Turn Freshly to the Lord

Posted on June 30, 2025 by ehurst

Let’s look at the trends. I won’t predict the eventual fallout, only what seems to be the strong thrust of human sentiment at large right now.

First, I must reiterate that Trump has no agenda aside from his own self-aggrandizement. Someone who knows him says that if six different people get his ear on the way to a press conference, he’s most likely to remember only the last conversation. You cannot appeal to his sense of direction, only his ego. This is reflected in his frequent changes in direction. There is no discernible policy basis at all, no clear agenda.

Instead, he has a collection of hobby horses without any philosophical cohesion. Thus, anything that can change easily probably will do so. He’ll be persuaded by whatever appeals to his ego. Those changes in government policy that take a long time with a high commitment up front will likely keep going forward until something breaks. And you can be sure a lot of stuff will break.

Meanwhile, you might wonder if the globalists are on the ropes. They are, but not everyone on the leftist/materialist end of the scale is wiped out. The socialist candidate for New York City mayor is the new face of leftism. If you want to know more details about why he is a threat, try this. I’d say it’s as accurate as anything else.

But more to the point in this post is that his rise signals another part of a larger ongoing shift in the Democratic Party (think AOC and her ilk). Classical socialism has lacked a friendly front until now. Hitherto, socialists have nagged and harassed everyone. The appeal now is not purely ideological; with charisma it will fool a lot of people — millions of them are ripe for that kind of manipulation. And because it’s mated with a pro-Palestinian message, that factor alone will draw millions who cannot support Israel, never mind any other policy.

In the long term, this movement will destroy parts of the national economy. But Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill will do the same, just in a different way. I’ve said in the past that the whole economy won’t collapse, only some parts of it, and I’m still saying that. People in big lefty cities may face serious food shortages, but not the rest of us. Instead, we will face a reduction in choices.

And genuine socio-political conservatives have nowhere to go right now. They have almost no representation in the federal government. They have been herded in under Trump, but he has already betrayed them. They will grow increasingly restive.

Nor have I changed my tune about another expectation: Sometime this calendar year, the system breakage will be enough for people of covenant faith to see a clear and present threat of persecution before the actual persecution starts. Keep your eyes open; all will be revealed in due time. But there’s also a threat for everyone else: Big Tech will snuggle up to government like never before. Surveillance through your computer and phone has already been much deeper than you know. In the near future, the likes of Palantir (the name of a fictional “all seeing stone”) will collate all the disparate and clunky government databases and everyone who’s had an unpleasant experience with any federal agency will be tagged as a problem by a centralized authority. Ready for a “social credit score”? It’s very popular with bureaucrats and politicians on all sides.

For now, it’s all about the immigrants. Once enough of them have been abused, more and more of the federal oppression will fall on legal citizens. We already have horror stories of legal citizens being swept up with immigrants and not released for weeks. A Real ID? Nah, they claim it’s fake. A substantial number of folks seeking asylum here for their Christian faith are being shipped back out. ICE is the new “jack-booted thugs” people should fear, kicking down doors and arresting anyone on a whim while ignoring all rights.

Against this, foreign money is funding protests like never before. There might be more than one kind of fireworks on Independence Day. If these trends continue, things will collide and martial law is highly likely. Welcome to your new apocalypse.

Covenant people, turn freshly to the Lord and trust in Him.

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Leviticus 19

Posted on June 28, 2025 by ehurst

While I do take some of this from Heiser’s podcast, this is not an echo of his material.

We begin with noting that the Lord commands Moses to review and summarize the Covenant Law with the nation. Previous chapters of Leviticus often referenced the situation in Egypt and was a reaction the pagan practices there. Here we get the feeling they are now closer to the Promised Land it’s time for a review against the Canaanite pagan practices, because things are stated a little differently this time around.

An unspoken emphasis is that Israel is one big family; your neighbor is your brother/sister. Much of what is said here points to treating each other with respect. But the point is not the respect itself, but the divine justice of caring for people, particularly those who are under the Covenant or seek its shelter around the fringes (i.e., Gentiles who submit feudally under the Code of Noah). It was to be a tightly knit community, bound by a common commitment to serving Jehovah as Lord as His earthly family.

The first few verses are straight out of the Ten Commandments and have not changed. It’s just a reminder to cling to these basic moral characteristics.

Nothing stops anyone from eating food the third day after cooking except the risk to your digestion. You are free to decide for yourself if it’s safe. However, a shared Peace Offering gets special handling. Don’t treat God’s food as common.

Even the dreary science of economics will tell you that any given economic system will include people in poverty for any number of reasons. Jehovah’s people make allowances for them to feed themselves. There’s no command to do the work for them, but to give them a chance to work for their own food by gleaning. Build an economic system that provides opportunities for them, even if you can’t hire them.

Be honest and don’t prank or mock the disabled. This is not a competition. Don’t show favoritism for people, but for God alone. Much of this sounds like “be nice” but that would miss the point. A society under Jehovah’s name must be stable, peaceful, and there must be a minimal level of trust. There’s that famous quotation: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

One thing does require explanation is the prohibition of mixing animals, fabrics, seeds, etc. The whole point is boundaries. The cherubim are mixed creatures in the Tabernacle/Temple, the priests wear mixed fabrics, your average Israeli was supposed to have a single thread of blue in a tassel on their out garment, etc. Mixing is a divine prerogative, often restricted to sacred space, but forbidden for common use. It is a mark of privilege and power delegated by God, not claimed by any human.

Notice commands regarding sex without consent. Role (social status) is a big deal here. Without female agency, it’s not adultery, so it’s not a capital offense. It doesn’t threaten the social stability the way a rape of a free woman would; all the more so when most of the women a man might encounter in daily life were close relatives by blood or marriage.

Common fruit trees do not produce until they are five years old. In nature, the poorly developed early fruit would fall and fertilize the tree. Believe it or not, this is a rather firm command to treat fruit trees with respect. In the fourth year it probably won’t produce a lot; give the first fruits to the priests. In the fifth year the tree is fully established and harvesting the fruit does no harm.

Verses 26-29 belong together as a paragraph on the same basic topic: avoiding specific pagan practices. Don’t consume blood, particularly as part of a divination ritual. The business of trimming beards (and hair by implication) had to do with cutting ritual symbols into the hair or skin. The Hebrew word here often translated “tattoo” shows up only this one time in Scripture, and it is ambiguous. Apparently, Hebrews did not differentiate tattoos or branding. Both were used to mark people as temple property, or at least as servants of some deity or as slaves (marked with their master’s name).

God Himself promises in several places to “put My name on” His people, so that is not forbidden for obvious reasons. It’s marking yourself for other deities that He forbids here. These days, such things seldom have that kind of meaning, except branding animals. But it’s connected closely in this passage with offering one’s daughter to a pagan temple as a ritual prostitute, something quite common across the ANE and Mediterranean Basin.

Instead, keep the Sabbath (only Israel did this). Don’t look for answers from anyone but God. Be polite to elders and respectful Gentiles. Don’t cheat anyone. All in all, it’s an abbreviated recipe for honoring Jehovah and boosting His reputation.

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Have Pity on Them

Posted on June 24, 2025 by ehurst

Divine justice is not simply the wrath of God falling on sin and sinners. Rather, it is the provision of redemption through covenant boundaries. The Lord revealed Himself — His moral character — through His covenants and His actions within those covenants. The boundaries reflect the very nature of reality itself, because His personality and character are inherent in His Creation. The way Creation works reflects Him. The covenants are a guide to discerning His character as manifested in reality.

Thus, divine justice is not merely retribution, but is restorative. It brings us back into His mercy and provision for fallen humanity. His revelation teaches us about our situation here and how to orient our thinking about what really matters.

We should already understand that only His Elect can receive the Holy Spirit. Without the Presence of the Holy Spirit, it is impossible to understand His revelation of His character. Thus, it requires the Holy Spirit to discern how you should think and act in context so that you manifest His glory. We are taking sides with Him in the heavenly debate on His Divine Council about things we cannot really comprehend.

That’s what we were made for in the first place. We worship Him and obey Him as our feudal Master and Lord. The act of baptism and other rituals are demonstrative protocols symbolizing our loyalty to Him.

We do all of this knowing that the majority of those around us are likely to be non-elect. His revelation gives us provisional indicators we can use to estimate whom we should treat as part of the divine family of Christ, but there is no certainty available on a human level of understanding. For the most part, we must build a lifestyle that leaves the ultimate question open as to who is Elect and who is Damned. The issue is not for us to attempt to nail it down, but to trust the Lord and His guidance about how to act with other humans.

Jesus warned that it is impossible to weed out the Damned from our community of faith (see the Parable of Tares). Instead, we are to operate in a certain way that gives them room to prosper until the harvest of souls. It is the glory of God that we toil away at keeping a community prospering in faith so that the fakes expose themselves and depart on their own. We are trying to make it very hard for them to tolerate our company.

In the process, we challenge the Elect to rise in faith and submission to Christ, while encouraging the Damned to move on. The goal is not a state to be achieved, but a process to be maintained. We must understand from the start that this is a dynamic situation, ever changing, responding in faith to changes in the context. We are building a community as a living thing.

A part of this process is understanding that we will never nail down who is Elect and who is Damned. Rather, it works out in practice to discerning how to keep shalom working as His glory. We maintain a cynicism, a skepticism about ourselves. We don’t trust our own flesh, but are obliged to drag it around and make it do the work. It becomes a matter of keeping an eye on the eternal goal of our human existence, but struggling with a fleshly nature that will never fully surrender to that divine purpose. The best we can do is learn to tolerate our own weaknesses and those of others, Elect and Damned.

No two communities will be the same. Uniformity as humans imagine it is not a part of the picture. Rather, it is a host of living communities expressing traits that arise from and match the local context. Further, that context includes the members themselves. Always imperfect, yet seeking to be more perfect, we maintain a community ever in tension. The best we can do is discover the limits of toleration within individual selves and the community as a whole. Who leads and how they lead will indicate who needs to go and who needs to stay — and when — along with how to pass through the days in shalom and glory.

At some point, the tension must break from time to time. Someone will become intolerable in the context and must be excluded. The details must be worked out within the context.

Throughout this process, we should be ever mindful that the Damned are damned. We cannot remake them into Elect. The most we can do is build an atmosphere that calls the Elect to rise and the Damned to feel unwelcome. Worst of all is that the New Covenant in Christ wipes away the linkage between society/government at large and the covenant community. There is a clear gap between the secular life and the community of faith. We are obliged to withdraw from the world at large in some measure, however the Spirit leads in the context.

We don’t hate the Damned; we pity them. They have no hope! The most we can do for them is to manifest what they cannot have. The more faithful we are, the weaker they will appear in our community. It’s not the question of identifying them officially as Elect or Damned, but identifying whether they are people who belong in the covenant community. If the answer is exclusion, then we must treat them as Damned, as outsiders who could never even understand. How sad for them! We must turn them over to the Devil; we must withdraw the spiritual covering. They will become wide open to whatever God decrees in His wrath against sin.

The blessings of covenant covering cannot extend to people who act like the Damned. Yes, weep for the losses of the fleshly nature, the sorrow of disentangling from them emotionally and physically. It hurts. We are losing an investment of our souls in the lives of others. But don’t surrender to the anger of your flesh, trying to claw back that investment, as if it were some material accounting process. We are not the instruments of wrath, though we are the instruments of exclusion.

This has nothing to do with the obscene calculus of the world and its ways. We should expect the world to reject the whole process of spiritual reckoning. We should expect worldly society and government to interfere in various ways. The world does not recognize the mission of the covenant community, and will seek every opportunity to assert its own system of control in every process it notices. This is why we are obliged to withdraw as far as possible as a community of faith.

But you should hardly be surprised that, in our American culture, we see a vast degree of compromise in organized religion. It is the long result of centuries of compromise that began back before Constantine. Today, churches seldom bear any resemblance to a covenant community. They should be treated as secular organizations that just barely permit some limited spiritual fellowship. The Lord can use us to influence some individuals there, but don’t expect churches to do anything to seriously alienate the Damned; they often run the show.

Pity the churches that are so spiritually destitute. Pity the Damned. Do what you can to keep them out of your hair, but they will never go away until the Lord returns.

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Not Special

Posted on June 22, 2025 by ehurst

President Trump is not special.

I realize just saying that by itself is enough to raise his ire. He’s not special; he’s no different from any other president we’ve had for at least a century back. Every one of them has acted for his own personal interests first. The party affiliation simply tells you the flavor of his personal interests. In Trump’s case, it’s not even that. He was a lifelong Democrat until he decided to run for President; using the Republican Party was the easiest path for him. He has made a deal with the neocons to seize full control of the party.

There’s nothing new about that among Republicans. What distinguishes him is his monumental ego and arrogance, and his willingness to lie without limits. There is nothing at all he wouldn’t lie about in order to manipulate the public. The man has zero principle, as vain as they come. He lied about his reason for bombing Iran. It’s all about his ego and his personal financial profit. This action is entirely unreasonable and based on flat out lies about Iran. It has nothing to do with what Iran did or didn’t do.

All of this is just regular American politics and would normally be unworthy of remark. However, it is important to note that in sending military power into Iran, Trump has torn away the last shred of provisional covering America had before the Lord. He has openly sided with Satan, whom Jesus said was the father of Judaism. Follow the logic here: Jesus said the Pharisees were children of Satan. Judaism is simply Pharisaism. Even secular Jewish ethnic identity is tainted with that, and Zionism in particular is Satanic.

Pharisaism lifted up a false image of who God is, so fatally blinded that it didn’t recognize His Son. It was like the sin of Jeroboam all over again, raising up a false image and calling it “Jehovah”. Trump has joined in this sin. He has raised up false idols and called them “Christian”. He has placed Christ’s name on something that does not represent the Lord of Scripture. Everyone who supports Trump will participate in defaming the Lord.

As always, I’m not writing to present you with a well reasoned argument. This is about the Holy Spirit; either God will confirm what I say or you will reject it. I have no doubt that, if/when this message comes to the notice of certain people, I will face persecution. Censorship will be the least of my worries. Trump has been maniacal about using government to hound anyone he considers an enemy. Perhaps my readership is too small for anyone much to notice. We’ll see.

I must speak my convictions and let the Lord provide whatever cover He sees fit for His glory. Trump’s actions are the straw the broke the camel’s back. America has zero covering and will reap the wrath of God in His own good time. Having chosen to serve Satan, America will discover what wages he offers.

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It’s the Rituals

Posted on June 21, 2025 by ehurst

Re: Naked Bible 79: Leviticus 17-18

We aren’t through with Leviticus. Already we’ve discovered some details that most readers never catch because the Hebraic and ANE background are missing. Starting in Leviticus 17 through 26, we are looking at what most scholars refer to as the Holiness Code. What may not be obvious is that the items discussed in these two chapters refer to worship. It has to be done right.

Thus, when the first few verses refer to killing an animal, it refers to sacrifice, not just slaughter for food (see Deuteronomy 12:15-16). The whole point is twofold: forbidding offerings to other deities, but also to ensure that every sacrifice to Jehovah comes to the Tabernacle. If nothing else, this ensures that the priests get their share.

Heiser belabors the meaning of “cut off” — Hebrew karath. I believe he overstates the situation. After his wrestling through all the references how that word is used elsewhere in the Bible, I think it boils down to ostracism or excommunication. The offender becomes a Gentile, and an unwelcome one, at that. Whether or not God does more to them is not the point; they are not allowed back into fellowship. Moreover, when they die, they likely will not be “gathered to their ancestors”. There is no expectation of welcome into eternal fellowship in the afterlife.

The term translated into English as “detestable things” or “abominations” (Hebrew toebah) refers to various pagan worship practices. Consuming blood was a pagan practice, but in Leviticus 17 blood belongs to God. The blood is the life, and life belongs to God. Don’t steal from the Lord! That blood was spilled in place of your own blood, substitutionary atonement. That’s the whole point of the sacrificial system; you bring a substitute to die in your place.

There is a strong record of pagan ritual magic using blood in other ways than consumption. Thus, Heiser notes a high probability that draining and burying the blood prevents anyone else collecting the spilled blood from food slaughter to be used in pagan rituals. It’s also a way of honoring the life given to sustain yours. You bury your fallen ones and leave the enemies to rot in the open.

Regarding Chapter 18, we note there are a lot of sexual boundaries here. It should be obvious that “uncovering nakedness” refers to having sex with someone. The boundaries here don’t match those in our American culture and law, but they make sense in the context of the Old Covenant.

He diverges just a moment to explain the business of Noah and his son Ham exposing his nakedness in Genesis 9. Hebrew tends to euphemism (AKA, symbolism, parable) for some things too sensitive to state plainly. Recall that uncovering one parent is the same as both. The best way to make sense of that story is to understand that Ham had sex with his own mother, and that the child of that union was Canaan. That’s why Canaan is the one who suffers the curse.

The whole thing includes the image of taking control of the tribe, as Absalom did with his father’s concubines. Ham was trying to seize control of the household. He crows to his brothers about this and they refuse to go along with it. They engage in a ritual act of putting their father’s covering back over their mother. They reject the usurpation. Noah’s curse on the child (naming him before birth) halts Ham’s attempt to begin a new dynasty.

I’m disappointed that Heiser leaves this pagan ritual theme behind when he addresses other sexual boundaries. This whole section of Leviticus is about ritual acts of idolatry. Everything in this chapter is certainly under that covering. Thus, it is not about sex itself; it is ritual sex acts. That’s what defiles the land. All the chatter about why it’s wrong for men and not for women misses the point: lesbian sex was not a common ritual in the ANE.

Also note that a man having sex with his menstrual wife is a small issue in Leviticus 15:4, but here it becomes an excommunication offense. The difference is the context of this latter portion of the Book of Leviticus. Here we are dealing with pagan ritual idolatry. The meaning of the act is the whole point.

Heiser’s argument about wasting procreative activity stands on its own, but does not fit here. Homosexuality is wrong regardless of why anyone does it. But any sexual act for the purpose of magic or idolatry is particularly evil; the Covenant tribe must be cleansed of such people. Paul’s prohibitions on such acts are more because he defines such self-centered behavior as a New Testament form of idolatry — self worship, the worship of the fleshly urges.

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Leviticus and Sacrifices

Posted on June 14, 2025 by ehurst

It’s not just Heiser, though I believe he leads the way in clarifying the sacrificial system in the Old Testament, but a lot of obscure scholarship attempts to dig into something that most Christians just do not understand.

Naturally, a major problem is that the history of church theology has really drawn the boundaries in a lot of wrong places. The western concept of justice really does defile our understanding of God’s Word. In broad simple terms, western justice is entirely depersonalized and dehumanizing, punitive and vindictive. Divine justice is restorative and personal. In moral matters, God is the offended party.

As noted in a previous lesson, God distinguishes between normal human mistakes and willful blasphemous defiance. There is no atonement in Moses for the latter, and the whole sacrificial system was all about the normal human mistakes. You can find any number of outlines online and in books for a list of the sacrifices required in Leviticus 1-7 (the context of this lesson). Most of them rely on English translations that are flawed in large part due to flawed theology based on western assumptions.

1. The Burnt Offering (Leviticus 1) — Heiser summarizes the crux of the matter with the image of bringing a host gift when visiting a VIP. You are coming to spend time with God in sacred space. You want to put Him in a good mood about your presence. The whole thing goes up in smoke on the altar. Further, it is often accompanied with the next item.

2. Grain Offering (Leviticus 2) often goes with a burnt offering. It’s primarily a nod to the priests, since they get to consume the bulk of it. The symbolism of adding salt is critical as a preservative of the Covenant, as it is sometimes referred to as a “covenant of salt”.

3. Peace Offering (Leviticus 3) is a shared meal that includes the priests and everyone else. Naturally, God needs no food, but it’s the image of you coming to His table. You give it to Him initially, and He graciously shares it with you and everyone else He includes in His household. It is a feast, a celebration of shalom — stability, prosperity, safety and health. You are giving Him credit for these things as a natural result of His reign.

4. The Sin Offering (starting in Leviticus 5) is no such thing. It’s a misleading label we instinctively assume is to atone for individual sins. The blood is not applied to the worshiper. Heiser suggests it should be called a “decontamination offering”, something that we must bring in order to protect sacred space for the contamination we all carry from the Fall. The blood is splattered on the structures of sacred space as a means of building a barrier against our fallen nature, which can be seen as a communicable defilement. Again, the priests get a piece of this offering.

5. The Guilt Offering (starting in Leviticus 6) should be called a “restitution offering”. It’s to make up for an actual loss suffered. In Hebrew law, you always add 20% to any loss you have caused another. The priestly share is the same as the previous.

Notice how we are reminded that these offerings could not take away sin (noted quite boldly in Hebrews 9-10). They were only for ritual purity, with a primary purpose of making the covenant people aware of their sinful mortal nature, while much of the rest of the Law pointed to the costs of sinful actions. There was a big emphasis on building a sense of holiness in the appointment of sacred spaces. People died for taking just the symbolism lightly.

In Christ, all sins were atoned. Not only can we enter sacred space, but we become the sacred space. This would be earthshattering for Jews who were paying attention. We owe it to ourselves to absorb the Hebrew understanding of these things.

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Cloud Shots

Posted on June 12, 2025 by ehurst

Today’s training ride was about 35 miles, out to NE 122nd and Westminster. It had been raining overnight. The humidity remained quite high and the scudding clouds east of us still brought a little drizzle. I got damp on my ride out in the countryside, but looking back west where the skies were clearing, we had some dramatic formations drifting across the horizon. These are not rain clouds, but the result of upper atmosphere moisture that could cause rain. Given a little instability, those would become thunderheads.

Once I got back into town, the formations had changed a bit. The winds aloft are still blowing this moisture inland (northward here in Oklahoma) and will result in rough weather somewhere up north, maybe around the Great Lakes. The park below is the newest one finished just about a year ago. The old Midwest City clock tower stands over what was once the municipal offices, but they were moved a long time ago.

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A Spiritual Free-fire Zone

Posted on June 9, 2025 by ehurst

As I’ve said before, Americans have a persistent problem with binary logic. It’s the go-to assumption everyone makes about anything they don’t really understand. While Americans are capable of gradations, levels and nuance, they don’t go there until forced into it. I’m forcing it on the issue of moral and spiritual things.

Divine covering is not an on/off switch. He offers one kind of covering for His Covenant family, another for His human allies, and another for His tools, etc. God has commissioned many servants, both individuals and nations, to serve a particular purpose, only to discard them later. There are the Elect, and then there are others. These tools were covered during their usefulness, but they were not family. Some of these provisional coverings may stretch over limited time frames and apply only to certain purposes.

But it gets even more challenging: Moral and spiritual truth cannot be objectified. You cannot examine it from the outside. You must get directly involved personally in order to understand anything at all about it. That’s because such knowledge is a matter of personal contact with God. Morality and spirituality are not things that exists in themselves; they are aspects of God and our roles in His Kingdom. If you don’t know Him, you don’t know them, because they are expressions of His personality and character.

As an elder, my spiritual covering is a resonance of God’s. I’m limited and so is my covering. If you are a husband/father, God grants you a limited covering over your household. As heads of households, there are varying gradations of covering we grant to children, females, males, etc. It’s all loaded with nuance, and your headship covering can be reinforced by your association with an elder, pastor, and others who have a strong role in the Kingdom of Heaven. That means the gaps in covering are also varied and nuanced.

Most of it is not too hard to estimate because of conviction and covenant. But sometimes it rests on your spiritual awareness. What you don’t know can harm you, but God may be patient with you, offering a covering you didn’t know you needed. It’s not guaranteed. Your role, mission and calling are also factors, as well as things like what happens in the Unseen Realm.

Understanding covering is like understanding a natural forest as a whole, all at once. It’s a living entity that can be fostered or neglected; it can thrive or degenerate. Bits and pieces can shift in strength and new demands on you may arise today simply because it’s not yesterday.

Our US government is under a provisional covering. It’s partial and has a limited shelf-life based on how it serves God’s inscrutable purpose. At some point, it is altogether likely that our ruling regime will slip out from under that covering. As far as I can discern, it’s getting very close. The anointing-for-purpose will expire or be abrogated.

I say that, not trying to speak for others, only for those who rely on my spiritual covering as elder. My convictions tell me that we are in grave danger of persecution of a type and means I cannot clearly see just yet. For now, I am convinced we need to do all we can to stay out of the way. Our community is currently avoiding provoking any government authority. But all too soon, the government will make new demands that will be impossible for us. The government will see it as politics, because our government has neither clue or interest regarding eternal spiritual matters.

In military jargon, we would say our government will wander out into a free-fire zone. Think about what that means in terms of spiritual warfare.

I have every confidence that God can make that moment clear to you without any need for me to point it out. At the same time, I can assure you I’ll find a way to let you know when I believe that moment has come. How you respond is a matter of your own convictions. I encourage you to study and pray about this before that day comes.

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So Should You

Posted on June 7, 2025 by ehurst

Human politics is not a driving force, not a cause; it is a consequence.

There may be more elections in the US. They won’t change anything that matters. No one is riding to the rescue; no human agent is appointed by God to restore some vision of peace and prosperity. There is no great revival of truth coming from human political affairs. All that you see is coming down from a far higher level of power, and it is designed to deceive. The thesis of the Unseen Realm should have locked that down for you already. The only way to understand what is happening in politics, economics, social movements, etc., is to have some way of sensing what God and the powers of Heaven are doing.

If God does not grant you some spiritual gift for seeing what is happening in His courts, then you are left to extrapolate from your convictions. Be very careful in doing so. What God requires of you is for His glory, not for your information, not to satisfy your curiosity about things. You should not imagine He won’t lead you into conflict with others He has called. Such conflict would be the context in which you demonstrate how God wants you to do things. The Scripture is loaded with instruction on handling conflicts because they are part of our human existence. His ways are inscrutable; you know only what He reveals to you. The issue with convictions is clarity for your choices in the context, not necessarily as guidance for anyone else.

I profess to you that my spiritual gifts are limited; they fit my mission. Today my mission is to remind you that what we are seeing is much more than simply a matter of cyclical human behavior at large. The cycles of human politics are in there, but there’s more to it. God has decreed destruction for Western Civilization as a whole. What happens in the US is just a small part of that.

The Enemy of Faith offers everything that’s got a name in order to keep the Elect in slavery. Don’t be a fool.

Reminder: Not a single government on this earth is under any covenant with God. There is no human political, economic or social activity that reflects His will for us. He does not interact with human events at large as Father, but as Judge. Any protection or anointing on public figures is wholly conditional based on the temporary usefulness of the person or thing. They are just tools, not His family. Your allegiance and support should be only provisional.

Yes, I will assert that this is true of Israel, as well. That government is already fracturing, and the mess is only beginning. Eschatological hopes for modern Israel are sheer folly; there is nothing covenantal about what’s going on there. Whatever vision of redemption you might be looking for is not there. It’s just a giant lie of Satan. Stay out of the way; we have no authority to change the situation.

I’m not saying, “Don’t get involved.” That would be silly. Rather, I’m saying don’t invest yourself into any of this. It is nothing more than a mixture of opportunities to testify. Otherwise, it is all meaningless chaos. Turmoil, tribulation and chaos is the only meaningful prediction anyone can make. Human wisdom can probably detect certain trends and outcomes, but the core meaning of what is happening is rooted in Heaven.

In Heaven, God has loosed the Watcher spirits, the Nephilim and their allies to deceive and destroy. Events at large will remain unpredictable to humans unless/until God commissions a prophet to warn about specifics. This would be someone who has been stood before the Council in Heaven as His anointed spokesman. I’m quite convinced there is no such person right now. There are only servants of the Lord with a very limited grasp of what is happening, and I’m the least of them.

I’m not going to tell you, “Thus saith the Lord.” All I can tell is what my convictions say to me. They are informed by my best effort to understand His Word in its own context. I stand on my commission to warn the Elect that an apocalypse is here. The Spirit should make that obvious to anyone who pays attention.

Basic principle: Our Lord is not working with large human structures. From the Cross onward, He works primarily in small communities. That’s where you’ll see His face. He will be absent from large crowds. So should you.

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Here’s Your Definitive Answer

Posted on June 6, 2025 by ehurst

This is your weekly Bible lesson.

3 So he carried me away in the Spirit to a wilderness, and there I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. 4 Now the woman was dressed in purple and scarlet clothing, and adorned with gold, precious stones, and pearls. She held in her hand a golden cup filled with detestable things and unclean things from her sexual immorality. 5 On her forehead was written a name, a mystery: “Babylon the Great, the Mother of prostitutes and of the detestable things of the earth.” 6 I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of those who testified to Jesus. I was greatly astounded when I saw her. (Revelation 17 NET)

Most readers recognize that, while John recorded here a parable of Rome as the Beast and religion as the Harlot, the image applies throughout human history, at least after Christ walked the earth. The expression “the Harlot Church” is recognized even among non-believers.

Lately I’ve been asked why I object to the various manifestations of Eastern Orthodoxy. For me, it’s the same question as to why I reject Catholicism and Protestantism. Rather than load you down with a detailed list of features, the answer is rather simple: They all keep asking and answering the wrong questions.

I often say that the fundamental issue here is reclaiming Biblical Mysticism. That mysticism is actually quite practical. The only biblical question is: What does God require of me? What do I need to know to understand His glory? How often must we remind ourselves that the Hebrew mind did not speculate on what was beyond the visible horizon? The Apostles were fully aware of the western obsession with visualizing things not present, and they contended against the tendency to ask a jillion detailed questions about the mechanism of divine power, when Scripture repeatedly says that we cannot understand it. We don’t need to know in order to be faithful.

Orthodoxy was born of dispute over questions that were wrong in the first place. Catholicism arose from seeking to sate human fleshly desires for control over things Christ did not place in our hands. Protestantism was born from political disputes over Catholic abuses. All of them are wrong because they are rooted in non-faith issues.

How easily we forget what “faith” means! It does not refer to intellectual content nor practices. It is another word for feudal submission to God. Trying to settle intellectual and procedural questions outside of what is revealed in Scripture is a fool’s errand. Speculation about the details of who Christ is — which is the bulk of early church controversies — is a sin in itself. Restoring the Hebraic context means adopting the Hebraic approach to such issues: Don’t approach them at all. That’s what it means to obey Christ.

The Harlot Church today is every religious organization that clings to the sinful human speculations that no Hebrew would have dared to ask. Seeking to nail things down intellectually is how humans do things when ignoring God’s revelation. That’s why we see the Harlot riding the Beast of human government. It is adultery and idolatry, and leads to the bloodshed of the Elect.

From this you can understand that the Lord periodically destroys some portions of human civilization. It’s an act of mercy to destroy systemic lies that herd humanity so far from God’s Word that they can no longer find their way back. The only reason I write so much is because there is too much to say against the lies of our world. Anyone can look around and see that we have arrived at that place yet again, and God is already at work destroying what blinds humans to faith.

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