Teachings of Jesus — Matthew 18:15-20

Posted on June 30, 2018 by ehurst

The underlying theme has not changed: Place a high value on unreserved trust and never manipulate. Completely open honesty is the way of the Kingdom.

How do you handle a genuine offense? Do you gossip and build up an undercurrent of resentment for the offender? That would be typical of fallen human behavior, but is wholly inconsistent with an atmosphere of open trust. You should assume a lack of malice. You should assume it was unintentional, and the proceed to enlighten your brother or sister. This is family; what will improve peace and stability in the household of faith?

Further, you do so privately. This is wholly in keeping with the atmosphere of open honesty and lack of malice. Give them a chance to understand without making a big deal. You are seeking to win them back to your side. Keep the family together in holiness and harmony.

But there is no guarantee that your offended feelings are appropriate. So if the offender rejects your overture, go talk to someone else. This helps to ensure you aren’t making much of nothing. If they agree that this is an actual offense, let them come along with you to bolster your claim. Tell the offender this matter is not settled, that what they have done is harmful to more than just little old you. It’s a threat to the shalom of everyone. At this point, you now have a witness that the offender is impenitent.

This preserves the moral tradition of accusations being more than one person’s private complaint. The problem is no longer the offense, but the truculence of the offender, and this threatens the whole family. This is the whole matter of our witness as a covenant community. It’s not what we can accomplish as a group, but how we handle natural human friction. Nobody says you can’t break things; we are all clumsy in one way or another. But you do have to clean up the mess. It’s not our activities and products, but the shalom by which we live together with a power the world cannot have. It’s the divine power to love and care for people for whom we have no earthly reason to even notice without that covenant.

So now it requires escalation to the whole body. Your supporting witness will be there to ensure this is not a private petty dispute. At this point you expect the body as a whole to see the threat. Give the offender one last chance to repent. If they refuse, then they are rejecting the covenant. They are an outsider who has no place within the family.

While we can only guess what Hebrew words Jesus used, Matthew selects a Greek word that is typically translated into English as “heathen” — ethnikos. In this context, it draws the image of someone who has chosen their earthly identity over that of Heaven. They belong to some other tribe or nation, but not to Christ.

And it is within this context that Jesus makes the statement regarding binding and dissolving. It is imperative that you and I recognize what does and doesn’t fit in the covenant that binds us together. More to the point, it refers to discerning and deciding when people belong and when they do not. An awful lot of people take this verse out of context and miss the point entirely. This is not carte blanche to ask for whatever goodies or miracles that tickle your fancy. If you decide as a covenant community that something is an offense to the body, then so it is, and God will back that up.

We say it often: Context is everything. If you and one other believer agree that any particular issue is good or bad for shalom, you can bring it before the Lord in prayer and He will respond accordingly. His moral character will bind that issue on your behalf and the blessings of His promises will apply to that issue. Further, if you both change your minds later, God will go along with it. The issue is to focus on what it takes to keep the covenant alive for you and everyone who embraces that covenant. “Lord, in our little group, can we get a curse on this issue, and a blessing on that matter of human interaction?” The Father will honor your earnest petition.

That’s because when two or more gather with the full intent to shine His glory, He’s there in Person. His power is in the fellowship under covenant. That’s how He delegates divine authority among humans.

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Free from Mammon, Free from Fear

Posted on June 30, 2018 by ehurst

The USA must turn inward and prepare to prosper with less trade.

Economists are excellent at analyzing what happened historically; they are utterly abysmal at predicting future events. Their logic is relentlessly vacant of moral discernment. That is, they deny that there is a moral element to reality. They recognize no moral analysis beyond sheer materialism; they worship Mammon. That deity is a lying demon.

I recognize that there are raw resources the US uses that are available only in foreign countries. Many of those resources are regarded as strategic — so important to our military capabilities that if we couldn’t trade for them, we would be compelled to take them by force. That’s another debate for another time. My point is that we have developed a massive dependency that makes us vulnerable. The US could do better with less dependence, but we have no idea how free we could be. We haven’t even tried to find alternatives using internal resources.

There is a very powerful globalist cabal that has manipulated the system to keep us vulnerable. This is what’s behind the biblical symbol of Babylon, seeking to unite the world in slavery to Mammon. In many cases, technological advancements have been rendered illegal to prevent members of this cabal from losing their monopoly position in existing technology. The US government has a long history of sending agents to secretly arrest people dabbling in forbidden advancements, and their research confiscated and buried. As a single example, look into hemp cultivation. Or look at Microsoft buying out all competition and burying superior software.

We have been denied a far better economic health because of private interests using government power to squelch any kind of competition. These same interests have lied about the necessity of wide open international trade. Right now, the US needs to turn inward and rebuild her internal economy. It will require a recession to break the bondage to senseless and false debt burdens. We cannot hope to do better until after we have done worse for a while.

I’m not defending Trump’s trade warfare because he’s doing it mostly wrong. However, the effort to wean us from dependence of foreign resources and products is appropriate for our times. It would take a small bookshelf of writing to explain it all in detail, but the current global economic situation is badly in need of violent reformation. I say “violent” because the people who run things have a death grip on the system. They are prepared to use violence to defend their “ownership” of all things.

So if Trump provokes some market instability, it’s overall a good thing. He will stumble and bumble through horrible advice from the so-called experts, but his instincts are running in the right direction. From what I can discern, I think he would settle for just a weakening of that iron grip from the banking lords of the world. And I’ll grant you that his motives are quite other than noble, but in the process of serving his own self interest, he will do us all a lot of good in the economic long term. He’s not trying to keep it all for himself; he has demonstrated an awareness that his prosperity is greatest when everyone is well off.

So on the one hand, this is going to be painful. We will have to abandon a lot of stuff in order to climb out of the pit. On the other hand, if we do not let these things go, we will be buried alive. While the escape will no doubt be more painful than really necessary, we should hardly be surprised that fallen people have closed their eyes to God’s truth. We who walk the heart-led path of faith need to understand that economics is not some objective truth, but is merely one aspect of a very living and sentient reality. God’s truth is the fabric of reality; He formed it from His own divine moral character.

Face the future with foreboding, but without fear. Yes, it’s going to hurt; that’s what “tribulation” means. But we are heart-led mystics, otherworldly people who seek to view this broken world from an eternal viewpoint. This world isn’t reality; it’s one big lie. Know the truth of God and you will be free from fear.

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The Virtual Race

Posted on June 29, 2018 by ehurst

As you probably know, the definition of an activist is someone who agitates for change in government policy. Along the way, they try to change social consciousness regarding their agenda. We might go along with changing social awareness about our faith, but government policy is off limits for us, if we take the Bible seriously.

On the other hand, nothing prevents any of us from engaging in a certain level of guerilla warfare. That is, we may well find it part of our mission and calling to engage in clandestine operations seeking to bypass government attention. As previously noted on this blog, we would certainly tend to avoid violence, if possible. There’s plenty of guerilla activity that doesn’t harm or injure anyone.

So, for example, some of you are aware that I am something of a cyber guerilla. Not a hacker; that’s too specific. It’s more about evading efforts to control our Internet activities. I try to keep track of computer security threats, censorship, and technologies that allow us to keep the lines of communications open. That means helping folks stay in control of their computers and their message. I’m generally not in the least concerned with what people do on their computers, but you can bet I’ll be more supportive of folks whose uses don’t violate my convictions.

My advocacy of Linux and BSD have nothing to do with a sense of moral superiority; Linux comes closest to the way I work. It solves more problems than it creates, though it is hardly trouble-free. I’m quite willing to track the best ways to protect Windows, too, because some of you would struggle with changing over to Linux. Linux is good for me; it may not be good for you. Or Mac, or BSD, or any number of other operating systems. I can just barely figure out Android, and I learned to hate iOS devices.

It’s the same with my food preferences, my fitness activities, etc. All Creation is just a tool for His glory. There are actually very few such choices covered under Biblical Law. There have been, and will continue to be, lots of posts on that here, but this post is about something else.

I want you to avoid being “religious” and harsh about choices of that sort that simply don’t matter eternally. We do make a lot of noise about reconnecting our bodies to the moral awareness of Creation, and how your heart should be able to answer most questions about health and medical issues. But in the end, you have to make that choice as to what God wants from you and for you. Just don’t turn that into a religious discipline in itself; that’s idolatry. The whole idea is that you connect and decide for yourself, knowing that your answer will never be precisely the same as anyone else’s answer.

We don’t declare an orthodoxy on much of anything like that. Yes, we do believe that the Bible presents certain doctrines, but you can overly analyze such things and chase the wrong ideas. What we present here in terms of Bible analysis is still not an orthodoxy, just a way of establishing what you have to tolerate in order to fellowship with us. I generally try to distinguish between solid Bible doctrine and my personal opinion when I post stuff here.

Some things are open for debate, but some things are not. Debate the wrong things too much and I’ll block your comments. Over the 9+ years on this blog, I’ve blocked something like six people, and politely asked one person to simply stop commenting.

My comments about racial tension and tribal existence arise from something written into the fabric of Creation. The words are mine, but the underlying ideas are Biblical Law for me. If we come together as heart-led people serving Christ, then race, ethnicity and culture mean very little. Without that, ethnic groups cannot and should not try to mix in this fallen world. No one has any business poking around in your daily life, and trying govern in that way, unless they are bound to you by blood or covenant. People outside of that bond cannot be anything but hostile to your needs as God sees them. They cannot promote your best interests because God won’t let them understand your needs.

That’s not clearly stated in the Bible, per se, but it’s pretty obvious if you can read between the lines. It’s pretty obvious if know anything at all about Hebrew culture in particular, and Ancient Near Eastern culture in general.

There’s nothing wrong with being kind and friendly to a different kind of folk residing next door to you, since we hardly expect to live under a government that will obey God’s Law. You can even “adopt” your nearest neighbors insofar as you can make it work out. The world needs more of that and it’s consistent with God’s character. Jesus did heal some foreigners, and the Apostles healed more Gentiles than Jews. Do what you can, because this world will barely tolerate us at the best of times.

But inside your heart you know this is not what God intended. You know that reality will eventually snap back into place from time to time when God tires of folks stretching it out of shape. So we don’t hate Muslims, but we know if you let them immigrate in mass numbers, they will eventually take over. The same goes with Latinos, blacks, and whites.

Get enough folks together in one place as a single identity group and they will flex their cultural advantages, unless you have a firm plan and procedure to prevent it, which includes stripping away most of their former identity. Some migrant groups will never assimilate, and simply move on if they can’t establish a safe enclave. The rivalry is entirely natural, and not sinful in itself.

People comfortable on the Internet are forming a new cultural identity. Keep your eyes open to this. Some attributes of Trump’s troll army will endure as a new type of ethnic identity. This whole business of virtual reality is still growing in its effects on humanity. It’s not that folks will necessarily lose their real world identity any time soon, but engaging that connection to the Net will put them in a totally different world. I’m convinced this will eventually eclipse any real world identity.

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Another Draper Bikeway Update

Posted on June 28, 2018 by ehurst

I took a ride around Draper Lake yesterday to check on the progress of the bikeway project. I started from the marina and rode counterclockwise. They now have a team laying a curb on one side of the bikeway. I’m guessing they’ll eventually do both sides, but with all the delays in getting the asphalt laid, they have plenty of time.

This is the point below the dam where the trail construction is temporarily blocked by a dirt dump from an older as-yet unfinished construction project. You can’t see the actual construction in this image on the right, but it shows the alignment of the bikeway and how the dirt piles have halted it until the site is released. If you go farther around the dam, you can see the unfinished pump house construction (left) below the dirt pile area.

This is a green sand plum (right). I think someone has picked the dew berries clean, and has been working on the blackberries, because the vines and bushes I spotted last week were bare of all but the greenest berries. However, close to these patches were sand plums. This has been a bad year for wild fruit out by the lake. In several very dense areas of sand plum bushes, I found only a half-dozen anywhere close to ripe like these two (left). They will ripen on the window sill at home.

All along the northern section of the bikeway loop crews have been doing massive dirt work. Recent rains have shown them the weak spots I wrote about previously. In this shot (right) the crews are adding a deep layer atop the previously half-finished trail bed. There were huge dump trucks rolling up and down Draper Drive ferrying fill dirt to low spots. Some of it came from this corner (left) that has been scalped for a future parking lot. This was one area where I pointed out the bikeway was almost a meter below the ground surface, but that’s been changed now, obviously.

Most of this dirt work looks fine, but it needs rocks. This last image shows a very nicely contoured fill over a deep gully, but unless they add a heavy layer of rip-rap on the face of the incline, this thing will wash out and collapse within three to five years. There are over a dozen places like this and most of them are at the stage when the rocks should already be there. It’s bad enough they didn’t mix any gravel into this build-up to help stabilize the soil.

I’ve had friends who lived in both Oklahoma and Texas tell me that the latter state is pretty tough on hydrology engineering and drainage for any construction, but that Oklahoma has very weak standards. Thus, the kind of flooding and washouts that plague Oklahoma roads and building foundations is rarely seen in Texas because Texas state government won’t tolerate such an outcome. Unless the Draper bikeway project puts in the hard work and engineering, parts of it will fail disastrously in just a few years. In closing, I note that the swamp section near the model aircraft aerodrome was flooded again yesterday. That portion of the bikeway is already a disaster.

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The Inevitable End of the West

Posted on June 27, 2018 by ehurst

Biblical Law is the Person of Christ. Get to know Him and you will know Biblical Law; this is the Covenant of Christ. It absolutely requires heart-led mysticism and spiritual birth. You are under that covenant when the Lord reaches out and touches you and breathes His Spirit into your soul. The Bible calls these people “the Elect” and makes clear it is a minority of humanity, but never says why that is so. The Covenant of Christ (Covenant of Biblical Law) is binding only for the Elect.

The Covenant of Noah is subsumed under Biblical Law. If you are in Christ, you use Noah merely as a reference point for your flesh. However, Noah is binding on all humanity. In case you are wondering, the Covenant of Moses is a specialized application of Noah, binding only on Jews. Moses implies Noah in that sense. However, the purpose of Noah is to point to higher things; it is the gateway for fallen mankind to find God’s ultimate truth.

Further, Noah implies the heart-led way. You can’t really get Noah right without heart-led mysticism, but you can begin to harvest the blessings — the shalom of Noah — without that. Noah also has unstated prerequisites; your social structure and government must be tribal, feudal and covenantal. Those should be seen as all one thing, but I break it up that way because we are addressing this from the Western viewpoint. These three help to depict the particular failure of the people in the USA. Those three items were ubiquitous in the world of the Bible, so they aren’t much of an issue up through the New Testament times. They become an issue because Western Civilization is a glaring failure of them.

(Note: The proper feudalism is not Western Medieval feudalism, but Ancient Near Eastern feudalism, which is quite different. The former if focused on real estate and tangible property, while the latter is focused on people as the real treasure. The latter is also inherently covenantal.)

But these are so essential that we can declare them as fundamental to Creation itself. The natural world is tribal, feudal and covenantal. You cannot hope to understand natural processes without understanding those three. And we could add that you cannot understand nature without seeing that every part of Creation is alive, sentient and willful, another prerequisite. This is rather plainly stated in Scripture, but precious few Bible readers take it seriously. This is why mainstream organized Christian religion is failing.

Our point here is that we must assert without waffling that Noah remains binding on all humanity; it is the standard by which we evaluate all human governments, and all human activity in general. The blessings are magnanimous; they are so generous that if you but nibble at the edges of Noahic Law, you will receive some measure of shalom, which we define generally as social stability. However, a more detailed description appropriate to Western minds is to break it down: reasonable prosperity, resistance to diseases, relative strength against enemies, and a stable economy and social order. Furthermore, nature itself tends to be kinder and more cooperative. Notice that we deny there is any mechanistic connection; these blessings reflect relative improvements over the baseline of other folks around you who ignore Noah’s Law.

It works on a sliding scale, rather like friendliness with humans. The more you cling to Noah’s provisions, the friendlier Creation gets, because it represents drawing near to the Creator. An otherwise failing society that is tribal-feudal will reap benefits over other societies in the same region that pretend to democracy or something else. So it’s entirely natural that a tribal Muslim people that migrate to a Western country will eventually take over the country, even if they have no conscious intent to do so. God will simply give them their new home.

That’s because Western Christianity is not genuinely Christian. Christ was an eastern man teaching an eastern religion; the Bible is an eastern book. Western churches are infused with a Germanic mythology that is quite foreign and even hostile to a genuine Hebrew traditional viewpoint.

Everything happening today can be explained by the moral power of Noah’s Covenant. See how the Latina wins her local election to the shock of everyone in the establishment? She’s a Latina who is openly racist (i.e., supports La Raza) in a majority Latino voting district. Nothing else about her matters much to the voters. You’ll read all kinds of commentary that suggests other factors, like being openly socialist in a socialist district, but that’s not the real story. And for those of us who understand Biblical Law, we see nothing wrong with this.

What’s wrong is letting her have significant authority over people who don’t agree with her agenda. A make-believe cosmopolitan USA is totally contrary to the Bible. The people in her district should have what they want, but they should not be able to force it on anyone else. The whole point in electing her to Congress is to change the balance of national policy. The USA is not a genuine nation, but an empire that enslaves all kinds of people. The US has done that since her birth, and now the slaves outnumber the slavers in certain locales. You should expect the tables to turn, but the fragile system that once held us all together is already fractured and coming apart. Freedom for one group will always mean oppression to every other group.

If it so happens the Lord calls you to a mission among Latinos, you’ll find their culture makes a whole lot more room for the heart-led way. Muslims very obviously stand quite close to it, but their otherwise rigid adherence to Islam can be quite an obstacle to missions. And there are other groups for which you’d have to study and experiment to see how they respond, but I dare say almost any culture will be more open to the heart-led way than white Americans. The so-called “American Way” is relentlessly hostile to Noah’s Law, so it stands as an abomination to God. It’s dying and won’t be back. Theoretically, it can be saved only at the cost of a horrific slaughter and forced emigration of non-whites; but then Caucasian birthrates are already approaching a net loss due to cultural drift.

Caucasian Americans are the remaining core of Western Civilization, so don’t be surprised at what happens to them as a race when God squashes the West.

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Rattling My Own Cage Again

Posted on June 26, 2018 by ehurst

Just my opinion, so you can ignore this post, but I will not be silent. This is part of my divine calling. If nothing else, this will tell you something about me.

I’ve struggled with how to characterize Trump. It’s not that he has no principles, but that’s only a small part of the picture. For decades he has been an entertainer with a huge business in the background. That hasn’t changed, but the show is now broadcast from the Oval Office. Everything he does eventually profits that business empire, but he manipulates his audience to ensure that everything remains favorable to his business dealings. He’s not deceiving; he is entertaining. He is fairly consistent with his themes. If he appears to change course, it’s in response to the ratings. Whatever agenda he espouses is aimed at prospering his empire and feeding his ego, but he will pursue it honestly.

His agenda is crony capitalism, but he knows it works best when a slender majority of the population that pays attention is tuned in to the show. Broad American prosperity is necessary for his own prosperity, and his plan will probably work in the long run. He believes he’s going to soften the inevitable economic crash. At some point he’ll probably try to sell it that way. He believes he’s laying the groundwork for a good rebound. His plan is plausible, so he’s not stupid, but he’s definitely not attuned to what God is doing right now.

But whatever crises are coming, those are just the shift in setting that God will use to carry out His own divine plans. The US has to be shattered, in the process, the globalists will be crushed first, followed by the imperialists. Nationalism will prosper, even if it’s only the flawed nationalism of Americans. This is not a complete wipe and do-over as with Noah. It’s just the end of some particularly egregious offenses against Biblical Law.

It’s also the end of one empire and civilization, and the rise of another that will include some elements of what it replaces. That’s the way Western Civilization arose, sucking up much of the Greco-Roman Civilization but adding a whole raft of new elements stolen from Germanic Tribes. Just so, what I currently call the nascent Networked Civilization will be somewhat western, but will be its own thing with a whole raft of new elements.

So this will not happen without some breakage and bloodshed. Nobody can estimate how much, nor where the tipping point will be — actually multiple tipping points, each with its own sorrows.

For once we have communism without guns (under the guise of globalism). That’s why it will fail; communism never happens without force. We’ve got riots and strikes, but no significant armed force.

Then again, genuine communism has never been tried; it’s always been the cover for cronyism. History says communism can work only in tiny enclaves. And even then it needs fresh blood every generation; kids raised under communism seldom stick around the commune. But as national governments go, communism has always been the cover for something else.

This is why today’s globalist elite are against China, for example. The globalist elite are also using communism as a front for cronyism, and China has the “wrong” cronies. At any rate, the globalists aren’t smart enough to actually understand communism in the first place, so they are promoting their brand and almost nobody is buying. America’s globalists will become increasingly frantic and violent. Somewhere in this will be a tipping point that provokes a violent right-wing backlash.

Had Clinton and her gang bowed out gracefully and worked on rebuilding their popular appeal, Trump would be in trouble. Instead, we get constant kvetching and trying to delegitimize the last election, ratcheting up the audacity of their attacks. It is wearing thin.

If the alt-right can provoke legal action, they would prefer that for now. Back during the Pizzagate noise, an alleged FBI informant was dumping information on 4chan and other forums. While this leaker was feeding the pedophilia frenzy, he insisted the real issue was Clinton’s charity foundation. He was unable to give too many details because they could be traced back to him, but he indicated that researching their foundation was the best way to bring pressure to bear on jailing the Clintons and their friends. Keep in mind that the Clintons rule over a very large globalist cabal. They didn’t hide their tracks all that well because they were convinced she would win the election.

Now here we are some months later and it turns out other leakers have made Clinton indictments plausible by diligently searching out her tracks. I’m not going to regurgitate all the ugly details here, but this long and detailed discussion is just skimming the surface. It links Clinton, Obama, Silkway Airlines, gun running for the CIA, the Libya murders, uranium shipments to Russia, and big huge donations from various parties in this business to the Clintons’ foundation, and it reaches all the way back to Brzezinski and the mujahideen. The linked article will also introduce you to the current thread of activity with Q and fans.

Then again, Q and friends have never heard of my prophetic warning not to mess with Iran. So Q is hotly promoting the current US-funded agitation in Iran. But my prophetic warning could as easily apply to our proxy warfare. I am confident Iran’s government will have no trouble squelching the riots if they so choose. I’d be really surprised if any efforts at regime change would work there. The news reports about this are wildly exaggerating the scope and seriousness of these protests.

I tend to believe this will be the primary failure point for Trump’s agenda. Buying into the neocon/Zionist idiocy is not from God. Israel keeps pushing the envelope of what the rest of the world will tolerate. Any day now she will cross that invisible line and all hell will break loose on her. I’m convinced that God will crush Zionism pretty soon as a part of pouring out His wrath on the American imperialists.

So the sequence I see here is:

1. The globalists go down, Clinton and friends in particular.

2. But the globalists will not surrender. Lots of lawsuits and indictments, then some bloodshed.

3. America will struggle with economics and some foreign policy failures.

4. God will crush the imperialists and Israel; it will be at least partly supernatural.

5. The US will break up into smaller states.

Running through all of this is how most of the warfare between parties will take place online. The bloodshed will be secondary as a consequence of the propaganda warfare on the Net. If you want to watch it as it happens, stay tuned to the activity on 4chan, 8chan and Reddit. Several blogs are tracking this, such as the one I linked above. It’s very hard to find a source that doesn’t actively support the troll army, so keep in mind the bias. This will help you see the first two items. The rest may be harder to track once they get started.

This is what I honestly expect to see, and what I plan on living with as it happens.

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Demon Gods of This World

Posted on June 26, 2018 by ehurst

Never apologize for your calling and mission from Jehovah.

We need fellowship; it is the essence of our design. It’s not the same as friendship. You can have lots of friends who don’t have a clue about otherworldly considerations, but truly satisfying fellowship is a bottomless hunger that comes from the Presence of the Holy Spirit, and the only fulfillment is in the company of folks who are heart-led mystics. Most of us here at Kiln of the Soul are lacking that fellowship in our worldly existence. We find it with each other online, but it only stokes the flames of desire for face-to-face contact with each other. Worse, there really aren’t all that many in our online world, either (in the sense of their being fully conscious of it).

If you are seeking genuine peace with God and service in His Kingdom, you will surely harvest hostility from people focused on this world. There is a sense in which the hostility is a symptom of need; the very people who most need your witness are the ones who reject it. Hostility is like respect; it should be earned. People who are naturally hostile are the sickest of all souls, but we know the root cause of hostility to our otherworldly witness is a symptom of demonic presence, one way or another.

Political activists of any stripe are serving demons. They believe this world matters, and Christ said it really doesn’t. There are things we do while we are here, and we do need to be aware of what’s going on, but that’s a matter of tactics, not overall strategy. The strategy is to deny this world, to pull away from it. At the same time, pulling away from it gives us a totally different perspective on what’s happening within it.

On the one hand, we cry out for more tribalism among our own kind of heart-led mystics. On the other hand, we know that in the eyes of this world it looks very much like something called “atomic individualism.”

This world does not understand where the focal point belongs; a proper godly tribalism rests on a biblical covenant, not on any other human trait. In a certain fundamental human sense we reject all other tribes as insignificant, as ultimately meaningless. We may still have a mission that means dealing with human associations, but that’s merely the place we stand for shining the light of glory. Nothing of significance comes from such human associations, except when we convince people to stop being anxious about such things. We want them to stop caring so much about the human associations and start caring about the divine.

It’s a realignment of everything in our human existence. It may well mean pulling away from some human friendships and family (Matthew 10:34-39). Be prepared for that, but don’t assume it has to be so. What we cultivate is a wholesale shift in meaning for everything, including those things most humans hold sacred. This requires we learn how to face hostility from folks who don’t like seeing their orientation and sense of what’s important trashed like that. It will appear to them we are going off into our own little world — “atomic individualism” — but that’s only because their world is a lie.

Get to know God. The only way you can know Him is via your heart. All the huge piles of theology and listed attributes are nothing but one or another man’s chatter. You have to write your own life narrative on the pages of human existence. Don’t let someone else write it for you; they may not even write their own very well. Your proper tribe is not found that way. It’s found in a genuine commitment to faith that makes no sense at all to this world.

Worldly virtues are no virtue at all; worldly deities are all demons.

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The Ultimate Loyalty

Posted on June 25, 2018 by ehurst

Biblical Law is the moral character of our Savior. It’s the revelation of God. It’s not confined to words on the pages of Scripture, but is the impact of God’s Presence in your soul, and the driving conviction to serve Him.

Dig into the issue of human nature and history itself will tell you that humans are tribal by instinct. Wise men can tell you that when you mix people together in a cosmopolitan atmosphere, each identity group will advocate for their own advantages. If they vote, then each group will vote for their own welfare, and precious few will think in terms of what’s in the best interest of the whole society. They may even claim that their tribal interest is in everyone’s best interest. Who in their right mind could want anything different? It can be racial, ethnic, religion, or something else, but people will support the agenda of whatever group they identify with most.

However, this is not simply human nature; this is Biblical Law. It shouldn’t be mere instinct, but should be conscious and forthright. The whole range of Law Covenants in the Bible presume that you must stick with your tribe and care for their unique needs and interests. If you don’t, you are a traitor or a spy. You actually belong to some other identity group and you are faking it. What the Bible does require is an honest confession of allegiance.

So anyone who tries to suggest that we should be conditioned and educated to support some cosmopolitan agenda is not just stupid — they are defying God. It’s damned evil; it’s the message of Satan. You cannot possibly have peace with God if you are forsaking a genuine tribal bond for some mythical cosmopolitan agenda.

In our parish, we naturally presume that those who care about Biblical Law will pray to God for guidance as to what their tribal identity should be. To whom do we belong in this world? What is the identity He requires for each of us? It cannot possibly be the same answer for all of us.

That is, it cannot be the same unless you seek to become a part of heart-led mysticism. Sure, root for your favorite sports team, hold fondness for your alma mater, and vote in elections for your home boy or girl. But once you join the family of Christ, all of those things take a back seat. They don’t disappear; they fade from your focus. The cares of this life remain below while your heart of conviction rises to the Spirit Realm.

And the longer that holds, as you progress in subjecting your whole life to the agenda of Heaven, the dimmer those things will be for you. It’s like the chorus of an hold hymn, Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.

In a certain sense, we don’t care about your ethnic background, your homeland, or any formal religious identity. We don’t care about human laws and political agendas. I’ll tell you what I think about such worldly things, but holding a different opinion won’t affect our fellowship. What we care about is that you are walking the heart-led way and committed to Christ. That makes you part of our tribe, however much you want to be a part. It’s the highest loyalty we have.

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Disentangled from the Lies

Posted on June 24, 2018 by ehurst

It’s a moral perversion to ignore the real problem in favor of false accusations.

If you are going to participate in revealing God’s truth, don’t drag the Devil into it. It’s one kind of problem to declare that there is no moral fabric; it’s actually worse to lie about what is moral. That’s the essence of the Fall: Deciding what is good or evil on the basis of human reason.

I mentioned recently Trump’s troll army and the anonymous figure called “Q” — these are not heroic people. Whatever else “Q” is, the person behind it is a despicable neocon. They will mix half-truth in with damned lies and promote an evil agenda that justifies God’s wrath. But none of that justifies calling the troll army “racist” or any number of other SJW false accusations. Keep in mind that this is two armies of evil fighting for who gets to plunder us and devour the spoils.

Our duty in Christ is to see what God is doing and call attention to His glory. He’s going to deal with one evil, and then turn His attention to the other. Either army is likely to espouse individual issues we happen to favor; the problem is that they have no clue why those issues are morally just. We have to be very careful how we engage something like that to avoid giving God’s glory to anyone else.

Thus, we can condemn those huge petroleum pipeline projects along with a bunch of Greens, but for a different reason: The people behind those projects are rapacious thugs who spitefully abuse natural resources and give our Creator the finger. They will reject any moral duty to be careful and protect other environmental resources God has given us.

But we condemn the Greens because they worship the creature, not the Creator. The Green agenda is to depopulate the earth (by slaughter if necessary) of all but themselves so they can enter into some impossible Nirvana of elitist “harmony with nature” as true worshipers. God gave us natural resources to use for His glory; the rapacious oil companies could do a far better job than they do now, but their worship of Mammon makes it a sin. The Greens versus Big Petroleum is a war between equally evil demon worshipers.

And it would be just as wrong to ignore the other groups involved in such protests. We are actually quite close to Native American pipeline protesters in many ways. Biblical Law says we owe a huge moral debt to the American natives. Don’t fall for a false dichotomy; few things in life are as simple as a binary choice.

Don’t walk into these things blindfolded. We represent the Creator, and He alone represents us. Nobody in this world is interested in what drives us, but they may be quite willing to hijack our energy for their lies and personal profit. There is nothing we can do about them for the most part, so ignore them when you can. We don’t support Trump; we stay out of his way as much as possible. We also don’t support his enemies. We are on a wholly different path from all of them, but we should pay attention to what they are doing so we’ll know to avoid unnecessary conflicts.

The ultimate failure of human reason is the self-deception that objectivity is even possible.

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Teachings of Jesus — Matthew 18:7-14

Posted on June 23, 2018 by ehurst

Jesus began this session explaining that leadership in His Messianic court would rest on unreserved trust in Him and His teaching. He draws the picture of a disciple who is like a younger child, but draws that image from His own culture where such children would never be a smart-aleck, but would always act as they were told. This is what Jesus calls a “little one” who should command the highest respect by His disciples.

A particular sin is taking advantage of such trust to mislead anyone. Would you dare trying to lie to the Father in Heaven who can read your very heart? Lying to one of His trusting servants is just as bad. Don’t abuse trust for any reason; it’s a cruel parent who plays head games, seeking to manipulate his own children instead of trusting them with the truth and free moral choice.

But Jesus now turns and says we should expect this world to be filled with people who do that and worse. That’s the way it is after the Fall — count on it. Still, God is watching and will surely pour out His wrath on such behavior. If not in this life, then surely in eternity, just recompense will fall on such moral depravity.

Jesus uses typical Hebrew hyperbole to emphasize His otherworldly viewpoint. It’s better to go through life maimed and crippled than to earn the wrath of God in the next life. If you cannot resist the temptation to abuse your position of trust, do whatever it takes to simply make it impossible. It’s a common Hebrew figure of speech to put out your eye or amputate a hand or foot to disable temptation. It’s a sort of preventive justice so you don’t end up falling under Lex Talionis — “eye for an eye.” Know yourself; if you know you are likely to abuse a position of trust, then stay away from such positions.

The kind of contempt for people that leads to abuse of trust is truly dangerous on the order of burning in Hell. Just because you can get away with it on the human level, don’t be fooled. God’s angels are watching and they will report it to the Father. The faith of these trusting “little ones” empowers their angels. Is your lack of faith, in trying to control things God reserves to Himself, binding your angel from guarding your life?

Try to understand how Jesus exemplified the divine shepherd. His servants who get misled and wander off into the power of the Devil are not just a minor annoyance to Him. It leaves Him with a sharp sense of loss. He came willing to die a horrifying death just so He could redeem them. He would go out of His way to chase them down, and would celebrate grandly when He rescued them. If He’s going to make such a big deal out of one percent like that, how much anger would you expect He holds for anyone who manipulated that sheep into getting lost?

You should tremble at the mere possibility that you could somehow lead one of His sheep astray.

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