Grand-River Images Spring 2019

Posted on April 2, 2019 by ehurst

Today I rode the River Trails-Grand Boulevard Trails loop. This first shot was taken out at Draper Lake, but it was the only one I shot that day. It’s a sand plum tree in blossom, and it smells pretty sweet, but it’s rather faint. There is a related tree that doesn’t bear fruit, but smells just the same, and whole lot stronger. The non-fruiting plum is potent enough to smell sweet a half-mile downwind.

This big flat open space was once the Downtown Airpark; it still shows up in some flight simulators. However, after they put that big Ferris wheel out here a couple of years ago (formerly at Santa Monica Pier), it was only a matter of time before it went from a flat racing venue to a housing site. From where I was standing this looks like a mixture of townhouses and mini-mansions.

This carpet of tiny lavender daisies stood in Woodson Park, which is just off Interstate 44 near SW 29th Street. There were patches like this all over the park. The other thing was a very potent flower smell that I failed to identify until I got all the way across the park to the south. I spotted a poor bedraggled magnolia tree with just a handful of fresh blossoms and it was still a marvelous scent.

When I left it was still in the low 50s F and hit high 60s F before I got home. Winds were WSW.

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Honest Expectations

Posted on April 1, 2019 by ehurst

We know how Creation is wired; we know reality as a close friend and ally. While we do have a lore of this knowledge, it’s not confined to that lore. Rather, the lore is just a record of what heart-led people have experienced with Creation as an expression of divine moral character. Scripture is a big part of that lore; it’s the core of our lore.

And that lore includes a firm understanding that we live in a fallen world. So even if we know the ideals possible for fallen humans, the mere fact they are fallen guarantees we are not hypnotized by visions of Utopia. The very best possible for humans still includes war and pestilence, famine and injustice. That’s the best. We don’t make room for any calculus that aims for genuine peace and prosperity. It’s not possible in this world.

But even that best possible world is not going to happen. Instead, we have a mass of human idolatry that includes visions of Utopia defined in all kinds of ways, and always rejecting God’s revelation. You and I can sense ultimate truth directly via our hearts and can help people see a better way, but there can be no truly good way in our world. So within that shitty reality, the best you and I can hope for as heart-led followers of Christ is to breathe some life into the best possible existence via our tiny congregations of fellow believers.

Don’t seek to build a mission and ministry based on helping the world come to the truth. Don’t get lost in a vision of making things right in this world. Cling to cynicism, because that’s reality. Turn your depression and desperation into the holy cynicism that says it’s supposed to be shitty. That’s reality; that’s the world around you remaining hostile to reality. Get used to it. This is what we have to work with.

So your mission is just a measure of realization of revelation in your own existence internally. Get your heart right; that’s as much as God lets any of us do. Never forget that you can and should see clearly what is good and right and just in God’s eyes, and cling to that for yourself. As a part of that, learn to understand the limits of your dominion in Christ and defend His sovereignty within your domain. That’s a part of “you” that God made. But get it through your hard head that this is a huge goal all by itself. The battle between Heaven and Hell is in your own soul.

Don’t believe the lie from Satan that it’s in the world around you. The natural world isn’t fallen; we are. And there is not a darned thing you can do for anyone else — except show them your own testimony of truth in how you live. That doesn’t mean they’ll see it, and it surely doesn’t mean you can do one single thing to turn their eyes toward the light. There is only the miracle power of God, so don’t get wrapped up in doing it for Him. Just shine and leave it at that. That’s the Great Commission; go wherever God leads you and just be. That’s how we share the gospel.

The prophetic vision that draws me forward isn’t about a world changed, but just a few more folks walking in the light than did yesterday. But I’ll be glad if it’s just one every now and then, because that’s one more soul delivered from darkness, one more soul to share in the light and rejoice with me. Sure, I weep for the billions who could have so much more and just don’t see it. What a waste! But there is nothing — nothing — I can do to help them beyond just being who God made me to be.

I know that God says in His Word and in my soul that there can be a community of folks like that in this world. He says it’s possible to establish a lore of truth in current terms, a lore that could be absorbed into souls so that it continues to live as the current situation drifts along the path only God knows. That’s my task, to build that lore. I fully expect this blog, and my books and the forum and everything else to disappear in the future. Shoot, it could easily happen before I die. But what time and the Devil cannot take away is the Word of Truth living in hearts aflame.

I don’t care about a legacy that humans can remember. I don’t care because I can’t do anything about it. I care about seeing people set free and able to commune and fellowship. That’s something where God says He’ll allow me to be a participant. He has promised to let me see that kind of community. So I keep trying to bring that Flaming Sword to life for you through my personal narrative. At the very least, you should be able to see it as clearly as I do. Even better is you showing me things I can’t see by myself.

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Zionist Ire

Posted on March 31, 2019 by ehurst

I don’t have time to read all that I would like, so I limit myself to stuff that provokes. This morning I was provoked on something: About the only activists who aren’t subverted by Zionism are Jew haters. Even some of the latter are suspect on that point. Indifference to the fate of Israel is simply not possible in the current propaganda climate.

This is part of what is behind my assertion that Israel as a political project is the single biggest problem the world at large has today. That’s because the Zionists want it that way; they demand everyone’s attention and turn every issue into something about their agenda. It’s one huge distraction from a lot of other things that actually do matter to human existence. Zionists insist on being the center of attention; everything is always about them.

So it’s getting harder and harder to find news and analysis that doesn’t suffer from this subversion, this big elephant in the living room. The system is gamed on every level to keep the focus on Zionist aspirations. And they refuse to understand how this attention seeking behavior provokes hostility. It is their divine right to grab all the attention, so failing to keep them in the center is inherently evil in their minds. All the chaos they provoke is fully justified, so any repercussions can only be antisemitism.

Thus, we have jokes like: “An anti-Semite is someone Jews don’t like.”

We distinguish between Jew and Zionist. I generally avoid using the term “Jew” because the Zionists have hijacked it. In the Bible, “Jew” means a Judean, someone under the authority of the Covenant of Moses. It’s a national-religious identity. With Zionists, it’s a race, an ethnic identity, but they allow certain Orthodox rabbis to control the legal process for being recognized as a Jew in the sense of “citizen of Israel.” They keep it confused on purpose, so that the “antisemitism” trope remains a viable political weapon.

So on the one hand we advance the New Testament view of Judaism as the perversion of Old Testament religion. There’s nothing special about that; the majority of those professing Christian religion say the same thing. We go into more detail than most, but there is broad agreement on that issue. We don’t bother to harass Jews about it; we are no more evangelistic than they are.

That’s one thing they get right and mainstream Christians get wrong. We live our faith and make our case when it seems appropriate and leave the rest in God’s hands. We infiltrate everywhere. Indeed, the last thing we want is a bunch of people who could be swayed by the standard evangelistic approach. We want people to join us only because their convictions draw them. God doesn’t work through fleshly persuasion. We take seriously what Jesus said about that narrow path and how few will find it (Mathew 7:13-20).

But Zionists are a different matter. They are worthy of opposition in the sense of verbally exposing their lies. That’s the extent of what we do here. Activism falls into that area of individual calling and mission. It’s not that activism itself is evil, but that it must of necessity be guided by personal conviction, not some imaginary orthodoxy. We don’t encourage BDS, for example, but we don’t discourage it, either. You do what God calls you to do about Zionism, but we will encourage you to see it clearly as evil.

As their influence grows in US government, this is the only significant threat to our message. They will seek to infiltrate everything everywhere, same as we do, but in order to censor any verbal opposition. At no point in history have Zionists been willing to serve their host nation as good citizens. Again, there are plenty of red-blooded American Jews, but Zionists by definition are agents of political disruption. They are the primary manifestation of The Cult, though hardly the only manifestation. An anti-Zionist position will soon be considered anti-American.

But as this threat grows, so will the resistance. The Zionists are the majority in government, not in the American population. There is considerable growth in anti-Zionism on both left and right. On the left it’s because of identity politics of the SJW variety; on the right it’s just plain old nationalism. The left is somewhat identified with communism and globalism, while the right is vehemently pro-Western Civilization. As these two camps suck in large numbers of people, our position outside the polarization will be drowned out. Both sides will suggest we belong to their opposition, while the Zionists on left and right both already consider us evil.

And because the Zionists have infiltrated the US government so thoroughly, we should expect harassment of our blogs and our forum. It’s possible we will escape notice, but I wouldn’t count on that. Their servants, the American Christian Zionists, will eventually start a pogrom against those who don’t bow the knee the Zionism. The point here is encouraging you to invest yourself in knowing and being prepared for your own calling, able to stand on your own in faith. Meanwhile, I’ll strive to clarify my own testimony so you will be provoked to clarify yours.

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Teachings of Jesus — John 5:17-47

Posted on March 30, 2019 by ehurst

The Nation of Israel was not a nation of laws, but of direct divine rule. Neither God nor Moses legislated; the Covenant was not fixed. It was merely the written expression of the Sovereign’s will, a revelation of His divine moral character. The members of the covenant were expected to read it and read between the lines. Thus, when Jesus the Messiah arrives as Son of God, the Law is subject to Him, not vice versa.

This is the logic of Ancient Near Eastern feudal government. It was the Jews who twisted this into something impersonal, pretending it was objective. But prior to Hellenization, any decent Hebrew scholar would have understood that law and covenant meant only what the sovereign ruler said it meant. There was no authority anywhere within his domain higher than the sovereign. In this case, the Creator Himself gave the Covenant, and there was no one in Heaven or on Earth who could hold Him accountable. The sheer arrogance of the Jewish leaders is off the scale.

Further, Jesus flatly said Jehovah was His Father, and He was the Son of God. Like any heir to a throne, no one could question His authority to assert the meaning of the Covenant. It meant whatever He said it meant.

If the Father works on the Sabbath, then clearly the Sabbath Law didn’t apply to either the Father or the Son. And any ruler’s heir is going to take his cue from the one still on the throne. Children learn what they see in their parents. In this case, the relationship between the two is close and loving, so the Father hides nothing from His Son, and the Son faithfully executes what He sees His Father doing.

And this authority extends beyond death, so that dead people can be called back to life. The Son has the power of life itself in His own hands. With His Son now walking the earth, the Father has no reason at all to stay His Son’s hand in giving life. Healing that man who had been waiting at the Pool of Bethesda was simply restoring life as God had intended for that man. The implication was that the Jewish leaders had created a situation where the man had suffered a touch of death. If they were claiming the authority of death, why did they not have the power to raise that man to full health on any day of the week for the years before Jesus came along on that Sabbath?

The Father intended that the Son be honored the same as Himself. That’s natural enough with any father and son, but more so with rulers. So anyone who embraces the teaching of the Son has that touch of Life that is rooted in Eternity. Soon enough it won’t be just Israelis, but anyone on earth who embraces the Son will receive that same Eternal Life. The Son has full authority like any co-regent; there’s no mystery here. And if we push things off long enough, the Son will one day call everyone from the grave to face the Final Judgment. Meanwhile, the Son does nothing except what the Father has ordered, so these Jewish leaders were arguing with the God they proclaimed.

If Jesus had made all this noise without any proof, then it should be obvious He was lying. But there is another witness involved here, and He never lies. Now the Sanhedrin did send officials to John the Baptist, and he told the truth about the Messiah coming. He also testified that Jesus was the Lamb of God. Now if John’s word alone was all Jesus had, it would still have been pretty persuasive, but that’s not why Jesus went to be baptized of John. Rather, it was the reverse: Jesus was testifying to John’s ministry as a far higher authority than John. John didn’t do the miracles Jesus did. Jesus came to fulfill His co-regency prior to being fully vested as heir. Everyone knows how that works.

So the Father Himself offers supporting testimony in the form of miraculous powers. The Sanhedrin never saw the Father’s form, nor heard His voice, but they saw the miracles they certainly couldn’t do. So clearly they really don’t know who God is, nor what He requires. They don’t have a clue about God. If they had bothered to search the Scriptures, they would be forced to admit Jesus fulfilled all of them, too. But their hearts were closed, so they were unable to discern accurately what to expect, and rejected the Son. It was tantamount to rejecting the Father, the God on whose behalf they were now telling lies.

They never understood God’s heart. Wasn’t it funny how, Jesus coming in the power and authority of God was rejected, but they seemed to have no trouble welcoming all kinds of men who asserted their own authority? They trusted self-proclaimed authorities who had nothing more than their own fallen reason and logic to rely on. How could they hope to understand divine revelation when all they had was the echo chamber approval of their own kind, and never sought the favor and power of God?

There was no reason for Jesus to bring charges against them before the Father. They claimed Moses, and it was Moses who accused them. They kept reinterpreting Moses to the point what he wrote was twisted and perverted far, far away from the purpose of God. Moses was now a foreigner to them, so there’s no surprise they rejected the testimony of Moses about the Messiah. They were looking for an excuse to disregard Moses, the servant of God, so there’s no way they would accept the Son of God.

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Short and Sweet

Posted on March 30, 2019 by ehurst

It’s not about making coverts; that is something God alone controls. Rather, we live shalom so that no human has any excuse when they stand before God without Christ.

This is our goal: We demonstrate the revelation of a merciful Creator so that no one can deny knowing redemption was available. Our mission is only to make it visible. That includes receiving into shalom fellowship those who embrace His mercy. People convert themselves.

This is why we say that we live in this fallen world only to shine His glory. There is no other purpose for putting up with the Curse of the Fall.

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The Identity of Escape

Posted on March 29, 2019 by ehurst

We live under the Curse of the Fall. For all our efforts, there is absolutely nothing we can do from here to get out, except to die. Meanwhile, we live with the misery of having no purpose, and most people have to grow up and get somewhat older just to figure out that much, so that something like suicide becomes attractive. People in despair are close to the truth.

Those who come up with all kinds of false dreams of changing the world are the farthest from the truth. Yet people who think they have something to live for will strive against the despair and keep trying one way or another to extract some kind of victory. But it’s all an illusion, because anything they gain will be forgotten all too soon.

While people in despair are closer to the truth, they still lack one thing, that one key that makes them able to strive for a purpose that isn’t part of this world. It’s something no one can give you and it cannot be taught, but it can be caught if God breathes His Spirit into yours. For all that is included in that, one critical element is that your spirit receives mercy and learns mercy, and gains a purpose on sharing mercy. At any given time, in any given context, precious few are the souls who have that mercy, so that the simple truth of having it means sharing it with the majority who will never get it any other way.

No, we cannot make this logical, but we are equipped to understand how it works. That’s the good part, because we sure as hell cannot change it. The only thing we can change is ourselves, and should we find others granted mercy, we can share the task of magnifying that mercy. We who have received mercy are obliged by that mercy to make it as big as we can, to make its presence felt in this dreary and nasty world. We don’t make it less dreary; we simply introduce the awareness of an alternative, a connection to another world.

Scripture sums up that other world with the word shalom. While it translates into English as “peace,” it most pointedly means “peace with God.” It’s not what you have, but it’s who you are. And it cannot be who you are unless it is shared. Granted, at the lowest default level, you are the peace of God with His Creation. That’s what Paul meant in Romans 8:17-25, saying that Creation cries out for the revelation of the Sons of God. Creation eagerly waits to see us manifest His shalom in fellowship with it and with each other. So the way to begin a shared mercy shalom with others is manifesting it against the background of Creation actively encouraging it.

Taking hold of God’s mercy creates an identity of shalom that others can sense. We don’t want to be confined to mere words, because words cannot hope to capture the whole meaning. So we make sure to turn it into a state of existence, an identity that opens a portal into the Spirit Realm. Our mere presence in this world becomes a touchpoint that others can sense one way or another before we even open our mouths. It transmits on that invisible wavelength of the heart, and people receive it even when they are not heart-conscious. It calls and beckons to them.

Those others who are also spiritually awakened will sense it, too. They will know it is their duty to affiliate on some level, drawn to communion and fellowship. The purpose of divine revelation is to express the character of God in ways that help us breathe life into that communion. It becomes a node of power that shakes the world, because it introduces things this world cannot sense or understand. It restores just a taste of Eden, something everyone knows painfully well they have lost. They know they belong to it.

The primary and practical manifestation of shalom is in the social stability between two or more people of faith. It becomes a primary sense of identity. It is Biblical Law, not merely in the concept, but in a living existence. It is also the blessings that pour out from obeying that call to divine justice — appropriate prosperity, safety from threats, resistance to disease, and the ability to live in peace with others. It becomes the very essence of social stability within the boundaries of those who engage that divine dominion.

It does not yield to the classical Aristotelian query of being or doing; it’s far more than what we are or what we do. It’s who we are. It’s personal and cannot be objectified. It’s also who God is, and by extension, it’s who Creation is. It’s an identity that escapes this dreary world, this prison existence in shadow and deception. It is dying to this world and coming to life in another, even as the locus of our existence is here.

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Visions and Dreams in the Night

Posted on March 28, 2019 by ehurst

We can easily understand the biblical moral ethics of how wealth and productivity should be handled. Even the damned communists (literally, they are damned) can see it that most productivity isn’t being used to the best benefit of humanity. So everyone agrees on that, but not a single government in human history has followed any ethical course of action when it comes to the kinds of decisions that governments make about such things. So it has been here in the US for our entire history.

Any economist can tell you there are established patterns of economic behavior and matching results. We may not be able to nail down the thresholds precisely, but we know they are there and can estimate reasonably when we get close. We can explain how the system of laws that permit corporations to be established and conduct business, and how they handle wealth and debt, will eventually mean wealth is inefficiently bestowed and far, far too much is not fed back into the system to keep it working. So we have an established pattern of wealth and productivity collecting into fewer and fewer hands until the system freezes up. Again, we can figure this out by simple observation.

However, consequences are not confined to what we can estimate from reason. This universe has a moral character, a fabric of morality woven into its very existence. There are results and consequences that are not visible to human observation until something breaks. Even then, it’s not fully visible simply because reason is flatly incapable of making the connections. For example, we do not employ the sabbatical year system in our agriculture. We do not use the jubilee system to reset the economy every generation. While a few bright minds can understand the value of such things, it is beyond human capability to see clearly how this is written into the natural world.

Only a heart and mind in proper relation will see it clearly. Only when you perceive reality through the heart’s sensory capability does it become obvious why America is doomed. Nature itself is rebelling against the abuse.

I had a revelatory dream last night. It was intentionally partial, in that God wasn’t showing me the whole story in total, but giving me a sample. Take it with a grain of salt, but my vision showed me what could happen if certain things take place. For example, should Trump remain in office, the Zionists will gain unprecedented control over our government and economy. The US will become a subsidiary, a colony of Israel. If Pete Buttigieg becomes president, he will eventually begin confiscating property and would willingly call out the troops to enforce it. Bernie Sanders would do it even more quickly and with a spiteful flourish hard to imagine. Biden would also do it like Sanders, but for different reasons and with far more corruption involved.

The point is not what kind of men they are, but what they would act like as things take their natural course. It’s a course no one can see with mere intellect, so it’s impossible to reasonably estimate how men will act. They will be put under unspeakable pressure by forces no human can control because everyone is ignoring the heart-led truth of just how catastrophic our future is. Do you think the flooding in the Heartland is just random? It’s a part of God’s wrath. That much was revealed to me when that massive low-pressure inland hurricane swept across the US a few weeks ago — it was very specifically the wrath of God. There is more to come like that, with nature erupting in ways human science cannot predict.

The rising hatred between the various political forces in America is a part of that natural response. Demons have been set loose on the population because they reject the only protection God offers from such evil. Such influences take time; I had a vision of it some years ago. It was like a huge flock of bat-like creatures streaming out a cavity in the ground and with deafening shrieks as they spread across the land. Now we are seeing the fruit of their influence.

Turn over and go back to sleep if you can. That may be your only sense of peace if you reject the underlying message here, but America is doomed, folks. If you are capable of heart-led awareness, you are going to see unspeakable sorrow even within this calendar year, and more to follow. Don’t get wrapped up in it. You should have already learned that this life is of no value beyond how it can be used to glorify our Savior. Brace yourselves.

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Random Spring Shots 2019

Posted on March 27, 2019 by ehurst

This is a random collection of shots taken over the past week or so. First up is a glimpse of the antenna farm in northern OKC. The tower just barely visible in the background is one of the tallest in the county, well over 1000 feet (300m). This area is the highest altitude land for quite some miles around.

For just a few days our North Canadian River was running near full depth. I really munged the shot two days earlier when it was even deeper and the sandbar was covered. You won’t see clear water until it slows down; it always carries a lot of silt when it’s running high like this. This is where it crosses Midwest Boulevard.

The Draper Lake Bikeway proceeds slowly at a snail’s pace. This creek crossing below the dam sees actual work maybe once per week and then they have to waste time cleaning up what the weather has done to mess things up, so that very little actual work gets done.

This yard is just a couple of blocks from my home. Two days before this it was just brown grass, now covered in henbit. It seems like spring is in a big hurry because it was delayed a couple of weeks, and is trying to catch up in just a few days.

This is just a mile from our Bricktown area in one of the urban parks. The color is mostly henbit and some tiny lavender daisies for which I don’t have a name. While henbit grows several inches tall and the flowers will be clipped by mowing, the lavender flowers are only an inch (2.5cm) or so tall and most mowers leave them standing.

At any rate, henbit is the signal that spring is in full force around here. It can withstand a light frost, but doesn’t bossom until that’s the worst we can expect. The weather in Oklahoma is like that, with wide-ranging temperatures. We can see a shift of more than 30 degrees Fahrenheit (17C) in just one day, up or down.

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Understanding Miracles

Posted on March 26, 2019 by ehurst

Our Western Civilization is loaded with so much intellectual trash, it’s a wonder anyone finds peace with God. Still, it’s there for those who seek His favor. Along with everything else that comes with His favor is a phenomenon in the Bible typically translated in English as “miracle.”

We have to get rid of a lot of false mythology about what a miracle is and how it works. On the one hand, we know miracles are part of following Christ. On the other hand, we see so few of them these days when seeking to follow Him. I can’t make them happen for you. And because their origin is in the Spirit Realm, I can’t actually explain how they happen and how you can claim them. All I can do is help you unlearn the lies so that your mind is open to the real thing.

1. Miracles are real. As long as you struggle with this, the door will remain closed. You must have faith and commitment enough to overwhelm your intellectual skepticism. It’s that old saw: You can hold your opinions (or let them go), but your convictions hold you. Opinion, thoughts and belief are a matter of your decisions. Your convictions existed before you were born, and rest somewhere in your soul awaiting your spiritual awareness for discovery. You must bend your intellect to bow before something bigger than you. If you aren’t held in the grip of faith such that you can embrace things you can’t understand, then there’s no way you can open that door.

2. Miracles are part of the Covenant. Which covenant? It’s the Covenant of Christ in His blood, the one that awakens in your soul as spiritual birth. When I write about the Radix Fidem covenant, that’s a subsidiary, a means of proclaiming our distinct community of faith. It is not the authoritative covenant to which all humanity is bound. The universal covenant for humanity is the Covenant of Christ (Law Covenants are subsidiary expressions of it). That covenant is something that escapes definition, yet it must be proclaimed. It’s beyond words, yet requires we use words that go along with our faith choices so that people can see it. If you aren’t pursuing that commitment to Christ as Your Lord, miracles will appear to you quite random, if they appear at all. In other words, you have to obey Biblical Law as the manifestation of your commitment to Christ.

3. Miracles are feudal. That is, miracles can only come via submission to that Lordship of Christ. This isn’t a doctrine or theology; it’s a moral truth, something fundamental to reality itself. Your authority to do miracles comes from your submission to the ultimate power of Creation itself. You can do them for yourself by exercising that authority in faith that it is real. You can do miracles for others when they place themselves under your authority, that authority granted to you by your covenant with Christ as a feudal servant of His.

4. Miracles are not automatic. You can’t simply claim a miracle as if it were a point of law. This is where we get that crazy “name it and claim it” nonsense; it comes from Christians thinking that divine truth works like US federal legislation. Divine justice is personal in nature; it is the feudal and covenantal “law” of the Lord you serve. It’s not “law” as legislation; it’s law as the divine will of some Person with whom you are involved. This is a totally different mindset that arose in ancient times in the Ancient Near East, and we have to absorb that, because it’s the context in which God revealed Himself.

5. Miracles are consistent with Creation. Miracles are not bending or breaking the rules. You get that perception because your heart does not rule over your mind. Miracles violate the perceptions of those who live by human logic and sensory data. Faith is above that; faith is something akin to a sixth sense that perceives moral reality as God designed it and revealed it. Faith is revelation in itself, revelation to you personally. It is your direct connection to the fabric of reality, wherein God designed everything consistently with His divine moral character. Miracles are optional, as noted in the previous point, but they are quite standard as part of the reality God made.

This is the point where I remind you that you must learn to see Creation or reality as a living person. All of the natural world that you experience is a living being — alive, sentient and willful. Jesus spoke to the storms and commanded other parts of nature to obey Him. That’s not just a metaphor; that’s reality. Learn to cultivate the friendship and alliance of the natural world. Learn that reality is variable like any real person would be with each of us. Get to know reality as a person.

6. Miracles ignore time. That’s because God is not bound by time. This is a tough one for Western brains. Sometimes it becomes necessary to explain this at length. The Spirit Realm doesn’t have “time” as we know it. But we belong in Eden; it’s what God designed for us and us for it. Time does exist in Eden, and when Christ returns He won’t abolish time. Time won’t end; the Curse of the Fall that holds us under time will be removed. Our perception of time will change. The natural world runs along in time, and our bodies are part of that. However, in our fallen condition, we are unable to perceive time the way God intended. A critical element in the Tree of Life is a radically different perception and relationship with time. In the Bible, it is portrayed as a question of ripeness, not something you should invest too heavily in measuring and trying to portion out.

Thus, miracles may happen immediately, or they may not. It all depends on what God thinks is appropriate for His glory. Your faith can tell you what He thinks, but that requires you learning how faith and convictions works.

7. Miracles are all about God’s glory. Now, His glory is much bigger than our witness, but our witness is part of His glory. Our witness is the totality of how we live in this fallen world by His grace. Thus, faith itself is a miracle, and faith to receive a miracle is supplied by the Holy Spirit in our hearts. Without that strong driving sense of faith to receive, there is no valid request. You can always ask when you don’t have to that strong leading, but the thing to pray for is an answer in your faith, a sense of what is necessary. And what is necessary depends on His grace. His glory is the whole point in living in the first place.

This is all a part of the communion with nature thing we proclaim. Nature is not fallen, but it is afflicted by the lack of our management due to the Fall. Perversion arises in the natural world because we aren’t on the job as we were in Eden. A critical element in that management mission was using miracles to shift things in the natural world to more closely match God’s glory. Knowing God’s glory and divine purpose in Eden meant sensing His divine moral character directly via the heart.

When any one of us is spiritually awakened, and then we also shift our sense of awareness into the heart instead of the intellect, then we gain that direct insight into what glory is and how to act accordingly. Living in Eden means having all of this worked out to the point it’s instinctive. That’s a very long way from where we are. It means having access to the Tree of Life, and that means we stop eating from the Forbidden Fruit. Our typical definition of the Forbidden Fruit is the human default choice of living by human capabilities and perceptions without faith, without a trust in God’s revelation. Getting from where we are to where we should be — stopping our consumption of the Forbidden Fruit — means passing through the Flaming Sword or Revelation. It means the fleshly self dies and the spiritual self takes over.

We can do that only part-way for as long as we are in the flesh. We can sample it, taste it, and that includes performing miracles. I cannot give you a HOWTO on performing miracles. You’ll have to learn that as part of your slow transformation while turning that Flaming Sword on your fleshly nature. And the perceived “completeness” of miracles is also subject to this. The degree to which God’s power changes things in your life may depend on you perceiving by faith just how far things should go.

The distance you have to travel between where you are today and where you could be is a matter of faith and practice, lots of prayer and contemplation, lots of communion with the unfallen natural world.

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Death Is a Reward

Posted on March 25, 2019 by ehurst

The otherworldly orientation is the only one that makes any sense given the full truth of things.

A major element in the online chatter about the mosque shooting in New Zealand is the repeated question: How do we stop this kind of thing?

The answer is easy: You don’t. At least, you don’t stop it by any of the means commonly proposed. All the standard efforts guarantee only that the murders will be more shocking and terrorizing. The world contains badly broken people, so these things will happen. The mere notion that they can be stopped is part of what provokes them in the first place, because the goal of terror is herding people into Utopia. It’s that false assumption that aggravates whatever makes humans stupid.

There is no hope for stopping them. There is hope for diverting them or restraining them — just barely. We already know that the bulk of humanity rejects those diversions and restraints, so there’s not much point in discussing them in detail. Divine revelation is the only possible hope, and that revelation warns that such things cannot be prevented. Instead, revelation says we can reduce the provocations that result in fallen humans doing such horrific evil. There aren’t many folks interested in that path.

All of the blaming and finger-pointing is useless. Every solution generated from human intelligence will fail. Get used to it. Get used to the idea that, no matter how traumatic and tragic a death may be, it’s not the end. Life is not precious. There may be some joyful things in this life, but life itself sucks and we need to keep that in front of us. We need to invest ourselves wholly into that mindset. The New Testament teaches quite plainly that this life is awful, a thing to be endured while serving Christ, and then getting out as soon as He tells us we are done.

One more time: Biblical Law is its own reward. It gives us hopeful glimpses of Real Life outside this prison existence. We pursue God’s glory and justice for its own sake, not because it works. Granted, it does work, but only in the sense that it works better than anything else humanity has cooked up. But nothing will bring us the longed for ideal existence in this life. Biblical Law brings us as close to Eden as we are going to get, and that’s still outside of it. Our best hope is to live like we belong in Eden so we can gain samples of it here and there.

We were not designed for this life. This existence is accursed. Eden is our eternal home and you can’t go there without leaving this world. This life is nothing we should cling to, as if death is somehow a tragedy in itself. Death is our reward, but only when Christ says He’s finished with us here.

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