promised land is the symbol of your own life, your earthly existence. It is infested with all sorts of evil inhabitants, and the Lord has called on you to enter that land, to explore it and to conquer it, and more importantly to occupy it. You are to repurpose the land to be a showcase of God’s shalom. You are taking back from evil a life He delivers into your hands; turn it around and make it serve Him.

You cannot make peace with the demons who live in your life. You cannot make agreements to let them stay, regardless of whatever benefits they claim to give you. Whatever they offer is poisonous; it will be your demise. More importantly, it will mean that the land of your life is not delivered at all, but remains captive to the whims of their master, the Devil.

You aren’t stronger than the demons there, and they surely outnumber you. Indeed, you aren’t worth much in human terms, and you wonder what the demons want with you. But the Father has promised to His Son an inheritance of many lives, and yours is one of them. So the Lord will not renege on His promise, but will deliver your life, but you must show no mercy to the demons currently occupying your life. You have been delivered from slavery, and it’s now time for you to stop living like a slave and live like a conqueror. The demons cannot resist your valid claim to the land unless you start fudging and compromising. Be faithful and courageous.

If you remain committed, then all the promises He has made since He first spoke to humanity in Garden will be yours to claim as your birthright. Everything you touch will be blessed; everything you do for His glory will succeed and bear fruit. The blessings of Joseph are still around. Every life you touch will be changed by His glory, and His Kingdom will grow.

Sure, the demons are more powerful than any human, but they are under divine authority. If you walk in that divine authority, they are bound by your obedience. It won’t matter who they are or what powers they possess; your obedience is an eviction notice. You are now the inheritance of Christ, for His use only.

Granted, He won’t drive out those demons all at once. You have to convert the various parts of your life to a divine purpose. That’s a whole lot of work, and it can’t be done quickly. It takes time for you to recognize what He gave you, and then to make it serve His purpose, before you have sufficient resources to take on the next challenge. But fear not; when the time comes, no demon can hold out against your commitment to His Word.

Don’t compromise and don’t hesitate to make drastic changes. Tear down the old idols and don’t even be tempted by the alleged precious materials in them. Those things were built by demons. There is nothing of value to you there. And while you are at it, keep a watch on all the entrances to your soul, so that the demons don’t sneak new idolatries in the back door.

Keep your eyes on the divine calling of God, the single purpose for which you were adopted as His child.

Posted in bible | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Law of Moses — Deuteronomy 7

Marriage: Path through the Shadows

Posted on April 4, 2020 by ehurst

What does God intend for us? Only that we have a desire to please Him. Everything else will take care of itself.

I’m participating in a rather long discussion over at Jack’s blog about why America is such a horrible place for anyone seeking a biblical marriage. At least, that’s what I see in this conversation between a dozen or so people, some with their own blogs. And it could apply in other countries, but God has told me to focus on the US. Jack’s doing a great job of defining the issues and summarizing usefully our progress.

There are lots of people happily married here in the US, in the sense that they believe they have hit the sweet spot. And yet, if you have any experience at all with counseling and pastoral work, even just watching it, you know there is something very deeply wrong with that “sweet spot.” We are reminded of Thoreau’s phrase about lives of “quiet desperation” — we can consciously sense the world is a mess and most people only pretend to cope. We ourselves have found peace and joy in the Lord, but people around us don’t have that deep, abiding sense of peace that God has given us. Sometimes they are able to tell us, but even when they don’t, we can see it leaking around the edges.

It’s the nature of being in that good place with God that we want to share it. We realize that we cannot share our peace directly, and certainly not with those who have themselves too medicated — literally and figuratively — to be aware of just how bad things are in their lives. Delusion is a prison where people keep themselves locked in. We can do very little for those folks. But for those who begin seeking an answer, the biggest problem we run into is finding that common ground, that space that God says we actually share, and how to abstract out the parts that are unique to each individual.

You can get that very, very wrong. That’s why we have denominations with conflicting creeds and practices; everyone seems convinced their personal answer is nearly identical with God’s answer. That’s a particular problem of the Fall, but is deeply aggravated by our Western intellectual assumptions. It should be obvious that a shallow change in behavior won’t solve the problem, but our Western heritage assumes that intellectual reason cannot be wrong, even if everyone comes up with their own very different logical structure. Westerners are incapable of seeing that the problem isn’t bad logic, but the dependence on human reason itself.

And then there are other problems. On and on it goes; we who sense that there is an answer to this problem, and that we simply cannot be silent, are besieged from all sides. Every time we say something, there are a thousand objections we must wade through to help the people in front of us crying for help. How do we push through the barriers, even to help only those few who seek help?

So this ongoing conversation at Jacks’ blog, reflected on this and other blogs, is aimed at answering a need that, so far, hasn’t been answered anywhere that we collectively have found. We sense there is some solid common ground between us, but that we are facing a mountain of weeds and wild predators trying to clear a foundation on which to build. We know that not everything should be scraped away; some of it belongs there. But it feels like we are operating on an alien planet because it’s just so foreign to what we have been through already.

And we can all sense it: Just this one issue of finding a mate and building a solid marriage becomes a symbol of much bigger things. So we keep referring to those bigger things. It seems most of the group knows better than to simply push our own individual solutions as “the” way to go; we’ve had enough of that failure. That’s the whole point: Can we identify something that worked in the Bible without dragging in all the stuff that was unique to the context? And can we translate that into our current context?

Several of us profess to having the great marriages we believe God could grant to everyone, so it’s not entirely theoretical. We recognize that we anomalies in our world, but we are convinced it doesn’t have to be that way. I can’t promise that we as a group will arrive at any conclusion, but I’m finding some of this discussion is worth the time and effort. At the least, it triggers recognitions in my soul and prompts me to put into words some of what this pulls up from my spirit. The depth of divine wisdom in the heart still needs good questions to give it life in the context. So even if I can’t contribute much to a solution this virtual council of elders seeks, I am surely finding a clearer view of my own path.

Do you understand that the symbolic image of Israel, standing immovable in the Lord when she was faithful, has a meaning for us? The New Testament is built on aspiring to that image, but without all the trappings of a political nation bound to this world. Just what degree of penetration, and what kind of penetration of this gospel message should we expect in our world?

I agree with the premise that good solid marriages are a manifestation of that vision, even to the point of being a primary manifestation. I have some interest in the mechanisms of how some of us found a good godly match, and working those out for everyone who seeks it, but not without first having a better vision of the wellspring from which those mechanisms flow. I believe I’ve done some of the work on that vision. I’m not sure I can convince the others; I’m not sure how much of it should apply to them. But it appears there is some agreement as we struggle through the shadows between us. I’m certainly ready to keep trying to shed some light on things.

I need to make note again that, from a prophetic standpoint, I am utterly convinced this is a very bad time for marriage. A great many sweet children of God are trapped in bad marriages, and I sense that we are in a time rather like Paul was addressing when he frankly discouraged marrying for some. I feel it’s safe to say that a good marriage right now is a miracle from God more than a matter of wisdom. Your reaction may be, “That’s easy for you to say — you already have yours.” Yes, and I confess mine was a miracle, still face down before the Lord, humbly grateful for His mercy. I fully realize just how unlikely it is to repeat that in our world today.

Yet, I still maintain that it’s possible to build something where it’s more common, even if it remains a miracle of God. This is a bad time for marriage precisely because all of this is about to change, if we can seize the moment. My convictions insist that a good marriage is part and parcel of the miracle of spiritual birth, though perhaps not with every individual. God appoints celibates, too, as part of the bigger picture, but that should be rare. I’m still struggling with the question of what we must do to claim that divine heritage as part of Biblical Law (AKA, Jesus Christ), but my faith says it’s there somewhere. And whatever we find, we cannot keep it to ourselves.

Update: Perhaps I spoke too soon. Every comment I make provokes trolling responses. Trolling is defined as intellectual dishonesty in answering something with the intention of stirring up dissent and disorder, rather than trying to contribute to a useful discussion. I feel bad for Jack.

Posted in eldercraft | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Faithfully Balancing

Posted on April 2, 2020 by ehurst

I admit to an obsession: I waste a lot of time on Google Earth and similar mapping services to revisit the places I roamed in Europe thirty years ago. I watch videos of people hiking and biking those areas. Right now, I have a particular desire to ride a bike on the Venn Bahn, an old railway converted to a bikeway, running some 125 km between Aachen, Germany and Troisvierges, Luxembourg. What I wouldn’t give to roam the Ardennes again…

My virtual reminiscing is as close as I will ever get.

It has nothing to do with whether I can afford it; a passport and plane tickets aren’t the issue. I’m pretty sure I could work that out sooner or later. Hunkering down until this Coronavirus has run its course isn’t the issue, either. The virus isn’t really doing that much damage, if you take into context general illness and mortality rates. Rather, the damage was already there, and the virus panic has simply stripped away the lies. Our previous “normal” was just a pretense.

This is going to set loose all the fantasies of the plutocrats. Have you noticed how health experts are sounding like the worst fictional tyrants? They are programmed to think like they own us. Once in place, the social and financial controls will never be dismantled. It’s not about our well-being, but their convenience. Those controls might be relaxed, but they’ll always be there, just waiting for some trumped up excuse to reactivate them. Free travel for us little people is gone, gone for a lot longer than the duration of this plague. The middle class lifestyle in America is dead. But you could have seen this coming a long time ago; I’m sure some of you did.

But it won’t work for very long. Once it starts to hurt bad enough, some of the little people will start to fight back. Dystopian visions of competent oppression are a lie the oppressors have told for a long time. It will most certainly fall apart. That’s a part of the prophetic lesson here: God remains in full control of all things. As long as we reject His revelation of how to live in this fallen world, it will steadily go from bad to worse. However, He will not permit anyone to achieve their earthly dreams, and that includes the power elite. The greater the evil in human ambitions, the greater the fall will be when His wrath is stirred.

They will come close again, just like every other time in history. And then it will all be snatched away. In the process we will pass through a time of harsh tribulation. Breaking down tyranny and oppression is a nasty job, and it will call for unimaginable brutality to push back against the provoking unimaginable brutality. This is hard-wired into our fallen existence, so pretending that we can do things peacefully is a lie from Satan.

As always: This is not an apocalypse. It will come close, but it’s something less. It won’t make any difference if the armed resistance and riots start this summer or somewhere down the road; the stage has been set.

As for me — The Lord commanded me to continue preparing for the mission of bikepacking Oklahoma. There is a high probability I won’t be able to do very much of that anytime soon, but the path revealed to me still goes in that direction. I strongly suspect I’ll end up doing a lot of something else, but the only way I’ll be in the right place at the right time is to stay on the current path. Whatever I’ll be doing in Kingdom service still requires that new bike, and the camping gear, and the camera and laptop, etc. Oddly enough, the Lord pressed me hard about that laptop, to make sure it’s ready and that all my files are backed up on removable media, and in the cloud.

Do you recall how Jeremiah warned Judah to accept the new overlords from Babylon? Do that now with the new networked AI controls and surveillance. It’s humanity’s punishment; it’s the only way we’ll get things done from here on out. I don’t know how long we’ll be in exile in Babylon, but God will make it clear when the time comes to leave. Just play along for now; get used to it, but don’t lose touch with the demands of Biblical Law.

May the Lord speak to each of you about how to be faithful and balance things in your own life.

Posted in prophecy | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Mortality Filter

Posted on March 30, 2020 by ehurst

The hardest thing you’ll ever do is rewrite all the mental programming that demands you try to save this life and this world.

Try to process: This world is damned and God will not permit it be saved. He wants the hearts of people, and He wants them to devote their time in this world glorifying His name. That means obeying His revelation, and it’s His revelation that warns us this world is not worth our concern. In other words, results don’t matter in terms that humans can measure them. The only outcome that matters is your sense of peace with God. Yeah, chew on that for a while.

Granted, God’s revelation does tell us how this world works, and how we can live in shalom. The bulk of it actually is within the grasp of fallen humans, but the underlying moral orientation is not. That moral fabric is discernible only in the heart.

Now we know that some parts of that moral fabric are available to those lacking spiritual birth, but the full picture is closed to them. And we know that a vast majority of those spiritually reborn have no clue about the heart-led way. A significant minority of the Spirit-born have some limited clue, simply because that’s how spiritual birth works. But there is also a significant number of folks professing spiritual birth who are only lying to themselves. They have a mere psychological conversion, and exercise virtually no conviction at all. It’s all about the logic of things, of accepting the rational premises of Scripture.

Yet we who are heart-led and Spirit-born know that the Bible is just a physical artifact of something much bigger, deeper and alive. The words are not really the point, but how God uses those words to convey something far more substantial than what the mind can process.

And this is the primary reason we know that this world cannot be fixed. The world cannot receive the underlying truth on that hidden channel. Most people can find no good reason for obeying the Bible; it demands things that are beyond reason. Reason cannot reach into Heaven; reason is part of the mortal flesh.

And that mortality itself is the marker for what really doesn’t matter. The problem is that our mission to reveal the ultimate truth of things requires that we have some awareness of how this mortal life matters so much to mortal souls. We have to understand their dread of death, and that we can do nothing to take that dread away. Indeed, we struggle with overcoming it in ourselves; our flesh rejects dying. Even the bravest noble heroes are hoping to honor the best of this damned existence by how they die. It’s still a focus on this life. What mankind considers noble and brave simply does not matter in the Spirit Realm.

That’s the whole point of God having Moses record the narrative of the Fall. What makes us fallen is our reflex to demand the right to decide for ourselves — on whatever grounds — what is good, right and noble. The answer can never be right if you take the wrong path getting there. It means closing off the convictions of the heart from all consideration. It means shutting out the only part of you that can discern ultimate moral truth. It is an inherent rejection of God’s revelation.

Our fleshly nature militates against reprogramming based on the truth. Flesh refuses to kneel before the Creator. People dying is not a tragedy. People rejecting divine revelation is the real tragedy.

Again: This world is doomed. Every time we hear someone pitching an idea, we need to run it through the filter that removes a care for this life. If there’s anything left after that, then maybe we can give it some of our attention.

Posted in teaching | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Mortality Filter