Points 9 & 10, Draper Lake

Posted on January 1, 2020 by ehurst

Here is a satellite image of today’s adventure. The pale blue numbers mark the points. The pinkish numbers match the following images in numerical order. Noteworthy is that the first image was several miles away from the lake, so it’s not on the map.

The new camera was on duty today, and it appears to have been the right choice. On my ride out to Draper Lake along the Sooner Road corridor, I pass this tributary to Crutcho Creek. Something called my name about a scene to shoot and this is what I ended up with. Crutcho Creek is just about a quarter mile off to my right (east) and this tributary was pushed over to it’s current position to make way for the housing addition to the left.

Today’s target was Points 9 and 10. The former is where all the fanciest recreation facilities were placed. There was nothing to gain by traipsing along the trails to get out here. Once here, I went out on a fishing dock that juts far into the water. This shot is looking back north to Point 8, where I was Monday. The high lake level puts that grass out in the water.

This park area isn’t actually on Point 9, but sits on the western side. At the southern end of this parking area is a trail that runs off into the woods toward the actual point. Most of the way we have this Pampas grass, a type I believe is actually native to this part of Oklahoma. At any rate, I see plenty of it in the wild, and I owe a debt of gratitude to the equestrians riding out here who keep a trail cut through it. It gets awfully thick in places.

About halfway between the parking lot and the actual point is this spot where the shore is accessible. Today we had stiff southerly breezes so the lake had a good chop on it. This little open spot faces almost south, so the waves are clearly whipped up onto the shore. In the far background is the marina on Point 5.

Point 9 proper isn’t actually rocky, but very hard-packed clay. There are two tracks cut into the shore by water run-off. With today’s blustery conditions, the waves were splashing way up high on the shore. I really wanted to stand on the other side of this inlet, but that was pure thorns. Without a cutting tool I would not have gotten out there with my pant-legs intact.

Father around on the eastern side of the point, the shore offers a little more visual appeal. You can see where a small tree was undercut and fell into the lake. There were several more much larger trees behind me, but there way no way to get a good angle on them. The shore here has lots of thorny stuff that makes it hard to crawl around.

Point 9 is part of a very large ridge sticking out into the lake, split out on the end between Points 9 and 10. The shore trail on the way to Point 10 offers much lovelier shoreline with exposed rocks. This was shot with still a half-mile or so to go. You can see Point 9 in the background.

Point 10 itself is a low ridge split by a sandy trench that creates a natural boat ramp, but you could never get a vehicle out here, much less while towing a boat. This was actually pretty dramatic with the wind whipping in off the water and the waves splashing over a rocky bed that was just about water level. I couldn’t capture it with my camera because the water never dropped low enough to make it obvious. That lone Blackjack oak has almost all of its roots exposed by wave action.

After eating my lunch of sardines, I was able to get close to the eastern shore of the point in a couple of places. The rocky underlayer was bare in several places. It appears the lake bottom drops away quickly here, so you can bring a boat up very close to the shore. Where the stone base is lacking farther along the trail, the crews had to place a lot of rip-rap to prevent erosion cutting too deep into the shore line and threatening the trail.

Here the rocks return. The trail runs through the tall grass on this side of the treeline. As I made my way north along the shore back toward the main road, there were places where the horse traffic had churned the sand into soft bogs that made it hard to ride. There were several trees down across the trail. I intervened a couple of times to move things or to reduce the barrier to something more manageable. I even ran into a family with little kids walking the old shore trail. The man commented that it was quite rare to see a cyclist on the trail, but horses and riders were common.

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Time for an Underground Church

Posted on December 31, 2019 by ehurst

In some parts of the world, this is a bad time to belong to an organized Christian church. However, in all parts of the world, this is a bad time to have a gospel message restricted to what takes place within an organized church. It’s always a bad time to have a gospel message cloaked in specific branding with theology and terminology that belongs to an identity that can be targeted, but churches are under attack all over the world right now.

Very few governments are openly hostile to the gospel message, although China is in this case. Even then, it’s probably secondary to a much more practical matter of control. It’s not about the gospel, but the influence churches have over human behavior. Because “the church” in China borrows entirely too much from the culture and social biases of Western churches, it becomes a target for controls that fight those biases. It’s entirely possible to have a biblical worldview and offer very little provocation to just about any government that exists.

The power of the gospel to accomplish God’s glory cannot be confined to a creed or sectarian identity. It doesn’t belong to any human agency any more than God Himself does. The mythology that imagines religious organizations as somehow exempt from human political foibles is an especially serious hindrance to the gospel message. This would be a really good time for Chinese Christians to build a faith and practice that is not tied to something their government can target.

This is a really good time to develop all the habits and expectations of an underground church. That’s not precisely the purpose of Radix Fidem, but it is certainly native to our heart-led way. We aren’t building a sectarian identity, but a method and means of building your own religion that resists the intrusion of government control. Not in the sense of fighting back, but we resist in the sense that we focus on a way of faith that leaves nothing the government can seize and control.

Granted, there is a place for followers of Christ to resist a bad government, but not for any of the reasons commonly asserted. The means and methods should arise from one’s divine calling, not some kind of sectarian identity. We aren’t defending a team as if we compete with human government. The issue is defending the dominion God granted you to keep. Your convictions know how to do that as a means of shining divine glory into a dark world.

Don’t think the tribulations of Chinese Christians can’t happen in the West.

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Point 8, Draper Lake

Posted on December 30, 2019 by ehurst

Today was cool, ranging between 40&#176 and 46&#176 F, with a stiff westerly breeze. I dressed in long-sleeved layers and it worked okay, with just a tad bit of sweating on my back. Today’s destination was Point 8, for which there is a no-wheels policy over the entire point. So I stuck to the paved road to the parking lot. I locked my bike to a sign post and wandered freely on foot.

The pocket camera died halfway through my hiking around (Canon Coolpix S3100), so I switched to my cellphone. This is the same thing that happened to the other pocket camera I had several years ago (similar, S2600 model). The lens must extend in order to work properly, and the gears froze. I could hear it grinding, but it didn’t extend out of the main case. My new camera should arrive Thursday, so until then, I may try to lug the big camera around. I just need to remember it doesn’t shoot well facing the sun.

Point 8 faces south right alongside 7 and 9. There’s a bluff in the center, with a shallower slope off to the west, as this picture shows. Under the bluff is a narrow shelf part of the way, but not much to walk on with the water level so high. On the east side of the point is a narrow extension that juts out into the water, just visible in the background of the second image above. There is no trail out onto this extension, so you have to walk through thick underbrush to get out there.

I made my way out there and shot back toward the main point. The marker sign is just visible in this shot. That was so boaters could tell where they were way back in the old days. You could hunt ducks back then, but there aren’t any visible these days. We still have deer, but I believe hunting is generally forbidden these days. Sometime back a couple of decades, the conservationists got the upper hand in the City Council.

Out on that little shore extension the rock shelf emerges again. This was the only part I could capture with my cellphone. It was fun enough and the place is pretty, but I never got that tingle of natural vibe there. The place has too much human traffic to make much noise that I could hear with my heart.

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How about the Orthodox Church?

Posted on December 29, 2019 by ehurst

One of my regular readers asked me something about the Eastern Orthodox branch of Christian faith. I suppose I’ve already established I’m not too favorable about the Western Catholic branch, nor with much of the Protestantism that derived from it. I have no complaints with how Wikipedia summarizes the differences.

Most of the controversies arising in the early church resulting in the split between East and West was a matter of asking the wrong questions, or restricting the answers in false dichotomies. I grow weary of citing all the names of the debates and who was involved; not because such things don’t matter, but that they may not be pertinent to your faith. Not everyone needs to know Church History in order to serve the Lord.

The primary departure between East and West seems to have started with the dispute over the Trinity. The debate tried too hard to define with precision the nature of Christ and the Father and how they related to each other. The question simmered with outbreaks over various implications of this question, such as whether the Church could require the confession that Mary was “mother of God.” Everyone was wasting time chasing their tails with precise formulaic statements that made all the wrong assumptions. In other words, by the time the two branches of Christian religion got into a fight, they were both far off the path of the ancient Hebrew assumptions that Jesus taught.

This whole thing was kicked off by Emperor Constantine. The man himself was never a Christian. However, he wanted to use the unifying power of Christian religion to rule his empire. He saw how Christians loved each other and assumed it was something that could be formulated in writing and law. So he pressed the church leaders of his day to politically organize the church on Roman terms. That meant casting aside the covenant feudal tribalism of the ancient Hebrew culture, and it meant regulating religious teaching and church organization in ways totally contrary to what Christ taught and what the disciples spread around the Roman Empire.

There’s nothing wrong with answering questions, as long as we deal with the false assumptions behind a great many questions that caused fractures leading up the Constantine’s demands. Most of the big disputes were bogus. For example, the Donatist controversy: What was required for the sacraments to be valid? One side said that the minister must be worthy or a sacrament is invalid. The other side said grace comes from Christ, not men, so all that mattered was whether the minister was duly appointed and ordained. I say both are wrong, because the sacraments don’t matter. We use rituals to bring our conscious minds into focus on God and claiming the peace He offers. The key is whether the participant is reaching out in genuine faith and commitment; the minister is just a servant who is surely filled with his own human failings, just like everyone else.

Or how about the Pelagian controversy? How does faith arise in the human soul? One side said it was wholly a gift from God, but the other side said that meant taking away human accountability. If God commands faith, how can He justly condemn those without it when He might refuse to give it to them? The mistake is in assuming it has to make sense on a human level. The Bible doesn’t answer this question because it’s the wrong question. As Paul says, “Who are you to question God, human?” (Romans 9:20)

The major flaw I see in the Eastern Church is not the answers they came up with so much as the fundamental issue of trying to answer bad questions in the first place. They were just as nit-picky and semantic as the Western Church, but simply had different answers. Both churches have their own take on mysticism, and I’m not impressed with either one, because both are a departure from the Ancient Near Eastern brand of biblical mysticism. Notice that a religion based on Greek language is not going to ignore everything Aristotle taught; Orthodox theology is as Greek as Catholic theology is Latin.

Here’s what really disturbs me: Both are highly regimented, elitist and closed. Both will tell you that they are the true inheritors of Christ’s authority on earth, and that you can’t rightly call yourself a Christian unless you are within their system. You can’t even know what Christ said without asking them. They are convinced God doesn’t really deal with people outside their organization. Today the two hierarchies have papered over most of the big differences, and what remains are a few minor points.

If you try to research the differences between Eastern and Western Churches today you’ll run into a wall of obfuscating terminology, all with fairly precise meanings that each of the two church hierarchies take seriously. Once you begin to understand these terms, you might conclude early on that what I teach does sound somewhat like the Eastern Church, but that I teach without using that fancy terminology. For example, hesychasm will sound quite familiar. However, you should understand that I borrow nothing from them, and there are significant departures once you get past the surface.

Feel free to chase the Orthodox way if you feel called to it, but sooner or later you will have to lose interest in what Radix Fidem is doing, because there is a clear divergence. In order to give proper attention to any existing church structure, you are going to have to step away from what I teach. That’s not meant to hinder your choice, but to point out the unavoidable consequences. We can still fellowship, but my blog is likely to engender distance between us, because we won’t have a shared mission.

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Law of Moses — Exodus 24

Posted on December 28, 2019 by ehurst

This chapter is critical to understand the Covenant and how God held Israel accountable. Keep in mind that the Hebrew language isn’t very good at description, and translations into English vary widely on this chapter. It’s difficult to get an image of what happened here without referring back to movies, and most of them were based on very poor scholarship.

The previous chapters we’ve looked at were one long monologue between God and Moses. He then came back and related all of it to the nation. Try to understand that even if it were only a few thousand bodies, this wasn’t a speech that touched everyone’s ears. Rather, the leadership of each tribe was clustered close enough to hear it, and they related what they heard to their tribes, but we can’t be sure the exact procedure and how long it may have taken. This was supposed to be at least 250,000 military aged men alone, not to mention all their families back among the tents. The whole nation was assembled and arranged in martial order, rather like their version of a military parade. At any rate, Moses wrote all of this down so that folks could copy it and review it later. They all agreed to it verbally, which was then binding on them.

The Lord called up Moses and his immediate ceremonial staff: Aaron as Chief Priest and the two primary senior priests, his elder sons Nadab and Abihu. Also invited were the ranking Seventy Elders Council, composed of men from the various Twelve Tribes. This was rather analogous to an emperor calling a vassal king into His court; this would be a vassal king’s retinue. In the case of the priests, it would brand them with an unmistakable sense of divine Presence and awe to breathe life into their service. For the elders, it was rather like them witnessing things firsthand so they can insure the rest of the nation knows this is not some imaginary vision of a crazy man, nor a smoke and mirrors show.

This tableau wasn’t on a flat plain. The approach to every mountain in that part of the world is hilly, with ridges cut by seasonal water courses (wadi). Early the next morning, Moses would have hiked up on a suitable ridge in easy view of the crowds, and built an altar according to the ancient traditions he already cited. He also erected a stone pillar for each of the tribes. All of this was likely near the same place Moses stood to receive the initial outline of the Covenant. Note in passing that Moses didn’t perform this labor with his own hands; there would have been high ranking men to handle this for him, with him clearly in charge.

Next, he called for younger adult men chosen by each tribe as representatives, and they brought collected offerings. The offerings would have already been in hand among the tribes, but the ritual called for the men to go and appear to solicit these offerings. Mentioned prominently was a number of oxen. The point was the necessary symbolism of the blood drained from their bodies. Half the blood of each animal was splattered on the altar to sanctify it. The other half of each was collected in basins. Again, the priests on hand would have performed the actual work. Moses read the current iteration of the Covenant to the crowd. Once more, they all verbally agreed to it through their leaders. In response, Moses splattered the blood from the basins in wide arcs over the front of the crowd, perhaps walking part way through the rest of the crowd doing the same thing. It’s almost certain he had the help of Aaron and his sons in this, but it was customary in Hebrew writing that you understand that without having to state it pedantically.

After all this ritual observance of confirming the Covenant, Moses gathered the previously mentioned entourage and climbed a ways up the side of the mountain. There, God gave them a vision, a manifestation of His Presence that they would recognize. He sat on a throne with a green colored pavement as His feet. They could see right through this pavement to whatever was underneath. There’s just too much symbolism here to summarize, but what matters most is that they would have been suitably impressed that this was no mere human. This whole scene was burned into their minds, and not only did they not die from being in His holy Presence, but they were allowed to eat a meal symbolizing being at peace with this, their new Emperor.

God commanded Moses to approach more closely so that he could receive in his hands tablets of thin slabs of stone with writing that symbolized the Covenant. Not previously noted was the presence of Joshua, but that’s not unusual in their culture. Joshua held the same place as Moses’ shield bearer; this was his understudy and presumed successor. Every man of importance had at least one younger fellow hanging around as his apprentice, even if they weren’t mentioned in the text. You can bet almost every man in his entourage up on the mountain had one or more attendants, too. In this case, the identity of Joshua is important, as he went right along behind Moses up to the throne of God. Turning back to the elders, Moses told them to wait, as this was going to take a long time. He left instructions on whom they should trust if anything came up: Aaron who could get a word from God, and Hur as a reliable judge. Again, we see a man named who wasn’t previously mentioned. This is normal.

Moses ascended higher (with Joshua in tow) into the cloud covering the top of the mountain. The two men were there fasting for a week before God called to Moses again. God manifested Himself again, this time as a fire consuming the top part of the mountain, and it was visible to the nation below. Just as a minor note, to these ancient people, all glowing was related to fire. They had no other source of light, so everything that was alight was “fire” to them. What you and I might think of it is impossible to guess, but a “consuming fire” indicates flames of some sort with smoke to match. In this case it would probably look like a volcano without the ash raining down or magma flowing down the sides. It was into this cloud of smoke that Moses (and Joshua) climbed even farther up. They stayed up there for “forty days and nights” — a Hebrew expression meaning longer than a month, but not precisely forty.

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Lonely Mission

Posted on December 25, 2019 by ehurst

Merry Christmas!

Think about it: Jesus was alone. Not just on the Cross as our Savior, but as a human being. How many people did He encounter who actually understood what He was doing? His closest friends and relatives among the disciples seldom came even close to truly grasping the ultimate truth He shared. It must have been a tough life in that sense. Yet it was a part of the package of His Father’s commission.

We can understand that now, at least in part. We are just a few, a tiny handful of folks who were called to this heart-led walk in Biblical Law. All around us, literally and virtually, is a world of people who just don’t get it. For some of us, even our families don’t get it. So we have a taste of what it was like for Jesus in His daily existence.

We still have a mission, though, to share as much of this as people will receive.

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Point 7, Draper Lake

Posted on December 23, 2019 by ehurst

The canyon! Today I lugged my big camera out on the trail at Draper Lake. As we shall see, the weak points on this camera showed today. Two other shots of this small sandstone canyon didn’t turn out at all well. Still, this shows at least some of what you might see. The deep water course cuts through the rock formations here and yields cliffs that are at least as high as I am tall.

I was able to ride most of the way. I started down the west side of the point. At this spot, the trail drops down through a rock outcropping, and it happened that this formed a small bowl that held some rain water. It hasn’t rained in days out here, but this pocket was wet and muddy. Most of the route was just damp as I followed the old shore trail along the west side of the point.

This image shows a major flaw in the camera. The lens is not dirty; the camera doesn’t handle sunlight very well. It creates a lot of ghosts and other artifacts that spoil the shot. This was a view from one of the grassy places along the trail, shot across the cove between Points 6 & 7. There is no place to attach any kind of external filter to the lens, so I just have to remember not to point it toward the sun. That means missing a lot of shots. This is actually one of the better ones.

Most of the shore in the area of Point 7 is either a dirt bluff or it slopes down to a swampy area like this. Keep in mind that the water level is at least 3 feet (1m) higher than normal, but it’s almost like this even at low water. Most of the large bedrock shelves are way up out of the water, so this is one of the easiest points to approach in a boat, but then it’s almost impossible to climb out. There is thick vegetation growing right into the water in most places.

Out on the actual point itself, there is this lovely little cove, if you don’t mind the old tire. There is a huge pile of them dumped up higher on the shore. I spotted soda bottles that haven’t been sold since the 1990s. This must have been a very popular point to drive to back in the day, because the Parks and Recreation crews at some point placed massive stones across the parking area to block four-wheeled vehicles.

Right behind the point and the makeshift parking area is a little stone ridge. You can get quite a lovely view of the area. In this shot, we are looking eastward across the lake towards Point 8. That entire point has a no-wheels restriction off the road. I haven’t seen much of it, but I suspect it was badly torn up back when off-road bikes were allowed throughout the park. By the way, the camera wasn’t able to show the perspective, because the shore road should be just visible in the lower foreground, but in this shot it looks all the same because of the grass.

This is all that remains of a memorial that once stood near the start of the trail to the canyon and along the western side of the point. None of my other shots from today’s ride turned out, but I wasn’t going to skip this one. The original memorial is in my image archives on this blog and I’m pulling it up for a repost here for comparison.

Don McEntire’s body was found out here back in March of 2016. That day I was riding around the lake and saw a huge collection of white pickups and some other vehicles at the head of that trail. At the time I had no idea what it was about, but when I went back later I followed all the tracks in the dirt and found this memorial standing in the grass. The story didn’t get a lot of notice in the press. However, through other channels I heard from the family of the man. They had been searching for him some 6 months at the point; there wasn’t much left of him.

The day started out pretty cool, but by the time I got to the trail, I was already sweating. Turned out to be a warm sunny day at around 60°F.

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Don’t Wait for Me

Posted on December 22, 2019 by ehurst

This is a “get to know me better” post. I can’t recall if I’ve shared this in the past, but if nothing else, it tells you where I am today.

When I finally made a break from mainstream church and began doing the house church thing, a short time later I came under the conviction that I was an “arrow in the quiver” — someone being fitted for ministry under conditions that would not arise for a while yet. This was not really news so much as a concrete realization of something that plagued me my whole life.

It was around age 9 when I realized that God owned me and was calling me. It took until age 16 to realize that this sense of calling was fairly specific. To be honest, I got darned little help from those responsible for my spiritual growth in my youth. I’m not blaming them for failing me, but it was a critical element in the calling itself. I was being led through a lifetime of frustration with mainstream Christian religion, because God has a word of judgment against that religious system. In some ways, I am that word.

I jumped through all the hoops for ministry preparation. At every point along that path, I knew in my heart that the system was wrong. Everyone kept telling me that it was my duty to conform to the system. I tried; I succeeded at all the measures, but rarely did anyone take seriously the idea that I was called by God. Those moments were so rare that I can recall them with clarity, but it was always from people who were in no position to help me very much in my struggle with the system.

Over the past two decades I slowly nailed to the cross my sense of personal insult about all of this. Nobody set out to destroy me; there was no particular conscious evil in the system. But the system was wrong and everyone I dealt with was part of that system. At the very least, the system was wrong for me. People could tell I had a zeal for God but they had no use for my mission; they had no experience in such things and made no room for even thinking about it. And I understand that the part of the system that kept rejecting me was the part that belonged to the wider worldly system that rejects the gospel still to this day.

At some point in the past decade I understood enough to tell someone that the reason I wasn’t involved in mainstream ministry was because I was an arrow in the quiver, prepared for a situation that was coming, but had not yet arrived. Several times during those ten years I wrongly believed that the moment had come. Several times I tried to start some work when the fruit was not yet ripe. During those times I attempted to use what I thought God had provided for that mission, but I was mistaken. Some of those attempts are on record on this blog.

Right now I can tell you that the moment has not yet arrived. I’ve gotten more patient about that. My only concern right now is that I’ll be slow to respond when it finally does come time for God to put me into the battle. I know that what He’s saving me for will be a time of chaos and turmoil. That’s upon us, but I know in my heart that it will rise slowly, and we haven’t hit that mark on the invisible flood gauge yet. God won’t show me that gauge until we are there.

Don’t wait for me. Unless you have sensed a specific call to serve alongside me in some way, such that you know in your heart that your ministry is tied to mine — there can’t be very many of you — don’t look for me to be your cue to get on with your calling. I am not the indicator for everyone who claims the Radix Fidem covenant. When you sense that calling, get to work. I’m not some general who must give the signal for the attack. I’m just another servant like the rest of you.

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Law of Moses — Exodus 23:20-33

Posted on December 21, 2019 by ehurst

This passage is steeped in symbolism and cultural significance. It’s very easy to miss what’s important here.

What we have covered here in these few chapters starting with the Ten Commandments is a summary of things they should have already known. This is before Moses climbed up the Mountain of God to spend forty days receiving a much larger body of revelation and clarification of ancient legends. The Covenant will get far more specific later, but this much was already a long standing body of custom and moral guidance.

Before Moses disappears, they are given a glimpse of where they are headed. They are going back to claim the homeland God promises to give them as descendants of Abraham. While the summary up to now were things Abraham would have been able to teach his household, this is something fresh. Here God sketches out for them how this covenant will work for them. This is the first fruits of divine blessings promised to those who are faithful to their divine Sovereign.

He first promises to grant a token of His divine Presence in the form of an angel. The word for angel is not that precise; it refers to a messenger from Heaven. But this messenger is the angel who carries the name of God — literally, the standard bearer, the one whose flag signals the title and authority of the Creator. This standard always stood outside the ruler’s tent, his royal court and his personal household. The primary manifestation of this standard bearer was the pillar of cloud and fire that went before the nation on the march.

The people had already shown the fear of coming too close to God’s divine Presence, so they were ordered to obey this angelic being as they would God’s own voice. His mission was relay communications, not to serve as a priest. Thus, he would offer no tolerance for insubordination. If they disputed anything he said, it would be counted as rebellion. They would then have to come back into the terrifying Presence to make amends.

The nation had already heard during their time back in Egypt who that nations were that lived in the Promised Land. These nations listed here were vassal kingdoms of Egypt. With all that God had done to destroy the Egyptian army and such, we can understand why these vassal kingdoms in Canaan sent so many letters back to Egypt whining about the invading Israelis, and there was no answer. God intended to lead His nation into that land and displace the current residents. Israel was to go in and kick everyone out, or destroy them if they wouldn’t leave, and begin to occupy the land.

God notes that it will be worse than a storm of wasps, as far as the resident nations were concerned. The cleansing would be quite thorough, given that all of these nations were devoted to all kinds of foreign idols. Israel generally wasn’t allowed to simply occupy the existing cities and towns, because they were defiled by that idolatry. Thus, they had to come in, wipe it all out, and start over from scratch. Given the monumental size of the task, God would insure that His people would conquer slowly, little by little. He wanted them to have time to really take full control.

If all the current residents up and left all at once, the cities and agricultural lands would go wild and become infested with dangerous animals. At that time, there were bears, lions, feral dogs like hyenas, not to mention poisonous snakes and a host of biting insects. The unproductive wild plants would fill the agricultural clearings, and the wells would collapse or become filled with dust. Thus, God wants them to prepare for the long haul. Be ready to push out the idolaters little by little. But God warns them to be sure they must do this job without fail. Otherwise, the pagan presence would serve as a compromising temptation. Jehovah would not tolerate any kind of adultery from His bride nation.

If they are faithful, then they could not fail to seize the entire Promised Land. God would become the Enemy of their enemies. Further, they would never run short of sustenance. They would be safe from plagues and threats. There would be no barren wombs and everyone could expect to live to a ripe old age. This is the standard summary of what shalom implies, the signs of peace with God.

This is a parable of how things work when people embrace Biblical Law. We must conquer the battleground of our own souls with righteous commitment. We drive out our demons little by little until we can occupy our lives with God’s glory and His peace.

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Re: Trump’s EO on Antisemitism

Posted on December 17, 2019 by ehurst

This was a dumb move. Not only will it not accomplish the stated or presumed objective, but will only exacerbate the situation. In essence, it declares Jewish identity as a nationality, which immediately points out that if they are Jews, they cannot be Americans or any other nationality. It simply serves to highlight that they are one of many identity groups that reject assimilation, and it means they will remain a threat to the nationalist fervor utterly necessary for any nation to survive.

Christ warned that humans cannot serve two masters. We are hard-wired for feudalism, and we can only commit to the demands of one identity at a time. And clinging to one identity means rejecting any other.

Just about everyone will seek first the advantages of their own identity group. In a recent speech, Sacha Baron Cohen whined about people seeing Jews as threats. Granted, there are plenty of Gentiles who think that way, and the tension is growing, in part because Jews keep trumpeting their advantages, making themselves a target. However, it’s a pointless and false view. The threat is not Jewish people, but Judaism. Judaism as a whole is the Synagogue of Satan, and clinging to that confirms that one willingly serves the Devil’s delusions. It’s a peculiar problem we face in following Christ.

Yes, Jews are going to Hell, but so is most of Gentile humanity going to Hell. That’s a given, the default human destiny. But worse is that an even greater proportion of the human race will never discover the blessings of divine heritage while living in this fallen world. The path of Biblical Law is lost to a great many Heaven-bound folks. We can thank the rise of Western Civilization for a lot of that, but Western epistemology is not the biggest problem. It’s not a clear cut issue that keeps people locked out of genuine faith, but does hinder faith. We do require a firm devotion to Christ to begin moving through that swamp, but a surprising number of people have made some measure of progress despite the serious flaws in Western Christian mythology.

Judaism is responsible for a significant portion of how Western Civilization turned out. Many Jews are quite proud of that. It was made possible by the Judaizing influence that crippled genuine heart-led faith in the early churches. It was a conscious aim of the Judaizers to destroy such faith, to pervert the body of ancient mystical teaching that Christ had resurrected in this world, to bog down Christian teaching in worldly concerns. The Judaizers consciously set out to destroy that teaching, for they neither wanted it for themselves, nor would they allow anyone else to have it. Their history is one sad tale of increasingly hostility to their original mission of spreading divine revelation. But they did conjure up a very perverted version of mysticism for themselves in the Kabbalah. If you examine the history of Talmudic development, you’ll see that the Kabbalah is a critical part of Jewish orthodoxy. They secretly worship using the name “Satan” as their god.

The reason we don’t consider Jews a threat is that most of them aren’t very orthodox. They still suffer the delusion that they are God’s Chosen, when Christ on the Cross proved otherwise. But to our best understanding, the majority of Jewish people aren’t very religious; their sense of superiority is not entirely conscious, but closely resembles the standard human moral delusions. It’s just a relatively small core group of Judaism’s elite that steer the majority, especially in keeping alive that sense of superiority. While they despise their fellow Jews for failing to embrace the elite religious dogma, they hate the rest of humanity far more. To paraphrase a famous quote, the whole of Gentile humanity is not worth a Jewish fingernail, even if said Jew is a secularist.

No, the mass of Jews are not a threat, just a peculiar problem we face among all the other problems we have with a world that rejects God’s revelation. The Jewish identity is the source of this peculiar problem we face. Judaism is Talmudism, and the Talmud arose as Satan’s claim over a sturdy sense of national identity that had already rejected God’s revelation and His divine call. That Zionism is inherently secular never prevented any Dispensationalist Christian from correctly associating the political dream of a Jewish nation in the land of ancient Israel with the biblical narrative. The problem is that Dispensationalists have a badly perverted understanding of what the Bible says about the Covenant of Moses. They don’t understand what the Lord they claim actually had to say about the provisions of that ancient covenant.

It isn’t that God hates Jews, but that Jews hate Him. Judaism is a particularly Satanic lie. Attempts to distinguish the Jewish identity in law is putting one’s hand to Satan’s plow. Like every other temptation of the Devil, this one will not work out well in the long run.

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