No Original Sin

Posted on December 20, 2025 by ehurst

Re: Paul, Original Sin, and Rabbinic Theology

It’s not as if the Hebrew people were poor, benighted bumpkins who never really understood God, and that somehow only after the church embraced western rationalism did the truth finally come out. If the Hebrew people did not know God, then there is no God and Scripture is just senseless drivel. Jesus was the Son of the Old Testament God; Jesus taught the Old Testament as it was meant to be understood. He warned His people that their leadership had long left behind the revelation of God for a batch of legalistic fables. Legalism is not inherent in the Old Testament.

The biggest mistake western readers make is clinging to their western mental frame of reference to understand the words they read in Scripture. They unconsciously link the concept of “sin” to crime.

The biblical definition of sin is arguing with God. It need not be any kind of confrontation so much as dismissing His testimony when you make certain decisions. The point is that you do not now stand before God condemned by some corpus of legislation and judicial precedent. Rather, you stand before your Father embarrassed at disregarding His will for you. The whole thing is very personal and feudal. You owe Him personally. You must make amends personally, and it’s really up to Him what it takes to recover that relationship.

Thus, in Heiser’s review of Leviticus, he explains that the whole point of the ritual sacrifices was not paying for sin. Rather, it was covering up the sacred space with blood so that your mortality doesn’t contaminate that space. The blood was splattered on the sacred space, not the person making the offering. The blood didn’t cover sin; it wasn’t paying a price. All the other types of sacrifices were designed to meet the minimum protocol for being in God’s Presence. You live as a tributary of the Sovereign, so you bring tribute. It wasn’t buying Him off; it was recognizing that He owned you and everything about you.

You might be family, but it’s a very formal setting in the company of the rest of the family, along with a lot of folks who aren’t family. Jesus didn’t argue with making blood sacrifices to enter the Temple, despite being sinless. He was playing by the rules, observing the protocols because He was in a mortal body.

While there was a lot of goofy speculation among later rabbis, the Pharisees in particular, the earlier material reflected a direct extension of Old Testament thinking. We have to be discerning about Second Temple teachings.

In early Second Temple literature, there is no discussion of Original Sin as a doctrine. Rather, there is simply the recognition that mortal flesh has a tendency to sin. It’s the nature of mortality, not the result of some single event or series of events. If we are born in flesh, then sin is already in us. We were born into a fleshly form because Adam disagreed with God about the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. That choice made Adam and Eve mortal and it was passed onto all their progeny, including you and me. You need not do anything to get the fleshly nature; you are born condemned. That is, your fleshly nature is condemned to die, sooner or later.

In that sense, sin does not keep you out of Heaven. It keeps you out of the Covenant while you live here on earth. It’s all about the Covenant. We say the Covenant is “Law” but not in the modern western sense. Rather, the Covenant is Law in the sense of it being the manifest will of your Father. Under Moses, the Law was not just a burdensome body of obligations. It was a collection of precepts that gave shape to the Father’s character. He expected people to make mistakes in their fleshly form. He also expected people to appear before Him in His sacred space and seek to restore peace with Him after embarrassing Him.

Your sinful nature is simply a feature of your mortality. You don’t start out innocent and become a sinner (Romans 5). That kind of thinking comes from the pagan background of Western Civilization. Your fleshly nature is doomed, so the only question is whether you also have a divine nature. If you are Elect, then your fleshly nature isn’t the real you. If you aren’t Elect, then the flesh is all you have and it’s the real you.

This same concept of sin also stands in the New Testament. If you insist on reading modern western jurisprudence into the Gospels and the Apostles, you will be woefully misled. As stated above, the concept of “sin” should not be equivalent to “crime”. Your fleshly nature belongs to the Devil, so it’s only natural that, once you hear/read the Scripture, your sin nature wants everything God says is wrong (see Romans 7). How does that surprise anyone?

Without being acquainted with divine revelation, your sin nature is not provoked to argue with God. Thus, defilement that keeps you from God’s Presence is not an issue. But once you learn about God and His revelation, you have both an obligation to seek Him and a disability from doing so. You feel defiled because your heart is awakened by moral truth and knows to condemn your fleshly nature. But there’s nothing the flesh can do to escape that torment of guilt. Until you submit to the power of God to escape the dominance of the flesh, you have no hope of seeking peace with Him. The blood of Christ satisfies far better than the whole of the ritual law of Leviticus.

Mortality belongs to the flesh; Romans 5 doesn’t mention guilt but death as the result of Adam’s fall. If your spiritual nature is alive, then you still have to deal with the problems of the flesh, but you realize that any guilt is false, along with everything about the fleshly existence. Once you understand the necessity of living by the spirit and not by the flesh, the guilt no longer holds you back. The spirit must enslave the flesh, however bad a slave it might be. We can denounce our flesh before the Lord and seek peace with Him in our spiritual natures. We are accepted into the Covenant.

Thus, Jesus died on the Cross to bring us into the Covenant, which is now in His name. How did people go to Heaven before the Cross? The same way they do now: Divine Election. Jesus mentioned, at least in theory, someone in the “bosom of Abraham” under the Covenant of Moses – a symbolic reference of being invited to dine in God’s Presence in Heaven. Just about everything He and His followers said about Heaven was almost totally a matter of parables and symbols. What holds us together under His Kingdom is our spiritual identity.

If you can accept the definition of “sin” as disagreeing with God, then it should be obvious that sin is the flesh choosing the Devil – the original source of arguing with God – over your Father. It’s a partisan move, straying into the feudal domain of the Enemy. Coming back – repentance – means forsaking anything you might have gained from such betrayal and going through the protocols of restoring peace with the Father. The idea that sin is like a crime, wherein you stand condemned before some code of law, is from the Devil. It’s designed to alienate you from God, keeping the focus on your flesh. As long as you wallow in that false sense of guilt, you cannot come before God as His child.

There is no Original Sin, no “age of accountability” and no innocence to lose. Mortality of the fleshly nature is the problem that only our Risen Lord can overcome.

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Our God Provides

Posted on December 18, 2025 by ehurst

I’m always looking for really good explanations that I can share with others, and today I found one: “America’s Weimar Moment: What DoorDash Culture Says about Economic Decline“. Let me encourage you to read this analysis of culture and economics in America.

Here’s why it matters to us: People without the Covenant promises are at the mercy of every wind of sentiment. They are thermometers, reacting to the situation in predictable ways. Periods of economic decline coupled with social decline will drive people to act in ways that don’t make sense unless you understand despair.

The author traces through the history of western feudalism and how it rested on a rise in rent-seeking behavior. The social system becomes rigid as the wealthy classes lock in shared ownership of all productive resources. In the past, that was ownership of land. Today, it’s more abstract — ownership of financial systems. In the West, financial feudalism locks whole populations into stratified classes. There are rent-seekers and rent-payers, separate by a vast gulf that cannot be crossed.

People who are locked into the rent-paying class have no hope, so their actions betray despair. Why save and invest when you will not be allowed to keep anything? The American myth of rising by hard work is dead. Everything is priced on the basis that you cannot avoid debt. You are not allowed to escape debt. If you try, you’ll be punished.

Every time someone finds a market opportunity, the upper class will use government power to shut it down, or at least will allow the uppers to confiscate it. If you develop a talent the uppers can use, they’ll constrict you in ways to ensure you remain under their control. Part of that control includes favoring cultural expressions that herd people into frivolous consumption. Anything that might actually empower people is crushed by market controls.

It’s not as if Covenant promises don’t work, but that the system denies the Covenant exists. You and I should strive to see how the system works and keep portraying the truth. We cannot afford to slip and slide down into cultural habits the deny the Covenant.

Granted, the system will not allow us to exercise thrift, but the lifestyle definition of “thrift” was always bogus and materialistic in the first place. Rather, I’m pointing to the kind of choices that come from confidence in our God to provide for us. We invest in things we know we can use for God’s glory.

We don’t splash money on poke bowls (I don’t like raw fish, anyway). It’s not a question of whether we see a way out of the system. The way out is not getting wrapped up in this world in the first place. The rent-seekers can’t own us, only some measure of our fleshly existence. We are not trapped in their world; this will all be over soon enough.

Meanwhile, our God is in control. It just so happens, as noted in the linked article on RT, the system is growing rigid at precisely the wrong time, when the whole foundation is in doubt. The reason we never see the fictional dystopian nightmares come to reality is because none of those systems can hold very long. Our current notional credit system assumes political structures that are static; no political system has ever been static for very long.

That’s the bait-n-switch the Devil uses to lure masses of humanity into destruction. Every system of human oppression rests on assumptions that are false. The Euro-centric socialist concept of importing third world workers en masse to keep labor costs low assumes Muslims never try to take over. Anyone with half of a brain cell knows Muslims always try to take over. When they do, everything will be rendered down to the third-world hell-holes they fled to reach Europe. Some of the member states know this; the EU will collapse when they pull out to avoid forced immigration. The current elite EU leadership will be lucky to survive another decade.

If anything, Trump and his friends aren’t working even half as quickly as they need on deportations to prevent the US from fracturing. The tariffs target political, not economic threats. The US economy will suffer shocks in the near future as the spiteful rent-seeking class will run out of room and their virtual assets evaporate. While no one knows exactly where the limits are, debt is not unlimited. Finally, because of how our economy rests wholly on consumer purchases, we risk a currency collapse and the loss of the US dollar’s “reserve currency” status for the world — OR — a halt to inflation that crushes the credit availability for consumers. Either way, consumer spending is already plunging on the margins, and that will spread like cancer into the center. The rent-seeking class is determined to crush consumer wages.

But our God provides for His Covenant people.

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Fuzzy Reality

Posted on December 16, 2025 by ehurst

Apparently this warrants further explanation: Factual accuracy is a peculiar obsession with western culture. It is by no means a biblical emphasis.

It seems I’m often reminding folks that this world is a deception in the first place. Our “reality” is not real. This world does not matter except as a staging ground for human eternity, however many of us make it to eternity. It is utterly impossible for humans to fully perceive all the pertinent facts. Everything is guesswork. All we really have is our experiences and perceptions. That notion that every human experiences events the same way is a lie from Hell.

You should not trust everything you experience, in the sense that your five senses plus reason will give you the whole story. Perception is not trustworthy. Ever hear of the Mandela Effect? There is no such thing as objective facts. The Unseen Realm keeps reaching into our human existence and tweaking things, and very often you would never know. At other times, your memories may be left intact after Eternity has changed something. This is part of our mortal existence.

It’s not as if I’m suggesting that you can make up anything you want when talking to people. The problem is you simply may not be fully aware of all pertinent data, may not remember it clearly, and it simply may have shifted without you realizing it. The best you can do is report your impressions when it comes to that. Honesty is not a question of accuracy but of your intent.

The biblical viewpoint is that you should focus on the moral issues at all times, not the “objective facts”. The Hebrew people did not suffer from the western obsession with this world. The Hellenistic outlook of the West assumes there is no Spirit Realm, no moral truth. It is inherently materialistic, assuming that this world is all there is. If you insist on operating on that standard, then you have denied the Word of God. His Word is personal; it’s a Person. Christ Himself would snicker at the western obsession with “propositional truth” — it’s an oxymoron.

Thus, Jesus warned that there were people in His own nation who had twisted moral truth to the point that giving them an honest answer would provoke violence (“pearls before swine”) because they had no idea what to do with truth. It’s a sort of “tell them what they want to hear” if can’t avoid them. On a less confrontational level, you need to speak to people where you believe they are, in terms they can use. Only those closest to you in shared covenant faith are worthy of genuine blunt honesty. Everyone else gets a provisional answer to help them make decisions. That’s why Jesus didn’t answer Pilate’s queries directly, but gave him something he could work with.

Facts are not on the same level with sacred truth. Stop treating accuracy in data as somehow holy. You may not be able to perceive the data. You probably won’t remember it accurately. It’s unlikely you can convey that data accurately in every setting. Some people in this world are NPCs (non-playing characters) for your mission, and it doesn’t matter a great deal what you tell them. However, the real issue is your faithfulness in compassion, determined to do what you can to represent your Lord by loving His people. Along with all the rest of Creation, even NPCs warrant compassion.

That’s as close as we can get to ultimate truth in human language.

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Moses Died; Christ Lives

Posted on December 15, 2025 by ehurst

We had a good discussion on our weekly conference call with the Kiln of the Soul faith community (we use MS Teams). One of the things that came up yesterday was regarding the Decalogue (Ten Commandments). They are the soul of the Covenant of Moses. Paul taught that we must examine the Covenant of Moses in order to understand what is required of us today in following Christ. At the same time, he said we are not constrained by it.

Jesus corrected the false impressions people had about what Moses actually required. In the process, He pointed out how Moses was limited to its context: that people, that time, that place. So, for example, Jesus said that Moses made divorce and polygamy too easy because Hebrew men were horn dogs. They were generally incapable of what God intended in the first place via faithful monogamy.

In the end, the Covenant of Moses died on the Cross. The mission inherent in the Old Covenant was passed on to a New Covenant that ignores national identity. It’s not Israel the nation, but Israel the mission of divine revelation. The Ten Commandments are not for us as followers of Christ.

Indeed, the Decalogue never applied to Gentiles in the first place. If we need to cite a law code, it’s Noah. It’s not as simple as a point-by-point comparison of Noah versus Moses. Both assumed a tribal lifestyle and there is some obvious overlap. However, Noah is far more generic, and can be applied to the individual without a covenant identity, whereas Moses cannot.

Tribal social structure is one thing; a covenant community is much more than that.

I did a series here discussing the implications of the Ten Commandments for us as Christians (intro, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and conclusion). And we have endless studies in the Seven Noachide Laws and the covenant in general in the archives on this blog. For a quick reference, see this post, where the seven laws are listed.

Notice a couple of things: Lying is not prohibited in Noah. We know that lying is a sin, but the Hebrew concept of lying bears little resemblance to the western legal imagery. A more accurate rendering of “thou shalt not bear false witness” is based on the motive of afflicting your covenant brothers and sisters for no good reason. Simply using words to convey inaccurate data is not the point. Noah doesn’t mention this because it excludes the concept of a covenant community.

Giving false data to people is not inherently wrong. It may be foolish to deceive, but it’s a tactical issue, not a moral one. We’ve discussed before how basic civility requires that you discern whether someone you encounter deserves an honest report. Did you forget “pearls before swine”? How about privacy — “It’s none of your business”? And then there’s diplomacy in which we candy-coat or ignore unpleasant facts to avoid conflict. What does God say you owe the person before you? If they aren’t spiritual family or allies, it might be appropriate to treat them as swine: Give them what it takes to pacify so they don’t attack you.

How about “honor your father and mother”? The Hebrew concept for “honor” here is to “make ponderous” in the sense of important, a big deal. In ancient Israel, that naturally included obedience as part of reverence. However, as you move into adulthood, it would mean acting even better than your parents taught you. Make people believe that your parents “raised you right”.

That’s missing from Noah. That’s because honoring your parents outside of the covenant nation might mean something quite different. For a believer who is forsaking their pagan heritage, you would naturally become disobedient to your parents. It’s no different here in America, where a churchly upbringing might be quite far from a genuine biblical orientation. I can assure you that I have greatly departed from my own father’s ways and reject my mother’s religion. While I don’t dishonor my parents, the concept of “honoring” them simply does not apply because I’m more concerned with honoring Christ.

Churches have abused the Ten Commandments to burden their members in particular, and the world in general, with moral demands that are not actually Christian. We can learn a great deal from Moses, but it simply does not apply to us who walk in Christ.

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Poking God in the Eye

Posted on December 13, 2025 by ehurst

Re: Naked Bible 115: Ezekiel 6; supplementary papers on High Places and Idols

Basic principle: God will get what He wants. He made it painfully obvious from the very start that He would have a human family to represent Him in this world. Whether or not the descendants of Israel will be involved depends on their willingness to embrace faithful adherence to His Covenant. The Covenant of Christ assumes this as the foundation; it need not have been restated at the Last Seder because it was the fundamental law from the beginning of divine revelation back in the Garden of Eden. At the very least it became painfully obvious when God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Even if you feel you are being jerked around, you must remain loyal and act on what He says. It has not changed; His sovereignty is absolute.

The Covenant with the Nation of Israel was conditional for them. There were ample warnings of what would happen if they strayed. Both the blessings and the curses were manifested in OT History. Eventually, they were kicked out of the land and into exile. Once they were there, Ezekiel declared to them why this had to happen. The problem was idolatry; Israel did not stay faithful to Jehovah alone as He very plainly insisted.

The linked podcast turns into a study of two issues that lack clarity for most western Christians: high places and the idolatry that took place at them.

The term typically translated as “high places” (Hebrew: bamot pl. and bama sing.) was a generic term referring to places that had been modified for use in ritual devotion. It wasn’t always pagan. There was a period of time prior to the Monarchy when it was appropriate to seek Jehovah at high places devoted solely to His name. It was during David’s reign that a singular location was selected as the place where Jehovah would “put His name”. This made all those high places obsolete. Thus, a primary activity of any King of Israel/Judah would be to destroy those places regardless who was worshiped there.

Thus, in the OT narrative in the Book of Judges, the Tabernacle was not the sole place to seek Jehovah. From the time of the Patriarchs, those who worshiped Jehovah might put up an altar wherever they lived. Nothing in the narrative condemns this up through the time of David. However, once the Temple was built, it was declared the only location. The problem Ezekiel points to is that even Solomon himself then went back and constructed high places for his wives to worship foreign deities.

Thus, prophets keep prodding the succeeding kings to take down the high places because there was no good reason for any of them. In the end, King Josiah finally obeyed this command, destroying the high places still left over from Solomon’s reign, along with the shrines of Jeroboam.

In passing, Heiser notes that the Hebrew term (qaṭ•ṭə•rîm) is typically translated as “incense altars”. However, it’s more likely referring to the structures built to protect the pagan shrines. He chases down the etymology of the Hebrew word, if you are interested, but most English translations get this wrong.

Equally controversial is the term Ezekiel uses (ḡil•lū•lîm) usually translated as “idols” because of the context, but the etymology is uncertain despite what you might read from the usual layman study sources. Most of those sources guess that there is a Hebrew word (galol “stele”) behind it that no one has found anywhere, to be honest, neither in Hebrew nor any other Semitic language. Some have wondered if it is one of those words where the Hebrews switched up some letters from a shaming word and combined the two to make a propaganda term. For example, the name Ishbaal (“man of Baal”) was changed to Ishboseth (“man of shame”) in the Scripture text to shame the name of Baal. Jewish scholars insist gillulim comes from a combination of words, one of which refers to feces.

Ezekiel is notorious for that kind of blunt, and sometimes even obscene, language.

The big thing about idolatry is not so much that random people here and there go after false gods. Ezekiel and the other prophets specifically condemn what Heiser calls “state-sponsored” idolatry. This is the stuff the kings ignored or even supported. Heiser refers to an article by Jacob Milgrom that I found on Z-Library if you are interested.* The article notes that after the Northern Kingdom was exiled, the prophets became even more insistent about idolatry. The reason is that there was simply no longer any excuse.

Samaria didn’t have the Temple; Judah did, along with the Davidic Dynasty. The big problem is that the population during 700s and 600s BC didn’t find things like worship of Moloch or communication with the dead against the Covenant. They could go to the Temple along with those other things and there was no problem. This was a serious mistake the prophets sought to correct. The leadership of Judah felt that they had God backed into a corner. He couldn’t destroy Jerusalem without damaging His reputation; the Temple and Davidic Dynasty were there.

Ezekiel reminds his audience in Babylonian Exile that the only God ever cared about was loyalty. The people in and around Jerusalem didn’t hide their idolatry because the leadership didn’t make it a priority to squelch it. Thus, during the reign of Manasseh, he completely reverses all the work of Hezekiah. Manasseh didn’t just let stuff go bad; he paid for pagan idolatry shrines to be built and maintained in the Temple courts. What people did in private was bad enough, but not enough by itself to bring God’s wrath. Rather, it was the leadership of the nation that broke everything. Worst of all, they did all of this knowingly, poking God in the eye.

* “The Nature and Extent of Idolatry in Eighth-Seventh Century Judah” by Jacob Milgrom; Hebrew Union College Annual, Vol. 69 (1998), pp. 1-13

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The One Thing They Don’t Have

Posted on December 10, 2025 by ehurst

It has been tough for me; I have no doubt it’s tough for a lot of others.

Perhaps the hardest thing for a believer from a western background is to embrace the primacy of peace with God over everything else mentioned in Scripture. It is the ultimate prize. It’s the one thing you can obtain in this life that you can take with you when you leave this life. Thus, it’s only natural you should realize that if you have nothing else in this life, shalom is more than enough by itself.

This is why we can put up with misfortune and testing. This is how we can watch sinners prosper materially, because we know they are going to Hell. Not with a sneer, but with tears of joy we realize they don’t know what they are missing.

Why did God send the Patriarchs into Egypt? Because the alternative was even worse. Why did He let them endure slavery? It guaranteed they would be dependent on Him alone. It was in their best interest. Why did they endure the harsh testing of slavery? Because it was critical that He should humble Egypt and elevate His chosen nation by His hand alone, not by any deeds they might do. Why did He force them to wander in the Wilderness? Because the generation of the Exodus was too whiny and unable to conquer Palestine. It took a fresh generation to be ready for the battles.

All of the things He did for them by His own hand — they kept rejecting His peace in favor of a bowl of pottage. They took after Esau, who was rejected. Recount the Wilderness Temptations Jesus faced with the Devil. Those were things the people of Israel kept chasing, not peace with God. All the wanted was pampering: bread in the wilderness, miraculous powers to wow everyone, and political rule over the human race. They expected God to exempt them from the consequences of the Fall. They didn’t want peace with God, but demanded He give those worldly symbols as the price of their cooperation. Those things the Devil offered? Biblical scholarship knows them as the False Messianic Expectations.

But because of their rejection of shalom, it is now offered to us on very generous terms. Just submit to Jesus as your feudal master. Granted, that Covenant often does bring some measure of material prosperity, some authority to keep away threats, and a bit of leverage with people outside the Covenant. But the primary focus is not that stuff, but peace with God. That’s the one thing no human agency can give or take away from us.

Don’t resent what others have. Pity them when they don’t have shalom.

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Humiliation Has Its Place

Posted on December 7, 2025 by ehurst

We are encouraged to approach every task with humility and open dependence on God. The Lord gets what He wants and no one has standing to object to His wishes. He doesn’t always tell us His plans because our foreknowledge could provoke us to mess it up. Sometimes, the real mission is to demonstrate how a servant of God handles surprises. If you are humble before Him, you are always in a good position to face failures.

His mission for you is to try; success is in His hands. And you make the attempt based on His calling and commission, not your own wisdom. Some may say you look the fool when it fails, but the real folly is thinking that human success matters. The Bible repeatedly warns against trying to help fools understand. It’s fools who always make the most noise about things that don’t matter.

The human lust for control of outcomes is easily the greatest folly of all. Scripture takes pains to make it clear that human outcomes have no value whatsoever. The only thing that matters is what God wants from any situation. We know that it’s all about His glory; it’s not about us at all. Therefore, the focus is always on procedure and process, not product. That’s the focus of divine revelation for mortal humans. We do things the right way, and let God worry about the results.

We must be careful to stay in the role God appoints for us and never presume to be more.

The other day, I ran across this video featuring John Kiriakou. Over the years since he first appeared on my radar (roughly twenty years ago), I’ve come to trust him for what he has to say about government in general. He was a solid CIA spy who drew the line at something that went very wrong at the agency — torture. In the video, he summarizes what happened, the stand he took, and the price he paid. What he reveals about the CIA is consistent with my experience, though I’m not at liberty to discuss all the particulars. When you consider where he’s coming from, there’s no reason to doubt his testimony.

One of the points Kiriakou raises is that torture never works. He’s referring to its use for interrogation. He’s right about that. There is simply too much clinical evidence that backs his contention.

However, we also know that information may not be the point. Kiriakou notes that a good CIA agent has sociopathic tendencies without being a full sociopath. But he doesn’t connect that with another issue we can sense in the furor over torture: Sometimes torture is used simply for the entertainment of the torturers. What happened at Abu Ghraib had little to do with obtaining information and everything to do with spite and the desire to humiliate. That’s what was so nasty about it.

In the full context of Scripture, that kind of motivation is blatantly Satanic. This is not merely the human lust to control the outcomes of interrogation, but a deeply wicked desire to cause suffering for the sheer pleasure of lording it over someone else.

So, what do we make of King David’s actions in 2 Samuel 8:2? His choices were clear and meaningful to Israelis and the surrounding nations. It was not torture, but grisly executions. It was not meant to make them suffer, but to assert a dominance according to God’s calling and commission. The symbolism of his acts won’t mean much to us. Keep in mind that David’s great-grandmother Ruth came from Moab. We know that Saul insanely persecuted David, who left his parents with Moab’s royal family to protect them. Tradition says the Moabites eventually betrayed David and murdered his parents, so this has a lot to do with David’s actions later. You cannot afford to leave out the full context in seeking to understand David’s actions.

Nothing in Scripture or tradition tags David’s actions as out of line. How else could he convince the surrounding kingdoms, not to mention the surviving Moabites, that Jehovah was superior to their filthy deities? It was not about David’s glory, but Jehovah’s. That’s how it was done in those days. How would we do it these days? I don’t believe we would or should operate that way today under Christ.

How many ordinary Americans would say that some people deserve to be humiliated? That some deserve a slow and painful death for their awful crimes? I’m sure you could get most people to offer a list of what crimes warrant such treatment. But I’m equally sure you won’t get nearly as many people who would approve of torment for the sick pleasure of seeing people suffer. That’s not the kind humiliation we would approve of these days, and it certainly should be illegal. Even those guilty of executing such torment deserve better treatment than that.

The real question is not what they deserve, but what we must do in order to avoid falling off the cliff of moral wickedness. Let’s be clear: The American government is irredeemable. That’s part of Kiriakou’s point in that video. For example, his comments about how the US treats China is correct; it’s rooted in sheer stupidity. Nonetheless, there are things my government could ask me to do that I’m still quite willing to do simply because it’s consistent with my calling and commission. During his training, Kiriakou suggested he would be willing to burgle foreign government offices in pursuit of information that might help the US government understand their policies. I see no problem with that.

But this is not a reflection of sociopathic tendencies; it’s recognizing the difference between my tribe versus an outside tribe. The Bible is all about tribalism as part of God’s requirements for humans in this world. America is my tribe in a very limited sense. The average American has little grasp of God’s priorities and doesn’t care; they read their own priorities back into the Bible. Even when you point out the vast difference between traditional American values versus those revealed in the Bible, using a full load of scholarship to prove it, Americans typically insist on clinging to their false image of God.

America was founded on rejecting God’s priorities. In the drift since then, she has gotten only farther from revelation. Today, our US government commits atrocities and supports Israel committing even worse atrocities. Kiriakou protested the shift in government policy that violates his values, but I won’t bother. Protest and activism are pointless, though denunciation is clearly warranted.

It’s not as if I imagine I have standing to reject America’s social and political system, but that I cannot serve God without making some distinctions. America need not worry about me, but must face the humiliation of God’s wrath — coming soon.

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Uniquely Wrong

Posted on December 6, 2025 by ehurst

I’ve been asked to provide a broader scriptural background for my teaching about Jews. I’ll try to summarize critical parts of the Bible for this.

You may recall the story of King Josiah. He succeeded to the throne after Manasseh’s long paganized reign and the short, paganized reign of his father, Amon. Josiah was just the opposite of those two, having a strong zeal for Jehovah. He ordered repairs to the Temple. During the process, they stumbled across one or more of the Books of Moses, which had not been seen in at least half a century. When it was read before Josiah, he tore his robe in shock and penitence. Unsure if the text was genuine, he commanded a prophet be consulted.

That turned out to be Huldah, a prophetess. She declared (2 Kings 22:14-20) that it was the Word of God, and that the warnings God declared therein were going to fall on Judah. However, Josiah would not see the wrath first hand. Instead, it came after he died in battle.

Babylon was the agent of that wrath. We have the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, among others, fully and eloquently declaring God’s wrath as justified by the sins of the nation. Both prophets lament the hardness of heart amply displayed by the people’s actions, rejecting the warnings.

Fast forward to Stephen in his defense before the Sanhedrin (Acts 7). He recounts the long history of Israel, ignoring the grand privilege of being the one and only Chosen Nation of Jehovah, rescued from the fate of all the other nations turned over to the Divine Council at Babylon. Every step of the way, the people kept fighting God’s plans for them, not least starting at the foot of Mount Sinai with the Golden Calf. Who can comprehend the heartbreak Moses endured with the nation during the exodus?

Stephen briefly refers to the messy path of the Conquest, the rise of the Davidic Dynasty, and how Israel never quite understood that the Temple was purely symbolic. Jeremiah noted that it was the existence of the Temple that made them so arrogant, suggesting they had Jehovah over a barrel, since His house was in Jerusalem. How could He destroy His own home?

Then Stephen lowers the boom: The Sanhedrin were no better than Israel during the worst periods of her history. They kept pushing away the Holy Spirit and rejecting God’s will for their own fleshly desires. Here they were, rejecting His own Son as their promised Messiah. They didn’t even know God anymore. It was like the Sin of Jeroboam again, raising up an image of some false deity more to their liking and calling it “Jehovah”.

In Matthew 11, John the Baptist sent a pair of his disciples to Jesus. His cousin John was in prison by then, knowing he would die soon, and wanted reassurance it would come for the right reason. Had John ministered in vain? By no means; Jesus pointed out how He fulfilled the prophecies about the Messiah. Then, He turned around and praised John to the crowd near Him.

Yet, the Jewish leadership said John had a demon and Jesus was a sinner. Jesus chose a trio of towns near His current residence – Chorazin, Capernaum and Bethsaida. They symbolized the Jewish rejection of Jesus’ answer to the same question John had asked. Had Jesus been sent to the Gentiles first, like Tyre and Sidon, they would have embraced His miracles and repented immediately. Even Sodom would have responded more readily to the gospel message.

In John 8, Jesus warned the Pharisees how wrong they were about everything. They didn’t have a clue about the God who had chosen them. Instead, they had made the Devil their father (verse 44). They had left the Covenant of Moses in the dust long ago, substituting their own fleshly desires in its place. In Revelation 2:8-9 and 3:7-9, John says they were the synagogue of Satan. The religion of Judaism/Talmudism is simply the doctrine of the Pharisees carried forward.

The Covenant of Moses was nailed to the Cross. It was finished. God moved all His operations over to the Kingdom of His Son. Now, Jews must renounce their heritage, same as the Gentiles, in order to enter the Covenant of Christ. Paul insists they have one advantage: It was their home first. If they truly submit to the Messiah, they are welcomed as long-lost family. We cannot justify any bitterness toward them once they enter. By the same token, neither can they justify contempt for us Gentiles who submit to Christ as Lord.

Many Christian scholars have dug through the Talmud. There is a mountain of evidence that Judaism asserts that Gentiles are less than human. Oddly enough, secular/atheistic Jewish people still hold to that one doctrine. As far as they are concerned, the only way a Gentile deserves to live is as a slave of Jews. Their accusations of “anti-Semitism” refer simply to our failure to prostrate ourselves at their feet. Rare is the person of Jewish heritage who is humble enough to hold themselves accountable to the same standards they hold forth for Gentiles.

We will not worship them, but we will welcome them home. Until they humble themselves under Christ’s reign, we will watch and declare their wicked plans for the rest of the world and their spite for Christian faith in particular.

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Not Flying Saucers

Posted on November 29, 2025 by ehurst

Ref: Naked Bible 112: Ezekiel 1 & Ezekiel 1 PDF

I assure you that this really does require the companion PDF from Heiser. This is an academic study on the imagery of the Ancient Near East (ANE) in general and the Hebrews in particular. The supplementary PDF includes images from Mesopotamian archaeology to help the reader understand where Ezekiel’s imagery comes from. This addresses one of Heiser’s hobby horses – Zecharia Sitchen and his ilk. The Hebrew prophets did not describe literally what they saw in visions, as westerners might do; they described their visions in ritual terminology and imagery. As a fan of antiquities (cultural artifacts and symbols found in archaeology), this is a big thing for me, as well.

First, we note that the vision in Ezekiel 1 is the same basic vision as in Chapter 10. The differences have to do with Ezekiel’s visual orientation and some other factors. For example, the list of the figures’ faces who were moving the chariot are in a different order. Each face is always oriented on the same cardinal points of the compass. There are four faces on the figures, and you’ll need to refer to the pictures in the supplement: a human face on the south, a lion on the west, an eagle on the north, and a cherub/bull on the west. In the first vision, Ezekiel is facing north, so the southern face is what he sees first. In the second vision, Ezekiel eventually moves around to the doorway of the Temple (8:16) which is oriented to the east, so he’s facing west and the eastern face of the figures floating above the doorway is what he sees first.

It’s not that hard, folks.

The chapter opens with Ezekiel declaring when his visions began. His remark about the thirtieth year is most likely his own age. Verses 2-3 were added by some editor who explains when that thirtieth year was, which we calculate to be about 593 BC.

The imagery of four faces, human bodies with wings, and bovine legs and hooves were common in Babylon itself, not to mention among the Hebrews, given the description of the Tabernacle furnishings from Moses and from Solomon’s Temple. What Ezekiel sees is the divine courts of God, the Heavenly Temple from which Moses took his design of the Tabernacle. Several significant figures in Scripture were known to have been granted visions of the divine courts in Heaven. This is where the Elohim Council would be seen gathered in God’s Presence. Those who read this prophecy are supposed to understand that. There in Babylon, the same God ruled over all things.

Much the same can be said of the storm imagery in verse 4. There’s nothing new here; Moses met God in stormy clouds on Mount Sinai. It’s a common ritual image for God to be encountered in a storm to steal the thunder of various pagan storm deities. This is not gleaming metal and roaring engines of a flying saucer.

The next section describes the flying throne borne by the cherubim. While images across the ANE vary some, the Bible seems consistent in suggesting that cherubim resembled hybrid human-bulls by default. Refer again to the supplement for pictures that will help to clarify. Those images come from Mesopotamian archaeology, so they were common to both Babylonian and Hebrew rituals. Both Abraham and Jethro carried a Mesopotamian background in their worship of Jehovah.

The description of the Tabernacle has two cherubim on the Mercy Seat and two more on either side of the Ark – four in total. Thus, Ezekiel sees four in his vision. They were envisioned as bodyguards primarily for kings and deities in the ANE. In this case, they also carry the throne of God. However, the throne happens to be in a chariot. You’ll find lots of wheel imagery in the Tabernacle/Temple, in Ezekiel, Daniel, etc. It’s the symbol of mobility, and the wheels Ezekiel saw were capable of swiveling as needed. However, the propulsion was the cherubim.

As Heiser warns, don’t impose a literal meaning to the imagery by suggesting what that might look like to us. Everyone reading this book, Hebrew or Babylonian, would have understood the imagery as the throne of Jehovah. It echoes what Moses and the elders saw on Mount Sinai (Exodus 24). All the symbolism of what they saw of a humanoid figure dressed in a certain way was common across the ANE.

And if that throne imagery happens to include a rainbow, it’s not just decoration. It hearkens back to the Code of Noah, the default law of God for all of humanity (Gentiles, the Nations, etc.). It should also bring to mind the Second Rebellion of the Watchers and the Nephilim being crushed and in prison in the Abyss (AKA, Tartarus, Hades, etc.). God is faithful; He is not a negligent ruler, though His time frame is not like ours. We are obliged to meet Him on His terms. This is the God of Israel who is also the God of all Creation.

And the source of luminescence in this vision of Ezekiel is the same from Genesis to Revelation: God’s own Presence. The only reason the throne glows is because of Him, the source of all light (AKA, truth).

A main point of all this is to remind readers that what seems boring to us in reading a detailed description of this imagery wherever it appears in the Bible is critically important. You want to understand John’s Revelation? It’s all here in Ezekiel, Daniel, Moses, etc. For example, do you recall that Solomon’s Temple had a chariot in it (1 Chronicles 28:11-18; 1 Kings 7:13-36)? That Temple still stood at the time Ezekiel prophesied, so he borrows from all the imagery that Judeans would recognize.

A secondary point is that astrology did have an influence in Hebrew culture and in the Bible. Not the garbage today that claims to be astrology, but the science of the ancients. They did not distinguish astronomy from astrology. For the Hebrews in particular, the only reason for studying the lights in the sky was because God sometimes chose to speak that way. Remember the Magi? We cannot bind God from using such things as astrological observations or the common imagery of the ANE just because we find it superstitious froo-froo. God speaks as He chooses, not as we demand.

The message of Ezekiel to the Jews in Babylonian exile is that Jehovah is still God. They are in a bad situation, but that’s their own fault, not God’s. He’s still on His throne. In due time, He will give them a chance to recover what they lost from His covenant promises. How far they can accomplish that is up to them in their faithfulness.

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Prayer Fatigue

Posted on November 24, 2025 by ehurst

Somehow, I’m pretty sure people in the Ancient Near East (ANE) didn’t suffer from prayer fatigue. The point of difference here is epistemological. That is, it has to do with the differences in basic assumptions about life and reality in general. Those people were used to the idea of supplicating superiors for the necessities of life, based on the assumptions that the supplicant was only serving the superior’s agenda in the first place.

The core failure for us is our deep conditioning in favor of individualism. We have an instinct to wonder how God feels about things in terms of how we feel about them. Does God get bored as easily as we do? Such a question would never occur to someone in the ANE. For the ANE mind, it was all about the protocols of service. How you felt about things didn’t matter. The necessities of existing in a feudal universe trumped everything.

The ANE mind would start from the basic assumption of duty to the Sovereign. What did He say He wanted? “Call on me.” The core issue is the Sovereign’s reputation, the utter necessity of creating an awareness of His greatness (i.e. glory). Surely that simple command comes with a very expanded set of implications. The whole point is confessing and operating on the foundation of our dependence. This is anathema in the West, but was never questioned in the ANE. It simply would never occur to them that life independent of the Sovereign was even possible, and they would point to demonstrations to the contrary.

The only question was the identity of your sovereign.

Does God know what you need? Silly question; of course He does. He designed us and made us. Why does He still require us to call on Him for those things? It’s protocol. For our own sakes, we must renew in our minds our utter dependence on Him. Maybe you don’t need to present a detailed list of requests, but the fundamental truth of our dependence on Him must be emphasized over and over, all day long. No, it won’t hurt to mention the specific items that come to mind, if you can discern that it helps your flesh stay in submission to Him.

There will come those times when certain specifics do take a central place. In the context, it would be quite moving to remind ourselves that the issue of the moment is to trust Him for His promises. The emotions aren’t necessary; they should be a byproduct of faith. It’s all too easy to find examples of people whipping up emotion in the same way they put on the correct uniform for the occasion. I know I don’t worship that way; it strikes me as fakery because of my western background. I can’t change that, but at the same time, I know that ANE cultures would do this to some degree, simply putting on the appropriate expression for the context.

We cannot remake ourselves; only God can do that. This brings us to a final point: Prayer must follow convictions. I cannot make prayer real for you, especially in writing. Maybe if you stood next to me as I prayed aloud, you might catch something very real, but the whole point here is to help you explore things that might not occur to you. Yes, I do have a stage presence; that’s part of my calling. Still, a critical issue here is that you know your calling in Christ.

To pray for others is an act of mercy — even more so if they get to hear you offering prayers on their behalf. It’s powerful; it builds their faith, their sense of dependence. But it’s easy to get lost on the huge number of requests you might be handed. Yes, a lot of people are just playing a “me too” game. It turns out that lifting such people to God results in His glory, not necessarily their wishes coming true. I can’t change social habits with a wave of my hand.

On the one hand, I’ll suggest you keep a prayer list, whether on paper or electronically. On the other hand, your convictions will know when God says you can remove specific items from that list. It has little to do with the physical realities of whether the item has changed. It has everything to do with you obeying the leading of the Spirit in your own heart.

On the one hand, we would consider it rude to refuse a prayer request without having a prophetic word about the issue at hand. Yes, God can tell you right off He isn’t going to entertain intercession on some things. On the other hand, most such issues warrant only a single mention, and I’d suggest you pray about those things right then and there. Wait to see if the Lord brings it back to your mind. Some people have more time in their mission for praying over every little thing, while others get their praying in as they go throughout the day.

My prayer life is largely organic. Sometimes I feel a call to stop and concentrate on praying. Most of the day, I simply have an internal conversation with God that never stops. I sense His immediate Presence in a very real sense, as if He were sitting near me, walking by me, or even riding a bike beside me when I’m out training or traveling. I never lose the sense of Him being nearby. I depend on that for a sense of normalcy.

As with all things, the underlying rule is always a matter of conviction. This trumps all reality. This world is a lie; His Presence is the ultimate reality.

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